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Kedesh

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This article is about the Kedesh (in Upper Galilee). For locations called Kadesh, see Kadesh.

Kedesh (alternate spellings: Qedesh, Cadesh, Cydessa) was an ancient Canaanite and later Israelite settlement in Upper Galilee, mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. Its remains are located in Tel Kedesh, 3 km northeast of the modern Kibbutz Malkiya in Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border.[1]

Tel Kedesh
Tel Kedesh
Kedesh is located in Israel
Kedesh
Shown within Israel
Kedesh is located in Northeast Israel
Kedesh
Kedesh (Northeast Israel)
Alternative nameCydessa
LocationNorthern District, Israel
RegionUpper Galilee
Coordinates33°06′42″N 35°31′46″E / 33.111638°N 35.529517°E / 33.111638; 35.529517
TypeSettlement
Site notes
ConditionIn ruins
Public accessyes

The settlement is first documented in the Book of Joshua as a Canaanite citadel conquered by the Israelites and designated as a Levitical city and City of Refuge. In the 8th century BCE, it was captured by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria and its inhabitants deported. Jewish tradition holds that Deborah, Barak and Jael were buried near Kedesh. During the 5th century BCE, it possibly became the capital of the Achaemenid province of Upper Galilee. In the Hellenistic period, Kedesh was the site of battles involving Jonathan Apphus and Seleucid king Demetrius II. In the Roman period, Josephus records Jewish attacks on Kedesh during the First Jewish–Roman War, with Titus establishing a camp there. The site was later mentioned in Eusebius. Excavations from 1997 to 2012 revealed significant Persian and Hellenistic administrative buildings and a large Roman temple complex.

As Qadas (also Cadasa; Arabic: قدس), it was a Palestinian village located 17 kilometers northeast of Safad that was depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war.[2][3] One of seven villages populated by Shia Muslims, called the Metawalis, that fell within the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine, Qadas is today known as the tell of the ancient biblical city of Kedesh.[4][3] The village of Qadas contained many natural springs which served as the village water supply and a Roman temple dating back to the 2nd century.[2]

History

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Iron Age

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Kedesh Naphtali was first documented in the Book of Joshua as a Canaanite citadel conquered by the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua.[4][5] Ownership of Kedesh was turned over by lot to the Tribe of Naphtali and subsequently, at the command of God, Kedesh was set apart by Joshua as a Levitical city and one of the Cities of Refuge along with Shechem and Kiriath Arba (Hebron) (Joshua 20:7).

In the 8th century BCE, during the reign of Pekah, king of Northern Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III of the Neo-Assyrian Empire took Kedesh and deported its inhabitants to Assyria. (2 Kings 15:29)

According to Jewish tradition, Deborah the prophetess, Barak the son of Abinoam and Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, as also Heber, were buried near the spring beneath the town of Kedesh.[6]

Persian period

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Later, during the 5th century BCE, Kedesh may have become the capital for the Achaemenid-controlled and Tyrian-administered province of the Upper Galilee.[7]

Hellenistic period

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In 259 BCE, Kedesh was mentioned by Zenon of Kaunos, a traveling merchant from Ptolemaic Egypt,[8] in the Zenon Papyri.[9] According to 1 Maccabees, a battle between Jonathan Apphus and the Seleucid emperor Demetrius II Nicator took place in Kedesh.[10][11]

Between 145 BCE and 143 BCE, Kedesh (Cades) was overthrown by Jonathan Maccabeus in his fight against Seleucid king Demetrius II Nicator.[12][13]

Roman period

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According to Josephus, after the Jerusalem riots of 66, the Jews attacked a series of gentile cities, including Cydessa (Kedesh), then a Tyrian village,[14] now in Roman Syria. During the First Jewish–Roman War, Titus established his camp there before he departed for battle with John of Gischala.[15]

