Antiquity Safed has been identified with
Sepph, a fortified town in the
Upper Galilee mentioned in the writings of the Roman-Jewish historian
Josephus. Safed is mentioned in the
Jerusalem Talmud as one of five elevated spots where fires were lit to announce the
New Moon and festivals during the
Second Temple period.
Crusader era Pre-Crusader village and tower There is scarce information about Safed before the
Crusader conquest. A document from the
Cairo Geniza, composed in 1034, mentions a transaction made in Tiberias in 1023 by a certain Jew, Musa ben Hiba ben Salmun with the
nisba (Arabic descriptive suffix) "al-Safati" (of Safed), According to the Muslim historian
Ibn Shaddad (d. 1285), at the beginning of the 12th century, a "flourishing village" beneath a tower called Burj Yatim had existed at the site of Safed on the eve of the Crusaders' capture of the area in 1101–1102 and that "nothing" about the village was mentioned in "the early Islamic history books". Although Ibn Shaddad mistakenly attributes the tower's construction to the
Knights Templar, the modern historian
Ronnie Ellenblum asserts that the tower was likely built during the early Muslim period (mid-7th–11th centuries). Safed was the seat of a
castellany (area governed by a castle) by at least 1165, when its
castellan (appointed castle governor) was Fulk, constable of
Tiberias. The castle of Safed was purchased from Fulk by King
Amalric of Jerusalem in 1168. Testifying to the considerable expansion of the castle, the chronicler
Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) wrote that it was practically built anew. The remains of Fulk's castle can now be found under the citadel excavations, on a hill above the old city. In the estimation of modern historian Havré Barbé, the
castellany of Safed comprised approximately . Its northern boundary was marked by the
Nahal Dishon (Wadi al-Hindaj) stream, its southern boundary was likely formed near Wadi al-Amud, separating it from the fief of Tiberias, while its eastern limits were the marshes of the
Hula Valley and upper
Jordan Valley. There were several Jewish communities in the
castellany of Safed, as testified in the accounts of Jewish pilgrims and chroniclers between 1120 and 1293.
Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the town in 1170, does not record any Jews living in Safed proper.
Ayyubid interregnum Safed was captured by the
Ayyubids led by Sultan
Saladin in 1188 after
a month-long siege, following the
Battle of Hattin in 1187. Saladin ultimately allowed its residents to relocate to
Tyre.
Samuel ben Samson, who visited the town in 1210, mentions the existence of a Jewish community of at least fifty there. He also noted that two Muslims guarded and maintained the cave tomb of a rabbi, Hanina ben Horqano, in Safed. The
iqta of Safed was taken from the family of Sa'd al-Din by the Ayyubid emir of
Damascus,
al-Mu'azzam Isa, in 1217. Two years later, during the Crusader
siege of Damietta, al-Mu'azzam Isa had the Safed castle demolished to prevent its capture and reuse by potential future Crusaders. The reconstruction was completed at the considerable expense of 40,000
bezants in 1243. The new fortress was larger than the original, with a capacity for 2,200 soldiers in time of war, and with a resident force of 1,700 in peacetime. The garrison's goods and services were provided by the town or large village growing rapidly beneath the fortress, which, according to Benoit's account, contained a market, "numerous inhabitants" and was protected by the fortress. Safed, with its position overlooking the Jordan River and allowing the Crusaders early warnings of Muslim troop movements in the area, had been a consistent aggravation for the Muslim regional powers. After a six-week siege, Baybars
captured Safed in July 1266, The siege occurred during a Mamluk military campaign to subdue Crusader strongholds in
Palestine and followed a failed attempt to capture the Crusaders' coastal stronghold of Acre. He likely preserved it because of the strategic value stemming from its location on a high mountain and its isolation from other Crusader fortresses. In 1268, he had the fortress repaired, expanded and strengthened. The mosque, called Jami al-Ahmar (the Red Mosque), was completed in 1275. By the end of Baybars's reign, Safed had developed into a prosperous town and fortress. From the time of its capture, the city was made the administrative center of Mamlakat Safad, one of seven
