Tiberias

Etymology

The city of Tiberias was named after the Roman Emperor Tiberius.

A Midrash regarding the city's name appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah 6A:

"Rabbi Yirmiya said: [...] And why is it called Tiberias? Because it sits at the navel (tabur) of the Land of Israel".

Rashi, in his commentary, provides two interpretations of the Midrash. The first explains the word "navel" (tabur) as referring to the lowest point in the Land of Israel. The second interpretation suggests that Tiberias is situated at the geographical center of the Land of Israel. Ishtori Haparchi later substantiated this claim through measurements of the entire land, demonstrating its accuracy.

Biblical relevance

Hebrew Bible and Talmud

Jewish tradition holds that Tiberias was built on the site of the ancient Israelite village of Rakkath (or Rakkat), first mentioned in the Book of Joshua (Josh 19:35). In Talmudic times, the Jews still referred to it by this name.

Gospels

See Diocese of Tiberias for ecclesiastical history

The city is mentioned directly only in John 6:23, noting that boats from Tiberias came near the place where Jesus had fed the 5,000.

History

Roman period

Tiberias was founded sometime around 18–20 CE in the Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea by the Roman client king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas made it the capital of his realm in Galilee and named it after the Roman emperor Tiberius. The city was built in immediate proximity to a spa which had developed around seventeen natural mineral hot springs, Hammat Tiberias. Tiberias was at first a strictly pagan city, but later became populated mainly by Jews, with its growing spiritual and religious status exerting a strong influence on balneological practices. Conversely, in Antiquities of the Jews, the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus calls the village with hot springs Emmaus, today's Hammat Tiberias, located near Tiberias. This name also appears in his work The Jewish War.

Under the Roman Empire, the city was known by its Koine Greek name Τιβεριάς (Tiberiás, Greek: Τιβεριάδα, romanized: Tiveriáda).

In the days of Herod Antipas, some of the most religiously orthodox Jews, who were struggling against the process of Hellenisation, which had affected even some priestly groups, refused to settle there: the presence of a cemetery rendered the site ritually unclean for the Jews and particularly for the priestly caste. Antipas settled many non-Jews there from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains in order to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the acropolis. The prestige of Tiberias was so great that the Sea of Galilee soon came to be named the Sea of Tiberias; however, the Jewish population continued to call it Yam HaKineret, its traditional name. The city was governed by a city council of 600 with a committee of ten until 44 CE, when a Roman procurator was set over the city after the death of Herod Agrippa I. The city is estimated to have had a population between 4,500 and 15,000 during the first century CE.

Tiberias is mentioned in John 6:23 as the location from which boats had sailed to the opposite, eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd seeking Jesus after the miraculous feeding of the 5000 used these boats to travel back to Capernaum on the north-western part of the lake.

In 61 CE, Herod Agrippa II annexed the city to his kingdom whose capital was Caesarea Philippi.

During the First Jewish–Roman War, the Jewish rebels took control of the city and destroyed Herod's palace, and were able to prevent the city from being pillaged by the army of Agrippa II, the Jewish ruler who had remained loyal to Rome. Eventually, the rebels were expelled from Tiberias, and while most other cities in the provinces of Judaea, Galilee and Idumea were razed, Tiberias was spared this fate because its inhabitants had decided not to fight against Rome. It became a mixed city after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; with Judea subdued, the surviving southern Jewish population migrated to Galilee. An epitaph found in Taenarum, Laconia (modern Kyparissa, Greece) records a man named Justus, son of Andromache, from Tiberias. He is believed to have been a first- or second-generation refugee displaced from Tiberias in the aftermath of the revolt.

Early Muslim period

During the Muslim conquest of Syria, Tiberias capitulated to the Arab commander Shurahbil ibn Hasana in c. 636. As part of the agreement, half the houses and churches were ceded to the Muslims, the other half to the Christians. Tiberias thereafter became the capital of Jund al-Urdunn (the military district of [the River] Jordan). Its territory corresponded with the Byzantine province of Palaestina Secunda (Palestine II, i.e. the Galilee and southern Lebanese mountains) with the additions of the Mediterranean coastal towns of Acre and Tyre and Jerash east of the Jordan River. Caliph Umar (r. 634–644) allowed 70 Jewish families from Tiberias to form the core of a renewed Jewish presence in Jerusalem.

The Umayyads, who ruled the caliphate (Islamic empire) in 660–750, developed Tiberias and its district, building palaces and places of entertainment at nearby Khirbat al-Minya and Sinnabra. A Greek inscription credits the first Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I for restoring the Roman-era bathworks at Hammat Gader in 663. The presaging of the inscription with a cross and the use of Greek both signal an effort by Mu'awiya to appease the Christians who formed the majority of his subjects. During this period, Tiberias was a center of trade between Egypt and the Umayyad capital at Damascus, particularly in small wares and agricultural products. Trade was particularly intensive between Tiberias and the other major inland towns of its district, Beisan and Jerash, as well as with Damascus, as indicated by numistatic evidence. Accommodating this trade was a large market in the middle of Tiberias and shops at its southern end.

The town became home to a mixed population of Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Muslims were concentrated in the southern quarter, while the Jews resided in the north side. Jewish studies flourished around the town's Eretz Israel Academy. The oral traditions of ancient Hebrew, still in use today, were codified in Tiberias. One of the leading members of the Tiberian Masoretic community was Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, who refined the oral tradition now known as Tiberian Hebrew. Both the Codex Cairensis and the Aleppo Codex were written in Tiberias. The Tiberian vocalization was devised here in the 7th–8th centuries. Willibald visited in 724 and noted several churches and synagogues. In 808, Tiberias had five churches and one convent. Although it was likely a mosque was founded in Tiberias not long after the Muslim conquest, the first known mention of a mosque is by the Jerusalemite geographer al-Muqaddasi in 985, who wrote that it stood in the market and was "large and fine", its floors laid with pebbles resting on stone drums. An imposing mosque, 90 metres (300 feet) long by 78 metres (256 feet) wide, resembling the Great Mosque of Damascus, was raised at the foot of Mount Berenice next to a Byzantine church, to the south of the city, as the eighth century ushered in Tiberias's golden age, when the multicultural city may have been the most tolerant of the Middle East.

Crusader period

During the First Crusade, Tiberias was occupied by the Franks soon after the capture of Jerusalem. The city was given in fief to Tancred, who made it his capital of the Principality of Galilee in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; the region was sometimes called the Principality of Tiberias, or the Tiberiad. In 1099, the original site of the city was abandoned, and settlement shifted north to the present location. St. Peter's Church, originally built by the Crusaders, is still standing today, although the building has been altered and reconstructed over the years.

In the late 12th century, Tiberias' Jewish community numbered 50 Jewish families, headed by rabbis, and at that time the best manuscripts of the Torah were said to be found there. In the 12th-century, the city was the subject of negative undertones in Islamic tradition. A hadith recorded by Ibn Asakir of Damascus (d. 1176) names Tiberias as one of the "four cities of hell." This could have been reflecting the fact that at the time, the town had a notable non-Muslim population.

In 1187, the Ayyubid sultan Saladin dispatched his son al-Afdal to send an envoy to Count Raymond III of Tripoli requesting safe passage through his fiefdom of Galilee and Tiberias. Raymond was obliged to grant the request under the terms of his treaty with Saladin. Saladin's force left Caesarea Philippi to engage the fighting force of the Knights Templar. The Templar force was destroyed in the encounter. Saladin besieged Tiberias on 2 July and entered the town within hours. The Crusader princess Eschiva and her men barricaded in the citadel of Tiberias in the center of town. On 4 July 1187, the Crusader army coming to relieve Tiberias, which included King Guy of Lusignan and Raymond III of Tripoli (Eschiva's husband), was routed by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin, 10 kilometres (6 miles) outside the city. The following day, the Tiberias citadel capitulated, Eschiva accepting Saladin's offer of safe passage. In 1190, upon hearing of the arrival of a large Crusader army under Frederick Barbarossa in Anatolia, Saladin preemptively had the citadel of Tiberias and several other forts dismantled.

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, (Maimonides) also known as Rambam, a leading Jewish legal scholar, philosopher and physician of his period, died in 1204 in Egypt and was later buried in Tiberias. His tomb is one of the city's important pilgrimage sites. Yakut, writing in the 1220s, described Tiberias as a small town, long and narrow. He also describes the "hot salt springs, over which they have built hammams which use no fuel." In 1241, control of the Galilee was transferred to the Crusaders as part of an agreement between Richard of Cornwall and Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Ayyub. The reestablished Principality of Galilee was assigned to Odo of Montbeliard, who rebuilt the citadel of Tiberias. The Crusaders again lost control of the city to the Ayyubids when it was captured by the emir Fakhr al-Din ibn al-Shaykh on 17 June 1247.

Mamluk period

The Mamluk Sultanate succeeded the Ayyubid Sultanate in 1260. In May 1295, the Mamluk governor of Safed, Faris al-Din Ilbaki, founded a maqam (funerary shrine) dedicated to Sukayna bint al-Husayn (great-granddaughter of Muhammad) on the south of Tiberias. The present structure was likely reconstructed in the late 19th century and was well-maintained prior to Israel's founding, though its present condition has deteriorated and it is used as a dump. The dedicatory inscription notes Tiberias at that time consisted of thirty feddans, two of which were endowed to the shrine's waqf, along with several named gardens around the village.

In 1325, Ibn Batuta described Tiberias as a ruin. Tiberias was noted as the center of a amal (subdistrict) of Safed province by the qadi (judge) of Safed Shams al-Din al-Uthmani in 1370 and the historian al-Qalqashandi in 1418.

Ottoman period

The Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine from the Mamluks in 1516. Tiberias remained the center of a subdistrict (nahiye) of Safed district but its administrative jurisdiction was expanded to Nazareth, Kafr Kanna and part of Marj Bani Amir (Jezreel Valley), its northern limit formed by Wadi al-Rubudiyeh (Zalmon Stream). Kafr Kanna served as the sole market center of the Tiberias nahiye in the 16th century. During this period, Tiberias was a small village.

It was one of two places (the other being Meirun) in the Safed district where Jews visited on pilgrimage, specifically the tombs of Maimonides and Rabbi Meir. Italian rabbi Moses Bassola visited Tiberias in 1522, noting that "it was a big city ... and now it is ruined and desolate" with "ten or twelve" Muslim households. The area was dangerous due to the Bedouin and he paid the local governor for protection. In 1543 or 1596, Tiberias had 50 Muslim households and four bachelors. Its main crop was wheat and other crops included barley, fruit, fish, goats and beehives; the total revenue was 3,360 akçe.

As the Ottoman Empire expanded along the southern Mediterranean coast under Sultan Selim I, the Catholic Monarchs began establishing Inquisition commissions. Many conversos, (marranos and moriscos) and Sephardi Jews fled in fear to the Ottoman provinces and were encouraged by the sultan to settle in Palestine. In 1558, a Portuguese-born marrano, Doña Gracia, was granted tax collecting rights in Tiberias and its surrounding villages by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. She envisaged the town becoming a refuge for Jews and obtained a permit to establish Jewish autonomy there. In 1561, her nephew Joseph Nasi, Lord of Tiberias, encouraged Jews to settle and rebuild the city. Securing a firman from the sultan, he and Joseph ben Adruth rebuilt the city walls and lay the groundwork for a textile (silk) industry, planting mulberry trees and urging craftsmen to move there. Plans were made for Jews to move from the Papal States, but when the Ottomans and the Republic of Venice went to war, the plan was abandoned. Ottoman tax registers between 1528 and 1596 do not list a Jewish community in Tiberias. The historian al-Qaramani noted in 1598 that Nasi's walls were strongly built. A 1560 firman noted 2,000–3,000 Muslims, Christians and Jews annually visited the hot springs of Tiberias.

Tiberias lacked importance during the 17th century. Between 1629 and 1634, Tiberias was visited by Jean de Thévenot, who described the ruins of a large "chateau" along the lake shore. Likewise, the Nazareth-based Franciscan Eugène Roger noted the same remains of a citadel and further mentioned its moat filled by the waters of the lake. According to Zvi Razi and Eliot Braun, this structure was the former Crusader citadel. The 1660 destruction of Tiberias by the Druze resulted in abandonment of the city by its Jewish community. Unlike Tiberias, the nearby city of Safed recovered from its destruction, and was not entirely abandoned, remaining an important Jewish center in Galilee. Corneille Le Brun sketched Tiberias in 1679, showing the large citadel on the shoreline rising high above the town's perimeter walls.

British Mandate

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Tiberias had a population of 6,950 inhabitants, consisting of 4,427 Jews, 2,096 Muslims, 422 Christians, and five others. Initially the relationship between Arabs and Jews in Tiberias was good, with few incidents occurring in the Nebi Musa riots in 1920 and the Arab riots throughout Palestine in 1929. The first modern spa was built in 1929. There were 5,381 Jews, 2,645 Muslims, 565 Christians and ten 'others' in the 1931 census.

The landscape of the modern town was shaped by the great flood of 15 May 1934. Deforestation on the slopes above the town combined with the fact that the city had been built as a series of closely packed houses and buildings – usually sharing walls – built in narrow roads paralleling and closely hugging the shore of the lake. Flood waters carrying mud, stones, and boulders rushed down the slopes and filled the streets and buildings with water so rapidly that many people did not have time to escape; 35 people were killed. The city rebuilt on the slopes and the British Mandatory government planted the Swiss Forest on the slopes above the town to hold the soil and prevent similar disasters from recurring. A new seawall was constructed, moving the shoreline several yards out from the former shore. In October 1938, Arab militants killed 19 Jews in Tiberias during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. By 1945, the population of Tiberias increased to 6,000 Jews, 4,540 Muslims, 760 Christians with ten 'others'.

