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Petah Tikva, also known as Em HaMoshavot, is a city in the Central District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv. It was founded in 1878, mainly by Ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Old Yishuv, and became a permanent settlement in 1883 with the financial help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. In , the city had a population of . Its population density is approximately . Its jurisdiction covers 35,868 dunams (~35.9 km2 or 15 sq mi). Petah Tikva is part of the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area.
[edit] History
The place where Petah Tikva was founded existed as a village for a long time, immediately previously as a village called Mulabbis.[1] [edit] Crusader and Mamluk eraKhirbat Mulabbis is believed to have been built on the site of the Crusader village of Bulbus, an identification proposed in the nineteenth century by French scholar J. Delaville Le Roulx. A Crusader source from 1133 CE states that the Count of Jaffa granted the land to the Hospitaller order, including “the mill/mills of the three bridges” (“des moulins des trios ponts”).[2] In 1478 CE (883 AH), the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Qaitbay, endowed a quarter of the revenues of Mulabbis to two newly established institutions: Madrasa Al-Ashrafiyya in Jerusalem, and a mosque in Gaza. [edit] Ottoman era[edit] MulabbisIt has been suggested that Mulabbis was Milus, a village with 42 Muslim households, mentioned in the Ottoman tax records in 1596. The village appeared under the name of Melebbes on Jacotin's map drawn-up during Napoleon's invasion in 1799, while it was called el Mulebbis on Kiepert's map of Palestine published in 1856. The village was repopulated following Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt's expedition to the Levant (1831-1841) by Egyptian emigrants belonging to the Abu Hamed al-Masri Clan, as part of a wider wave of migration that settled in Palestine's coastal lowlands. In 1870 Victor Guérin noted that Melebbes was a small village with 140 persons, surrounded by fields of watermelon and tobacco. An Ottoman village list from about the same year showed that Mulebbes had 43 houses and a population of 125, though the population count included men, only. It was also noted that the village was located on a hill, (Auf einer anhöhe"), 2 3/4 hours NE of Jaffa. The Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine visited Mulebbis in 1874 and described it as "a similar mud village [as Al-Mirr], with a well." Following the sale of Mulabbis' lands to Jewish entrepreneurs, its residents dispersed in neighboring villages like Jaljulia and Fajja.[3][4] [edit] Petah TikvaPetah Tikva was founded in 1878 by ultra-orthodox Jewish pioneers from Europe, among them Yehoshua Stampfer, Moshe Shmuel Raab, Yoel Moshe Salomon, Zerach Barnett, and David Gutmann, as well as Lithuanian Rabbi Aryeh Leib Frumkin who built the first house. It was the first modern Jewish agricultural settlement in Ottoman Southern Syria (hence its nickname as "Mother of the Moshavot").
In 1878 the founders of Petah Tikva learned of the availability of land northeast of Jaffa near the village of Mulabes (or Umlabes). The land was owned by two Christian businessmen from Jaffa, Antoine Bishara Tayan and Selim Qassar, and was worked by some thirty tenant farmers. Tayan's property was the larger, some 8,500 dunams, but much of it was in the malarial swamp of the Yarkon Valley. Qassar's property, approximately 3,500 dunams, lay a few kilometers to the south of the Yarkon, away from the swampland. It was Qassar's that was purchased on July 30, 1878. Tayan's holdings were purchased when a second group of settlers, known as the Yarkonim, arrived in Petah Tikva the following year. Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II allowed the purchase because of the poor quality of the land. A malaria epidemic broke out in 1880, forcing the abandonment of the settlements on both holdings. Those who remained in the area moved south to Yehud. After Petah Tikva was reoccupied by Bilu immigrants in 1883 some of the original families returned. With funding for swamp drainage provided by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the colony became more stable. Upon learning that the Austrian post office in Jaffa wanted to open a branch in Petah Tikva, Yitzchak Goldenhirsch, an early resident, offered his assistance on condition that the Austrian consulate issued a Hebrew stamp and a special postmark for Petah Tikva. The stamp was designed by an unknown artist featuring a plow, green fields and a blossoming orange tree. The price was 14 paras (a Turkish coin) and displayed the name 'Petah Tikva' in Hebrew letters. David Ben Gurion (then known as David Grün) lived in Petah Tikva for a few months on his arrival in Palestine in 1906. It had a population of around 1000, half of them farmers. He found occasional work in the orange groves. But he soon caught malaria and his doctor recommended he return to Europe. The following year, after moving to Jaffa, he set up a Jewish workers organisation in Petah Tikva. During the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I, Petah Tikva served as a refugee town for residents of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, following their exile by the Ottoman authorities. The town suffered heavily as it lay between the Ottoman and British fronts during the war. [edit] British Mandate era (1917–1948)In the early 1920s, industry began to develop in the Petah Tikva region. In 1921, Petah Tikva was granted local council status by the British authorities. In May 1921 Petah Tikva was the target of an Arab attack, which left four of its Jewish inhabitants dead - an extension of the Jaffa riots of 1921. In 1927, Petah Tikva concluded a local peace treaty with the Arabs living nearby (see photo); subsequently, Petah Tikva was untouched by the 1929 Palestine riots. According to the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Petah Tikva had a total population of 3,032; 3,008 Jews, 22 Muslims and 2 Orthodox Christians. In the 1931 census the population had increased to 6,880 inhabitants, in 1,688 houses. In 1937 it was recognized as a city. Its first mayor, Shlomo Stampfer, was the son of one of its founders, Yehoshua Stampfer. Petah Tikva, a center of citrus farming, was considered by both the British government and the Jaffa Electric Company as a potentially important consumer of electricity for irrigation. The Auja Concession, which was granted to the Jaffa Electric Company on 1921, specifically referred to the relatively large Jewish settlement of Petah-Tikva. But it was only in late 1929 that the company submitted an irrigation scheme for Petah-Tikva, and it was yet to be approved by the government in 1930. In 1931 Ben Gurion wrote that Petah Tikva had 5000 inhabitants and employed 3000 Arab labourers. In the 1930s, the pioneering founders of Kibbutz Yavneh from the Religious Zionist movement immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, settling near Petah Tikva on land purchased by a Jewish-owned German company. Refining the agricultural skills they learned in Germany, these pioneers began in 1941 to build their kibbutz in its intended location in the south of Israel, operating from Petah Tikva as a base.
[edit] Israeli statehood era (1948-)[edit] Arab–Israeli conflictAfter the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Petah Tikva took over all of the lands of the newly depopulated Palestinian village of Fajja. [edit] Israeli–Palestinian conflictThe city has suffered a series of attacks in the 21st Century as a result of the ongoing regional conflict. During the Second Intifada, Petah Tikva suffered three terrorist attacks: On May 27, 2002, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a small cafe outside a shopping mall, leaving two dead, including a baby; on December 25, 2003, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a bus stop near the Geha bridge, killing 4 civilians, and on February 5, 2006, a Palestinian got into a shuttle taxi, pulled out a knife, and began stabbing passengers killing two of them, but a worker from a nearby factory hit him with a log, subduing him. [edit] Research Tips
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