The monumental eastern gateway to the palace at Khirbat al-Minya
In the second half of the 19th century, Charles William Wilson and other European travelers discovered ancient ruins among the huts of a local Arab peasant settlement at Khirbat al-Minya (in Hebrew, Horvat Mimim). At first the site was thought to be Capernaum―until the synagogue of the true Capernaum was discovered in 1904. In his Recovery of Jerusalem (1871), Wilson wrote:
'A short distance north of the spring is Khan Minyeh, almost a ruin, though inhabited by a few Arabs. The Khan was doubtless built for the convenience of travellers to Damascus, and is at least as old as the twelfth century, being mentioned by Bohaeddin in his 'Life of Saladin.' \\'est of the spring are the ruins (Kh. Minyeh) which Dr. Robinson, the learned American traveller, identifies with Capernaum. They form a .series of mounds, covering an extent of ground small in comparison with either those of Tell Hum or Kerâzeh. We made some small excavations in these, but did not succeed in finding the remains of any building of great size. The walls were rudely built, and the fragments of pottery dug up appeared to be modern. There were traces of a thick wall surrounding the site. No fragments of columns, capitals, or carved stones were found in the ruins, nor could any be seen in the walls of the Khan, or round the tombs close by—a fact which seems to indicate that the ruins are of modern date, or at any rate never contained any building such as the synagogues or churches found elsewhere, as in all other places old material is invariably found built into the walls of later buildings where they are near old sites.'
Conder and Kitchener―in their 1881 Survey of Western Palestine for the Palestine Exploration Fund― wrote that 'Minieh' (as they spelled it) was "apparently the Caphar Nahum which is mentioned by Isaac Chelo (1334 a.d.) as a town inhabited by the Minai (or heretics) north of Tiberias, containing the tomb of Nahum the Ancient, a Rabbi mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud (Beracoth, vii. f 48)." They suggest that he made this false connection because the Talmud (Midrash Koheleth, vii. 17) mentions the name Huta or Minai ('sinners' or 'heretics') as being equivalent to a 'Son of Capharnahum. They note that the site is noticed still earlier in Bohaeddin's 'Life of Saladin' (twelfth century), and that Quaresmius (1616 CE) identifies 'Khan Minieh' with Capernaum. On the other hand, they also point out that Marino Sanuto (1322 CE) identified the site with Bethsaida.
The archaeologist and priest, Andreas Evaristus Mader, conducted exploratory excavations on behalf of the Görres Society in 1911-4 and again in 1931. Finding a large, quadratic structure with outer walls and corner towers, he thought it to be a Roman fort, but further work―by German archaeologists, Alfons Maria Schneider and Oswin Puttrich-Reignard, in 1932-9―disproved this theory: by 1937, they had uncovered the mosque and it had become obvious that the building was an early Islamic palace. When the outbreak of World War II terminated German archaeological work in Palestine, they had excavated about half of the palace and published some of their findings. Various objects excavated were evenly divided between the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, and the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem (today the Rockefeller Museum).
Between July and August 1959, the western section of the palace was excavated by O. Grabar for the Israel Antiquities Authority, and in 1960 the site was excavated by an Israeli-American expedition, intending to refine the chronology and the plan of the palace. Several rescue digs conducted by the Israeli Antiquities Authority between the 1960s and 2011, in the environs of the palace, revealed a bath from the early Islamic period, a medieval caravanserai ,and the remains of a medieval settlement between the palace and the lake. The site is now in the protection of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, which awarded the area protected status as a listed monument. In 2000, it was proposed that Khirbat al-Minya should become a World Heritage Site. The unique status of the site as the only Umayyad-built palace with remains above the ground in Israel, has in recent years resulted in efforts to maintain and restore the ruins and to make them more accessible to visitors. In 2012, the Institut für Vor-und Frühgeschichte of the University of Mainz, in cooperation with the Deutscher Verein vom Heiligen Lande, presented a plan to the Israeli authorities. A guide was published and, with financial support from the German Foreign Ministry, the University is working with the National Park Authority and the Israel Antiques Authority to protect the masonry from further damage.
Khirbat al-Minya was likely built during the reign of the sixth Umayyad caliph, al-Walid I (al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, 705-715 CE), and an inscription on a stone found at the site mentions his name, making the palace's mosque one of the earliest to be built in Palestine. Khirbat al-Minya served as local administrative center for a sub-region of the Jund al-Urdunn ("District of Jordan") and maybe also as a caravanserai for merchants. There is evidence that the palace was in use until at least the end of the Umayyad period in 750 CE. A strong earthquake hit the region around 749 CE, damaging the building through the eastern wing, going straight through the mosque's mihrab. Fallen debris from the earthquake was discovered in the 20th century in situ on the floor tiles of the main entry,and the unused raw materials of a mosaic builder were found in the antechamber of the mosque, so that it remains unclear whether the palace was ever finished.