Between 8–9 April 1948, sporadic shooting broke out between the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods of Tiberias. Arab Liberation Army and irregular forces attacked and closed the Rosh Pinna road, isolating the northern Jewish settlements. On 10 April, the Haganah launched a mortar barrage against the Arab residential areas in Tiberias, killing some Arab residents. The local National Committee refused the offer of the Arab Liberation Army to take over defense of the city, but a small contingent of outside irregulars moved in. Some fled in the wake of news of the Deir Yassin massacre.

During 10–17 April, the Haganah attacked the city and refused to negotiate a truce, while the British refused to intervene. Newly arrived Arab refugees from Nasir ad-Din told of the civilians there being killed, news which brought panic to the residents of Tiberias. The British authorities had not intervened in Nasir ad-Din, and told the residents of Tiberias that they could offer no protection of the Arab neighbourhoods beyond 22 April.

State of Israel

The city of Tiberias has been almost entirely Jewish since 1948. Many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews settled in the city, following the Jewish exodus from Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Over time, government housing was built to accommodate much of the new population, like in many other development towns.

In 1959, during Wadi Salib riots, the "Union des Nords-africains led by David Ben Haroush, organised a large-scale procession walking towards the nice suburbs of Haifa creating little damage but a great fear within the population. This small incident was taken as an occasion to express the social malaise of the different Oriental communities in Israel and riots spread quickly to other parts of the country; mostly in towns with a high percentage of the population having North African origins like in Tiberias, in Beer-Sheva, in Migdal-Haemek".

Over time, the city came to rely on tourism, becoming a major Galilean center for Christian pilgrims and internal Israeli tourism. The ancient cemetery of Tiberias and its old synagogues are also drawing religious Jewish pilgrims during religious holidays.

Tiberias consists of a small port on the shores of Galilee lake for both fishing and tourist activities. Since the 1990s, the importance of the port for fishing was gradually decreasing, with the decline of the Tiberias lake level, due to continuing droughts and increased pumping of fresh water from the lake. It was expected that the lake of Tiberias will regain its original level (almost 6 metres (20 feet) higher than today), with the full operational capacity of Israeli desalination facilities by 2014. In 2020, the lake raised above the level it was in 1990.

In 2012, plans were announced for a new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, Kiryat Sanz, on a slope on the western side of the Kinneret.

Demographics

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), as of August 2023, 49,876 inhabitants lived in Tiberias. According to CBS, as of December 2019 the city was rated 4 out of 10 on the socio-economic scale. The average monthly salary of an employee for the year 2019 was 7,508 NIS. Among today's population of Jews, many are Mizrahi and Sephardic. The yearly growth rate of its population is 3.9%.

Following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 many ex-South Lebanon Army soldiers and officers who fled from Lebanon settled in Tiberias with their families.

Today almost all of the population is Jewish. In 2022, 93.3% of the population was Jewish and 6.7% was counted as other.

Urban renewal and preservation

Ancient and medieval Tiberias was destroyed by a series of devastating earthquakes, and much of what was built after the major earthquake of 1837 was destroyed or badly damaged in the great flood of 1934. Houses in the newer parts of town, uphill from the waterfront, survived. In 1949, 606 houses, comprising almost all of the built-up area of the old quarter other than religious buildings, were demolished over the objections of local Jews who owned about half the houses. Wide-scale development began after the Six-Day War, with the construction of a waterfront promenade, open parkland, shopping streets, restaurants and modern hotels. Carefully preserved were several churches, including one with foundations dating from the Crusader period, the city's two Ottoman-era mosques, and several ancient synagogues. The city's old masonry buildings constructed of local black basalt with white limestone windows and trim have been designated historic landmarks. Also preserved are parts of the ancient wall, the Ottoman-era citadel, historic hotels, Christian pilgrim hostels, convents and schools.

Archaeology

A 2,000 year-old Roman theatre was discovered 15 metres (49 feet) under layers of debris and refuse at the foot of Mount Bernike south of modern Tiberias. It once seated over 7,000 people.

In 2004, excavations in Tiberias conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered a structure dating to the 3rd century CE that may have been the seat of the Sanhedrin. At the time it was called Beit Hava'ad.

In June 2018, an underground Jewish mausoleum was discovered. Archaeologists said that the mausoleum was between 1,900 to 2,000 years old as of 2018. The names of the dead were inscribed on the ossuaries in Greek.

