Bayt Jibrin or Beit Jibrin (Arabic: بيت جبرين lit. 'House of the Powerful') was an Arab village in the Hebron Subdistrict of British Mandatory Palestine, in what is today the State of Israel, which was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was preceded by the Iron Age Judahite city of Maresha, the later Hellenistic Marissa, located slightly south of Beit Jibrin's built-up area; and the Roman and Byzantine city of Beth Gabra, known from the Talmud as Beit Guvrin (also Gubrin or Govrin, Hebrew: בית גוברין, romanized: Beit Gubrin), renamed Eleutheropolis (Greek, Ἐλευθερόπολις, "Free City") after 200 CE. After the 7th-century Arab conquest of the Levant, the Arabic name of Beit Jibrin was used for the first time, followed by the Crusaders' Bethgibelin, given to a Frankish colony established around a Hospitaller castle. After the Muslim reconquest the Arab village of Beit Jibrin was reestablished.
During the days of Herod the Great, Bet Gabra was the administrative center for the district of Idumea. In 200 CE, after the turmoil of the First Jewish–Roman War (64–70) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135), the town became a thriving Roman colony, a major administrative centre and one of the most important cities in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina under the name of Eleutheropolis. The city was then inhabited by Jews, Christians and pagans. Under the British Mandate of Palestine, Bayt Jibrin again served as a district centre for surrounding villages. It was captured by Jewish forces during the 1948 war, causing its Arab inhabitants to flee eastward. Today, many of the Palestinian refugees of Bayt Jibrin and their descendants live in the camps of Bayt Jibrin (ʽAzza) and Fawwar in the southern West Bank.
The kibbutz of Beit Guvrin was established to the north of Bayt Jibrin, on the villages' lands, in 1949. The archaeological sites of Maresha and Beit Guvrin are today an Israeli national park known as the Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park, including their burial caves and underground dwellings, workshops and quarries, which are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Eleutheropolis remains a titular see in the Roman Catholic Church.
Location
The entire site is located in the Lakhish region of central Israel, between the coastal plain to the west and the Hebron Hills to the east, near the 1949 ceasefire line.
Ancient Maresha was identified at Tell Sandahanna, renamed Tel Maresha. The Hellenised city of Marissa included a lower city of 320 dunams during its heydays, which surrounded the tell (mound). It covers the southern part of the Beit Guvrin-Maresha archaeological park.
Bet Gabra or Betogabris grew around a hill c. 1.5 km north of Tel Maresha, after the demise of Marissa in 40 BCE.
The Crusader colony of Bethgibelin stood at what had been the northern margin of the classical city, with its castle built over the remains of the Roman amphitheatre. Its ruins now stand adjacent to and north of the regional road.
The built-up area of the modern Arab village of Beit Jibrin was largely south of the Crusader castle, adjacent to and mainly south of the regional road.
Kibbutz Beit Guvrin was built north of the Bethgibelin Castle and former Beit Jibrin.
Geography
Historically, the site was located on the main road between Cairo and Hebron via Gaza, in an area of plains and soft hills known as the Shfela (Shephelah) in Hebrew. Beit Jibrin's average elevation was of 275 meters (902 ft) above sea level.
The region contains a large number of caverns, both natural formations and caves dug in the soft chalk by inhabitants of the region over the centuries for use as quarries, burial grounds, animal shelters, workshops and spaces for raising doves and pigeons. There is estimated to be 800 such caverns, many linked by an underground maze of passageways. Eighty of them, known as the Bell Caves, are located on the grounds of the Beit Guvrin National Park.
Name
The settlement was renamed over the centuries. The Aramaic name Beth Gabra, attested from at least the Early Roman period, was preserved by the geographer Ptolemy in the Greek variation of Βαιτογάβρα, Baitogabra, translates as the "house of the [strong] man" or "house of the mighty one". The antecedent might be seen in the name of an Edomite king: Ḳaus-gabri or Kauš-Gabr, found on an inscription of Tiglathpileser III.
According to historical geographer A. Schlatter, the name Betaris mentioned by Josephus should either be identified with Bittir, or else the 't' amended to gamma, so as to read Begabrin.
In the year 200 CE, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus gave it the status of a city under a new Greek name, Eleutheropolis (Ἐλευθερόπολις), meaning 'City of the Free', and its inhabitants were given the rank of Roman citizens under the laws of ius italicum.
