User:Al Ameer son/Askar
Askar is a neighborhood or suburb of the Palestinian city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. It was formerly a small village, identified as the possible site of the 4th-century CE Samaritan town of Sychar. Under the Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries it was home to a priory. It was mentioned in Ottoman tax records in the 16th century and visited by Western travelers in the 19th century. It became the site of the Askar refugee camp for Palestinians displaced in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The village was annexed by the municipality of Nablus during the Jordanian period (1948–1967).
History
[edit]Askar (meaning "army");[1] has been identified as the Samaritan town of Sychar, which was mentioned by the Bordeaux Pilgrim in 333 CE and Jerome (d. 420). The Survey of Western Palestine considers it to be the same "Sychar" mentioned in the Gospels and the town of Iskar mentioned in the Samaritan Chronicle (c. 1300).[2]
Crusader period
[edit]During Crusader rule, Askar, called "Aschar", was granted to the abbey of St. Mary in the Valley of Jehoshuafat by the Crusader count Garnier of Grez (d. 1100). The grant was confirmed on four different occasions; 1108[3], 1115,[4][5] 1130[6][7] and 1152.[8] The grant included the former market of Askar's old town. The abbey of St. Mary had its rights to the tithes of Askar confirmed by Pope Anastasius IV in 1154[9] and Pope Alexander IV in 1255.[10] A priory was established in the village by the abbey in the 12th century, evidenced by the mention of monks and priors from Askar in documents dated to 1177,[11][12] 1180[13] and 1187.[14] No structures in Askar have been definitively traced to the Crusader period.[15]
Ottoman period
[edit]In the Ottoman tax census of 1525–1526 Askar had forty taxpayers, of whom fifteen were Christians.[16] By 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 21 households and 8 batchelors, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat (7,100 akçe), barley (1,500), summer crops (3,540), olive trees (2,000), "agnam" (250), "occasional revenues" (500), beehives (250), and "customary tax on subjects" (840); a total of 16,500 akçe.[17]
In 1870, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited Askar.[18] In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine noted that Askar was a small hamlet in the Mashariq Nablus district whose structures were built of mud and stone on the slope of Mount Ebal. Askar contained a spring, called Ain Askar, on a hill beneath the hamlet. Near the spring were "the remains of ancient sepulchres".[19][2]
British Mandate period
[edit]In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Askar had a population of 215, all Muslims,[20] increasing at the time of the 1931 census to 276, still all Muslim, in 64 houses.[21] In the 1945 statistics 'Askar had a population of 340, all Muslims,[22] with 3,715 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[23] Of this, 8 dunams were for citrus and bananas, 99 were plantations and irrigable land, 2,825 used for cereals,[24] while 47 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[25]
Jordanian period
[edit]During the Jordanian period (1948–1967) Askar was annexed to the municipality of Nablus.[26] The Askar camp for Palestinian refugees was established on 100 dunams in the village in 1950 and a new camp, called New Askar, was established to accommodate an increas in the refugee population. The refugees hailed from 36 villages around Haifa, Jaffa and Lydda.[27]
References
[edit]- ^ Palmer, 1881, p. 179
- ^ a b Palmer & Besant 1882, p. 168.
- ^ Röhricht, 1890, RHH, pp. 10-11, no 52
- ^ Delaborde, 1880, p. 29, no 6
- ^ Röhricht, 1890, RHH, p. 18, no 80
- ^ Delaborde, 1880, p. 45, no 18
- ^ Röhricht, 1890, RHH, p. 33, no 134
- ^ Röhricht, 1890, RHH, p. 68, no 29??
- ^ Delaborde, 1880, pp. 63-65, no 28
- ^ Delaborde, 1880, pp. 101-102, no 49
- ^ Delaborde, 1880, pp. 86-87, no 39
- ^ Röhricht, 1890, RHH, p. 144, no 542
- ^ Röhricht, 1904, RRH Ad, p. 37, no 591a
- ^ Röhricht, 1904, RRH Ad, p. 45, no 657d
- ^ Pringle 1993, p. 69.
- ^ Ellenblum 2003, p. 248.
- ^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 136
- ^ Guérin, 1874, pp. 371-372
- ^ Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 168
- ^ Barron, 1923, Table IX, Sub-district of Nablus, p. 24
- ^ Mills, 1932, p. 59
- ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 18
- ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 59
- ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 105
- ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 155
- ^ Abujidi 2014, p. 96.
- ^ "Profile: Askar Camp" (PDF). UNRWA. March 2015.
Bibliography
[edit]- Abujidi, Nurhan (2014). Urbicide in Palestine: Spaces of Oppression and Resilience. Routledge. ISBN 9781317818847.
- Barron, J.B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922. Government of Palestine.
- Conder, C.R.; Kitchener, H.H. (1882). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. Vol. 2. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
- Dauphin, Claudine (1998). La Palestine byzantine, Peuplement et Populations. BAR International Series 726 (in French). Vol. III : Catalogue. Oxford: Archeopress. ISBN 0-860549-05-4. (p. 773)
- Delaborde, H.-F. [in French] (1880). Chartes de Terre Sainte provenant de l'Abbaye de N. D. de Josaphat (in French and Latin). Paris: E. Thorin.
- Ellenblum, Ronnie (2003). Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521521871.
- Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics (1945). Village Statistics, April, 1945.
- Guérin, V. (1874). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine (in French). Vol. 2: Samarie, pt. 1. Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale.
- Hadawi, S. (1970). Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center.
- Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. ISBN 3-920405-41-2.
- Mills, E., ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas. Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
- 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.
- Pringle, Denys (1993). The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A-K (excluding Acre and Jerusalem). Vol. I. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 39036 2.
- Röhricht, R. (1893). (RRH) Regesta regni Hierosolymitani (MXCVII-MCCXCI) (in Latin). Berlin: Libraria Academica Wageriana.
- Röhricht, R. (1904). (RRH Ad) Regesta regni Hierosolymitani Additamentum (in Latin). Berlin: Libraria Academica Wageriana.
- Tsafrir, Y.; Leah Di Segni; Judith Green (1994). (TIR): Tabula Imperii Romani. Iudaea, Palestina: Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic , Roman and Byzantine Periods; Maps and Gazetteer. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. p. 238. ISBN 965-208-107-8.
External links
[edit]- Survey of Western Palestine, Map 11: IAA, Wikimedia commons