Ancient and classical Assyrian
artifacts have been discovered in Qaqun. Among these are fragments of
stelae recording the victory of
Sargon II over the
Philistine city-states in the 8th century BC, providing evidence of the establishment of Assyrian rule in Palestine. In the 1st century AD,
Antipas, like others close to the
Herodians who ruled over parts of the region at the time, was granted dominion over large areas of land. One of the gifts (
doreai) he received was a parcel of land located in the Plain of Sharon which included Qaqun, among other villages.
Crusader period In the
Crusader period, a castle called Caco or Cacho stood here, of which an 8.5m tower survives. It was mentioned in 1253 when it apparently still was held by the
lord of Caesarea,
John Aleman. In 1271, Lord
Edward of England launched a large raid during the
Ninth Crusade with the support of the
Templar,
Hospitaller, and
Teutonic Knights on the town of Qaqun, in which he surprised a large force of
Turcomans (mostly itinerant herdsmen), reportedly killing 1,500 of them and taking 5,000 animals as booty. These Turcomans were likely relatively new additions to
Baibars' army, being integrated in 1268 and given horses, titles, and lands in return for military service after the Turkmen migrations following the
Mongol invasions.
Mamluk period Qaqun was captured by the
Mamluk sultan
Baibars (1259–1277) in 1267. Under Mamluk rule, Qaqun was the capital of one of six districts that made up the province of
as-Sham, the Mamluk administrative unit for a part of the governorship of "Mamlakat
Gaza", one of the region's three Mamluk administrative governorships, the other two being "Mamlakat Dimashq" (
Damascus) and "Mamlakat Zafad" (
Safed). Qaqun and also
Lydda appeared to be independent provinces later in this period. While early scholarship often attributed the construction of the fortress to Crusaders, both the fortress and mosque at Qaqun are now thought to have built during the reign of
Baybars, who also built the administrative center and large
market there. However the near contemporary Egyptian historian
Ibn al-Furat wrote that Edward’s raid may have been a little more troublesome, he wrote: “At the end of the month of Rabi' II, the month already mentioned (4 December 1271), the Sultan learnt that the Franks had attacked Qaqun (Caco); the emir Husam al-Din, the ustadh-dar, had been killed and the emir Rukn al-Din al-Jaliq wounded; while the governor of the place had had to leave.” At the end of the 13th century, the
Via Maris was moved eastward inland to improve the line of defence since Palestine's coastal cities were the first to fall to competing powers seeking to expand their domain. The route followed the coast of the
Sinai, passing through
Al-Arish,
Rafah,
Khan Yunis, and
Gaza. There, a branch then turned eastward to
Jerusalem, onto
Hebron while another passed through
Beit Hanoun to
Ramlah through
Daris and continued north to
Lydda, through
Jaljulia and
Tira to the center of Qaqun. From Qaqun, the route branched into two, one leading to
Jenin and the other to
Wadi Ara. Many of these places were villages that had
khans built there in the 14th century. The khan in Qaqun was built on the orders of Mamluk governor
Sanjar al-Jawli in 1315, and under Mamluk rule, khans like the one in Qaqun were used by couriers on horseback, forming part of the
postal network on the
Gaza-Damascus road.
Al-Qalqashandi (d .1418) mentioned Qaqun as a pleasant, though not particularly prosperous town, with a mosque, a bath, a handsome fort, and
wells.
Ottoman period During early
Ottoman rule in Palestine, the revenues of the village of Qaqun were in 1557 designated for the new
waqf of
Hasseki Sultan Imaret in
Jerusalem, established by Hasseki Hurrem Sultan (
Roxelana), the wife of
Suleiman the Magnificent. By 1596, Qaqun was the center of the
nahiya (subdistrict) of Qaqun under
Nablus Sanjak with a population of 19 households and 4 bachelors; an estimated 127 persons; all
Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on a number of crops, including
wheat and
barley, as well as on
goats and
beehives; a total of 16,590
akçe. Qaqun continued to function as an important stop on the Cairo-Damascus road. During
Napoleon's
campaign in 1799, the French forces defeated the Ottoman troops who had been sent to Qaqun to stop their advance towards
Acre.
