Al-Bassa - History

History

The site shows signs of habitation in prehistory and the Middle Bronze Age. It was a Jewish settlement between 70 and 425 AD. Blown glass pitchers uncovered in a tomb in al-Bassa were dated to circa 396 AD. An ancient Christian burial place and 18 other archaeological sites were located in the village.

The village was inhabited in the Early Arab period. The Survey of Western Palestine, sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund, identified al-Bassa as, "probably a Crusading village"; however, archaeological excavations uncovered evidence of an ecclesiastical farm in operation there between the 5th to 8th centuries, and pottery sherds indicate continuous inhabitation throughout the Middle Ages.

The site was used in 1189 C.E. as a Crusader encampment during a military campaign, and a document dated October 1200 recorded the sale of the village by King Amalric II of Jerusalem to the Teutonic Order. No Crusader era buildings have been found in al-Bassa, and a cross once dated to the Crusader period was later re-dated to the Byzantine era. A-Bassa was the first village listed as part of the domain of the Crusaders during the hudna between the Crusaders based in Acre and the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur (Qalawun) in 1283.

In 1596, Al-Bassa was part of the Ottoman Empire, a village in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Tibnin under the liwa' (district) of Safad, with a population of 76 Muslim families and 28 Muslim bachelors. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat olives, barley, cotton and fruits, as well as on goats, beehives and pasture land.

In the 18th century Al-Bassa became a zone of contention between Dhaher al-Omar and the chiefs of Jabal Amil, while under his successor, Jezzar Pasha, Al-Bassa was made the administrative center of the nahiya in around 1770. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte described Al-Bassa as a village of 600 Metawalis.

The European traveller Van de Velde visited "el-Bussa" in 1851, and stayed with the sheikh, Aisel Yusuf, writing that "The clean house of Sheck Yusuf is a welcome sight, and the verdant meadows around the village are truly refreshing to the eye". He further noted that "The inhabitants of Bussah are almost all members of the Greek Church. A few Musselmans live among them, and a few fellahs of a Bedouin tribe which wanders about in the neighborhood are frequently seen in the street."

In 1863 the village was visited by Henry Baker Tristram who described it as a Christian village, where "olive oil, goats´hair, and tobacco, seemed to be principal produce of the district; the latter being exported in some quantities, by way of Acre, to Egypt. Bee-keeping, also, is not an unimportant item of industry, and every house possesses a pile of bee-hives in its yard."

In the late nineteenth century, the village of Al-Bassa was described as being built of stone, situated on the edge of a plain, surrounded by large groves of olives and gardens of pomegranate, figs and apples. The village had about 1,050 residents.

The village had a public elementary school for boys (built by the Ottomans in 1882), a private secondary school, and a public elementary school for girls.