Qalansawe

Qalansawe or Qalansuwa (Arabic: قلنسوة, Hebrew: קלנסווה, lit. "turban") is an Arab city in the Central District of Israel. Part of the Triangle, in 2023 it had a population of 24,728.

During the Abbasid Revolution in 750, which toppled the Umayyad Caliphate, numerous members of the Umayyad dynasty were deported to Qalansawe from Egypt for execution, including descendants of caliphs Umar II (r. 717–720) and Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 715–717). Yaqut, a 13th-century scholar, wrote that "many of the Omayyads were slain there." From the ninth century until the Crusader period, Qalansawe was a stop on the Cairo-Damascus road, between Lajjun and Ramla.

During the Crusader period, the village was known as Calanson, Calansue, Calanzon or Kalensue. In 1128, it was given to the Hospitallers by the knight Godfrey of Flujeac. Yaqut (d. 1229) wrote that Qalansawe, Castle of the Plains, of the Crusaders, was a fortress near Ramle. Remnants of a crusader fortress remain today. It remained in Hospitallers hands (except for 1187–1191) until Baybars took it in 1265. However, during this period the lord of Caesarea appears to have retained overlordship.

In 1265, after the Mamluks had defeated the Crusaders, Qalansawe was mentioned among the estates which Sultan Baibars granted his followers. It was divided equally between two of his emirs: Izz al-Din Aidamur al-Halabi al-Salihi and Shams al-Din Sunqur al-Rumi al-Salihi.

In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine. In the 1596 tax-records it appeared located in the Nahiya of Bani Sa'b of the Liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 29 Muslim households. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes; a total of 11,342 akçe.

Pierre Jacotin called the village Qalensawi on his map from 1799.

In 1870, the French explorer Victor Guérin found it to have 500 inhabitants. He then examined the remains of a church facing east and west, and divided into three naves, terminating to the east in three apses. It was constructed of cut stones, some of them slightly embossed. The naves were separated one from the other by monolithic columns and probably crowned by Corinthian capitals. One of them, of white marble, was repurposed by a villager who took it from the site of the church. The rest of the capitals and shafts were missing. An elegant door with a pointed arch was still standing. Under the nave ran a vaulted crypt, now divided into several compartments, which served as a shelter for several families. Ancient walls were found near the church and below the village. One was surmounted by a vaulted arcade in cut stones.

In the 1860s, the Ottoman authorities granted the village an agricultural plot of land called Ghabat Umm Ulayqa, or Ghabat Qalansuwa, in the former confines of the Forest of Arsur (Ar. Al-Ghaba) in the coastal plain, west of the village.