Subtara (Arabic: سبتارة) is an archaeological site in theLod Valley, near the modernIsraeli settlement ofYagel in Israel'sCentral District.
The site has been inhabited since ancient times, and its name is of non-Semiticextraction.[1]
Archaeological excavations discovered the remains of aMamluk settlement dating to the13th and14th centuries.[2][3]
Subtara was incorporated into theOttoman Empire in 1517 with all ofPalestine. In 1552, Subtara was an inhabited village.HasekiHürrem Sultan, the favorite wife ofSuleiman the Magnificent, endowed its tax revenues to herHaseki Sultan Imaret inJerusalem. Administratively, the village belonged to the Sub-district ofRamla in the District ofGaza.[4]
In 1596 it appeared as a large village in thetax registers under the name ofSitan, as being in thenahiya ("subdistrict") ofRamla, which was under the administration of theliwa ("district") ofGaza. It had a population of 123 households who were all Muslims.[5] They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,3 % on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, sesame, vineyards, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 19,100akçe. All of the revenue went to aWaqf.[6] Archaeological excavations found settlement remains from this period, including walls, floors,cooking ovens and a rich ceramic repertoire.[2][3]
In 1051 AH/1641/2, the Bedouin tribe ofal-Sawālima from around Jaffa attacked the villages of Subtara,Bayt Dajan,al-Sāfiriya,Jindas,Lydda andYazur belonging to Waqf Haseki Sultan. Under nomadic pressures, Subṭāra was abandoned and its residents moved toKafr 'Ana, than a minor and insignificant hamlet.[7]
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the area around Subtara now belonged to the Nahiyeh (sub-district) ofLod that encompassed the area of the present-day city ofModi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut in the south to the present-day city ofEl'ad in the north, and from the foothills in the east, through the Lod Valley to the outskirts ofJaffa in the west. This area was home to thousands of inhabitants in about 20 villages, who had at their disposal tens of thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land. The lands of Subtara were subsumed by the village ofal-Safiriyya.[8]