Mansouri, Lebanon Explained

Mansouri[1]
Native Name:المنصوري
Settlement Type:Village
Pushpin Map:Lebanon
Subdivision Type:Country
Subdivision Name: Lebanon
Subdivision Type1:Governorate
Subdivision Name1:South Governorate
Subdivision Type2:District
Subdivision Name2:Tyre
Timezone:GMT +3
Coordinates:33.1711°N 35.2092°W
Grid Position:169/286
Elevation M:50

Mansouri (Arabic: المنصوري) is a village in the Tyre District in South Lebanon.[2]

History

In the 1596 tax records in the early Ottoman era, it was named as a village, Mansura, in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Tibnin under the liwa' (district) of Safad. It had a population of 33 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on various agricultural products, including 1,300 akçe on wheat, 350 on barley; 150 on olive trees, 100 on "occasional revenues"; a total of 1,900 akçe.[3] [4]

In 1875 Victor Guérin noted here about "a dozen houses built with ancient materials, quite regularly carved. A oualy was dedicated to Neby Mansour. Cisterns dug into the rock and several broken sarcophagi also prove that this hamlet, now inhabited by some poor Métualis families, has succeeded a much larger former village."[5]

The PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described the village: "A village built of stone, on the plain, surrounded by olives, figs, and arable land ; contains about 50 Moslems. Water from cisterns and spring near shore."[6] They also noted some rock-cut tombs by the village.[7]

On 13 April 1996, during Operation Grapes of Wrath, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) helicopter attacked a vehicle in Mansouri, killing two women and four children.[8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Turtle Reserve

In early 2000, environmentalist Mona Khalil – who had inherited her family's beachfront farm that stretches from the main road to the yet unspoiled beaches – moved to Mansouri from the Netherlands, where she had lived in exile for 25 years. Three months later, the IDF ended two decades of Israeli occupation in the nearby buffer zone and withdrew with its allies of the South Lebanon Army from there. In the same year, Khalil and her associate Habiba Fayed opened their Orange House Project as a bed-and-breakfast in order to finance their efforts to protect the nesting grounds of endangered sea turtles through ecotourism.[13]

In June 2017, a television crew from LBCI was attacked while filming an interview with Mona Khalil at the turtle reserve. An unidentified assailant disrupted the filming, assaulting cameraman Samir Baitamouni and verbally threatening Khalil, citing affiliations with Hezbollah and Amal. Journalist Sobhiyya Najjar captured the incident on her mobile phone.[14]

Bibliography

. Victor Guérin. Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine. 3: Galilee, pt. 2. 1880. L'Imprimerie Nationale. Paris. French.

External links

Notes and References

  1. meaning "Mansur's (building)", Palmer, 1881, p. 9
  2. Web site: 2018-05-01. المنصوري تاريخٌ وحاضِر. 2021-04-17. صدى صور. ar.
  3. Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 183
  4. Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6 writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9
  5. Guérin, 1880, p. 238
  6. Conder and Kitchener, 1881, p. 50
  7. Conder and Kitchener, 1881, p. 68
  8. Web site: 1999-12-08. Petition Charges Israel with War Crimes. 2021-04-17. MERIP. en-US.
  9. Web site: 2015-09-21. Lebanon flies the flags of mourning. 2021-04-17. The Independent. en.
  10. 1996-10-01. Documents and Source Material. Journal of Palestine Studies. en. 26. 1. 138–163. 10.2307/2538046. 2538046. 0377-919X.
  11. Web site: lebanons02. 2014-10-22. An Israeli helicopter fired at an ambulance killing two women and four girls in al-Mansouri. 2021-04-17. Civil Society Knowledge Centre. en.
  12. Book: Friel, Howard. Chomsky and Dershowitz: On Endless War and the End of Civil Liberties. 2013-09-21. Interlink Publishing. 978-1-62371-035-4. en.
  13. Web site: Giles . Chris . 2017-08-18 . Saving endangered turtles in Lebanon's former war zone . 2023-08-31 . . en.
  14. Book: Arsan, Andrew . Lebanon: a country in fragments . 2018 . Hurst & Company . 978-1-84904-700-5 . First published in the United Kingdom . London . 340.