Acre district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
Al-Nabi Rubin
النبي روبين
Al-Nabi Rubin was a satellite of Tarbikha on a dome-shaped hill twenty-eight kilometres from Acre, gathered around the tomb of the prophet Rubin, its children walking to school in Tarbikha. In the second week of November 1948, after the fighting had stopped, the army ordered its people across the border into Lebanon; the Northern Front commander Moshe Carmel reported to Ben-Gurion on 16 November that he had been forced for military reasons to expel the border villages, and named it. The shrine is all that is left.
See Al-Nabi Rubin on the Atlas33.0802°N · 35.2913°EAl-Nabi Rubin stood on a dome-shaped hill at about 550 metres, thirty or forty metres higher than Tarbikha and about a kilometre southeast of it, twenty-eight kilometres from Acre. It was a satellite of Tarbikha and took its services from there; its children went to school in Tarbikha. It had a shrine for the prophet Rubin, from which it took its name, and its people were predominantly Muslim. The Survey of Western Palestine described it in 1881 as a small village round the tomb of the Nabi, of about ninety Muslims, on a prominent top, surrounded by many olives, a few figs and arable land, with two cisterns and a birket nearby.
Most of the village land was pasture, but grain, olives and tobacco were grown. Here too the published figures are shared. The 1945 statistics counted al-Nabi Rubin together with Tarbikha and Suruh: 1,000 Muslims between the three villages, holding 18,563 dunums, of which 3,204 were allotted to cereals, 619 were irrigated or planted in orchards and 112 were built-up. There is no separate published count for al-Nabi Rubin alone, and figures that give it a population of its own are dividing an amalgamated total that the Mandate never divided.
The village was one of those near the Lebanese border emptied in the second week of November 1948, after military operations had ceased. Benny Morris records that the army ordered the villagers to cross into Lebanon. On 16 November the commanding officer of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, reported to the Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion that the army “Had been forced for military reasons … to expel the villages on the border,” and mentioned al-Nabi Rubin by name. The village was mostly destroyed but for its shrine. Its inhabitants were expelled to Lebanon in two waves; the aged and the infirm were the last to go, trucked to the Lebanese border by the army.
Shomera was established west of the village site in 1949, Even Menachem on a hill to its west in 1960, Kefar Rosenwald — registered as Zar’it and still widely known by that name — on village land in 1967, and Shetula in 1969. The shrine of al-Nabi Rubin is all that remains of the village. Cactus, fig trees and tall grass grow on the site, which has been turned into a grazing area.
Sources
Cited works
3- palquest.org — al nabi rubin acre(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17102/al-nabi-rubin-acre
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49307/en
- en.wikipedia.org — Al Nabi Rubin, Acre(opens in a new tab)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nabi_Rubin,_Acre
Connected in the archive
22 connected records22 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-Nabi Rubin stood on a dome-shaped hill at about 550 metres, thirty or forty metres higher than Tarbikha and about a kilometre southeast of it, twenty-eight kilometres from Acre.
- Tarbikhaتربيخا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: It was a satellite of Tarbikha and took its services from there; its children went to school in Tarbikha.
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-Damunالدامون
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.
- and 14 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Al-Nabi Rubin.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-nabi-rubin-acre.- MLA
“Al-Nabi Rubin.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-nabi-rubin-acre. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-nabi-rubin-acre, title = {Al-Nabi Rubin}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-nabi-rubin-acre}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }