Arbel

In 161 BCE "Arbela" in the Arbel Valley was the site of a battle between the supporters of the Maccabees and Seleucid general Bacchides, who defeated and killed his opponents ({{bibleverse|1 Macc.|9:2}}).{{cite book |title=Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land |chapter=Arbel, Arbela |first1=Avraham |last1=Negev |first2=Shimon |last2=Gibson |year=2001 |location=New York and London |publisher=Continuum |page=47 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l3JtAAAAMAAJ |isbn=0-8264-1316-1 |via=Google Books }}

In the second half of the second century BCE, the village of Arbel was the home of the sage Nittai of Arbela.{{citation needed|date=July 2019}}

In 38 BCE, Jewish partisans of Antigonus who were opposing Herod in his conquest of the land with the help of the Romans, sought refuge from his troops in the caves dotting the steep northern cliffs of Mount Arbel, but couldn't escape death.{{cite book |author=Flavius, Josephus |translator=G.A. Williamson |title=The Jewish War |lang=la |trans-title=The Jewish War |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd |year=1959 |pages=62-63 }} Their story is told by Josephus, who himself fortified the cave-village as a storage base at the beginning of the First Jewish–Roman War against Rome in 66 CE.

The ancient town of Arbel is thought by some to have been located at the site of Khirbet Wadi Hamam ("Ruins [in the] Valley of the Doves"; Hurvat Vradim being the modern Hebrew name), on the other side of Arbel Valley, on the eastern slopes of Mount Nitay and close to the stream bed; if that was the case, the village only moved to the site of Khirbet Irbid, close to where the modern moshav stands now, during the Middle Ages. The Jewish scholar Ishtori Haparchi, writing in 1322, thought to identify ancient Arbel with the Arab village itself, in its location on Mount Arbel, {{convert|4.5|km}} northwest of Tiberias.{{cite book |author=Haparchi, Ishtori |title=Kaftor wa-Ferach |volume=2 |edition=3rd |editor=Havatzelet, Avraham Yosef |chapter=Chapter 11 |location=Jerusalem |year=2007 |page=54 (note 29) |lang=he }}

Ceramics from the late Roman and Byzantine periods have been found.Dauphin, 1998, pp. 718-719{{dubious|Where exactly? Kh. Irbid? Khirbet Wadi Hamam? Elsewhere in the area?|date=July 2019}}

In 1047 CE, Nasir Khusraw was on a pilgrimage through Palestine, and noted that he came to the village of Irbil, after leaving Hittin, on his way to Tabariyyah. He further noted that "on the south side of [Irbil] rises a mountain; and on the mountain is an enclosure, which same contains four graves-those of the sons of Yacub (Jacob) - .[..] -who were brothers of Yusuff (Joseph) [..] And going onward I came to a hill, and below the hill a cavern, in which was the tomb of the mother of Moses."Khusraw, 1897, p.[https://archive.org/stream/cu31924028534281#page/n45/mode/1up 16]

In 1517, the village was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine, and in 1596, Irbid appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in nahiya (subdistrict) of Tabariyya under the liwa' (district) of Safad. It had a population of 2 households, both Muslims. They paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, cotton, goats and/or beehives, olive oil press and/or a press for grape syrup.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 190

The caves on the steep northern cliffs of Mount Arbel were refortified into a cave castle by Ali Beg, the son of 17th-century Druze ruler Fakhr ad-Din al-Maani.{{cite book |title=The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700 |series=Oxford Archaeological Guides |author=Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome |year=2008 |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-923666-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m3Yy9FDcT8gC&q=Arbel&pg=PA313 |access-date=17 July 2019 |via=Google Books }}

In 1875, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the ruins,Guérin, 1880, pp. [https://archive.org/stream/descriptiongogr01unkngoog#page/n211/mode/1up 198]-201 and in 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine found at "Kh. Irbid""The ruin of Irbid", according to Palmer, 1881, p. [https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp00conduoft#page/128/mode/1up 128] "important ruins", with "traces of an Arab village".Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, pp. [https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp01conduoft#page/396/mode/1up 396]-400

By 1948, the land belonged to the Arab village of Hittin, which was depopulated in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Arbel was established in 1949 by demobilized soldiers.Khalidi, 1992, p. 523 Initially a moshav shitufi (a more socialist-type moshav, closer to the kibbutz model), Arbel became a moshav ovdim in 1959.

{{Infobox religious building

| name = Arbel Ancient Synagogue

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| image = ARBEL_SYNAGOGUE.JPG

| image_upright = 1.4

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| caption = Remains of the ancient synagogue

| religious_affiliation = Judaism {{small|(former)}}

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| location = Arbel, Northern District

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| year_completed = 4th century CE

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Arbel is notable for the ruins of an ancient Jewish synagogue, which stands amid the remnants of an ancient Jewish village on the western edge of the moshav. Archaeologists concluded that it was built in the fourth century CE, shows at least two construction phases, being rebuilt in the sixth century, and was probably used continuously until the eighth century, when a conflagration finally destroyed it—probably connected to the catastrophic 749 earthquake.{{cite web |url=https://www.parks.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/arbel-ein.pdf |title=Arbel National Park and Nature Reserve |work=Israel Nature and Parks Authority |date=August 2017 |access-date=17 July 2019 |format=brochure }} The door of the synagogue, still standing, was carved from a massive natural outcropping of limestone, and the synagogue itself situated so as to make use of the stone as a handsome door. It is carved with decorative floral motifs and medallions. A carved groove for a mezuzah can be seen. Three sides of the building had carved stone benches. The two-storey building had three rows of columns with Corinthian capitals on the first floor and Ionic capitals on the second.{{cite book |author=Aviam, Mordechai |title=Ancient Synagogues in the Land of Israel |publisher=Israel Nature and Parks Authority |year=1997 |page=16 }}

• Shay Avital (born in 1952), Israeli Major General (Ret.) and former head of the Special Operations Forces Command

{{stack|{{portal|Judaism|Israel|Architecture}}}}

• Ancient synagogues in the Palestine region
• Ancient synagogues in Israel
• Archaeology of Israel
• History of the Jews in Israel
• List of synagogues in Israel

{{reflist|2}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book

|last1=Conder |first1=C.R. |authorlink1=Claude Reignier Conder

|last2=Kitchener |first2=H.H. |authorlink2=Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

|year=1881

|url=https://archive.org/details/surveyofwesternp01conduoft

|title=The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology |location=London

|publisher=Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund

|volume=1 }}

• {{cite book

|last=Dauphin |first=C.|author-link=Claudine Dauphin

|title=La Palestine byzantine, Peuplement et Populations

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FC1mAAAAMAAJ |volume=III: Catalogue

|series=BAR International Series 726 |year=1998 |publisher=Archeopress |location=Oxford

|language=French |isbn=0-860549-05-4 |via=Google Books }}

• {{cite book

|last=Guérin|first=V. |authorlink=Victor Guérin

|year=1880

|url=https://archive.org/details/descriptiongogr01unkngoog

|title=Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine

|volume=3, Galilee, pt. 1 |lang=fr }}

• {{cite book

|last1=Hütteroth |first1=W.-D.|author-link1=Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth

|last2=Abdulfattah|first2=K. |author-link2=Kamal Abdulfattah

|title=Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wqULAAAAIAAJ |year=1977 |publisher=Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft

|isbn= 3-920405-41-2 |via=Google Books }}

• {{cite book

|title=All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948

|first=W. |last=Khalidi |authorlink=Walid Khalidi

|year=1992

|location=Washington D.C. |publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies |isbn=0-88728-224-5}}

• {{cite book |author=Khusrau, Nasir I. |authorlink=Nasir Khusraw |year=1897 |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028534281 |title=Vol IV. A journey through Syria and Palestine (1047 CE.). The pilgrimage of Saewolf to Jerusalem. The pilgrimage of the Russian abbot Daniel. |location=London |publisher=Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society |display-authors=etal}}
• {{cite book

|last=Palmer |first=E.H. |authorlink=Edward Henry Palmer

|year=1881 |url=https://archive.org/details/surveyofwesternp00conduoft |title=The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer

|publisher=Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund}}

{{refend}}

{{commons category|Arbel (moshav)}}

• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 6: [http://www.iaa-archives.org.il/zoom/zoom.aspx?folder_id=93&type_id=6&id=8369 IAA], [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Survey_of_Western_Palestine_1880.06.jpg Wikimedia commons]

{{Lower Galilee Regional Council}}

{{Ancient synagogues|state=collapsed}}

{{Synagogues in Israel}}

Category:1949 establishments in Israel

Category:4th-century establishments in the Roman Empire

Category:4th-century synagogues

Category:Ancient Jewish settlements of Galilee

Category:Ancient synagogues in the Land of Israel

Category:Archaeological sites in Israel

Category:Buildings and structures demolished in the 8th century

Category:Former populated places in West Asia

Category:Former synagogues in Israel

Category:Moshavim

Category:Populated places established in 1949

Category:Populated places in Northern District (Israel)

Category:Sea of Galilee