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Bayt Shanna

بيت شنّة
Bayt Shanna بيت شنّة
	Etymology: The house of Shenna
	1870s map 1940s map modern map 1940s with modern overlay map A series of historical maps of the area around Bayt Shanna (click the buttons)
	Bayt Shanna Location within Mandatory Palestine
	Coordinates: 31°52′39″N 34°59′13″E / 31.87750°N 34.98694°E
Palestine grid	148/142
Geopolitical entity	Mandatory Palestine
Subdistrict	Ramle
Date of depopulation	July 15–16, 1948
Population (1945)
• Total	210
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces

Bayt Shanna was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War on July 15, 1948, during the second stage of Operation Dani. It was located 11.5 km southeast of Ramla.

Etymology

Bayt šannā /Bēt šanna/ is an Aramaic place-name, which means "House of the Rock" (šn’).^[5] A rarely documented variant in 16th century endowment deeds reads Bayt al-šunnāra /Bēt iš-šunnāra/ [53], "the place of the cat (or ‘of the partridge’)".^[5]

History

Ceramics from the Byzantine era have been found here.^[6]

Ottoman era

Bayt Shanna was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine.

In 1552, Bayt Shanna was an inhabited village. Haseki Hürrem Sultan, the favourite wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, endowed the tax revenues of Bayt Shanna to her Haseki Sultan Imaret in Jerusalem. Administratively, the village belonged to the Sub-district of Ramla in the District of Gaza.^[7]

In 1596, it appeared in the tax registers under the name of Bayt Sanna, as being in the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Ramla, which was under the administration of the liwa ("district") of Gaza. It had a population of four household;^[8] an estimated 22 persons, who were all Muslims. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 1,000 Akçe. All of the revenue went to a Waqf.^[8]^[9]

In 1838, it was noted as Beit Shinna, a place "in ruins or deserted," in the Ibn Humar area in the District of Er-Ramleh.^[10]

In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine noted at Beit Shenna: "Traces of ruins and squared stones."^[11]

By the beginning of the 20th century, residents from Beit Surik settled the site, establishing it as a dependency – or satellite village – of their home village.^[12]

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Bait Shanna had a population of 8 Muslims,^[13] increasing in the 1931 census, when it was counted together with Salbit, to 406, still all Muslims, in a total of 71 houses.^[14]

In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 210 Muslims^[2] with 3,617 dunams of land.^[3] Of this, 44 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 865 for cereals,^[15] while 2,708 dunams were non-cultivable areas.^[16]

Bayt Shanna 1942 1:20,000
Bayt Shanna 1945 Scale 1:250,000

1948, and aftermath

Bayt Shanna became depopulated after a military assault on July 15–16, 1948.^[4]

As of 1992, there were no Israeli settlement on village land. Sha'alvim, on the land of the depopulated Palestinian village of Salbit is the closest.^[9]

In 1992, the village site was described: "The stone rubble of the former houses covers the village site. Large mulberry, olive, and almond trees grow amid the rubble, most of which is covered by wild vegetation. The whole site is fenced in and appears to be used as a grazing area. On the hillside east of the village, a room made of masonry still stands. Fruit trees grow around it."^[9]

References

^ Palmer, 1881, p. 287
^ ^a ^b Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 29
^ ^a ^b Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 66
^ ^a ^b Morris, 2004, p. xix, village No. 238. Also gives cause of depopulation, with a "?".
^ ^a ^b Marom, Roy; Zadok, Ran (2023). "Early-Ottoman Palestinian Toponymy: A Linguistic Analysis of the (Micro-)Toponyms in Haseki Sultan's Endowment Deed (1552)". Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins. 139 (2).
^ Dauphin, 1998, p. 841
^ Marom, Roy (2022-11-01). "Jindās: A History of Lydda's Rural Hinterland in the 15th to the 20th Centuries CE". Lod, Lydda, Diospolis. 1: 8.
^ ^a ^b Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 155
^ ^a ^b ^c Khalidi, 1992, p. 367
^ Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p. 120
^ Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p. 86
^ Marom, Roy (2022). "Lydda Sub-District: Lydda and its countryside during the Ottoman period". Diospolis – City of God: Journal of the History, Archaeology and Heritage of Lod. 8: 124.
^ Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Jerusalem, p. 15
^ Mills, 1932, p. 43
^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 114
^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 164