Al-Ruways
| al-Ruways | |
|---|---|
  al-Ruways | |
| Arabic | الرويس |
| Name meaning | "The little hilltop", or "Headland"[1] |
| Also spelled | al-Ruweis |
| Subdistrict | Acre |
| Coordinates | 32°51′50.01″N 35°10′40.46″E / 32.8638917°N 35.1779056°ECoordinates: 32°51′50.01″N 35°10′40.46″E / 32.8638917°N 35.1779056°E |
| Palestine grid | 167/252 |
| Population | 330 (1945) |
| Area |
1,163[2] dunams 1.2 km² |
| Date of depopulation | July 15-16, 1948[3] |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Military assault by Yishuv forces |
al-Ruways (Arabic: الرويس) was a Palestinian Arab village of 330 on a rocky hill located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) southeast of Acre and south of al-Damun.[4]
History
Al-Ruways stood on the site of the Crusader town, called Careblier,[4] or Roeis.[5] In 1220 Beatrix de Courtenay and her husband Otto von Botenlauben, Count of Henneberg, sold their land, including ‘’Roeis’’, to the Teutonic Knights.[6] However, they appeared not to have sole ownership, as in 1253 John Aleman, Lord of Caesarea, sold several villages, including Al-Ruways, to the Hospitallers.[7] In 1266, a Crusader vanguard returning from a raid in Tiberias to Acre was ambushed by Mamluk forces based in Safad in Careblier.[8] In 1283 it was mentioned as part of the domain of the Crusaders in the hudna between the Crusaders based in Acre and the Mamluk sultan Qalawun.[9]
Based on tradition, the people of the village professed to have blood relations with Husam ad-Din Abu al-Hija. Hussam ad-Din was a high-ranking officer in the Ayyubid army of Saladin.[10]
Ottoman era
Victor Guérin visited in 1875, and noted that the village contained "150 people at most, whose homes are located on a hill, amid gardens filled with fig, pomegranate and olive trees, and here and there are palm trees."[11]
In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Al-Ruways as being situated on open ground with olive groves to the north of the village. Its population of 400 was entirely Muslim.[12]
British Mandate era
Under the British Mandate of Palestine in the early twentieth century, al-Ruways was one of the smallest villages in the District of Acre. In the 1922 census of Palestine Al Ruwais had a population of 154; all Muslims,[13] increasing in the 1931 census to 217, still all Muslims, in a total of 44 houses.[14] and consisting of two quarters.
The village had a mosque, its children attended school in nearby al-Damun. The villagers drinking water came from domestic wells, and they primarily grew wheat, corn, sesame, watermelons, and olives.[4] In 1945 the population of al-Ruways was 330, all Arabs, who owned 1,163 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.[2] 222 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 844 used for cereals,[15] while 15 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[16]
1948, and aftermath
On July 18, 1948, two days after Nazareth was occupied by Israel's Seventh Brigade in Operation Dekel, some units advanced into the Western Galilee and captured a number of Arab villages, one of which was al-Ruways. The inhabitants fled after bombardment and the fall of major neighboring towns (Shefa-'Amr and Nazareth).[17][18] According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, "the site is deserted. The debris of old wells and cement roofs is strewn of over the site, which is otherwise covered by a forest of eucalyptus trees and cactus."[17]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Palmer, 1881, p. 115
- 1 2 Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 41
- ↑ Morris, 2004, p. xvii, village #91. Also gives the cause of depopulation.
- 1 2 3 Khalidi, 1992, p.28.
- ↑ Frankel, 1988, p. 264
- ↑ Strehlke, 1869, pp. 43- 44, No. 53; cited in Röhricht, 1893, RRH, p. 248, No. 934; cited in Frankel, 1988, p. 264
- ↑ Delaville Le Roulx, 1883, p. 184; cited in Clermont-Ganneau, 1888, pp. 309 -310; cited in Röhricht, 1893, RRH, p. 319, No. 1210
- ↑ Bronstein, 2005, p. 46
- ↑ From al-Qalqashandi´s version of the hudna, referred in Barag, 1979, p. 207
- ↑ Benvenisti, 2000, p. 195
- ↑ Guérin, 1880, p. 431
- ↑ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 271. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 28
- ↑ Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Acre, p. 37
- ↑ Mills, 1932, p. 102
- ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 81
- ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 131
- 1 2 Khalidi, 1992, p.29.
- ↑ Morris, 2004, pp.421-423.
Bibliography
- Al-Maqrizi (1845). Histoire des sultans mamlouks, de l'Égypte, écrite en arabe (in French and Latin) 2. Translator: Étienne Marc Quatremère. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. (pp. 179-185, 224-235.)
- Barag, Dan (1979). "A new source concerning the ultimate borders of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem". Israel Exploration Journal 29: 197–217.
- Barron, J. B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922 (PDF). Government of Palestine.
- Benvenisti, Meron (2000). Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948. University of California Press.
- Bronstein, Judith (2005). The Hospitallers and the Holy Land: Financing the Latin East, 1187-1274. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-84383-131-0.
- Clermont-Ganneau, Charles Simon (1888). Recueil d'archéologie orientale (in French) 1. Paris.
- Conder, Claude Reignier; Kitchener, Herbert H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology 1. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
- Conder, C. R. (1890). "Norman Palestine". Quarterly statement - Palestine Exploration Fund 22: 29–37. (p. 35)
- Dauphin, Claudine (1998). La Palestine byzantine, Peuplement et Populations. BAR International Series 726 (in French). III : Catalogue. Oxford: Archeopress. (p. 663)
- Delaville Le Roulx, Joseph (1883). Les archives, la bibliothèque et le trésor de l'Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem à Malte (in French and Latin). Paris: E. Leroux.
- Frankel, Rafael (1988). "Topographical notes on the territory of Acre in the Crusader period". Israel Exploration Journal 38 (4): 249–272.
- Guérin, Victor (1880). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine (in French). 3: Galilee, pt. 1. Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale.
- Hadawi, Sami (1970). Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center.
- Khalidi, Walid (1992). All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0-88728-224-5.
- Mills, E., ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas (PDF). Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
- Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00967-7.
- Palmer, E. H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
- Röhricht, Reinhold (1893). (RRH) Regesta regni Hierosolymitani (MXCVII-MCCXCI) (in Latin). Berlin: Libraria Academica Wageriana.
- Strehlke, Ernst, ed. (1869). Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici ex tabularii regii Berolinensis codice potissimum. Berlin: Weidmanns.
External links
- al-Ruways Palestine Remembered
- Survey of Western Palestine, Map 5: IAA, Wikimedia commons
- al-Ruways from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre
- Al-Rweis photos from Dr. Moslih Kanaaneh