From 1997 to 2012, Tel Kedesh was excavated by a team from the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology in conjunction with the University of Minnesota,[16] focusing in 2010 and 2012 on the Persian and Hellenistic administrative building of enormous size and complexity. Its expensive decoration and the variety and quantity of artifacts have revealed a dominating administrative presence in the Kedesh valley and the Upper Galilee lasting nearly 350 years.[17] A large Roman temple complex was built there.[15]

Eusebius, writing about the place in his Onomasticon, says: "Kedesh. A priestly city in the inheritance of Naphtali. Previously it was a city of refuge 'in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali.' The 'king of the Assyrians' destroyed it (2 Kings 15:29). This is (now) Kydissos (Κυδισσός), twenty miles from Tyre near Paneas."[18]

Kedesh of Naphtali

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Identification of the biblical "Kedesh of Naphtali" (Judges 4:6, 10) has been the subject of archaeological and historical debate. While many hold the ancient site to be in Upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border, Israeli archaeologist, Yohanan Aharoni, held the view that it lay in Lower Galilee, near the Valley of Jezreel, at a site which bears the same name (now Khirbet Qadish).[19] Some prominent archaeological publications have, therefore, listed the site as being east of the "Jabneel valley" in "Lower Galilee."[20]

Excavation project at Tel Kedesh

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From 1997–2012, archaeological excavations were conducted at the Tel Kedesh site by Sharon Herbert and Andrea Berlin on behalf of the University of Michigan.[21][22] The excavations revealed an enormous Persian-Hellenistic administrative building built in the later sixth century BC. Over the next 350 years, this complex provided a stage for interactions between imperial powers, provincial administrators and local elites – as control shifted from the Achaemenid Persians, to the Ptolemies of Egypt, and then the Seleucids of Syria.


Middle Ages

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Under the rule of the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate in the 10th century CE, Qadas was a town in Jund al-Urrdun ("District of Jordan").[23] According to al-Muqaddasi in 985, "Qadas was a small town on the slope of the mountain. It is 'full of good things'. Jabal Amilah is the district which is in its neighborhood. The town possesses three springs from which the people drink, and they have a bath below the city. The mosque is in the market, and in its court is a palm tree. The climate of this place is very hot. Near Qadas is the (Hulah) Lake."[24][25] Moreover, he described half of Qadas inhabitants as Shia Muslims.[26]

Ishtori Haparchi, visiting the holy sites in the early fourteenth-century wrote of Kedesh: "About half a day's distance southward of Paneas, known in Arabic as Banias, is Kedesh, in the mountain of Naphtali, and it is [now] called Qades."[27]

Ottoman era

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In 1517, Qadas was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after it was captured from the Mamluks, and by 1596, it was under the administration of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Tibnin, under Sanjak Safad. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, cotton, orchards, beehives, and goats, as well as a press that processed either grapes or olives.[28][29]

Victor Guérin visited in 1875, and described the most important ruins there.[30]

In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP), Qadas was described as a stone-built village, situated on a spur of a ridge. The population, which was estimated to be between 100 and 300, cultivated fig and olive trees.[31] SWP also noted that the "Metawali" from Qadas went to nearby Al-Nabi Yusha' to venerate the name of Joshua.[32]

British Mandate era

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Qadas was a part of the French-controlled Lebanon until 1923, when the British Mandate of Palestine's borders were delineated to include it.

Rainfall and the abundance of springs allowed the village to develop a prosperous agricultural economy based on grain, fruit, and olives.[33]

In the 1931 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Qadas had a population of 273; 1 Christian and 272 Muslims, in a total of 56 houses.[34]

In the 1945 statistics the village had a total of 5,709 dunums of land allotted to cereals, while 156 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.[33][35]

 
Qadas ruins on village land 1939
 
Qadas village land 1939

1948 war, and aftermath

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Qadas was occupied by Israeli forces during Operation Yiftach on 28 May 1948. Defended by the Arab Liberation Army and the Lebanese army, its inhabitants fled under the influence of the fall of, or exodus from, neighbouring towns.[36]

