Allar (Arabic: علار*) was a Palestinian Arab village located southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Wadi Sarar ("Valley of Pebbles"). The name was shared by the twin villages of 'Allar al-Sifla ("Lower Allar") and 'Allar el-Fawqa ("Upper Allar"), with official imperial ledgers often listing them both under the single entry of Allar.[2]
Habitation in the village spanned centuries and is attested in architectural remains and documents from the Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman and Mandate Palestine periods.
Allar was depopulated during the 1948 Palestine war and the Israeli localities of Matta and Bar Giora were established on its former lands.
The older of the two villages appears to have been Lower Allar. Remains of a Crusader-era church and cloister made up of
five other vaulted buildings attest to habitation there in the 12th century. One of these buildings is thought to be a Cistercian house, a sister house of Belmont built in 1161 known as Saluatio.
Western travellers who wrote of the village include Edward Robinson, who travelled throughout Palestine and Syria in 1838 and Victor Guérin, whose travels spanned many years in the latter half of the 19th century. Both describe Lower and Upper Allar as two distinct villages located in a valley. Robinson calls it er-Rumany wadi ("Pomegranate Valley"), while Guérin calls it Oued el-Limoun ("Valley of the Lemons/Limes"), so named because of the abundant presence of a variety of citrus tree there known to the Arabs as limoun. Both note the presence of a large, ancient, ruined church in Lower Allar. Robinson describes a fine fountain further up the valley that irrigated fruit trees and gardens below, noting the abundance of olive trees. Guérin describes A'llar es-Sifla ou et-Tahta as an oasis covered in grape vines, citrus, pomengranate and fig trees, irrigated by an ancient canal and a second inexhaustible water source.
In 1945, Allar had a population of 440 Arabs, all of whom were Muslim.[11] During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War,
Allar was depopulated as a result of a military assault by Israeli forces on 22 October 1948.[1] It was one of a series of villages occupied during Operation ha-Har, an offensive launched by Harel Brigade and Etzioni Brigade to widen the Jerusalem corridor
Allar, Jerusalem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
