Persian period According to Chronicles 36:22–23, the Persian emperor
Cyrus the Great (reigned 559–530 BCE) permits the return of the exiles to their homeland and orders the
rebuilding of the Temple (
Zion). The prophet
Isaiah identifies Cyrus as "the 's
Messiah". As the
Babylonian captivity had primarily affected the lowlands of Judea, the Samarian populations had likely avoided the casualties of the crisis of exile and in fact showed signs of widespread prosperity. The books of Ezra–Nehemiah detail a lengthy political struggle between Nehemiah, governor of the new Persian province of
Yehud Medinata, and
Sanballat the Horonite, the governor of Samaria, centered around the refortification of the destroyed Jerusalem. Despite this political discourse, the text implies that relationships between the Jews and Samaritans were otherwise quite amicable, as intermarriage between the two seems commonplace, even to the point that the
High Priest Joiada married Sanballat's daughter. Some theologians believe Nehemiah 11:3 describes other Israelite tribes returning to Judah with the Judeans. The former lived in the cities of Judah, whilst the latter lived in Jerusalem.
Benjamites also lived with Judeans in Jerusalem. During
Achaemenid rule, material evidence suggests significant overlap between Jews and proto-Samaritans, with the two groups sharing a common language and script, eschewing the claim that the schism had taken form by this time. However, onomastic evidence suggests the existence of a distinct northern culture. Some inhabitants of Samaria during this period identified with Israelite heritage. This connection is evidenced in two ways: first, through biblical accounts of local officials' involvement with the Jerusalem Temple, and second, through naming patterns. Many names recorded in the
Wadi Daliyeh documents and on Samaritan coins feature Israelite elements. Sanballat's sons bore the theophoric Israelite names Delaiah and Shelemiah, while the name "Jeroboam", used by northern Israelite kings during the monarchic period, also appears on Samaritan coins. The archaeological evidence can find no sign of habitation in the Assyrian and Babylonian periods at Mount Gerizim but indicates the existence of a sacred precinct on the site in the Persian period by the 5th century BCE. This is not to be interpreted as signaling a precipitous schism between the Jews and Samaritans, as the
Gerizim temple was not the only Yahwistic temple outside of Judea. According to most modern scholars, the split between the Jews and Samaritans was a gradual historical process extending over several centuries rather than a single schism at a given point in time.
Hellenistic period Foreign rule The
Macedonian Empire conquered the
Levant in the 330s BCE, resulting in both Samaria and Judea coming under Greek rule as the province of
Coele-Syria. Samaria was by-and-large devastated by the Macedonian conquest and subsequent colonization efforts, though its southern lands were spared the broader consequences of the invasion and continued to thrive. Matters were further complicated in 331 BCE when the Samaritans rose up in rebellion and murdered the Macedonian-appointed prefect Andromachus, resulting in a brutal reprisal by the army. Following the death of
Alexander the Great, the area initially became part of the
Ptolemaic Kingdom, but was eventually
conquered by the neighboring
Seleucid Empire. -era Samaritan settlement on
Mount Gerizim, built next to the
Samaritan Temple and destroyed c. 110 BCE Though the temple on Mount Gerizim had existed since the 5th century BCE, evidence shows that its sacred precinct experienced an extravagant expansion during the early
Hellenistic era, indicating its status as the preeminent place of Samaritan worship had begun to crystallize. By the time of
Antiochus III the Great, the temple "town" had reached 30
dunams in size. The presence of a flourishing cult centered around Gerizim is documented by the sudden resurgence of Yahwistic and Hebrew names in contemporary correspondence, suggesting that the Samaritan community had officially been established by the 2nd century BCE. Overall, the Samaritans were generally more populous and wealthier than the Judeans in Palestine, until 164 BC.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Hellenization Antiochus IV Epiphanes was on the throne of the Seleucid Empire from 175 to 163 BCE. His policy was to
Hellenize his entire kingdom and standardize religious observance. According to 1 Maccabees 1:41-50 he proclaimed himself the incarnation of the
Greek god
Zeus and mandated death to anyone who refused to worship him. In the 2nd century BCE, a series of events led to a revolution by a faction of Judeans against Antiochus IV. Anderson notes that during the reign of Antiochus IV: Josephus quotes the Samaritans as saying: In the letter, defended as genuine by
E. Bickerman and
M. Stern, the Samaritans assert their distinction from the Judeans based on both race (γένος) and in customs (ἔθος). According to II Maccabees:
Destruction of the temple During the Hellenistic period, Samaria was largely divided between a Hellenizing faction based in Samaria (
Sebastia) and a pious faction in
Shechem and surrounding rural areas, led by the High Priest. Samaria was a largely autonomous state nominally dependent on the Seleucid Empire until around 110 BCE, when the
Hasmonean ruler
John Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim and devastated Samaria. Only a few stone remnants of the temple exist today. Hyrcanus' campaign of destruction was the watershed moment which confirmed hostile relations between Jews and Samaritans. The actions of the Hasmonean dynasty resulted in widespread Samaritan resentment of, and alienation from, their Judean brethren, resulting in the deterioration of relations between the two that lasted centuries, if not millennia.
