Al-'Ubaydiyya
العبيدية
Village
Remains of a gristmill
Remains of a gristmill
Etymology: From personal name[1]
1870s map
1940s map
modern map
1940s with modern overlay map
A series of historical maps of the area around Ubeidiya, Tiberias (click the buttons)
Al-'Ubaydiyya is located in Mandatory Palestine
Al-'Ubaydiyya
Al-'Ubaydiyya
Location within Mandatory Palestine
Coordinates: 32°41′21″N 35°33′42″E / 32.68917°N 35.56167°E / 32.68917; 35.56167
Palestine grid202/232
Geopolitical entityMandatory Palestine
SubdistrictTiberias
Date of depopulationMarch 5, 1948[2]
Area
[3]
 • Total5,173 dunams (5.173 km2 or 1.997 sq mi)
Population
 (1945)
 • Total870[4][3]
Cause(s) of depopulationFear of being caught up in the fighting

Al-'Ubaydiyya (Arabic: العبيدية) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Tiberias Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Israeli Occupation War in Mandatory Palestine on March 3, 1948. It was located 11 km south of Tiberias, situated close to the Jordan River.

Today the site is a desolate hill named Tel Ubeidiya.

History

Ottoman period

It was mentioned in the Ottoman defter for the year 1555-6, as Mezraa land, (that is, cultivated land), located in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Liwa of Safad. The land was designated as Sahi land, that is, land belonging to the Sultan.[5] Pierre Jacotin called the village Abadieh on his map from 1799.[6]

In 1838 Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine noted it as a Muslim village, el-'Öbeidiyeh, in the Tiberias District,[7] located south of lake Tiberias.[8]

In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described El Abeidiyeh: "Stone and mud houses, built on a round tell, close to the Jordan river. It contains about 200 Moslems, and the plain is cultivated. There are several mills in the neighbourhood. There are a few small palms, but not many trees round the village."[9] The PEF wrote that the name comes from Arabic word "Abeed", meaning slave. [10]

A population list from about 1887 showed al Abediyeh to have about 310 inhabitants; all Muslims.[11]

Al-'Ubaydiyya had an elementary school which was founded by the Ottomans.[12]

British Mandate

At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Al-'Ubaydiyya had a population of 336 Muslims,[13] increasing in the 1931 census to 625 Muslims, in 137 houses.[14]

In 1944/1945, the village had a population of 870 Muslims,[4] with a total of 5,173 dunams of land.[3] Of this, Arabs used 3 dunams for citrus and bananas, 1,014 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards, 1,349 were used for cereals,[15] while 24 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) land.[16]

1948, aftermath

The village became depopulated on March 5, 1948.[2][17][18][19]

In 1988, a book about the village was published in Jordan.[20]

In 1992 the village site was described: "The remaining section of the walls of the canal (that provided the mill with water) is the most prominent indication of the former existence of the village. Ruins of houses, piles of stones, the bases of walls, terraces, and date palms can be seen on the site. The lands around the site are cultivated mainly in cotton by the Israelis."[21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Palmer, 1881, p. 121
  2. 1 2 Morris, 2004, p. xvii, village #104. Also gives cause of depopulation
  3. 1 2 3 Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 73
  4. 1 2 Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 12
  5. ↑ Rohde, 1979, p. 101
  6. ↑ Karmon, 1960, p. 167 Archived 2019-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 3, Appendix 2, p. 131
  8. ↑ Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 3, p.264
  9. ↑ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 360
  10. ↑ Claude Reignier Conder; Earl Horatio Herbert Kitchener Kitchener (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. p. 121. from 'Obeid, "a little slave" (but perhaps connected with the Biblical name Obadiah).
  11. ↑ Schumacher, 1888, p. 187
  12. ↑ Khalidi, 1992, p. 543
  13. ↑ Barron, 1923, Table XI, p. 39
  14. ↑ Mills, 1932, p. 85
  15. ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 123
  16. ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 173
  17. ↑ Morris, 2004, p. 132, note #543, p.160
  18. ↑ Morris, 2004, p. 186, note #176, p. 275
  19. ↑ Morris, 2004, p. 372, note #180, p. 405
  20. ↑ Davis, 2011, p. 283
  21. ↑ Khalidi, 1992, p. 544

Bibliography

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