Ailabu is mentioned as the residence of the Jewish priestly clan known as Haqoṣ, being one of the cities associated with one of the twenty-four priestly divisions. But by 1517 it was a small village of 13 Muslim households, according to Ottoman tax registers. By the nineteenth century, Eilabun (عيلبون, עילבון)―argued both as recalling the Israelite name and as deriving from the Arabic for hard, rocky ground―was a Christian Arab village. In 1875, the French explorer Victor Guérin found a village of about 100 Greek Christians. He noted an excellent water source, and remains of an ancient building with columns, possibly a synagogue, of which there are no traces today. Burial caves and rock-cut sarcophagi, found to the west of the village, attest to the settlement of the site during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods; pottery remains from the Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age II, Persian, early Roman and from the Byzantine eras have also been excavated here.
Today Eilabun is a predominantly Christian Arab village, with a Muslim minority comprising 30% of the population.
The spring of Eilabun―Ein Eilabun―is adjacent to the main road west of the village. Today the water is not potable and flows slowly.
The spring today, divided into an open tank (right) and a flowing source (left)
Above the spring―cut off now by a security fence of the National Water Carrier, whose signed access gate was locked when we visited―is a grave which has been identified for many generations as that of the Tana, Matia ben Charash. According to the book Righteous Among the Nations by Gershon ben Asher Ish Scarmela, printed in Mantua in the year 1561, the tomb was enclosed in a stone hut. However when Joseph Bratslav, a scholar of Israel and a tour guide, visited in the twentieth century he found it hidden in the shade of ancient trees and marked by five courses of large ashlars; the tomb was regularly visited by pilgrims who lit oil lamps on the grave. Today the enclosure has once again been roofed over with a small dome.
Grave of Rabbi Matya Ben Charash, Eilabun [Credit: By Almog - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14663614]
Rabbi Matya ben Charash was both wealthy and G-d fearing, and like Rabbi Meir his teacher, spent all his days learning Torah in the synagogue. His face radiated light like the sun and his countenance resembled that of the ministering angels. It was said of him, that he never gazed at a woman in his life. A third or fourth generation Tana (the Rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 10-220 CE), born in the Land of Israel, he relocated to Rome where he established a major Yeshiva. He is often cited as the prime example of Shmirat Enayim (guarding the eyes from impurity).
Left: The entrance to the grave site was beyond a locked gate when we visited; you can just make out the top of its blue dome in the centre f the picture, halfway up the fence.
Right: The author frustrated at not being able to visit the grave, and knowing he would have to find a picture from the public domain!