Kafr Lam
Encyclopedia
Kafr Lam was a Palestinian
Arab
village located 26 kilometres (16.2 mi) south of Haifa
on the Mediterranean coast
. The name of the village was shared with that of an Islamic fort constructed there early on in the period of Arab Caliphate rule (638-1099 CE) in Palestine
. To the Crusaders
, both the fort and the village, which they controlled for some time in the 13th century, were known as Cafarlet
.
Kafr Lam was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
. While the village was largely destroyed, some of its former structures and their ruins can be seen in the Israeli moshav
of HaBonim
, established on the lands of Kafr Lam in 1949.
, the town of Kafr Lam was established near Qisarya
by the Umayyad
caliph Hisham ibn ´Abd al-Malik (A.D. 724-743). The fort, constructed in the castra
form, was erected during early Abbasid, or late Umayyad rule to guard against invasion from the Byzantine
empire.
Kfar Lam was a fiefdom of the lord of Caesarea during the Crusader era in Palestine, and was known at this time as Cafarlet. In October 1213, the lord of Caesarea pledged the casalia of Cafarlet and two fiefdoms as surety
for a debt of 1,000 besants
he had taken from the Hospitallers. In 1232, the Casal of Cafarlet was sold to the Hospitallers for 16,000 Saracen
besants, its increased value due to its having been fortified after a raid on the lordship of Caesarea by troops from Damascus
in 1227. The Hospitallers transferred ownership over Carfalet to the Templars in 1255. The village was captured by Muslim forces in 1265, but retaken by the Crusaders shortly thereafter. In 1291, it was taken by the Mamluk
s, who ruled over it from that time until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire
into Palestine in the early sixteenth century.
During early Ottoman rule in Palestine, in 1596, a farm in Kafr Lam paid taxes to the ruling authorities. Descriptions of Kfar Lam under later Ottoman rule are available in the writings of European travellers to the region. For example, the French
traveller Guérin noted in 1841 that Kafr Lam was situated on top of a small hill and was inhabited by about 300 villagers. He said that the village stood within a large stone enclosure that dated to the time of the Crusades. Mary Rogers, the sister of the British
vice-consul in Haifa, visited the Kafr Lam in 1856 and wrote that its houses were built of mud and stone and that the fields around the village abounded in Indian wheat
, millet
, sesame
, tobacco
, and orchards.
In modern times, the houses of Kafr Lam were made of stone and either mud or cement and were clustered together. The villagers were Muslim
s, and maintained a mosque
. A boys elementary school was built in 1882, but it was closed during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. There were five wells on village lands. The village economy depended on animal husbandry and agriculture and the main crops cultivated were various sorts of grain. In 1944-45, a total of 4833 dunum were allotted to cereals, while 75 dunum were irrigated or used for orchards.
, troops from the Carmeli Brigade occupied Kafr Lam and neighbouring Sarafand
, and briefly garrison
ed the two villages. Both villages were re-occupied and cleared of their inhabitants by mid-July 1948. This operation involved the first use of support fire from Israeli naval forces, with two warships participating in the attack, aiming light-weapons fire at Kafr Lam and Sarafand.
After the start of the Second Truce, on 19 July 1948, units of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) units continued to destroy Palestinian villages in various parts of the country. However, special interest groups, such as archaeologists
, began to complain, calling for curbs on IDF destructiveness. Thus, on 7 October, Haifa District HQ ordered the 123rd Battalion to stop all demolition activities in "Qisarya
, Atlit, Kafr Lam and Tiberias"; all of which contained Roman
or Crusader era ruins.
After the depopulation of Kafr Lam, the moshav
of HaBonim
and Ein Ayala
were established on Kafr Lam's village lands in 1949. The abandoned fortress and several houses are still standing. One house, that of Ahmad Bey Khalil, has been converted into a school, while another is being used as an Israeli post office
.
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 located 26 kilometres (16.2 mi) south of Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
on the Mediterranean coast
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
. The name of the village was shared with that of an Islamic fort constructed there early on in the period of Arab Caliphate rule (638-1099 CE) 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....
. To the Crusaders
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
, both the fort and the village, which they controlled for some time in the 13th century, were known as Cafarlet
Cafarlet
Cafarlet is a fortress that was located in the village of Kfar Lam, built in the 8th or 9th century. Today, it is located inside moshav HaBonim, Israel.-External links:*...
.
Kafr Lam 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...
. While the village was largely destroyed, some of its former structures and their ruins can be seen in the Israeli moshav
Moshav
Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...
of HaBonim
HaBonim, Israel
HaBonim is a moshav shitufi in northern Israel. Located 5 km south of Atlit and 3 km north of Kibbutz Nahsholim, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 259....
, established on the lands of Kafr Lam in 1949.
History
According to the Arab geographer Yaqut al-HamawiYaqut al-Hamawi
Yāqūt ibn-'Abdullah al-Rūmī al-Hamawī) was an Islamic biographer and geographer renowned for his encyclopedic writings on the Muslim world. "al-Rumi" refers to his Greek descent; "al-Hamawi" means that he is from Hama, Syria, and ibn-Abdullah is a reference to his father's name, Abdullah...
