Some scholars have suggested that the name Tireh reflects the town's history as the original location of Ancient Tyre. The
Crusaders called al-Tira,
St. Yohan de Tire, and in the thirteenth century the village contained a
Greek Orthodox abbey of St. John the Baptist. In 1283 it was mentioned as part of the domain of the Crusaders, according to the
hudna between the Crusaders and the
Mamluk sultan
Qalawun.
Ottoman era In 1517 the village was incorporated into the
Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine. During the
16th and
17th centuries, Tirat al-Lauz belonged to the
Turabay Emirate (1517-1683), which encompassed also the
Jezreel Valley,
Haifa,
Jenin,
Beit She'an Valley, northern
Jabal Nablus,
Bilad al-Ruha/Ramot Menashe, and the northern part of the
Sharon plain. In 987 H. (1579 CE) it is recorded that
Assaf, the
sanjaqbey of
al-Lajjun, built a
mosque in the village. In 1596, al-Tira was a village with a population of 52
Muslim households, an estimated 286 persons, under the administrative jurisdiction of the
nahiya ("subdistrict") of Shafa, part of
Sanjak Lajjun of the
Ottoman Empire. Villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% to the authorities for the crops that they cultivated, which included wheat, goats, beehives, and
vineyards; a total of 26,000
Akçe. In
1799, it appeared under the name of El Koneiceh (= Kh. el Keniseh) on the map that
Pierre Jacotin compiled that year, though it was misplaced.
Victor Guérin visited in 1870, “I first examined a small mosque, which appears to have been formerly a Christian church. Aligned from west to east it has only a single nave and is terminated towards the east by an apse. One enters through a rectangular door crowned by a fine monolithic
lintel. This church, which has been constructed with very regular ashlars, is covered by slightly pointed vaults, above which there is a flat terrace roof.” After the heavy conscription imposed by the Ottomans in 1872, there was a decline in the village's prosperity, but it subsequently recovered. A population list from about 1887 showed that Tireh had about 2,555 inhabitants; all
Muslims. File:El Tireh.jpg|Al-Tira (El Tireh)
Palestine Exploration Fund map, 1875 File:Et Tira 1932.jpg|Al-Tira (Et Tira) 1932 1:20,000 File:Haifa 1945.jpg|Al-Tira (Tira) 1945 1:250,000 Al-Tira had two mosques, named the Old and the New. The Old mosque was originally a church, and was already out of use by 1932. The New mosque appears to be still standing, but now converted into a
synagogue. The age of the New Mosque is not agreed upon; Pringle states that it is the mosque built by Assaf in 1579 C.E. However, Petersen, who inspected it in 1994, reports that this is incorrect, and that an inscription set in an arched recess by the door to what was the entrance to the prayer hall records, in provincial
nasskhi script, the construction of the mosque to Ishaq ibn Amir in 687 H. (1288-1289 CE). where the Christians were 1 Roman Catholic and 8 Orthodox. The population had increased in the
1931 census to 3,191 people; 3,173 Muslims, 17 Christians, 1 Druze, in a total of 624 houses. In 1943, al-Tira produced more olives and oil than any other village in the Haifa District. The abundance of almond trees in al-Tira gave rise to the village's nickname,
Tirat al-Lawz ("Tira of the almonds"). By 1945, its 5,240
Muslims and 30
Christians Of this, Palestinians used 16,219 for
cereals; 3,543 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, while a total of 901 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
1948 ethnic cleansing Shortly after the beginning of the
1948 Palestine war, on 11/12 December 1947 Tira was attacked by the terrorist organisation
Irgun and thirteen residents were killed, "mainly children and the elderly" according to historian
Ilan Pappé. Tira was attacked by the
Haganah on the night of 21–22 April 1948, causing some women and children to flee the village. At dawn on April 25, the Haganah mortared Tira, and launched an attack on the village in the early hours of 26 April. An infantry company reached the outskirts of the village but was apparently halted by fire from British units. The village's non-combat population was then evacuated by the British, leaving several hundred armed men to defend it. It fell to Israeli forces in July. Following the war, the area was incorporated into the
State of Israel and absorbed into
Tirat Carmel. Tira was first settled with Jewish immigrants in February 1949; by April it had a population of 2,000. Many of Tira's refugees fled to Jordan, mostly to
Irbid. After the war,
Palestinian refugees who had been displaced the town established the Wādī al-‘Ein village . The community at Wādī al-‘Ein persisted until the early 1970s, when
Israeli authorities forcibly evicted the residents. This
eviction was implemented to incorporate the area into the
Mount Carmel National Park, which had been designated in 1960. Subsequent to the residents' removal, the dwellings in the small village were not
demolished. Instead, they remain vacant up to the present day. The Palestinian historian
Walid Khalidi described the village remains in 1992: "Some of the houses, such as one belonging to 'Irsan al-Dhib, remain standing. The cemetery is unkempt and there are several broken gravestones. The remains of two shrines are visible and the school is used by Israeli students, both Palestinians and Jewish. There are forests and some residential houses in the mountainous part of the surrounding land." File:Al-Tira, Haifa former Mosque.jpg|Former Mosque in Al-Tira, presently a synagogue File:Al-Tira, Haifa, old school building.png|Old school building in Al-Tira, Haifa File:Al-Tira, Haifa, Police station.png|Al-Tira, Haifa, Police station ==References==