Help with Family Tree Research- Palestine

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crimsontide06

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I am really into family tree research. I have so much information for my moms side since she was born and raised here in the U.S and that side of the family has been here for over 200 years. I have lines on my tree going as far as the 1600's. I research every line, not just male.

However, I have virtually no information about my fathers side. I know the names of my grandparent's parents and that is as far as I have gotten. No one in the family knows(both grandparents on that side have died).

Is there any type of resource online(in English) or maybe in Palestine itself that could help?

Here in the U.S we have censuses, obituaries..etc. to help.
 
I have come across a lot of family tree search engines in the US in net. Did you google it? By the way is your parental line from Palestine?
 
anatolian said:
I have come across a lot of family tree search engines in the US in net. Did you google it? By the way is your parental line from Palestine?
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Yeah that's why I am asking about Palestine..my father came from there to here for college.

There is no information that I can find for research about another country.
 
crimsontide06 said:
I am really into family tree research. I have so much information for my moms side since she was born and raised here in the U.S and that side of the family has been here for over 200 years. I have lines on my tree going as far as the 1600's. I research every line, not just male.

However, I have virtually no information about my fathers side. I know the names of my grandparent's parents and that is as far as I have gotten. No one in the family knows(both grandparents on that side have died).

Is there any type of resource online(in English) or maybe in Palestine itself that could help?

Here in the U.S we have censuses, obituaries..etc. to help.
Click to expand...

Asalamu Alaikum

Lol good luck finding anything, Muslim countries haven't got documents of this kind of stuff. Unless your family is famous, you're unlikely to get anything anywhere. The only things you can rely on is a DNA test (make sure you put the results into a good calculator), oral tradition (but be warned, the latter is usually an embellishment of the truth and sometimes even a flat-out lie), and academic research.

Ask your dad what tribe he comes from, and find out their origins from there via the internet. I can help you with that too since I know a fair bit about this type of stuff.
 
there existed Ottoman and British land registries, court registers, censuses and many diff. source types in Palestine too (well every state likes to tax their subjects, and for that you need to register them :D) , though i think they are not digitalized, and there may be no similar easy to use genealogy search engines compared to the ones in US and Europe. As far as i understand you know your Palestinian line back to your great grandparents, so i guess you know their nisba (roughly "family name" "Al-...something") and their place of origin (village, town). Try to search through that, first through google, are there other people from the same are with the same nisba... A nisba can indicate many things, clan affiliation, occupation, geographic origin etc. If you could speak Arabic it would be easier, there are Arabic genealogy themed books, associations, online forums, actually researching clan and tribal genealogies is quite popular among Arabs i believe, but not in English...
 
crimsontide06 said:
I am really into family tree research. I have so much information for my moms side since she was born and raised here in the U.S and that side of the family has been here for over 200 years. I have lines on my tree going as far as the 1600's. I research every line, not just male.

However, I have virtually no information about my fathers side. I know the names of my grandparent's parents and that is as far as I have gotten. No one in the family knows(both grandparents on that side have died).

Is there any type of resource online(in English) or maybe in Palestine itself that could help?

Here in the U.S we have censuses, obituaries..etc. to help.
Click to expand...

The last name is usually the best indication of where the family came from. There used to be a book that listed all of the Palestinian family names and their villages. It was in English. I saw it 7 years ago, one copy in Amman at a Carrefour, and I wish I bought it at the time. If you know your father's last name and middle name, as well as your paternal grandparents', you could probably find the original village they were from. However, you may also find it difficult because Israelis have been raiding homes for years specifically for historical books to destroy and delete the Palestinian identity. If your father's village was displaced, this may make it also a bit difficult. Palestinians actually source one another by their family names, so with enough help you'll probably be able to find more than you expected to.

Edit: You may also find this helpful: http://www.palestineremembered.com/index.html
 
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palestineremembered . com seems to be a quite good site for identifying displaced settlements and as a starting point. But if you know they were displaced, maybe the UNRWA can also be helpful to find relatives, as they have registered millions of Palestinian refugees.
 
crimsontide06 said:
I am really into family tree research. I have so much information for my moms side since she was born and raised here in the U.S and that side of the family has been here for over 200 years. I have lines on my tree going as far as the 1600's. I research every line, not just male.

However, I have virtually no information about my fathers side. I know the names of my grandparent's parents and that is as far as I have gotten. No one in the family knows(both grandparents on that side have died).

Is there any type of resource online(in English) or maybe in Palestine itself that could help?

Here in the U.S we have censuses, obituaries..etc. to help.
Click to expand...
I think I got the answer you're looking for. You can type on google this site: www.myheritage.com And here you can see even your history of your family. Just now I checked.
 
*charisma* said:
The last name is usually the best indication of where the family came from. There used to be a book that listed all of the Palestinian family names and their villages. It was in English. I saw it 7 years ago, one copy in Amman at a Carrefour, and I wish I bought it at the time. If you know your father's last name and middle name, as well as your paternal grandparents', you could probably find the original village they were from. However, you may also find it difficult because Israelis have been raiding homes for years specifically for historical books to destroy and delete the Palestinian identity. If your father's village was displaced, this may make it also a bit difficult. Palestinians actually source one another by their family names, so with enough help you'll probably be able to find more than you expected to.

Edit: You may also find this helpful: http://www.palestineremembered.com/index.html
Click to expand...

Thanks all for the info!

They are from Sebastia(I usually see a word, Samaria, associated with where they live).. the house and everything is still there..my aunt(fathers sister) takes care of the house now, they did not get displaced.
 
*charisma* said:
From Nablus??

http://www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/Sabastiya_1533/index.html#Links

This fb page is active https://www.facebook.com/subhikiwan/?ref=br_rs

You could probably contact them and ask questions :)
Click to expand...

Oh cool, thanks. There are pictures of my grandparents home(and store) in their photos. Their home/store front is used in a lot pf promotional stuff for tours..etc.

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 100%, align: center"]
[TR][TD]Sabastiya - سبسطيه -Nablus - Palestine Remembered
Palestine Remembered (فلسطين في الذاكرة)/1533: Sabastiya - سبسطيه -Nablus-Pictures, Stories, Nakba Oral hsitory, Palestine Satellite & Street View, and maps...[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]
 

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