page_title: Meron, Israel
section_title: Ottoman period
hierarchical_section_title: Meron, Israel / History / Ottoman period
caption_attribution_description: English: Jewish Pilgrims dancing, Meron, c. 1920
context_page_description: Meron is a town in northern Israel. Located on the slopes of Mount Meron in the Upper Galilee near Safed, it falls under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council. It was founded in 1949 on the ruins of the depopulated Palestinian village of Meiron, by Orthodox soldiers discharged after the war.
  Meron is most famous for the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and is the site of annual mass public commemoration of Lag Ba'Omer. The association of Meron with the ancient Canaanite city of Merom or Maroma is generally accepted by archaeologists. According to Avraham Negev, by the Second Temple period, Merom was known as Meron. Meron is mentioned in the Bible as the site of Joshua's victory over the Canaanite kings. In the 12th century, Benjamin de Tudela visited Meron and described a cave with tombs, believed to hold the remains of Hillel, Shammai, and "twenty of their disciples and other Rabbis". In 1931, Meron consisted of an Arab and Jewish quarter.
  In 2018 it had a population of 963.
context_section_description: Palestine was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and by 1596, Meron was a large village of 715 located in the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jira, part of Sanjak Safad. The village paid taxes on goats, beehives, and a press that processed either grapes or olives. All the villagers were Muslim. 
  Meron suffered relatively minor damage in the Galilee earthquake of 1837. It was reported that during the earthquake the walls of the tombs of Rabbi Eleazer and Rabbi Shimon were dislodged, but did not collapse.
  A number of European travellers came to Meron over the course of the 19th century and their observations from the time are documented in travel journals. Edward Robinson, who visited Meron during his travels in Palestine and Syria in the mid-19th century, describes it as "a very old looking village situated on a ledge of bristling rocks near the foot of the mountain. The ascent is by a very steep and ancient road [...] It is small, and inhabited only by Muhammedans." The tombs of Shimon bar Yochai, his son rabbi Eleazar and those of Hillel and Shammai are located by Robinson as lying within a khan-like courtyard underneath low-domed structures that were usually kept closed with the keys held in Safad. Robinson indicates that this place was the focal point of Jewish pilgrimage activities by his time; the synagogue is described as being in ruins.
  Laurence Oliphant also visited Meron sometime in the latter half of the 19th century. His guide there was a Sephardic rabbi who owned the land that made up the Jewish quarter of the village. Oliphant writes that the rabbi had brought 6 Jewish families from Morocco to till the land, and that they and another 12 Muslim families made up the whole of the village's population at the time. Karl Baedeker described it as a small village that appeared quite old with a Muslim population. By the late 19th century, Meron was a small village of 50 people who cultivated olives.
caption: Jewish pilgrims in Meron, c. 1920.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery 6.0.6001.18000", "Image DateTime": "2009:04:25 16:40:46", "Image ExifOffset": "2202", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "1/0", "Thumbnail YResolution": "1/0", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4420", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2219", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "2A5430EC64A548A9953A98B88B9D2152", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}