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50-656: Hittin was located on the northern slopes of the double hill known as the " Horns of Hattin ." It was strategically and commercially significant due to its location overlooking the Plain of Hittin , which opens onto the coastal lowlands of the Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) to the east, and to the west is linked by mountain passes leading towards the plains of lower Galilee . These plains, with their east–west passages, served as routes for commercial caravans and military invasions throughout

100-535: A Muslim in Aleppo, he felt he could travel safely and not be questioned on his identity. To test his disguise, he made 3 journeys in the area of Syria, Lebanon , Palestine and Transjordan travelling as a poor Arab, sleeping on the ground and eating with camel drivers. With these trips being successful, he prepared to continue his journey to Cairo. He left Aleppo in early 1812 and headed south through Damascus , Ajloun , and Amman . In Kerak , he trusted his security to

150-460: A Muslim on his passage to Timbuktu . Burckhardt wrote of his travels in Egypt and Nubia, where he witnessed slave trading : "I frequently witnessed scenes of the most shameless indecency, which the traders, who were the principal actors, only laughed at. I may venture to state, that very few female slaves who have passed their tenth year, reach Egypt or Arabia in a state of virginity." After crossing

200-496: A gloomy and almost subterraneous passage as I have described. The natives call this monument Kaszr Faraoun, or Pharaoh's castle; and pretend that it was the residence of a prince. But it was rather the sepulchre of a prince, and great must have been the opulence of a city, which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers... In comparing the testimonies of the authors cited in Reland 's Palastina, it appears very probable that

250-571: A sermon at that exact spot." This geography of Israel article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Johann Ludwig Burckhardt Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis , Jean Louis ) Burckhardt (24 November 1784 – 15 October 1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and Orientalist . Burckhardt assumed the alias Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah during his travels in Arabia. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis . He

300-408: Is Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses." Around this time and until the late 18th century, Hittin was a small village in the autonomous sheikhdom of Zahir al-Umar . In 1766, Zahir's son Sa'id sought to control Hittin and nearby Tur'an , but was defeated by his father. Nonetheless, Zahir granted Sa'id both villages when he pardoned him. A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1800 by Pierre Jacotin showed

350-619: Is best known for rediscovering two of the world's most famous examples of rock-cut architecture – the ruins of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan and the temples of Abu Simbel in Egypt. Burckhardt was born on 24 November 1784 in Lausanne , Switzerland to a wealthy Basel family of silk merchants, the Burckhardt family. His father was named Rudolf, son of Gedeon Burckhardt, an affluent silk ribbon manufacturer; his mother, Sara Rohner,

400-469: Is held there once a week, when ten thousand men would gather from the neighbourhood to sell and buy. It is situated in a spacious valley, bordered on both sides by low rocks. There is a mosque, a public bath and a caravanserei in it." Çelebi also reported that there was a shrine called the Teyké Mughraby, inhabited by over one hundred dervishes, which held the grave of Sheikh 'Imād ed-dīn, of the family of

450-543: The Liwā’ ( Arabic : لِـوَاء , "District") of Safed . The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives , goats and beehives. In 1646, the bulaydah ( Arabic : بُـلَـيْـدَة , "small village") was visited by Evliya Çelebi , who described it as follows: "It is a village in the territory of Safad, consisting of 200 Muslim houses. No Druzes live here. It is like a flourishing little town ( bulayda ) abounding with vineyards, orchards and gardens. Water and air are refreshing. A large fair

500-660: The British Museum . He was again stricken with dysentery and died in Cairo on 15 October 1817, never having made his intended journey to the Niger. He was buried as a Muslim, and the tombstone over his grave bears the name that he assumed on his travels in Arabia. He had from time to time carefully transmitted to England his journals and notes, and a copious series of letters, so very few details of his journeys have been lost. He bequeathed his collection of 800 volumes of oriental manuscripts to

550-696: The Islamic period in Palestine were born or buried in Hittin, according to early Arab geographers such as Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229) and al-Ansari al-Dimashqi (1256–1327), who himself was called the Shaykh of Hittin. 'Ali al-Dawadari, the writer, Quranic exegetist, and calligrapher , died in the village in 1302. In 1596, Hittin was a part of the Ottoman Nāḥiyah ( Arabic : نَـاحِـيَـة , "Subdistrict") of Tiberias under

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600-606: The Sinai Peninsula , he arrived at Cairo on 4 September 1812. After spending four months in Cairo with no westbound caravans across the Sahara available, Burckhardt decided to journey up the Nile River to Upper Egypt and Nubia . He justified this to his employer with the argument that the information he would collect on African cultures would help him in his planned journey to west Africa. In January 1813, he departed Cairo travelling up

