al-Maghar

The village stood on three slightly elevated hills in an otherwise flat area on the central coastal plain, on a highway leading northeast to Ramla. The military airport at 'Aqir was located a few km east of it, and Wadi al-Maghar bordered it to the south. Its name meant 'cave' in Arabic. The site of the village contained remains indicating ancient habitation; one of the three hills on which it was situated contained antiquities that presumably dated to the Canaanite era. In the early Islamic period it was a seasonal camping ground for the Arab tribe of Lakhm. The Muslim geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi (d. 1228) said that the village was in the Ramla sub-disctrict and that the Islamic jurist Abu aI-Hasan Muhammad al-Maghari was born there in the eighth century A.D. In 1596, al-Maghar was a village in the nahiya of Gaza (liwa' of Gaza) with a population of 121. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, sesame, and fruits.

In the late nineteenth century, al-Maghar was a village built of adobe bricks and situated on the south slope of a hill. It was surrounded by pastureland and fig-tree orchards. In the first half of the twentieth century the houses were made of mud, cement, and stone. They were laid out in clusters, each comprised of closely built units, and spread along Wadi al-Maghar and along the various tracks crossing the village. Construction increased during the Mandate era, and houses were built on the two other hills-to the north and to the south-that rose on either side of the originally populated one, as well as along the road leading to the nearby village of Yibna (see photo). Most of the people in the village were Muslims. Al-Maghar had a mosque and a number of shops. The villagers invested about 5,000 Palestinian pounds to establish an elementary school on twenty-two dunums of land; 190 students were enrolled in the mid-1940s.

The village was well-provided with ground water and had good soil for agriculture, which was the villagers' chief occupation. They cultivated a variety of crops, including rainfed grain and irrigated vegetables and fruits. In 1944/45 a total of 1,772 dunums was devoted to citrus and bananas and 9,075 dunums were allocated to cereals. Eighty-six dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, 22 dunums of which were for olives.