al-Damun

The village was spread across the flat top and sides of a rocky hill, on the eastern tip of the Acre plain. Secondary roads linked it to the Acre-Safad and Acre-Haifa highways. Its inhabitants traced their origins back to the al-Zaydaniyya tribe, which had emigrated from the Hijaz in the Arabian peninsula. The Muslim traveler Nasir Khusraw mentioned that he visited al-Damun in 1047, saying that he reached it from al-Birwa and visited the shrine of Dhu al-Kifl, a saintly personage mentioned in the Qur'an (sura XXI, aya 85). The Crusaders referred to it as Damar. In the nineteenth century, al-Damun was a village surrounded by olive groves; its population in 1859 was estimated at 800. It contained two small mosques.

At the beginning of this century, al-Damun's houses were clustered along one road. Starting in 1935, the villagers began to build them with reinforced concrete. The population consisted of 1,240 Muslims and 70 Christians. Al-Damun had an elementary school, established by the Ottomans in 1886, and a renowned mosque. The inhabitants drew their drinking water from springs and irrigated some of their crops from the Na'amin River. They also engaged in allied activities, especially the plaiting of mats and baskets from the esparto grass and rushes that grew on the river banks. Grain-wheat, sorghum, and barley-and olives were the chief crops, but the village was also known for its watermelons and cantaloupes. In 1944/45 a total of 16,256 dunums was planted in cereals; 706 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, of which 484 dunums were planted with olive trees. West of the village lay a tell that contained the foundations of a wall, fortifications, and a well.