Dayr al-Shaykh

Dayr al-Shaykh stood on a small hill at the foot of the northern slope of Mt Shaykh Badr, about sixteen kilometres west of Jerusalem, overlooking Wadi al-Sarar to the northeast. The Jaffa–Jerusalem highway and railway ran through the wadi, and one of the stations stood half a kilometre east of the village. Secondary roads linked it to its neighbours. Its plan was rectangular and ran north to south, with a few houses built along the spur towards the highway.

In 1596 it was a village of 113 people in the nahiya of Jerusalem, taxed on wheat, barley, olives, fruit, goats, beehives and vines. In the early 1870s it was reported to have about four hundred people, but by 1881 it was deserted; its inhabitants may have moved away for a time or may have died in the typhus epidemic of 1874. Its two mosques, one with a large dome, stood to the east, and there was a rock-cut tomb to the southwest. By the Mandate the village had been repopulated. The 1931 census counted 155 people in 26 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 220, about ten of them Christians and the rest Muslims, on 6,781 dunums of which 1,025 were under cereals and 291 irrigated or orchard. Most homes were stone. The village landmark was the maqam and mosque of al-Shaykh Sultan Badr. There were a few small shops, and a well to the west supplied drinking water. The land was planted in rainfed grain, vegetables and fruit trees, with olives and fruit occupying large stretches to the east, west and north, and other parts used for grazing.

When the second truce ended on 15 October 1948, Israeli forces pushed into the Jerusalem corridor just south of the road to the coast. Dayr al-Shaykh was occupied by the Har’el Brigade in the course of that operation — Operation Ha-Har — probably on 21 October; Zochrot gives the same date and names Har’el and Etzioni. Benny Morris gives a date of occupation but does not record what finally became of the villagers, though he notes that some villagers in the area fled as Israeli forces approached and that others were expelled.

No Israeli settlement stands on the village’s land; Nes Harim, founded in 1950, is a kilometre southwest of the site on land belonging to Bayt ‘Itab. One of the few village buildings that remain is the maqam of al-Shaykh Sultan Badr — a white structure with two domes, arched entrances and a courtyard — which is now an Israeli tourist site. Stone rubble west of the shrine is under wild grass. Cactus grows on the terrace walls to the west and east, along with many olive trees, and the rubble of houses and terraces can be seen across the site.

Sources

• Dayr al-Shaykh — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• Dayr al-Shaykh — Zochrot, drawn from Walid Khalidi, All That Remains (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)