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Kafr 'Inan

Coordinates: 32°55′23″N 35°25′07″E / 32.92306°N 35.41861°E / 32.92306; 35.41861
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Kafr 'Inan
كفر عنان
Kefr 'Anan;[1][2] Kefar Hananiah (old)[3]
Ruins of ancient Kfar Hananya
Ruins of ancient Kfar Hananya
Etymology: Village of Anan[4]
1870s map
1940s map
modern map
1940s with modern overlay map
A series of historical maps of the area around Kafr 'Inan (click the buttons)
Kafr 'Inan is located in Mandatory Palestine
Kafr 'Inan
Kafr 'Inan
Location within Mandatory Palestine
Coordinates: 32°55′23″N 35°25′07″E / 32.92306°N 35.41861°E / 32.92306; 35.41861
Palestine grid189/259
Geopolitical entityMandatory Palestine
SubdistrictAcre
Date of depopulationFebruary 1949[5]
captured on 30 October 1948 during the Golani Brigade (part of Operation Hiram)
Area
[6]
 • Total5,827 dunams (5.827 km2 or 2.250 sq mi)
Population
 (1945)[7][6]
 • Total360
Cause(s) of depopulationExpulsion by Yishuv forces
Current LocalitiesKfar Hananya

Kafr ʿInān (Arabic: كفر عنان), is a former Palestinian village, depopulated in the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. It was located around 33 kilometres (21 mi) east of Acre.

In ancient times, it was known as Kfar Hananiah, and was a large Jewish village and a significant pottery production center.[3][8][9] Archaeological surveys indicate Kefar Hanania was founded in the Early Roman period, and was inhabited through the Byzantine period.[10][11] It was resettled in the Middle Ages and the modern era.[12] By mid 1500, the village was wholly Muslim and was known as Kafr 'Inan.

Kafr ʿInān was captured by Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. Those who managed to remain were subsequently expelled from the village by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to the West Bank or to other Arab towns in the newly established Israel. Many villagers managed to "infiltrate" back to Kafr ʿInān, but on three separate occasions in January and February 1949 the Israeli army expelled them.[13]

A shrine for the Sheikh Abu Hajar Azraq and the remains of a small domed building are still standing, along with the remains of various burial sites of rabbis. In 1989, the Israeli village of Kfar Hananya was established on Kafr ʿInān land on a hill adjacent to the former Palestinian village.[14]

History

Roman and Byzantine Kfar Hanania

The earliest mentions of the village occur in sources from the Roman and Byzantine periods in Galilee, when it was then a Jewish village known as Kefar Hananya (or Kfar Hanania),[8] that served as a center for pottery production in the Galilee.[10][11] Most of the cooking ware in the Galilee between the 1st century BCE and the beginning of the 5th century CE was produced here.[12] A Byzantine-period synagogue was partially carved out of the rock, probably during the 5th century CE, and its remains have been excavated east of the village.[15] Khalidi mentions shafts and bases of columns, caves, a pool, and a burial ground discovered in archaeological excavations.[14]

During the Second Temple period, within a distance of less than a kilometer from Kfar Hananya, was the thriving village of Bersabe (now Khirbet es-Saba [Kh. Abu esh-Shebaʿ], Beer Sheba of the Galilee), a village mentioned in the writings of Josephus.[16]

Among the Kfar Hanania's most respected personages who is said to have been buried there was a Tanna (Jewish sage) of the 1st century, Eliezer ben Jacob I.[17] The Talmud mentions it as the home of Rabbi Jacob of Kfar Hanan, a third-generation amora. As a result of Aramaic influence, the village became known as Kafr Hanan, a shortened form of Hananiah.[9]

An Aramaic inscription dated to the 5th or 6th century was found on a kelilah (a polycandelon, i.e. a bronze chandelier holding glass lamps and suspended from the ceiling) in or near the Galilean village of Kefar Makr near Acre, reading "This polycandelon [kelilah] … [offered] to the holy place [the synagogue] of Kefar Hananyah. May they be remembered for good. Amen, selah, shalom, ptp t".[clarification needed] The chandelier, now exhibited in a Belgian museum, bears the inscription next to the images of Judaic religious objects: two menorahs (seven-branched candlesticks), a lulav (palm frond) and a shofar (ram's horn); for illustrations see here.[18][19][20][21][22]

