Silwan Totally Explained

Everything about Silwan totally explained

Silwan (known in Hebrew as Kfar Shiloah ) is a Palestinian village that, as the city of Jerusalem has grown in modern times, has become a neighborhood of Jerusalem with a population of 45,000.

History

The historic location of the village was near the outlet of the waters of the Gihon Spring at Siloam. Silwan is the Arabic version of the Greek name for the water outlet, Siloam. A variant of the name Siloam is used in most western languages. The name Siloam is itself derived from the Hebrew, Shiloach. All three names, Silwan, Siloam, and Shiloach are in contemporary use for the water source.
   The role of the village of Silwan, until it became a suburb, was as a market garden providing fresh vegetables to the nearby city of Jerusalem. Silwan was the closest arable land to the city. In the Ottoman period, Silwan was regarded as a village in the countryside near Jerusalem. The entire village was located on the rising eastern slope of the Kidron Valley.
   “East of the Kedron, right opposite the rough grey slope extending between Deraj and Silwan, above the kitchen gardens watered by Siloam which supply Jerusalem with vegetables, is the village which takes its name from the pool – Kefr Silwan. At Derej the Kidron is narrow and the village is very near the fountain… It lies near the foot of the third or southern height of the Oliver (Mount of Olives) …”
   “continuing to descend the valley of the Kidron, on the E. side is Kefr Silwan or Siloam and on the W. the fountain of the virgin, or Ain Omm el-Deraj…. Continuing to walk down the Kidron about 310 yards, the traveler reaches a verdant spot, sprinkled with trees and cultivated. …”
   “the modern Kefr Silwan the little village on the eastern side of the Kidron, just across the valley from the City of David.”
   “Opposite Ophel, perched on a very steep and slippery scarp cut in the face of the hill lies the village of Silwan, or Siloam.”
   The practice of building the village on a steep hill slope was sensible both because extradonary rain events can cause the Kidron to funnel fierce torrents of water, and because, like farmers worldwide in places where arable is scarce, the farmers would have wished to conserve the arable for farming.
   In 1882, a group of Jews arrived from Yemen which, like Silwan, was part of the Ottoman Empire and all subjects of which were allowed free movement within the empire. The Yemenites are said to have lived at first in tents, then to have moved into the ancient burial caves on the east side of the valley as the rainy season began. In 1884 the Yemenites began to move into new, stone homes built for them on the eastern slope of the Kidron north of the Arab village by a charity called Ezrat Niddahim. This housing project was called Kfar Hashiloach or, the Yemenite Village. Construction costs were kept low by using the Shiloach as a water source instead of digging cisterns. An 1891 photo shows the housing project on an otherwise vacant stretch of the hillside.
   In the “village of Silwan, east of Kidron …. some of the fellah dwellings being old sepulchers hewn in the rocks. During late years a great extension of the village southward has sprung up, owing to the settlement here of a colony of poor Jews form Yemen, etc. many of whom have built homes on the steep hillside just above and east of Bir Eyyub,”

Twentieth century

The Yemenite Jews left Silwan during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. After the 1948 war between the Arabs and the Israelis, and the creation of the state of Israel, Silwan became part of the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and remained under the Jordanian rule until the year 1967, when Israel occupied the rest of the Palestinian territories. Until the Israeli occupation in 1967, the village had delegates in the Jerusalem City Council.
Over the course of the twentieth century, Silwan grew from a small farming village into a substantial urban neighborhood. The growth was largely northward, toward Jerusalem. Along the ridge of the southern peaks of the Mount of Olives to the east of the Kidron Valley, Palestinian Silwan grew to encompasses both the old Yemenite village and the vacant land that once separated the Yemenite settlement form old Silwan. Alnog the ridge to the west of the Kidron Valley known to Jews and Christians as the City of David or Ophel, the neighborhood of Silwan grew to encompass the ridge stretching up to the southern wall of the Temple Mount/Haram.
After the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Arabs moved into the vacated buildings of the Yemenite Village. In recent years, the buildings were purchased and inhabited by Jews.

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