A-RAM

Al-Ram ( ar, الرّام), also transcribed as Al-Ramm, El-Ram, Er-Ram, and A-Ram, is a Palestinian town which lies northeast of Jerusalem, just outside the city's municipal border. The village is part of the built-up urban area of Jerusalem, the Atarot industrial zone and Beit Hanina lie to the west, and Neve Yaakov borders it on the south, with a built-up area of 3,289 dunums. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, a-Ram had a population of 25,595 in 2006. The head of A-Ram's village council estimates that 58,000 people live there, more than half of them holding Israeli identity cards.

History

Ancient Israel

Al-Ram is thought to be the site of the biblical city of Ramah in Benjamin.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 2, pp
315
317 Archeological evidence shows that the town was heavily populated during the Iron Age II, declined during the Persian period, and later revived during the Hellenistic period.

Classical period

Ossuaries dated to the first century BC and CE were discovered at Al-Ram bearing Hebrew inscriptions with names such as ''Miriam'', ''Yehohanan'', and ''Shimon ben Zekhariya''.

Crusader period

In Crusader sources, Al-Ram was named ''Aram, Haram, Rama, Ramatha, Ramitta,'' or ''Ramathes''.Pringle, 1998, p
179
/ref> Al-Ram was one of 21 villages given by Godfrey of Bouillon (r. 1099–1100) as a fief to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
11
/ref> All the inhabitants of the village who were mentioned in Crusader sources between 1152 and 1160 had names which imply they were Christian.Pringle, 1998, p
180
/ref> The village was mentioned around 1161, when a dispute about a land boundary was settled.

Ottoman period

In 1517, the village became part of the Ottoman Empire along with the rest of Palestine. In the 1596 tax records, it appeared as ''Rama'', located in the ''Nahiya'' of Jabal Quds of the ''Liwa'' of Al-Quds. The population was 28 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees and vineyards, in addition to occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 4700 akçe.

In 1838, Edward Robinson found the village to be very poor and small, but large stones and scattered columns indicated that it had previously been an important place. In 1870 the French explorer Victor Guérin found the village to have 200 inhabitants,Guérin, 1874, p
199
ff while an Ottoman village list of about the same year showed that Er-Ram had 32 houses and a population of 120, though the population count included men only.Socin, 1879, p
158
/ref>

In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Er-Ram as a "small village in a conspicuous position on the top of a white hill, with olives. It has a well to the south. .The houses are of stone, partly built of old material".
"West of the village is a good birkeh with a pointed vault; lower down the hill a pillar-shaft broken in two, probably from the church. On the hill are cisterns. Drafted stones are used up in the village walls. At Khan-er-Ram, by the main road, is a quarry with half-finished blocks still in it, and two cisterns. The Khan appears to be quite modern, and is in ruins. There are extensive quarries on the hill-sides near it."Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
155
/ref>

In 1896, the population of Er-Ram was estimated to be about 240 persons.

British Mandate period

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Al-Ram had a population of 208, all Muslims.Barron, 1923, Table V, , , Sub-district of Jerusalem, p
14
/ref> This had increased in the 1931 census to 262, still all Muslim, in 51 houses.Mills, 1932, p
42
/ref> Al-Ram suffered badly in the 1927 earthquake, with old walls collapsing.

In a