Silwan or Siloam (; ;Palmer, 1881, pp. 319, 329 ) is a predominantly Palestinian district in East Jerusalem, on the southeastern outskirts of the current Old City of Jerusalem.Meron Benvenisti, 'Shady Dealings in Silwan,' . Ir Amim for an Equitable and Stable Jerusalem, May 2009 p.5.Archaeology and the struggle for Jerusalem BBC News. February 5, 2010
It was the source of water for the Pool of Siloam within larger boundaries of the ancient walled city of Jerusalem, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. In the latter it is the location of Jesus' healing the man blind from birth. 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. Over many centuries, the village grew until it became an urban neighborhood of Jerusalem in the 20th century.
In 1947, the UN voted for Silwan to be part of an international city of Jerusalem called a Corpus separatum. After the 1948 war, the village came under Jordanian rule and was annexed by Jordan. Its rule lasted until the 1967 Six-Day War. It was annexed by Israel in 1980. Neither Israel's or Jordan's annexations were recognized by most countries. Most countries view Silwan as occupied by Israel. Silwan is administered as part of the Jerusalem Municipality. In 2016, Haaretz reported that the Israeli government and the settler organization Ateret Cohanim were working together to evict Palestinians living on property registered as part of the Hekdesh trust. The trust owned land lived on by a Yemenite Jewish community in an area of Silwan now mostly referred to as Batn al-Hawa.Nir Hasson, 'How Israel Helps Settler Group Move Jews Into East Jerusalem's Silwan,' Haaretz January 6, 2016. Israeli law allows land to be reclaimed if documentation of transfer cannot be found. In 2021, the Jordanian government turned over "All the documents [they held] on property and land in Jerusalem" to the Palestinian Authority to prove cases of ownership transfer.
Depending on how the neighborhood is defined, the Palestinian residents in Silwan number 20,000 to 50,000 while there are about 500 to 2,800 Jews.Shimi Friedman, 'Adversity in a Snowball Fight: Jewish Childhood in the Muslim village of Sillwan,' in Drew Chappell (ed.) Children under construction: critical essays on play as curriculum, Peter Lang Publishing 2010, pp.259–276, pp.260–261.
Geography
Silwan is located southwest of the Old City Walls and constitutes part of the Jerusalem's "Holy Basin". The neighborhood has a narrow shape on a north-to-south axis. It is bounded by Wadi Hilweh and Abu Tor to the west and the Ras al-Amud neighborhood to east. Its southern tip touches the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood and its northern tip touches the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery.
Built on the southern ridge of the Mount of Olives, Silwan slopes steeply from approximately above sea level, until it reaches the Kidron Valley, which bounds it in the west. The historical core lies is in the northwestern section, considered to be the site of ancient Jerusalem. Dozens of ancient burial tombs attributed to the time of ancient Israel and Judah as well as the Byzantine rule were found there. Arab villagers used the tombs as dwellings or enclosures for livestock. Many of the burial tombs are inhabited until today.Yonatan Shiloni (May 1986), תכנית שיקום ובינוי לכפר סילואן ["Restoring and Construction Plan for the Village of Silwan"], in "ירושלים: כעיר שחוברה יחדיו" [Jerusalem: A City Bonded Together], אריאל: כתב עת לידעת הארץ [Ariel: Journal of the Geography of Israel], year eight, issue 44–45, pp. 152–156 (in Hebrew) The village was built next to numerous water sources of historical importance, such as the Pool of Siloam (Ain Silwan), Gihon Spring and Ein Rogel. The rest of the village was built in the 19th century.
History Iron Age
In the ancient period, the area where the village stands was occupied by the necropolis of the Biblical kingdom. "Silwan, Jerusalem: The Survey of the Iron Age Necropolis," David Ussishkin, Tel Aviv University webpage. In the valley below, according to the Hebrew Bible, "the waters of Shiloah go softly" (from the Gihon Spring; ) and "the Pool of Siloam" () to water what since King Solomon became known as the king's garden (; ; ).
The necropolis, or ancient cemetery, is an archaeological site of major significance. It contains fifty rock-cut tombs of distinguished calibre, assumed to be the burial places of the highest-ranking officials of the Judean kingdom. Tomb inscriptions are in Hebrew. One of the ancient rock-cut tombs in Silwan is known as the Tomb of Pharaoh's daughter. Another notable tomb, called the Tomb of the Royal Steward is now incorporated into a modern-period house. The ancient inscription states that it was the final resting place of ""...yahu who is over the house." The first part of the Hebrew name is effaced, but refers to a Judean royal steward or chamberlain. The inscription is now in the collection of the British Museum.
At their first thorough archaeological investigation, all of the tombs were long since emptied, and their contents removed. A great deal of destruction was done to the tombs over the centuries by Roman-period quarrying and later by their conversion for use as housing, both by monks in the Byzantine period, when some were used as churches, and later by Muslim villagers "...when the Arab village was built; tombs were destroyed, incorporated in houses or turned into water cisterns and sewage dumps."The Necropolis from the Time of the Kingdom of Judah at Silwan, Jerusalem, David Ussishkin, The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 33, No. 2 (May 1970), pp. 33–46.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Siloam was built around the "serpent-stone", Zoheleth, where Adonijah gave his feast in the time of Solomon.
