Kabul (, ) is an

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

town in the Northern District of

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, southeast of

Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

and north of

Shefa-'Amr Shefa-Amr or Shefar'am (; ) is an Arab city in the Northern District of Israel. In it had a population of with a Sunni Muslim majority and large Christian Arab and Druze minorities. Etymology Palmer writes that the name meant: "The margin ...

. In it had a population of .

History

Classical era

Kabul is probably the Biblical Cabul mentioned in the

Book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...

. Fragments of pottery from the

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

period have been found in Kabul, as well as excavated burial chambers, used from the 1st to the 4th centuries. During the Second Temple a family of kohanim lived in the village. The head priest was Shecania. In Roman times,

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

called it "Chabolo" and camped there. He says it was a post from which incursions were made into the

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

.Robinson, 1856, p
88

Potsherds This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

dating from the end of the Hellenistic–Early Roman period, Roman, and Byzantine periods have been found in the village.Abu-‘Uqsa, 2007
Kabul
/ref> and bathhouse dating from the

Byzantine era The Byzantine calendar, also called the Roman calendar, the Creation Era of Constantinople or the Era of the World (, also or ; 'Roman year since the creation of the universe', abbreviated as ε.Κ.), was the calendar used by the Eastern Orth ...

, and used well into the

Umayyad The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a membe ...

era, have been excavated.

Middle Ages

Al-Muqaddasi Shams al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr, commonly known by the '' nisba'' al-Maqdisi or al-Muqaddasī, was a medieval Arab geographer, author of ''The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions'' and ''Description of Syri ...

visited Kabul in 985 CE, while it was under

Abbasid The Abbasid Caliphate or Abbasid Empire (; ) was the third caliphate to succeed the prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 C ...

rule. He writes that it was is a town in the coastal district with fields of

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

: "They make the best

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

—better than in all the rest of Bilad ash-Sham."Le Strange, 1890, p
467
/ref> Ali of Herat reports in 1173 that two sons of

Jacob Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...

are buried in the town, namely

Reuben Reuben or Reuven is a Biblical male first name from Hebrew רְאוּבֵן (Re'uven), meaning "behold, a son". In the Bible, Reuben was the firstborn son of Jacob. Variants include Reuvein in Yiddish or as an English variant spelling on th ...

and

Simeon Simeon () is a given name, from the Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew, Biblical ''Šimʿon'', Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian ''Šimʿôn''), usually transliterated in English as Shimon. In Greek, it is written Συμεών, hence the Latinized spelling Sy ...

. Kabul was one of the principal cities of Jund al-Urrdun.Le Strange, 1890, p
39
/ref> Its Crusader name was "Cabor". Remains of a building dating to the

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

period was excavated in 1999.

Ottoman Empire

In 1517, Kabul was incorporated into the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

. In 1596, the village appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the ''

Nahiya A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level divisi ...

'' of

, part of

Safad Sanjak Safed Sanjak (; ) was a '' sanjak'' (district) of Damascus Eyalet ( Ottoman province of Damascus) in 1517–1660, after which it became part of the Sidon Eyalet (Ottoman province of Sidon). The sanjak was centered in Safed and spanned the Galil ...

, with a population of 40

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

households, 9

bachelors, 14 Jewish households and 1 Jewish bachelor. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on wheat, barley, fruit trees, cotton, and bees, in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 7,926

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (anglicized as ''akche'', ''akcheh'' or ''aqcha''; ; , , in Europe known as '' asper'') was a silver coin mainly known for being the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. It was also used in other states includi ...

. In 1859, the population was estimated to be 400 people, with 30

feddan A feddan () is a unit of area used in Egypt, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Oman. In Classical Arabic, the word means 'a yoke of oxen', implying the area of ground that could be tilled by oxen in a certain time. In Egypt, the feddan is the only n ...

s as tillage.Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p
271
/ref> The French explorer

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

visited in 1875. He found many rock-cut

cistern A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster. Cisterns are disti ...

s, scattered cut stones, some of which were used in building, vestiges of a surrounding wall, and remains of

sarcophagi A sarcophagus (: sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a coffin, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek σάρξ ' meaning "flesh", and φ� ...

adorned with discs and garlands." In 1881, the

Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization i ...

's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' described Kabul as a moderate sized village with olive groves to the north and south. A population list from about 1887 showed that Kabul had about 415 inhabitants; all Muslims.

British Mandate

In the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divis ...

conducted by the British Mandate authorities, the population is cited as 365 Muslims,Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Acre, p.
37
/ref> increasing at the time of the 1931 census to 457, still all Muslims, in 100 houses.Mills, 1932, p
101
/ref> In the 1945 statistics the population was up to 560 Muslims,Department of Statistics, 1945, p
4
/ref> while the total land area was 10,399

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,065 were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 5,539 for cereals, while 56 dunams were classified as built-up areas.

Israel

The village was captured by the Haganah on 15 July 1948 during Operation Dekel, particularly the Sheva Brigade. The village was not attacked and very few villagers left. However, some Kabul residents were among those from other villages who were expelled to

'Ara Ara (; ) is a village in the Haifa District in northern Israel, located in the Wadi Ara valley. Since 1985, 'Ara has been part of the Ar'ara local council. It is located north of highway 65, between Ar'ara and Kfar Qara. Its population of 4,6 ...

on 8 January 1949. Currently, there are five

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

s in the town.Welcome to Kabul
Palestine Remembered. In 1974, it received the status of local council by the government.Gutterman, Dov
Kabul (Israel)
CRW Flags.

Demographics

In 1859 the population was estimated as being 400. In a 1922 census by the British Mandate of Palestine, Kabul had 365 inhabitants, rising to 457 in 1931. According to the

Israel Central Bureau of Statistics The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (, ''HaLishka HaMerkazit LiStatistika''; ), abbreviated CBS, is an Israeli government office established in 1949 to carry out research and publish statistical data on all aspects of Israeli life, including ...

, the town of Kabul had a population of 7,134 in 1995, rising to 9,400 in 2005. Its inhabitants are mostly Muslims. Kabul's prominent families are Rayan, Hamoud, Taha, Morad, Hamdony, Ibrahim, Hebi, Uthman, Ashkar, Sharari, Akari, Badran and Bouqai. The town hosts a large number of Internally displaced Palestinians from the nearby destroyed villages of al-Birwa, al-Damun,

Mi'ar Mi'ar (), was a Palestinian village located 17.5 kilometers east of Acre. Its population in 1945 was 770. The Crusaders referred to it as "Myary". By the 19th century, during Ottoman rule, it was a large Muslim village. The village was a center ...

and

al-Ruways Al-Ruways (), was a Palestinian Arab village on a rocky hill located southeast of Acre and south of the village of al-Damun. Its population in 1945 was 330. Al-Ruways was depopulated following its capture by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab ...

.Palestinian Internally Displaced Persons inside Israel: Challenging the Solid Structures
BADIL, p.5. All of the inhabitants are

Arab citizens of Israel The Arab citizens of Israel form the country's largest ethnic minority. Their community mainly consists of former Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, Mandatory Palestine citizens (and their descendants) who continued to inhabit the territory ...

, mostly adherents of

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * (pp
103
?)
129154194
197
200202
* * * * * * * ( pp
1185
* * p. 192-3 * * * * * *

External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 5
IAAWikimedia commons
{{Authority control Arab localities in Israel Local councils in Northern District (Israel) Ancient Jewish settlements of Galilee