mamlakas (provinces), whose governors were typically appointed from
Cairo, which made up
Mamluk Syria. Initially, its jurisdiction corresponded roughly with the Crusader
castellany. The territorial jurisdiction of the
mamlaka eventually spanned the entire Galilee and the lands further south down to
Jenin. The governor of Safed, Emir Baktamur al-Jukandar (the Polomaster; ), built a mosque later called after him in the northeastern section of the city. The geographer
Abu'l Fida (1273–1331), the ruler of
Hama, described Safed as follows:[Safed] was a town of medium size. It has a very strongly built castle, which dominates the
Lake of Tabariyyah [Sea of Galilee]. There are underground watercourses, which bring drinking-water up to the castle-gate...Its suburbs cover three hills... Since the place was conquered by Al Malik Adh Dhahir [Baybars] from the Franks [Crusaders], it has been made the central station for the troops who guard all the coast-towns of that district." The native
qadi (Islamic head judge) of Safed, Shams al-Din al-Uthmani, composed a text about Safed called ''Ta'rikh Safad'' (the History of Safed) during the rule of its governor Emir Alamdar (). The extant parts of the work consisted of ten folios largely devoted to Safed's distinguishing qualities, its dependent villages, agriculture, trade and geography, with no information about its history. His account reveals the city's dominant features were its citadel, the Red Mosque and its towering position over the surrounding landscape. He noted Safed lacked "regular urban planning",
madrasas (schools of Islamic law),
ribats (hostels for military volunteers) and defensive walls, and that its houses were clustered in disarray and its streets were not distinguishable from its squares. He attributed the city's shortcomings to the dearth of generous patrons. A device for transporting buckets of water called the
satura existed in the city mainly to supply the soldiers of the citadel; surplus water was distributed to the city's residents. Al-Uthmani praised the natural beauty of Safed, its therapeutic air, and noted that its residents took strolls in the surrounding gorges and ravines. In 1481, Joseph Mantabia reported that 300 Jewish families lived in Safed and its surrounding villages. While the accuracy of this figure is uncertain, it reflects the town's growing importance as a center of Jewish life, particularly with the arrival of
Sephardic Jews due to
persecutions in Portugal and
Spain.
Ottoman era Sixteenth-century prosperity The Ottomans conquered Mamluk Syria following their victory at the
Battle of Marj Dabiq in northern Syria in 1516. Safed's inhabitants sent the keys of the town citadel to Sultan
Selim I after he captured Damascus. No fighting was recorded around Safed, which was bypassed by Selim's army on the way to Mamluk Egypt. Safed became the capital of the
Safed Sanjak, roughly corresponding with Mamlakat Safad but excluding most of the Jezreel Valley and the area of
Atlit, part of the larger province of
Damascus Eyalet. In 1525/26, the population of Safed consisted of 633 Muslim families, 40 Muslim bachelors, 26 Muslim religious persons, nine Muslim disabled, 232 Jewish families, and 60 military families. In 1549, under Sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent, a wall was constructed and troops were garrisoned to protect the city. In 1553/54, the population consisted of 1,121 Muslim households, 222 Muslim bachelors, 54 Muslim religious leaders, 716 Jewish households, 56 Jewish bachelors, and 9 disabled persons. At least in the 16th century, Safed was the only
kasaba (city) in the sanjak and in 1555 was divided into nineteen
mahallas (quarters), seven Muslim and twelve Jewish. The total population of Safed rose from 926 households in 1525–26 to 1,931 households in 1567–1568. The Muslim quarters were Sawawin, located west of the fortress; Khandaq (the moat); Ghazzawiyah, which had likely been settled by
