Kedesh

Archeological site in Israel

Kedesh (alternate spellings: Qedesh, Cadesh, Cydessa) was an ancient Canaanite and later Israelite settlement in Upper Galilee, mentioned few times in the Hebrew Bible. Its remains are located in Tel Kedesh, 3 km northeast of the modern Kibbutz Malkiya in Israel on the Israeli Lebanese border. As Qadas (also Cadasa; قدس), it was a Palestinian village located 17 kilometers northeast of Safad that was depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war. One of seven villages populated by Shia Muslims, called the Metawalis, that fell within the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine, Qadas is today known as the tell of the ancient biblical city of Kedesh. Ownership of Kedesh was turned over by lot to the Tribe of Naphtali and subsequently, at the command of God, Kedesh was set apart by Joshua as a Levitical city and one of the Cities of Refuge along with Shechem and Kiriath Arba (Hebron) (Joshua 20:7 (NIV)). In the 8th century BCE, during the reign of Pekah, king of Northern Israel, Tiglath Pileser III of the Neo Assyrian Empire took Kedesh and deported its inhabitants to Assyria. (Kings 15:29 (NIV))

Later, during the 5th century BCE, Kedesh may have become the capital for the Achaemenid controlled and Tyrian administered province of the Upper Galilee. In 259 BCE, Kedesh was mentioned by Zenon of Kaunos, a traveling merchant from Ptolemaic Egypt, in the Zenon Papyri. According to 1 Maccabees, a battle between Jonathan Apphus and the Seleucid emperor Demetrius II Nicator took place in Kedesh. Between 145 BCE and 143 BCE, Kedesh (Cades) was overthrown by Jonathan Maccabeus in his fight against Seleucid king Demetrius II Nicator. According to Josephus, after the Jerusalem riots of 66, the Jews attacked a series of gentile cities, including Cydessa (Kedesh), which was then controlled by Tyre, now in Roman Syria. During the First Jewish–Roman War, Titus established his camp there before he departed for battle with John of Gischala. From 1997 to 2012, Tel Kedesh was excavated by a team from the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology in conjunction with the University of Minnesota, focusing in 2010 and 2012 on the Persian and Hellenistic Administrative Building. Archaeological excavations conducted at Kedesh have shown that the town had prospered in the second and third centuries CE, and a large Roman temple complex was built there. Eusebius, writing about the place in his Onomasticon, says: "Kedesh. A priestly city in the inheritance of Naphtali. Previously it was a city of refuge 'in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali.' The 'king of the Assyrians' destroyed it (2 Kings 15:29). This is (now) Kydissos (Κυδισσός), twenty miles from Tyre near Paneas."

Identification of the biblical "Kedesh of Naphtali" (Judges 4:6, 10) has been the subject of archaeological and historical debate. While many hold the ancient site to be in Upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border, Israeli archaeologist, Yohanan Aharoni, held the view that it lay in Lower Galilee, near the Valley of Jezreel, at a site which bears the same name (now Khirbet Qadish). Some prominent archaeological publications have, therefore, listed the site as being east of the "Jabneel valley" in "Lower Galilee." From 1997–2010, archaeological excavations were conducted at the Kedesh Naphtali (Qadesh) site by Sharon Herbert and Andrea Berlin on behalf of the University of Michigan.

Under the rule of the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate in the 10th century CE, Qadas was a town in Jund al Urrdun ("District of Jordan"). According to al Muqaddasi in 985, "Qadas was a small town on the slope of the mountain. It is 'full of good things'. Jabal Amilah is the district which is in its neighborhood. The town possesses three springs from which the people drink, and they have a bath below the city. The mosque is in the market, and in its court is a palm tree. The climate of this place is very hot. Near Qadas is the (Hulah) Lake." Moreover, he described half of Qadas inhabitants as Shia Muslims. Ishtori Haparchi, visiting the holy sites in the early fourteenth century wrote of Kedesh: "About half a day's distance southward of Paneas, known in Arabic as Banias, is Kedesh, in the mountain of Naphtali, and it is [now] called Qades."

In 1517, Qadas was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after it was captured from the Mamluks, and by 1596, it was under the administration of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Tibnin, under Sanjak Safad. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, cotton, orchards, beehives, and goats, as well as a press that processed either grapes or olives. Victor Guérin visited in 1875, and described the most important ruins there. In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP), Qadas was described as a stone built village, situated on a spur of a ridge. The population, which was estimated to be between 100 and 300, cultivated fig and olive trees. SWP also noted that the "Metawali" from Qadas went to nearby Al Nabi Yusha' to venerate the name of Joshua.

Qadas was a part of the French controlled Lebanon until 1923, when the British Mandate of Palestine's borders were delineated to include it. Rainfall and the abundance of springs allowed the village to develop a prosperous agricultural economy based on grain, fruit, and olives. In the 1931 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Qadas had a population of 273; 1 Christian and 272 Muslims, in a total of 56 houses. In the 1945 statistics the village had a total of 5,709 dunums of land allotted to cereals, while 156 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.

Qadas was occupied by Israeli forces during Operation Yiftach on 28 May 1948. Defended by the Arab Liberation Army and the Lebanese army, its inhabitants fled under the influence of the fall of, or exodus from, neighbouring towns. In June, 1948, kibbutz Manara requested land from the newly depopulated village of Qadas, as it was "suitable for winter crops." The settlement of Yiftach was built in 1948 to the northeast of the village site on lands belonging to Qadas. The village land is also used by the settlements of Malkiyya, founded in 1949, and Ramot Naftali, established in 1945. Walid Khalidi described the remaining structures of the former village in 1992 as follows:<blockquote>"Stones from the destroyed houses are strewn over the fenced in site, and a few partially destroyed walls near the spring are visible. The flat portions of the surrounding lands are planted with apple trees; the spring provides drinking water for cattle. Team leader Raphael Greenberg noted that his project was unusual in its focus on Palestinian remains, contrary to the usual practice of digging around or through them to reach what is beneath.

In the Book of Judges, the great oak tree in Zaanaim is stated to be near Kedesh, though this verse could be a reference to a second Tel Kedesh, located 3 km to the south of Megiddo, within the territory of the Israelite tribe of Issachar. (Judges 4:11 (NIV))