Diaspora During the Hellenistic period, a Samaritan Diaspora is documented outside Samaria. Among the earlier instances is Ergasion the Samaritan, who is attested as a member of a pagan group in
Athens,
Greece, during the 4th to 3rd century BC. Whether he was declaring his faith, ethnicity, or both remains unclear. In the late Hellenistic period, a Samaritan family erected an inscription at
Caunos, in
Caria, a region of
Asia Minor. The father, Simon, is identified as coming from Shechem, while the rest of the family bear
Greek names, such as Dionysia and Cleopatra.
Roman period Under the
Roman Empire, Samaria became a part of the
Herodian Tetrarchy, and with the deposition of
Herod Archelaus in the early 1st century CE, Samaria became a part of the province of
Judaea. Samaritans appear briefly in the Christian
gospels, most notably in the account of the
Samaritan woman at the well and the
parable of the Good Samaritan. In the former, it is noted that a substantial number of Samaritans accepted
Jesus through the woman's testimony to them, and Jesus stayed in Samaria for two days before returning to
Cana. In the latter, it is only the Samaritan who helps the man stripped of clothing, beaten, and left on the road half dead, his Abrahamic covenantal circumcision implicitly evident. A priest and a Levite walk past, but the Samaritan helps the naked man regardless of his nakedness (itself religiously offensive to the priest and Levite), his self-evident poverty, or to which Hebrew sect he belongs. During the
First Jewish–Roman War in 67 CE a significant Samaritan uprising gathered on Mt. Gerizim. In response, Roman general
Vespasian dispatched a relatively small force under the command of Cerialis. Although some Samaritans surrendered, most fought, resulting in heavy casualties. According to Josephus, 11,600 Samaritans were killed. There is no evidence of Samaritan involvement in later phases of the revolt. The defeat of the Jews in the Bar Kokhba revolt, along with the depopulation and destruction of
Judea, allowed the Samaritans to expand into former Jewish areas, particularly in northern Judea, establishing themselves in places such as
Emmaus and
Sha'alavim. Samaritans also settled in the
Beit She'an Valley and in coastal cities like
Caesarea. as well as the composition of new religious works. During this period, much of the liturgy was organized and formalized under the high priest
Baba Rabba. Later Samaritan chronicles also credit him with the construction of synagogues in several villages, including Awarta,
Salem, Namara,
Qaryat Haja,
Qarawa,
Tira Luza, Dabarin, and Beit Jan. In
Rome, a letter of King
Theoderic the Great (early 6th century) refers to a Samaritan synagogue. , a settlement probably abandoned after the
Samaritan revolts Some modern historians believe that the order of the facts preserved by Samaritan sources should be inverted, with the persecution of Zeno as a consequence of the rebellion rather than its cause, and should have happened after 484, around 489. Zeno rebuilt the church of St. Procopius in Neapolis, and the Samaritans were banned from Mount Gerizim, on whose top a signaling tower was built to alert in case of civil unrest. According to an anonymous biography of Mesopotamian monk
Barsauma, whose pilgrimage to the region in the early 5th century was accompanied by clashes with locals and the forced conversion of non-Christians, Barsauma managed to convert Samaritans by conducting demonstrations of healing. Jacob, an ascetic healer living in a cave near Porphyrion,
Mount Carmel in the 6th century CE, attracted admirers including Samaritans who later converted to Christianity. Under growing government pressure, many Samaritans who refused to convert to Christianity in the 6th century may have preferred
paganism and even
Manicheism. Under a charismatic,
messianic figure named
Julianus ben Sabar (or ben Sahir), the Samaritans of Palaestina launched a war to create their own independent state in 529. With the help of the
Ghassanids, Emperor
Justinian I crushed the revolt; tens of thousands of Samaritans died or were enslaved. The Samaritan faith, which had previously enjoyed the status of
religio licita, was virtually outlawed thereafter by the Christian
Byzantine Empire; from a population once at least in the hundreds of thousands, the Samaritan community dwindled to tens of thousands. The Byzantine response to the revolts, described by the archaeologist
Claudine Dauphin as an act of
ethnic cleansing, decimated five successive generations of the Samaritan population, destroyed their religious center, stripped their rights, and left them politically insignificant. Nevertheless
, the Samaritan population in Samaria did survive. During a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 570 CE, an anonymous Christian pilgrim from
