Archaeological evidence shows that Nazareth was occupied during the late Hellenistic period, through the Roman period and into the Byzantine period.
Stone and Metal Ages Archaeological researchers have revealed that a funerary and cult center at
Kfar HaHoresh, about two miles () from current Nazareth, dates back roughly 9,000 years to the
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B era. The remains of some 65 individuals were found, buried under huge horizontal headstone structures, some of which consisted of up to 3 tons of locally produced white plaster. Decorated human skulls uncovered there have led archaeologists to identify Kfar HaHoresh as a major cult centre in that era. The Franciscan priest
Bellarmino Bagatti, "Director of Christian Archaeology", carried out extensive excavation of this "Venerated Area" from 1955 to 1965. Fr. Bagatti uncovered pottery dating from the
Middle Bronze Age (2200 to 1500 BC) and ceramics, silos and grinding mills from the
Iron Age (1500 to 586 BC) which indicated substantial settlement in the Nazareth basin at that time.
Roman Empire According to the
Gospel of Luke, Nazareth was the home village of Mary as well as the site of the
Annunciation (when the angel
Gabriel informed Mary that she would give birth to Jesus). According to the
Gospel of Matthew, Joseph and Mary resettled in Nazareth after returning from the
flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. According to the Bible, Jesus grew up in Nazareth from some point in his childhood. However, some modern scholars also regard Nazareth as the birthplace of the historical Jesus. A
Hebrew inscription found in
Caesarea dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century mentions Nazareth as the home of the
priestly Hapizzez/Hafizaz family after the
Bar Kokhba revolt (AD 132–135). From the three fragments that have been found, the inscription seems to be a list of the twenty-four priestly courses, with each course (or family) assigned its proper order and the name of each town or village in
Galilee where it settled. Nazareth is not spelled with the "z" sound but with the Hebrew
tsade (thus "Nasareth" or "Natsareth").
Eleazar Kalir (a Hebrew Galilean poet variously dated from the 6th to 10th century) mentions a locality clearly in the Nazareth region bearing the name Nazareth נצרת (in this case vocalized "Nitzrat"), which was home to the descendants of the 18th
Kohen family Happitzetz (הפצץ), for at least several centuries after the
Bar Kochva revolt. Although it is mentioned in the New Testament gospels, there are no extant non-biblical references to Nazareth until around AD 200, when
Sextus Julius Africanus, cited by Eusebius (
Church History 1.7.14), speaks of Nazara as a village in Judea and locates it near Cochaba (modern-day
Kaukab). In the same passage Africanus writes of
desposunoi – relatives of Jesus – who he claims
kept the records of their descent with great care.
Ken Dark describes the view that Nazareth did not exist in Jesus's time as "archaeologically unsupportable". James F. Strange, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, notes: "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century AD. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea." Strange originally calculated the population of Nazareth at the time of Christ as "roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people" but, in a subsequent publication that followed more than a decade of additional research, revised this figure down to "a maximum of about 480." In 2009, Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre excavated archaeological remains in Nazareth that date to the time of Jesus in the early Roman period. Alexandre told reporters, "The discovery is of the utmost importance since it reveals for the very first time a house from the Jewish village of Nazareth." A tablet at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, dating to AD 50, was sent from Nazareth to Paris in 1878. It contains an inscription known as the "Ordinance of Caesar" that outlines the penalty of death for those who violate tombs or graves. However, it is suspected that this inscription came to Nazareth from somewhere else (possibly
Sepphoris). Bagatti writes: "we are not certain that it was found in Nazareth, even though it came from Nazareth to Paris. At Nazareth there lived various vendors of antiquities who got ancient material from several places." C. Kopp is more definite: "It must be accepted with certainty that [the Ordinance of Caesar]... was brought to the Nazareth market by outside merchants."
