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Jaffa, Palestine
Story Archive
A place-based archive of family memory, urban history, shoreline narratives, and the city’s interrupted modernity.
Showing 27 of 27 stories
By the Bronze Age Jaffa was a bustling port town. In the 1930s and more so in the 1940s, Jaffa was a full-blown diverse and cosmopolitan city and the export center and the entrance to Palestine. Jaffa had cabarets, ba...
Jaffa Orange is the IP, Intellectual Property of the Palestinian city of Jaffa. Developed after experimentations at the Shammouti family groves and became commercial around 1865. After 1948 when Israel occupied the la...
Who is recorded and who is invisible? Jaffans fled their city suddenly in one day, and all their belongings including photographs and memoirs, are gone. The homes and all archives of the city were taken over by the St...
Jaffans fled their city suddenly in one day, expecting to be back soon. Nearly all their belongings including photographs and memoirs, are gone. The homes, libraries, films in cinemas, photos in studios, and different...
Jaffa was a port town already during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The sea made Jaffa and there’s no Jaffa without its Mediterranean. Jaffans call their hometown “Mother of Strangers” because the city embraced everyone, i...
Photo Album Jaffan girl on a swing Scholten 1921-23, NINO The Tamari family, Jaffans , among the tidepools, c. 1929 A well-known Jaffan Tamari is sociologist Salim Tamari The Tamari family at home، Jaffa, 1919 Schol...
School Parade by Scholten , 1921-1923 Scholten A classroom at a government school in Jaffa, likely Al Amereyyah School for boys. Frank Scholten, 1921-23/ NINO Students at the English speaking Tabeetha School in Jaffa,...
Jaffa 1921-23 Scholten ©NINO, The Netherlands Institute for the Near East Zakia Jabre, Jaffa, c. 1944 Jerusalem Girls College students and teacher's annual end-of-year field trip to the beach in Jaffa, c. 1941 Source:...
Would you like to share your Jaffan story? Please try to use as many details as possible relating to where your roots come from, names, anecdotes, and even trivial details and memories, or what other Jaffans memories...
This is the photo album of Randa Berouti Randa Berouti is an artist who creates mini-sculptures of gold, silver, and stones. The story of the Beroutis here is about Randa's father Charles Berouti, her grandparents Emi...
and his Coat of Arms in Al Ajami, Jaffa Emilia Alonzo De Talamas with her husband, Antoine Giries De Talamas, Jaffa, early 1900's Musa Talamas is the son of Issa and Tecla Talams, born in Nazareth in 1627. Issa and Te...
Please find the article about Nabi Rubeen festival in the corresponding pin , located south of Jaffa.
Roch: Oranges, Parties, and Resistance Image Source: Rachman Alfred Roch was a businessman, a crucial Palestinian politician, and a supporter of culture- and he excelled in all three. While a member of the Palestinian...
The Miracle of the Burial of Professor Abu Lughod Image Source -- Professor Ibrahim Abu Lughod This story is an example of the modern format of Palestinian oral history — stateless Palestinians find their history and...
Palestine was among the pioneering nations in the region in film production, with the earliest recorded film screening in 1908 in Jerusalem. Palestine was also the subject of the Lumeire brothers' first films. Jaffa a...
Zahrat Al Uqhuwan زهرة الأقحوان A teacher of math changed from skirt to pants and went underground. With 13 other Jaffan women, Zahrat Al Uqhuwan (The Daisies), a secret organistaion, carried out strategic planning, a...
Resisting the Pharaos 1460 BC The first resistance of the Jaffans that we have archeological evidence of, is from around 1460 B.C.E. to 1125 B.C.E. when the pharaonic New Kingdom conquerors ruled Jaffa. In 1472 BC, Ph...
Image Source -- Falastin's editors and journalists in Jaffa. Founders Issa and Yousef El Issa sitting in the front row. , 1913. Image Source -- Masthead of Falastin Newspaper, 18 June 1936 Falastin Newspaper Falastin...
Scholten girls at an orphanage in Jaffa 1921-23. Jaffa was among the cities with the most schools in Palestine. Between 1944 and 1945, 77% of the Jaffan boys and 57% of the girls were attending school. Seven of Jaffa...
Image Source – Al Kamal Pharmacy in al-Ajami, 2011 Three Jaffan generations of pharmacists who studied abroad and came back to Jaffa: Kamel Geday studied and worked in Adana, Turkey Fakhri Geday studied at St. Joseph...
Image Source: Matson, Library of Congress , before 1933 Fourteen kilometers south of Jaffa, there’s a Mediterranean beach with sand so soft it falls off your clothes, far enough from the city noise and close enough...
Image Source – Jaffan Adib Al-Dasouki, Boxing Champion of Palestine “The entire western world has been talking about this Arab athlete who’s challenging American press in its weight, its strength, its size…they’re all...
What are the names of the streets of an ancient city made of? Image Source At the beginning of the 18th century, Jaffa saw a recovery marked by renovations and the building of the wharf and warehouses. After Napoleon’...
When A Mercedes-170 was worth 500 boxes of Jaffa oranges The Mediterranean made the ancient city of Jaffa. For centuries, fishermen and sailors were the Jaffans. But the name ‘Jaffa’ was transformed, and for the last...
Image Source Image Source: Scholten Harbor towns are open to the rest of the world by the sea. This gives the city a feeling of openness and power. No wonder Venice and Amsterdam were city-states. Mediterranean port c...
Al Ajami is all that is left of Jaffa Image Source – What is left of a Palestinian house in old Jaffa looking at the Mediterranean Cosmopolitan luxurious neighborhood Al Ajami was the most affluent neighborhood, wit...