Acre district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
Al-Damun
الدامون
Al-Damun was a village on the Na'amin River southeast of Acre, home of the Zayadina clan before they rose to rule the Galilee. Captured in July 1948 during Operation Dekel and razed, its people became mostly internal refugees in nearby Tamra and Kabul; its cemetery and ruined waterworks remain in the undergrowth.
See Al-Damun on the Atlas32.8769°N · 35.1831°E
Al-Damun lay eleven and a half kilometers southeast of Acre, on the banks of the Na’amin River, which its people tapped for drinking water and irrigation. It is an old place: Nasir Khusraw, traveling through in 1047, stopped at a cave in Damun venerated as the tomb of the prophet Dhul-Kifl, and the Crusaders knew the village as Damar. In 1596 it counted thirty-three households. The village holds a particular place in Galilee history — its mosque was built in 1722–23 by Ali ibn Salih al-Zaydani, uncle of Daher al-Umar, and its inscriptions preserve the genealogy of the Zayadina, the family that went on to rule the Galilee from Acre. By 1875 the village was prosperous, with some 800 people and two mosques; the Ottomans added a boys’ school in 1886. Its farmers grew grain and olives and were known for their watermelons and cantaloupes, and its artisans plaited mats and baskets from esparto grass. The 1945 survey counted 1,310 people — 1,240 Muslims and 70 Christians — on 20,357 dunums.
The village tried to stay out of the war: in April 1948 the son of its main landowner, Sadiq Karaman, reportedly paid the local Arab Liberation Army garrison £P5,000 to leave, hoping to keep al-Damun out of the fighting. It did not save the village. After the first Israeli successes of Operation Dekel, units of the Sheva’ Brigade moved west and captured al-Damun in the operation’s second stage, on 15–16 July 1948 — the Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref dates its fall earlier, to May, after the capture of Acre. Benny Morris writes that the inhabitants, demoralized by the fall of Acre and then Nazareth, fled under the bombardment that preceded the attack, and that those who remained were expelled; the village was then razed.
Most of al-Damun’s people became internally displaced Palestinians inside Israel, settling in nearby Tamra, Kabul, I’billin, and Shefa-Amr; by one 2008 estimate the village’s refugees and their descendants numbered over 12,600. Khalidi, visiting in 1992, found the site overgrown with thorns, cacti, olive trees, and pines, with scattered stone and concrete rubble, the old structure over the central water source collapsing, and the cemetery still extant. Kibbutz Yas’ur cultivates the village lands, and al-Damun is one of the villages to which annual Marches of Return are held.
Sources
Cited works
3- palestineremembered.com — index(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/al-Damun/index.html
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49124/en
- palquest.org — al damun(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/16802/al-damun
Connected in the archive
23 connected records23 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Acreعكا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Al-Damun lay eleven and a half kilometers southeast of Acre, on the banks of the Na'amin River, which its people tapped for drinking water and irrigation.
- Aref al-Arefعارف العارف
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: After the first Israeli successes of Operation Dekel, units of the Sheva' Brigade moved west and captured al-Damun in the operation's second stage, on 15–16 July 1948 — the Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref dates its fall earlier, to May, after the capture of Acre.
names this place — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Mi'arميعار
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Mi'ar stood on a rocky hill at the eastern tip of the plain of Acre, at about 275 metres and seventeen and a half kilometres from the city, linked by a secondary road to al-Damun to the northwest.
in the same district — 20 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Al-Bassaالبصة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Birwaالبروة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Ghabisiyyaالغابسية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Kabriالكابري
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Manshiyya (Acre)المَنْشِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Mansuraالمنصورة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- and 14 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Al-Damun.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-damun.- MLA
“Al-Damun.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-damun. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-damun, title = {Al-Damun}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-damun}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }