Salfit-The Daily Ledger

Salfit () is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank, and the capital of the Salfit Governorate of the State of Palestine. Salfit is located at an altitude of , adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Ariel. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Salfit had a population of 10,911 in 2017. Since the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Salfit, located in Area A, has been administered by the Palestinian National Authority, while continuing under Israeli military occupation.

Etymology

According to the Salfit Chamber of Commerce, the word "Salfit" is a Canaanite word which means "basket of grapes" (Sal meaning "basket and fit meaning "grapes"). Palmer in 1881 suggested the name was possible from "levelled sown field".

Salfit

History

Pottery sherds from the Iron Age I, Iron Age II, Persian, Hellenistic, and the Roman eras have been found, while no sherds from the Byzantine era have been found.

Salfit

According to Ronnie Ellenblum, Salfit was re-established during early Muslim rule (7th–11th centuries) and continued to exist through the Crusader period. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Salfit was inhabited by Muslims. Pottery sherds from the Crusader, Ayyubid and Mamluk eras have also been found here.

Salfit

Ottoman era

Salfit was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and sherds from the early Ottoman era have been found. In 1596 the village appeared in Ottoman tax registers under the name of Salfit al-Basal as being in the Nahiya ("Subdistrict") of Jabal Qubal, part of the Sanjak of Nablus. It had a population of 118 households and 2 bachelors, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats and/or beehives, in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 7,618 akçe.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Salfit formed part of the highland region known as Jūrat ‘Amra or Bilād Jammā‘īn. Situated between Dayr Ghassāna in the south and the present Route 5 in the north, and between Majdal Yābā in the west and Jammā‘īn, Mardā and Kifl Ḥāris in the east, this area served, according to historian Roy Marom, "as a buffer zone between the political-economic-social units of the Jerusalem and the Nablus regions. On the political level, it suffered from instability due to the migration of the Bedouin tribes and the constant competition among local clans for the right to collect taxes on behalf of the Ottoman authorities.”

In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim village, Selfit, in Jurat Merda, south of Nablus.

During the Ottoman era, it served as a hub for the local villages, and was one of many large commercial villages in the area that served a mediating role between the administrative center of Nablus and the smaller villages.

In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village in the nahiya (sub-district) of Jamma'in al-Thani, subordinate to Nablus.

In 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine, Salfit was described as "a large village, on high ground, with olive groves round it, and a pool to the east. It is apparently an ancient site with rock-cut tombs." It further noted that there were two springs to the west of the village.

By 1916, towards the end of Ottoman rule in Palestine, Salfit was one of the two largest villages in the District of Nablus that produced olive oil. At the time there were tensions between the residents of the village and the merchants of the administrative center of Nablus. The boys' school had about 100 pupils while the girls' school had 10 pupils. One of the reasons for the disparity was the locust attack on Salfit's crop earlier the previous year which had destroyed the village's harvest. Because of the consequent poverty and state of demise, parents kept their daughters at home to care for the family.

British mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Salfit had a population of 901; 899 Muslims and 2 Orthodox Christians, increasing in the 1931 census, to 1,415; 1,412 Muslims and 3 Christians, occupying 331 homes.

In the 1945 statistics the population was 1,830, all Muslims, while the total land area was 23,117 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 10,853 were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 3,545 for cereals, while 100 dunams were classified as built-up areas.