International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Jon Seligman
Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem, Israel; 
[e-mail]
Were there Villages in Jerusalem’s Hinterland during the Byzantine Period?
The centrality of the village to the Byzantine economy and settlement pattern has been stressed 
by number of scholars. A number of regional studies of rural settlement have detailed villages in 
Byzantine Palestine and Syria, while others have given considerable attention to its very definition. 
Literary sources emphasis the place of the village, with 85% of settlements listed in the Onomasticon 
termed as villages, and 37 villages identified as located within the hinterland of Jerusalem. However, 
only seven sites have remains that can be unambiguously accepted as a village. The remainder have 
limited or no remains that can be classified as a village.
It is judged that the origin of this settlement pattern should be sort in the historical development 
of land ownership which developed in the hinterland of Jerusalem following the Jewish revolts that 
had left the land both devoid of settlement and expropriated to imperial ownership. Possibilities for 
the usual processes of land redistribution over the coming centuries were limited, probably because 
of lack of available people to rejuvenate the villages. Certainly farms were built and operated by 
tenants. But this settlement form was not a catalyst for the rebuilding of villages which require time, 
socialisation, stability, state non-interference and organic growth to develop and endure. In their 
place the Byzantine landscape was covered with farms and monasteries on lands probably rented or 
gifted by the state.
Still, a number of villages did formulate. Typically in this period the villages occupied the 
topographical periphery and agricultural margins of the area, along the edge of the cultivated region 
and the Judaean desert. Only here could free small-holders find lands outside the hands of the 
crown that permitted villages to develop without the intervention of the state administrators. In my 
view the success of these villages was in part as service centres to the many monasteries found just 
a few kilometres distant, as many of the largest villages were located adjacent to the main centres 
of monasticism. Not only were these the only villages in the Jerusalem area, they are also the only 
villages specifically referenced in the ‘Lives’ of Cyril of Scythopolis. 
Still, the area west of the line of desert margin villages was not void of settlement. Here crown 
lands were granted to private individuals and to ecclesiastical institutions. The areas between 
Jerusalem and the Shephelah becoming the domain of monasteries, farms and possibly a small 
number of hamlets.

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