Suba, Jerusalem

Suba (صوبا) was a Palestinian Arab village west of Jerusalem that was depopulated and destroyed in 1948. The site of the village lies on the summit of a conical hill called Tel Tzova (תל צובה), or Jabal Suba, rising 769 meters above sea level, and it was built on the ruins of a Crusader castle.

Biblical reference
The place has been tentatively identified with a town mentioned in the Septuagint version of Joshua 15:59. The Septuagint gives a list of eleven towns, which is missing in the Masoretic text. One of them is given as Σωρης ('Sōrēs') in most manuscripts but as Εωβης ("Eobes") in the Codex Vaticanus. The original therefore might have been Σωβης ("Sōbes"). There has also been a tentative identification with Tzova or Zobah (Greek Σουβα, "Sūba") from the Books of Samuel ( and ), but several scholars consider the identification unfounded. Both the Greek and the Hebrew spellings correspond exactly to the Arabic name of Suba. `

Antiquity
Middle Bronze Age cairn-tombs were excavated in the neighborhood of the ruined Arab village, though the site itself has not yielded artifacts from before the late Iron Age.

March 2000 excavations at a plastered cave on the grounds of Kibbutz Tzova identified it as the cave of John the Baptist.

In the later Roman period, the site was possibly mentioned in rabbinical sources as Seboim.

Crusader era
It has been suggested that Suba was Subahiet, one of 21 villages given by King Godfrey as a fief to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1114, the gift was re-confirmed by Baldwin I of Jerusalem.

A "Brother William of Belmont" was mentioned in Crusader sources in the years 1157 and 1162, he might have been castellan at Belmont.

Sometime before 1169, the Crusaders built a castle there called Belmont, run by the Hospitallers. In 1170 an unnamed castellan was mentioned. Today, parts of the northern and western Crusader wall remain, as well as ruins of a tower and other structures. These include large underground cisterns, some pre-dating the Crusader period.

Belmont Castle was taken by Saladin in 1187. According to the chronicles it was destroyed by him in 1191 but no trace of the destruction was located during the archaeological investigation.

Settlement at the site continued, and it was mentioned as "Suba", a village of Jerusalem, about 1225 by Yakut.

Belmont castle was excavated by archaeologists in 1986–9.

Ottoman era
Suba, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in the tax registers of 1596, there were 60 Muslim and 7 Christian families living there; an estimated 369 persons. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including  wheat, barley, olives and grapes; a total of 3,800 akçe. In the 1500s, Suba villagers also paid taxes for the cultivation of the land of Deir Sammit.

In the 17th century, Christian villagers of the Greek Orthodox denomination in Ṣūbā converted to Islam, as documented in records from the Islamic court of Jerusalem. These conversions are believed to have been influenced by economic challenges.

In 1838 Suba was noted as a Muslim  village, located in the Beni Malik district, west of Jerusalem.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the village was controlled by the Abu Ghosh family. The Crusader walls and the fortifications they built in the village were destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha in 1834.

