Magdala
Magdala was an ancient Jewish city on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, north of Tiberias. In the Babylonian Talmud it is known as Magdala Nunayya, and which some historical geographers think may refer to Tarichaea. It is believed to be the birthplace of Mary Magdalene. Until the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palestinian village of al-Majdal stood at the site of ancient Magdala. The Israeli municipality of Migdal now extends into the area.
History
Roman period
Archaeological excavations on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted in 2006 found that the settlement began during the Hellenistic period and ended during the late Roman period. Later excavations in 2009–2013 brought perhaps the most important discovery in the site: an ancient synagogue, called the "Migdal Synagogue", dating from the Second Temple period. It is the oldest synagogue found in the Galilee, and one of the few synagogues from that period found in the entire country, as of the time of the excavation. They also found the Magdala stone, which has a seven-branched menorah symbol carved on it. It is the earliest menorah of that period to be discovered outside Jerusalem.Archaeologists discovered an entire first century Jewish town lying just below the surface. The excavation revealed multiple structures and four mikvaot. In 2021, another synagogue from the same period was discovered at Magdala.
At Magdala, two texts from the first century were discovered. The initial finding is a Greek mosaic inscription embedded in tessera, displaying the word ΚΑΙΣΥ, translated as " also to you!". The second finding is a lead weight with Greek inscriptions from the 23rd year of Agrippa II, referencing two agoranomoi, enabling its dating to either 71/2 or 82/3 CE.
A collapse layer from the Second Temple period supports Josephus's narrative of the Roman destruction of Magdala during the First Jewish–Roman War. Excavations show that after the destruction, during the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods, the city moved slightly to the north.
Magdala has been described as the "capital of a toparchy" and compared to Sepphoris and Tiberias in that it had "administrative apparatus and personnel" though not to the same extent.
Synagogues
The remains of a Roman-period synagogue dated to 50 BCE- 100 CE were discovered in 2009. The walls of the main hall were decorated with brightly colored frescoes and inside was a stone block carved with a seven-branched menorah.In December 2021, a second synagogue dating to the Second Temple period was unearthed at Magdala. It is the first time two synagogues from this period have been found in a single site. The second synagogue found was not as ornate as the first, and probably served the city's industrial zone.
The city was destroyed by the Romans during the First Jewish-Roman War.
Byzantine, Early Muslim, and Crusader periods
All four gospels refer to a follower of Jesus called Mary Magdalene, which is usually assumed to mean "Mary from Magdala", although there is no biblical information to indicate whether it was her birthplace or her home. Most Christian scholars assume that she was from Magdala Nunayy. Recognition of Magdala as the birthplace of Mary Magdalene appears in texts dating back to the 6th century CE. In the 8th and 10th centuries CE, Christian sources write of a church in the village that was Mary Magdalene's house, where Jesus is said to have exorcised her of demons. The anonymously penned Life of Constantine attributes the building of the church to Empress Helena in the 4th century CE, at the location where she found Mary Magdalene's house. Christian pilgrims to Palestine in the 12th century mention the location of Magdala, but fail to mention the presence of any church at that time.Mamluk period
Under the rule of the Mamluks in the 13th century, sources indicate that the church was used as a stable. In 1283, Burchard of Mount Sion records having entered the house of Mary Magdalene in the village, and about ten years later, Ricoldus of Montecroce noted his joy at having found the church and house still standing.Al-Majdal was a Palestinian Arab village, located on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, north of Tiberias and south of Khan Minyeh.
Christian pilgrims wrote of visiting the house and church of Mary Magdalene from the 6th century onward, but little is known about the village in the Mamluk and early Ottoman period, indicating it was likely small or uninhabited. In the 19th century, Western travellers generally describing it as a very small and poor Muslim village.
Ottoman era
writes of al-Majdal in 1626 that "certain people have claimed that her house is to be seen there", but that the site was in ruins.The small Muslim Arab village of Al-Majdal was located to the south of the land acquired by the Franciscans. Little is known about the village in the medieval or early Ottoman period, presumably because it was either small or uninhabited. Richard Pococke visited "Magdol" around 1740, where he noted "the considerable remains of an indifferent castle", which in his opinion was not the biblical Magdala. The village appeared as El Megdel on the 1799 map of Pierre Jacotin. In the early 19th century, foreign travellers interested in the Christian traditions associated with the site visited the village. In 1807 U. Seetzen stayed overnight in "the little Mahommedan village of Majdil, situated on the bank of the lake." The English traveler James Silk Buckingham observed in 1816 that a few Muslim families resided there, and in 1821, the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt noted that the village was in a rather poor condition.