 
Qadas 1946

In June, 1948, kibbutz Manara requested land from the newly depopulated village of Qadas, as it was "suitable for winter crops."[37]

The settlement of Yiftach was built in 1948 to the northeast of the village site on lands belonging to Qadas. The village land is also used by the settlements of Malkiyya, founded in 1949, and Ramot Naftali, established in 1945.[38]

Walid Khalidi described the remaining structures of the former village in 1992 as follows:

"Stones from the destroyed houses are strewn over the fenced-in site, and a few partially destroyed walls near the spring are visible. The flat portions of the surrounding lands are planted with apple trees; the spring provides drinking water for cattle.[38]

Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, has publicly recalled on occasion the fate of Qadas and the other Metawali villages in his references to the 1948 annexation of several Lebanese villages, the expulsion of their residents, the expropriation of their property and the destruction of their homes.[3]

As of 2023, an archaeological project was underway to investigate the recent history of Qadas before its destruction.[39] Team leader Raphael Greenberg noted that his project was unusual in its focus on Palestinian remains, contrary to the usual practice of digging around or through them to reach what is beneath.[39]

Other

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In the Book of Judges, the great oak tree in Zaanaim is stated to be near Kedesh, though this verse could be a reference to a second Tel Kedesh, located 3 km to the south of Megiddo, within the territory of the Israelite tribe of Issachar. (Judges 4:11)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Negev & Gibson, eds. (2001), p. 278.
  2. ^ a b "Welcome to Qadas". Palestine Remembered. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
  3. ^ a b c Danny Rubinstein (2006-08-06). "The Seven Lost Villages". Haaretz. Archived from the original on October 1, 2007.
  4. ^ a b "The Hebrew University Excavations at Tel Qedesh". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2023-02-12. A Shi'a village by the name of Qadas occupied part of the mound in the last centuries, and was abandoned in the aftermath of the 1948 War.; "The Hebrew University Expedition to Qedesh in the Galilee". Archaeological Institute of America. 2021-11-21. Retrieved 2023-02-12. Tel Qedesh is one of the largest biblical mounds in northern Israel. First settled as early as the Chalcolithic period, the site reached its peak during the Early Bronze Age, when an enormous site (ca. 60 hectares), extending well beyond the main mound, emerged during this crucial phase of early Levantine urbanism. A Canaanite city continued to thrive on the mound during the second millennium BCE, to be followed by an important Israelite center during the Iron Age II, known as one of the Refuge and Levite Cities (Joshua 20:7; 21:32). Following its conquest by the Assyrian King Tiglath Pileser III in 732 BCE (2 Kings 15:29), it re-emerged as a Phoenician administrative center during the Persian and Hellenistic periods, and later as an important pagan town on the boundary between Tyre and Jewish Galilee during the Second Temple period (BJ 3:35–40). A rural cultic center, housing two temples and numerous mausolea (elaborate burial monuments), developed here in the Late Roman period, and an important market town is attested during the Early Islamic period. In the more recent past, the mound was occupied by a small Shi'ite village by the name of Qadas… the Arab village of Qadas, which was occupying the upper mound during the last centuries.
  5. ^ Al-Ya'qubi quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.467.
  6. ^ Burial Places of the Fathers, published by Yehuda Levi Nahum in צהר לחשיפת גנזי תימן, Tel-Aviv 1986, p. 248
  7. ^ Berlin, Andrea and Herbert, Sharon (2005). "Life and Death on the Israel-Lebanon Border". Biblical Archaeology Review 31 (5), 34-43.
