Zakariyya

The village stood on undulating ground that was underlain by soft white eocene limestone, in the western foothills of the Hebron Mountains. It was next to the road between Bayt Jibrin and the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway. This road linked it to other lateral roads and led to Bethlehem and a number of villages, among them 'Ajjur, Dayr al-Dubban, and Tall al-Safi. The village name reflected the cultural continuity of the area's population with the Roman and Byzantine periods; the site was called Caper Zacharia during those times and fell within the administrative jurisdiction of Bayt Jibrin. In 1596, Zakariyya was a village in the nahiya of Jerusalem (liwa' of Jerusalem), with a population of 259. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, and olives, as well as on other types of produce, such as goats and beehives.

In the late nineteenth century, Zakariyya stood on the slope above a broad, flat valley, surrounded by extensive olive groves. The village had a rectangular layout and the residents, who were Muslim, built their houses of stone and mud. The older parts of the village were located at its center and in its northern and southern quarters. The center consisted of a mosque, a shrine for a Shaykh Hasan, a busy marketplace, and an elementary school. The village expanded on all sides in modern times, especially to the north and south. The villagers obtained their drinking water from two communal wells -the al-Saflani well, drilled next to Wadi 'Ajjur, and the al-Sarara well, north of the village. Some water also came from domestic wells that gathered rainwater.

Rainfed agriculture represented the backbone of the economy; the main crops included grain, beans, fruit, and olives. In 1944/45 a total of 6,523 dunums was allocated to cereals; 961 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, of which 440 dunums were planted with olive trees. The second most important occupation for the villagers was animal husbandry. They grazed their goats and sheep on the wild shrubs and grasses that grew on the slopes of the hills and wadis. Near the site of the village were many ancient localities. About 1 km to the southwest was Tall Zakariyya, which rises 117 m above the plain. The plain to the east has been identified with the Valley of Elah where, according to the Bible (1 Samuel 17), David fought Goliath. Tall Zakariyya was excavated in 1898 and has been identified with Azekah, a town which may have been referred to in a text written on a broken shard that was found at Tall al-Duwayr. Azekah was said to be the place where Joshua triumphed over the Canaanites (Joshua 10:10).