Rural Archive

The following documents relate to rural Palestine (primarily covering the years of 1952–1990), and I collected them from libraries and archives in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, and Amman during my fieldwork for my dissertation. When I was initially thinking about putting this archive together, I had hoped to do it collectively with several other researchers who also had sizable personal archives (also collected over the course of their dissertation research). The idea was that there isn’t much scholarly work done on rural Palestine today, and that part of the difficulty of doing this work is that source material is scattered all over the place, and often not easily accessible to researchers without the right passports, institutional backing, and funding. I didn’t realize how time-consuming even posting material could be, and so the collective part of this project will have to wait. For now, this is material from my own archive and is limited to the themes I was tracking. Most of the archival documents and government reports are up now, although I might upload some of the harder to find (mostly Arabic) books that were published in the 1980s at some point.

Currently, I have found it easiest to host the files—which include some quite large JPEGs as well as some PDFs—on Dropbox. The organization of is pretty rudimentary and mostly reflects the keywords I used in my field notes. If you’d like to use any of these files, please send an email to kohlbry (at) uchicago (dot) edu.

Finally, if you have ideas about archiving, expanding this sort of thing to include more materials, or anything else, do be in touch. If this archive is useful, both as a research tool and a way to create some chance for collaborative work, I’d love to build it up. For now, this is sort of an experiment, and I’m curious to see where (if anywhere) it goes.

 
 

AGRICULTURE

Jordanian government files, 1948–1967 (Israel State Archives, Jerusalem)

These files are labeled as “mem gimel aleph (MGA)” in the Israel State Archives. They often contain correspondence from multiple government ministries as well as petitions from different villages, so I’ve tried to label them according to where each file would have been housed.

MGA 38

  • MGA 38/10, Ministry of Interior: 1963, requests for grain aid from central government, Um Safa and bedouin near Deir Jarir. [6 pages]

  • MGA 38/21, Agricultural Credit Cooperation: 1960, Agricultural Credit Corporation correspondence to Jerusalem, relevant notices pertaining to the implementation of the 1959 Agricultural Credit Law, discussions of eligibility. [33 pages]

  • MGA 38/25, Agricultural Bank: 1959, rural debt and request for tax forgiveness, crop inspections, collateral on land without title. [30 pages]

  • MGA 38/26, Ministry of Finance: 1961–1962, report from the Ministry of Finance about drought and land tax forgiveness, data on crop loss, requests from villages for tax forgiveness, claims on crops that are being grown. [44 pages]

  • MGA 38/28, Ministry of Interior: 1962, statement from the lawyer of the farmer who was being evicted, statement by the landowners' lawyer, a back and forth in the government, and a report by the committee that was formed to investigate it. [15 pages]

  • MGA 38/30, Ministry of Agriculture: 1959–1965, agricultural advisors in the West Bank. [19 pages]

MGA 39

  • MGA 39/01, Ministry of Agriculture: 1961, emergency grain provision; price controls, lists by village, accounts of theft, requests by village leadership for food aid from central government. [99 pages]

  • MGA 39/09, Ministry of Agriculture: 1964, drought relief, mention of improved seed program in Turmisiyya. [10 pages]

  • MGA 39/11 (A), Ministry of Agriculture: 1963, drought, requests from mukhtars for aid, different water interventions in Jericho. [78 pages]

  • MGA 39/11 (B), Ministry of Agriculture: 1961–1964, flooding damage, requests for compensation, accounts of damage; mostly Bethlehem, Beit Fajjar, also Ramallah and Jerusalem. [181 pages]

  • MGA 39/12, Ministry of Agriculture: 1963–1965, floods in the Jordan River, tax exemption or loans, focus on Jericho, account of field visit as well as list of flood damage. [19 pages]

  • MGA 39/15, Ministry of Agriculture: 1961–1964, extensive claims of trespassing and resultant damage done to agricultural lands, usually by Bedouin or village owners of animals, covers mostly central and southern West Bank. [95 pages]

  • MGA 39/19, Ministry of Agriculture: 1961–1962, various agricultural issues, crop inspections, compensation for crop damages, grain provisioning, mostly Ramallah/Jerusalem. [47 pages]

  • MGA 39/20, Ministry of Agriculture: 1963–1964, statements and claims of damage caused by trespassing and grazing animals, expert investigations, and appeals. [137 pages]

  • MGA 39/22, Ministry of Agriculture: 1963–1964, monthly reports from the Department of Agriculture that include rainfall, crop yields, tree planting, military bases, agricultural instruction work, trainings, veterinary, livestock, forestry, and nurseries. [109 pages]

  • MGA 39/23, Ministry of Agriculture: 1965, request from the mukhtar/people of Biet Ijza for a prohibition of grazing on their lands, part of wider inter-village dispute. [27 pages]

