Tulkarm or Tulkarem () is a city in the West Bank, Palestine and the capital of the Tulkarm Governorate. Netanya is to the west in Israel, while Nablus and Jenin are to the east. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2017 Tulkarm had a population of 64,532. Tulkarm is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority.
Etymology The Arabic name translates as 'length of vineyard'Edward William Lane, An Arabic–English Lexicon, vols. 6–8 ed. by Stanley Lane-Poole, 8 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863–93). but is a distortion of the Aramaic name Tur Karma ('mount of the vineyard'), which was used for Tulkarm by the Crusaders and by the mediaeval Samaritan inhabitants.
History Benjamin Mazar identified Tulkarm with the toponym Birat Seriqa (בירת סריקא, lit. 'Saracen tower' or 'vineyard tower'), mentioned in the Talmud (b. AZ 31a; y. AZ 5:4) as located near the Samaritan town of Burgata (בורגתא/ברקתא, perhaps from burgus, 'tower'), which may be modern Burj al-Atut. However, Félix-Marie Abel put Birat Seriqa closer to Kafr Qallil, and others put it near Qalqilya. Isaiah Press and Dov Zudkevitz suggest the true site may be somewhat west of Tulkarm, at in the Poleg basin.
Ayyubid and Mamluk periods During the Ayyubid era, after the Muslim reconquest of Palestine under Sultan Saladin in 1187, the first families to settle in Tulkarm were from the Kurdish clan of Zaydan. A military group, the Zaydan were dispatched to the Wadi al-Sha'ir area, which includes Tulkarm, by Saladin to buttress the defense of the western approaches of Muslim-held Palestine from the Crusaders who dominated the coastal area.
The Zaydan politically dominated Tulkarm and the vicinity until the early 17th century. Around 1230, during the late Ayyubid period, a group of Arabs from southern Palestine immigrated to Tulkarm. They had originally migrated to Palestine from Arabia many generations prior and had become semi-nomadic farmers and grazers. Among the Arab families were the Fuqaha clan, who were considered ashraf (related to the Islamic prophet Muhammad) and served as the ulama (religious scholars) of the village.
During the Ayyubid, and later the Mamluk era (1260–1517), the majority of Tulkarm's lands were made part of a waqf (religious trust) to support the al-Farisiyya Madrasa, an Islamic religious school in Jerusalem, located north of the Masjid Al-Aqsa compound. Two-thirds of the village's farmlands were confirmed as part of this trust in 1354 by the deputy-governor of Damascus, Faris al-Din al-Baki. During Mamluk rule another wave of Arab immigrants arrived in Tulkarm from North Africa and nearby Nablus. They largely engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, supplying hides to leather merchants in the coastal villages, retaken from the Crusaders in the second half of the 13th century.
Ottoman era Tulkarm was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Afterward, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66) transferred Tulkarm's waqf to the al-Jawhariyya Madrasa (Commons), located in the Muslim Quarter, northwest of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Under this arrangement, Tulkarm's inhabitants paid a third of their harvest as a tax towards the waqf, called qasm. At the time of the waqf'''s reassignment, the population of the village was estimated at 522 (95 households) and the qasm consisted of eight carats of wheat and three carats of barley. The town's elite families administered the trust, which enabled them to reach higher social and economic status. The population increased through intermarriage with families fleeing violent feuds between the various clans of Jabal Nablus. By 1548, the population had grown to 189 households or roughly 1,040 persons.
Tulkarm appeared in Ottoman tax registers in 1596 as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Qaqun, which was a part of the sanjak (district) of Nablus. The largest village in the nahiya, Tulkarm had a population of 176 Muslim households (roughly 968 persons) and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats, beehives and a press for olives or grapes.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 137 During this early period of Ottoman rule, there were five neighborhoods (pl. harat) centered around the Shaykh Ali al-Jazri al-Mughrabi Mosque, today referred to simply as the "Old Mosque". The population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, and most residents were fellahin (peasants who worked the land.) The elite families during that time were the Zaydan and the Lajjun-based Tarabay, the latter belonging to the Bani Harith tribe. Because of the decentralized nature of the Ottoman state, these families and their successors in later centuries ruled the area with a high degree of autonomy. The Zaydan had particular authority over Tulkarm, being appointed as the mutassalim (tax collectors or enforcers) on behalf of the central authorities.
In the mid-17th-century most members of the Zaydan family, with the exception of the children and the elderly, were killed in a massacre by Tulkarm's inhabitants during Friday prayers. This was in reaction to the Zaydan having forced Tulkarm's residents to harvest and process the village's grains for taxation purposes. Consequently, political power in Tulkarm passed to the Badran clan, while the Fuqaha family took control of administering the "waqf" lands, firmly establishing them as the village's religious leaders. The Fuqaha had derived much of their authority from their classification as ashraf and their association with the Sufi Rifa'iyya zawiya of the village. The western neighborhood was mostly emptied of Zaydan members and would serve as the main area of settlement for newcomers.