Gazans; Jami' al-Ahmar (the Red Mosque), located south of the fortress and named for the local mosque; al-Akrad, and whose inhabitants mainly were
Kurds; al-Wata (the lower), the southernmost quarter of Safed and situated below the city; and al-Suq, named after the market or mosque located within the quarter. The Jewish quarters were all situated west of the fortress. Each quarter was named for the place of origin of its inhabitants: Purtuqal (Portugal), Qurtubah (
Cordoba), Qastiliyah (
Castille), Musta'rib (Jews of local, Arabic-speaking origin), Magharibah (northwestern Africa), Araghun ma' Qatalan (
Aragon and
Catalonia), Majar (Hungary), Puliah (
Apulia), Qalabriyah (
Calabria), Sibiliyah (
Seville), Taliyan (Italian) and Alaman (German). The Sufi sage Ahmad al-Asadi (1537–1601) established a
zawiya (Sufi lodge) called Sadr Mosque in the city. Safed became a center of
Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) during the 16th century. After the
expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many prominent
rabbis found their way to Safed, among them the Kabbalists
Isaac Luria and
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero;
Joseph Caro, the author of the
Shulchan Aruch; and
Solomon Alkabetz, composer of the
Shabbat hymn "
Lekha Dodi". The influx of Sephardic Jews—reaching its peak under the rule of sultans
Suleiman the Magnificent and
Selim II—made Safed a global center for Jewish learning and a regional center for trade throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. Sephardi Jews and other Jewish immigrants by then outnumbered
Musta'arabi Jews in the city. There were more than 7,000 Jews in Safed in 1576 when
Murad III proclaimed the forced deportation of 1,000 wealthy Jewish families to
Cyprus to boost the island's economy. There is no evidence that the edict or a second one issued the following year for removing 500 families, was enforced. In 1584, there were 32
synagogues registered in the town. A Hebrew
printing press, the
first in West Asia, was established in Safed in 1577 by Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi of Prague and his son, Isaac.
Political decline, attacks and natural disasters by the Ottomans in the mid-1700s, the "Saraya" (house of the governor) currently serves as a community centre By the early part of the 17th century, Safed was a small town. He formed close relations with the city's
Sunni Muslim ulama (religious scholars), particularly the
mufti,
al-Khalidi al-Safadi of the
Hanafi school of
fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), who became his practical court historian. The Ottomans drove Fakhr al-Din into European exile in 1613, but his son Ali became governor in 1615. Fakhr al-Din returned to his domains in 1618 and five years later regained the governorship of Safed, which the
Ma'n dynasty had lost, after his victory against the governor of Damascus at the
Battle of Anjar. In , the orientalist
Franciscus Quaresmius spoke of Safed being inhabited "chiefly by Hebrews, who had their synagogues and schools, and for whose sustenance contributions were made by the Jews in other parts of the world." According to the historian Louis Finkelstein, the Jewish community of Safed was plundered by the Druze under
Mulhim ibn Yunus, nephew of Fakhr al-Din. Five years later, Fakhr al-Din was routed by the Ottoman governor of Damascus, Mulhim abandoned Safed, and its Jewish residents returned. Survivors relocated mainly to
Sidon or
Jerusalem.
Safed Sanjak and the neighbouring
Sidon-Beirut Sanjak to the north were administratively separated from Damascus in 1660 to form the
Sidon Eyalet, of which Safed was briefly the capital. The province was created by the imperial government to check the power of the Druze of Mount Lebanon, as well as the Shia of
Jabal Amil. The Tiberias-based sheikh
Daher al-Umar of the local Arab
Zaydan clan, whose father
Umar al-Zaydani had been the governor and tax farmer of Safed in 1702–1706, wrested control of Safed and its
tax farm from its native strongman, Muhammad Naf'i, through military pressure and diplomacy by 1740. The Naf'i, Shahin, and Murad families continued to farm the taxes of Safed and its countryside into the 1760s as Daher's subordinates. By the 1760s, Daher entrusted Safed to his son Ali, who made the town his headquarters. After Daher was killed by Ottoman imperial forces, the governor of Sidon,
