al-Jammasin al-Gharbi

The village was situated 2.5 km from the seashore on the central coastal plain and was bordered by marshlands. The first part of the village name, al-Jammasin, meant 'buffalo breeders' in Arabic; the second part, al-Gharbi ('western'), distinguished it from its twin village in the east, al-Jammasin al-Sharqi. In the Ottoman tax registers for 1596 Jammasin is mentioned as a 'tribe' in the nahiya of Bani Sa'b (liwa' of Nablus); its members paid taxes on water buffalo. It is not certain that the 'tribe' had actually built the two villages that later bore the same name at that early date, since the area in which they were located was not characterized as an area of permanent settlement in the tax records. They were known to be descendants of nomads who had migrated from the Jordan Valley. By the eighteenth century the people of Jammasin, all of whom were Muslims, had settled in the area. A typical village abode was a khus (a conical or pyramidical hut made of tree logs and branches ), although some houses were built of adobe brick.

In 1922 there were about 200 people living in the village and by 1944 this figure had increased to over 1,000. The children attended school in the village of al-Shaykh Muwannis. The villagers earned their living primarily by raising buffalos, marketing their meat and milk in Jaffa, and using the beasts as draft animals. In addition to animal husbandry, they cultivated fruits, especially citrus. In 1944/45 a total of 202 dunums was devoted to citrus and bananas and 173 dunums were allocated to cereals; 151 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Some people from the village also worked in the outlying citrus groves, particularly the German-owned groves in Saruna.