Allenby Garden

The story

Allenby Garden is located at the corner of Ha-Atzmaut and Herzl streets in the Old City of Beersheba. The garden is rectangular, its area is about three and a half dunams and the length of each of its sides is about 55 meters; in its northern part is a paved plaza surrounded by grass and trees, and at its center a monument in memory of General Edmund Allenby. It was laid out in 1902, about two years after the founding of the city by the Ottomans, and was one of the first public gardens in the country. The garden was laid out in the center of the city, adjoining the Saraya House to the west of it, and served for gatherings and ceremonies. As it was not fenced, its condition deteriorated from the grazing of goats and camels and from the gathering of wood. In 1915 Ahmed Djemal Pasha initiated a plan for the afforestation of the desert and hired farmers for that purpose, most of them Jews, graduates of Mikveh Israel and residents of the colonies; they laid out in the garden four paths leading to its center, tended flowerbeds and surrounded it with a fence. At the center of the garden a marble column was set up bearing the emblem of the Ottoman Empire and an inscription commemorating the victories of the Turkish army over the British in the first and second battles of Gaza, in March and in April 1917. After the British entered the city on 31 October 1917 Avraham Melnikov sculpted a bust of Allenby, and it was placed on top of the Turkish marble column and dedicated by the High Commissioner Herbert Samuel in March 1923. In 1938, during the Great Arab Revolt, rebels pulled down the bust and defaced it; its remains were found but were not set up again. In 1947 the British put up in its place a square memorial structure of Jerusalem stone, without a figure, bearing the name Allenby in English and in Arabic only. A new bust, the work of Etienne Millner, was set up in 2006, and the garden was renovated again in 2015.

• Ottoman
• 1917
• Commemoration
• Beersheba