Kafr Lam - History

History

According to the Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi, the town of Kafr Lam was established near Qisarya by the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn ´Abd al-Malik (A.D. 724-743). The fort, constructed in the castra form, was erected during early Abbasid, or late Umayyad rule to guard against invasion from the Byzantine empire.

Kfar Lam was a fiefdom of the lord of Caesarea during the Crusader era in Palestine, and was known at this time as Cafarlet. In October 1213, the lord of Caesarea, Aymar de Lairon, pledged the casalia of Cafarlet and two fiefdoms as surety for a debt of 1,000 besants he had taken from the Hospitallers. In 1232, the Casal of Cafarlet was sold to the Hospitallers for 16,000 Saracen besants, its increased value due to its having been fortified after a raid on the lordship of Caesarea by troops from Damascus in 1227. The Hospitallers transferred ownership over Carfalet to the Templars in 1255. The village was captured by Muslim forces in 1265, but retaken by the Crusaders shortly thereafter. In 1291, it was taken by the Mamluks, who ruled over it from that time until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Palestine in the early sixteenth century.

During early Ottoman rule in Palestine, in 1596, a farm in Kafr Lam paid taxes to the ruling authorities. Descriptions of Kfar Lam under later Ottoman rule are available in the writings of European travellers to the region. For example, the French traveller Guérin noted in 1841 that Kafr Lam was situated on top of a small hill and was inhabited by about 300 villagers. He said that the village stood within a large stone enclosure that dated to the time of the Crusades. Mary Rogers, the sister of the British vice-consul in Haifa, visited the Kafr Lam in 1856 and wrote that its houses were built of mud and stone and that the fields around the village abounded in Indian wheat, millet, sesame, tobacco, and orchards.

In modern times, the houses of Kafr Lam were made of stone and either mud or cement and were clustered together. The villagers were Muslims, and maintained a mosque. A boys elementary school was built in 1882, but it was closed during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. There were five wells on village lands. The village economy depended on animal husbandry and agriculture and the main crops cultivated were various sorts of grain. In 1944-45, a total of 4,833 dunums (1,194 acres) were allotted to cereals, while 75 dunums (19 acres) were irrigated or used for orchards.