Palestine grid 151/109 Name meaning Tricomia | Governorate Hebron | |
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Tarqumiyah (Arabic: ترقوميا) is a Palestinian town located twelve kilometers northwest of Hebron. The town is in the Hebron Governorate Southern West Bank.
Contents
Map of Tarkumiya
History
Tarqumiyah is an ancient town situated on a rocky hill. Cisterns have been found here. According to the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP), this place is the early Christian Tricomias, an episcopal see.
Ottoman era
Tarqumiya, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in the census of 1596 the village appeared to be in the Nahiya of Halil of the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 17 families, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,33% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 6,500 Akçe.
In 1838 Edward Robinson passed by and noted that Tarqumiya was on the most common path from Gaza, via Bayt Jibrin to Hebron. While resting at Tarqumiya, he was visited by the local Sheikh and other dignitaries, who “demeaned themselves kindly and courteously."
In 1863 Victor Guérin found it to have 400 inhabitants, while an Ottoman village list from about 1870 counted 45 houses and a population of 108, though the population count included men only.
In 1883 SWP described Tarqumiyah as “A small village on a rocky hill near the low lands. On the east, about a mile distant, is a spring; on the south are olives.”
British Mandate era
According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Tarqumiyah had a population of 976 inhabitants, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 1,173, still entirely Muslim, in 225 inhabited houses.
In 1945 the population of Tarqumiya was 1,550 Muslims, and the total land area was 21,188 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. 1,029 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 6,614 were used for cereals, while 152 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
1948-1967
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Tarqumiyah came under Jordanian rule.
Post-1967
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Tarqumiyah has been under Israeli occupation. The population in the 1967 census conducted by the Israeli authorities was 2,412. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of over 14,357 in 2007.