Rosh HaAyin

Rosh HaAyin (Hebrew: ראש העין, pronounced [ˈʁoʃ haˈʔajin]) is a city in the Central District of Israel. It is located in the eastern ravine of the Sharon Plain, opposite the Samaria Mountains. The city is named after its location at the source of the Yarkon River (“Rosh” meaning source/head, “Ayin” meaning spring).

Rosh HaAyin was declared a city in 1994 and covers an area of approximately 16,000 dunams. Its eastern neighborhoods border the Green Line, and the city forms the boundary between the Central District and the occupied West Bank. The city is one of the fastest-growing cities in Israel. In 2023 it had a population of 77,104.

Contemporary Rosh HaAyin lies between several sites of historic habitation, with records of occupation dating back hundreds, thousands, or, in one case, hundreds of thousands, of years.

Rosh HaAyin was founded in 1949 near the lands of the Palestinian village of Majdal Yaba, which was captured by Israeli forces in July 1948. The episode formed part of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba.

The built-up part of Majdal Yaba lay to the south of contemporary Rosh HaAyin, on elevated land that today lies within the Migdal Afek national park. At the centre of the park is the ruin of a mid-19th Century fortified manor house. The ruins contain remnants of a crusader fort, Castle Mirabel, which was an important administrative location for the Crusaders until 1187, when it was taken by Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known as Saladin. It was known as Majdal Yaba by, at the latest, the early 13th Century, when it was recorded by geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi.

To the north-west of Rosh HaAyin, in the contemporary Yarkon Park, lies the ruins of Ottoman fortress of Ras Al-Ayn (Arabic: رأس العين), which was built following a decree issued in 1537.

Ras-al Ain means "head of the spring" in Arabic, a reference to the source of the Al-Auja river, which still springs up nearby, and is known in Hebrew as the Yarkon. The same phrase rendered in Turkish, pınar başı, was also used to refer to the location, and when rendered in Hebrew gives Rosh HaAyin, the name of the contemporary town a short distance away. A typical Arabic mispronunciation of the Turkish name, substituting "b" for "p", gave the fortress another of its local names: Binar Bashi. The crusaders knew the site as Surdi Fontes, or "silent springs."

There was an Arab village at Ras al-Ain during the British mandate. According to a study edited by the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, by 1948 it had been "deserted since the 1920s".