Dayr al-Shaykh
Encyclopedia
Dayr al-Shaykh was a Palestinian
Arab
village in the District of Jerusalem
, also known as the Jerusalem corridor
. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
. The village was located 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of Jerusalem, overlooking the Wadi al-Sarar stream to the northeast.
times, Dayr al-Shaykh was home to one of the most famous local dynasties of local religious Shaykhs in the area. The founder was al-Sayyid
Badr-al Din Muhammed who came to Palestine
either from Iraq, Khurasan, or the Hijaz.
He first settled in Shuafat
, but after the death of one of his daughters, whose tomb can still be seen in the village, he moved westwards. According the Mamluk-era historian Mujīr al-Dīn al-'Ulaymī
, Badr-al Din probably arrived in Palestine around 1229-1244, and eventually he settled at Dayr al-Shaykh. According to the same source, Badr-al Din was a man of great virtue, with a reputation of being close to God. He died 1253 (650 AH), and was buried at his zawiya at Dayr al-Shaykh. Because of him, Dayr al-Shaykh attracted many disciples and other people who came for ziyara
.
Badr-al Din had eight sons; the oldest, al-Sayyid
Muhammed (died 1264-65 (663 AH)), is also described as a guide and leader. Abd al-Afiz (died 1296-97 (696 AH), another of his sons to attain leadership status, returned to Jerusalem to a village that was subsequently renamed Sharafat
for this family of Ashraf
("nobles").
in 1517, and according to an Ottoman census of 1596, the village had a population of 113. It was a part of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jerusalem which was under the administration of the liwa
("district") of Jerusalem. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, fruits, beehives, goats, and vineyards.
In 1834, when Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt
led the Egyptian army into Palestine
, he confiscated large areas of land once belonging to local leaders in the process. However, according to local tradition, when Ibrahim Pasha sent a regiment to confiscate the land of Dayr al-Shaykh, it was attacked by a swarm of bees. According to tradition, this was Shaykh Badr defending his abode. The population grew to about 400 by the early 1870s. However, the village was described as deserted by 1881. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi
writes that the inhabitants might either have migrated elsewhere for a temporary period or died during the typhus
epidemic that swept the area in 1874. However, according to P.J. Baldensperger, writing in 1894, Sheikh Ethman, a direct descendant of Shaykh Badr, was partly a resident of Artas
, partly of Dayr al-Shaykh, from 1874-1882. Sheikh Ethman, described in 1894 as a man about 50, with "fine features, tall, and very sober in speech", wore a green turban as a symbol of his decent from Husayn
. He had been greatly revered by everybody until an incident in 1881, involving the escape of a criminal, had left his reputation diminished.
Along with all of Palestine
, Dayr al-Shaykh became part of the British Mandate in 1920 following the region's capture from the Ottoman Turks by Great Britain
. By this time, the village was repopulated; the 1931 census counted 148 Muslim
s, seven Christian
s, and one Jew. In 1945 the population reached 220. Most of the residents' houses were built from stone. There were a few shops in the village and a well to the west provided drinking water. Most of its cultivable land was used for grain, vegetables and fruit trees. Large swathes of land to the east, west and north of Dayr al-Shaykh were covered by olive groves. The village had two mosque
s, one with a notable large dome to the east, and a rock-cut tomb to the southwest. Within the village lay the tomb and mosque of Shaykh Sultan Badr. In 1944-45, the village had 1,025 dunums of land used for cereals, while 291 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.
. The village was occupied by Israel
's Har'el Brigade, probably on October 21, 1948 during Operation ha-Har. No Jewish locality was built on village lands which amounted to 6,781 dunam
s in 1945. The mosque of Shaykh Sultan Badr remains and is currently a tourist attraction.
The Israeli town of Nes Harim
is located 1 kilometre (0.621372736649807 mi) southwest of the village site, on land formerly belonging to Bayt 'Itab
.
Andrew Petersen, an archaeologist specializing in Islamic architecture
, surveyed the shrine in 1994. The shrine consists of four main structures: a courtyard, a prayer hall, a maqam and a crypt. His conclusion was that the complex evolved over several hundred years, but that the oldest part is the vaulted crypt. This crypt, with the entrance in the south-east corner of the courtyard, has pointed arches which indicate a medieval, possibly Crusader date. The maquam belongs to a second phase of constructions, probably built shortly after the death of Sheik Badr in the 13th century. The prayer hall, which is located in the south-west corner of the complex, is the largest building and was probably constructed during late Mamluk, possibly early Ottoman times.
