Hamama

Hamama, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In first Ottoman tax register of 1526/7 the village had a population of 31 Muslim households and one bachelor, and it belonged to the nahiya of Gaza (Gaza Sanjak).[11] In the tax registers of 1596 it had a population of 84 Muslim households, an estimated 462 persons. The villagers paid taxes on goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 6,800 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf.[12]

The seventeenth-century traveller al-Nabulsi recorded that the tomb (qabr) of Shaykh Ibrahim Abi Arqub was located in the village,[13] while the Syrian Sufi teacher and traveller Mustafa al-Bakri al-Siddiqi (1688-1748/9) visited Hamama in the first half of the eighteenth century, after leaving al-Jura.[14]

Marom and Taxel have shown that during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, nomadic economic and security pressures led to settlement abandonment around Majdal ‘Asqalān, and the southern coastal plain in general. The population of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, while the lands of abandoned settlements continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages. Thus, Hamama absorbed the lands of Ṣandaḥanna, Mi‘ṣaba, and excluded the lands of Bashsha, an exclave of al-Majdal.[15]

Hamama appears on Jacotin's map drawn-up during Napoleon's invasion in 1799, though its position is interchanged with that of Majdal.[16][17] In 1838, Hamameh was noted as a Muslim village in the Gaza district.[18]

In 1863, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village, and noted a mosque constructed with ancient materials. The village had a population of "at least eight hundred souls".[19] He further noted: "The gardens of Hamama are outstandingly fertile. They are divided by living fences of huge cactus pears, and are planted with olive, fig, pomegranate, mulberry and apricot trees. Here and there slender palm trees and broad treetops of sycamore trees rise above them."[20]

An official Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that Hamame had 193 houses and a population of 635, although it only counted the men.[21][22]

Under the British Mandate in Palestine, a village council was established to administer local affairs, and Hamama had a mosque, and two primary schools for boys and girls established in 1921.[23] In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Hamama had a population of 2,731; 2,722 Muslims and 9 Christians,[24] where all the Christians were Orthodox.[25] The population had increased in the 1931 census to 3,405; 3,401 Muslims and 4 Christians, in a total of 865 houses.[26]

Hamada 1930 1:20,000

Hamada 1945 1:250,000 (lower left)

In the 1945 statistics Hamama had a population of 5,070; 5,000 Muslims, 10 Christians and 60 Jews,[4] with a total of 41,366 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[5] Of this, 1,356 dunams were used for citrus and bananas, 4,459 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 28,890 for cereals,[27] while 167 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[28]

In 1946, the boys' school had an enrollment of 338, and the girls' school an enrollment of 46. Its inhabitants engaged primarily in fishing and agriculture, cultivating grain, citrus, apricots, almonds, figs, olives, watermelons, and cantaloupes. Due to the existence of sand dunes in the north part of the town, trees were planted on parts of those lands to prevent soil erosion.[23] During the Mandate time, the village was visited by inspectors from the Department of Antiquities who noted two mosques. One of these, known as Shaykh Ibrahim Abi Arqub, included marble columns and capitals in the iwan. The other mosque, known as Shaykh Hamid, also incorporated marble fragments. Neither of these mosques have survived.[13]

According to reports published by the newspaper Felesteen, Hamama was first drawn into the 1948 Arab-Israeli War after a group of workers from the town laboring in the adjacent fields were struck by Jewish residents from Nitzanim on January 22, 1948, leaving fifteen Arabs wounded.[29] Two days later, a unit from Nitzanim opened fire on Hamama residents, killing one, and on February 17, a group of workers waiting for a bus on the road between Isdud and the town were fired upon, wounding two.[23]

It was captured by Israel from the Egyptian Army in the first stage of Operation Yoav on October 28. By then several refugees from nearby towns were in Hamama, most of them, along with many of Hamama's residents, fled with the withdrawing Egyptian troops.[30]

At the end of November 1948, Coastal Plain District troops carried out sweeps of the villages around and to the south of Majdal. Hamama was one of the villages named in the orders to the IDF battalions and engineers platoon, that the villagers were to be expelled to Gaza, and the IDF troops were "to prevent their return by destroying their villages." The path leading to the village was to be mined. The IDF troops were ordered to carry out the operation "with determination, accuracy and energy".[31] The operation took place on 30 November. The troops found "not a living soul" in Hamama. However, the destruction of the villages was not completed immediately due to the dampness of the houses and the insufficient amount of explosives.[32]

Mohammed Dahlan's family is originally from Hamama.

In 1992 it was noted: "No traces of village houses or landmarks remain. The site is overgrown with wild vegetation, including tall grasses, weeds, and bushes. It also contains cactuses. The surrounding land is unused."[6]