Yazur

The village is mentioned in the annals of the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (704 – 681 BCE) as Azuro.[7]

The Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229) described Yazur as a small town[8] that was the birthplace of several important figures during the Fatimid period, most prominent among them, al-Hasan ibn ´Ali al-Yazuri, who became a Fatimid minister in 1050 CE.[7] In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, Muslim and Crusader forces fought for control of the village and it changed hands several times, before finally falling under the control of the Mamluks.[7]

Maqam (shrine) of Imam ´Ali, ca. 1887

During early Ottoman rule in Palestine, the revenues of the village of Yazur were in 1557 designated for the new waqf of Hasseki Sultan Imaret in Jerusalem, established by Hasseki Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana), the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent.[9] In 1586, the Maqam Imam ´Ali in Yazur was seen by Jean Zuallart, who described it as follows: "....a little further was a square mosque with nine little cupolas. Across the road there is a well or cistern."[10] In the 1596 tax records, Yazur was a village in the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Ramla, part of Sanjak of Gaza. It had a population 50 Muslim households, an estimated 275 persons. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% for the crops that they cultivated, which included wheat, barley, fruit, and sesame as well as on other types of property, such as goats and beehives; a total of 19,250 akçe. All of the revenue went to a Muslim charitable institurion.[11] In 1602, Seusenius described the Maqam Imam ´Ali as "a mosque with nine cupolas the one in the middle being the highest".[12]

The Syrian Sufi teacher and traveller Mustafa al-Bakri al-Siddiqi (1688-1748/9) who travelled in the region in the first half of the eighteenth century, and Mustafa al-Dumyati (d. 1764) reported visiting the shrine of a sage called Sayyiduna ("our master") Haydara in Yazur.[7] The village appeared named Jazour on the map that Pierre Jacotin compiled in 1799.[13]

In 1863 Victor Guérin visited.[14] While still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in 1870, Charles Netter from Alliance Israélite Universelle founded the Mikveh Israel southeast of Jaffa. Through a firman of the sultan, he received land for the school which until then had been worked by the fellahin of the village of Yazur. In a Survey of Western Palestine (1882), it is noted that, "Though the land belongs to the Government, the Fellahin, from long usage, have got to look upon it as virtually their own, and resent its occupation by any other person." The peasants therefore became bitter enemies of the school farm.[15]

In the late summer of 1870, the governor of Damascus visited Jaffa. Accompanied by Netter and two Templars, Hoffmann and Ernst Hardegg, the governor also passed by Yazur:

While riding between Natter's property and the city, the Wali was beset by Arab women and men who begged him, holding onto the reigns of his mule, and onto his trousers, to help them regain their rights, the Jews were taking away their land; here they pointed at Natter, who rode next to the Wali, screaming "the Jews, the Jews." The Pasha, riding on the other side, asked Ernst for his riding crop and chased them away himself. The Wali accepted a petition handed him by a shaykh, incidentally.[16]

The PEF's Survey of Western Palestine also reported that in 1882 the village structures were built of adobe brick with dispersed gardens and wells, and that Yazur contained a domed shrine.[17]

Modern Yazur was divided into four quarters, one for each of four clans (hama´il, sing. hamula) that lived there. The houses were made of stone or adobe brick and straw and were built in groups called ahwash (pl. of hawsh, "courtyard"). Each house in such a group opened onto a common courtyard that had a single entrance, often an arched gate. The village had two elementary schools, one for boys (built in 1920) and another for girls (opened in 1933). The boys' school occupied 27 dunums (the bulk of which was allocated for training students in agronomy) and had its own artesian well. In 1947, 430 boys and 160 girls were registered in these schools. The remains of an old Crusader church built by Richard the Lionheart in 1191, called Castel des Plaines, were visible on a hill inside the village. The Crusader church had been rebuilt to serve as Yazur's mosque.

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yazur had a population of 1,284 residents, all Muslims,[18] increasing in the 1931 census to 2,337 inhabitants in 419 houses.[19]

According to the 1945 census, Yazur had a population of 4,030, mostly Muslim Arabs with a small Arab Christian community of 20 people.[5][7] Agriculture constituted the backbone of the economy; in 1944, citrus was planted on 6,272 dunums and 1,441 dunums were allocated to cereals. Agriculture was both rainfed and irrigated; 1,689 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. During World War II, the villagers also started raising Holstein cows, and by 1947 numerous artesian wells were being used for irrigation.[7]

Yazur 1929 1:20,000

Yazur 1945 1:250,000

The Filastin newspaper reported that on December 11, 1947, members of a pro-Zionist armed group drove at high speed through the town, throwing bombs at a barbershop and a coffeehouse. They did not cause any fatalities. However, Aref al-Aref reports that one week later, on the 18th of December, more Zionist troops returned, this time disguised as British soldiers. Driving through the main road they threw several bombs at a coffeehouse, killing six villagers.[20] Filastin reported that on 30 December, yet another Zionist raiding party had tried to blow up village houses. This group had been discovered by the village guards, and driven away.[7] More attacks followed early 1948.[21] The largest came on 12 February, when Yazur and Abu Kabir were attacked by mortars and machine-guns. Several houses in Yazur were destroyed.[22] Attacks followed almost weekly, including on 20 February when Zionist forces attacked the village with tanks and armoured vehicles, destroying an ice factory, two houses, and killing one villager and wounding another four.[23][24]

Yazur was depopulated during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, weeks prior to the outbreak of the wider 1948 Arab-Israeli War, during the Haganah's offensive Operation Hametz 28–30 April 1948. This operation was held against a group of villages east of Jaffa, including Yazur. According to the preparatory orders, the objective was "opening the way [for Jewish forces] to Lydda". Though there was no explicit mention of the prospective treatment of the villagers, the order spoke of "cleansing the area" [tihur hashetah].[25] The final operational order stated: "Civilian inhabitants of places conquered would be permitted to leave after they are searched for weapons." Soldiers were instructed to not harm women and children "insofar as possible" and to not loot captured villages.[26]