Silwan

View of Silwan

The pool of Siloam

Silwan ( Arabic سلوان, DMG Silwān ) is a predominantly Palestinian district of East Jerusalem , which is located south of Jerusalem's old town . After the Palestine War of 1948, the village came under Jordanian occupation. Jordanian rule lasted until the Six Day War when Silwan was occupied by Israel . In 1980 East Jerusalem was annexed by the Jerusalem Law . Depending on your point of view, Silwan has 20,000 to 50,000 Palestinian residents and around 500 to 2,800 Israelis.

location

Historic Silwan was on the eastern slope of the Kidron Valley , across from the Gihon spring and the City of David . The villagers cultivated the farmland down in the Kidron Valley. Nineteenth century travelers describe it as green and cultured. In the twentieth century, Silwan grew north towards Jerusalem. Today, Silwan includes historic Silwan in the south, the Yemeni village in the north and the once free land in between.

history

Houses in Silwan above the necropolis

The village was built on and around a necropolis from Biblical times. This necropolis is an archaeological site of great importance. It contains 50 large rock tombs with Hebrew grave inscriptions, which are believed to have been the burial sites of the most senior officials of the Judean Empire . The “most famous” rock tomb with fine decorations is called the tomb of the Pharaoh's daughter .

All the graves had long been plundered. Over the centuries the graves were used for other purposes. During the Christian period, monks lived there who used some rock tombs as churches. After that, Muslim villagers used them.

middle Ages

The first mention of Silvan is dated around the arrival of the second rightly guided caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb from Arabia . After the conquest of Jerusalem , Umar is said to have entered the city on foot while his servant rode a camel, which presented him with a key to the city with the key. The caliph therefore gave the place of the cave dwellers who lived in the valley by the source the name "Khan Silovna".

According to medieval Muslim tradition, the Silwan Spring ( Ayn Silwan ) was one of the four most sacred springs in the world. Silwan is mentioned in the 10th century by the Arab writer and traveler al-Muqaddasī as "Sulwan". In 985 he noted that the village on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem was called Ain Sulwan (" Spring of Siloam "), which had "fairly good water" and was used to irrigate large gardens which the third right-wing Caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān , equipped when Waqf gave to the impoverished residents of Jerusalem.

Ottoman period

In 1596, Ayn Silwan appeared in the Nahiya of Quds in Ottoman tax registers . There were 60 Muslim households.

During a peasant uprising against Ibrahim Pasha in 1834, thousands of rebels infiltrated Jerusalem through ancient underground sewers that led to the agricultural fields of the village of Silwan. A traveler to Palestine wrote in 1883 that the Muslims met on Friday in the olive groves near Silwan.

In the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan received £ 100 annually from the Jews to prevent the desecration of the Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives. In addition, Jewish visitors to the Western Wall had to pay the residents of Silwan a fee, which in 1863 was 10,000 piastres . Nineteenth-century travelers described the village as a raid for robbers.

An official Ottoman land register from 1870 shows that Silwan had a total of 92 houses and 240 male residents.

Houses in Silwan from the 1880s, built for poor Jews on a barren hill

Silwan in the 1920s (looking north to Jerusalem Temple Square)

In 1910 the Yemeni Jewish community in Jerusalem and Silwan bought a piece of land on the Mount of Olives on credit and with the help of Baron Edmond Rothschild to bury their dead. In the following year, at the urging of the Muhtar von Silwan , the community was forced to buy an adjacent area.

British mandate period

In the 1922 census of Palestine, the population was 1,699 Muslims, 153 Jews, and 49 Christians. In the same year, Baron Edmond Rothschild bought several acres of land there and transferred them to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association . At the Palestine census of 19231, Silwan had 630 inhabited houses and a population of 2,553 Muslims, 124 Jews and 91 Christians.

During the Arab uprising , the Yemeni community of Silwan was relocated to the Jewish quarter by the Jewish National Council in Palestine. When security for the Jews deteriorated in 1938, the remaining Yemeni Jews were evacuated from Silwan. Their houses were inhabited by Arab families.