650-510: The plague epidemics that ravaged the Hejaz and Egypt between 1812 and 1816. He wrote: "In five or six days after my arrival [in Yanbu] the mortality increased; forty or fifty persons died in a day, which, in a population of five or six thousand, was a terrible mortality." Burckhardt spent the remaining two years of his life editing his journals and living modestly in Cairo while waiting and preparing for

700-430: The "bright faces and bright colours" he saw there, and the "peculiar" costumes: "long tight gowns, or cassocks, of scarlet silk , with diagonal yellow stripes, and generally a bright red and blue or yellow jacket over them; while their cheeks were encircled by piastres , after Nazareth fashion, and some of the more wealthy wore necklaces of gold coins, with a doubloon for pendant in front." In 1875 Victor Guérin visited

750-454: The Crusaders. In 2007, an Israeli-Palestinian advocacy organization, Zochrot , protested development plans that encroach on the site and threaten to "swallow up the abandoned remains of the Hittin village." Ali of Herat wrote (c. 1173) that both Jethro and his wife were buried in Hittin. Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229) wrote that another shrine near Arsuf that claimed to be the tomb of Shu'aib

800-551: The Nile river over land via donkey. He planned to reach Dongola in what is now modern-day Sudan . He was eventually blocked by hostile people less than 160 km from his goal near the third cataract of the Nile river. Journeying north, he came across the sand-choked ruins of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel in March 1813. After considerable effort, he was unable to excavate

850-552: The Red Sea, he entered Jeddah on 18 July 1814 and became sick with dysentery for the first time in his travels. Here he proved his credentials as a Muslim and was permitted to travel to Mecca. He spent several months in Mecca performing the various rituals associated with the Hajj which was unheard of for a European. He wrote of his detailed observations of the city and the deportment and culture of

900-591: The UN vote in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan , and assured the villagers they did not want war. There were 50 men in the village who had rifles, with 25-50 rounds of ammunition each. The villagers grew anxious listening to Radio Amman and Radio Damascus, but remained uninvolved until June 9, when Jewish fighters attacked the neighbouring village of Lubya and were repulsed. Shortly after an Israeli armoured unit, accompanied by infantry, advanced towards

950-577: The ages. Archaeological excavations near the village have yielded pottery fragments from the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic period . An Early Bronze Age wall was excavated just west of the village. The Arab village may have been built over the Canaanite town of Siddim or Ziddim ( Joshua 19:35 ), which in the third century BCE acquired the Old Hebrew name Kfar Hittin ("village of grain"). It

1000-604: The army objected to Hittin for security reasons. In 1949 and 1950, the Jewish villages of Arbel and Kfar Zeitim were founded on the lands of Hittin. In the 1950s, the Druze community in Israel was given official custodianship over the Jethro shrine and 100 dunams of land around it. A request to build housing there for Druze soldiers was rejected. The Druze annual pilgrimage continued to be held and

1050-457: The caravan that would take him west across the Sahara to Timbuktu and the Niger river. He made a trip to Alexandria and another to Mount Sinai where he visited Saint Catherine's Monastery before returning to Cairo. In Cairo, he met and introduced The Great Belzoni to Henry Salt , the British consul to Egypt, who commissioned Belzoni to remove the colossal bust of Ramesses II from Thebes to

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1100-514: The city mentioned as m-r-m-i-m in a campaign list of Thutmose III (r. 1479-1425 BCE), and again by Ramses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE) and Tiglath Pileser III in 733/32 BCE, based on geography, archaeology, text analysis, and logical assumptions. Kurûn Hattîn is believed to be the site of the Battle of Hattin , Saladin 's victory over the Crusaders in 1187. The Battle of Hattin was fought in summer when

1150-580: The course of the Niger River . The expedition called for an overland journey from Cairo to Timbuktu . To prepare for the journey, he attended Cambridge University and studied Arabic , science and medicine. At this time he also began to adopt Arabian costume. In 1809 he left England and travelled to Aleppo , Syria to perfect his Arabic and Muslim customs. En route to Syria, he stopped in Malta and learned of Ulrich Jasper Seetzen who had left Cairo in search of

1200-459: The cultivated land, 1,967 dunams consisted of plantations and irrigable land, and 10,462 dunams were devoted to cereals. The built-up area of the village was 70 dunams and it was populated entirely by Arabs. In 1948 the village mukhtar was Ahmad ´Azzam Abu Radi. According to the villagers, they did not feel threatened by their Jewish neighbours at Kfar Hittim, who had visited in November 1947 after

1250-414: The decision of Greek scholars. He could not remain long at the ruins or take detailed notes due to his fears of being unmasked as a treasure-seeking infidel. Seeing no evidence of the name of the ruins, he could only speculate that they were in fact the ruins of Petra which he had been informed about on his journey to Syria. He continued his travels and after crossing the southern deserts of Transjordan and

