Financial Difficulties circa 1882 Yehuda Appel writes in 1922 that an unnamed manuscript was found, dated circa 1882 or prior stating: "..And the people of
Artuf village owed money to the government. There were some years of drought that could not pay the wealth. (the tax) and the wealth in those good days was not only 12 percent of the grain, because the Turkish government was not specific so much with the farmers' taxes, and according to the assessor's estimate they sometimes had to pay 20 percent and more. Apart from that, they were not allowed to touch the threshing floor before the appraiser arrived, whom he drove slowly from village to village. And after all this the time was not yet complete, because after the first appraiser the villagers had to wait a long time until the great appraiser who was in charge of his back came with good luck and the wealth debt (the tax) to the government increased and increased year by year, until a vigorous order came to collect the debt is valid. Then the soldiers appeared in the village, arrested the old men who belonged to them, and hung them by their feet in the big fig tree near the threshing floor and began to gather thorns and thistles to light a fire and torture their souls until they paid the debt... and they found a savior angel who saved them (at the very last moment...), From this horrible death, one Effendi (it turns out that it was
Iskander Effendi, the Spanish deputy consul from Jerusalem who suddenly appeared at the very last moment...). The consul therefore paid the debt and in return received all the village lands, about 4500 dunams. The Arabs do not know (so it is written) whether the appearance of the savior angel was by chance... or if it was premeditated... but at that time they had great joy..." Maoz Haviv, a regional researcher from
Kibbutz Tzora notes that:
In 1881, following disturbances among the Russian Jews after the assassination of the Tsar, which were named "Storms in the Negev", Yehiel Ben Rabbi Yehuda Leib began to work for bringing Jews to agricultural settlement in Israel. In the Polish city of Radom, he recruited 11 heads of families, all of them Jewish farmers who worked the land, and together with them he returned and immigrated to Israel to establish an agricultural colony here." The purchase, which was finalized in 1883 did not go through because the eleven families were concerned about the isolated location.
Christian missionary colony (1882–1891) In the early 1880s, the Spanish consul in Jerusalem bought over 5,000 dunams of land from the villagers of
Artuf, which he sold to the
London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. After the 1882 anti-Jewish
pogroms in Eastern Europe, the society used some of the money raised to help the Jewish refugees to purchase land in Artuf. Towards the end of 1883, 24 Jewish families were settled there, each receiving 150 dunams of farmland, farm animals and tools. Due to economic difficulties and the lack of water, some of the land was leased to Arabs. In his 1912-13 literary almanac, ''Luah le'eretz yisrael,'' historian
Abraham Moses Luncz wrote: "Artuf (Har-Tuv), founded in 1895, about 10 minutes from D'ieban along the route of the Jerusalem-Yafo railroad, 101 inhabitants, Sephardi Jews of Bulgarian origin." During the
1929 riots Hartuv was destroyed by Arabs. The residents fled to
Jaffa. Invoking the Collective Punishments Ordinance, the British Mandatory authorities heavily fined the Arab villages whose residents attacked the Jews of Hartuv.
New Har-Tuv and the War of Independence (1930–1948) In 1930 Hartuv was rebuilt and some of the families returned. According to a
census conducted in 1931 by the
British Mandate authorities, Har Tuv had a population of 107 inhabitants, in 24 inhabited houses. On 20 December 1947, a
Notrim truck on its way to Hartuv was attacked and its 3 passengers murdered. Since then all transportation was done in lightly armored vehicles. On March 18, 1948, a convoy that had just finished resupplying Hartuv was ambushed on its way back to Jerusalem by the forces of
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni. 11 convoy members were killed in the battle. The
Convoy of 35 left Hartuv in an attempt to resupply and reinforce the
Gush Etzion kibbutzim by foot on January 16, 1948. 35 members of the convoy were killed.
Moshav Naham After the establishment of the State of Israel, a
ma'abara transit camp was set up to accommodate the masses of new immigrants arriving from Europe and Arab lands. In 1950, Moshav
Naham was founded nearby. ==Archaeology==