Palestine grid 158/167 Name meaning Serta | Governorate Salfit | |
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Sarta (Arabic: سرطّه) is a Palestinian town located in the Salfit Governorate in the northern West Bank, 22 kilometers southwest of Nablus. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it had a population of approximately 2,530 in 2007.
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History
Sarta is situated on an ancient site, where cisterns and columbariums carved into rock have been found.
Yakut mentions "Suratah", as being in "a village in Jabal Nabulus". It has been suggested that this was Sarta.
Ottoman era
The village was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the nahiya of Jabal Qubal in the liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 6 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives.
French explorer Victor Guérin travelled through the village in 1870, and found it to have around 40 houses, some better built than in the average village. The stones of the houses were alternately red and white. Several ancient cisterns dug into the rock provided water for the residents. In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's "Survey of Western Palestine" described Serta as a small stone village.
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sarta had a population of 275 Muslims and 1 Jew, increasing in the 1931 census to 317, all Muslim, in a total of 76 houses.
In 1945 the population was 420, all Muslims, while the total land area was 5,584 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,858 were used for plantations and irrigable land, 766 for cereals, while 23 dunams were classified as built-up areas.
1948-1967
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Sarta came under Jordanian rule.
Post-1967
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Sarta has been under Israeli occupation.