Tur'an

Tur'an (Arabic: طرعان‎, Hebrew: תֻּרְעָן) is an Israeli-Arab local council in the North District of Israel. It is located at the foot of Mount Tur'an and the Tur'an Valley, near the main road from Haifa to Tiberias, and about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) north of Nazareth. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Tur'an had a population of 11,100 mostly Muslim inhabitants in 2005.

History

Pottery and building remains from the Iron Age I have been excavated in the village. Apparently Tur'an was at that time (12-11th centuries B.C.E.) surrounded by a city wall.

The Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) found caves and rock-cut cisterns in the village, which they noted appeared to be an ancient site.

The village was known in the Roman and Byzantine periods (Mishnaic and Talmudic times, respectively) as Tir'an. It was a Jewish village whose inhabitants probably converted to Islam by the end of the early Islamic Arab period (7th-10th centuries) in Palestine.