Al-Bireh, al-Birah, or el-Bira (; also known historically as Castrum Mahomeria, Magna Mahomeria, Mahomeria Major, Birra, or Beirothah) is a city in the central

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, north of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. It is the capital of the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of the

State of Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

. It is situated on the central ridge running through the West Bank and is above sea level, covering an area of . Al-Bireh is under the administration of the

Palestinian National Authority The Palestinian Authority (PA), officially known as the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a c ...

(as part of Area A). Bireh has been associated with several ancient sites. Because of its location Al-Bireh served as an economic crossroad between the north and south, along the caravan route between Jerusalem and

Nablus Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...

. Under Crusader rule, it was one of the fief villages of the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, Old City of Jerusalem. The church is the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchat ...

. It was captured and destroyed by

Saladin Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, h ...

, but it was rebuilt during the

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty (), also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultan of Egypt, Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate of Egyp ...

period. Throughout the Ottoman era, it was a predominantly Muslim village. Following the British Mandate, its population grew. After the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

, it came under Jordanian rule until the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...

in 1967, when it was occupied by Israel. Since the

Oslo Accords The Oslo Accords are a pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993; and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. They marked the st ...

, Bireh has been governed by the Palestinian Authority and now serves as a significant administrative center, hosting various governmental and non-governmental organizations. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the city had a population of approximately 45,975 in the 2017 census.

History

Edward Robinson in the early 19th century thought Al-Bireh was the

biblical The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

Be'eroth,Robinson and Smith, 1841, pp
130
- 133 but modern scholars believe Be'eroth was located at Kh. el-Burj near Beit Iksa.Finkelstein et al., 1997, p. 510 In the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

, it was also known as ''Berea'' or ''Beroth'', and Seleucid general Bacchides camped there in 161 BCE before attacking Judas Maccabaeus's forces at Elasa. Claude Reignier Conder and others identified it with ''Beirothah'' of the Samaritan chronicles.

Medieval period

The Crusaders captured and named the town Birra. It was also called Castrum Mahomeria, Magna Mahomeria or Mahomeria Major.Pringle, 1993, pp
161
- 165 It was one of 21 villages given by King Godfrey as a

fief A fief (; ) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal alle ...

to the

.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
11
/ref> In 1114, the gift was re-confirmed by Baldwin I of Jerusalem. In 1156, 92 people from ''Mahomeria'' pledged their allegiance to the

, and a further 50 names were added in the next three decades. Hence, it has been estimated that the total Frankish population at this time was 500–700. The Crusaders built a castle,Pringle, 1997, p.
35
/ref> church and hospice there.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, pp.
88
89Pringle, 2009, pp
259
- 266 The latter two buildings were built by the

Knights Templar The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, mainly known as the Knights Templar, was a Military order (religious society), military order of the Catholic Church, Catholic faith, and one of the most important military ord ...

in 1146 and belonged to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Benjamin of Tudela Benjamin of Tudela (), also known as Benjamin ben Jonah, was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, and Africa in the twelfth century. His vivid descriptions of western Asia preceded those of Marco Polo by a hundred years. With his ...

and Isthori Haparchi described it as a large village. The

Ayyubids The Ayyubid dynasty (), also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish ori ...

under

drove away the Crusaders from Birra when they reconquered interior Palestine after the

Battle of Hattin The Battle of Hattin took place on 4 July 1187, between the Crusader states of the Levant and the forces of the Ayyubid sultan Saladin. It is also known as the Battle of the Horns of Hattin, due to the shape of the nearby extinct volcano of ...

in 1187, and completely demolished the town.

Yaqut al-Hamawi Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (1179–1229) () was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine ancestry active during the late Abbasid period (12th–13th centuries). He is known for his , an influential work on geography con ...

mentions seeing the ruins a few times during his travels in the area. Nearing the end of Ayyubid rule, in 1280, the modern town of al-Bireh was an inhabited village. The Ayyubids built a

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

in the town dedicated to

Umar ibn al-Khattab Umar ibn al-Khattab (; ), also spelled Omar, was the second Rashidun caliph, ruling from August 634 until his assassination in 644. He succeeded Abu Bakr () and is regarded as a senior companion and father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muh ...

adjacent to the church ruins.Sharon, 1999, pp
236
239 Potsherds from the Crusader/

era have been found.