Jordanian era

After the Palestine War , the West Bank was annexed by Jordan . The land in Silwan, which was owned by Jews, was administered by Jordan until 1967.

State of Israel

After the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Jewish organizations tried to reestablish a Jewish presence in Silwan. In 1980, Silwan was annexed by Israel as part of East Jerusalem . In 1987 the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations briefed the Secretary-General on Israeli settlement activities. He pointed out in his letter that an Israeli company, claiming the houses were their property, took over two Palestinian houses near al-Bustan after their residents were evicted. The City of David has always been a focus of the Jewish settlement.

In 1991 a movement was formed to encourage Jewish settlement in Silwan. Some properties had already been declared absent property under Israeli law in the 1980s, and it was suspected that a number of claims had been made by Jewish organizations without site visits. Real estate has been acquired from Jews through indirect purchases, some relying on Israeli absent property law . In other cases, the Jewish National Fund signed protected rental agreements.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest condemned the takeovers, describing the new residents as "affiliated with an organization which, under its constitution, is fueling tension between Israelis and Palestinians." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “stunned” by the criticism and considered it “un-American” to criticize the legal acquisition of houses in East Jerusalem.

On August 1, 2018, the foundation stone was laid for a center to commemorate the Yemeni synagogue in Silwan. The prayer house was abandoned and destroyed in the Arab uprising from 1936 to 1939.

Environmental projects

In a redevelopment plan, the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat , proposed the establishment of a park called the “King's Garden”. This should also include Silwan as part of the Kidron Valley. UN Special Rapporteur Richard A. Falk commented on the plan by saying that "international law does not allow Israel to demolish Palestinian houses to make way for the mayor's project or to build anything".

archeology

Old olive tree in Jerusalem

The ridge west of Silwan known as the City of David is believed to be the original Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem. Archaeological research began in the 19th century. There was hardly any settlement in the Ottoman period. Jews and Arabs only settled here in the late 19th century. Skeletons from the Islamic period that were discovered during the excavations have disappeared. ElAd has been charged with excavating Palestinian property without permission.

In 2007, archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion under a parking lot, which is attributed to Queen Helene of Adiabene . The building has storage rooms, living rooms and ritual baths. In April 2008, the Supreme Court temporarily stopped the excavations.

After eight years of underground excavations, an old pilgrim path was opened as an archaeological tourist site on July 1, 2019. According to the archaeologists' findings, the pilgrimage route was built no earlier than 30 to 31 AD and led from the pond of Siloam through Silwan to the Jerusalem temple .

Web links

Commons : Silwan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Ayn Silwan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ayn Silwan short films show the Silwan source

