Qastina

Qastina (Arabic: قسطينة‎) was a Palestinian village, located 38 kilometers northeast of Gaza City. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Location

Qastina was situated on an elevated spot in a generally flat area on the coastal plain, on the highway between al-Majdal and the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway. A British military camp, Beer Tuvia, was 3 km. southwest of the village.

History

Qastina was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with the rest of Palestine, and by 1596, it was a village in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Gaza under the liwa' (district) of Gaza, with a population of 385. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and sesame, and fruits, as well as goats, beehives and vineyards.

The Syrian Sufi teacher and traveller Mustafa al-Bakri al-Siddiqi (1688-1748/9) reported travelling through the village in the first half of the eighteenth century, on his way to al-Masmiyya al-Kabira.

In 1838, Edward Robinson saw el-Kustineh located northwest of Tell es-Safi, where he was staying, while in 1863, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village, called Kasthineh. He found it had four hundred people. Near the mouth of a well were the remains of an antique gray-white marble column, while two palm trees and three acacia mimosas shaded the cemetery. In the late nineteenth century, Qastina was described as a village laid out in a northwest-southeast direction on flat ground. It had adobe brick structures, a well, and gardens.