| Qalunya | ||
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Qalunya
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| Arabic | قالونيا | |
| Also Spelled | Qaluniya, Colonia, Kolonia | |
| District | Jerusalem | |
| Coordinates | ||
| Population | 1,056 (1948) | |
| Area | 4,844 dunums | |
| Date of depopulation | early April, 1948,[1] | |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Military assault by Yishuv forces | |
| Current localities | Mevaseret Zion | |
Qalunya (Arabic: قالونيا, also transliterated Qaluniya, Colonia and Kolonia) was a Palestinian Arab village located 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) west of Jerusalem.[2]
Prior to the village's destruction in 1948, with the exception of 166 dunums, Qalunya's land was privately owned: 3,594 dunums were owned by Arabs, while 1,084 dunums were owned by Jews.[2]
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Qalunya stood on a mountain slope, facing southwest; Wadi Qalunya passed through its eastern edge. The village lay on the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway, and a dirt path linked it to its neighboring villages.[3]
Qalunya is identified with the Canaanite town of Mozah (Joshua 18:26), its name was found stamped on pottery handles in Tall al-Nasba. After A.D. 71 Vespasian settled 800 Roman soldiers in the town, which became a Roman settlement known as Colonia Amosa or Colonia Emmaus.[3]
The word colonia produced the Byzantine name, Koloneia, for the site. The status of the site in the early Islamic period has not been established, but the name was preserved in Crusader times as Qalonie or Qalunia and in Arabic as Qalunya. Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali (d.1522) reported that in 1192 it was a village near Jerusalem.[4]
In 1596, Qalunya was a village in the Ottoman Empire, nahiya (subdistrict) of Jerusalem under the liwa' (district) of Jerusalem, and it had a population of 110. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and olives, as well as on goats, beehives and molasses.[5]
In the late nineteenth century, Qalunya was described as a moderate-sized village perched on the slope of a hill, 300 feet (91 m) above a valley. Travelers reported that it had a "modern" restaurant. The villagers tended orange and lemon trees that were planted around a spring in the valley.[6]
During the 1929 Palestine riots, several residents of Qalunya attacked an outlying house belonging to the Maklef family, killing the father, mother, son, two daughters, and their two guests. Three children survived by escaping out a second-story window; one, Mordechai Maklef, later became Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. The attackers included the lone police officer and armed man in the area, as well as a shepherd employed by the Maklef family. The village was subsequently abandoned by Jews for a year's time.[7]
On 11 April 1948, as part of Operation Nachshon, a Hagana forces entered the village and blew up 50 houses.[8] Qalunya was one of four villages that were systematically destroyed by Hagana units in this fashion in the immediate wake of the Deir Yassin massacre; the others being, Beit Surik, Biddu and Saris.[8]