Al-Zuq al-Tahtani

Al-Zuq al-Tahtani stood on a hill at about a hundred metres, thirty kilometres from Safad, facing broad open ground on every side with Mount Hermon — Jabal al-Shaykh — rising to the northeast. A secondary road linked it to the highway running down to Safad and Tiberias, and graded roads to the villages nearby. The etymology of al-Zuq has not been established; it may come from the Syriac zuk, “town”. Al-Tahtani means “lower” in Arabic and distinguished it from al-Zuq al-Fawqani, the upper village to the northwest. Researchers have noted that the name originally referred to this southern site alone and only later extended northwards to the adjacent village, a kind of name transfer that is a recognised feature of Palestinian toponymy.

The Survey of Western Palestine described it in 1881 as a stone and mud village with ruined Arab houses on the north side and a mill, containing about a hundred Muslims, on the Hula plain, with arable land around and a large stream near. The 1931 census counted 626 Muslims and one Christian in 137 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 1,050, with no exact confessional breakdown but a predominantly Muslim population, holding 9,368 of the village’s 11,634 dunums. The villagers drew water for domestic use from a nearby wadi and worked water-powered mills north of the village. They lived mainly by agriculture, growing citrus and other fruit, especially on the land to the south: in 1944/45, 2,145 dunums were allotted to cereals and 5,547 were irrigated or planted in orchards — a proportion unusual even for the Hula. Al-Zuq al-Tahtani was itself classed as an archaeological site, an artificial mound with building foundations protruding from the surface, and remains of dry-stone enclosures and pottery fragments could be found on the ground.

Israeli military sources claimed in a report of 1948 that the villagers of al-Zuq al-Tahtani left their homes on 11 May 1948, under the impact of the fall of Safad the previous day. Benny Morris, who quotes the report, does not indicate whether there was an Israeli attack on the village during Operation Yiftach, nor when Israeli forces actually entered it. Other references give the depopulation as the work of the Palmach’s First Battalion on 11 May; Zochrot dates the occupation to May 1948 without naming a unit. The record does not go further than that.

Beyt Hillel was established south of the village in 1940. By 1944 the land it occupied had been administratively combined with the lands of the neighbouring village of Lazzaza, though subsequent land survey maps show Beyt Hillel on land belonging to al-Zuq al-Tahtani, about a kilometre southeast of the village site; in 1950 the re-established Beyt Hillel was expanded to take in al-Zuq al-Tahtani land, and Zochrot also records part of Qiryat Shemona and an industrial area on the village’s ground. Only one house remains, built of stone and serving as an office for an airstrip. The grass and wild vegetation covering the site are mowed. Tall al-Wawiyat is being excavated at the southern edge of the site, and a fenced area holding a large number of cactus plants and tall eucalyptus lies west of the tell.

Sources

• al-Zuq al-Tahtani — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest)
• al-Zuq at-Tahtani — Zochrot
• Al-Zuq al-Tahtani — Wikipedia