# Katzrin ancient village and synagogue

The Katzrin ancient village and synagogue (Arabic: قاصرين; Hebrew: קצרין העתיקה) is an open-air museum located in the Golan Heights on the outskirts of the Israeli settlement of Katzrin. It features the partially reconstructed remains of a village from the 4th-8th century CE, that is: mainly from the Byzantine period, but starting from the Late Roman and extending into the Early Muslim era (Rashidun and Umayyad periods), or in Jewish historiography, the Talmudic period.
The site was the Syrian village of Kisrin.

## History, archaeological site and park

The site was inhabited during the Middle Bronze Age, Iron II, Late Roman, Early Islamic, Mamluk, and modern era.
The ancient Jewish farming village of Katzrin was built around a spring, which still flowed until recently. Above-ground ruins already existed at the site, and archaeological excavations have increased the number of accessible ancient buildings. An ancient synagogue was discovered in 1967 and excavated between 1971 and 1984. Other parts of the village were excavated beginning in 1983. Some of the buildings have been reconstructed on their ancient foundations and furnished with replicas of household goods and tools. An ancient wine press and olive press have also been made functional with new ropes and beams. Costumed guides demonstrate and explain in Hebrew and English construction methods, agricultural and manufacturing processes.

### Synagogue

The Katzrin Synagogue was built in the 6th century CE atop a more modest, probably late-4th-century synagogue. It was built with an architectural style characteristic to southern Syria, but not used in Palestine during that period. Fragments of a mosaic floor have been found. The synagogue was apparently destroyed by the catastrophic 749 earthquake. In the Mamluk period, part of the standing ruin was roofed and used as a mosque. After a brief period, this use and the village itself were abandoned until 1967.
The synagogue had two rows of four columns each. The building was two stories tall with rows of windows at the top of the walls. The roof was built of wooden beams covered with ceramic tiles. In the southern wall, which faces Jerusalem, two massive stone steps lead to a raised stone platform (bimah). It is thought that a wooden Torah ark would have stood here. Under the bimah there is a long, stone-paved space thought to have served as a geniza (storage space for sacred texts no longer in use). The walls were plastered and painted white, with the lower walls decorated with red geometric motifs. The walls were lined with stone benches in the form of a double step.
The basalt lintel of one of the houses unearthed in the Golan bears a Hebrew inscription that reads: "This is the beit midrash of Rabbi Elazar the Caper Maker." This discovery ties in with a discussion in the Talmud that revolves around wearing new shoes on the Sabbath: What are new shoes? Shoes that have not “walked” a certain distance, in this case the distance between the synagogue at Katzrin and the beit midrash of Rabbi Elazar the Caper Maker.

### Mamluk village and Mosque

In the thirteenth-fourteenth century CE it became a Mamluk village and had a mosque. The Mamluk period is not presented to visitors of the site.
Transhumance shaped settlement in the Golan for centuries because of its harsh winters. The winters "forced tribespeople until the 19th century to live in hundreds of rudimentary 'winter villages' in their tribal territory. Starting in the second part of the 19th century, villages like Kisrin became "fixed and formed the nucleus of fully sedentary life in the 20th century Golan."

#### Ottoman Syria, French Mandate for Syria and Independent Syria

The settlement was the Syrian village of Kisrin. In the 1880s, Kisrin was described as "a small Bedawin winter village, with a group of beautiful oak trees and old ruins, south of el-Ahmediyeh". From the late 19th century to 1967, the village was inhabited by Bedouins and a settled population. Since 1920 and until the independence of Syria in 1944, the area was under the jurisdiction of the French mandate. The Syrian farm of Fakhoura was just to the north-east and had about 250 inhabitants before its depopulation in 1967.
The Syrian period is not presented to visitors of the site.

## Criticism of the museum

The site has been described by an archeologist as being developed: "with a clear agenda and nationalistic narrative." It has also been criticized for distorting historical items and showing a selective part of history, focusing on the Jewish period leaving out the Mamluk and Syrian periods.