The Siloam inscription was discovered in the water tunnel built during the reign of Hezekiah, in the early 7th century BC. The Siloam inscription is now preserved in the Archeological Museum of Istanbul, Turkey. Another important inscription found at Siloam is the lintel of Shebna-yahu's tomb (known as the Shebna Inscription), which is in the collections of the British Museum. In 2004, archaeologists excavating the site for the Israel Antiquities Authority found biblical-era coins marked with ancient Hebrew writing, pottery shards and a stone bottle cork that confirmed the identification of the site as the biblical Siloam Pool.
Roman Empire The King's Garden was used as a staging area for Jewish pilgrims who, during the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, used the spring-fed Pool of Siloam to wash and ritually purify themselves before ascending the monumental stepped street to the Temple Mount while singing hymns based on Psalms. On Sukkot water was brought from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple and poured upon the altar, s.v. Sukkah 4:9, p. 179 and the priests also drank of this water.
In the New Testament, the collapse of the Tower of Siloam is cited by Jesus as one of two examples where sudden, untimely death came to people who didn't necessarily deserve it more than most other sinful people.
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus healed a man who had been blind from birth. Jesus spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man's eyes. He then told the man, "Go wash yourself in the Pool of Siloam." So the man went and washed and came back seeing.
Josephus described the waters of Siloam as "sweet and abundant".Smith, Stelman. The Exhaustive Dictionary of Bible Names. Bridge Logos, 2009. During the general outbreak of hostilities between the Jewish nation and the Roman Imperial army in ca. 66 CE, Simon bar Giora controlled all of the "Upper City" where he made his place of residence in the Phasael tower before abandoning it,Josephus (1981), The Jewish War 5.4.3. (5.156) and part of the "Lower City" (Acra) as far as the great wall in the Kidron Valley and the fountain of Siloam, now in Silwan.Josephus (1981), The Jewish War 5.6.1 (5.248 ).Williamson (1980), p. 296
Byzantine Empire A pool and church were built at Siloam by the Byzantine empress Eudocia (c. 400–460 CE) to commemorate Jesus' miraculous healing of the blind.
Caliphates and Crusaders
Local folklore dates Silwan to the arrival of the second Rashidun caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab from Arabia. According to one resident's version of the story, the Greeks were so impressed that the Caliph entered on foot while his servant rode on a camel that they presented him with the key to the city. The Caliph thereafter granted the wadi to "Khan Silowna," an agricultural community of cave dwellers living in ancient rock-cut tombs along the face of the eastern ridge.
In medieval Islamic tradition, the spring of Silwan (Ayn Silwan) was among the four most sacred water sources in the world. The others were Zamzam in Mecca, Ayn Falus in Beisan and Ayn al-Baqar in Acre.Sharon, 1997, p. 24 Silwan is mentioned as "Sulwan" by the 10th-century Arab writer and traveller al-Muqaddasi. In his 985 book he noted that (as rendered in the edition by Le Strange) "The village of Sulwan is a place on the outskirts of the city [Jerusalem]. Below the village of 'Ain Sulwan (Spring of Siloam), of fairly good water, which irrigates the large gardens which were given in bequest (Waqf) by the Khalif 'Othman ibn 'Affan for the poor of the city. Lower down than this, again, is Job's Well (Bir Ayyub). It is said that on the Night of 'Arafat the water of the holy well Zamzam, at Makkah, comes underground to the water of the Spring (of Siloam). The people hold a festival here on that evening."Muk., 171. Quoted in Guy Le Strange: Palestine under the Moslems, 1890, p. 221.
Moshe Gil interprets statements by Muqaddasi (writing in 985), Nasir-i Khusraw (1047), and Yaqut (1225), as meaning that what they called the Spring of Silwan, must be a water source located at quite a distance farther south, Khusraw actually indicated a distance of around 3 kilometers from Jerusalem's walls. This leads to Gil identifying the medieval "Spring of Silwan" with what is known today as the Spring of Bir Ayyub (the biblical Ein Rogel spring), whose exact location is unknown, but was several kilometers from the city walls.
Ottoman Empire
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. They paid a total of 35,500 akçe in taxes, and all of the revenues went to a Waqf.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 114
In 1834, during a large-scale peasants' rebellion against Ibrahim Pasha, thousands of rebels infiltrated Jerusalem through ancient underground sewage channels leading to the farm fields of the village of Silwan.Jerusalem in the 19th Century: The Old City Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Part II, Chapter One: Ottoman Rule, pp. 90, 109, Yad Ben Zvi Institute & St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984 A traveller to Palestine in 1883, T. Skinner, wrote that the olive groves near Silwan were a gathering place for Muslims on Fridays.Jerusalem in the 19th Century: The Old City Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Part II, Chapter Two: The Muslim Community, p. 133, Yad Ben Zvi Institute & St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984
In 1838 Silwan was noted as a Muslim village, part of el-Wadiyeh district, located east of Jerusalem.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p. 122
A photograph of the village taken between 1853 and 1857 by James Graham can be found on page 35 of Picturing Jerusalem by photographers James Graham and Mendel Diness. It shows the western part of the modern village as empty of habitations, a few trees are scattered across the southern ridge with the small village confined to the ridgetop east of the valley.Picturing Jerusalem; James Graham and Mendel Diness, Photographers, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2007.