  8. ^ Papyrus Cairo Zenon I 59.004
  9. ^ Papyrus Cairo Zenon I 59.004
  10. ^ Antiquities of the Jews 13.154–62; The Wars of the Jews 2.459, 4.104.
  11. ^ 1 Maccabees 11:63–74 (text)
  12. ^ 1 Maccabees 11:63-74 (text)
  13. ^ Antiquities of the Jews 13.154-62; The Wars of the Jews 2.459, 4.104.
  14. ^ Rogers, Guy MacLean (2021). For the Freedom of Zion: the Great Revolt of Jews against Romans, 66-74 CE. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 293. ISBN 978-0-300-24813-5. So Titus camped not close by the town but at some distance from it, at the Tyrian village of Kedasa (Qedesh) some six miles away to the northeast on the road to Tyre. Perhaps logistical or supply requirements influenced Titus's decision. He had to look after the welfare of his cavalrymen's mounts, and there may have been good grazing land around Kedasa. Given the fact that Kedasa was a Tyrian settlement, it is also possible that Titus might have assumed that Kedasa's inhabitants would be friendly, if not active allies against the Jews. Titus presumably knew that the Tyrians had taken part in the earlier attack upon Gischala.
  15. ^ a b Fischer, Moshe; Ovadiah, Asher; Roll, Israel (1984). "The Roman Temple at Kedesh, Upper Galilee: A Preliminary Study". Tel Aviv. 11 (2): 146–172. doi:10.1179/tav.1984.1984.2.146. ISSN 0334-4355.
  16. ^ "Tel Kedesh, Israel". Archived from the original on July 20, 2012.
  17. ^ "Features - the Story of a Site and a Project: Excavating Tel Kedesh - Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2012".
  18. ^ Eusebius, Onomasticon - The Place Names of Divine Scripture, (ed.) R. Steven Notley & Ze'ev Safrai, Brill: Leiden 2005, pp. 111–112 (§601), note 601 ISBN 0-391-04217-3
  19. ^ Meyers, E.M., Strange, J.F., and Groh, D.E., "The Meiron Excavation Project: Archaeological Survey in Galilee and Golan, 1976," in: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (No. 230 - April 1978), p. 4, citing Aharoni, Y. (1976) "Upper Galilee," in vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (ed. M. Avi-Yonah), Israel Exploration Society: Jerusalem.
  20. ^ Negev & Gibson, eds. (2001), p. 278 (s.v. Kedesh-Naphtali).
  21. ^ Israel Antiquities Authority, Excavators and Excavations Permit for Year 2010, Survey Permit # G-36
  22. ^ The Story of a Site and a Project: Excavating Tel Kedesh, published in Archaeology (Volume 65 Number 3, May/June 2012): Archaeological Institute of America
  23. ^ Al-Ya'qubi quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.39.
  24. ^ Muqaddasi, 1886, p. 28
  25. ^ Muqaddasi quoted in le Strange, 1890, p.468
  26. ^ Muqaddasi, 1886, p. [1]
  27. ^ Ishtori Haparchi, Sefer Kaftor Ve'ferah (vol. 2), ed. Avraham Yosef Havatzelet, Jerusalem 2007, (chapter 11) p. 53 (Hebrew). The editor (ibid.), note 8, makes note of the fact that the site is mentioned in Joshua 20:7, but that today it is called Tell Kedesh, located at grid reference 200 / 285.
  28. ^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 181. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 484
  29. ^ Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6 Archived 2019-04-20 at the Wayback Machine writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9
  30. ^ Guérin, 1880, pp. 355-362; as given in Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 229
  31. ^ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 202. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 484
  32. ^ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 228
  33. ^ a b Khalidi, 1992, p.484.
  34. ^ Mills, 1932, p. 109
  35. ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 120
  36. ^ Morris, 2004, pp. 251, 303, 361, 402. Khalidi, 1992, pp. 484, 485
  37. ^ Morris, 2004, p. 363, note #130, p. 402
  38. ^ a b Khalidi, 1992, p.485.
  39. ^ a b Ariel David (September 13, 2023). "Digging Up the Nakba: Israeli Archaeologists Excavate Palestinian Village Abandoned in 1948". Haaretz.

Bibliography

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