| Imwas | |
| Native Name: | Arabic: عِمواس |
| Native Name Lang: | ar |
| Other Name: | 'Amwas, Amwas |
| Settlement Type: | Village |
| Etymology: | possibly "thermal springs"[1] |
| Pushpin Map: | Mandatory Palestine |
| Pushpin Mapsize: | 200 |
| Coordinates: | 31.8406°N 34.9917°W |
| Grid Name: | Palestine grid |
| Grid Position: | 149/138 |
| Subdivision Type: | Geopolitical entity |
| Subdivision Name: | Mandatory Palestine |
| Subdivision Type1: | Subdistrict |
| Subdivision Name1: | Ramle |
| Established Title1: | Date of depopulation |
| Established Date1: | 7 June 1967 |
| Established Title2: | Repopulated dates |
| Population Total: | 2,015 |
| Blank Name Sec1: | Cause(s) of depopulation |
| Blank Info Sec1: | Expulsion by Israeli forces |
| Blank3 Name Sec1: | Current Localities |
| Blank3 Info Sec1: | Canada Park |
Imwas or Emmaus (Arabic: عِمواس ʿImwās), known in classical times as Nicopolis ( Νικόπολις|lit=City of Victory), was a Palestinian village located 12km (07miles) southeast of the city of Ramla and 26km (16miles) from Jerusalem in the Latrun salient of the West Bank.[2] It is traditionally (possibly from as early as the 3rd century, but probably incorrectly) identified with the biblical Emmaus.[3] Its population was expelled and its buildings razed by Israeli forces in 1967.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Imwas fell under Jordanian rule. Its population at the time was predominantly Muslim although there was a Palestinian Christian minority. Captured by the Israeli Defense Forces during the Six-Day War on June 7, 1967 along with the neighbouring villages of Yalo and Bayt Nuba, the villagers of Imwas were expelled and the village destroyed on the orders of Yitzhak Rabin.[4] Today the area of the former village lies within Canada Park, which was established by the Jewish National Fund in 1973.
The name of the modern village was pronounced Arabic: ʿImwās by its inhabitants. Arabic literary sources indicate the name was formerly pronounced Arabic: ʿAmwās and Arabic: ʿAmawās, the latter being form transcribed by the Syrian geographer Yakut (1179–1229).[5]
In the time of Jerome, the Semitic name of Emmaus Nicopolis was ʿAmmaôs or ʿEmmaus, both beginning with an ʿāyin (ʿ).[6] Following Clermont-Ganneau, Moshe Sharon argued that the Arabic name more faithfully approximates the town's original ancient name when compared against the name as transcribed in the Talmud, where it begins with an alef (ʾ).[5] Kitchener and Conder suggested the name Emmaus is derived from the ancient Hebrew ḥammat, a thermal spring.[7]
According to a tradition held by local fellahin in the 19th century, the village's name is related to an epidemic that killed the ancient Jewish inhabitants of the village, but they were miraculously brought back to life after Neby Uzair's visited the place and prayed to God to revive the victims. The fellahin described the pestilience as amm-mou-asa, which according to Clermont-Ganneau, roughly means "it was extended generally and was an affliction". Clermont-Ganneau thought this local etymology was "evidently artificial".[8] [9]
Emmaus is also mentioned in the first Book of the Maccabees as the site where Judas Maccabeus defeated the Syrian Seleucid general Gorgias in the 2nd century BCE and subsequently fortified by General Bacchides in 160 BCE. It replaced Gezer as the head of a toparchy in 47 BCE.[5]
Edward Robinson relates that its inhabitants were enslaved by Gaius Cassius Longinus while Josephus relates that the city, called Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Άμμoὺς, was burned to the ground by Publius Quinctilius Varus after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE.[10] [11]
Imwas has been identified as the site of ancient Emmaus, where according to the Gospel of Luke (24:13-35), Jesus appeared to a group of his disciples, including Cleopas, after his death and resurrection.[12]
Reduced to a small market town, its importance was recognized by the Emperor Vespasian, who established a fortified camp there in 68 CE to house Legio V Macedonica, populating it with 800 veterans.[5] [13] In 131 CE, the city was destroyed by an earthquake.[5] It was rebuilt and renamed Nicopolis ("City of Victory") by Elagabalus in 221 CE, becoming the chief polis in a region that bore its name.[5] [14] Robinson writes that the town was rebuilt "by the exertions of the writer Julius Africanus."[12] [10] In 222 CE, a basilica was erected there, which was rebuilt first by the Byzantines and later by the Crusaders.[15] In the 4th century, the city served as an episcopal see.[11] Remains of a Samaritan synagogue point the presence of a Samaritan community in Imwas in the late Roman period.[14]
Described by Eusebius in his Onomasticon, Jerome is also thought to have referred to the town and the building of a shrine-church therein, when he writes that the Lord "consecrated the house of Cleopas as a church."[16] In the 5th century, a second tradition associated with Emmaus emerges in the writings of Sozomen, who mentions a fountain outside the city where Jesus and his disciples bathed their feet, thus imbuing it with curative powers.[12]
After the conquest of Palestine by forces of the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, a military camp was established at ʿImwas, which formed part of the newly created administrative district of Jund al-Urdunn. This jund or military camp, among others established in Tiberias and Homs, was made up of Arab soldiers, who were soon to become citizens of the newly conquered areas. The soldiers brought their wives and concubines to the camps, some of whom, according to Philip K. Hitti, were no doubt captured native women.