In the Peutinger Table in 393 CE, Bayt Jibrin was called Beitogabri. In the Talmud, compiled between the 3rd and 4th centuries, it was known as Beit Gubrin or Guvrin. To the Crusaders, it was known as Bethgibelin or Gibelin.
Another name in medieval times may have been Beit Jibril, meaning "house of Gabriel". In Arabic, Bayt Jibrin or Jubrin (بيت جبرين) means "house of the powerful", reflecting its original Aramaic name, and the town was probably called Bayt Jibrin or Beit Jibril throughout its rule by various Muslim dynasties.
History
Iron Age Maresha
The excavations have revealed no remains older than the Iron Age, a time when the Judahite town of Maresha rose on the tell to the south of Bay Jibrin known in Arabic as Tell Sandahanna and in Hebrew as Tel Maresha.
This corresponds to several Hebrew Bible mentions of Maresha. However, local folklore tells that the former Arab village of Bayt Jibrin was first inhabited by Canaanites.
After the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, the city of Maresha became part of the Edomite kingdom. In the late Persian period a Sidonian community settled in Maresha, and the city is mentioned three times in the Zenon Papyri (259 BCE). During the Maccabean Revolt, Maresha was a base for attacks against Judea and suffered retaliation from the Maccabees. In 112 BCE, Maresha was conquered and destroyed by the Hasmonean king, John Hyrcanus I, after which the region of Idumea (the Greek name of Edom) remained under Hasmonean control and Idumeans were forced to convert to Judaism. In 40 BCE, the Parthians devastated completely the "strong city", after which it was never rebuilt. After this date, nearby Beit Guvrin succeeded Maresha as the chief center of the area.
Roman and Byzantine periods
In the Jewish War (68 CE), Vespasian slaughtered or enslaved the inhabitants of Betaris. According to Josephus: "When he had seized upon two villages, which were in the very midst of Idumea, Betaris [sic] (corrected to read Begabris), and Caphartobas, he slew above ten thousand of the people, and carried into captivity above a thousand, and drove away the rest of the multitude, and placed no small part of his own forces in them, who overran and laid waste the whole mountainous country."
However, it continued to be a Jewish-inhabited city until the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE).
Septimius Severus, Roman Emperor from 193 to 211, granted the city municipal status, under a new Greek name, Eleutheropolis, meaning "City of the Free", and giving its citizens the ius italicum and exempting them from taxes. Coins minted by him, bearing the date 1 January 200, commemorate its founding and the title of polis. Eleutheropolis, which covered an area of 65 hectares (160 acres) (larger at the time than Aelia Capitolina – the Roman city built over the ruins of Jewish Jerusalem), flourished under the Romans, who built public buildings, military installations, aqueducts and a large amphitheater. Towards the end of the 2nd century CE, Rabbi Judah the Prince ameliorated the condition of its Jewish citizens by releasing the city from the obligations of tithing home-grown produce, and from observing the Seventh Year laws with respect to the same produce, as believing this area of the country was not originally settled by Jews returning from the Babylonian captivity. The vita of Epiphanius of Salamis, born into a Christian family near Eleutheropolis, describes the general surroundings in Late Antique Judaea. The second chapter of the vita describes the details of the important market of Eleutheropolis. Seven routes met at Eleutheropolis, and Eusebius, in his Onomasticon, uses the Roman milestones indicating the city as a central point from which the distances of other towns were measured. The Madaba Map (dated 542–570 CE) shows Eleutheropolis as a walled city with three towers, a curving street with a colonnade in the central part and an important basilica. In the centre is a building with a yellowish-white dome on four columns. Eleutheropolis was last mentioned in the ancient sources by the near contemporary itinerarium of the Piacenza Pilgrim, about 570.
In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, Christianity penetrated the city due to its location on the route between Jerusalem and Gaza. The city's first bishop, Justus, was one of the 70 Disciples. Eleutheropolis was a "City of Excellence" in the fourth century and a Christian bishopric with the largest territory in Palaestina. In 325 CE, Eleutheropolis was the seat of Bishop Macrinus, who in that year attended the First Council of Nicaea. Epiphanius of Salamis, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, was born at Eleutheropolis; at Ad nearby he established a monastery which is often mentioned in the polemics of Jerome with Rufinus and John, Bishop of Jerusalem. Epiphanius also mentions that Akouas, a disciple of Mani, had been the first to spread Manichaeism in Eleutheropolis and the rest of Palestine during the reign of Aurelian (270–275 AD).