Jazzar Pasha, moved to oust Daher's sons from their Galilee strongholds. Ali made a final, unsuccessful stand against Jazzar Pasha from Safed, which was afterward captured and garrisoned by the governor. The simultaneous rise of Acre, established by Daher as his capital in 1750 and which served as the capital of the Sidon Eyalet under Jazzar Pasha (1775–1804) and his successors,
Sulayman Pasha al-Adil (1805–1819) and
Abdullah Pasha (1820–1831), contributed to the political decline of Safed. It became a subdistrict center with limited local influence, belonging to the
Acre Sanjak . An influx of
Russian Jews in 1776 and 1781, and of
Lithuanian Jews of the
Perushim movement in 1809 and 1810, reinvigorated the Jewish community. In 1812, another plague killed 80% of the Jewish population. Following Abdullah Pasha of Acre's ordered killing of his Jewish vizier
Haim Farhi, who served the same post under Jazzar and Sulayman, the governor imprisoned the Jewish residents of Safed on 12 August 1820, accusing them of tax evasion under the concealment of Farhi; they were released upon paying a ransom. The war between Abdullah Pasha and the influential Farhi brothers in
Constantinople and Damascus in 1822–1823 prompted Jewish flight from the Galilee in general, though by 1824 Jewish immigrants were steadily moving to the city. The forces of
Muhammad Ali of Egypt wrested control of the Levant from the Ottomans in 1831 and in the same year many Jews who had fled the Galilee, including Safed, under Abdullah Pasha returned as a result of Muhammad Ali's liberal policies toward Jews. Safed was raided by Druze in 1833 at the approach of
Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian governor of the Levant. During the revolt, rebels
plundered the city for over thirty days. Emir
Bashir Shihab II of Mount Lebanon and his Druze fighters entered its environs in support of the Egyptians and compelled Safed's leaders to surrender. destroyed all fourteen of its synagogues and prompted the flight of 600
Perushim for Jerusalem; the surviving Sephardic and Hasidic Jews mostly remained. Among the 2,158 residents of Safed who had died, 1,507 were Ottoman subjects, the rest foreign citizens. The Jewish quarter was situated on the hillside and was particularly hard hit; The population was estimated at 7,000 in 1850–1855, of whom 2,500–3,000 were Jews. Through the late 19th century, Safed's merchants served as middlemen in the Galilee grain trade, selling the wheat, pulses and fruit grown by the peasants of the Galilee to the traders of Acre, who in turn exported at least part of the merchandise to Europe. The major Muslim landowning clans were the Soubeh, Murad and Qaddura. The latter owned about 50,000
dunams toward the end of the century, including eight villages around Safed. In 1878 the municipal council of Safed was established. The centralization and stability brought by the imperial reforms solidified the political status and practical influence of Safed in the Upper Galilee. The Ottomans developed Safed into a center for
Sunni Islam to counterbalance the influence of non-Muslim communities in its environs and the Shia Muslims of Jabal Amil. Along with the three major landowning families, the Muslim
ulema (religious scholarly) families of Nahawi, Qadi, Mufti and Naqib comprised the urban elite (''a'yan
) of the city. They lived mainly in three quarters of the city: al-Akrad, whose residents were mostly laborers, Sawawin, home to the Muslim a'yan'' households and the city's Catholic community, and al-Wata, whose inhabitants were largely shopkeepers and minor traders. The entire Jewish population lived in the Gharbieh (western) quarter. many members of these families became officials in the civil service, local administrations or businessmen. In the last decade of the 19th century, Safed contained 2,000 houses, four mosques, three churches, two public bathhouses, one caravanserai, two public
sabils, nineteen mills, seven olive oil presses, ten bakeries, fifteen coffeehouses, forty-five stalls and three shops.
