Talk:Zaytun Quarter

Map

This article could use a map showing the location of Zaytun Quarter within Gaza City. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 20:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Merge

@Al Ameer son: I see that you wrote both this article (Zeitoun, Gaza) and Zaytun Quarter. I think these are the same place and should be merged.

The only source for the existence of this article is "Dumper, Abu-Lughod, and Stanley, 2007, p.156": "During the 1930s and 1940s, a new and spacious residential quarter, Rimal, was built on the sands west of the town. It contained detached houses built in European style and led to the transfer of the center of gravity of the town to an axis leading to the port, whose economic basis would thereby be strengthened. During the same period, the Zeitun and Judeide quarters were built, expanding the town toward the south, the southwest, and the east."

I believe this statement should have said "the Zeitun and Judeide quarters were built out, expanding…".

I have been pulling together maps of the Old City and Shuja'iyya – the best ones are below. They confirm that the Zeitun quarter existed in the 1880s, and the size and shape of both of these two quarters doesn't seem to have changed much from the 1880s to 1931. And your article Shuja'iyya is clear that the Judaida (new) quarter is 800 years old.

• 
  1840–41 Royal Engineers
• 
  1887-88, Georg Gatt 1–5,000,
• 
  1931, Survey of Palestine 1–10,000

Also, the coordinates for the two articles are very close to each other. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@Oncenawhile: I worked on this topic in a flurry about 15 years ago, spurred on by the devastation visited on Gaza in the 2009 war; I hope there is more English-language source material available for us today then I had access to at that time. Your take on this makes sense. My understanding now is there is the Zeitoun and Daraj quarters which constitute Gaza's 'Old City' (the old, formerly walled core of Gaza), and then there are the Zeitoun and Daraj neighborhoods/municipal districts which extend beyond the Old City perimeter. These maps found on Commons help illustrate this: [1][2].

I do not feel strongly either way, so long as there is clarification in the merged article I am not opposed to the merger (I treated al-Shaghur, Damascus, which was a similar case, in this way too). My only concern is the lack of a supporting source which states the modern Zeitoun is an outgrowth of the old Zeitoun (same with Daraj), though I suppose this can be safely implied. I did locate this source, Hamidian Palestine (pp. 275–278), which states "Zaytun was a residential neighbourhood which had grown beyond the boundaries of the old city walls. In the south it bordered on fields and orchards, and in the north it was directly connected to the central business and administrative district (Map 4.4 [Gatt's map])." The time period discussed is circa 1905. Al Ameer (talk) 15:51, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful comment. I agree that we don’t have a clear source that says modern Zeitoun is an outgrowth of the old Zeitoun, but nor do we have a source that these are two different places.

I will merge them now. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:49, 12 October 2024 (UTC)