Ottoman era

Al-Bireh, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

in 1517, and in the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 1596, the village, called Bira al-Kubra, was a part of the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level divisi ...

'' ("subdistrict") of

Al-Quds Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Jud ...

which was under the administration of the '' liwa'' ("district") of Al-Quds. It had a population of 45 households, all

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

, and paid taxes on wheat, barley, olive trees, fruit trees, occasional revenues, beehives and/or goats; a total of 4,570 akçe. Half of the revenue went to a

waqf A (; , plural ), also called a (, plural or ), or ''mortmain'' property, is an Alienation (property law), inalienable charitable financial endowment, endowment under Sharia, Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot ...

. In the spring of 1697, Henry Maundrell noted at Al Bireh, which he called ''Beer'', the remains of a church, which he wrote was built by Empress Helena.Maundrell, 1703, p
63
March 25, 1697, cited in Wilson, c1881, vol 1, p
218
/ref> After the 1834 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Ottoman authorities conscripted many men from Al-Bireh as soldiers. In 1838, when Robinson visited, 60 had been taken away to be soldiers, out of a total population of 700. Robinson noted it as a Muslim village, ''el-Bireh'', located in the area immediately north of Jerusalem.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 3, 2nd appendix, p
122
/ref> When French explorer

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (; 15 September 1821 – 21 September 1890) was a French people, French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included ...

visited the village in 1863, he found it to have 800 inhabitants. Socin, citing an official Ottoman village list compiled around 1870, noted that Al-Bireh had a population of 399 Muslims in 142 houses, and 20 "Greeks" in 5 houses, though that population count included only men. It was further noted that the name meant "The

cistern A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster. Cisterns are disti ...

". Hartmann found that Al-Bireh had 142 houses. In 1883, the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described Bireh as a good-sized village, with "fairly well built" houses. In 1896, the population of Bireh was estimated to be about 1,080 persons. Until 1917, the city served as a political and administrative center for the

British Mandate era

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 divis ...

conducted by the British Mandate authorities, ''Al-Bireh'' had a population of 1,479; 1,407

s, and 72

Christians A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words '' Christ'' and ''C ...

,Barron, 1923, p
16
/ref> where the Christians were 61 Orthodox, 3 Roman Catholics and 8 "other".Barron, 1923, Table XIV, p
45
/ref> The population had increased in the 1931 census to 2,292; 2,044 Muslim and 248 Christians, in 541 houses.Mills, 1932, p
48
/ref> In the 1945 statistics, the town's residents numbered 2,920; of which 280 were Christians and 2,640 Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
26
/ref> while urban Bireh had 967

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s of land, and rural Bireh 22,045 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 5,162 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 11,226 used for cereals, while 759 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

Jordanian era

In the wake of the

and the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Al-Bireh came under Jordanian rule. In 1961, the population of ''Bira'' was 14,510.

Post-1967 era

During the

, on June 6, 1967, Israeli troops occupied the city, and Al-Bireh has been under

Israeli occupation Israel has occupied the Golan Heights of Syria and the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967. It has previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to 1967, control of the Palestinian terr ...

since. Israel confiscated 346 dunams of land from Al-Bireh in order to build the

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

of Beit El (established in 1977) in addition to 780 dunams in order to build Pesagot (established in 1981). In 1994, the civil administration of the city was turned over to the

under the

. Al-Bireh is the second largest center of Palestinian administration after Gaza. Besides the governor's headquarters, it also hosts a considerable number of governmental, non-governmental, and private organizations, including the Ministries of Transportation, Supply,

Information Information is an Abstraction, abstract concept that refers to something which has the power Communication, to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the Interpretation (philosophy), interpretation (perhaps Interpretation (log ...

