Tulkarm, Tulkarem or Tull Keram (, Ṭūlkarm) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, located in the Tulkarm Governorate of the State of Palestine. The Israeli city of Netanya is to the west, and the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin to the east. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2007 Tulkarm had a population of 51,300 while its adjacent refugee camp had a population of 10,641. Tulkarm is under the administration of the Palestinian Authority (as part of Area A). Etymology The Canaanite name, which survived through to Roman times, was Birat Sorqua ('well of the chosen vine'), The Arabic name translates as "mountain of vines" and may be derived from the Aramaic name Tur Karma ("vineyard hill") which was used for Tulkarm by the Crusaders and by the mediaeval Samaritan inhabitants. History Ayyubid and Mamluk periods During the Ayyubid era, after the Muslim reconquest of Palestine under Sultan Saladin in 1187, the first families to settle in Tulkarm were from the Kurdish clan of Zaydan. A military group, the Zaydan were dispatched to the Wadi al-Sha'ir area, which includes Tulkarm, by Saladin to buttress the defense of the western approaches of Muslim-held Palestine from the Crusaders who dominated the coastal area. The Zaydan would come to politically dominate Tulkarm and the vicinity until the early 17th century. Around 1230, during the late Ayyubid period, a group of Arabs from southern Palestine immigrated to Tulkarm. They had originally migrated to Palestine from Arabia many generations prior and had become semi-nomadic farmers and grazers. Among the Arab families were the Fuqaha clan, who were considered ashraf (related to the Islamic prophet Muhammad) and served as the "ulama" (religious scholars) of the village. During the Ayyubid, and later the Mamluk era (1260-1517), the majority of Tulkarm's lands were made part of a waqf ("religious trust") to support the al-Farisiyya Madrasa, an Islamic religious school in Jerusalem, located north of the Masjid Al-Aqsa compound. Two-thirds of the village's farmlands were confirmed as part of this trust in 1354 by the deputy-governor of Damascus, Faris al-Din al-Baki. During Mamluk rule another wave of Arab immigrants arrived in Tulkarm from North Africa and nearby Nablus. They largely engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, supplying hides to leather merchants in the coastal villages, retaken from the Crusaders in the second half of the 13th century. Ottoman era Tulkarm was incorporated into