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
village in the District of Jerusalem
District of Jerusalem
The District of Jerusalem was an administrative district, situated in the British Mandate of Palestine around the city of Jerusalem. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the district was integrated into the Jerusalem District....
, also known as the Jerusalem corridor
Jerusalem corridor
The Jerusalem corridor is a segment of Israeli territory between the Shephelah and Jerusalem which is home to over 700,000 Israeli Jews. Not including the Arab population of annexed East Jerusalem the areas population is almost 99% Jewish. Roughly stretching from Latrun in the west to Jerusalem in...
. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
. The village was located 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of Jerusalem, overlooking the Wadi al-Sarar stream to the northeast.
Mamluk period
During MamlukMamluk
A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin, who were predominantly Cumans/Kipchaks The "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior...
times, Dayr al-Shaykh was home to one of the most famous local dynasties of local religious Shaykhs in the area. The founder was al-Sayyid
Sayyid
Sayyid is an honorific title, it denotes males accepted as descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hasan ibn Ali and Husain ibn Ali, sons of the prophet's daughter Fatima Zahra and his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib.Daughters of sayyids are given the titles Sayyida,...
Badr-al Din Muhammed who came to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
either from Iraq, Khurasan, or the Hijaz.
He first settled in Shuafat
Shuafat
Shu'fat , also Shuafat and Sha'fat, is a Palestinian Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, forming part of north-eastern Jerusalem. Located on the old Jerusalem-Ramallah road about three miles north of the Old City, Shuafat has a population of 35,000 residents...
, but after the death of one of his daughters, whose tomb can still be seen in the village, he moved westwards. According the Mamluk-era historian Mujīr al-Dīn al-'Ulaymī
Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi
Mujīr al-Dīn al-'Ulaymī , often simply Mujir al-Din, was a Jerusalemite qadi and Arab historian whose principal work chronicled the history of Jerusalem and Hebron in the Middle Ages. Entitled al-Uns al-Jalil bi-tarikh al-Quds wal-Khalil Mujīr al-Dīn al-'Ulaymī (Arabic: ) (1456–1522), often...
, Badr-al Din probably arrived in Palestine around 1229-1244, and eventually he settled at Dayr al-Shaykh. According to the same source, Badr-al Din was a man of great virtue, with a reputation of being close to God. He died 1253 (650 AH), and was buried at his zawiya at Dayr al-Shaykh. Because of him, Dayr al-Shaykh attracted many disciples and other people who came for ziyara
Ziyarat
Ziyārah is an Arabic term literally means "visit", used to refer to a pilgrimage to sites associated with Muhammad, his family members and descendants , his companions, or other venerated figures in Islām, such as the Prophets, Sufi saints and Islāmic scholars...
.
Badr-al Din had eight sons; the oldest, al-Sayyid
Sayyid
Sayyid is an honorific title, it denotes males accepted as descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hasan ibn Ali and Husain ibn Ali, sons of the prophet's daughter Fatima Zahra and his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib.Daughters of sayyids are given the titles Sayyida,...
Muhammed (died 1264-65 (663 AH)), is also described as a guide and leader. Abd al-Afiz (died 1296-97 (696 AH), another of his sons to attain leadership status, returned to Jerusalem to a village that was subsequently renamed Sharafat
Sharafat, East Jerusalem
Sharafat is a Palestinian village in East Jerusalem. Historically, it was located in Palestine, about 5 km to the south west of Jerusalem. It is mentioned in Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th and 15th centuries, Ottoman tax records from the 16th century, and the travel writings and...
for this family of Ashraf
Ashraf
Ashraf refers to someone claiming descent from Muhammad by way of his daughter Fatimah. The word is the plural of sharīf "noble", from sharafa "to be highborn"...
("nobles").
Ottoman period
Dayr al-Shaykh, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in 1517, and according to an Ottoman census of 1596, the village had a population of 113. It was a part of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jerusalem which was under the administration of the liwa
Liwa (arabic)
Liwa or Liwa is an Arabic term meaning district, banner, or flag, a type of administrative division. It was interchangeable with the Turkish term "Sanjak" in the time of the Ottoman Empire. After the fall of the empire, the term was used in the Arab countries formerly under Ottoman rule...
("district") of Jerusalem. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, fruits, beehives, goats, and vineyards.
In 1834, when Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt
Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt
Ibrahim Pasha was the eldest son of Muhammad Ali, the Wāli and unrecognised Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. He served as a general in the Egyptian army that his father established during his reign, taking his first command of Egyptian forces was when he was merely a teenager...
led the Egyptian army into Palestine
1834 Arab revolt in Palestine
The 1834 Arab revolt in Palestine was a reaction to conscription into the Egyptian army by the Wāli Muhammad Ali. Ali, as a part of a modernisation policy, began the conscription of ordinary subjects. Traditionally, soldiers were recruited from freebooters, loot-seekers, mercenaries, slaves or...
