Jenin
Jenin is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and is the capital of the Jenin Governorate. It is a hub for the surrounding towns. Jenin came under Israeli occupation in 1967, and was put under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority as Area A of the West Bank, a Palestinian enclave, in 1995.
The city had a population of approximately 50,000 people in 2017, whilst the Jenin refugee camp had a population of about 10,000, housing families of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Palestine War. The camp has since become a stronghold of Palestinian militants, being the location of several incidents relating to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Etymology
Jenin has been identified as the place "Gina" or "Ginah" mentioned in the Amarna letters from the 14th century BCE, as a town in Canaan. Jenin is commonly identified with the later biblical city of Ein-Ganim, from, meaning "the spring of gardens" or "the spring of Ganim", probably referring to the many springs located nearby. The present-day Arabic name is believed to preserve the city's ancient name.History
Ancient period
Jenin is identified with a number of important towns mentioned in ancient sources. Throughout history, it was referred to as "Ein Ganim", "Beth Hagan", "Ginah", and "Ginae", along other names.Tell Jenin, believed to constitute the original settlement core of the city, is located at the center of what is today Jenin's business district. The tell is also known as Tell el-Nawar, a term derived from the Arabic word for "gypsies," due to former nomadic encampments in this site. The earliest settlement at the tell dates to the late Neolithic and the early Chalcolithic. In the early 20th century, the tell was occupied by a modern cemetery and a threshing floor.
Bronze Age
Jenin has been identified as the place Gina or Ginah mentioned in the Amarna letters from the 14th century BCE. At the time, it was a vassal state of the New Kingdom of Egypt. The people of Gina managed to kill the warlord Labaya during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten.Iron Age
Jenin is identical to Ein-Ganim, which the Hebrew Bible describes as a Levite city belonging to the Israelite Tribe of Issachar. It has also been associated with Beth-Haggan, mentioned in 2 Kings in connection with Ahaziah's flight from Jehu, before he is wounded at Ibleam and later dies in Megiddo. The Book of Judith renders its name as Gini.Roman and Byzantine periods
, a Roman-Jewish historian of the 1st-century CE, mentions Ginae as being in the great plain, on the northern border of Samaria. During the Roman period, Ginae was settled exclusively by Samaritans. The people of Galilee were disposed to pass through their city during the annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In 51 CE, a Galilean Jew was killed in Ginae by hostile Samaritans while en route to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot. With Roman procurator Cumanus failing to respond, Jewish Zealots led by Elazar the Son of Deinaeus sought vengeance, and several Samaritan villages in Aqrabatene were destroyed.Biblical commentator F. W. Farrar raised the possibility that this Samaritan village, "the first village at which would arrive", was the one which rejected the disciples of Jesus in Luke's Gospel at the point where Jesus and his followers begin his journey towards Jerusalem.
Ceramics dating from the Byzantine era have been found here. There is no mention of Jenin in the reports of the Muslim conquest of the Levant from the Byzantines, which, according to the historian Moshe Sharon, "is not surprising, since it was a small place of minor importance".
Crusader, Ayyubid and Mamluk periods
Jenin came under Crusader rule in 1103. The Crusaders called it Le Grand Guerin, to distinguish it from the town of Zir'in, which they called Petit Grin. Under the Crusaders it was a small seigniory, forming part of the Principality of Galilee or the Kingdom of Jerusalem.Shortly before the Battle of Hattin in 1187, Jenin was captured by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin, who destroyed the nearby fort, Castellum Beleismum. In the 1220s, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Jenin as "a small and beautiful town, lying between Nabulus and Beisan, in the Jordan Province. There is much water, and many springs are found here, and often have I visited it." In 1229, a peace was concluded between Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and Sultan al-Kamil, during the Sixth Crusade, whereby the city was given to the Crusaders, but Sultan as-Salih Ayyub was able to control it permanently in 1244 after the Battle of La Forbie.