The governmental framework of the Byzantine rule was preserved, though a commander-in-chief/governor-general was appointed from among the new conquerors to head the government, combining executive, judicial and military roles in his person.[17]
In 639, the Plague of Amwas began and spread from there, killing some 20,000 people, including the commander-in-chief Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah and his successor, Yazid. The Rashid Caliph Umar appointed Yazid's younger brother Mu'awiya to the position of commander-in-chief in 640, and he served as the governor of Syria for 20 years before becoming the Umayyad caliph.[18] [19] Studies on the impact of the plague note that it was responsible for a massive depopulation of the countryside, with the consequence that the new Arab rulers, particularly under the subsequent Umayyad Caliphate, were prompted to intervene more directly in the affairs of these areas than they had intended.[20] Until as late as the 19th century, a well in the village was known locally as "The Plague Well" (Arabic: بئر الطاعون), its name suggesting a derivation from these events.[21]
In 723, Saint Willibald visited Imwas. He was the son of West Saxon Saint Richard the Pilgrim and Saint Wuna of Wessex, brother of Saint Winnibald and Walpurga. Later Willibald's uncle (his mother's brother), Saint Boniface, recruited his nephews in Rome to assist him in evangelizing the still-pagan Germans. Willibald eventually became the first bishop of Eichstätt. In his writings, he notes that the church, which he thought lay over the house of Cleopas, was still intact; he also recalls and describes the miraculous water source mentioned by Sozomen.[22] Hygeburg of Heidenheim, Bavaria, a nun who visited Palestine in the 8th century, mentions both the church and the fountain in Imwas in her work on The Life of St. Willibald.[12]
By the 9th century, the administrative districts had been redrawn and Imwas was the capital of a sub-district within the larger district of Jund Filastin.[23] The geographer al-Maqdisi (c. 945-1000) recalls that ʿImwas had been the capital of its province, while noting, "that the population [was] removed therefrom to be nearer to the sea, and more in the plain, on account of the wells."[24]
By 1009, the church in Imwas had been destroyed by Yaruk, the governor of Ramla, after the Fatimid caliph of Egypt, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, ordered the destruction of Christian sites, affecting some 30,000 churches in the territory under his rule.[22] Carsten Peter Thiede describes this destruction and other acts of suppression against Christian worship as one of the main impetuses behind the First Crusade, in which, "Saving Christian sites and guaranteeing access to them was paramount."[22]
William of Tyre, describing the arrival of the armies of the First Crusade to Imwas from Ramla in 1099, notes the abundance of water and fodder available at the site. Throughout the 12th century, Imwas continued to be identified as the Biblical Emmaus by Eastern Orthodox Christians. For example, in 1106-7, Abbot Daniel writes of Imwas: "Once there was a large village here, and a church was built here, but now all is destroyed by the pagans and the village of Emmaus is empty. It was near the road beyond the mountains on the right hand as you go from Jerusalem to Jaffa."[12] John Phocas (c. 1185) also located Emmaus in the same position.[12] Conversely, Western sources in the late 12th century identified Biblical Emmaus with another village closer to Jerusalem: Qaryat al-'Inab or Abu Ghosh. Denys Pringle and Peter E. Leach attribute the reasons for this shift as stemming from a difference in the description of the distance between Emmaus and Jerusalem in the Gospel texts, versus the distance as transcribed in the earliest Greek Gospel codices. In the Gospel texts, more widely embraced by the West, the distance is transcribed as 60 stades, whereas the Codex Sinaiticus, which was known to Eusebius and Jerome, places the distance at 160 stades.[25] [26] The identification of Biblical Emmaus with two villages in the 12th century has led to some confusion among modern historians when apprehending historical documents from this time. Generally speaking, however, Abu Ghosh was referred to by the Latin Biblical name for Emmaus, Castellum Emmaus, whereas Imwas was referred to simply as Emmaus. In 1141, Robert of Sinjil leased the "land of Emmaus", which included Imwas and six other villages, to Raymond of Le Puy, the master of the Hospitallers for 500 bezants a year.[27] The same year, William, the Patriarch of Jerusalem granted half of the tithes from six surrounding villages to the Hospitallers, one of these villages was nearby Khulda.[28] In February 1151 or 1152 the Hospitallers were still leasing, but the terms of the lease were modified.[29] An 1186 reference to a "bailiff of Emmaus" named Bartholomew suggests that the Hospitallers had an established a commandery in Imwas.[30] There is also archaeological and documentary evidence that suggests that the local Eastern Christian population continued to live in Imwas during this time, and likely attended services alongside the Crusaders at the parish church dedicated to St. George which was constructed in the village by the latter on the site of the ruins of the earlier churches.[31] [32]
Imwas was likely abandoned by Crusaders in 1187 and unlike the neighboring villages of Beit Nuba, Yalo, Yazur and Latrun, it is not mentioned in chronicles describing the Third Crusade of 1191-2, and it is unclear whether it was reoccupied by the Hospitallers between 1229 and 1244.[25] The village was re-established just north of where the church had been located.[25]
Maqam Sheikh Mu'alla had an endowment text (now lost), dating it to 687 AH/1289-1290 CE.[33] Clermont-Ganneau described it: