At the bottom of the mountain was an important road junction:
Via Maris passed there from the
Jezreel Valley northward towards
Damascus. Its location on the road junction and its bulgy formation above its environment gave Mount Tabor a strategic value and wars were conducted in its area in different periods in history.
Hebrew Bible The mountain is mentioned for the first time in the
Hebrew Bible, in , as border of three tribes:
Zebulun,
Issachar and
Naphtali. The mountain's importance stems from its strategic control of the junction of the Galilee's north–south route with the east–west highway of the Jezreel Valley. According to the
Book of Judges,
Hazor was the seat of Jabin, the king of Canaan, whose commander,
Sisera, led a Canaanite army against the Israelites.
Deborah the Jewish prophetess summoned
Barak of the tribe of Naphtali and gave him God's command, "Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun" (
Judges 4:6). Descending from the mountain, the
Israelites attacked and vanquished
Sisera and the
Canaanites.
Second Temple period In the
Second Temple period (c. 516 BCE – 70 CE), Mount Tabor was one of the mountain peaks on which it was the custom to light
beacons in order to inform the northern villages of Jewish
holy days and of
the beginning of new months.
Roman period In 55 BCE, during a
Hasmonean rebellion against the Roman
proconsul of
Syria,
Aulus Gabinius,
Alexander of Judaea and his army of 30,000 Judeans was defeated in battle at Mount Tabor. As many as 10,000 Jewish fighters were killed in the battle and Alexander was forced to flee, apparently to Syria. In 66 CE, during the
First Jewish-Roman War, the Galilean Jews retrenched on the mountain under the command of
Yosef Ben Matityahu, better known as Josephus Flavius, the later historian, whence they defended themselves against the Roman assault.
Itabyrium, as Josephus calls it, was one of the 19 sites fortified by the rebels in Galilee under his very orders. According to what is written in his book
The Wars of the Jews,
Vespasian sent an army of 600 riders, under the command of Placidus, who fought the rebels. Placidus understood that he could not reach the top of the steep mountain with his forces, and therefore called the fortified rebels to walk down the mountain. A group of Jewish rebels descended from the mountain, supposedly, in order to negotiate with Placidus, but they attacked him. The Roman forces initially retreated, but while they were in the valley, they returned towards the mountain, attacked the Jewish rebels, killed many of them, and blocked the road for the remaining rebels who tried to flee back to the top of the mountain. Many of the Jewish rebels left Mount Tabor and returned to Jerusalem. The rest of the fortified rebels in the fortress on the mountain surrendered after their water ran out. They then handed over the mountain to Placidus. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jewish settlement on Mount Tabor was renewed.
Transfiguration of Jesus Of the
New Testament, the
gospels relate that Jesus brought
Peter,
James, and his brother
John onto a high mountain, and that
Jesus became radiant there. However, none of these accounts identifies the "high mountain" of the scene by name. The earliest identification of the
Mount of Transfiguration as Tabor is by
Origen in the 3rd century. This early speculation is recounted by
St. Cyril of Jerusalem and
St. Jerome in the 4th century. It is later recounted in the 5th-century
Transitus Beatae Mariae Virginis. The identification has been doubted in 19th-century scholarship (
Henry Alford 1868,
John Lightfoot 1825).
Byzantine period Due to the importance of Mount Tabor in Christian tradition, from the 4th century onward it became a pilgrimage site. According to descriptions of the pilgrims, during the 6th century there were three churches on the top of the mountain.
Early Muslim period During the 8th century there were four churches and a monastery on the mountain. During the
Arab Caliphate period, in 949, a battle occurred on Mount Tabor between different factions over the control of
Palestine on behalf of the
Abbasid Caliphate.
Crusader, Ayyubid, and Mamluk periods During the period of the
Crusades, the mountain changed hands many times between Muslims and Christians. In 1099 the Crusaders fortified the area of the monastery which was on the peak of the mountain, in order to protect the pilgrims from Muslim attacks. In 1101, when Crusaders controlled the area, the
Benedictine monks rebuilt a ruined
basilica and erected
a fortified abbey. In 1212 the mountain was occupied by the
Ayyubid Sultan Al-Adil I who built a large fortress at its top, which was unsuccessfully besieged by the armies of the
Fifth Crusade in 1217, but in 1229 it was again occupied by the Christians. In 1263, the
Mamluk ruler
Baibars occupied the fortress and destroyed the buildings on the mountain.
Ottoman period In 1799, during the time of
Napoleon Bonaparte's Syrian expedition, in the valley between Mount Tabor and the Hill of
Moreh, the
Battle of Mount Tabor was fought in which a French force of about 3,000 soldiers under the command of Napoleon and general
Kléber won against an
Ottoman force of about 35,000 soldiers. Jews lived in rural villages in the area in the mid-19th century, where they farmed the land. At the end of the 19th and the beginning the 20th century, the Bedouin tribe Arab Al-Sabehi settled on the mountain. It was one of the strongest tribes in that region.
State of Israel During the
1948 Arab–Israeli War members from the Arab Al-Sabehi tribe joined the
Arab Liberation Army of
Fawzi al-Qawuqji and amongst others killed seven members of
Kibbutz Beit Keshet. At the start of May 1948 the
Golani Brigade occupied Mount Tabor. Most members of the tribe were forced out to
Syria and to the Kingdom of
Jordan, except for one branch of the tribe, the clan of Shibli, whose members refused to leave their land. After the war their village was established, Arab Al-Shibli, which is nowadays part of the village
Shibli-Umm al-Ghanam. The Bedouin village was admitted as a tourist village by the Israeli government. Many tribes in the region, like Arab-Al Hieb, began their military cooperation with the Jewish underground forces before the
establishment of the state, in the late 1930s. Since the late 1960s many of the tribesmen joined the Israeli security forces (such as
IDF,
Border Police and police). In April each year, the
Lower Galilee Regional Council holds a 12-kilometre race around Mount Tabor in memory of
Yitzhak Sadeh, the first commander of the
Palmach, one of the founders of the
Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the
State and a promoter of
mass sport. ==Landmarks==