MGA 49

  • MGA 49/16, Ministry of Agriculture (Forestry Department): 1953–1958, Trespassing, fires, shepherds, inspections of land, afforestation programs. Various locations, including Tubas, Jerusalem, Jerusalem villages (Anabta, Him, Jaba’, Mikhmas),  Ramallah villages (Ni’lin, Beitin, Burqa). [30 pages]

West Bank agricultural statistics, 1948–1973 (various libraries, Amman)

 Different Jordanian state bodies produced agricultural statistics about the West Bank, and these are the ones that I found in Amman (and generally are the sources for most older scholarship on this period). There are more fine-grained, district level reports as well, but I was unable to locate them in the Ministry of Agriculture in Amman, and from employees I spoke to there, it does not seem like they were preserved. I came across one or two in Jordanian files held at the ISA.

Jordanian Agricultural Statistics

  • Ministry of National Economy, Census of Agriculture, 1953.

  • Ministry of National Economy, Statistical Yearbook (Section B: Agricultural Statistics), 1954.

  • Ministry of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1963.

  • Department of Statistics, Report on Agriculture Census, 1965.

  • Department of Statistics, Population and Labour Force in the Agriculture Sector, 1967.

  • Ministry of Agriculture (prepared by B. Abu Howayej), Agricultural Atlas of Jordan, 1973.

Rural Research Center, 1980–1993 (various libraries, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Nablus)

The Rural Research Center (RRC), founded in 1980 by Hisham Awartani, was designed to produce data and research on Palestinian agriculture that could contribute toward the sector’s economic and political viability. Prior to this point, it was the Israeli military government that produced the only statistical data on agriculture in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Between 1980 and 1993, the RRC produced its own statistics as well as research reports on crops, profitability, and land use, and the publications I made copies of (and are available below) only represent a small part of that output. Today, the publications of the RRC are not centralized, but located in different libraries in Nablus, Ramallah, and Jerusalem.

  • Agricultural Statistics, 1980–82, 1986, 1989, 1990.

  • Agricultural Profitability, 1982–4 [selections].

  • Awwad, Munir. Agricultural Land Reclamation. 1992.

  • Awwad, Munir. Olive Oil Marketing Problems. 1984.

Land and Property

Department of Land and Survey reports, 1952–1967 (DLS Library, Amman)

Every year the Jordanian DLS published an annual report on the progress made in West Bank land titling. The hard copies I found were in the DLS’s small library in Amman. Available are 1952, 1955–6, 1958–67.

Jordanian government files, 1948–1967 (Israel State Archives, Jerusalem)

These files are labeled as “mem gimel aleph (MGA)” in the Israel State Archives. A few of these are from local government, the rest are fragments of what is still public from the Jordanian Department of Land and Surveys.

MGA 43

  • MGA 43/6, Ramallah Municipality: 1960–1965, eminent domain and responses. Mostly for school in al-Tireh built on agricultural land. [92 pages]

  • MGA 43/7, Jerusalem and Ramallah Municipalities: 1958–1963, land related issues, mostly eminent domain seizures and correspondence, and arguments from owners and their lawyers. Ramallah, Beit Sahour, Silwad, Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah. Original files 150+ pages. [35 pages] 

MGA 3562

  • MGA 3562/1, Department of Land and Survey: Nablus land registry, fragments from Ras al-Ayn; Dafna and Zayn al-Dar; Khallat al-Rahban al-Wusta; Khallat al-Natsh, Khallat al-Rahban al-Gharbiya. [50 pages]

  • MGA 3562/2, Department of Land and Survey: 1958–1962, Bank loan records from Agricultural Bank (27 contracts), Development Bank of Jordan (2 contracts), Arab Land Bank (30 mortgages), Jordanian Construction Committee (2 contracts for Jerusalem hotels). [63 pages]

  • MGA 3562/3, Department of Land and Survey: 1960s, schedule of rights for land settlement in Beit Iba (Nablus). [90 pages]

  • MGA 3562/4, Department of Land and Survey: 1951–1954, fragments from land survey operations in Tulkarm area. [6 pages]

  • MGA 3562/6, Department of Land and Survey: 1951–1955, Multiple contracts and notes from Tubas including survey of government property, planting contract, and loans. [16 pages]

  • MGA 3562/8 Department of Land and Survey: 1957–1960, land survey operations, Tulkarm area [16 pages]

  • MGA 3562/11, Department of Land and Survey: 1950–1958, register of petitions (sijl al esteda'aat) for Nablus and some surrounding villages; sales, new registration, mortgage. [135 pages]

MGA 3563

  • MGA 3563/2, Department of Land and Survey: 1957–1967, list of property exempted ("extra copies of contracts connected to assets exempted from the settlement in the West Bank”), property sales, Jerusalem and Nablus. [45 pages]

