Ammuqa

Ammuqa
Ammuqa
Arabic	عموقه
Name meaning	"deep"[1]
Also spelled	Amuka, 'Amuqa
Subdistrict	Safad
Coordinates	33°00′21.86″N 35°31′12.69″E / 33.0060722°N 35.5201917°ECoordinates: 33°00′21.86″N 35°31′12.69″E / 33.0060722°N 35.5201917°E
Palestine grid	198/267
Population	140[2][3] (1945)
Area	2,574 dunams
Date of depopulation	24 May 1948[4]
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Amuka

Ammuqa (also transliterated 'Amuqa and Amuka) was a Palestinian village, located five kilometres northeast of Safed.

History

Known locally for its seven springs, Ammuqa also enjoyed renown as the site of the sepulchre of Jonathan ben Uzziel. Rabbi Samuel ben Samson, who travelled to Palestine in 1210, writes that the site was marked by "a great tree" where the local Muslim population made vows "to his glory" and gave votive offerings of oil and light.^[5]

Ottoman era

In 1517, Ammuqa was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, and by 1596 it was under the administration of the nahiyah ("subdistrict") of Jira, part of Sanjak Safad, with a population of 391. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, beehives, vineyards, and goats.^[6][7]

In the second half of the 19th century Algerian followers of Abdelkader El Djezairi have been defeated by the French in Algeria, and sought refuge in another part of the Ottoman Empire. They were given lands in various locations in Ottoman Syria, including Ammuqa, and the close-by Dayshum, Marus, Al-Husayniyya and Tulayl.^[8]

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, 'Amuqa had a population of 114, all Muslims,^[9] decreasing slightly in the 1931 census to 108, still all Muslims, in a total of 17 houses.^[10]

By 1944/45, the village had a total of 1,164 dunums of land allocated to cereals; while 195 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.^[11][12]

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, on the 24 May 1948, Ammuqa was assaulted by the Palmach's First Battalion, headed by Yigal Allon.^[13] Following the "systematic" destruction of the villages in the Hula Valley, Ammuqa was evacuated.^[14]

See also

• Operation Yiftach
• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestinian exodus

References

1. Palmer, 1881, p. 66
2. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945, quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. p.69.
3. Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 9
4. Morris, 2004, p. xvi, village # 47. Also gives the cause of depopulation.
5. Adler, 2004, p. 107.
6. Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p.175, quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p.433.
7. Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6 writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9
8. Abbasi, 2007 (Hebrew). Non-Hebrew version in The Maghreb Review, 28(1), 2003 pp. 41-59.
9. Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Safad, p. 41
10. Mills, 1932, p. 105
11. Khalidi, 1992, p.434
12. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 118
13. "Welcome to Ammuqa". Palestine Remembered. Retrieved 2007-12-09.
14. Morris, 2004, pp. 251–252.

Bibliography

• Abbasi, Mustafa (2007). "From Algeria to the Holy Land: Algerian communities in the Galilee, from the late Ottoman period to 1948 / הקהילה האלג'יראית בגליל משלהי השלטון העות'מני עד שנת 1948". Horizons in Geography / אופקים בגאוגרפיה (68/69): 56–72. ISSN 0334-3774. JSTOR 23716446.
• Adler, Elkan Nathan (2004). Jewish Travellers. p. 107. ISBN 0-415-34466-2.
• Barron, J. B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922. Government of Palestine.
• Department of Statistics (1945). Village Statistics, April, 1945. Government of Palestine.
• Hadawi, Sami (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.
• 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. Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
• Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6.
• 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.
• Rhode, Harold (1979). Administration and Population of the Sancak of Safed in the Sixteenth Century. Columbia University.

External links

• Welcome to Ammuqa,
• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 4: IAA, Wikimedia commons
• 'Ammuqa, at Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
• Ammuqa, Dr. Khalil Rizk.