Princeton University archaeologist Jack Finnegan describes additional archaeological evidence related to settlement in the Nazareth basin during the
Bronze and
Iron Ages, and states that "Nazareth was a strongly
Jewish settlement in the
Roman period." In 2020, Yardenna Alexandre confirmed that Jews from Judea migrated to Galilee and settled in new villages and settlements, including Nazareth, since the late Hellenistic-Hasmonean period (). Under the leadership of priestly families, the Jewish inhabitants observed ritual purity laws. Previously, most of Galilee, except for minor short-lived Israelite settlements in the Naḥal Ẓippori basin, had an occupational gap for about 5 centuries because of the
Assyrian conquest in 732 BCE. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schroter note that Assyrians were typically relocated to conquered territories, which most likely included Israel. Some scholars believed
Jesus, a native of Nazareth, was influenced by
Cynicism, which was popular in Hellenized Galilean cities such as
Gadara.
Byzantine Empire Epiphanius in his
Panarion () numbers Nazareth among the cities devoid of a non-Jewish population. Epiphanius, writing of
Joseph of Tiberias, a wealthy Roman Jew who converted to Christianity in the time of
Constantine, says he claimed to have received an imperial rescript to build Christian churches in Jewish towns and villages where no gentiles or Samaritans dwell, naming
Tiberias,
Diocaesarea,
Sepphoris, Nazareth and
Capernaum. From this scarce notice, it has been concluded that a small church which encompassed a cave complex might have been located in Nazareth in the early 4th century", although the town was Jewish until the 7th century. The Christian monk and Bible translator
Jerome, writing at the beginning of the 5th century, says Nazareth was a
viculus or mere village. In the 6th century, religious narrations from local Christians about the
Virgin Mary began to spark interest in the site among pilgrims, who founded the first church at the location of the current
Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation at the site of a freshwater spring, today known as
Mary's Well. Around 570, the
Anonymous of Piacenza reports travelling from
Sepphoris to Nazareth. There he records seeing in the Jewish synagogue the books from which Jesus learnt his letters, and a bench where he sat. According to him, Christians could lift it, but Jews could not, since it disallowed them from dragging it outside. Writing of the beauty of the Hebrew women there, he records them saying St. Mary was a relative of theirs, and notes that, "The house of St. Mary is a basilica." Constantine the Great ordered that churches be built in Jewish cities, and Nazareth was one of the places designated for this purpose, although construction of churches apparently only started decades after Constantine's death, i.e. after 352. Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that previous to the erection of the Byzantine-period church at the site of Mary's house in the mid-5th century, Judeo-Christians had built there a synagogue-church, leaving behind Judeo-Christian symbols. The ruins of St. Joseph's remained untouched for a very long time, while the Church St. Mary is repeatedly mentioned throughout the following centuries, including by an
Arab geographer in 943. of Nazareth In 1099, the Crusader
Tancred captured Galilee and established his capital in Nazareth. He 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. A Martin of Nazareth, who probably acted as viscount of Nazareth, is documented in 1115 and in 1130/1131. Nazareth was the original site of the Latin Patriarch, also established by Tancred. The ancient diocese of
Scythopolis was relocated under the
Archbishop of Nazareth, as one of the four archdioceses in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. When the town returned to Muslim control in 1187 following the victory of
Saladin in the
Battle of Hattin, the remaining Crusaders and European clergy were forced to leave town.
