.jpg)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Kfar Hittim
Kfar Hittim (Hebrew: כְּפַר חִטִּים) is a moshav shitufi in northern Israel. Located on a hill 3 km west of Tiberias, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lower Galilee Regional Council. It was Israel's first moshav shitufi, and can also be considered the first Tower and Stockade settlement. In 2024 it had a population of 621.
Hittin was located on the northern slopes of the double hill known as "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 Lake Tiberias to the east, and to the west is linked by mountain passes leading towards the plains of the Lower Galilee. These plains, with their east-west passages, served as routes for commercial caravans and military invasions.
Archaeological excavations have yielded pottery fragments from the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic period.
It has been suggested that the Arab village of Hittin was 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 was known as Kfar Hittaya in the Roman period. In the 4th century CE, it was a Jewish rabbinical town.
In 1596, Hittin was a part of the Ottoman Nāḥiyah (Arabic: نَـاحِـيَـة, "Subdistrict") of Tiberias under the Liwā’ (Arabic: لِـوَاء, "District") of Safed. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, goats and beehives. Richard Pococke, who visited in 1727, writes that the village was "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) is Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses." William McClure Thomson, who visited in the 1850s, reported that visiting the shrine was considered a cure for insanity. In 1875 Victor Guérin wrote about the local tradition that the tomb of Jethro (Neby Chaʾīb), the father-in-law of Moses, was found in Hittin.
A population list from about 1887 showed 1,350 inhabitants; 100 Jews[clarification needed] and 1,250 Muslims. An elementary school was established in the village around 1897.
In the early 20th-century, village land in the eastern part of the Arbel Valley was sold to Jewish land societies. In 1910, Mitzpa, was established there.
The land on which Kfar Hittin sits was purchased by the Jewish National Fund in 1904, with the help of David Chaim, an Ottoman citizen previously in the employment of Edmond James de Rothschild. Two thousand dunams of land, consisting of 400 small parcels, were purchased from the Arab village of Hittin. The first attempt to settle there in 1913 failed due to friction with the local Arabs, the shortage of water and the lack of contiguity of the land.
Hub AI
Kfar Hittim AI simulator
(@Kfar Hittim_simulator)
Kfar Hittim
Kfar Hittim (Hebrew: כְּפַר חִטִּים) is a moshav shitufi in northern Israel. Located on a hill 3 km west of Tiberias, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lower Galilee Regional Council. It was Israel's first moshav shitufi, and can also be considered the first Tower and Stockade settlement. In 2024 it had a population of 621.
Hittin was located on the northern slopes of the double hill known as "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 Lake Tiberias to the east, and to the west is linked by mountain passes leading towards the plains of the Lower Galilee. These plains, with their east-west passages, served as routes for commercial caravans and military invasions.
Archaeological excavations have yielded pottery fragments from the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic period.
It has been suggested that the Arab village of Hittin was 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 was known as Kfar Hittaya in the Roman period. In the 4th century CE, it was a Jewish rabbinical town.
In 1596, Hittin was a part of the Ottoman Nāḥiyah (Arabic: نَـاحِـيَـة, "Subdistrict") of Tiberias under the Liwā’ (Arabic: لِـوَاء, "District") of Safed. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, goats and beehives. Richard Pococke, who visited in 1727, writes that the village was "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) is Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses." William McClure Thomson, who visited in the 1850s, reported that visiting the shrine was considered a cure for insanity. In 1875 Victor Guérin wrote about the local tradition that the tomb of Jethro (Neby Chaʾīb), the father-in-law of Moses, was found in Hittin.
A population list from about 1887 showed 1,350 inhabitants; 100 Jews[clarification needed] and 1,250 Muslims. An elementary school was established in the village around 1897.
In the early 20th-century, village land in the eastern part of the Arbel Valley was sold to Jewish land societies. In 1910, Mitzpa, was established there.
The land on which Kfar Hittin sits was purchased by the Jewish National Fund in 1904, with the help of David Chaim, an Ottoman citizen previously in the employment of Edmond James de Rothschild. Two thousand dunams of land, consisting of 400 small parcels, were purchased from the Arab village of Hittin. The first attempt to settle there in 1913 failed due to friction with the local Arabs, the shortage of water and the lack of contiguity of the land.