Ein Bikura spring
Yonatan and I took a short drive into the hills of Jerusalem near Ein Kerem and stopped in the Sorek valley to climb the 400-metre long staircase up to Sataf. Sataf is located 10 km west of Jerusalem, overlooking the Sorek Valley (Wadi as-Sarar). Two springs, Ein Sataf and Ein Bikura flow from the site into the riverbed below. The site has been settled since Chalcolithic times (4,000 BCE), and traces of agricultural activities and a Chalcolithic village are among the oldest in the region. Although the site has been occupied almost continuously since then until 1948, most of the ancient remains found there today date back to the Byzantine period. The first written mention of the site is found in documents from the Ein Kerem region from the Mamluk era.
At Ein Sataf, which was the village’s main spring, a cave partially hewn into the rock to increase the spring’s flow and a man-made tunnel emerging from the cave carries the water to a large pool, which has a capacity of around 180 cubic meters. A small chamber built into the back wall of the pool may have been used by the village women when doing laundry. The Ein Bikura spring was similarly modified with a tunnel leading to the cave from which the spring emerges.
The Ein Sataf spring (left) feeds a large pool, which has a capacity of around 180 cubic meters (centre). A small chamber built into the back wall of the pool may have been used by the village women when doing laundry. A plan of the system is shown (right).
In 1896 the population of Sataf was estimated to be about 180 persons and, by the time of the 1922 census 329, comprising 321 Muslims and 8 Roman Catholics. By the 1931 census, the 381 inhabitants comprised 379 Muslim and 2 Christians, and by 1945 the village was wholly Muslim with 540 inhabitants. Between Sataf and the neighbouring village of Khirbet Luz was a school that served both villages. Residents of Khirbet Luz came to Sataf to fetch water, use the olive press and to grind wheat. A secondary road linked Sataf to the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway, to the northeast, and dirt paths linked it to neighbouring villages. The village was divided into four quarters. Sataf had a few shops, and grain, vegetables, olives, and fruit produced on village lands was sold in the markets of Jerusalem.
In the months of January and February, 1948 , at the beginning of the War of Independence , Aharon Haim Cohen , the founder of the Histadrut 's Arab labour department, worked to arrange peace agreements with the villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem, including Sataf. In the months that followed, 'Abd al-Qader al-Husseini's irregular fighters received a cold welcome in Sataf and were forced to return to their base in Beit Sourik. On July 13, 1948, the village was occupied by the second and fourth battalions of the Har’el Brigade, during Operation Danny, as part of the expansion of the IDF's control of the Jerusalem Corridor. Benny Morris has written that the villages had already been abandoned since April 1948, because of their proximity to the front, and that as the Har’el Brigade approached, most of the remaining villagers left. They were not subsequently permitted to return.
Remains of the Arab village of Sataf
On 7 November 1949, a village of immigrants from North Africa was established on the site and named moshav Bikura, with the help of veterans of the Lehi organization, but it was abandoned shortly afterwards. In the 1950s the site was used as a training site for Unit 101 and the Paratroopers Brigade, which accelerated the decline of the village’s houses. In the 1980s the Jewish National Fund began the restoration of ancient agricultural terraces, and the area around the springs has been turned into a tourist site. As part of the project, the two springs, the channels that flowed from them, and the storage pools were excavated and exposed. Showcasing ancient agricultural techniques used in the Jerusalem Mountains, concepts such as ma’yan hatum (literally “a sealed spring”―a spring whose waters have been diverted to make them more easily accessible), shalhin agriculture (agriculture that using channel-fed irrigation), and ba’al agriculture (which is dependent only on natural precipitation) have been developed on site. In addition, a project called Bustanoff (literally “landscape orchard”) was launched in which residents of Jerusalem rent plots of land on the terraces, irrigated by the springs, at a peppercorn rate for personal use―much like allotments in the UK.
Below is a slideshow of the agriculture and geography of Sataf today - hover over the images for the captions.