  • MGA 3563/5, Department of Land and Survey: April 1965–March 1966, records of sales and other transactions, Jericho. [55 pages]

  • MGA 3563/6, Department of Land and Survey: 1954–1964, records of sales and other transactions, northern Jerusalem/southern (and north?) Ramallah villages. [20 pages]

  • MGA 3563/7, Department of Land and Survey: January–April 1967, records of sales and other transactions, Jericho and al-Duyuk. [19 pages]

  • MGA 3563/8, Department of Land and Survey:  1966 (April–December), records of sales and other transactions, Ramallah [88 pages]

  • MGA 3563/11, Department of Land and Survey: 1952, schedule of rights for Ghor al-Fara’a, water and land [19 pages]. 

  • MGA 3563/12, Department of Land and Survey: 1964–1965, records of sales and other transactions, Jenin [145 pages]

  • MGA 3563/13, Department of Land and Survey: 1965–6, various documents including: Ramallah transactions unregistered land; documents relating to enemy property, loans, mukhtar signatures; letters from Dier Debwan and Beit Nuba. [30 pages]

 

Local Government

Jordanian government files, 1948–1967 (Israel State Archives, Jerusalem)

These files are labeled as “mem gimel aleph (MGA)” in the Israel State Archives. They often contain correspondence from multiple government ministries as well as petitions from different villages, so I’ve tried to label them according to where each file would have been housed. A note on MGA 14 and 95 (mukhtar files): in a 1982 article published in Fellah and Townsman in the Middle East: Studies in Social History called “The Office and Functions of the Mukhtars,” Gabriel Baer cites some very detailed Jordanian government files on mukhtars that get into questions of land ownership. The filing system for the ISA seems to have changed since the 1980s, and the numbers that Baer gives in his bibliography no longer correspond to the ISA’s system. I went through all the mukhtar files and could not locate any of the documents that Baer mentioned.

MGA 01

  • MGA 01/27, Ministry of Finance: 1965–1966, budgets for the Jericho municipality and related correspondence. [27 pages]

MGA 02

  • MGA 02/01, Ministry of Finance: 1965–1967, budgets for the Jericho municipality. [41 pages]

  • MGA 14

  • MGA 14/15, Ministry of Interior: 1961–1967, al-Jib mukhtars and family reports. [62 pages]

  • MGA 14/16, Ministry of Interior: 1958–1966, Complaint about mukhtar corruption, lawyers and extensive correspondence. [79 pages]

  • MGA 14/17, Ministry of Interior: 1957–1959, Um Safa, mukhtar resignation. [13 pages]

  • MGA 14/18, Ministry of Interior: 1957–1960, Kobar, claims of corruption. [10 pages]

  • MGA 14/19, Ministry of Interior: 1958–1961, Abwayn, criminal disputes related to mukhtar and money. [50 pages]

  • MGA 14/20, Ministry of Interior: 1956–1963, Yalu (destroyed in 1967), government reports on village, family conflicts, border situation. [14 pages]

  • MGA 14/21, Ministry of Interior: 1957–1966, firing of a mukhtar in Deir Jarir relating to membership in the Ba'ath Party, various requests and correspondence. [50 pages]

MGA 95

  • MGA 95/1, Ministry of Interior: 1959, al-Nawaiya mukhtar file. [15 pages]

  • MGA 95/2, Ministry of Interior: 1959–1967, Ni’lin mukhtar file. [27 pages]

  • MGA 95/5, Ministry of Interior: 1959–1964, 'Arab al-Ta'amra mukhtar file. [45 pages]

  • MGA 95/6, Ministry of Interior: 1957–1962, 'Asba Jabr Camp mukhtar file. [15 pages]

  • MGA 95/7, Ministry of Interior: 1958–1964, Beit Jala mukhtar file. [44 pages]

  • MGA 95/9, Ministry of Interior: 1957–1962, Beit Fajjar mukhtar file. [68 pages]

  • MGA 95/13, Ministry of Interior: 1965, Azariyya mukhtar file. [175 pages]

  • MGA 95/16, Ministry of Interior: 1960–1963, 'Asba Jabr mukhtar file. [25 pages]

  • MGA 95/18, Ministry of Interior: 1959–1960, Bethlehem mukhtar file. [8 pages]

  • MGA 95/19, Ministry of Interior: 1963–1965, Ayn Sultan Camp mukhtar file. [14 pages]

  • MGA 95/21, Ministry of Interior: 1958–1960,  al-Auwjeh mukhtar file. [48 pages]

  • MGA 95/22, Ministry of Interior: 1958–1966, Beit Sahour mukhtar file. [17 pages]

  • MGA 95/23, Ministry of Interior: 1959–1966, Jericho mukhtar file. [79 pages]