In 1255, it was agreed between the Ayyubid sultan in Syria, an-Nasir Yusuf, and the first Mamluk sultan in Egypt, Izz al-Din Aybak, to give the latter all of the lands lying west of the Jordan River, and thus Jenin entered into the possession of the Mamluks. It was one of eleven subdistricts of Mamlakat Safad. In the late 13th century, Mamluk emirs stationed at Jenin were ordered by Sultan Qalawun "to ride every day with their troops before the fortress of 'Akka, so as to protect the coast and the merchants." As one of the stations of the Mamluk barid between the Mamluk capital Cairo and Damascus, it was one of the towns where fires were lit to warn of a Mongol attack. The geographer al-Dimashqi mentioned Jenin around 1300. From the time of Qalawun's son, Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad, it was a station on the route where ice was transported to Cairo for the sultans' drink houses. The Mamluk historian al-Qalqashandi described Jenin as "an ancient spacious town which is riding on a shoulder of a nice valley in which there is a river of flowing water" north of Qaqun "on the top end of Marj Bani Amer ". He also noted that it contained the mausoleum of Dihyah al-Kalbi, a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Ottoman era
The Ottomans conquered Mamluk Syria in 1516. Jenin became the administrative center of a nahiya of the Lajjun Sanjak. The sanjak was officially called the Iqta of Turabay until 1559 when it became officially known as the Lajjun Sanjak. The Turabay dynasty was the ruling house of the Bedouin Banu Haritha tribe, whose members held the governorship of Lajjun from the start of Ottoman rule through 1677.The tax registers from 1548 to 1549 report that Jenin had a population of eight households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 2,000 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf in the name of the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri. Turabay rule was occasionally interrupted, including in 1564, when a certain Kemal Bey was appointed sanjak-bey by the Ottomans. On 15 October 1564 Kemal Bey requested from the beylerbey of Damascus that the stone caravanserai of Jenin be repaired, garrisoned and serve as the chief headquarters of the Lajjun sanjak-bey in order for Lajjun to prosper and for the road connecting Damascus to Jerusalem and Egypt to become secure. The official response was that the caravanserai be turned into a fortress; the fortress became ruined at some later point and 19th-century residents of Jenin used to claim that certain large rocks strewn in the village were the remnants of the 16th-century fortress.
The Turabays, who remained nomads in the plain between Mount Carmel and Caesarea, made Jenin the administrative headquarters of Lajjun and used the town's Izz al-Din Cemetery to bury their dead. A large, domed mausoleum was built for the grave of one of the chiefs and sanjak-beys of the family, Turabay ibn Ali. Known as Qubbat al-Amir Turabay, it was described in a 1941 report as a ruined structure, and Sharon, writing in 2017, notes that it "does not exist anymore". No other graves of the Turabays in Jenin had survived into the 20th century. During the conflict between Fakhr al-Din of the Ma'n dynasty, who governed the sanjaks of Sidon-Beirut and Safed, and the Turabays, in 1623, Fakhr al-Din captured Jenin and stationed his men there. In 1624 the most prominent Turabay chief and sanjak-bey of Lajjun, Ahmad ibn Turabay, drove out the Ma'nid troops from Jenin and established his personal residence in the town.
In the mid-18th century, Jenin was designated the administrative capital of the combined districts of Lajjun and Ajlun. There are indications that the area comprising Jenin and Nablus remained functionally autonomous under Ottoman rule and that the empire struggled to collect taxes there. During the Napoleonic Campaign in Egypt which extended into Syria and Palestine in 1799, a local official from Jenin wrote a poem enumerating and calling upon local Arab leaders to resist Bonaparte, without mentioning the Sultan or the need to protect the Ottoman Empire.
In the late 19th century, some members of the Jarrar family, who formed part of the mallakin in Jenin, cooperated with merchants in Haifa to set up an export enterprise there. During the Ottoman era, Jenin was plagued by local warfare between members of the same clan. The French explorer Guérin visited in 1870. In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Jenin as "The capital of the district, the seat of a Caimacam, a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, with a small bazaar. The houses are well built of stone. There are two families of Roman Catholics; the remainder are Moslems. A spring rises east of the town and is conducted to a large masonry reservoir, near the west side, of good squared stonework, with a long stone trough. This reservoir was built by 'And el Hady, Mudir of Acre, in the first half of the century , north of the town is the little mosque of 'Ezz ed Din, with a good- sized dome and a minaret."
British Mandate period
According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Jenin had a population of 2,637. A following census in 1931 showed a slight increase to 2,706 with another 68 in nearby suburbs. From 1936, Jenin became a center of rebellion against the British Mandatory authorities. By the summer of 1938, residents of the city embarked on "an intensified campaign of murder, intimidation and sabotage" that caused the British administration "grave concern", according to a British report to the League of Nations; the population had further increased to 3,100. The city played an important role in the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, prompted by the death of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in a fire-fight with British colonial police at the nearby town of Ya'bad months prior to the start of the revolt. On 25 August 1938, the day after the British Assistant District Commissioner was assassinated in his Jenin office, a large British force with explosives entered the town. Despite having captured and killed the assassin, British forces ordered the inhabitants to leave, and blew up one quarter of the town as a form of punishment.Jenin was used by Fawzi al-Qawuqji's Arab Liberation Army as a base.
The village statistics of 1945 list the population as 3,990.