Shilta was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict of

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

. Sitting on a hill, It was probably settled in the 19th century. It was depopulated during 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 ...

on July 18, 1948, by the First Battalion of the

Yiftach Brigade The 11th Brigade (also known as the Yiftach Brigade) is a reserves unit in the Israel Defense Forces, composed mainly of fighters that completed their compulsory service in the Egoz Unit, Unit 621 – 'Egoz'. History In the 1948 Arab–Israeli ...

in the Operation Danny. It was located 15 km east of

Ramla Ramla (), also known as Ramle (, ), is a city in the Central District of Israel. Ramle is one of Israel's mixed cities, with significant numbers of both Jews and Arabs. The city was founded in the early 8th century CE by the Umayyad caliph S ...

Etymology

The name is of

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

origins. During the Crusader era the place was called ''Kefrscilta'' or ''Capharscylta''.

History

Persian to Mamluk periods

Shards from the Persian,

Hellenistic 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 ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

periods have been found here, and possible shards from the

Umayyad The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a membe ...

Abbasid The Abbasid Caliphate or Abbasid Empire (; ) was the third caliphate to succeed the prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 C ...

and the Crusader periods.Finkelstein, et al., 1997, p. 135 Shards from the

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

period have also been found, though Finkelstein label this find questionable.

Ottoman period

The village likely saw settlement during the 19th century, given its absence from the Early Ottoman

defter A ''defter'' was a type of tax register and land cadastre in the Ottoman Empire. Etymology The term is derived from Greek , literally 'processed animal skin, leather, fur', meaning a book, having pages of goat parchment used along with papyrus ...

. In 1870,

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 and noted that the village was "reduced to a few houses, it succeeded an ancient locality, as is proved by several

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 ...

s dug in the middle of a rocky platform flattened by the man's hand, and a number of stones scattered here and there or embedded in

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 ...

buildings." An Ottoman village list from about the same year showed that ''Schi’ra'' had 13 houses and a population of 41, though the population count included men, only. It was noted that it was located east of Jimzu.Socin, 1879, p
161
/ref> By the beginning of the 20th century, residents from Kharbatha Bani Harith settled the site, establishing it as a dependency – or satellite village – of their home village.

British Mandate

According to a

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 ...

conducted in 1931 by the British Mandate authorities, Shilta had a population of 22 inhabitants, in 7 houses.Mills, 1932, p
23
/ref> The village had a mosque at the north end of the village, and there was a shrine of Shayk Ahmad al Shiltawi near it. In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 100 Muslims, with a total of 5,380 dunums of land. Of this, 27 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 2,159 dunums were used for cereals, while 6 dunams were classified as built-up public areas.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
167
/ref> File:Shilta 1944.jpg, Shilta 1944 1:20,000 from 1919 survey File:Burj 1945.jpg, Shilta 1945 1:250,000

1948 war; Israel

Shilta was depopulated after a military assault July 15–16, 1948. Israel established Shilat and Kfar Ruth on village land in 1977. In 1992, the village site was described: "The site is overgrown with mountain flora, including long grasses and

pomegranate The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punica, Punicoideae, that grows between tall. Rich in symbolic and mythological associations in many cultures, it is thought to have o ...

almond The almond (''Prunus amygdalus'', Synonym (taxonomy)#Botany, syn. ''Prunus dulcis'') is a species of tree from the genus ''Prunus''. Along with the peach, it is classified in the subgenus ''Amygdalus'', distinguished from the other subgenera ...

, and

carob The carob ( ; ''Ceratonia siliqua'') is a flowering evergreen tree or shrub in the Caesalpinioideae sub-family of the legume family, Fabaceae. It is widely cultivated for its edible fruit, which takes the form of seed pods, and as an ornam ...

trees. Some of the

cactus A cactus (: cacti, cactuses, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae (), a family of the order Caryophyllales comprising about 127 genera with some 1,750 known species. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, ...

hedges survive, and several wells also are visible. Israeli have built greenhouses for growing flowers, [] Israeli settlement houses have been built on village land."

References

Bibliography

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External links

Welcome To Shilta Shilta
Zochrot *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 14
IAAWikimedia commons
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War District of Ramla