After the Bar-Kochba Revolt had been suppressed in A.D.130 the Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered a second Roman legion, the legio VI Ferrata (“Ironsides”), to be stationed in the north of the country. The site of the camp was known as Legio. When the army was withdrawn from the area in the third century, Legio became a city, and was known throughout all the Byzantine period as Masimianupolis. It came under Arab control during the first stage of the Islamic Conquest in the seventh century A.D.
Lajjun was the site of many confrontations between Muslim rulers, such as the one in A.D. 945 between the Hamadanids of Aleppo and the Ikshidis of Egypt in which the renowned Arab Prince, Sayf al-Dawla al-Hamadani was defeated.
Lajjun was captured by the Crusaders but was taken back by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin) in 1187. A number of Arab geographers mentioned Lajjun over the years, including Ibn al-Faqeeh (writing in A.D. 903), al Makdesi (985) and Yaqout al Hamawi (died in 1229). Makdesi described it as a pleasant town on the edge of Palestine. He mentioned its springs of fresh Makdesi and al-Hamawi (in his Mu’jam) reported the presence of what the people of Lajjun called the Mosque of Abraham built over a round rock in the town center. But Faqeeh reported that the mosque lay outside Lajjun.
Many Arab Muslim kings passed by the village. Among them was Malek Alkamel, the sixth Ayoubid ruler , where his daughter Ashoura’a got married in 1231. Two Muslim relics were buried in it: Ali Shafi’e (d. 1310) and Ali Ben Jalal (d. 1400).
In 1596, al-Lajjun was a village of 226 strong, which paid taxes on wheat and barely, as well as on other types of property, such as goats, beehives, and water buffalos. Zaher al-Umar, who ruled over northern Palestine for a short period during the second half of the eighteenth century, was reported to have used cannons against al-Lajjun in the course of his campaign (1771-73) to capture Nablus.
In the late nineteenth century, villagers from Umm al-Fahm moved to the site of al-Lajjun to make use of its farmland.
Occupation and depopulation:
The official Israeli account states that al-Lajjun was occupied shortly before June 1948, following the “ clearing “ of the Baysan Valley and prior to the botched Israeli attack on Jenin. The New York Times reported earlier that the village was first attacked and captured in mid-April, during the battle around the settlement of Mishmar ha-‘Emeq. The commander of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) also reported an assault on April 13, when Jewish forces attempted to reach the crossroads at al-Lajjun in an outflanking operation. The attack apparently failed. The Times said that 12 people were killed and fifteen wounded during that offensive. The paper also said that al-Lajjun was occupied a few days later on April 17, twelve days after the attack on Mishmar ha-Emeq had been launched from that village. The account read: “ Lajjun is the most important place taken by the Jews, whose offensive has carried them through ten villages south and east of Mishmar Ha’emek.” The report added that women and children had been removed from the village and that 27 buildings were blown up by the Haganah in al-Lajjun and other villages nearby.
But Ala commander Fawzi al-Qawuqji states that attacks resumed the following month, on May 6, when ALA positions in the area of al-Lajjun were attacked by Haganah forces. The ALA’s Yarmuk Battalion and other units drove the attackers back, but two days later, the ALA commander reported that Haganah forces were “ trying to cut off the Lajjun from Tulkarm in preparation of seizing Lajjun and Jenin…”
During the second truce, in early September, a United Nations official fixed the permanent truce line in the area at Lajjun, according to press reports. A 500-yard area was established on both sides of the line in which Arabs and Jews were allowed to harvest crops. [NYT: 15, 18/4/48, 31/5/48, 1/6/48, 7/9/48].
In 1949 Israel established the settlement of Yose Kaplan, which was later renamed Megiddo, about 0.5 km to the northeast of the village site.
