Sarafand al-Kharab

Sarafand al-Kharab (صرفند الخراب) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict, located 50 m above sea level, 7 km west of Ramla, in the area that is today northeast of Ness Ziona.

Etymology
Sarafand or Sarafend (Ṣarafand / صرفند) is an Arabic rendition of the Phoenician place-name *Ṣrpt. Al-Kharab means "the ruined, uninhabited".

Early Muslim and Crusader periods
Umayyad and Abbasid pottery sherds from the 8th-10th centuries (part of the Early Muslim period) have been found here.

An Arabic inscription on a slab of marble, formerly held in the private collection of Baron d'Ustinow, was found in Sarafand al-Kharab. Dating to the Fatimid period and ostensibly brought to the village from Ashkelon, it states: "The slave of amir al-mu'minin may Allah bless him and his pure ancestors, and his noble descendants. And he was then in charge of ... in the border stronghold of Ashqelon in the month of (?) of Rabi' II of the year 440." AH 440 corresponds to 1048/49 CE.

A vault dating from the Crusader period has been found in the village.

Ottoman period: 19th century
In 1838, Edward Robinson reported that there were two villages by the name of Sarafand in the area, one of which was inhabited by Muslims and the other ruined. Thus, it may be that Sarafand al-Kharab ("Sarafand of the ruins") acquired its name during this period. Both the Sarafand villages belonged to the District of Ibn Humar.

Dovid Grossman (scholar) believed that the village had have been settled by Bedouins and Egyptians in the late 19th century. A more recent study, based on oral histories of former residents, indicated that Sarafand al-Kharab had been established by refugees from Abwein in the West Bank.

An Ottoman village list of about 1870 counted 22 houses and a population of 107 in Sarfend el Charab, though the population count included men only.

In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) noted the village on their maps as Khurbet Surafend, and described the archeological remains at the place as being "a tank or birkeh of rubble in cement, resembling those at Ramleh, here exists, with traces of other ruins."

The village is believed to have been established in the late 19th century, driven by Egyptian migration and Bedouin settlement in response to the demand for manpower in emerging Jewish colonies. The specific period of its earlier settlement and the reasons behind its destruction remain unclear.

British Mandate
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sarafand al-Kharab had a population of 385 Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 974; 938 Muslims, 33 Christians and 3 Jews, in a total of 206 residential houses.

Sarafand al-Kharab was one of a number of villages in the Lydda-Ramle district of Mandatory Palestine whose equine population was struck by an epidemic of African horse sickness in 1944, resulting in "stand-still" orders preventing the movement of horses outside of town between September and November 1944 and the deaths of 730 horses in the district.

In the 1945 statistics the village had a population of 1,040; 930 Muslims and 110 Christians, with a total of 5,503 dunams of land. (3,545 Arab-owned, 1,611 Jewish-owned, 347 public lands) In 1944-45, a total of 4,235 dunams were devoted to citrus and bananas and 499 dunams were allocated to cereals; 64 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards, while 33 dunams were classified as built-up, urban areas.

1948, aftermath
By 8 April, Haganah reports mentioned that Palestinian women and children had started evacuating the village. News of the Deir Yassin massacre might have prompted further evacuation.

By September 1948, Sarafand al-Kharab was one village Israeli general Avner considered "suitable" for filling with newly Jewish immigrants, so-called olim.

In 1992 the village site was described as follows: "A major part of the village has been destroyed. Many houses, however, remain; no more than six of them, including the house of Muhammad Darwish, are occupied by Israeli families. Most of them have gable roofs and rectangular doors and windows. One house is comprisedof [sic] two stories and has a slanted roof. The school is used by Israeli students. A pond and a pump house in the orchard of Mahmud Yusuf Darwish are still undamaged. Castor oil (Ricinus) plant and mulberry trees grow on the site. The cemetery is overgrown with cactus plants. The surrounding land are cultivated by Israelis."