Tulkarm appears on sheet 45 of Pierre Jacotin's map drawn up during Napoleon's invasion in 1799, named Toun Karin.Palestine Exploration Quarterly Jan-Apr 1944. "Jacotin's Map of Palestine". D.H.Kellner. p. 161.Karmon, 1960, p. 170
Following the adoption of the Ottoman Land Code in 1858, the musha (collective landownership) system was gradually abrogated and residents were required to register their property with the central authorities. The fellahin were wary of registering their names for fear of military conscription by the Ottoman state and instead entrusted various elite clans with the role of landlords, who were in effect absentee owners. This altered the area's social structure, with the Samara, al-Hajj Ibrahim and Hanun clans legally obtaining vast swathes of Tulkarm's lands. Leadership of the town's two main religious establishments were generally supplied by the Kur-based Jayyusi clan and the al-Barqawi clan of Shufa. The Barqawi clan controlled the area around the town in the 19th century.Doumani, 1995, p. 54.
The 1860s French explorer Victor Guérin visited Tulkarm, which he described as being of "considerable" size, with about 1,000 inhabitants. During this time, the Ottoman authorities granted the village an agricultural plot of land called Ghabat Tulkarm in the former confines of the Forest of Arsur (Ar. Al-Ghaba) in the coastal plain, west of the village.Marom, Roy, "The Contribution of Conder's Tent Work in Palestine for the Understanding of Shifting Geographical, Social and Legal Realities in the Sharon during the Late Ottoman Period", in Gurevich D. and Kidron, A. (eds.), Exploring the Holy Land: 150 Years of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Sheffield, UK, Equinox (2019), pp. 212-231
The Survey of Western Palestine in 1882 described Tulkarm as a "long straggling village, on high ground", surrounded by arable land and rock. There were several "good-sized" houses, mainly of stone in the village.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, pp. 161-162
Tulkarm became the administrative center of a new subdistrict (qada') Bani Saʿb-Tulkarm in 1876, later becoming a municipality in 1892.Thawaba, 2009, p. 31. Tulkarm was also appointed a governor, bringing the residents who numbered only a few thousand and who were mostly fellahin, closer to the central government. This elevated status gave Tulkarm precedence over the nearby villages, which at that time also included Qalqilya. Tulkarm's center shifted from the Old Mosque to an empty space in the northwest as the town expanded northward with the construction of government buildings, a post office, a school and a hospital in that area.Thawaba, 2009, p. 32.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Tulkarm was one of the villages in which the Hannun family owned extensive estates. The Hannuns fostered close ties with clans in the village.
Tulkarm became a major rail junction in 1908 on the Hejaz Railway line running up from Egypt and southern Palestine to Haifa and Acre in the northwest, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah to the south, Lebanon to the north, and Syria and Transjordan to the east. The Ottoman Army used Tulkarm as one of its principal bases during the Sinai and Palestine campaign in World War I. It was bombed by British planes carried by HMS Anne. It was captured by British forces in 1918.Semplici, Andrea and Boccia, Mario. . Med Corporation. pp. 3-8.
British Mandate era
The British Mandatory administration (1942–1947) in Palestine designated Tulkarm as the center of the Tulkarm Subdistrict.Fischbach 2005, p. 494.
A road was constructed in 1920 to connect the town with Netanya on the coast. In order to cope with a significant increase in population and unorganized infrastructural development, a civil planning scheme was designed for Tulkarm and its satellite villages in 1945. At the time Tulkarm was divided into four main sections, with the bulk of commercial activity concentrated along the north–south and east–west roads. Meanwhile, the town continued to expand past its northern fringes, which had previously been characterized by green spaces.Thawaba, 2009, p. 36.
Tulkarm became a haven for Palestinian Arab rebel activity during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine against British rule. General Commander of the Revolt Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad hailed from Dhinnaba, today part of Tulkarm municipality, and led many operations in the region.
In the 1945 statistics the population of Tulkarm consisted of 8,090; of whom 7,790 were Muslims, 280 Christian and 20 "other", with a land area of 1,672 dunams (urban) and 32,610 dunams (rural), according to an official land and population survey.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 77 Of this, 2,399 dunams were designated for citrus and bananas, 276 plantations and irrigable land, 28,256 for cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 128 while 1,492 dunams were built-up areas.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 178
Jordanian rule During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Tulkarm was occupied by the Iraqi Army and later annexed as part of the Jordanian-held West Bank. The 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Jordan left roughly 30,000 dunams of Tulkarm's 32,610 dunams of land, mostly agricultural, in Israeli territory. In consequence, many residents moved to Transjordan or went abroad in search of employment.name="Fischbach494"/ Straddling the armistice line, Tulkarm was cut off from nearby Arab towns. Its principal economic and social connection was with Nablus.Thawaba, 2009, p. 38.