The following article summarizes our current knowledge of the history of Tell Mulabbis (in modern Petah Tikva). As a key archaeological site in the Yarkon River basin, it was inhabited during the Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Late Ottoman periods. Based on the published results of recent excavations, older scholarship, and hereto-unnoticed written evidence, the article examines and interprets Mulabbis's material culture within the broader contexts of the region's historical geography. Although possessing important advantages like access to water and arable land, the site was inhabited only intermittently due to malaria and changing economic and political circumstances. Within the framework of Ottoman Archaeology, the article suggests the need to pay closer attention to ‘recent’ archaeological layers. For example, the few Ottoman material remains published so far, testify to continued cultural exchange and economic ties between Mulabbis, the mountainous interior, and the southern parts of Palestine.

Jindās was the nearest village to Lydda, situated by the town’s northern entrance. Although Lydda remained, to a large extent, an agricultural town until 1948, its rural hinterland has received little scholarly attention thus far. In this article, I sought to redress this disparity by reconstructing the history of Jindās, based on Ottoman tax records, waqf endowment deeds, registers of the Sharia courts and even oral testimonies. Jindās is mentioned in the 15th , 16th and early 17th centuries as a flourishing village whose lands belonged to different religious endowments. In the 18th and 19th centuries the village was abandoned several times. The desertion of Jindās, as well as of its neighbors Sibtāra, Kafr Jinnis, Beit Qūfa, and Shīhā, reflects the unsettled conditions around Lydda as a result from the migrations of nomadic groups and local manifestations of the Qays and Yaman rivalry. From a broader historiographical perspective, the article underlines a key point: the abandonment of villages did not necessarily result in an overall demographic decline. Just as the inhabitants of Jindās were scattered throughout Palestine’s central hill country, residents of other abandoned villages relocated, for the most part, to other regions, expanding and changing their existing patterns of settlement. In addition, the lands of these villages were not left abandoned, but continued to be cultivated by other populations. Thus, the lands of Jindās were cultivated by the inhabitants of Beit Nabālā and Lydda, and while they became the target of early Zionist settlement initiatives starting in the late 19th century, Ottoman reassertion of Jindās’ status as a waqf estate forestalled the land acquisition initiatives.

This article centres around the question of how do modern researchers view the Hijrah and its being a historical event or process which took place in a specific time and place. The general convention is that the Hijrah is the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Al-Madinah in the summer of 622 CE. Yet, a closer examination reveals that the Hijrah is deeply and inextricably tied to the chronological reconstruction of the emergence of Islam and its conquests. Some researchers have argued that the Hijrah was a different historical event, for instance, a campaign of Jews and Arabs – led and inspired by Muhammad – to liberate the Holy Land from Christian hold; or a gradual migratory movement from Arabia to the then known world; still others view the Hijrah as a later historical process, during which Arab warriors migrated to new garrison towns established in the lands conquered by Islam. The premise in this article is that the answer to the historical essence of the Hijrah is primarily a historiographical one, which is connected to the historical method and its interpretations. This article will demonstrate how the understanding of the Hijrah has developed via the correlation between Traditional historiography – which is derived from the classical Muslim narrative, and new insights which have emerged in recent decades – and are based both on a reinterpretation of existing evidence, as well as new evidence (mostly non-Islamic in nature). Considering the central role that the revisionist work by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism, has had on the discussion on the Hijrah, its main thesis will be examined in this paper and compared to both the Traditional research approach and the Integrative and Neo-Traditionalist approaches that followed this work

During much of the Ottoman period, the subdistrict of Lydda (Lod) was a large administrative unit that stretched from the present-day city of Modi’in in the south to the present-day city of Elad in the north; from the foothills in the east, through the Lod Valley to the outskirts of Jaffa in the west. This area was home to thousands of inhabitants in about 20 villages, who had at their disposal tens of thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land. The changing balance of power between the economic strength of Lydda and the influence of the neighboring administrative center in Ramla governed Lydda’s degree of administrative autonomy. As an economic space, however, Lydda’s hinterland remained relatively stable throughout the Ottoman period. Lydda Sub-district was united with Ramla Sub-district in the early 16th century but by the early 18th century, it was reestablished within similar boundaries to those that existed in the early 16th century. Lydda’s proximity to the grain basket of the Lod Valley, its location on the mainland trade routes and its proximity to the port of Jaffa, all contributed to its economic prosperity even in times of security instability. Lydda’s economy relied on the olive industry (oil and soap), cotton cultivation and trade. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, Waqf officials and European merchants managed much of this economic activity, while from the late 18th century this role was played mainly by local urban merchants (similar to the situation in Nablus and other Levantine cities). The nomadic incursions of the 17th and 18th centuries depopulated some villages in Lydda’s area. During the 19th century, the defeat of the Bedouins by the Abu Ghosh peasant alliance, and the increasing control of the Ottoman state on its internal security, facilitated the renewed expansion of settlement in the lowlands by the inhabitants of the highlands, in parallel with the extensive settlement of immigrants from Egypt in the coastal plain. The development of Lydda thus accelerated, reaching its peak during the British Mandate period.

Al-Sheikh Muwannis, where Tel Aviv University was later established, was one of four villages founded in the Ottoman period next to the shores of the Sharon (along with the villages of Ijlil, Al-Haram Sidna ‘Ali and Umm Khalid). The article traces the village's history within its social and spatial contexts. At the historiographical level, the establishment of Al-Sheikh Muwannis as discussed in the article demonstrates that the expansion of settlement in the southern Sharon was the result of the internal expansion of the core settlement by residents of the mountainous highlands of Samaria, and not by Egyptian ‘penetrators’ as previously claimed. Furthermore, the article outlines the complex relationships that developed between the original village population, new migrants, and nomadic populations camping on its lands; relationships that were exploited to further the growth and crystallization of Jewish settlement in the Yarkon Basin and around Tel Aviv. The close proximity of al-Sheikh Muwannis to the countryside of the Sharon and to Tel Aviv-Jaffa, led to the development of a space expressing architectural, social, linguistic and technological concepts derived from both countryside and city alike. The rich and complex picture presented in this paper can provide a framework to understand the development of other villages like al-Haram Sidna ‘Ali, Jalil, al-Jammasin, Sumayil (al-Mas‘udiya) and Salama.

Dispelling Desolation: The Expansion of Arab Settlement in the Sharon Plain and the Western Part of Jabal Nablus, 1700-1948, 2022This doctoral dissertation seeks to describe and explain the human factors that influenced the spatial distribution of Arab settlements in the Plain of Sharon and Samaria/Jabal Nablūs (hereinafter: Jabal Nablūs), which together form its area of study (hereinafter: AoS). More specifically, it explores the geographical, social and economic features of the Arab settlements in the AoS between the years 1700 – 1948 CE. In doing so, the study outlines the settlement processes, identifying the places of origin of the settlers and clarifying the circumstances of their arrival in the AoS. Furthermore, it describes the tenurials of land ownership, possession and use at the family, village and regional levels. The work won the Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel (MEISAI)'s 2023 award for outstanding Ph.D. dissertation.