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| view of Mount Tabor, courtesy, Wikipedia |
The mountain is mentioned
for the first time in the Bible in the Book of Joshua, 19:22, as the border of three
tribes: Zebulun, Issachar and Naphtali. According to the Book of Judges, Mount Tabor was the location
of the Battle
of Mount Tabor between the Israelite army under the leadership of Barak and
the army of the Canaanite king of Hazor, Jabin,
commanded by Sisera. Deborah the Jewish prophetess had summoned Barak of
the tribe of Naphtali and gave him God's command, "Go and draw toward
mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali
and of the children of Zebulun" (Judges 4:6). This
resulted in the Canaanites’ total defeat. A cave near the top of the mountain may have been the original
sanctuary of the Greek god Zeus Atabyrios (from which, the name “Tabor” supposedly
derived). Centuries later, this sanctuary was revived by the Israelites, calling
forth the wrath of the prophet Hosea (5:1). In the days of the Second Temple (c. 516 BCE – 70 CE), Mount
Tabor was one of the mountain peaks on which it was the Jewish custom to
light beacons in order to inform the northern
villages of the start of the holy days and of the beginning of the new months. In
55 BCE, during a Hasmonean rebellion
against the Roman proconsul of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, Alexander of Judaea and
his army of 30,000 Judeans was defeated in battle at Mount Tabor. As many as
10,000 Jewish fighters were killed in the battle and Alexander was forced to
flee, apparently to Syria. In Christian tradition, Mount Tabor is the site of
the transfiguration of Jesus.
In 66 CE, during the First Jewish-Roman War,
the Galilean Jews retrenched on the mountain under the command of Yosef Ben Matityahu, better known as Josephus
Flavius, the later historian, whence they defended themselves against the Roman
assault. Itabyrium, as Josephus called it, was one of the 19 sites
fortified by the rebels in Galilee under his very orders. According to what is
written in his book The Wars of the Jews, Vespasian sent an army of 600 riders, under
the command of Placidus, who fought the rebels. Placidus understood that he
could not reach the top of the steep mountain with his forces, and therefore
called the fortified rebels to walk down the mountain in order to negotiate.
Figuring it was a trick, a group of Jewish rebels did so supposedly for that
reason, but instead, they attacked him. The Roman forces initially retreated,
but while they were in the valley, they returned towards the mountain, attacked
the Jewish rebels, killed many of them, and blocked the road for the remaining
rebels who tried to flee back to the top of the mountain. The remaining rebels on
the mountain surrendered after their water ran out. They then handed it over to
Placidus. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jewish settlement on
Mount Tabor was renewed. Several centuries later, the Jewish inhabitants left,
for various reasons, for other parts of the Levant and the site was
subsequently fought over between Christians and Muslims as well as between
various Arab tribes. At the end of the 19th and the beginning the 20th centuries,
the Bedouin tribe Arab Al-Sabehi settled on the mountain and became one of the
strongest tribes in the region. Eventually, other branches of the tribe were
formed, most notably the Shibli, and they settled around the base of the
mountain. Jews first returned to the region in 1901 with the establishment
of Kefar
Tavor. In 1933, the Kadoorie Agricultural High School was
founded north of the village by the monies of the legacy of Sir Ellis Kadoorie,
a Baghdadi Jewish merchant from China. The Jewish inhabitants had fostered good
relations with many (but not all) of the Arab tribes in the region, like the Arab-Al
Heib, who began their military cooperation with the Jewish underground forces since
the late 1930s. In 1944, the kibbutz Beit
Keshet was founded on the northern base of the mountain.
During the War of
Independence (1947-1949), members from the Al-Sabehi fought in the Arab Liberation Army under
the Syrian Arab Fawzi al-Qawuqji and
among other atrocities, they murdered seven members of Beit Keshet in cold blood. At
the start of May 1948 the Israeli Golani Brigade occupied the mountain itself. Most
of the Sabehi were forced out to Arab-occupied Syria and
Jordan, except for the Shibli branch. After the
war, the surrounding property of the Kadoorie School became the Kadoorie
Regional Center and the local Jewish and Arab towns came under its administration.
Since 1953, the regional
council of Lower Galilee holds a 12-kilometer race around Mount
Tabor, held in April each year, in memory of Yitzhak Sadeh, the first commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at
the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.
Meanwhile, the Shibli
village of Arab al-Shibli was established and today, it is part of the
village of Shibli-Umm al-Ghanam.
It was admitted as a tourist village by the Israeli government and the locals
are famous for being hospitable and very friendly to visitors. Since the late
1960s many of the tribesmen joined the Israeli security forces (such as the IDF,
Border Guards Unit and police, etc.).
As part of the Jewish National Fund's
efforts to recreate the Biblical landscapes of the country, during the 1960s
and 1970s the area was reforested with trees which were similar to its original
vegetation such as Mount Tabor Oak, “Palestine” oak, the Persian lily, Mt.
Tabor larkspur, and Galilean alkanet. The woodland vegetation provides a good habitat
for such fauna as wolves and jackals, foxes, porcupines, hyraxes, mongooses and the broad-toothed field mouse. In
addition, reptiles and birds of various species have also settled in the
woodland areas.
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