Sheikh Bureik

Pottery shards discovered at the site indicate that a first settlement there dates back to the Iron Age.[3]

Beit She'arayim was founded at the end of the 1st century BCE, during the reign of King Herod.[11] The Roman Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, in his Vita, referred to the city in Greek as Besara, the administrative center of the estates of Queen Berenice in the Jezreel Valley.[12]

Basalt-stone pavement at Sheikh Bureik (Beit Shearim ruin) in Lower Galilee

After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Sanhedrin (Jewish legislature and supreme council) moved to Beit She'arayim.[12] The town is mentioned in rabbinical literature as an important center of Jewish learning during the 2nd century.[3] Rabbi Judah the Prince (Yehudah HaNasi), head of the Sanhedrin and compiler of the Mishna, lived there and was buried there, as were many other Jews from all over the country and from the Jewish diaspora from nearby Phoenicia[3] to far away Himyar in Yemen.[13]

Stone column at Sheikh Bureik (Beit Shearim)

While it was originally thought that Bet She'arayim was destroyed during the Jewish revolt against Gallus in the mid-4th century, recent research has revealed the destruction to be far less extensive.[3] An earthquake in 386 caused some damage, but the town recovered and enjoyed prosperity during the era of Byzantine rule.[3] Almost 300 inscriptions primarily in Greek, but also in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Palmyrene were found on the walls of the catacombs containing numerous sarcophagi.[3]

From the beginning of the Early Islamic period (7th century), settlement was sparse.[14] Excavations uncovered 75 lamps dating to the period of Umayyad (7th–8th centuries) and Abassid (8th–13th centuries) rule over Palestine.[3]

In 1956, a bulldozer working at the site unearthed an enormous rectangular slab, 11×6.5×1.5 feet, weighing 9 tons. Initially, it was paved over, but it was eventually studied and found to be a gigantic piece of glass. A glassmaking furnace was located here in the 9th century during the Abbasid period, which produced great batches of molten glass that were cooled and later broken into small pieces for crafting glass vessels.[3][15]

An elegy written in Arabic script typical of the 9–10th century and containing the date AH 287 or 289 (CE 900 or 902) was found in the Magharat al-Jahannam ("Cave of Hell") catacomb during excavations conducted there in 1956. Composed by the previously unknown poet Umm al-Qasim, whose name is given in acrostic in the poem, it reads as follows:[16]

I lament the defender (who passed away)

While desire within his breast is still afire.

His generosity was not very manifest to the eye,

So that the envious ones neglect desiring him.

Yearning (for him) has made his resting place

(a site of) wakefulness and a shrine where people stay.

The blessing of beauty he enjoyed. Can any thing equal them

in the worlds? Nothing to match them can be found.

Closer come the Ages, but distance they cause;

for nearness they aspire, but friends they keep afar.

Were Desire to cause blame (to a person), (still) it could not subdue (him);

And if man's fortune does not ascend, he (too will) not rise.

Ask about it, and the experienced ones will tell thee

That Time combines both blame and praise:

As long as limpid it remains, life is happy, blissful

But once it turbid turns, miserable is life and painful

And wrote Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Bishr b. Abu Dulaf al-Abdi, and in these verses is a name. Take from the beginning of each verse one letter and you should comprehend it. And it was written in the month of Rabi II in the year 287 (or 289).[16]

Moshe Sharon speculates that this poem might be marking the beginning of the practice of treating this site as the sanctuary of Shaykh Abreik and suggests the site was used for burial at this time and possibly later as well.[4][17] He further notes that the cave within which the inscription was found forms part of a vast area of ancient ruins which constituted a natural place for the emergence of a local shrine. Drawing on the work of Tawfiq Canaan, Sharon cites his observation that 32% of the sacred sites he visited in Palestine were located in the vicinity of ancient ruins.[17]

There is some evidence of activity in the former city area and necropolis dating to the Crusader period (12th century), probably connected to travellers and temporary settlement.[3]

Sheikh Abreik shrine, February 2008

Sheikh Bureik, like the rest of Palestine, fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 20th centuries. In the imperial daftar for 1596, it is recorded as a village of 22 Muslim families located in the nahiya of Shafa in the liwa of Lajjun, whose inhabitants paid taxes on wheat, barley and summer crops.[18] A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the place, named as Cheik Abrit.[19]

In 1859, the tillage of the village was 16 feddans.[20] In 1872, the Ottoman authorities sold Shayk Abreik (together with a total of 23 villages and some seventy square miles of land) for £20,000 to the Sursuk family of Lebanon.[21] In 1875, Victor Guérin found it to have 350 inhabitants.[22] In 1881, "The Survey of Western Palestine" describes Sheikh Abreik as a small village situated on a hill with a conspicuous Maqam (sanctuary) located to the south. The village houses were made mostly of mud, and it belonged to the Sursuk family. The population at this time was estimated to be around 150.[20][23]

A population list from about 1887 showed that Sheikh Abreik had about 395 inhabitants; all Muslims.[24]

During World War I, the "finest oaks" of Sheikh Bureik were "ruthlessly destroyed" by the Turkish Army for use as rail fuel.[25]

Sheikh Bureik 1944 photograph of excavations

During the period of Mandate Palestine, in the October 1922 census of Palestine, the population of Sheikh Bureik was recorded as 111 Muslims (51 male and 60 female).[26] At some time during the early 1920s, the Sursuk family sold the lands of the village to the Jewish National Fund, via Yehoshua Hankin, a Zionist activist who was responsible for most of the major land purchases of the World Zionist Organization in Ottoman Palestine.[27][28] After the sale, which included lands from the Arab villages of Harithiya, Sheikh Abreik and Harbaj, a total of 59 Arab tenants were evicted from the three villages, with 3,314 pounds compensation paid.[29] In 1925 an agricultural settlement also named Sheikh Abreik was established by the Hapoel HaMizrachi, a Zionist political party and settlement movement.[30] By 1930, the new Jewish settlement had a population of 45 spanning an area of 1,089 dunams.[31] In 1940, the High Commissioner of the British Mandate for Palestine placed the village in Zone B for land transfers, meaning that transfer of land to a person other than a Palestinian Arab was permitted in certain specified circumstances.[32]

The lands belonging to Sheikh Bureik and which were purchased by the Jewish National Fund (under the auspices of the "Palestine Land Development Company Ltd.") were classified by the Government of Palestine under "miri property," meaning, lands given out for conditional public use, while ultimate ownership lay with the Government; or what is tantamount to private usufruct State land.[33] The Jewish National Fund, however, had no authority over the Muslim shrine.[33]