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jewish Activists Reclaim Synagogue in Silwan
2. ↑ In tense eastern Jerusalem, Arabs and Jews hunker down
3. ↑ Handbook to the Mediterranean: Its Cities, Coasts and Islands, Robert Lambert Playfair , John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, 1892, p. 70.
4. ^ Biblical Geography and History, Charles Foster Kent, 1911, p. 219
5. ↑ Jeffrey Yas. "(Re) designing the City of David: Landscape, Narrative and Archeology in Silwan" ; Jerusalem Quarterly, Winter 2000, Issue 7
6. ↑ Sharon (1997, 24
7. ^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, 114
8. ^ Jerusalem (Israel) - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
9. ↑ Jerusalem in the 19th Century: The Old City Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Part II, Chapter One: Ottoman Rule, pp. 90, 109, Yad Ben Zvi Institute & St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984
10. ^ Jerusalem in the 19th Century: The Old City Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Part II, Chapter Two: The Muslim Community, p. 133, Yad Ben Zvi Institute & St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984
11. ↑ Menashe Har-El: Golden Jerusalem . Gefen Publishing House Ltd, April 2004, ISBN 978-965-229-254-4 , p. 244, (accessed October 14, 2010).
12. ^ Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide . Fairleigh Dickinson University Press , 2002, ISBN 978-0-8386-3942-9 , p. 86.
13. ↑ This is Jerusalem , Menashe Har-El, Jerusalem 1977, p.135
14. ^ Socin, 1879, p. 161
15. ↑ Zekhor Le'Avraham , Shelomo al-Naddaf (ed. Uzziel Alnadaf), Jerusalem 1992, pp. 56-57 (Hebrew)
16. ^ Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Jerusalem, p. 14th
17. ^ Zionist Organization of America, Jewish Agency for Israel. Economic Dept: Israel yearbook and almanac . IBRT Translation / Documentation Ltd., 1997, p. 102 (accessed October 14, 2010).
18. ↑ Mills, 1932, p. 43
19. ^ Sylva M. Gelber, No balm in Gilead: a personal retrospective of mandate days in Palestine, Carleton University / McGill University Press 1989 pp. 56.88.
20. ↑ Nadav Shragai: 11 Jewish families move into J'lem neighborhood of Silwan . In: Haaretz , January 4, 2004. 
21. ^ Palestine Post , Aug.15, 1938, p. 2
22. ↑ Documents show Arabs illegally Obtained Jewish homes in Silwan , Bill Hutman, Jerusalem Post . Retrieved October 14, 2010.
23. ↑ WHO OWNS THE LAND? , Gail Lichtman, Jerusalem Post . Retrieved October 29, 2010.
24. ^ Michael R. Fischbach: State, Society, and Land in Jordan . Brill , 2000, ISBN 978-90-04-11912-3 , p. 193.
25. ↑ "Letter dated 16 October 1987 from the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. UN General Assembly Security Council  
26. ^ John B. Quigley : Flight Into the Maelstrom: Soviet Immigration to Israel and Middle East Peace. Ithaca Press, 1997 p. 68.
27. ↑ Hillel Cohen , The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Palestinian Politics and the City since 1967, Routledge 2013, p. 94. 'Late in the Intifada, when Jewish settlement began in the Wadi Hilwe section of Silwan (“The City of David” ) left-wing activists from Jerusalem worked together with people from Orient House in an attempt to stop the Jewish settlement in the neighborhood '.
28. ↑ Meron Rapoport. Land lords ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Haaretz, January 20, 2005 
29. ^ Joel Greenburg. "Settlers Move Into 4 Homes in East Jerusalem" ; New York Times, June 9, 1998
30. ↑ Meron Rapoport. "The republic of Elad" ; Haaretz, April 23, 2006 [accessed May 27, 2010]
31. ^ Daniel Estrin, 'Sudden apartment takeovers in east Jerusalem spark anger,' The Times of Israel October 3, 2014.
32. ↑ Archaeologists will not find a Palestinian coin here.In : Israelnetz.de , July 27, 2018, accessed on August 5, 2018.
33. ↑ Gan Hamelech residents wary of Barkat's redevelopment plan, Abe Selig, Feb 16, 2010 Jerusalem Post.
34. ^ Demolitions, new settlements in East Jerusalem could amount to war crimes - UN expert 29 June 2010. UN News Center
35. ↑ A photograph of the vacant ridge taken between 1853 and 1857 by James Grahm can be found on page 31 of Picturing Jerusalem ; James Graham and Mendel Diness, Photographers, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2007.
36. ↑ Meron Rapaport. "Islamic-era skeletons 'disappeared' from Elad-sponsored dig" Haaretz, June 1, 2008
37. ↑ Haaretz on Rabbis for Human Rights arrest
38. ↑ Meron Rapoport. "City of David tunnel excavation proceeds without proper permit" ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Haaretz, February 5th, 2007 
39. ^ Israeli archaeologists find 2,000-year-old mansion linked to historic queen
40. ^ Israeli Supreme Court Intervenes in Silwan . Rabbis for Human Rights. March 23, 2008. Archived from the original on July 20, 2008. Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 9, 2009. 
41. ^ "Israeli High Court orders an end to excavations in Silwan" ; IMEMC, March 18, 2008
42. ↑ Archaeological site opened to tourists. In: Israelnetz .de. July 1, 2019, accessed July 7, 2019 . 

Coordinates: 31 ° 46 ′ 10 ″  N , 35 ° 14 ′ 10 ″  E