Pierre Jacotin named the village
Qaqoun on his map from the same campaign. In the 1830s, the inhabitants of Qanqun participated in the
revolt against Egypt, and it was thence destroyed by the army of
Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt during his
Syrian campaign (1832–1840). In 1838 it was noted as a village,
Kakon, in the western ''Esh-Sha'rawiyeh'' administrative region, north of
Nablus. In the late 19th century, Qaqun was described as a large village built around the central tower of the Crusader/Mamluk fort. Its houses, built of stone and mud, were dispersed over the surface of a hill. There was arable land in the surrounding area.
Claude R. Conder writes to have seen a
Crusader-era tower in Qaqun during his visit there. decreasing in the
1931 census to a population of 1367 Muslims, in a total of 260 houses. In the
1945 statistics the population of Qaqun was 1,916, all Muslims, while 137 dunams were built-up (urban) land. Just prior to the 1948 war, in addition to the mosque and fortress, Qaqun also housed an elementary school for boys and hundreds of homes for its more than 2,000 inhabitants. File:Qaqun 1930.jpg|Qaqun 1930 1:20,000 File:Qaqun 1939.jpg|Qaqun 1939 1:20,000 File:Qaqun 1945.jpg|Qaqun 1945 1:250,000
1948 War {{Warbox Qaqun was the victim of a "hit-and-run" raid carried out by the
Irgun Zvai Leumi on 6 March 1948, according to the
History of the Haganah. No further details are provided by this source, but the Palestinian newspaper
Filastin reported an attack on the morning of 7 March. Quoting a communiqué issued by Palestinian militia forces, the paper said that the large attacking unit failed to penetrate the village, and that it threw a number of grenades which wounded two women. On 9 May 1948 the Alexandroni Arab affairs experts decided on a meeting in
Netanya, in preparation for the declaration of Israeli statehood and the expected pan-Arab invasion, to immediately "expel or subdue" the inhabitants of the Palestinian villages of
Kafr Saba,
al Tira, Qaqun,
Qalansuwa, and
Tantura. The final operational order did not say what was to be done with the inhabitants, but repeatedly spoke of "cleaning" or "clearing" the village. After the establishment of the State of Israel and the outbreak of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, regular Iraqi forces entrenched in the
Triangle region threatened to cut Israeli-controlled territory in half by capturing
Netanya. An Iraqi attack was repelled on 29 May 1948, when Israeli forces successfully defended the villages
Ein Vered,
Kfar Yabetz and
Geulim. Arab attacks originated in
Ras al-Ein,
Tira,
Qalansawe and Qaqun, and the capture of any of these was deemed likely to bring to an end the Iraqi effort in the Netanya area. Qaqun was chosen as the target of an Israeli offensive, and on 5 June at 04:00, the 33rd Battalion of the
Alexandroni Brigade attacked the village. A frontal assault was conducted on the Iraqi headquarters to the north of the village, after the nearby mill was cleared. The
Israel Defense Forces were only able to clear the village during the day, and used reinforcements from the 32nd Battalion at
Ein HaHoresh, which flanked the Arab forces from the south. Iraqi counter-attacks from Kalansawe and Tulkarem lasted until nightfall, with both sides bombing each other's positions from the air. Israeli forces were able to hold on to the village and put an end to Iraqi advances on the coastal plain. However, according to
Benny Morris, the attack was preceded by an artillery barrage that precipitated the evacuation of most of Qaqun's inhabitants to nearby groves. And only a few local militiamen and several dozen Iraqi Army soldiers remained to fight and they were rapidly overwhelmed by the Alexandroni infantry. Two days later, on 7 June,
Joseph Weitz noted Qaqun among the villages which they had to decide as to whether destroy (to prevent the villagers from returning), or renovate and settle with Jews. By December 1948 the
IDF General Staff\Operations approved the depopulation of the remaining small border-hugging sites ("khurab") in
the Triangle area. It was instructed that "an effort should be made to carry out the eviction [of Arab civilians] without force". But if force proved necessary, the Military Government was authorized to use it. Among the sites evicted was eight in the Qaqun and Gharbiya area.
After 1948 Kibbutz ha-Ma´pil was built on what had traditionally been village land in 1945, 3 km to the northwest. Three settlements were founded on village land in 1949:
Gan Yoshiyya, 1 km due south of the village site,
Ometz, 1 km north of the site; and
´Olesh, 4 km southwest of the site.
Haniel was built on village land in 1950.
Yikkon was built in the early 1950s to serve as a transit camp for new Jewish immigrants, and was later made into a regional school.
Burgeta, built in 1949, is 5 km to the southwest but is not on village land. The plan is to rehabilitate the site and turn it into a "focal point that will draw tourism." ==See also==