Ceramics from the
Byzantine era have been found here. Kawfakha was inhabited in the
15th century. In 1472–1473 CE, Sultan
Qaitbay endowed it for the benefit of his
Jerusalem madrasa.
Ottoman era In 1838, in the late
Ottoman era,
el-Kaufakhah was noted as a place "in ruins or deserted." In 1882, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) noted at
Khurbet el Kofkhah: "a large site. Rubble
cisterns, a marble
capital, with
acanthus leaves. Scattered stones and pottery." Kawfakwa was founded in the late nineteenth century by Gaza city residents who came to cultivate the surrounding land. In its center was a
mosque that was well known in the region, built in the reign of the
Ottoman sultan
Abd al-Hamid II (1876–1909).
British mandate era In the
1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the
British Mandate authorities,
Kufakha had a population of 203 Muslims, increasing in the
1931 census to 317, still all Muslims, in 56 houses. The village had an elementary school and some small shops. The villagers obtained water for domestic use from two
wells inside the village. The land on the northern side of the village was planted with fruit trees, such as
apricots,
olives,
almonds,
grapes and
figs. On the other sides of the village grain was grown. In the
1945 statistics Kawfakha had a population of 500 Muslims, while 41 dunams were built-up, public land.
1948 and after During the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, the villagers of Kawfakha repeatedly asked to surrender, accept Jewish rule and be allowed to stay, all to no avail. Kawfakha, together with
al-Muharraqa, was raided by the
Palmach's
Negev Brigade on May 27–28, and the inhabitants of both villages were expelled or driven out. On May 30, a
New York Times correspondent reported that the two villages had been captured. According to Khalidi, by 1992 the village remaining structures on the village land were: "Only the mosque remains, and it is used as a storehouse for animal fodder and as a horse stable. It is a stone structure with arched entrances and windows on all sides; its roof is topped by three shallow domes. The site, which contains piles of rubble and is overgrown with cactuses and other desert plants, has been fenced in and serves as a pasture. There is a citrus grove west of it, and grain is grown by Israeli farmers on part of the surrounding land." ==See also==