Image Gallery of Tall al-Hāsī
Please note that this section is work in progress. We continue to collect and analyse images. If you would like to share images, please write to Sarah Büssow.
The geographer Ellsworth Huntington travelled through the area in the spring of 1909. In his description, he emphasises the importance of local grain production, which was organised in cooperation between Bedouins (probably from the Jabbārāt tribe, as indicated on the 1880 map) and agriculturalists: "[W]e traversed a beautiful rolling land in whose red soil wheat studded with white daisies grew thickly [. . .] The land here, being close to the dry Negeb, belongs to wandering Bedouin, an unusual circumstance; but on the hilltops small houses are scattered about, the homes of Fellahin servants who till the land for their wandering masters. ... These houses are worthy of note [. . .]. Like those of many similar regions, they show the falsity of the frequent assertion that in regions such as Syria or Asia Minor districts sufficiently moist to give a reasonable assurance of good crops are often ‘nomadized’. On the contrary, they are almost sure to be cultivated. They may or may not belong to the nomads, they may or may not be subject to plundering by them, but except in the rarest cases, they are cultivated and contain permanent houses [. . .]" (See Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, p. 260).
