Ein 'Arik

Ein 'Arik (عين عريك) is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located 7 kilometers west of Ramallah in the central West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the town had a population of 1,567 inhabitants consisting of Muslims (65%) and Christians (35%) in 2007 and a population of 1,774 in 2017.

Location
Ein Arik is located 5.6 km north-east of Ramallah. It is bordered by Ein Qiniya to the east, Beituniya  to the east and south, and Deir Ibzi to the west and north.

History
Archaeological surveys have never been conducted at the village. Some assume, that it is the place of the Archites, mentioned in the Bible as being located between Bethel and Bethoron.

Southwest of Ein 'Arik is Khirbet al-Hafi, where Byzantine pottery has been found, together with glass fragments and ancient agricultural terraces.

In the Crusader era Ein 'Arik was known as Bayt Arif, and already by the mid-eleventh century the  village, together with another just north of Jerusalem, belonged to the  Jacobite Church. By 1099 the estate was deserted, and was hence annexed by a Crusader, Geoffry of the Tower of David. In 1106, he was imprisoned in Egypt, and his nephew took over the estates. However, the Jacobite Church appealed to Queen Melisende to get their property back. This was finally granted in 1138. Potsherds from the Crusader/Abbasid and early Ottoman period have also been found.

Abel associated Ein 'Arik with Beth 'Ariq, a place referenced in a 12th-century Syrian text.

According to Conder and Kitchener, Ein 'Arik was mentioned in Marino Sanuto's Map of the Holy Land as Arecha.

Ottoman era
Ein Arik, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in 1596  'Ain 'Arik  appeared in the  tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. It had a total population of 24 households, 14 Muslim and 10 Christian. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, olive trees, vineyards and fruit trees,  goats and beehives; a total of 4,300 akçe.

In 1838, Edward Robinson noted it as a partly Christian village, with 25 Christian men, and the rest Muslims. It was located in the Beni Harith district, north of Jerusalem.

In 1870 the French explorer Victor Guérin found Ein 'Arik to have "forty small houses, inhabited by half Muslim, half  Greek schismatics, who have a church." An Ottoman village list of about the same year, 1870, showed that Ein 'Arik had 41 houses with 179 Muslim men, and 24 houses with 80 Greek Christian men; a total of 65 houses with 259 men. The population count included men, only.

In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Ain' Arik as "A small stone hamlet in a deep valley with a Greek church, the inhabitants being Greek Christians. There is a good spring to the west with a small stream. The place is surrounded with olives, and there are lemons and other trees round the water in a thick grove."

In 1896 the population of 'Ain arik  was estimated to be about 471 persons; half Christian and half Muslim.

British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, 'Ain 'Arik had a population of 365; 165 Muslims and 200  Christians; 144 Orthodox, 56 Roman Catholics, increasing in  the 1931 census, to 494; 220 Christians and 274 Muslims, living in a total of 117 houses.

In the 1945 statistics, the population of 'Ein 'Arik was 610;  360 Muslims and 250 Christians,  while the total land area was 5,934 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this,  2,203  were allocated  for plantations and irrigable land, 1,168 for cereals, while 32 dunams were classified as built-up areas.

Jordanian era
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Ein 'Arik came under Jordanian rule.

In 1961, the population of 'Ain Arik was  1,385, of whom 260 were Christian.

1967 and aftermath
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Ein 'Arik has been under Israeli occupation,  and according to the Israeli census of that year, the population of 'Ain 'Arik stood at 642, of whom 215 were registered as having come  from Israel.

After the 1995 accords, 7.3% of village land has been defined as Area B land, while the remaining 92.7% is Area C.

In 1997, it was described by Finkelstein and Lederman as "a small village surrounded by groves".

There are two churches located in the village, one Orthodox Christian and the other one is Roman Catholic Couvent Saint-Etienn. One mosque is located in the center of the village and has the tallest minaret in all of Palestine. Two-thirds of its inhabitants are Palestinian Muslims, and the remaining one-third are Palestinian Christians. The village council which consists of mostly Muslims is chaired by a Christian. Both Christians and Muslims have been living together since early on harmoniously by respecting each other's religion.

Ein 'Arik is known for the natural springs that run through the village and pour into the valley. Both springs, up until the year 2000, were used for drinking and cooking. The village has a large lush valley filled with fruit trees. In 1948 when Palestinians were exiled from their villages some refugees from different villages settled in Ein 'Arik due to the accessibility of clean water.

Ein 'Arik has a public swimming pool, which is open from May to September. There are several restaurants in Ein 'Arik that serve traditional Arabic cuisine, but the most popular of the restaurants is the Falaha, which is very well known throughout the West-Bank area.

Shrine of A-Sheikh Hussein
Ein 'Arik is home to a shrine locally known as A-Sheikh Hussein (الشيخ حسين). It is considered the tomb of a local saint, who also gave his name to the village's mosque which was built on the remains of an earlier church. There, the locals perform their ceremonies, swear in the saint's name, regard anyone swearing there as a speaker of truth, and hold that anyone who disobeys vows made at the tomb will ultimately be killed. A large oak tree that is thought to be three hundred years old is growing close to the tomb. The saint's tomb sanctifies a nearby spring known as  'Ein al-Foqa whose waters are believed to cure urinary retention (but only if consumed before the stars appear).

According to one tradition, this is where John the Baptist's tomb is located. They believe that he was also known as Hussein, and the church on which the shrine was constructed was called "Church of John the Baptist". Uri suggested that this site may be associated with A-Sheikh Hussein Ibn Sa'id a-Samkhan, who led the Qays tribes in Samaria at the time of the Egyptian conquest of the Levant in the early 19th century.