Sarafand al-Kharab () was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict, located above sea level, west of Ramla, in the area that is today northeast of Ness Ziona.

Etymology Sarafand or Sarafend (Ṣarafand / صرفند) is an Arabic rendition of the Aramaic place-name Ṣrifin.Palmer, 1881, p. 215 Al-Kharab means "the ruined, uninhabited".

History Early Muslim and Crusader periods Umayyad and Abbasid pottery sherds from the 8th-10th centuries (part of the Early Muslim period) have been found here.Golan, 2015, Nes Ziyyona, Sarafand el-Kharab

The Samaritan chronicle known as the Tolidah records the ancestry of the "Benē Marḥīb that descended from Benē Bakr b. Ur" from Sarafand.Marom, Roy. "Continued Pasts: Samaritan Tolidah Extensions and Self-Reflections on History." Texts as Living Objects: Dhayls and Knowledge Transmission in the Islamic World, edited by Sacha Alsancakli and Philip Bockholt, Brill, 2026, pp. 223–49 (p. 237).

An Arabic inscription on a slab of marble, formerly held in the private collection of Baron d'Ustinow, was found in Sarafand al-Kharab. Dating to the Fatimid period and ostensibly brought to the village from Ashkelon, it states: "The slave of amir al-mu'minin may Allah bless him and his pure ancestors, and his noble descendants. And he was then in charge of ... in the border stronghold of Ashqelon in the month of (?) of Rabi' II of the year 440." AH 440 corresponds to 1048/49 CE.Sharon, 1997, pp. 151 -152.

A vault dating from the Crusader period has been found in the village.Pringle, 1997, p. 93Khalidi, 1992, p. 412

Ottoman period: 19th century In 1838, Edward Robinson reported that there were two villages by the name of Sarafand in the area, one of which was inhabited by Muslims and the other ruined. Thus, it may be that Sarafand al-Kharab ("Sarafand of the ruins") acquired its name during this period.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 3. p. 45, cited in Khalidi, 1992, p. 413. Both the Sarafand villages belonged to the District of Ibn Humar.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 3. Second appendix, p. 121

Dovid Grossman (scholar) believed that the village had been settled by Bedouins and Egyptians in the late 19th century.Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 376 A more recent study, based on oral histories of former residents, indicated that Sarafand al-Kharab had been established by refugees from Abwein in the West Bank.

An Ottoman village list of about 1870 counted 22 houses and a population of 107 in Sarfend el Charab, though the population count included men only.Socin, 1879, p. 160Hartmann, 1883, p. 138 also noted 22 houses

In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) noted the village on their maps as Khurbet Surafend, and described the archeological remains at the place as being "a tank or birkeh of rubble in cement, resembling those at Ramleh, here exists, with traces of other ruins."Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 266

Excavations revealed traces of Late Ottoman infant jar burials, commonly associated with nomads or itinerant workers of Egyptian origins.Taxel, Y., Marom, R., & Nagar, Y. (2025). An Infant Jar Burial from Zarnūqa: Muslim Funerary Practices and Migrant Communities in Late Ottoman Palestine. 'Atiqot, 117, 269–293.

British Mandate In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sarafand al-Kharab had a population of 385 Muslims,Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p. 21 increasing in the 1931 census to 974; 938 Muslims, 33 Christians and 3 Jews, in a total of 206 residential houses.Mills, 1932, p. 23.

Sarafand al-Kharab was one of a number of villages in the Lydda-Ramle district of Mandatory Palestine whose equine population was struck by an epidemic of African horse sickness in 1944, resulting in "stand-still" orders preventing the movement of horses outside of town between September and November 1944 and the deaths of 730 horses in the district.El-Eini, 2004, p. 399

In the 1945 statistics the village had a population of 1,040; 930 Muslims and 110 Christians, with a total of 5,503 dunams of land. (3,545 Arab-owned, 1,611 Jewish-owned, 347 public lands) In 1944-45, a total of 4,235 dunams were devoted to citrus and bananas and 499 dunams were allocated to cereals; 64 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p.117 while 33 dunams were classified as built-up, urban areas.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 167

1948, aftermath By 8 April, Haganah reports mentioned that Palestinian women and children had started evacuating the village.Morris, 2004, p. 175, note 58 News of the Deir Yassin massacre might have prompted further evacuation.

By September 1948, Sarafand al-Kharab was one village Israeli general Avner considered "suitable" for filling with newly Jewish immigrants, so-called olim.Morris, 2004, p. 394, note 328

In 1992 the village site was described as follows: "A major part of the village has been destroyed. Many houses, however, remain; no more than six of them, including the house of Muhammad Darwish, are occupied by Israeli families. Most of them have gable roofs and rectangular doors and windows. One house is two stories and has a slanted roof. The school is used by Israeli students. A pond and a pump house in the orchard of Mahmud Yusuf Darwish are still undamaged. Castor oil (Ricinus) plant and mulberry trees grow on the site. The cemetery is overgrown with cactus plants. The surrounding land are cultivated by Israelis."

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External links Welcome To Sarafand al-Kharab Sarafand al-Kharab, Zochrot Survey of Western Palestine, Map 13: IAA, Wikimedia commons