The Palestinian Village Digital Archive (saqiya.org) is an open-source research project dedicated to the forensic reconstruction of Palestinian villages destroyed or depopulated during the 1948 Nakba.

Our mission is to bridge the gap between historical documents—Ottoman tax registers, British Mandate land surveys, and military logs—and the living oral histories preserved by the diaspora community.

Why Saqiya?

Saqiya serves as our foundational case study. As a village that sat at the heart of the Jaffa orange trade, its history encapsulates the rapid modernization and subsequent erasure that defined the Palestinian coastal experience in the early 20th century.

Our Methodology

• Cartographic Recovery: High-resolution analysis of the 1:20,000 Survey of Palestine series.
• Oral History: Indexing and preserving testimonies from survivors and their descendants.
• Data Visualization: Using historical statistics to recreate the social and economic fabric of the villages.