Pottery production

Rabbinic literature mentions Kfar Hanania village in relation to the production of pottery; in the Tosefta (Bava Metzia 6:3), there is a reference to, "those who make black clay, such as Kefar Hananya and its neighbors."[23] Late Roman-era pottery types of the kind made in Kafr 'Inan have been found all throughout the Galilee and the Golan.[24]

Crusader to Mamluk period

Ya'akov ben Netan'el, who visited the village in the 12th century during the period of Crusader rule, writes about the ruins of a synagogue quarried into the hill.[3] Potential references to the village include a mention of the "widow of Ben al-'Anani" in a 12th-century Genizah document and to Kfar Hanan in the 13th century.[3] In 1211, Samuel ben Samson travelled from Tiberias and Kfar Hanania before stopping in Safed.[25] In the 14th century, another traveller transcribes the village's name as Kefar Hanin.[3]

Ottoman period: Kafr ʿInan

In 1522, Jewish traveler Moses ben Mordecai Bassola found about 30 families of Musta'arabi Jews (Arabic-speaking Jews, as opposed to Sephardi Jews) among the residents, most of whom of priestly stock, making it the fifth largest Jewish community in the country at the time, out of the eight places named by him.[26][27][28][29] An Ottoman census taken two years later (1525) listed 14 Jewish families.[29]

It is during the rule of the Ottoman Empire that the form Kafr ʿInān (Kafr 'Anan) first appears. The village is listed in the tax records of either 1549 or 1596, as forming part of the nahiya (subdistrict) of Jira, part of Safad Sanjak, with 21 households and 8 bachelors; an estimated population of 259. All the villagers were Muslim. They paid taxes on goats, beehives and on its press, which was used either for olives or grapes; a total of 12,272 akçe. All of the revenue went to a Waqf.[30][31] A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place, named as "K. Hanein".[32]

It is said some Jewish Kohanitic families migrated to Peki'in, possibly in the late 16th century.[33]

In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described the village as being built of stone and having 150-200 Muslim residents. The arable land in the village comprised gardens and olive trees.[34]

A population list from about 1887 showed that Kafr 'Inan had 80 inhabitants; all Muslim.[35]

British Mandate period

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kufr Enan had a population of 179; all Muslims,[36] increasing in the 1931 census to 264, still all Muslims, in a total of 47 houses.[37]

In the 1945 statistics, Kafr 'Inan had 360 Muslim inhabitants,[7] with a total of 5,827 dunums (1,440 acres) of land according to an official land and population survey.[6] Of this, a total of 1,740 dunums were used for the cultivation of cereals, 1,195 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards and most of these (1,145 dunums) were planted with olive trees,[7][14][38] while 21 dunams were built-up (urban) area.[7][39] The village, however, occupied an area of only 25 dunams (6.1 acres).[40]

The village houses, made of stone with mud mortar, were bunched close together and separated by semi-circular, narrow alleys. Many new houses were constructed during the last years of Mandatory Palestine. Springs and domestic wells supplied drinking water. Olives and grain were the main crops. Grain was grown in the nearby flat zones and valleys.[14]

Israeli period

Capture, evacuation and land expropriation

The village was captured on 30 October 1948 by the Golani Brigade as part of Operation Hiram and following the war the area was incorporated into the State of Israel. However, according to Walid Khalidi, the villagers refused to leave like most of the population in the area.[14] Morris reports that the Israeli authorities classified the village as "abandoned" but the villagers kept returning.[41] In January 1949, the IDF expelled 54, and moved another 128 inhabitants from Kafr 'Inan and Farradiyya to other villages in Israel.[13] On 4 February 1949, units of the 79th Battalion surrounded the two villages and expelled 45 people to the West Bank. The 200 villagers who had permits to stay, mostly old men, women and children, were transferred to Majd al Kurum.[13] Yet again, the villagers returned. By mid-February 1949 there were about 100 back in the two villages, according to IDF sources. The two villages were again evacuated by the IDF.[13]