Mandatory Palestine {{Image frame|align=left|content= Safed was the centre of
Safad Subdistrict. According to a
census conducted in 1922 by the
British Mandate authorities, Safed had a population of 8,761 inhabitants, consisting of 5,431 Muslims, 2,986 Jews, 343 Christians and others. Safed remained a mixed city during the
British Mandate for Palestine and ethnic tensions between Jews and Arabs rose during the 1920s. During the
1929 Palestine riots, Safed and Hebron became major clash points. In the
Safed massacre 20 Jewish residents were killed by local Arabs. Safed was included in the part of Palestine recommended to be included in the proposed Jewish state under the
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
1948 war In 1948 the city was home to about 12,000 Arabs and about 1,700 Jews, mostly religious and elderly. In February 1948, during the
civil war, Muslim Arabs attacked a Jewish bus attempting to reach Safed, and the Jewish quarter of the town came under siege by the Muslims. British forces that were present did not intervene. According to
Martin Gilbert, food supplies ran short. "Even water and flour were in desperately short supply. Each day, the Arab attackers drew closer to the heart of the Jewish quarter, systematically blowing up Jewish houses as they pressed in on the central area." On April 16, the same day that British forces evacuated Safed, 200 local Arab militiamen, supported by over 200
Arab Liberation Army soldiers, tried to take over the city's Jewish Quarter. They were repelled by the Jewish garrison, consisting of some 200
Haganah fighters, men and women, boosted by a
Palmach platoon. The Palmach ground attack on the Arab section of Safed took place on 6 May, as a part of
Operation Yiftach. The first phase of the Palmach plan to capture Safed, was to secure a corridor through the mountains by capturing the Arab village of
Biriyya. The Arab Liberation Army placed artillery pieces on a hill adjacent to the Jewish quarter and started its shelling. The Palmach's Third Battalion failed to take the main objective, the "citadel", but "terrified" the Arab population sufficiently to prompt further flight, as well as urgent appeals for outside help and an effort to obtain a truce. The secretary-general of the Arab League
Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam stated that the goal of Plan Dalet was to drive out the inhabitants of Arab villages along the Syrian and Lebanese frontiers, particularly places on the roads by which Arab regular forces could enter the country. He noted that Acre and Safed were in particular danger. However, the appeals for help were ignored, and the British, now less than a week away from the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, also did not intervene against the second and final Haganah attack, which began on the evening of 9 May, with a mortar barrage on key sites in Safed. Following the barrage, Palmach infantry, in bitter fighting, took the citadel, Beit Shalva and the police fort, Safed's three dominant buildings. Through 10 May, Haganah mortars continued to pound the Arab neighbourhoods, causing fires in the marked area and in the fuel dumps, which exploded. "The Palmah 'intentionally left open the exit routes for the population to "facilitate" their exodus...' " According to Gilbert, "The Arabs of Safed began to leave, including the commander of the Arab forces,
Adib Shishakli (later Prime Minister of Syria). With the
police fort on Mount Canaan isolated, its defenders withdrew without fighting. The fall of Safed was a blow to Arab morale throughout the region... With the invasion of Palestine by regular Arab armies believed to be imminent – once the British had finally left in eleven or twelve days' time – many Arabs felt that prudence dictated their departure until the Jews had been defeated and they could return to their homes. The first was due to the departure of the British compounded by the failure of an attack on the Jewish quarter and a disagreement between the Jordanian and Syrian commanders. Among them was the family of
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The city was fully under the control of Jewish paramilitary forces by May 11, 1948. File:Zoltan Kluger. Safed.jpg|Safad 1937 File:Safed iv.jpg|Mandate Police station at Mount Canaan, above Safed (1948) File:Safed 1948.jpg|Safed (1948) File:Safed citadel.jpg|Safed Citadel (1948) File:Safad v.jpg|Safad Municipal Police Station after the battle (1948) File:Safad i.jpg|Bussel House, Safad, 11 April 1948:
Yiftach Brigade headquarters File:Mount Canaan iv.jpg|View of Safed from Mount Canaan (1948) File:Mount Canaan Police station.jpg|Mandate administration building on the eastern outskirts of Safed (1948) File:Safed v.jpg|
Yiftach Brigade, with their
Hotchkiss machine guns, based at Bussel House, 1948 File:Druze in Safad.jpg|Druze parading in Safed after the
Palmach victory in 1948
State of Israel In 1974, 25 Israeli Jews (mainly school children) from Safed, were killed in the
Ma'alot massacre. Over 1990s and early 2000s, the town accepted thousands of Russian Jewish immigrants and Ethiopian
Beta Israel. In July 2006,
"Katyusha" rockets fired by
Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon hit Safed, killing one man and injuring others. Many residents fled the town for the duration of the conflict. On July 22, four people were injured in a rocket attack. The town has retained its unique status as a Jewish studies centre, incorporating numerous facilities. == Mayors ==