Halhul (, transliteration: Ḥalḥūl) is a Palestinian city located in the southern part of the West Bank, north of Hebron in the Hebron Governorate of Palestine. The town, bordered by Sa'ir and al-Shuyukh to the east, Beit Ummar and al-Arroub refugee camp to the north, and Kharas and Nuba westwards,'Halhul', ARIJ, 2000. is located 916 m above sea level, and is the highest inhabited place in the State of Palestine. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the city had a population of 27,031 inhabitants in 2017.
History
Antiquity The Arabic name conserves the biblical toponym for the site, (Hebrew:חַלְחוּל; Greek: Αἰλουά/Άλοόλ; Latin Alula,)Guérin, 1869, pp. 284 -p.285 which is believed to reflect a Canaanite word meaning "to tremble (from the cold)". According to the Bible, Halhul was a city in the tribal territory of Judah, located in the hill country near Beth-zur. Biblical scholar Edward Robinson identified the modern town with the "Halhul" mentioned in the Book of Joshua.Robinson, 1841, vol. 1, p. 319. John Kitto noted that "the name has remained unchanged for more than 3,300 years".
According to a Jewish tradition, Halhul was the burial place of Gad the Seer.Burial Places of the Fathers, published by Yehuda Levi Nahum in book: Ṣohar la-ḥasifat ginzei teiman (Heb. צהר לחשיפת גנזי תימן), Tel-Aviv 1986, p. 253 During the late Second Temple period, Halhul (Greek: Alurus) and its immediate environs were considered a part of Idumea. During the First Jewish–Roman War, an Idumean army encamped in Halhul during their conflict with Simon bar Giora.Josephus, The Jewish War (Book IV, chapter IX, verse 6). During the Bar Kokhba revolt, the town's defenses were fortified.Lexicon of Eretz Israel – Halhul (Hebrew) A considerable amount of pottery has been unearthed bearing inscriptions in ancient Hebrew, most of them reading "To the king" (LMLK) and mentioning names of locations nearby. Handles with Jewish names inscribed in Greek have been found from the Hellenistic period.
Roman and Islamic house foundations have been dug deeply into older layers of habitation. Building remains with mosaic pavement with writing in Greek has been found on the site (called 'Aqd al-Qin) of a former church. Byzantine ceramics have also been found.Dauphin, 1998, p. 937
Middle Ages
During repairs to the Nabi Yunis shrine, a slab of limestone was discovered there with a Fatimid-era epitaph, which is currently stored in the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem. The original description of the epitaph by Abdullah el-Azzeh dated it to 674 and claimed it was the oldest Islamic inscription discovered in Palestine. However, the historian Moshe Sharon translated the inscription as dating to March or April 966. The deceased person named in the epitaph, according to el-Azzeh, was Lalak ibn Rumi al-Jarmi, but Sharon asserts this was a translation error and the deceased was named Zayd ibn Rumi al-Harami. The 'al-Harami' indicated the man belonged to the Haram clan of the Judham tribe which had been established in the region throughout the early Islamic period (7th–11th centuries).
A Muslim traditionist from Halhul, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abdallah ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Halhuli was recorded to have been killed fighting against the Crusaders in 1148–1149. The chronicler Ali of Herat documented in 1173 that Halhul was a part of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and contained the tomb of Yunis ibn Matta (Jonah, son of Amittai).Ali of Herat quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.447. In 1226, the Ayyubid sultan al-Mu'azzam Isa had one of his mamluks, the governor of Hebron Rashid al-Din Faraj, construct the minaret of Halhul's mosque.Mujir ad-Din quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.448. That same year, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi visited Halhul, reporting that it lay between Hebron and Jerusalem and contained the tomb of Jonah.Al-Hamawi quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.447.
Halhul was mentioned in two documents of a waqf (religious endowment) corpus from the Mamluk period (1260–1516) stored in Jerusalem's Islamic Museum; the waqf concerned agricultural revenues for the benefit of the Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron. The documents dated to the first decade of the 14th century. One of them is an acknowledgment by two (headmen) of Halhul from the clan of al-Abbas of grain seed advancements to the village. The other document names six men from Halhul and nearby Beit Einun, three of whom belonged to the Abbas family, as guarantors of the peace for the nearby village of Nuba.
