Mulabbes

Tell Mulabbes (Arabic: ملبس, Hebrew: אומלבס, מולבס) is an archaeological mound in modern Petah Tikva, Israel.

Mulabbes is key site in the Yarkon River basin, with habitation remains from the Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Late Ottoman periods.

Crusader and Mamluk periods
Khirbat Mulabbes was home to the Crusader village of Bulbus, an identification proposed in the nineteenth century by French scholar fr. A Crusader source from 1133 CE states that the Count of Jaffa granted the land to the Hospitaller order, including “the mills of the three bridges” (“des moulins des trios ponts”).

In 1478 CE (AH 883), the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Qaitbay, endowed a quarter of the revenues of Mulabbes to two newly established institutions: Madrasa Al-Ashrafiyya in Jerusalem, and a mosque in Gaza.

Ottoman period
David Grossman suggest that Mulabbes was "Milus", a village with 42 Muslim households, mentioned in the Ottoman tax records in 1596.

"Melebbes" appears on Jacotin's map drawn up during Napoleon's invasion in 1799, and shows up as "el Mulebbis" on Kiepert's map of Palestine, published in 1856.

Following the invasion of the Levant by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt (1831-1841), the village was repopulated by Egyptian emigrants belonging to the Abu Hamed al-Masri clan as part of a wider wave of migration that settled in Palestine's coastal lowlands.

In 1870, Victor Guérin noted that "Melebbes" was a small village with 140 inhabitants, surrounded by fields of watermelon and tobacco. An Ottoman village list from about the same year showed that "Mulebbes" had 43 houses and a population of 125, though the population count included men only. It was also noted that the village was located on a hill, "Auf einer Anhöhe", 2.75 hours northeast of Jaffa.

The Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine visited "Mulebbis" in 1874 and described it as "a similar mud village [as Al-Mirr], with a well." Following the sale of Mulabbes' lands to Jewish entrepreneurs, its residents dispersed in neighboring villages like Jaljulia and Fajja.

In 1878, Jewish colonist purchased the land of Mulabbes, establishing the first Jewish moshava, Petah Tikvah.