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Mansour Nasasra

Abstract

This article addresses historical and social issues concerning the Arabs of the Neqab and the Bir al-Saba’ district since 1900, through the Ottoman and British periods and the post-Nakba period, until the establishment of the city of Rahat in 1972. It also sheds light on the historical relationship between the districts of Bir al-Saba’ and Gaza while relating to social, economic and geopolitical connections. The data presented is based on central themes published in the book “The Naqab Bedouin: A Century of Politics and Resistance” (Columbia University Press, New York), including archival materials from Istanbul, Jerusalem, London and Oxford, and oral interviews of the inhabitants of the Bir al-Saba’ District and Jordan. The magnificent archaeological discoveries in the southern part of Rahat join other such discoveries in the southern district of Palestine from the Islamic periods and earlier, illuminating the historical city of Bir al-Saba’ and its network of social, geopolitical and economic relations with the Arab and Islamic world. This social and political environment includes areas extending from the Hebron Mountains northeast of Bir al-Saba’ to Aqaba in the south, and from Auja al-Hafir, Wadi al-Arish, Gaza and the Jaffa coast in the west, extending east through Wadi al-Araba to Ma’an in Jordan. This wide geographical space yielded much data, assembled from memory and a wide range of works, including the present and the absent, roads, places, landscapes, governance, possibilities, restrictions and important oral narratives. The historical location and sovereignty of Bir al-Saba’ played an important role in the axes of trade, pilgrimage and economic services, which created countless job opportunities. The interviewees confirmed that the police building and the wells of Tell el-Malah and al-Mashash, east of Bir al-Saba’, became major and strategic sites for the gathering of merchants from Hebron, Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as the local clans, who sold there goats, sheep, camels, barley, tobacco and dairy products.

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