Arabic ديشوم Also spelled Dayshum, Deishum Palestine grid 197/276 Current locality Dishon | Name meaning personal name Subdistrict Safad Area 23,044 dunams Date of depopulation 30 October 1948 | |
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Dayshum (Arabic: ديشوم) was a Palestinian village, depopulated on 30 October 1948 by the Sheva Brigade of Israeli paramilitary force Palmach in an offensive called Operation Hiram, where the village has been destroyed, and only house rubble left behind. The village was located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) north of Safed, 600 meters (2,000 ft) above sea level.
History
In 1517 Dayshum was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after it was captured from the Mamluks, and by 1596, it was a village under the administration of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jira (liwa’ of Safad) with a population of fifty. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, olives, and fruits, as well as on other types of produce and property, such as goats, beehives, and a press that was used for processing either olives or grapes.
Algerian immigrants who had fought with Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri against the French colonialists in the 1830s and 1840s resettled the site. These people may have come with him to the region following his defeat and banishment to Damascus in 1847. As some of their ancestors had been horsemen in Algeria, the villagers of Dayshum took a keen interest in raising horses.
In 1881 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Dayshum as a “well-built” village with about 400 residents. The village houses were situated on the side of a steep hill near the bottom of a valley and had gabled roofs. The village had three mills and several small gardens.
In 1921 inspectors from the British Mandatory Department noted a Maqam north-east of the village site, dedicated to a Sheikh Haniyya. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Daishum had a population of 479, all Muslim, decreasing slightly in the 1931 census of Palestine to 438, still all Muslim, in 102 inhabited houses. In 1944/45 a total of 4,701 dunums of village land was allocated to cereals and 611 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.