Шфа-Амр: История и археология древнего города в Израиле.

Shefa Amr or Shfar'am (شفاعمرو, Šafāʻamr, , Šəfarʻam) is an Arab city in the Northern District of Israel. In it had a population of , with a Sunni Muslim majority and large Christian Arab and Druze minorities.

Palmer writes that the name meant: "The margin or edge of 'Amr. Locally and erroneously supposed to mean the healing of 'Amer (ed Dhaher)." The city is identified with Shefar'am, an ancient Jewish town of great significance during Talmudic times. Some have proposed that its original meaning may be linked to the Hebrew words "Shefer" (שֶׁפֶר), signifying something nice, beautiful or good, and "'Am", (עַם) which translates to people.

[[File:Byzant. jpg|thumb|Christian Byzantine graves, 5th and 6th century CE. Shefa Amr is first mentioned under the name Shefar'am in the Tosefta (Tractate Mikvaot 6:1), followed by the Talmud redacted in 500 CE where it is mentioned in several places, in Tractate Avodah Zarah 8b and Rosh Hashanah 31b, et al. Settlement has existed there without interruption since the Roman period, when it was one of the cities mentioned in the Talmud as containing the seat of the Jewish Sanhedrin during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The seat of the Sanhedrin was traditionally thought to be where the Old Synagogue "Maḥaneh Shekhinah" was built in later times. Decorated burial caves were documented by the Survey of Western Palestine in the late nineteenth century; they were found to be Christian tombs from the Byzantine era, dating to the 5th and 6th century CE. Greek inscriptions were also found. Archaeological excavations of a cave and quarries revealed that they were used in the Roman and Byzantine eras. Shefa ʻAmr contains Byzantine remains, including a church and tombs. A salvage dig was conducted in the southern quarter of the old city exposing remains from five phases in the Late Byzantine and early Umayyad periods. Finds include a tabun oven, a pavement of small fieldstones, a mosaic pavement that was probably part of a wine press treading floor, a small square wine press, handmade kraters, an imported Cypriot bowl and an open cooking pot. Also discovered were glass and pottery vessels.

Under the Crusaders the place was known as "Safran", "Sapharanum", "Castrum Zafetanum", "Saphar castrum" or "Cafram". The Crusaders built a fortress, used by the Knights Templar, in the village. At the foot of the castle was a fortified settlement with a church, inhabited either by local Christians or Crusaders. The village, then called "Shafar 'Am", was used by Muslim leader Saladin between 1190–91 and 1193 94 as a military base for attacks on Acre. By 1229, the place was back in Crusader hands; this was confirmed by Sultan Baybars in the peace treaty of 1271, and by Sultan Qalawun in 1283. Italian monk Riccoldo da Monte di Croce visited the village in 1287–88, and noted that it had Christian inhabitants. It apparently was under Mamluk control by 1291, as it was mentioned in that year when sultan al Ashraf Khalil allocated the town's income to a charitable organization in Cairo.

In 1948 Shefa Amr was captured by the Israeli Army during the first phase of Operation Dekel, from 8 to 14 July. The Druze population actively cooperated with the IDF. The Muslim quarter was heavily shelled and thousands of inhabitants fled to Saffuriyeh. Following the fall of Nazareth some of the refugees were allowed to return to their homes. Ibraheem Nimr Hussein, a former mayor of Shefa Amr, was chairman of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel (later the Arab Follow Up Committee) from its inception in 1975. In 1981 an NGO to promote health care in the Arab community was set up in Shefa Amr. It called itself WD=Q6573412 the Arab National Society for Health Research and Services. In 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Mayor Ibrahim Nimr Husayn formed the "Supreme Follow Up Committee" based on a committee that had been formed following Land Day. It consisted of 11 heads of local councils as well as Arab Members of Knesset. By the 1990s the committee, meeting in Nazareth, had expanded and become a mini parliament representing Palestinians in the Galilee.

upright=.8|thumb|Orsan Yasen, mayor of Shefa Amr
On 16 May 2004, Whehebe Moheen, a man in his sixties, murdered Manal Najeeb Abu Raed, his widowed daughter in law, wife of his son, and mother of his two granddaughters. Manal had lost her husband to cancer two years earlier, and was living in the couple's home, in the Druze village of Daliat El Carmel, near Haifa. Following this event there was conflict between the families of the victim and of the killer. The final reconciliation took place on 27 February 2009, when about 300 family members, dignitaries and residents of the mixed city of Shefa Amr and Daliyat al Carmel participated in the reconciliation ritual. In January 2008, Mayor Ursan Yassin met with officials of the Israeli state committee on the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of independence, and announced that Shefa Amr intended to take part in the celebrations. In 2011, 7,000 Christians, Druze and Muslims held a solidarity march in support of Christians in Iraq and Egypt who were suffering from religious persecution.

According to CBS, in 2012 there were 12,494 salaried and 1062 self employed workers in the city. The mean monthly wage in 2012 for a salaried worker in the city was ILS 5,412. Salaried males had a mean monthly wage of ILS 6,312 versus ILS 3,904 for females. The mean income for the self employed was ILS 7,381. 235 people received unemployment benefits and 3,971 received an income guarantee.