Beer-Sheva: The First City in the Negev


Abu Rabia A.

in: The Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern Cities, Bruce Stanley, Editor, ABC-CLIO, Inc. , California, pp.77-88, 2007

  • Publication Type: Book Chapter / Chapter Research Book
  • Publication Date: 2007
  • Publisher: ABC-CLIO, Inc.
  • City: California
  • Page Numbers: pp.77-88
  • Editors: Bruce Stanley, Editor
  • Erciyes University Affiliated: No

Abstract

Beersheba is a modern frontier city, selling dreams of making the desert bloom, a home for Israel’ s recent immigrants, and a bright future in software and the chemical industry. But it is also an ancient crossroads, an edge site where markets arose when the Palestinian village areas touched the Bedouin semi-nomadic lifestyle. Lacking any built environment older than 1900, for seven thousand years the site was an oasis of springs and pasture, most famous as one of the homes of the Patriarch Abraham. Its dramatic transformation to the large planned city of today makes it both a city of hope and denial, with its Bedouin heritage threatened, and its future to be determined by the dynamics of mineral exploitation, nationally directed growth, immigration and land seizures.