The expulsion of the villagers upset some members of Mapam, who condemned David Ben-Gurion and the army. However, a suggestion for a Knesset motion calling for the establishment of an inquiry to probe the expulsions of the villagers of Kafr 'Inan, Farradiyya and Al-Ghabisiyya, was apparently never brought to the Knesset plenum.[42]

In 1950, Article 125 of the Defence regulation of 1945 was invoked in order to confiscate the land belonging to a number of Palestinian Arab villages in Galilee, among them Kafr 'Inan.[43] This law was also used to prevent the villagers from returning to their homes even by legal means.[44]

Aftermath

The modern Jewish village of Kfar Hananya was first planned to the south of the depopulated Kafr ʿInān village in 1982, and was eventually established there in 1989 on village land (though not on the actual site of Kafr ʿInān).[14] Chazon, built in 1969 on the lands of Al-Mansura, Tiberias, and Parod, built in 1949 on the lands of Al-Farradiyya (District of Safad), are both close to the village site, but not on village land.[14] In 1992, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi found piles of stones, clusters of cacti, fig trees, the remains of a domed building on a slope facing the village and the small shrine of Shaykh Abu Hajar Azraq on an adjacent hill to the east. The land around the site is forested and planted with fruit trees by the settlement of Parod."[14]

Archaeology

Roman to Byzantine-period village

In 1933, Joseph Braslavsky was the first to identify the quarried synagogue in Kafr 'Inan, based on the testimony of a local Arab peasant.[45][46] In 1989, the site was surveyed by Zvi Ilan. Adan-Bayewitz, of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar Ilan University conducted archaeological research at the site from 1987 to 1988, and excavated a late Roman-era pottery kiln in 1992–1993, with a stone-paved approach.[47][48]

See also

  • Synagogue carved into the rock at ancient Kefar Hananiah (later Kafr 'Inan)
    Synagogue carved into the rock at ancient Kefar Hananiah (later Kafr 'Inan)
  • Synagogue walls carved into the rock at ancient Kfar Hananya
    Synagogue walls carved into the rock at ancient Kfar Hananya
  • Ruins of stone structure at ancient Kfar Hananya
    Ruins of stone structure at ancient Kfar Hananya
  • Ancient Kfar Hananya (at Kafr 'Inan)
    Ancient Kfar Hananya (at Kafr 'Inan)
  • Green fields below hill of Kafr 'Inan
    Green fields below hill of Kafr 'Inan
  • Kafr 'Inan, ruins
    Kafr 'Inan, ruins