During his travels through Syria and Palestine in 1838, Edward Robinson described el-Mejdel, as he called it, "a miserable little Muslim village, looking much like a ruin, though exhibiting no marks of antiquity." He wrote: "The name Mejdel is obviously the same with the Hebrew Migdal and Greek Magdala; there is little reason to doubt that this place is the Magdala of the New Testament, chiefly known as the native town of Mary Magdalene. The ancient notices respecting its position are exceedingly indefinite; yet it seems to follow from the New Testament itself, that it lay on the west side of the lake. After the miraculous feeding of four thousand, which appears to have taken place in the country east of the lake, Jesus 'took ship and came into the coast of Magdala;' for which Mark the Evangelist writes Dalmanutha. Here, the Pharisees began to question him, but he 'left them, and entering into the ship again, departed to the other side This view is further confirmed by the testimony of the Rabbins in the Jerusalem Talmud, compiled at Tiberias; who several times speak of Magdala as adjacent to Tiberias and Hammath or the hot springs. The Migdal-el of the Old Testament in the tribe of Naphtali was probably the same place."
In his account of an expedition to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea in 1849, William Francis Lynch reports that it was "a poor village of about 40 families, all fellahin," living in houses of stone with mud roofs, similar to those in Tur'an. Arriving by boat a few years later, Bayard Taylor describes the view from path winding up from shoreline, " through oleanders, nebbuks, patches of hollyhock, anise-seed, fennel, and other spicy plants, while on the west, great fields of barley stand ripe for the cutting. In some places, the Fellahs, men and women, were at work, reaping and binding the sheaves."
In 1857, Solomon Caesar Malan wrote: "Each house, whether separate or attached to another, consisted of one room only. The walls built of mud and of stones, were about ten or twelve feet high; and perhaps as many or more feet square. The roof which was flat, consisted of trunks of trees placed across from one wall to another, and then covered with small branches, grass and rushes; over which a thick coating of mud and gravel was laid.... A flight of rude steps against the wall outside leads up to the roof; and thus enables those who will to reach it without entering the house."
There were two shrines in Al-Majdal: the maqam of Sheikh Muhammad al-'Ajami to the north of the village and the maqam of Sheikh Muhammad ar-Raslan south of the village, as shown on PEF maps and British maps of the 1940s. The first shrine is mentioned by Victor Guérin in 1863. He writes that he arrived in the village from the north: "At seven twenty minutes I crossed the fifth important stream, called Wadi al-Hammam. Behind him is a wely dedicated to the saint Sidi al-Adjemy. At seven o'clock twenty-five minutes I reach Mejdel, a village which I pass without stopping, having already visited it enough".
Isabel Burton also mentions the shrine for Muhammad al-'Ajami in her private journals published in 1875: "First we came to Magdala ... There is a tomb here of a Shaykh, the name implies a Persian Santon; there is a tomb seen on a mountain, said to be that of Dinah, Jacob's daughter. Small boys were running in Nature's garb on the beach, which is white, sandy, pebbly, and full of small shells."
In 1881 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described al-Majdal as a stone-built village, situated on a partially arable plain, with an estimated population of about 80. Fellahin from Egypt are said to have settled in the village some time in the 19th century.
A population list from about 1887 showed el Mejdel to have about 170 inhabitants; all Muslims.
The Jewish agricultural settlement of Migdal was established in 1910–1911 on land purchased by Russian Zionists Jews, northwest of the village of Al-Majdal.
British Mandate era
and another Franciscan friar who visited the village in 1935 were hosted by the Mukhtar Mutlaq, whose nine wives and descendants are said to have made up almost the whole of the population of the village at the time. Part of the site was acquired by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land sometime after 1935. During this period, Al-Majdal had a rectangular layout, with most of the houses crowded together, though a few to the north along the lakeshore were spaced further apart. Built of stone, cement, and mud, some had roofs of wood and cane covered with a layer of mud. It was the smallest village in the district of Tiberias in terms of land area. The Muslim inhabitants maintained a shrine for one Mohammad al-Ajami on the northern outskirts of the village. To the west of the village on the summit of the mountains, lay the remains of the Crusader fortress of Magdala. On the lakeshore about south of the village, was a perforated black stone mentioned by Arab travellers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Local belief held that the holes were caused by ants having eaten through it, and for this reason it was called hajar al-namla, "the ant´s stone."At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine, Majdal had a population of 210 Muslims, increasing to 284 Muslims living in 62 houses by the 1931 census. The village economy was based on agriculture, vegetables and grain.
In the 1945 statistics Al-Majdal had a population of 360 Muslims with a total land area of 103 dunams. Of this, 24 dunams were used for growing citrus and bananas, and 41 dunums devoted to cereals. Another 17 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards, while 6 dunams were classified as built-up area.