By November 26, 2008 Read More →

The Village of Siloam

Siloam.jpg

Photographs of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, Charles W. Wilson, 1865.

An official Ottoman village list from about 1870 shows that the village of Siloam (Silwan) had a total of 92 houses and an adult male population of 240.

In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund’s Survey of Western Palestine described Silwan as a “village perched on a precipice and badly built of stone. The waters is brought from Ain Umm ed Deraj. There are numerous caves among and behind the houses, which are used as stables by the inhabitants.”

Modern settlement of the western ridge of the modern urban neighborhood of Silwan began in 1873-1874, when the Meyuchas family moved out of the Old City to a new home in the City of David. In 1881–82, a group of about 30 Jewish families arrived from Yemen and settled in Siloam. 

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