References

  1. ^ Guérin, 1880, Galilee II, p.457
  2. ^ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p.203
  3. ^ a b c d e Leibner, 2009, p. 129
  4. ^ Palmer, 1881, p. 76
  5. ^ Morris, 2004, p. xvii, village # 71. Also gives cause of depopulation.
  6. ^ a b c Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 40
  7. ^ a b c d Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 4
  8. ^ a b Lissovsky (2007), p. 167
  9. ^ a b Rozenfeld, Ben Tsiyon (2010). Torah centers and rabbinic activity in Palestine, 70-400 CE: history and geographic distribution. Chava Cassel. Leiden: Brill. p. 145. ISBN 978-90-474-4073-4. OCLC 695990313.
  10. ^ a b Crossan, 1999, p. 224.
  11. ^ a b Negev and Gibson, 2005, p. 279.
  12. ^ a b Leibner, 2009, p.130.
  13. ^ a b c d Morris, 2004, p. 517
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h Khalidi, 1992, p. 21
  15. ^ Lissovsky (2007), pp. 167–168
  16. ^ M. Aviam & P. Richardson, "Josephus' Galilee in Archaeological Perspective", published in: Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus: translation and commentary, vol. 9, Leiden; Boston: Brill 2000–2008, p. 179
  17. ^ Lissovsky (2007), p. 173
  18. ^ Negev, Avraham; Gibson, Shimon (2001). Kefar Hananyah. New York and London: Continuum. p. 279. ISBN 0-8264-1316-1. Retrieved 24 April 2021. Sixth century examples have been found at...Kefar Makr in Galilee. An Aramaic inscription incised on the Kefar Makr polycandelon refers to the hanging device as a kelilah and identifies the chandelier as a dedication to the Kefar Hananyah synagogue. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  19. ^ Martin Nagy, Rebecca; Meyers, Carol I.; Meyers, Eric M.; Weiss, Zeev, eds. (1996). 122. Polycandelon. North Carolina Museum of Art. p. 225. ISBN 0-88259-971-2. Retrieved 24 April 2021. ...one found in Upper Galilee, at the village of Kefar Makr, which may be related to the synagogue of Kefar Hananyah. An Aramaic inscription on that lamp uses the Semitic word for the bronze element of such a lamp, kelilah. "This kelilah was dedicated to the synagogue of Kefar Hananyah" (Naveh, 1978: 34-35, no. 16). {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  20. ^ Flood (2001), p. 50.
  21. ^ Quertinmont, Arnaud (1 December 2012). "Une scénographie de la Chrétienté et de l'Islam" [A scenography of Christianity and Islam] (in French). Morlanwelz: Musée royal de Mariemont. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  22. ^ Fine, Steven (1996). Steven Fine (ed.). From Meeting House to Sacred Realm: Holiness and the Ancient Synagogue. Oxford University Press. pp. 21–47. ISBN 9780195102246. Retrieved 26 April 2021 – via Center for Online Judaic Studies (COJS). {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  23. ^ Gale, 2005, p. 70.
  24. ^ David Adan-Bayewitz, Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Question & Response Archived 2019-04-02 at the Wayback Machine - 2 December 2013 (Hebrew)
  25. ^ Winter and Levanoni, 2004, p. 164.
  26. ^ Braslavsky (1933), p. 20
  27. ^ Moshe Hayyim Baruch (1826), pp. 15b-24b
  28. ^ Ben-Zevi (1943), p. 80
  29. ^ a b Lissovsky (2007), p. 169
  30. ^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 178. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 21
  31. ^ Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6 Archived 2019-04-20 at the Wayback Machine writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9
  32. ^ Karmon, 1960, p. 166 Archived 2019-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
  33. ^ Braslavski (1 July 1933). "Kefar Hanania / כפר חנניה: על יסוד פרטים שנאספו בשעת סיור". Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society / ידיעות החברה העברית לחקירת ארץ-ישראל ועתיקותיה (in Hebrew). 1 (2). p. 20. ISSN 2312-0096. JSTOR 23718865.
  34. ^ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p.203, Also cited in Khalidi, 1992, p. 21
  35. ^ Schumacher, 1888, p. 174
  36. ^ Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Acre, p. 36
  37. ^ Mills, 1932, p. 100
  38. ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 80
  39. ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 130
  40. ^ Frankel, et al. (2001), p. 31
  41. ^ Morris, 2004, pp. 516-17
  42. ^ Morris, 2004, p. 516, note 80, pp. 541-2
  43. ^ Nazzal, 1978, p. 100. The other villages were Amqa, Al-Damun, Al-Birwa, Al-Ghabisiyya, Al-Ruways, Mi'ar, Kuwaykat, Al-Mansura, Safad, Kafr Bir'im, al-Majdal, Tiberias and Saffuriyya
  44. ^ Nazzal, 1978, p. 101
  45. ^ Braslavsky (1933b), pp. 18–22; See p. 20 in: Braslavski, Joseph (1933). "Kefar Hanania". Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society (in Hebrew). א (ב'): 18–23. JSTOR 23718865.
  46. ^ Zvi Ilan (1991), pp. 153–154
  47. ^ Leibner, 2009, p. 130
  48. ^ Adan-Bayewitz (1992), p. 192

Bibliography

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