Jaffa district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
al-Jammasin al-Sharqi
الجَمّاسِين الشرقي
Al-Jammasin al-Sharqi, the eastern of Jaffa's two buffalo-raising Jammasin villages, had 730 people in 1944/45. The cited records give different dates for departure or occupation — 7 January, 17 March, 1 April, or only sometime before 15 May 1948 — and do not reconcile them. Tel Aviv development engulfed the site, though a site description published in 1992 recorded several Palestinian houses still standing in the street grid.
See al-Jammasin al-Sharqi on the Atlas32.0982°N · 34.8289°EAl-Jammasin al-Sharqi stood nine kilometres northeast of Jaffa and about five kilometres from the seashore, on the central coastal plain beside marshland. Its name identified the people as buffalo breeders, while al-Sharqi — eastern — distinguished it from al-Jammasin al-Gharbi to the west. The population was Muslim.
The cited historical account traces the community to nomadic herders who migrated from the Jordan Valley and may have reached the area in the sixteenth century. Ottoman tax registers for 1596 list Jammasin/Mazra’at Khashana as a tribe in the nahiya of Bani Sa’b and record taxes on goats and beehives rather than crops, evidence the account treats as consistent with short-distance herding and semi-nomadic work. By the eighteenth century the Jammasin had settled permanently. The source calls the earlier community nomadic and tribal; it does not label it Bedouin. Villagers typically lived in a khus, a conical or pyramidal hut made from trunks and branches, although some houses were adobe. Children attended school in nearby al-Shaykh Muwannis.
The 1931 census counted 395 people, and the 1944/45 statistics counted 730. Buffalo remained central to the economy: villagers sold meat and milk in Jaffa and used the animals for draft work. Of the Arab-held land recorded in 1944/45, 53 dunums were planted in citrus and bananas, 40 in cereals, and 193 were irrigated or used for orchards. Some residents also worked in the German-owned citrus groves at Saruna. Palestine Remembered prints 22 public dunums while retaining a total of 358, making its components add to 362. The contemporary government table resolves the transcription error: 286 dunums were Arab-owned, 54 Jewish-owned and 18 public, for the stated total of 358.
The cited web records do not establish one date for either the villagers’ departure or military control. Palestine Remembered’s added summary says intimidation caused part of the population to leave on 7 January 1948 and that the village was completely emptied on 17 March; its statistical summary also gives 17 March as the occupation date. Zochrot instead lists 1 April and identifies Irgun and Haganah units. The All That Remains narrative reproduced by PalQuest and Palestine Remembered says only that the village probably fell to Zionist attacks sometime before the British Mandate ended on 15 May. These dates may describe successive stages, but the cited records do not reconcile them.
The Khalidi-derived account reproduced by PalQuest, Palestine Remembered and Zochrot lists no Israeli settlement founded on village land and describes Tel Aviv’s expansion as taking over the site. Its site description, published in All That Remains in 1992, recorded rubble among castor-oil plants, cypress, fig and Christ’s-thorn trees. Several Palestinian houses still stood within the Tel Aviv street grid, alongside newer commercial and residential buildings.
Sources
Cited works
4- palquest.org — al jammasin al sharqi(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17022/al-jammasin-al-sharqi
- upload.wikimedia.org — Village Statistics 1945 fullPDF(opens in a new tab)https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Village_Statistics_1945_full.pdf#page=28
- palestineremembered.com — index(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestineremembered.com/Jaffa/al-Jammasin-al-Sharqi/index.html
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49087/en
Connected in the archive
14 connected records14 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 4 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- al-Jammasin al-Gharbiالجَمّاسِين الغربي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Its name identified the people as buffalo breeders, while al-Sharqi — eastern — distinguished it from al-Jammasin al-Gharbi to the west.
- Al-Shaykh Muwannisالشيخ مونّس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Children attended school in nearby al-Shaykh Muwannis.
- All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The All That Remains narrative reproduced by PalQuest and Palestine Remembered says only that the village probably fell to Zionist attacks sometime before the British Mandate ended on 15 May.
- Jaffaيافا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Al-Jammasin al-Sharqi stood nine kilometres northeast of Jaffa and about five kilometres from the seashore, on the central coastal plain beside marshland.
in the same district — 10 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Abu Kishkأبو كِشْك
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-'Abbasiyyaالعَبّاسِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-Khayriyyaالخيرية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-Manshiyyaالمنشية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-Mas'udiyyaالمَسْعُودِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Beit Dajanبيت دجن
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- and 4 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“al-Jammasin al-Sharqi.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-jammasin-al-sharqi.- MLA
“al-Jammasin al-Sharqi.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-jammasin-al-sharqi. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-jammasin-al-sharqi, title = {al-Jammasin al-Sharqi}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-jammasin-al-sharqi}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }