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Tomb of the Matriarchs

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Tombs of biblical peopleWomen and deathWomen in the Hebrew BibleZipporah
Matriarch graves 1
Matriarch graves 1

The Tomb of the Matriarchs (Hebrew: קבר האמהות, Kever ha'Imahot) in Tiberias, Israel, is the traditional burial place of several biblical women: Bilhah, handmaid of Rachel. Zilpah, handmaid of Leah. Jochebed, mother of Moses. Zipporah, wife of Moses. Elisheba, wife of Aaron. Abigail, one of King David's wives. The marble structure beside a modern apartment building block is surrounded by a stone wall.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Tomb of the Matriarchs (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Tomb of the Matriarchs
Ha'imahot,

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N 32.802 ° E 35.522611111111 °
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קבר האימהות

Ha'imahot
1427943
North District, Israel
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Matriarch graves 1
Matriarch graves 1
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Tiberias
Tiberias

Tiberias ( ty-BEER-ee-əs; Hebrew: טְבֶרְיָה, ; Arabic: طبريا, romanized: Ṭabariyyā) is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed. In 2022, it had a population of 48,472. Tiberias was founded around 20 CE by Herod Antipas and was named after Roman emperor Tiberius. It became a major political and religious hub of the Jews in the Land of Israel after the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judea during the Jewish–Roman wars. From the time of the second through the tenth centuries CE, Tiberias was the largest Jewish city in Galilee, and much of the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud were compiled there. Tiberias flourished during the early Islamic period, when it served as the capital of Jund al-Urdunn and became a multi-cultural trading center. The city slipped in importance following several earthquakes, foreign incursions, and after the Mamluks turned Safed into the capital of Galilee. The city was greatly damaged by an earthquake in 1837, after which it was rebuilt, and it grew steadily following the Zionist Aliyah in the 1880s. In early modern times, Tiberias was a mixed city; under British rule it had a majority Jewish population, but with a significant Arab community. During the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, fighting broke out between the Jewish residents of Tiberias and its Palestinian Arab minority. As the Haganah took over, British troops evacuated the entire Palestinian Arab population; they were refused reentry after the war, such that today the city has an almost exclusively Jewish population. After the war ended, the new Israeli authorities destroyed the Old City of Tiberias. A large number of Jewish immigrants to Israel subsequently settled in Tiberias. Today, Tiberias is an important tourist center due to its proximity to the Sea of Galilee and religious sanctity to Judaism and Christianity. The city also serves as a regional industrial and commercial center. Its immediate neighbour to the south, Hammat Tiberias, which is now part of modern Tiberias, has been known for its hot springs, believed to cure skin and other ailments, for some two thousand years.

1938 Tiberias massacre
1938 Tiberias massacre

The Tiberias massacre took place on 2 October 1938, during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Tiberias, then located in the British Mandate of Palestine and today located in the State of Israel. After infiltrating the Jewish Kiryat Shmuel neighbourhood, Arab rioters killed 19 Jews in Tiberias, 11 of whom were children. During the massacre, 70 armed Arabs set fire to Jewish homes and the local synagogue. In one house a mother and her five children were killed. The old beadle in the synagogue was stabbed to death, and another family of 4 was killed. At the time of the attack there were only 15 Jewish guards in the neighborhood of over 2,000 people. The coast of the Sea of Galilee remained unguarded, for it was the least expected direction for an attack. Two Jewish guards were killed in the attack. The historian Shai Lachman has attributed the massacre to Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir. A representative of the British mandate reported that: "It was systematically organized and savagely executed. Of the nineteen Jews killed, including women and children, all save four were stabbed to death. That night and the following day the troops engaged the raiding gangs". After the massacre, the Irgun proposed a joint retaliatory operation with Haganah to deter such events, but the latter group did not agree. Tiberian Arabs murdered the Jewish mayor, Zaki Alhadif, on 27 October 1938. The Haganah sent a party, led by Yosef Avidar, a Haganah leader who later became a general (Aluf) in the Israel Defense Forces, to investigate the failed defense of the city.

Capture of Tiberias (1918)
Capture of Tiberias (1918)

The Capture of Tiberias took place on 25 September 1918 during the Battle of Sharon which together with the Battle of Nablus formed the set piece Battle of Megiddo fought between 19 and 25 September in the last months of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War. During the cavalry phase of the Battle of Sharon the Desert Mounted Corps occupied the Esdraelon Plain (also known as the Jezreel Valley and the plain of Armageddon) 40–50 miles (64–80 km) behind the front line in the Judean Hills. One squadron from each of the 3rd and 4th Light Horse Brigades Australian Mounted Division attacked and captured Tiberias (on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee also known as Lake Tiberias), along with the Yildirim Army Group's Ottoman and German garrison. The Tiberias garrison formed part of a rearguard stretching to Samakh and on to Deraa which was intended to cover the retreat of three Ottoman armies. They were set up to delay the advance of the Desert Mounted Corps of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) after the British Empire infantry victories at the Battle of Tulkarm, Battle of Tabsor during the Battle of Sharon. These and other battles fought during the Battle of Nablus including the Third Transjordan attack, also part of the Battle of Megiddo, forced the retreat of the Ottoman Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Armies north towards Damascus. Tiberias was captured by two squadrons of light horse, one from the 3rd Light Horse Brigade supported by armoured cars, and one from the 4th Light Horse Brigade after fighting the Battle of Samakh. The two squadrons converged on the town from the north–west and south respectively and took 100 prisoners. The remainder of the garrison retreated northwards to form a rearguard at Lake Hule with the survivors from the Samakh garrison. The next day the Australian Mounted Division and the 5th Cavalry Division pursued the Ottoman forces towards Damascus, paralleling the pursuit on the inland route begun by the 4th Cavalry Division a day earlier.

Sieges of Tiberias (1742–1743)

The sieges of Tiberias occurred in late 1742 and the summer of 1743 when the Ottoman governor of Damascus, Sulayman Pasha al-Azm, twice attempted and failed to eliminate the increasingly powerful, Tiberias-based multazim (tax farmer), Zahir al-Umar, and destroy his fortifications. Sulayman Pasha operated under orders from the imperial government to execute Zahir, and was militarily backed by the governors of Sidon and Tripoli, as well as the district governors of Nablus, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Bedouin levies. Zahir and his family, the Banu Zaydan, controlled and fortified several places in the Galilee, with Zahir based in Tiberias, and his brother, Sa'd al-Umar, in nearby Deir Hanna. In 1737 and 1738, Zahir had intensified his raids, incursions, and operations to areas under the jurisdiction of Damascus, prompting the imperial orders to eliminate him and his local allies. The first siege of Tiberias lasted for nearly three months, with Sulayman Pasha unable to breach the fortifications and forced to withdraw to lead the Hajj caravan to Mecca. Zahir strengthened Tiberias, while unsuccessfully lobbying the imperial government through the French merchants of Acre and the Jewish community in Tiberias, who attempted to leverage their contacts in the imperial capital, Constantinople. Shortly after his return to Damascus, Sulayman Pasha renewed the campaign in July 1743, with more troops and weapons. He attempted to reduce Deir Hanna, which supplied Tiberias with arms and provisions, but died suddenly in his camp. Zahir soon after reached a détente with Sulayman Pasha's successor, As'ad Pasha al-Azm. The next fourteen years were generally free of hostilities with Damascus, which enabled Zahir to focus on occupying the port of Acre in the 1740s.