Ottoman period Halhul, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In the census of 1596, the village appeared in the tax registers as being in the nahiya of Hebron of the Liwa of Jerusalem. It had an all Muslim population of 92 households and paid taxes on wheat, barley, vineyards and fruit trees, occasional revenues, goats and/or beehives.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 123
John Wilson described it in 1847 as a place of Jewish pilgrimage.John Wilson, Lands of the Bible, William Whyte, Edinburgh, 1847 vol.1, p.384. Edward Robinson visited Halhul in 1852, describing its surroundings as "thrifty", with numerous fields, vineyards, cattle, and goats. He reported that it was the "head of its district" and that the old mosque was in poor condition and had a tall minaret from which many other villages could be seen.Robinson, 1856, p. 281 The French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village in 1863, and found it to have about 700 inhabitants. He mentions graves dating from the Jewish period carved in the rocks, a spring, Ain Ayoub (Job's spring) on the southern side of the hill which furnished the locals with water; a mosque Djama'a Nebi Yunis (mosque of the prophet Jonah) built of ancient stone, foreign access to which was forbidden.Guérin, 1869, pp. 284 – 287
An Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that Halhul had a population of 380, in 119 houses, though the population count included only men.Socin, 1879, p. 154Hartmann, 1883, p. 142, noted 118 houses In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Halhul as a large stone village on a hilltop, with two springs and a well.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, p. 305 The mosque appeared to be a "modern" building.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, p. 329
British Mandate period
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Halhul had a population of 1,927, all Muslim.Barron, 1923, Table V, Sub-district of Hebron, p. 10 This had increased at the time of 1931 census, when Halhul, together with the surrounding Kh. Haska, Kh. en Nuqta, Kh. Beit Khiran, Kh. Baqqar and Kh. ez Zarqa had a population of 2,523 people in 487 houses. Except for one Christian woman, the population was still all Muslim.Mills, 1932, p. 32
In July 1939, during the Arab Revolt, the village was the site of an atrocity committed by the British Black Watch Regiment. In an attempt to force the villagers to give up weapons they were suspected of hiding, all the men in the village were imprisoned in a wire cage in the sun with little water. According to the British official Keith-Roach, after permission had been obtained, the officers... instructed that they be kept there [in an open cage] and he gave them half a pint of water per diem. I saw the original order. The weather was very hot for it was summer. According to Indian Army Medical standards, four pints of water a day is the minimum that a man can live upon exposed to hot weather. After 48 hours treatment most of the men were very ill and eleven old and enfeebled ones died. I was instructed that no civil inquest should be held. Finally, the High Commissioner, MacMichael, decided compensation should be paid, and my Assistant and I assessed the damage at the highest rate allowed by the law, and paid out over three thousand pounds to the bereft families.Palestinian versions put the death toll from dehydration at 13, with one more person shot as he endeavoured to escape.apology sought for British war crimes in Palestine,' BBC News 7 September 2022- Some witnesses mentioned a second cage, either for women or a 'good' cage with adequate water for men who cooperated. A man who was driven by thirst to falsely claim to have hidden a gun down a well was killed when he failed to retrieve it.
In the 1945 statistics the population of Halhul was 3,380 Muslims,Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 23 who owned 37,334 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 50 Of this, 5,529 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 13,656 for cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 93 while 165 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 143
Jordanian period In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Halhul was ruled by Jordan. In 1961, the population of Halhul was 5,387.Government of Jordan, 1964, p. 13
Post-1967 Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Halhul, like the rest of the West Bank, has been occupied by Israel; since 1995, it has been governed by the Palestinian Authority as part of Area A of the West Bank.
Israeli occupation In March 1979, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) enforced a curfew in Halhul lasting sixteen days. Two youths, one a young girl, were shot and killed by a Jewish settler and an Israeli soldier while protesting during the curfew. Report of the Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the population of the occupied territories
During the Second Intifada, Israel confiscated some 1,500 dunams of land from the Halhul municipality.