Balad al-Sheikh
| Balad al-Sheikh | |
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A house from Balad ash-Sheikh, now located in Tel Hanan, Nesher
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 Balad al-Sheikh
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| Arabic | بلد الشيخ |
| Name meaning | "The town of the sheikh" |
| Also spelled | Balad ash-Shaykh |
| Subdistrict | Haifa |
| Coordinates | 32°46′18″N 35°02′32″E / 32.77167°N 35.04222°ECoordinates: 32°46′18″N 35°02′32″E / 32.77167°N 35.04222°E |
| Palestine grid | 154/241 |
| Population | 4,120 (1945) |
| Area | 9,849 dunams 9.8 km² |
| Date of depopulation | April 25, 1948 |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Military assault by Yishuv forces |
| Secondary cause | Influence of nearby town's fall |
| Current localities | Nesher |
Balad al-Sheikh (traditional transliteration) or Balad ash-Shaykh (most recent form of transliteration; Arabic: بلد الشيخ) was a Palestinian Arab village located just north of Mount Carmel, 7 kilometers (4.3 mi) southeast of Haifa. Currently the town's land is located within the jurisdiction of the Israeli city, Nesher.
The town is named after Sheikh Abdullah as-Sahli, a renowned Sufi, who was granted the taxes collected from the village by Sultan Salim II (1566-1574). The village contains a maqam ("shrine") dedicated to him. His grave is located in the Balad al-Sheikh cemetery on Mount Carmel.
In 1816, British traveller James Silk Buckingham passed by "Belled-el-Sheikh".
In 1859, the village had an estimated "200 souls", and the tillage was 20 feddans, while in 1875, Victor Guérin estimated that the village had a population of 500. He described that the houses were built by successive stages, one above the other; and almost all had a cabin made with tree branches at the top. This was where, during the summer, people spend the night to get cooler. Guérin further noted that at the lower end of the village were "cultivated gardens, surrounded by cactus and planted with olive, pomegranate and fig trees, and dominated by the elegant stems of several palm trees".
In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described it as "a moderate-sized village at the foot of Carmel, with good springs below near the road, and olive gardens with a few palm trees".
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Balad al Shaikh had a population of 406; 405 Muslims and 1 Christian, where the one Christian was a Melkite. This had increasing in the 1931 census to 747 Muslims, including Bedouin tribes that lived nearby, in a total of 247 houses.
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Wikipedia