, the town of Kafr Lam was established near Qisarya
Qisarya
The village of Qisarya was located south of Haifa.-History:After the Muslim conquest, during the Mamluk area, the ruins of Caesarea Maritima by the Crusader fortress near Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast was uninhabited. First in 1664 a settlement is mentioned. It consisted of 100...
by the Umayyad
Umayyad
The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four major Arab caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the...
caliph Hisham ibn ´Abd al-Malik (A.D. 724-743). The fort, constructed in the castra
Castra
The Latin word castra, with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean buildings or plots of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position. The word appears in both Oscan and Umbrian as well as in Latin. It may have descended from Indo-European to Italic...
form, was erected during early Abbasid, or late Umayyad rule to guard against invasion from the Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
empire.
Kfar Lam was a fiefdom of the lord of Caesarea during the Crusader era in Palestine, and was known at this time as Cafarlet. In October 1213, the lord of Caesarea pledged the casalia of Cafarlet and two fiefdoms as surety
Surety
A surety or guarantee, in finance, is a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults...
for a debt of 1,000 besants
Bezant
Bezant is a medieval term for a gold coin from the Byzantine Empire, which term is derived from the Greek name Βυζάντιον for the relatively minor city which in the 4th c. became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, renamed Constantinople by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great...
he had taken from the Hospitallers. In 1232, the Casal of Cafarlet was sold to the Hospitallers for 16,000 Saracen
Saracen
Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...
besants, its increased value due to its having been fortified after a raid on the lordship of Caesarea by troops from Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
in 1227. The Hospitallers transferred ownership over Carfalet to the Templars in 1255. The village was captured by Muslim forces in 1265, but retaken by the Crusaders shortly thereafter. In 1291, it was taken by the Mamluk
Mamluk
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...
s, who ruled over it from that time until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman 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...
into Palestine in the early sixteenth century.
During early Ottoman rule in Palestine, in 1596, a farm in Kafr Lam paid taxes to the ruling authorities. Descriptions of Kfar Lam under later Ottoman rule are available in the writings of European travellers to the region. For example, the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
traveller Guérin noted in 1841 that Kafr Lam was situated on top of a small hill and was inhabited by about 300 villagers. He said that the village stood within a large stone enclosure that dated to the time of the Crusades. Mary Rogers, the sister of the British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
vice-consul in Haifa, visited the Kafr Lam in 1856 and wrote that its houses were built of mud and stone and that the fields around the village abounded in Indian wheat
Wheat
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...
, millet
Millet
The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult...
, sesame
Sesame
Sesame is a flowering plant in the genus Sesamum. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for its edible seeds, which grow in pods....
, tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
, and orchards.
In modern times, the houses of Kafr Lam were made of stone and either mud or cement and were clustered together. The villagers were 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, and maintained a 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...
. A boys elementary school was built in 1882, but it was closed during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. There were five wells on village lands. The village economy depended on animal husbandry and agriculture and the main crops cultivated were various sorts of grain. In 1944-45, a total of 4833 dunum were allotted to cereals, while 75 dunum were irrigated or used for orchards.
1948 Arab-Israeli war and aftermath
Kafr Lam was evacuated early in May 1948, but by mid-May some of the villagers had returned. On 15 May 1948, the first day of 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...
, troops from the Carmeli Brigade occupied Kafr Lam and neighbouring Sarafand
Al-Sarafand
Al-Sarafand was an Arab village near the Mediterranean shore south of Haifa. In Ottoman tax records, it is shown that the village had a population of 61 inhabitants in 1596...
, and briefly garrison
Garrison
Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base....
ed the two villages. Both villages were re-occupied and cleared of their inhabitants by mid-July 1948. This operation involved the first use of support fire from Israeli naval forces, with two warships participating in the attack, aiming light-weapons fire at Kafr Lam and Sarafand.
After the start of the Second Truce, on 19 July 1948, units of the Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
(IDF) units continued to destroy Palestinian villages in various parts of the country. However, special interest groups, such as archaeologists
Syro-Palestinian archaeology
Syro-Palestinian archaeology is a term used to refer to archaeological research conducted in the southern Levant. Palestinian archaeology is also commonly used in its stead, particularly when the area of inquiry centers on ancient Palestine...
, began to complain, calling for curbs on IDF destructiveness. Thus, on 7 October, Haifa District HQ ordered the 123rd Battalion to stop all demolition activities in "Qisarya
Qisarya
The village of Qisarya was located south of Haifa.-History:After the Muslim conquest, during the Mamluk area, the ruins of Caesarea Maritima by the Crusader fortress near Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast was uninhabited. First in 1664 a settlement is mentioned. It consisted of 100...
, Atlit, Kafr Lam and Tiberias"; all of which contained Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
or Crusader era ruins.
After the depopulation of Kafr Lam, the moshav
Moshav
Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...
of HaBonim
HaBonim, Israel
HaBonim is a moshav shitufi in northern Israel. Located 5 km south of Atlit and 3 km north of Kibbutz Nahsholim, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 259....
and Ein Ayala
Ein Ayala
Ein Ayala is a semi-cooperative moshav in northern Israel. Located at the foot of Mount Carmel around 20 km south of Haifa, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council...
were established on Kafr Lam's village lands in 1949. The abandoned fortress and several houses are still standing. One house, that of Ahmad Bey Khalil, has been converted into a school, while another is being used as an Israeli post office
Postage stamps and postal history of Israel
The postage stamps and postal history of Israel is a survey of the postage stamps issued by the state of Israel, and its postal history, since independence was proclaimed on May 14, 1948. The first postage stamps were issued two days later on May 16, 1948...
.