Al-Shaykh Muwannis

Al-Shaykh Muwannis (Arabic: الشيخ مونّس), also Sheikh Munis, was a small Palestinian Arab village in the Jaffa Subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine, located approximately 8.5 kilometers from the center of Jaffa city in territory earmarked for Jewish statehood under the UN Partition Plan. The village was abandoned in March 1948 due to the threats of Jewish militias, two months before the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. Today, Tel Aviv University lies on part of the village land.

According to local legend, the village was named for a local religious figure, al-Shaykh Muwannis, whose maqam was in the village.

Al-Shaykh Muwannis was founded in the 18th century. Pierre Jacotin named the village Dahr on his map from 1799.

Al-Shaykh Muwannis was noted in December 1821, as being "located on a hill surrounded by muddy land that was flooded with water despite the moderate winter". In 1856 the village was named Sheikh Muennis on Kiepert's map of Palestine published that year.

In 1870, Victor Guérin noted about al-Shaykh Muwannis: "It contains four hundred inhabitants and is divided into several quarters, each under the jurisdiction of a particular sheikh. On the outskirts one can note some gardens where succulent watermelons grow, with hardly any horticultural care." In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) noted "ruins of a house near the kubbeh", while Al-Shaykh Muwannis was described as an ordinary adobe village. Most of the villagers were members of the Abu Kishk tribe.

The village population was 315 in 1879.

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Shaik Muannes had a population of 664 residents, all Muslims. This had increased in the 1931 census when Esh Sheikh Muwannis had 1154 inhabitants, still all Muslims, in 273 houses.

In the 1920s, the government of the British mandate attempted to gain title to lands lying to the west of Al-Shaykh Muwannis and extending to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea on the grounds that it was "waste and uncultivated." According to the authors of a book on the Israeli-Arab conflict, the Arabs of the Jaffa-Tel Aviv region "understood the implications of the Zionist-cum-British discourses of development generally and their implementation through town planning schemes." In 1937, the Arabic daily al Ja'miah al-Islamiyya commented on British plans to build a bypass road for Tel Aviv residents on what they claimed were village lands: "[I]n reality the plan in the Town Planning Commission now including Sheikh Muwannis is not really a 'plan', but rather a plan to take the land out of the hands of its owners."