, he confiscated large areas of land once belonging to local leaders in the process. However, according to local tradition, when Ibrahim Pasha sent a regiment to confiscate the land of Dayr al-Shaykh, it was attacked by a swarm of bees. According to tradition, this was Shaykh Badr defending his abode. The population grew to about 400 by the early 1870s. However, the village was described as deserted by 1881. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi
Walid Khalidi
Walid Khalidi is an Oxford University-educated Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is General Secretary and co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center...
writes that the inhabitants might either have migrated elsewhere for a temporary period or died during the typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
epidemic that swept the area in 1874. However, according to P.J. Baldensperger, writing in 1894, Sheikh Ethman, a direct descendant of Shaykh Badr, was partly a resident of Artas
Artas, Bethlehem
Artas is a Palestinian village located four kilometers southwest of Bethlehem in the Bethlehem Governorate in the central West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 3,663 in 2007.-History:...
, partly of Dayr al-Shaykh, from 1874-1882. Sheikh Ethman, described in 1894 as a man about 50, with "fine features, tall, and very sober in speech", wore a green turban as a symbol of his decent from Husayn
Husayn ibn Ali
Hussein ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib was the son of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Fātimah Zahrā...
. He had been greatly revered by everybody until an incident in 1881, involving the escape of a criminal, had left his reputation diminished.
British Mandate in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, Dayr al-Shaykh became part of the British Mandate in 1920 following the region's capture from the Ottoman Turks by Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. By this time, the village was repopulated; the 1931 census counted 148 Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s, seven Christian
Palestinian Christian
Palestinian Christians are Arabic-speaking Christians descended from the people of the geographical area of Palestine. Within Palestine, there are churches and believers from many Christian denominations, including Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic , Protestant, and others...
s, and one Jew. In 1945 the population reached 220. Most of the residents' houses were built from stone. There were a few shops in the village and a well to the west provided drinking water. Most of its cultivable land was used for grain, vegetables and fruit trees. Large swathes of land to the east, west and north of Dayr al-Shaykh were covered by olive groves. The village had two mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
s, one with a notable large dome to the east, and a rock-cut tomb to the southwest. Within the village lay the tomb and mosque of Shaykh Sultan Badr. In 1944-45, the village had 1,025 dunums of land used for cereals, while 291 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.
1948, and afterwards
Dayr al-Shaykh was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
. The village was occupied by Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
's Har'el Brigade, probably on October 21, 1948 during Operation ha-Har. No Jewish locality was built on village lands which amounted to 6,781 dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
s in 1945. The mosque of Shaykh Sultan Badr remains and is currently a tourist attraction.
The Israeli town of Nes Harim
Nes Harim
Nes Harim is a moshav in Israel, eight kilometers from Jerusalem. Located in the Judean foothills near Beit Shemesh, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Yehuda Regional Council...
is located 1 kilometre (0.621372736649807 mi) southwest of the village site, on land formerly belonging to Bayt 'Itab
Bayt 'Itab
Bayt ʿIṭāb was a Palestinian village located in the District of Jerusalem. The village was captured, depopulated of its residents, and demolished by Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.-Overview:...
.
Andrew Petersen, an archaeologist specializing in Islamic architecture
Islamic architecture
Islamic architecture encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day, influencing the design and construction of buildings and structures in Islamic culture....
, surveyed the shrine in 1994. The shrine consists of four main structures: a courtyard, a prayer hall, a maqam and a crypt. His conclusion was that the complex evolved over several hundred years, but that the oldest part is the vaulted crypt. This crypt, with the entrance in the south-east corner of the courtyard, has pointed arches which indicate a medieval, possibly Crusader date. The maquam belongs to a second phase of constructions, probably built shortly after the death of Sheik Badr in the 13th century. The prayer hall, which is located in the south-west corner of the complex, is the largest building and was probably constructed during late Mamluk, possibly early Ottoman times.
External links
- Welcome To Dayr al-Shaykh
- Dayr Al-Shaykh from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural CenterKhalil Sakakini Cultural CenterKhalil Sakakini Cultural Center is an organization established in 1996. It is located at 4 Raja Street, Ramallah in the West Bank. The traditional manor that houses the centre was the former family home of Khalil Salem Salah, the mayor of Ramallah between 1947/1951, is now owned by the Palestinian...
- Dary al- Shaykh, Palestine Family.net