Al-Samra ( ar, السمرا) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Tiberias Subdistrict. It was depopulated on April 21, 1948, during the

1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Pa ...

. It was located 10 km southeast of Tiberias.

History

The village had a mosque and several ''khirbas'' (ruined sites) including ''Khirbat al-Tawafiq'' and ''Khirbat Duwayraban''.

Late Ottoman period

In the early 19th century,

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt (24 November 1784 – 15 October 1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and Orientalist. Burckhardt assumed the alias ''Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah'' during his travels in Arabia ...

noted it as the only village on the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias, and that it had some ancient buildings. In 1838, Edward Robinson was told that the village, ''Khurbet es-Sumrah'', was on the eastern shore of the lake. The villagers were

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

. In 1875, Victor Guérin found here large ruins, which he misidentified as Hippos. A population list from about 1887 showed ''es Samr (east shore)'' to have about 180 inhabitants; 20

Druze The Druze (; ar, دَرْزِيٌّ, ' or ', , ') are an Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion based on the teachings of ...

and 160 Muslims. In 1914, an Ottoman airplane, on its way from Istanbul to Cairo, crashed by the village. Two pilots were killed. There is an Ottoman memorial to the event, about 1,5 km east of the village site. Yüzbaşı Fethi Bey, one of the first pilots of the Ottoman Air Force, was one of the pilots killed.

British Mandate period

In the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divisi ...

conducted by the British Mandate authorities, the population of Samra was 157 Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 237; 232 Muslims and 5 Baháʼís, in a total of 50 houses. In the 1945 statistics, ''Es Samra'' had a population of 290; 280 Muslims and 10 classified as others, with 6,912

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

s of Arab-owned land. Of this, 30 dunams were used for citrus and bananas, 21 for plantations and irrigable land, 6,828 dunams for cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
123
/ref> while 23 dunams were classified as built-up area.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
173
/ref>

1948, aftermath

Ein Gev - Al Samra - Al Hamma Demilitarized Zone

The village became depopulated on April 21, 1948.Morris, 2004, p
513
notes #56, 57, p
539
/ref> HaOn was established on village land, north of the village site, in 1949. In 1992, Walid Khalidi described the village site: "Nothing remains of the village houses. A tourist resort, which consists of a few cabins and small houses, has been established on part of the village site. Other parts of the site are covered with trees. The surrounding land is cultivated by Israelis."

References

Sources

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External links

Welcome To al-Samraal-Samra
Zochrot {{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War District of Tiberias