Burial complexes from theRoman period have been excavated at Ar'ara, revealing clay lamps, glass vessels and beads, commonly used in the 1st to 4th century CE.[4] Rock-cut tombs with niches, andByzantine period ceramics have been found.[5]
In theCrusader period, the place was known as "Castellum Arearum". In the land allocation made by sultanBaybars in 663 H. (1265-1266 C.E.), Ar'ara was shared between hisamirsAla' al-Din andSayf al-Din Bayhaq al-Baghdadi.[6]
A few clay fragments from theMamluk period have been found at the same location as the Roman remains.[4]
In 1596, Ar'ara appeared inOttoman tax registers as being in theNahiya ofSa'ra of theLiwa ofLajjun. It had a population of 8Muslim households and paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, and goats or beehives; a total of 9,000akçe.[9]
By the eighteenth century, the village remained in the administrative district of Lajjun, but the revenue of the place was farmed for theMutasarrıf ofJaffa.[10] In 1838, it was noted as a village in the Jenin district.[11]
In the late nineteenth century, the site was described as:
A village of moderate size on high ground, with a spring to the east, a second to the west and awell to the south. There are rock cut tombs near. The population is stated by Consul Rogers (1859) as 400, the cultivation then being 30feddans.[12]
A population list from about 1887 showed thatAr'arah had about 600 inhabitants; allMuslims.[13]
In the1945 statistics, Ar'ara and Arah had a population of 2,290 Muslims,[16]1,490 in Ar'ara and 800 in'Ara,[17] and a privately owned land area of 29,537dunums,[18] in addition to 5,802 dunams of publicly owned land.[19] Of this, 1,724 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 20,560 for cereals,[20] while 33 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[21]
Ar'ara 1942 1:20,000
Ar'ara 1945 1:250,000
State of Israel
Ar'ara was transferred from Jordanian to Israeli jurisdiction in 1949 under theRhodes armistice agreements.[22]
By 1962 the area had been reduced to 7,269 dunums, partly due to expropriations of 8,236 dunums by the Israeli government in 1953–54.[18] One case of expropriation from a private landowner named Younis became a test case before theHigh Court of Israel in 1953,[23] as the land had been expropriated by the government without notifying the owner.[23] In 1954 the court ruled that the law did not require the owner to be notified and did not provide a right for the owner to contest the expropriation in advance.[23] This ruling and one other effectively ended the possibility of land owners using the courts to contest the seizure of their land.[23] The neighboring village ofʿAra was merged with Ar'ara in 1985.
Maqam Shaykh Khalaf
Maqam Shaykh Khalaf is the only building which was noted by theIsrael Antiquities Authority in theMandate area, and it is located on a slope by the highest point in the village, set in the middle of extensive graveyards. The Maqam is a singlerectangular chamber, covered by adome. The two topcourses arechamfered towards the dome. On the north side is a doorway, and double window set inside shallowarches. There is also a set of windows on the west side. Inside, there are threecenotaphs, located east-west, close to the west wall. Amihrab is located on the south wall. The date of the building is not known, but according to A. Petersen (who inspected the place in 1994), the architecture indicate an eighteenth or early nineteenth century date.[24]
^abcdHanna Dib Nakkara (1985). "Israeli Land Seizure under Various Defense and Emergency Regulations".Journal of Palestine Studies.14 (2):13–34.doi:10.1525/jps.1985.14.2.00p0125a.
Gorzalczany, Amir; Mahajna, Shireen; Massarwa, Abdallah (2009-03-12)."'Ar'ara (Southwest) Final Report".Hadashot Arkheologiyot – Excavations and Surveys in Israel (121).
Haifa