Frederick II managed to negotiate safe passage for pilgrims from Acre in 1229, and in 1251,
Louis IX, the king of France, attended mass in the grotto, accompanied by his wife. He ensured Nazareth's security for other reasons as well, among them strengthening ties with
France by protecting the Christian community and protecting one of his wives who resided in Nazareth. Daher authorized the Franciscans to build a church in 1730. That structure stood until 1955, when it was demolished to make way for a larger building completed in 1967. Nazareth's Christian community did not fare well under Daher's Ottoman successor,
Jazzar Pasha (r. 1776–1804), and friction increased between its Christians and Muslim peasants from the surrounding villages. Nazareth was temporarily captured by the troops of
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, during his
Syrian campaign. Napoleon visited the holy sites and considered appointing his general
Jean-Andoche Junot as the duke of Nazareth. In the late 19th century and the first years of the 20th century, Nazareth prospered as it served the role of a market center for the dozens of rural Arab villages located within its vicinity. Local peasants would purchase supplies from Nazareth's many
souks (open-air markets), which included separate
souks for agricultural produce, metalwork, jewelry and leathers. In 1914, Nazareth consisted of eight quarters: 'Araq, Farah, Jami', Khanuq, Maidan, Mazazwa, Sharqiya and Shufani. There were nine churches, two monasteries, four convents, two mosques, four hospitals, four private schools, a public school, a police station, three orphanages, a hotel, three inns, a flour mill and eight
souks. The Ottomans lost control of Palestine, including Nazareth, to the
Allied Powers during
World War I. The
Greek Orthodox Patriarchate invested in properties that further anchored its landholdings in areas of Christian pilgrimage and demographic importance around Nazareth. By then, Nazareth's importance had declined significantly as most of the Arab villages in the
Jezreel Valley had been replaced by newly established
Jewish communities. In 1922 there were 7,424 people (4,885 Christians, 2,486 Muslims and 53 Jews) living in Nazareth with 16 languages spoken (7,035
Arabic, 135
English, 72
French, 43
Hebrew, 42
German, 20
Armenian, 12
Greek, 12
Italian, five
Maltese, five
Turkish, four
Polish, three
Yiddish, two
Abyssinian, two
Magyar, and two
Spanish). Nazareth was relatively slow to modernize. While other towns already had wired electricity, Nazareth delayed its electrification until the 1930s and invested instead in improving its water supply system. This included adding two reservoirs at the northwestern hills and several new
cisterns. In the
1936–1939 Arab Revolt, Nazareth played a minor role, contributing two rebel commanders out of 281 rebel commanders active in the country. The two were Nazareth native and Christian
Fu'ad Nassar and Nazareth resident and
Indur native Tawfiq al-Ibrahim. The nearby villages of
Saffuriya and
al-Mujaydil played a more active military role, contributing nine commanders between them. The leaders of the revolt sought to use Nazareth as a staging ground to protest the
British proposal to include the
Galilee into a future Jewish state. On 26 September 1937, the British district commissioner of the Galilee,
Lewis Yelland Andrews, was assassinated in Nazareth by local rebels. In the 1938 village statistics, Nazareth is listed with a population of 9,900 (including 100 Jews) with 161 in nearby suburbs. In the 1945 village statistics, Nazareth is listed with a population of 14,200 (8,600 Christians and 5,600 Muslims). By 1946, the municipal boundary of Nazareth had been enlarged and new neighborhoods, namely Maidan, Maslakh, Khanuq and Nimsawi, were established. New homes were established in existing quarters and the town still had an abundance of orchards and agricultural fields. Two cigarette factories, a tobacco store, two cinemas and a tile factory had been established, significantly boosting Nazareth's economy.
