Khirbat Jiddin ( ar, خربة جدين, list=ruins of Jiddin), known in the

Kingdom of Jerusalem The Kingdom of Jerusalem ( la, Regnum Hierosolymitanum; fro, Roiaume de Jherusalem), officially known as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Frankish Kingdom of Palestine,Example (title of works): was a Crusader state that was establishe ...

as Judin, was an Ottoman fortress in the western

Upper Galilee The Upper Galilee ( he, הגליל העליון, ''HaGalil Ha'Elyon''; ar, الجليل الأعلى, ''Al Jaleel Al A'alaa'') is a geographical-political term in use since the end of the Second Temple period. It originally referred to a mountai ...

, originally built by the

Teutonic Order The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians on ...

after 1220 as a

crusader castle Crusader or Crusaders may refer to: Military * Crusader, a participant in one of the Crusades * Convair NB-36H Crusader, an experimental nuclear-powered bomber * Crusader tank, a British cruiser tank of World War II * Crusaders (guerrilla), a C ...

, 16 km northeast of the city of

Acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imp ...

, which at the time was the capital of the

. The castle was destroyed by the Mamluk sultan

Baibars Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Bunduqdari ( ar, الملك الظاهر ركن الدين بيبرس البندقداري, ''al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Rukn al-Dīn Baybars al-Bunduqdārī'') (1223/1228 – 1 July 1277), of Turkic Kipchak ...

sometime between 1268-1271 and lay in ruins until being rebuilt and expanded by the

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

ruler

Zahir al-Umar Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Daher al-Omar or Dahir al-Umar ( ar, ظاهر العمر الزيداني, translit=Ẓāhir al-ʿUmar az-Zaydānī, 1689/90 – 21 or 22 August 1775) was the autonomous Arab ruler of northern Ottom ...

as ''Qal'at Jiddin'' ( ar, قلعة جدين, lit=castle of Jiddin) in the 1760s, only to be destroyed again around 1775 by

Jazzar Pasha Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar ( ar, أحمد باشا الجزّار; ota, جزّار أحمد پاشا; ca. 1720–30s7 May 1804) was the Acre-based Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death in 1804 and the simultaneous governor of Da ...

.Pringle et al., 1994. The ruined fortress, known as Khirbat Jiddin, was later inhabited by the al-Suwaytat Bedouin tribe. According to a 1945 census, there were 1500

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

s living in the area. Khirbat Jiddin land totaled 7,587 dunums, of which however all but 34 were officially listed as non-cultivable; 4,238 were owned by

Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...

and 3,349 dunums owned by

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

Yehiam Yehi'am ( he, יְחִיעָם) is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located at the western Upper Galilee, eight miles east of the coastal town of Nahariya and 14 miles south-east of the border with Lebanon it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Ash ...

was established in the area in 1946. The establishment of the kibbutz is described on its own Wikipedia page. Today the remains of the castle are the central part of

Yehi'am Fortress National Park Yehi'am Fortress National Park is an Israeli national park in the western Upper Galilee on the grounds of Kibbutz Yehi'am, whose main attraction are the ruins of a hilltop castle. History The structure is based on the Crusader-time Iudyn Cas ...

History

Byzantine period

The site was inhabited in the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

period.

Crusader period

The

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

called the place ''Judin'' or ''Judyn.'' A Crusader castle was built there some time after May 1220, when the

acquired the nearby village of Shifaya.Pringle, 1997, pp.
80
- 82Pringle, 1998, p
162
/ref> The village fell to Sultan

between 1268 and 1271. In 1283,

Burchard of Mount Sion Burchard of Mount Sion (, also misnamed ''Brocard'' or ''Bocard''; fl. late 13th century), was a German priest, Dominican friar, pilgrim and author probably from Magdeburg in northern Germany, who travelled to the Middle East at the end of the 13t ...

described a destroyed castle on the site that had belonged to the Teutonic Order. Marino Sanuto, in 1322, still referred to it as a castle belonging to the Teutonic Knights. The castle was built around two towers with an outer enclosure wall.Petersen, 2001, p
251
/ref>

Ottoman period

The fortress as it now exists was built in the eighteenth century by

, the Bedouin ruler who became Ottoman governor of the

Galilee Galilee (; he, הַגָּלִיל, hagGālīl; ar, الجليل, al-jalīl) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Galilee traditionally refers to the mountainous part, divided into Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and Lower Galil ...

. It was Zahir al-Umar who had the enclosure walls and towers constructed and the

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...

hewn out of the bedrock, together with an angled entrance gatehouse, vaulted in a manner faithful to the Crusader style. The vaulted hall on the lower level of the castle was the basement of a palatial residence that included a small

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

and a bathhouse. The hall's roof rested on a series of square pillars on the hillside. The walls featured well shafts and gun-slits. The mosque was a small square building originally roofed with four cross-vaults resting on a central pillar. The bathhouse was a small building supplied with water from the wells below. An Italian, Giovanni Mariti, who visited "Geddin" in the 1760s, says he was given a generous reception by the local sheik who guarded the place for Daher.

Jezzar Pasha Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar ( ar, أحمد باشا الجزّار; ota, جزّار أحمد پاشا; ca. 1720–30s7 May 1804) was the Acre-based Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death in 1804 and the simultaneous governor of D ...

destroyed the fortress around 1775. A map by

Pierre Jacotin Pierre Jacotin (1765–1827) was the director of the survey for the ''Carte de l'Égypte (Description de l'Égypte)'', the first triangulation-based map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine. The maps were surveyed in 1799-1800 during the campaign in Eg ...

from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the place, named as ''Chateau de Geddin.'' French explorer

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (15 September 1821 – 21 Septembe 1890) was a French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included Greece, Asia Mino ...

visited in 1875, and described it:

"'Two great square towers, deprived of their upper stage, are still there, partly upright, and contain several chambers now in very bad condition. The staircases which lead to them have been deprived of part of their steps to make access more difficult. Underneath are magazines and cellars, the vaults of which rest on several ranges of arcades. Cisterns hollowed in the rock are found beneath a paved court. Below and near the castle a second inclosure, flanked by semicircular towers, contains within it the remains of numerous demolished houses and cisterns.'"

When Kitchener inspected the place in 1877, he found it "quite unoccupied, though there are several chambers and vaults that could serve as habitations."Kitchener, 1878, p
137
/ref>

British Mandate

The ruins were later inhabited by

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...

of the al-Suwaytat tribe whose primary occupation was animal husbandry. In the 1945 statistics, they also cultivated

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley pr ...

and

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

on 22

dunums A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

of land.Khalidi, 1992, p. 19Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
81
/ref> At the same time, Jews cultivated the remaining 32 dunums officially listed as cultivable. The land ownership of the village in 1945, in

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

s:Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945''. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
40
/ref> Types of land use in

s in the village in 1945:Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
131
/ref>

1948 War and aftermath

File:יחיעם - מבצר הצלבנים ג'ידין-JNF036187.jpeg, Yehi'am Fortress 1946 File:יחיעם - מבצר ג'ידין וסביבתו-JNF036197.jpeg, View from battlements 1946 File:יחיעם - ביום העליה ליחיעם, מטבח ארעי בתוך מבצר ג'ידין-JNF036185.jpeg, Interior 1946 Khirbat Jiddin was in the territory envisaged as an Arab state in the

1947 UN Partition Plan The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan as Re ...

. On July 11, 1948, during the

1948 Arab-Israeli War Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

, it was captured by

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

Sheva' Brigade The 7th Armored Brigade ( he, חטיבה שבע, ''Hativa Sheva'') is a military formation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Formed during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and still in operation, it is the oldest armored brigade in the IDF. It has ...

as part of

Operation Dekel Operation Dekel ( he, מבצע דקל , Mivtza Dekel, Operation Palm Tree), was the largest offensive by Israeli forces in the north of Palestine after the first truce of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was carried out by the 7th Armoured Brigade ...

References

Bibliography

* * Cited in Khalidi, (1992) * * * * * * * * * * * * (p
51
* * Pringle, R. D., A. Petersen, M. Dow and C. Singer (1994), Qulʿat Jiddin: A castle of the Crusader and Ottoman periods in Galilee. ''Levant,'' 26: 135–66. * Also cited in Petersen (2001) *

External links

Palestine Remembered: Khirbat Jiddin

Khirbat Jiddin

Zochrot Zochrot ( he, זוכרות; "Remembering"; ar, ذاكرات; "Memories") is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2002. Based in Tel Aviv, its aim is to promote awareness of the Palestinian ''Nakba'' ("Catastrophe"), including the 1948 Pa ...

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 3
IAAWikimedia commons

Official archaeology website: Yehiam National Park
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War District of Acre Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Castles of the Teutonic Knights