44 Facts About Nazareth

Nazareth is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel.

Nazareth was a Jewish village during the Roman and Byzantine periods, and is described in the New Testament as the childhood home of Jesus.

Since late antiquity, Nazareth has been a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical events.

Arabic name for Nazareth is an-Nasira, and Jesus is called an-Nasiri, reflecting the Arab tradition of according people an attribution, a name denoting whence a person comes in either geographical or tribal terms.

In Luke's Gospel, Nazareth is first described as 'a town of Galilee' and home of Mary.

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Around 331, Eusebius records that, from the name Nazareth, Christ was called a Nazoraean, and that, in earlier centuries, Christians were once called Nazarenes.

The Rabbinic and modern Hebrew name for Christians, notzrim, is thought to derive from Nazareth, and be connected with Tertullus' charge against Paul of being a member of the sect of the Nazarenes, Nazoraioi, "men of Nazareth" in Acts.

Archaeological evidence shows the Nazareth was occupied during the late Hellenistic period, through the Roman period and into the Byzantine period.

Nazareth is not spelled with the "z" sound but with the Hebrew tsade.

Eleazar Kalir mentions a locality clearly in the Nazareth region bearing the name Nazareth ????, which was home to the descendants of the 18th Kohen family Happitzetz, for at least several centuries after the Bar Kochva revolt.

Ken Dark describes the view that Nazareth did not exist in Jesus's time as "archaeologically unsupportable".

At Nazareth there lived various vendors of antiquities who got ancient material from several places.

Christian monk and Bible translator Jerome, writing at the beginning of the 5th century, says Nazareth was a viculus or mere village.

The Christian Byzantine author Eutychius claimed that Jewish people of Nazareth helped the Persians carry out their slaughter of the Christians.

Nazareth was the ruler of the Principality of Galilee, which was established, at least in name, in 1099, as a vassal of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Later, in 1115, Nazareth was created as a seigneury within the principality.

Nazareth was the original site of the Latin Patriarch, established by Tancred.

In 1263, Baybars, the Mamluk Sultan, destroyed the Christian buildings in Nazareth and declared the site off-limits to Latin clergy, as part of his bid to drive out the remaining Crusaders from Palestine.

Nazareth transformed Nazareth from a minor village into a large town by encouraging immigration to it.

Nazareth played a strategic role in Zahir's sheikhdom because it allowed him to wield control over the agricultural areas of central Galilee.

Nazareth permitted the Franciscans to purchase the Synagogue Church in 1741 and authorized the Greek Orthodox community to build St Gabriel's Church in 1767.

Nazareth was temporarily captured by the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, during his Syrian campaign.

The Christians of Nazareth were protected during the massacres of 1860 by Aqil Agha, the Bedouin leader who exercised control over the Galilee between 1845 and 1870.

Representatives of Nazareth opposed the Zionist movement, sending a delegation to the 1919 First Palestine Arab Congress and issuing a letter of protest in 1920 that condemned the movement while proclaiming solidarity with the Jews of Palestine.

Politically, Nazareth was becoming further involved in the growing Palestinian nationalist movement.

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Nazareth was in the territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

Nazareth itself was not a field of battle during the 1948 War, which began on 15 May, before the first truce on 11 June, although some of the villagers had joined the loosely organized peasant military and paramilitary forces, and troops from the Arab Liberation Army had entered Nazareth on 9 July.

Surrender of Nazareth was formalized in a written agreement, whereby the town's leaders agreed to cease hostilities in return for promises from the Israeli officers, including brigade commander Ben Dunkelman, that no harm would come to the civilians of the town.

Nazareth refused, remarking that he was 'shocked and horrified' that he would be commanded to renege on the agreement he, and Chaim Laskov, had just signed.

Knesset member Seif el-Din el-Zoubi, who represented Nazareth, actively opposed the Absentees' Property Law, which allowed state expropriation of land from Arab citizens who were not permitted to return to their original villages.

Two locations for Nazareth are cited in ancient texts: the Galilean location in the Christian gospels and a southern location mentioned in several early noncanonical texts.

Nazareth is about 25 kilometres from the Sea of Galilee and about 9 kilometres west from Mount Tabor.

Nazareth is home to the largest Arab Christian community in Israel, the Christian communities of Nazareth are varied and included various denominations, the most prominent among them the Greek Orthodox, Melkite Greek Catholic, Latin Catholics, Maronites, Armenian Orthodox, and Protestants.

The Christian communities in Nazareth tend to be wealthier and better educated compare to other Arabs elsewhere in Israel, and Christians of Nazareth occupay the majority of the top positions in the town: three hospitals and bank managers, judges and school principals and faculties.

Population list from about 1887 showed that Nazareth had about 6,575 inhabitants; 1,620 Muslims, 2,485 Greek Catholics, 845 Catholics, 1,115 Latins, 220 Maronites and 290 Protestants.

In 1918, Nazareth had an estimated population of 8,000, two-thirds Christian.

Today, Nazareth still has a significant Christian population, made up of various denominations.

In 2011, Nazareth had over 20 Arab-owned high-tech companies, mostly in the field of software development.

Nazareth is home to dozens of monasteries and churches, many of them in the Old City.

Bagatti, who acted as the principal archaeologist for the venerated sites in Nazareth, unearthed quantities of later Roman and Byzantine artifacts, attesting to unambiguous human presence there from the 2nd century AD onward.

Noteworthy is that all the post-Iron Age tombs in the Nazareth basin are of the kokh or later types; this type probably first appeared in Galilee in the middle of the 1st century AD.

Kokh tombs in the Nazareth area have been excavated by B Bagatti, N Feig, Z Yavor, and noted by Z Gal.

Three prestigious Arab Christian schools in Nazareth are the St Joseph's Eclerical School, run by the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, the Nuns of St Joseph School, a Catholic institution, and the Nazareth Baptist High School, a Protestant institution.

City's main football club, Ahi Nazareth, currently plays in Liga Leumit, the second tier of Israeli football.