Qaqun (Arabic: قاقون) was a Palestinian Arab village located 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) northwest of the city of Tulkarm at the only entrance to Mount Nablus from the coastal Sharon plain.

Evidence of organized settlement in Qaqun dates back to the period of Assyrian rule in the region. Ruins of a Crusader and Mamluk castle still stand at the site. Qaqun was continuously inhabited by Arabs since at least as early as the Mamluk period and was depopulated during a military operation by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, after Iraqi troops used the town as a base for operations.

While the site is an ancient one, the current name, Qāqūn is an Aramaic one, meaning “little pelican”. In the Crusader period it was variously transcribed as Caco, Caccho among other forms. Some 17th century Ottoman documents have another variant, Qāqūm (قاقوم).

Assyrian artifacts have been discovered in Qaqun. Among these are fragments of stelae recording the victory of Sargon II over the Philistine city-states in the 8th century BC, providing evidence of the establishment of Assyrian rule in Palestine.

In the 1st century AD, Antipas, like others close to the Herodians who ruled over parts of the region at the time, was granted dominion over large areas of land. One of the gifts (doreai) he received was a parcel of land located in the Plain of Sharon which included Qaqun, among other villages.

In the Crusader period, a castle called Caco or Cacho stood here, of which an 8.5m tower survives. In 1160, Benjamin of Tudela visited Qaqun which he identified as being ancient Keilah. It was mentioned in 1253 when it apparently still was held by the lord of Caesarea, John Aleman.

In 1271, Lord Edward of England launched a large raid during the Ninth Crusade with the support of the Templar, Hospitaller, and Teutonic Knights on the town of Qaqun, in which he surprised a large force of Turcomans (mostly itinerant herdsmen), reportedly killing 1,500 of them and taking 5,000 animals as booty. These Turcomans were likely relatively new additions to Baibars' army, being integrated in 1268 and given horses, titles, and lands in return for military service after the Turkmen migrations following the Mongol invasions.

Qaqun was captured by the Mamluk sultan Baibars (1259–1277) in 1267. Under Mamluk rule, Qaqun was the capital of one of six districts that made up the province of as-Sham, the Mamluk administrative unit for a part of the governorship of "Mamlakat Gaza", one of the region's three Mamluk administrative governorships, the other two being "Mamlakat Dimashq" (Damascus) and "Mamlakat Zafad" (Safed). Qaqun and also Lydda appeared to be independent provinces later in this period. Baybars had ordered its fortress rebuilt and had its church renovated and made into a mosque. Its markets were re-established, and it soon became a commercial center with a caravanserai for merchants, travelers, and their animals. While early scholarship often attributed the construction of the fortress to Crusaders, both the fortress and mosque at Qaqun are now thought to have built during the reign of Baybars, who also built the administrative center and large market there.