1300-530: The early 20th-century, some of the village land in the eastern part of the Arbel Valley was sold to Jewish land purchase societies. In 1910, the first Jewish village, Mitzpa , was established there. In 1924, the second Jewish village, Kfar Hittim , was established on land purchased from Hattin. In the 1922 census of Palestine , conducted by the Mandatory Palestine authorities , the population of Hattin

1350-534: The entrance to the temple. He later told his friend Giovanni Belzoni about the ruins and it was he who later returned in 1817 to excavate the temple. Burckhardt continued north to Esmé . He later made an additional trip to Nubia travelling as far as Shendi near the Pyramids of Meroë . From here his journey took him to the Red Sea , where he resolved to make the pilgrimage to Mecca as this would enhance his credentials as

1400-416: The first modern European to lay eyes on the ancient Nabataean city of Petra: I was particularly desirous of visiting Wady Mousa, of the antiquities of which I had heard the country people speak in terms of great admiration... I hired a guide at Eldjy, to conduct me to Haroun's tomb ... I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen… Future travellers may visit

1450-446: The grass was tinder-dry. Saladin's troops set fire to the grass, after cutting off the Crusaders' access to water in the Sea of Galilee . Saladin built a "victory dome," Qubbat al-Nasr, on the hill. Thietmar , a German pilgrim who visited the site in 1217, wrote that the "temple Saladin had erected to his gods after the victory is now desolate." In the early 17th century, ruins were found on

1500-415: The local governor, Sheikh Youssef. The governor, under the guise of concern for his guest, liberated him of his most valuable belongings and then sent him south with an unscrupulous guide. The guide soon after took the remainder of his belongings and abandoned him in the desert. Burckhardt found a nearby Bedouin encampment and obtained a new guide and continued his journey south. On the road to Cairo along

1550-550: The local inhabitants. His journals were a valuable source of information for the African explorer Richard Burton who also later travelled to Mecca a few decades later. He later made a side trip to Medina where he again became sick with dysentery and spent three months recovering. Departing Arabia, he arrived in a state of great exhaustion in the Sinai peninsula and travelled overland to Cairo, arriving on 24 June 1815. Burckhardt witnessed

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1600-547: The lost city of Petra and had subsequently been murdered. Once in Syria, he adopted the alias Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah to hide his true European identity. While in Syria, he investigated local languages and archaeological sites and became the first discoverer of Hittite or Luwian hieroglyphs . He suffered setbacks during his time in Syria having been robbed of his belongings more than once by people he had paid to guarantee his protection. After more than 2 years living and studying as

1650-499: The more dangerous inland route to Aqaba , Burckhardt encountered rumours of ancient ruins in a narrow valley near the supposed biblical tomb of Aaron , the brother of Moses . This region was the former Roman province of Arabia Petraea leading him to believe these were the ruins he had heard about in Malta. Telling his guide that he wished to sacrifice a goat at the tomb, he was led through the narrow valley where on 22 August 1812, he became

1700-439: The place, named as Hattin . Johann Ludwig Burckhardt , a Swiss traveller to Palestine around 1817, noted Hittin as a village, while in 1838 Edward Robinson described it as a small village of stone houses. William McClure Thomson , who visited in the 1850s, found "gigantic" hedges of cactus surrounding Hittin. He reported that visiting the local shrine was considered a cure for insanity. In 1863 H. B. Tristram , wrote about

1750-512: The plains of Hattin in the Lower Galilee , Israel . It is most famous as the site of the Battle of Hattin (1187). Excavations were carried out on the hill in 1976 and 1981. The ruined Canaanite hilltop fortress of Tel Qarney Hittin , the site name used by Israeli archaeologists, was identified by Zvi Gal with Meron/Merom of the Hebrew Bible ( Joshua 11 , " waters of Merom ") and with

1800-498: The population was estimated at 1,190 Arabs. The village had a number of large and influential families; Rabah, 'Azzam, Chabaytah, Sa'adah, Sha'ban, Dahabra, and Houran. Horns of Hattin The Horns of Hattin ( Hebrew : קרני חיטין , romanized :  Karnei Hittin Arabic : قرون حطين , romanized :  Qurûn Hattîn ) is an extinct volcano with twin peaks overlooking

1850-453: The prophet Shu'eib, who was reputed to have lived for two hundred years. Richard Pococke , who visited in 1727, writes that it is "famous for some pleasant gardens of lemon and orange trees; and here the Turks have a mosque , to which they pay great veneration, having, as they say, a great sheik buried there, whom they call Sede Ishab, who, according to tradition (as a very learned Jew assured me)

