15 Facts About Silwan

Silwan or Siloam is a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, on the outskirts of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Medieval Silwan began as a farming village, dating back to the 7th century according to local traditions, while the earliest mention of the village is from the year 985.

Silwan is located southwest of the Old City Walls and constitutes part of the Jerusalem's "Holy Basin".

The "most famous" of the ancient rock-cut tombs in Silwan is finely carved, the one known as the Tomb of Pharaoh's daughter.

In medieval Muslim tradition, the spring of Silwan was among the four most sacred water sources in the world.

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Silwan is mentioned as "Sulwan" by the 10th-century Arab writer and traveller al-Muqaddasi.

In 1596, Ayn Silwan appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds, with a population of 60 households, all Muslim.

In 1838 Silwan was noted as a Muslim village, part of el-Wadiyeh district, located east of Jerusalem.

An official Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that Silwan had a total of 92 houses and a population of 240, though the population count included only men.

The village of Silwan was located on the eastern slope of the Kidron Valley, above the outlet of the Gihon Spring opposite Wadi Hilweh.

Since the 1967 Six-Day War Silwan has been under Israeli occupation, and Jewish organizations have sought to re-establish a Jewish presence there.

Some Silwan properties had already been declared absentee property in the 1980s, and suspicions arose that a number of claims filed by Jewish organizations had been accepted by the Custodian without any site visits or follow-up.

Property in Silwan has been purchased by Jews through indirect sales, some by invoking the Absentee Property Law.

However, the Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem are difficult to define, in contrast to the Jewish neighborhoods, because dense construction has blurred older boundaries and Silwan is merged with Ras al-Amud, Jabel Mukaber and Abu Tor.

Part of Silwan was built around and above the Silwan necropolis, a series of rock-cut structures originally used as Iron Age tombs, but repurposed for various uses over the millenia.