The French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village on 30 April 1863. "Cette montagne, isolée et de forme conique, était couronnée à son sommet par une petite ville, réduite maintenant à l'état d'un simple village, qui est appelé de meme Souba,  Avant l'invasion d'Ibrahim-Pacha, c'était uue place forte, environnée d'anciens remparts parfaitement construits en blocs magnifiques et bien appareillés; mais, en 1834, après une assez vive résistance, elle fut emportée d'assaut par lbrahim et  presque entièrement démantelée. Néanmoins, il subsiste encore, sur  plusieurs points, des pans entiers de murs presque intacts, attestant, par la régularité el les grandes dimensions de leurs assises, la beauté de l'enceinte qui entourait cette ville et qui alors, quoiqu'elle  eût déjà beaucoup souffert du temps et plus encore des hommes, était toutefois assez bien conservée poulr offrir, malgré des nombreuses brèches, un abri suffisant aux habitants de Souba. Sur le point culminant de la montagne s'élève une petite tour moderne, dont les fondations seules sont en partie antiques; elle a été rebatie depuis une vingtaine d'années. Dans plusieurs maisons où je pénètre, j'observe un certain nombre de beaux blocs, bien équarris, engagés dans la construction, et qui proviennent soit des remparts, soit d'anciens édifices renversés. Dans une maison qui est affectée aujourd'hui à la réception des étrangers, les habitants m'affirment avoir vu autrefois d'anciens tombeaux, actuellement comblés. A les en croire, il y avait là une crypte funéraire assez vaste, dont ils ne parlent qu'avec admiration. [..] Il vaut mieux, je crois, avouer que, malgré l'importance de la position de Souba, malgré aussi celle des beaux remparts dont elle était jadis entourée, comme l'attestent les magnifiques pans de murailles encore debout qui ont échappé à la destruction ordonnée, en 1834, par lbrahim-Pacha, on n'a jusqu'a présent découvert, d'une manière indubitable, aucune ville ou bourgade antique qui puisse  etre identifiée, sans conteste, avec cette localité intéressante."  In Guérin, 1868, pp. 265 -278  Translation: "This mountain, isolated and conical, was crowned at its summit by a small town, now reduced to the state of a simple village, which is similarly called Souba, Before the invasion of Ibrahim-Pasha, it was a stronghold, surrounded by ancient ramparts perfectly constructed in magnificent blocks and well fitted; but, in 1834, after a rather strong resistance, it was conquered by assault by Ibrahim and almost entirely dismantled. Nevertheless, there still remain, on several points, whole sections of almost intact walls, attesting, by the regularity and the large dimensions of their seats, the beauty of the enclosure which surrounded this city and which then, although it already had suffered a lot from the weather and even more from the men, was however fairly well preserved for offering, despite numerous breaches, sufficient shelter to the inhabitants of Souba. On the highest point of the mountain rises a small modern tower, whose foundations alone are partly ancient; it has been rebuilt for twenty years. In several houses where I enter, I observe a certain number of beautiful blocks, well squared, part of the construction, and which come either from the ramparts, or from old overturned buildings. In a house which is used today for the reception of foreigners, the inhabitants affirm to me to have seen formerly old tombs, currently filled. If they were to be believed, there was a fairly large funerary crypt there, of which they speak only with admiration. [...]  It is better, I believe, to admit that, despite the importance of Souba's position, despite also that of the beautiful ramparts with which it was once surrounded, as evidenced by the magnificent sections of walls still standing which have escaped the orderly destruction, in 1834, by Ibrahim-Pacha, we have so far unmistakably discovered no ancient city or town which can be identified, without question, with this interesting locality."

An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that Suba had 33 houses and a population of 112, though the population count included only men.

In 1896 the population of Suba was estimated to be about 360 persons.

British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Suba had a population 307, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census  (when it was counted with Dayr 'Amr) to 434 Muslims, in 110 houses.

In the 1945 statistics the population of Suba was 620, all Muslims, who owned 4,082 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. 1,435 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 712 for cereals, while 16 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

State of Israel
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the village saw fierce fighting, due to its key location near the Jerusalem highway. In late 1947 and early 1948, irregular forces of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood stationed in Suba took part in the fighting against Jewish forces, including attacks on Jewish traffic on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Road. The village was attacked several times by the Haganah, and finally conquered by the Palmach during the night of July 12–13 as part of Operation Danny. Most of the inhabitants had fled during the fighting, and those who remained were expelled. In October 1948, the "Ameilim" group of Palmach veterans established a kibbutz called Misgav Palmach on village lands 1 km to the south. Later it was renamed Tzova.

Today Tel Tzova is a national park surrounded by the lands of the kibbutz. The ruins of the village are visible along with remains of Belmont Castle.

By 2011, the history of the village of Suba has been the subject of two books; one by Ibrahim ‘Awadallah published in Amman, Jordan in 1996, and another by Muhammad Sa’id Muslih Rumman in the West Bank, published in 2000.