Beit Guvrin is mentioned in the Talmud in the 3rd and 4th centuries, indicating a revival of the Jewish community around that time. The tanna Judah b. Jacob and the amora Jonathan (referred to in the Talmud as "Yonatan me-Bet Guvrin" or Jonathan of Bet Guvrin) were residents of the city. The Talmudic region known as Darom was within the area of Eleutheropolis ("Beit Guvrin"),
later known by its Arabic corruption ad-Dārūm.
Excavations at Eleutheropolis show a prosperous city, and confirm the presence of Jews and Christians in the area. It was described as one of Palestine's five "Cities of Excellence" by 4th-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus. During the Roman-Byzantine era, water was brought into Beit Gubrin (Bayt Jibrin) via an aqueduct that passed through Wādi el-ʻUnqur, a watercourse that originates from a natural spring to the south-west of Hebron, and running in a north-westerly direction, bypassing Idhna on the north, for a total distance of about 25 kilometres (16 mi). Remnants of the aqueduct are still extant.
The territory under the administration of Eleutheropolis encompassed most of Idumea, with the districts of Bethletepha, western Edom and Hebron up to Ein Gedi, and included over 100 villages.
Bayt Jibrin is mentioned in the Talmud (redacted 5th–6th century CE) under the name Beit Gubrin. In the Peutinger Tables (393 CE), the place is called Beto Gabra, and shown as 16 Roman miles from Ascalon. The true distance is 20 English miles.
The Midrash Rabba (Genesis Rabba, section 67) mentions Beit Gubrin in relation to Esau and his descendants (Idumaeans) who settled the region, and which region was renowned for its fertile ground and productivity.
Early Islamic period
The 9th-century historian al-Baladhuri mentions Bayt Jibrin (the Arabicized form of the original Semitic place name used following the Muslim conquest) as one of ten towns in Jund Filastin (military district of Palestine) conquered by Amr ibn al-As in the mid-630s'. Amr enclosed a domain to Bayt Jibrin, which he named Ajlan, after one of his freemen.
The Bishop of Bayt Jibrin was Tamim al-Dari, a member of the Palestinian Christian Lakhmid tribe. His nisba, al-Daīri, comes from "monastery" (Dair/Dayr/Deir), alluding to his Christian background. He eventually became a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad, advising him on many issues regarding the Christians of Syria and is credited with introducing the use of oil lamps, ubiquitous in local worship, into Islamic worship practices.
The 1904 Analecta Bollandiana recounts that in 638 the Muslim army beheaded fifty soldiers in Bayt Jibrin from the Byzantine garrison of Gaza who refused to abandon Christianity and who were then buried in a church built in their honor.
In the beginning of the power struggle between Ali and Mu'awiya for the position of caliph, Amr left Medina in the Hejaz and took up residence at his estate called Ajlan in Bayt Jibrin with his sons Muhammad and Abdallah. The latter died there. The Umayyad prince and governor of Palestine, Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik, received the news of his becoming caliph in 715 during his stay in Bayt Jibrin.
In 750 Palestine came under Abbasid rule. Bayt Jibrin may have already been devastated in 788,
but in any event, in 796, it was destroyed by Bedouin tribesmen in an effort to combat Christian influence in the region during a civil war between the Arab tribal federations of the area. According to a monk named Stephen, "it was laid waste, and its inhabitants carried off into captivity". However, by 985, Bayt Jibrin seemed to have recovered, judging by the writings of the Jerusalemite geographer al-Muqaddasi:
"[Bayt Jibrin] is a city partly in the hill country, partly in the plain. Its territory has the name of Ad Darum (the ancient Daroma and the modern Dairan), and there are here marble [sic] quarries. The district sends its produce to the capital (Ar Ramlah). It is an emporium for the neighbouring country, and a land of riches and plenty, possessing fine domains. The population, however, is now on the decrease...."
There is no marble quarry anywhere in Israel/Palestine, but al-Muqaddasi probably referred to the underground chalkstone quarries known today as "bell caves". Surface nari (local name for caliche) is harder than chalk.