Yanun () is a Palestinian village in the Nablus Governorate of the State of Palestine, in the northern West Bank, located southeast of Nablus, and 3 miles north of Aqraba. It lies within Area C, under total Israeli control, of the West Bank. It is divided into two sites, upper and lower Yanun. Upper or northern Yanin is considered illegal by the Israeli authorities, and development is prohibited there. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the village had a population of 92 in 2017. This was a decrease from 2004 when the PCBS recorded that Yanun had 145 inhabitants. The residents of the village have to travel to Beit Furik for primary health care.
History
Pottery sherds from Iron Age II, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader/Ayyubid eras have been found here.
Yanun the village is distinct from Khirbet Yanun, nearby ruins to the north-east of the village. According to Edward Robinson, Yanun corresponds to the Janō(Ἰανὼ) of Eusebius and Jerome, a village in Acrabatene east of Neapolis, which, according to Robinson, these two Church fathers confused with the ancient frontier town of Yanoḥah(ינוחה) of Naphtali, which belonged to the Tribe of Ephraim. Victor Guérin argued that both Eusebius and Jerome had confused the Yanoḥah of the tribe of Ephraim with the quite distinct, homophonous village belonging to the tribe of Naphtali (p. 7) Modern researchers, following Guerin, have suggested that the Biblical Yanoḥah refers to Khirbet Yanun, as pottery sherds from lron Age I has been found there, and not at Yanun. Several caves dot the area, which the local school headmaster claims were dwelt in by the Canaanites.
There is a shrine, formerly used by villagers as a mosque, believed to be of the prophet Nun on a hillock called Nabinun three hundred metres east of Lower Yanun.
Byzantine pottery and other signs of ancient habitation including tombs carved into rock have been found at the village site. There are ruins of a Frankish church.
Ottoman era
In 1596, Yanun appeared in Ottoman tax registers as a village in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal, part of Sanjak Nablus, with a population of 18 Muslim households. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes; a total of 7,500 akçe.
Edward Robinson visited Yanun in 1852. He wrote that the village was mostly in ruins and only a few houses were inhabited. In the 19th century, Yanun was settled by some 50 Bushnaks (Bosniaks), Muslims from Bosnia, after their country was ceded to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Congress of Berlin. The sultan Abdul Hamid gave the immigrants a significant part of the village. According to Haaretz, these were soldiers sent to reinforce Ottoman rule in Palestine. Adopting a common surname, Bushnak, they later moved to nearby Nablus and leased their farmlands to villagers from Aqraba who gradually left their village to settle in Yanun themselves. The villagers are their partners and descendants. In 1870, Victor Guérin visited, and noted the Neby Nun east of Yanun. In the 1882, the Survey of Western Palestine described it as "A small village on the edge of a deep valley, with a sacred place to the east (Neby Nun), and a small spring about 1 mile to the north".
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yanun had a population of 70; all Muslim, increasing in the 1931 census to 120, still all Muslims, in a total of 22 houses.
According to the 1945 statistics, Yanun had a population of 50 Muslims, with a total of 16,439 dunams of land, living in a built-up area of 34 dunams. Of this, 731 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, while 3,969 dunams were used for cereals.
Jordanian era
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Yanun came under Jordanian rule. It was annexed by Jordan in 1950.
The Jordanian census of 1961 found 103 inhabitants.
1967 and aftermath
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Yanun has been under Israeli occupation.
After the 1995 accords, 31% of the land of Aqraba/Yanun was classified as Area B, the remaining 69% as Area C.
As of 2002, the village is still leased by the residents of Aqraba and payment for leasing the land could be made in the form of wheat, olive oil or cash. About three-quarters of Yanun's 16,000 dunams of land is still leased.