From the Pages of the Defter (ص 186)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 186)

المحتوى

3°8 (See Image 4.1). The two-thousand-and-some dunams*”
at the base of the Hebron foothills.
known collectively as Jamrura have served the nearby villagers of Taffuh and Bayt Kahil as
important agricultural lands since the Ottoman era, when the Hebron district extended north,
west, and south some distance beyond its present-day borders. An approximation of the
expanse of the mezra‘ in the late-nineteenth century is shown on Map 4.1. The area
encompasses a number of plots, each known by its own name, for example: Marj Qassa, al-
Ruweisat, Shi ‘ib ‘Azzam, Akfar, al-Nijma, al-Khab, Bayarat Abu ‘Umayra, Dhara‘ al-‘Abd, Khallat
al-Khamas, and Khallat al-Khaimeh.?”
In Hutteroth and Abdulfattah’s well-known study (1977) of late-sixteenth century
dafatir-| mufassal (detailed land registers), the western foothills of Hebron appear to have been
sparsely populated with small, tax-paying settlements.°”” Their research does not shed light on
Taffuh, Bayt Kahil, or Jamrura. None of these was counted among the thirty villages that
3°6 About confiscation orders issued in 1983, 1991, 1997, and 2005, see “Jamrura wa’l-aradhi al-musadira”
(Jamrura and the Confiscated Lands), http://taffouh.org/ar/taffouh/jammrora , accessed May 2015
(Arabic). Regarding land confiscation orders issued in 2006, see “al-Khalil: al-lhtilal ya‘atazimu igtila‘
‘asharat al-ashjar tamhidan l’iqamat muqati‘ min al-jidar ff Jamrura” (Hebron: The Occupation intends to
remove dozens of trees to make way for the establishment of segments of The Wall in “Jamrura”), al-
Ayyam, 2 August 2006, accessed at http://www. miftah.org/Arabic/Display.cfm?Docld=4554&
Categoryld=4 , accessed 9 June 2015.
3°7 Ibid.
3°8 Some of these names occur in the documents to be discussed in this chapter. This list is taken from Ibid.,
in consultation with Abu Sitta, sheets #456, 457, 473, 474. Dozens of local names are listed in the area.
°° The authors theorize that this was because the area was inhabited and controlled by bedouin, whose
presence discouraged permanent settlement. Wolf Dieter Hutteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, Historical
Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the late 16" century (Erlangen: Frankische
Geographische Ges., 1977), 46, 48. The relevant register is Liva-1 KudUs, defter-1 mufassal #112. In recent
decades, scholars have moved away from viewing bedouin as settled society’s traditional enemy.
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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

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