Beit Imrin

Beit Imrin
Other transcription(s)
• Arabic	بيت امرين
• Also spelled	Beit Imrin (official) Bayt Umrin (unofficial)
Beit Imrin, from the west Beit Imrin, from the west
Beit Imrin Location of Beit Imrin within the Palestinian Territories
Coordinates:
Palestine grid	170/188
Governorate	Nablus
Government
• Type	Village council (from 1966)
• Head of Municipality	Basheer Samarah
Area
• Jurisdiction	12,100 dunams (12.1 km2 or 4.7 sq mi)
Population (2007)
• Jurisdiction	2,821
Name meaning	"House of Princes", "The House of Imrin"

Beit Imrin (Arabic: بيت امرين‎‎, transliterated as "House of Princes") is a Palestinian village in the Nablus Governorate in northern West Bank, located 18 kilometers northwest of Nablus. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the village had a population of 2,821 inhabitants in 2007.

Beit Imrin is an agricultural village with the main products being pulses, grains, vegetables, olives, grapes, alonds and figs. There is a girls' primary school and a boys' secondary school in the village. Other public facilities include a health clinic, telephone and postal services.

History

Beit Imrin was founded by Arabs from nearby Burqa and the Bani Hassan tribe of eastern Jordan who also populated Qarawat Bani Hassan. The towns of Sebastia is located to the southwest, the villages of Ijnisinya and Nisf Jubeil to the south, Burqa to the northwest and Yasid to the east.

Ottoman era

In 1517, Beit Imrin was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine. In 1596, it appeared in Ottoman tax registers as "Bayt Imrin", a village in the nahiya of Jabal Sami in the liwa of Nablus. It had a population of nine households and two bachelors, all Muslim, and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, occasional revenues, goats and beehives, and a press for olives or grapes.

In 1838 Edward Robinson noted that the village was on the road to Jenin, while in 1870 Victor Guérin estimated that Beit Imrin had 700 inhabitants.

In 1882 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as "a village of moderate size in the valley at the foot of the Sheikh Beiyzid chain. It is built of stone, and has a spring in the valley to the south, and olives round it on the east and west. Some of the inhabitants are Greek Christians."

British Mandate era

In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Beit Imrin had a population of 527, 15 Christians and 512 Muslims. The population increased in the 1931 census of Palestine to 620, of whom 13 were Christians and 607 Muslims, in a total of 157 occupied houses.

In 1945, the population was 860, all Muslims, with 12,094 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,442 dunams were for plantations or irrigated land, 6,819 for cereals, while 53 dunams were built-up land.

1948-1967

In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Beit Imrin came under Jordanian rule.

post-1967

In 1967, after Six-Day War, the village came under Israeli occupation, and the same year the population was 1,100.

A village council to administer Beit Imrin's civil affairs was established in 1966 with the first mayor being Ayad Youssef Abdel-Rahman Ahsan. The council consists of nine members including the mayor who currently is Basheer Samarah.

Bibliography

• (p. 249)
• Perlmann, Joel: The 1967 Census of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Digitized Version. Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. November 2011 – February 2012. [Digitized from: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, 1967 Conducted in the Areas Administered by the IDF, Vols. 1–5 (1967–70), and Census of Population and Housing: East Jerusalem, Parts 1 and 2 (1968–70).]

External links

• Welcome To Bayt Umrin
• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 11: IAA, Wikimedia commons
• Beit Imrin Village Profile, ARIJ
• Bayt Umrin (areal photo), ARIJ