Place Name
Tulkarm Region (طولكرم)Place Description
The historic Tulkarm region of Palestine extended across the transition between the western foothills of the central highlands and the northern coastal plain, encompassing broad, fertile lowlands to the west and increasingly elevated terrain toward the east, with Tulkarm situated at this meeting point. The Arabic word "Tulkarm" translates as "length of the vineyard" which may refer to its prominent crops of grapes. Tulkarm appeared in Ottoman tax registers in 1596 as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Qaqun, which was a part of the sanjak (district) of Nablus. At that time, Tulkarm had a population of 176 Muslim households (roughly 968 persons) and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats, beehives and a press for olives or grapes.
Under Ottoman rule, Tulkarm developed from a rural agricultural settlement into an administrative and commercial center, becoming the seat of the Tulkarm subdistrict in 1876 and an important railway junction in 1908, linking the coastal plain with Nablus, Jerusalem, Haifa, Acre, and the wider region. The region's agricultural landscape continued to be exceptionally productive, combining extensive cereal cultivation with irrigated fields, citrus and banana groves, vegetables, watermelons, olives, and orchards, with wells and groundwater supporting intensive cultivation across the coastal plain. Land-use records demonstrate the scale of this agriculture: at Raml Zayta, 14,106 dunums were devoted to cereals and 130 dunums to citrus and bananas; at Qaqun, 37,809 dunums were devoted to cereals and 2,289 dunums to citrus and bananas, while Kafr Saba had more than 2,200 dunums of citrus and banana cultivation alongside extensive cereal and irrigated land.
Since the 1967 Six Day War in 1967, Tulkarm has been under illegal Israeli military occupation and is currently a part of the West Bank.Also Known As
طولكرم, TulkaremPlace Type
Historical RegionMap Coordinates
Latitude
32.311643Longitude
35.026884General Notes
Note Type
Cataloging NoteNote
BWB_ID:26;POM_ID:1030Updated By
Wafa Ghnaim