1900-525: The ruins in Wady Mousa are those of the ancient Petra, and it is remarkable that Eusebius says the tomb of Aaron was shewn near Petra. Of this at least I am persuaded, from all the information I procured, that there is no other ruin between the extremities of the Dead sea and Red sea, of sufficient importance to answer to that city. Whether or not I have discovered the remains of the capital of Arabia Petraea, I leave to

1950-430: The spot under the protection of an armed force; the inhabitants will become more accustomed to the researches of strangers; and the antiquities of Wady Mousa will then be found to rank amongst the most curious remains of ancient art… An excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller, after having traversed for nearly half an hour such

2000-551: The summit that appeared to be those of a church. Prior to 1948, an Arab village, Hittin , lay at the foot of the hill. Some scholars have identified the hill with the Mount of Beatitudes , where Jesus delivered his Sermon on the Mount . Writing in 1864, Fergus Ferguson describes it as the "supposed" site, because although "its position corresponds with the particulars of the narrative", no one can declare with any certainty that He gave

2050-460: The surrounding plain. A population list from about 1887 showed Hattin to have about 1,350 inhabitants; 100 Jews and 1,250 Muslims. An elementary school was established in the village around 1897. Conder writes in his Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1887): "The place was surrounded by olives and fruit trees, and a good spring—copious and fresh—flowed on the northwest into the gorge of Wadi Hammam." In

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2100-456: The village from the direction of Mitzpa . The attack was rebuffed, but all the local ammunition was used up. On the night of July 16–17, almost all the inhabitants of the village evacuated. Many left for Sallama , between Deir Hanna and Maghar , leaving behind a few elderly people and 30-35 militiamen. On July 17, Hittin was occupied by the Golani Brigade as part of Operation Dekel . When

2150-448: The village, mentioning in his writings that there was a local tradition that alleged that the tomb of Jethro ( Neby Chaʾīb ), the father-in-law of Moses, was to be found in the village. In 1881, the PEF 's Survey of Western Palestine described Hittin as a large well-built village of stone, surrounded by fruit and olive trees. It had an estimated 400-700 villagers, all Muslim, who cultivated

2200-486: The villagers tried to return, they were chased off. On one occasion, some men and pack animals were killed. The villagers remained at Salamah for almost a month, but as their food-supply dwindled and their hope of returning faded, they left together for Lebanon . Some resettled in Nazareth . The Israeli government considered allowing 560 internally displaced Palestinians from Hittin and Alut to return to their villages, but

2250-579: Was 889; 880 Muslims and 9 Jews, increasing in the 1931 census to 931, all Muslims, in a total of 190 houses. In 1932 Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and the local Palestinian leadership affiliated with the Istiqlal party inaugurated a celebration on the anniversary of Saladin's victory in Hittin. Hittin Day, held on August 27 of that year in the courtyard of a school in Haifa, was intended to be an anti-imperialist rally. It

2300-462: Was Rudolf's second wife following a brief marriage to the daughter of the mayor of Basel which ended in divorce. After studying at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen , he travelled to England in the summer of 1806 with goal of obtaining employment in the civil service. Unsuccessful, he took employment with the African Association with the objective of resolving some of the problems of

2350-630: Was attended by thousands of people from Palestine, Lebanon , Damascus , and Transjordan . The speeches delivered at the event centered around the independence of the Arab world and the importance of unity between Arab Muslims and Christians . In 1945 , Hittin had a population of 1,190 Muslims with a total land area of 22,764 dunams (22.764 km), of which 22,086 dunams were Arab -owned and 147 dunams were Jewish -owned. The remaining 531 dunams were public property. Cultivable land amounted to 12,426 dunams, while uncultivated land amounted to 10,268 dunams. Of

2400-503: Was known as Kfar Hittaya in the Roman period . In the 4th century CE, it was a Jewish rabbinical town. Hittin was located near the site of the Battle of Hattin , where Saladin defeated the Crusaders in 1187. It is described as having been near the base camp of Saladin's Ayyubid army, by Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Conder in Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1897). Many prominent figures from

2450-467: Was misidentified. Sunni Muslims and Druze would make ziyarat pilgrimages to Hittin to the Tomb of Shu'ayb , and the Druze celebration at the site attracted members of their religion from other parts of the region of Syria . In 1596 Hittin had a population of 605. In the 1922 census of Palestine Hittin had a population of 889, which rose to 931 in the 1931 census. There were 190 houses that year. In 1945

2500-400: Was officially recognized as a religious holiday by Israel in 1954. According to Ilan Pappé , a resident of Deir Hanna unsuccessfully applied to hold a summer camp on the site of the Hittin mosque, which he hoped to restore. The land is currently used as grazing pasture by the nearby kibbutzim . According to tradition, the mosque was built by Saladin in 1187 to commemorate his victory over

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