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The village stood on a
lightly elevated hill on the southern western edge of the Marj ibn
Amer
Plain, on the two banks
of Wadi al-Lajjun. Jenin and the plain itself were visible from the
village. It was bordered
from the west and south by the Carmel Mountains, and by Tall
al-Mutsallem (to the
northeast), and by Tall al-Asmar (to the northwest). The village,
which
was linked by secondary
roads to the highway of Jenin-Haifa, and to other highway that led
southwest to the town of
Umm el- Fahm, lay close to the junctions of the two highways.
After the Bar-Kochba
Revolt had been suppressed in A.D.130 the Roman Emperor Hadrian
ordered a second Roman
legion, the legio VI Ferrata (“Ironsides”), to be stationed in the
north of the country.
The site of the camp was known as Legio. When the army was
withdrawn from the area
in the third century, Legio became a city, and was known
throughout all the
Byzantine period as Masimianupolis. It came under Arab control
during
the first stage of the
Islamic Conquest in the seventh century A.D.
Lajjun was the site of
many confrontations between Muslim rulers, such as the one in A.D.
945 between the
Hamadanids of Aleppo and the Ikshidis of Egypt in which the
renowned
Arab Prince, Sayf al-Dawla
al-Hamadani was defeated.
Lajjun was captured by
the Crusaders but was taken back by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi
(Saladin) in 1187.
A number of Arab
geographers mentioned Lajjun over the years, including Ibn al-Faqeeh
(writing in A.D. 903),
al Makdesi (985) and Yaqout al Hamawi (died in 1229). Makdesi
described it as a
pleasant town on the edge of Palestine. He mentioned its springs of
fresh
water.
Makdesi and al-Hamawi
(in his Mu’jam) reported the presence of what the people of
Lajjun
called the Mosque of
Abraham built over a round rock in the town center. But Faqeeh
reported that the mosque
lay outside Lajjun.
Many Arab Muslim kings
passed by the village. Among them was Malek Alkamel, the sixth
Ayoubid ruler , where
his daughter Ashoura’a got married in 1231. Two Muslim relics were
buried in it: Ali
Shafi’e (d. 1310) and Ali Ben Jalal (d. 1400).
In 1596, al-Lajjun was a
village of 226 strong, which paid taxes on wheat and barely, as well
as on other types of
property, such as goats, beehives, and water buffalos.
Zaher al-Umar, who ruled
over northern Palestine for a short period during the second half
of the eighteenth
century, was reported to have used cannons against al-Lajjun in the
course of his campaign
(1771-73) to capture Nablus.
In the late nineteenth
century, villagers from Umm al-Fahm moved to the site of al-Lajjun
to
make use of its
farmland.
Occupation and
depopulation:
The official Israeli
account states that al-Lajjun was occupied shortly before June 1948,
following the “ clearing
“ of the Baysan Valley and prior to the botched Israeli attack on
Jenin. The New York
Times reported earlier that the village was first attacked and
captured
in mid-April, during the
battle around the settlement of Mishmar ha-‘Emeq. The commander
of the Arab Liberation
Army (ALA) also reported an assault on April 13, when Jewish
forces attempted to
reach the crossroads at al-Lajjun in an outflanking operation. The
attack apparently
failed. The Times said that 12 people were killed and fifteen
wounded
during that offensive.
The paper also said that al-Lajjun was occupied a few days later on
April 17, twelve days
after the attack on Mishmar ha-Emeq had been launched from that
village. The account
read: “ Lajjun is the most important place taken by the Jews, whose
offensive has carried
them through ten villages south and east of Mishmar Ha’emek.” The
report added that women
and children had been removed from the village and that 27
buildings were blown up
by the Haganah in al-Lajjun and other villages nearby.
But Ala commander Fawzi
al-Qawuqji states that attacks resumed the following month,
on May 6, when ALA
positions in the area of al-Lajjun were attacked by Haganah forces.
The ALA’s Yarmuk
Battalion and other units drove the attackers back, but two days
later,
the ALA commander
reported that Haganah forces were “ trying to cut off the Lajjun
from
Tulkarm in preparation
of seizing Lajjun and Jenin…”
During the second truce,
in early September, a United Nations official fixed the permanent
truce line in the area
at Lajjun, according to press reports. A 500-yard area was
established on both
sides of the line in which Arabs and Jews were allowed to harvest
crops. [NYT: 15,
18/4/48, 31/5/48, 1/6/48, 7/9/48].
In 949 Israel
established the settlement of Yose Kaplan, which was later renamed
Megiddo, about 0.5 km to
the northeast of the village site.
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