Sataf

Sataf (Arabic: صطاف, Hebrew: סטף) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It is located 10 km west of Jerusalem, with Sorek riverbed ("Wadi al-Sarar") bordering the east.

Two springs, "Ein Sataf" and "Ein Bikura" flow from the site into the riverbed, below.

History

Remains and agricultural traces of a 4,000 BCE Chalcolithic village were discovered at the site. Remains were also found from the Byzantine era. The first mention of the site is from the Mamluk era.

Ottoman era

In the late Ottoman era, in 1863, Victor Guérin found a village of one hundred and eighty people. He further noted that their houses were standing on the slopes of a mountain, and that the mountainside was covered by succcssives terraces. An Ottoman village list of about 1870 counted 38 houses and a population of 115, though the population count included only men.

In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Setaf as "a village of moderate size, of stone houses, perched on the steep side of a valley. It has a spring lower down, on the north."