, Public Works and Higher Education, as well as the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.General view of al-Bireh
Al-Bireh Municipality. Due to its proximity with Ramallah, the cities form a single constituency for elections to the Palestinian National Authority. Al-Bireh Aerial photo

After the 1995 accords, 39.8% of village land was classified as Area A, 5% as Area B, while the remaining 55.2% was classified as Area C.

Demographics

The 1997 census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics counted 27,856 residents, exactly half male and half female. The majority of the inhabitants were

Palestinian refugee Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refug ...

s who made up 55.4% of the total population. In the 2007 PCBS census, there were 38,202 people living in the city. Al-Bireh is inhabited by five major

clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societie ...

s: Qur'an, Hamayel, 'Abed, Qaraqra, At Taweel and Ar Rafidi.

Government

Al-Bireh established a city council headed by mayor Eid Musa in 1928 under the British Mandate. Eight other mayors took office either through elections or government appointments. The city had some well known mayors, including Abudul Jawad Saleh who was mayor in the 1970s until exiled by the Israelis. He later went on to become a member of the PLO executive committee and then minister of agriculture in the Palestinian Authority. In 1982,

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

instated a civil administration, but later appointed an Arab mayor, Hassan al-Tawil. In 1988, after two years in office, he was stabbed and critically wounded outside his office. In 1996, a 12-member

municipal council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, borough cou ...

was established by the Palestinian National Authority with Sheikh Jamal al-Tawil as mayor. Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate Health Directorate

Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate Health Directorate

In the Palestinian municipal elections in 2005, the

Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...

-backed Reform and Change List won 9 of the 15 seats, while independent lists won the remaining 6. The current mayor is Azzam Esmail. In 2010, a public square in al-Bireh was dedicated to the memory of Dalal Mughrabi, leader of an attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, in 1978.

Health and education

Secretary Kerry at the Al Bireh Youth Center in the West Bank

In 2010, the Jerusalem Fund, National Arab American Medical Association Foundation and Physicians for Peace dedicated the Palestine Diabetes Institute in al-Bireh. Al-Quds University maintains a campus in al-Bireh.

Sports

The 7,000-seat Majed Ass'ad or Al Bireh International Stadium was completed in 2010; originally constructed in 1996, it was upgraded to international standards from 2006 to 2010 at a cost of €3 million. The work was funded by France, the German Development Bank, the UN Development Agency, and FIFA. Construction was halted by the Israeli Supreme Planning Council on November 1, 2009, but resumed in late December. In November 2009, the nearby settlement of Psagot petitioned the

High Court of Justice The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal (England and Wales), Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Courts of England and Wales, Senior Cour ...

to have the stadium shut down, citing concerns that rowdy soccer fans might attack Psagot. Friends Stadium at Al-Bireh

Al Bireh Youth Foundation is the most prominent sports club in the city, mostly famous for its football teams and ancient scouts association.

Twin towns – sister cities

Al-Bireh is twinned with: *

Gennevilliers Gennevilliers () is a Communes of France, commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, in the Hauts-de-Seine Departments of France, department of Île-de-France. It is located from the Kilometre zero, centre of Paris. History On 9 April 1929, ...

, France

Notable people

* Bassel al-Araj, Palestinian activist killed in al-Bireh *

Ahmad Sa'adat Ahmad Sa'adat (also transliterated from Arabic as Ahmed Sadat or Saadat; ; born 1953), also known as Abu Ghassan, is a Palestinian militant, and Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist–Lenin ...

, a PFLP secretary-general currently imprisoned in IsraelBarghouti, Ze'evi assassin among prisoners to be freed
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * (p
205
* * * * * * * * * * * * * (p
76
* (pp
429

340
?)) * * * * * * (pp
338
339) *

External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17:
IAAWikimedia commons

Al-Bira City (Fact Sheet)
Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem (ARIJ)
Al-Bira City City Profile
ARIJ
Al-Bireh Municipality WebsiteThe Al-Bireh demonstration project on agricultural reuse of wastewater in the West Bank
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bireh, al- Cities in the West Bank Throne villages Municipalities of Palestine