Israel 1948 War (left), Mayor of Nazareth, with Israeli prime minister
Moshe Sharett, 1955 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 (ALA) had entered Nazareth on 9 July. The local defense of the town consisted of 200–300 militiamen distributed along the hills surrounding the town. The defense in the southern and western hills collapsed after Israeli shelling, while resistance in the northern hills had to contend with an incoming Israeli armored unit. Not long after the Israelis began shelling the local militiamen, Nazareth's police chief raised a white flag over the town's police station. Most of the fighting around Nazareth occurred in its satellite villages, particularly in
Saffuriya, whose residents put up resistance until largely dispersing following Israeli air raids on 15 July. During the ten days of fighting which occurred between the first and second truce, Nazareth capitulated to Israeli troops during
Operation Dekel on 16 July, after little more than token resistance. By then, morale among local militiamen was low and most refused to fight alongside the ALA because of their perceived weakness in the face of Israel's perceived military superiority and the alleged maltreatment of Christian residents and clergy by ALA volunteers. Seeking to prevent the town's destruction, the Muslim mayor of Nazareth, Yusef Fahum requested a halt to all resistance put up by Nazarenes. By the end of the war, Nazareth's population saw a large influx of refugees from major urban centers and rural villages in the Galilee. As the largest Arab town in Israel, Nazareth became a center of
Arab and
Palestinian nationalism, and because the
Communist Party was the sole legal political group that took up many of the local Arab causes, it gained popularity in Nazareth. Arab political organization within Nazareth and Israel was largely stymied by the state until recent decades. Arab and Palestinian nationalist sentiment continue to influence Nazareth's political life. In 1954, 1,200
dunams of Nazareth's land, which had been slated for future urban expansion by the municipality, was expropriated by state authorities for the construction of government offices and, in 1957, for the construction of the Jewish town of
Nazareth Illit. The latter was built as a way for the state to counterbalance the Arab majority in the region.
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. Zoubi argued that the internally displaced refugees were not absentees as they were still living in the country as citizens and wanted to return to their homes. Israel offered compensation to these internal refugees, but most refused for fear of permanently relinquishing their
right of return. Tensions between Nazareth's inhabitants and the state came to a head during a 1958
May Day rally where marchers demanded that refugees be allowed to return to their villages, an end to land expropriation, and self-determination for Palestinians. Several young protesters were arrested for throwing stones at security forces. Martial law ended in 1966. , Nazareth As the political center of Israel's Arab citizens, Nazareth is the scene of annual rallies held by the community including
Land Day since March 1975 and May Day. There are also frequent demonstrations in support of the Palestinian cause.
1980s–1990s In the 1980s, the government began attempts to merge the nearby village of
Ilut with Nazareth, although this move was opposed by residents from both localities and the Nazareth Municipality. On 13 May, during a
football match in
Nahariya, a riot broke out between Arab and Jewish fans, resulting in a Jewish man being stabbed and 54 people, mostly Arabs, being arrested. A rally in Nazareth on 19 May followed, in which thousands of Arabs protested against "racist attacks" against the Arab fans and discriminatory policies against Arabs in general. This has left many people in Nazareth who vote in the city's municipal elections and receive services from its municipality effectively outside of the city's jurisdiction. Such areas include the Sharqiya and Jabal el-Daula quarters which are in Nazareth Illit's jurisdiction and whose residents had to acquire building permits from the latter city. Similarly, the Bilal neighborhood of the Safafra Quarter is located within
Reineh's jurisdiction. In 1993, the residents of Bilal became official residents of Reineh.
2000s–2020s Preparations for the
Pope's visit to Nazareth in 2000 triggered highly publicized tensions related to the
Basilica of the Annunciation. In 1997, permission was granted to construct a paved plaza to handle the thousands of Christian pilgrims expected to arrive. A small group of Muslims protested and occupied the site, where a nephew of Saladin, named
Shihab al-Din, is believed to be buried. A school, al-Harbyeh, had been built on the site by the Ottomans, and the Shihab-Eddin shrine, along with several shops owned by the
waqf, were located there. Government approval of plans for a large mosque on the property triggered protests from Christian leaders. In 2002, a special government commission permanently halted construction of the mosque. In March 2006, public protests followed the disruption of a prayer service by an Israeli Jew and his Christian wife and daughter, who detonated firecrackers inside the church. The family said it wanted to draw attention to their problems with the welfare authorities. In July 2006 a rocket fired by
Hezbollah as part of the
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict killed two children in Nazareth. In March 2010, the Israeli government approved a $3 million plan to develop Nazareth's tourism industry. New businesses receive start-up grants of up to 30 percent of their initial investment from the
Ministry of Tourism. Riots broke out in Nazareth during the
2021 Israel–Palestine crisis. In September 2024, a rocket launched by
Hezbollah struck the city, and fires broke elsewhere in the city. ==Geography==