The inscription (the left part of which is missing) found at Khirbat al-Minya, which reads: "In the na[me of God the Mos]t Mercif[ul] … It has ordered the servant of God, al-Walıîd,commander of the [faithful] …Bairūt, at the hands (under the supervision) ofʿAbdallâh, son of …" [Credit: M. Ritter]
The site was abandoned at an uncertain date, but was later temporarily resettled during the late Mamluk period (14th-15th centuries), when Khan al-Minya was constructed 300 metres due north of the palace by Saif al-Din Tankiz, the Mamluk governor of Syria, who reigned from 1312-1340. Parts of Khirbat al-Minya might have been used as building material for the new khan; baked bricks and a marble capital found during excavations of the khan were assumed to be taken from the palace. No traces on the khan are visible today.
Sixteenth century Ottoman tax registers list the place under the name of Mina in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Jira in the sanjak (district) of Safad, with an all-Muslim population, consisting of 110 households and 2 bachelors. Parts of the ruined palace were used as a water reservoir (likely for a mill) and later a large brick oven was built in the south wing and used to process sugar cane from nearby plantations. In the 19th century locals built huts on the rubble heaps, as Charles Wilson and others found when they visited.
The palace of Khirbat al-Minya is contained within an irregular rectangular enclosure (66 by 73 meters) oriented north-south. Like other Umayyad palaces, it has round towers at its corners and semi-circular towers in the middle of each wall except the eastern wall where a monumental entrance was located, part of which remains and is still impressive; it comprises two projecting half-round towers separated by the arch of the gateway, with niches within.
Ground plan of the Umayyad residence at Khirbat al-Minya [Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority]
Amber sitting in the northern niche of the monumental gateway to the palace
The center of the structure is occupied by a colonnaded courtyard with twin staircases giving access to an upper floor level. The rooms which surrounded the courtyard differ in size and arrangement and included a mosque, numerous rooms with mosaics, and a throne room. The mosque is located in the southeastern corner and is divided into twelve bays supported on piers. Next to the mosque is a triple-aisled basilica hall. Like other Umayyad desert or country palaces, such as Qasr al-Heer al-Gharbi in the Syrian Desert and Khirbat al-Mafjar near Jericho, Khirbat al-Minya followed the Umayyad model of a five-room house flanking the basilica hall. The building is constructed of finely dressed limestone blocks laid in regular courses on a lower course of black basalt stones. The mosque had a simple decoration, but the domed gateway chamber and the southern rooms were richly decorated. The top of the walls were decorated with large stepped merlons (equivalent to crenellations) and the interior was decorated with a variety of glass and stone mosaics. Marble panels covered the dadoes of the walls, and stone mosaics combined with glass cubes were set in geometric carpet-like patterns on the floors of the five southern rooms (you can see pictures of the stunning mosaic floors, which have been covered over for protection, here). A well-preserved floor mosaic has been discovered in the western part of the palace. Based on the foundations of the gate house, parts of the palace were at least 15 metres high.
Clockwise from top left: the mosque, with minhab in southern wall; basilica hall and throne room; Ottoman period basalt mills in the north eastern rooms; two merlons (equivalent to crenellations) which would have sat atop the outer walls of the palace
In one of the rooms to the north east we saw a snake coiled up in the cracks between four stones. On gingerly examining it closer, we realised that the snake―a coin snake (Hemorrhois nummifer) (זעמן מטבעות) harmless to humans―was in the process of pacifying and eating a lizard, having dislocated its jaw in order to enclose the unlucky lizard's head, about which was much slimy digestive juice.
Once the snake became aware if us it released its victim and slid off across the wall, losing its grip and dropping to the ground, before disappearing into a hole. The lizard was not dead, but immobile, and by the end of our visit was beginning to move again. Perhaps it lived to see another day!
Immediately north of Khirbat al-Minya was a Roman/Byzantine Jewish village called Ein-Te'ena ("Spring of the Fig"), referred in the Talmud (4th century CE). It was probably located around the spring which preserved its name in Arabic as Ein e-Tina. There are no traces to be seen today.
North of Ein-Te’ena, and overlooking Khirbat al-Minya, is the tel identified as Kinneret, which is listed by Joshua as one of the fortified cities in the Naftali tribe region (Joshua 19:36). Known in Arabic as Tell el-‘Oreimeh, it was populated from the early bronze age. In 1928 a fragment, from a Egyptian basalt tablet, was found on the hill. It is believed to be from the time of Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III, who listed 119 captured cities from his conquest of Israel in 1468 BCE, including Kinneret. The settlement continued until the Hellenistic period, when the population relocated to Capernaum. Today the hill hosts the water pumps for the National Carrier.
Tel Kinneret, site of the biblical city of Kinneret. Today the site is used as the water pumps for the National Carrier project