In January 2021, the foundations of a mosque dating to the earliest years of Muslim rule was excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee by archaeologists led by Katia Cytryn-Silverman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Built around 670 CE, it is considered to have been the first purpose-built mosque in the city.

Geography

Tiberias lies on a narrow strip of rolling terrain along the western shores of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias). The hill country directly west of the old city rises steeply as high as 300 meters (980 ft) above lake level. The town's elevation range is of −200 to 200 metres (−660–660 feet).

Climate

Tiberias has a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSh) that borders a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa), with an annual precipitation of 437.1 mm (17.21 in). Summers in Tiberias average a maximum temperature of 38 °C (100 °F) and a minimum temperature of 25 °C (77 °F) in July and August. The winters are mild, with temperatures ranging from 10 to 18 °C (50–64 °F). Extremes have ranged from 0 °C (32 °F) to 48 °C (118 °F).

Tiberias has been severely damaged by earthquakes since antiquity. Earthquakes are known to have occurred in 30, 33, 115, 306, 363, 419, 447, 631–32 (aftershocks continued for a month), 1033, 1182, 1202, 1546, 1759, 1837, 1927 and 1943.

The city is located above the Dead Sea Transform and is one of the cities in Israel that is most at risk to earthquakes (along with Safed, Beit She'an, Kiryat Shmona, and Eilat).

Health care

In 1885, a Scottish doctor and minister, David Watt Torrance, opened a mission hospital in Tiberias that accepted patients of all races and religions. In 1894, it moved to larger premises at Beit abu Shamnel abu Hannah. David Watt Torrance died in Tiberias in 1923. The same year his son, Dr. Herbert Watt Torrance, was appointed head of the hospital. In 1949, following the establishment of the State of Israel, it became a maternity hospital supervised by the Israeli Department of Health. After its closure in 1959, the building became a guesthouse until 1999, when it was renovated and reopened as the Scots Hotel.

Poria hospital is located near Upper Tiberias neighborhood, and operates a hospitalization control center in the city itself.

Culture

Art

Tiberia due to its pictureque settings and its mix of water and mountain has attracted numerous artists throughout the years. The painter Shimshon Holzman did several water colours of the city which he compiled into an exhibition and set up a studio in Tiberias in 1950. In 2010 a sculpture museum was opened in Tiberias.

Sports

Its first football club established in 1925 was Maccabi Tiberias, but folded in the 1990s after financial difficulties.

Hapoel Tiberias represented the city in the top division of football for several seasons in the 1960s and 1980s, but eventually dropped into the regional leagues and folded due to financial difficulties.

Following Hapoel's demise, a new club, Ironi Tiberias, was established, which currently plays in Liga Leumit.

6 Nations Championship and Heineken Cup winner Jamie Heaslip was born in Tiberias.

The Tiberias Marathon is an annual road race held along the Sea of Galilee in Israel with a field in recent years of approximately 1000 competitors. The course follows an out-and-back format around the southern tip of the sea and was run concurrently with a 10k race along an abbreviated version of the same route. In 2010, the 10k race was moved to the afternoon before the marathon. At approximately 200 metres (660 feet) below sea level, this is the lowest course in the world.

Voting Patterns

In the 2022 election, 82 percent of voters in Tiberias voted for the parties of the right-wing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu, while 16 percent voted for the parties of the center-left coalition led by Yair Lapid and 0.2 percent voted for the Arab parties.

Twin towns – sister cities

Tiberias is twinned with:

Notable people

Prominent people predating the State of Israel, listed by year of birth:

Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes (Rabbi Meir the miracle maker), 2nd-century CE Jewish sage

Johanan bar Nappaha (180–279), rabbi

Sulayman ibn Ahmad at-Tabarani (874–971), Muslim hadith scholar and collector

Akhiyahu HaKohen (fl. 910 CE), rabbi and Hebrew-language grammarian

Dosa ben Saadia (935 – 1018) Talmudic scholar, Gaon of Sura

Donna Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510–1569), Portuguese philanthropist and one of the wealthiest Jewish women of the Renaissance

Daher al-Umar (c. 1689–1775), virtually autonomous Arab ruler of northern Palestine in the mid-18th century

Shemariah Catarivas, 18th-century Talmudic writer

Jacob ha-Cohen Sekili (1846–1918), rabbi

Hassib Sabbagh (1920–2010), Palestinian billionaire businessman, activist and philanthropist

Prominent people in the State of Israel or born/active there, listed alphabetically:

Yossi Abulafia (born 1944), writer and graphic artist

Gadi Eizenkot (born 1960), IDF Chief of General Staff (Feb. 2015 – Jan. 2019)