Piacenza travelled through Samaria and recorded the following: "From there we went up past a number of places belonging to Samaria and Judaea to the city of Sebaste, the resting-place of the Prophet Elisha. There were several Samaritan cities and villages on our way down through the plains, and wherever we passed along the streets they burned away our footprints with straw, whether we were Christians or Jews, they have such a horror of both". The same pilgrim also mentions a place called
Castra Samaritanorum near
Shikmona. According to Menachem Mor, the decline of the Samaritan population between the 5th and 6th centuries was mostly due to the ongoing Christianization of Palestine's inhabitants, rather than the uprisings against the Byzantines. Mor argues that a large number of Samaritans in the cities and towns converted to Christianity, some under pressure and some of their own free will. He claims that both Samaritan and Christian sources preferred to conceal this phenomenon. The Samaritans preferred to attribute their numerical decrease on their resistance to coerced conversion, while the Christians were not willing to admit that the Samaritans were coerced into accepting Christianity and instead preferred to claim that many Samaritans were killed because of their rebellious nature. A change in the local population's identity throughout the Byzantine period is not indicated by the archeological findings. The revolt was put down, but caliph
al-Mu'tasim then increased taxes on the rebels, which sparked a second uprising. Rebel forces captured Nablus, where they set fire to synagogues belonging to the Samaritan and Dosithian (Samaritan sect) faiths. The community's situation briefly improved when this uprising was put down by Abbasid forces, and High Priest Pinhas ben Netanel resumed worship in the Nablus synagogue. Under the reign of
al-Wāthiq bi-llāh, Abu-Harb Tamim, who had the support of
Yaman tribes, led yet another uprising. He captured Nablus and caused many to flee, the Samaritan High Priest was injured and later died of his wounds in
Hebron. The Samaritans could not go back to their homes until Abu-Harb tamim was vanquished and captured (842 CE). The numerous instances of Samaritans converting to Islam that are mentioned in the Chronicle of Abu l-Fath are all connected to economic difficulties that led to widespread poverty among the Samaritan population, anarchy that left Samaritans defenseless against Muslim attackers, and attempts by those people and others to force conversion on the Samaritans. It is crucial to keep in mind that the Samaritan community was the smallest among the other dhimmi communities and that it was also situated in Samaria, where Muslim settlement continued to expand as evidenced by the text; by the ninth century, villages such as
Sinjil and
Jinsafut were already Muslim. This makes it possible to assume that the Samaritans were more vulnerable than other
dhimmi, what greatly broadened the extent of their Islamization. As time goes on, more information from recorded sources refers to Nablus and less to the vast agricultural regions that the Samaritans had previously inhabited. Hence, the Abbasid era marks the disappearance of Samaritan rural habitation in Samaria. By the end of the period, Samaritans were mainly centered in Nablus, while other communities persisted in
Caesarea,
Cairo,
Damascus,
Aleppo,
Sarepta, and
Ascalon.
Crusader period During the
Crusades, the
Franks took over Nablus, where the majority of Samaritans lived. Massacres took place in Samaritan maritime communities in
Arsuf,
Caesarea,
Acre and perhaps
Ascalon. During the initial
razzia in Nablus the invading Franks destroyed Samaritan buildings and sometime later tore down their
ritual bath and synagogue on Mt. Gerizim. Christians bearing crosses successfully pleaded for a calm transition. The calamities that befell them during the Frankish reign came from Muslims such as the commander of the Dasmascene army, Bazwȃdj, who raided Nablus in 1137 and abducted 500 Samaritan men, women and children back to Damascus.
Ayyubid and Mamluk rule Two hundred Samaritans were reportedly forced to convert to Islam in the village of
Immatain by
Saladin, according to a tradition recalled by a Samaritan High Priest in the 20th century; however, written sources make no reference to this event. Rural Samaritan settlemet around Nablus ceased in the 15th century.
Ottoman rule According to the Ottoman censuses of 1525–1526, 25 Samaritan families lived in Gaza, and 29 families lived in Nablus. In 1548–1549, there were 18 families in Gaza and 34 in Nablus. In 1596–1597, there were 8 families in Gaza, 20 in Nablus and 5 in Safed. The Samaritan community in
Egypt shrank as a result of Ottoman persecution of Samaritans who worked for the
Mamluk government, with the majority of them converting to Islam. The Nablus community endured because most of the surviving diaspora returned, and they have maintained a tiny presence there to this day. In 1624, the last
Samaritan High Priest of the line of
Eleazar son of
Aaron died without issue, but according to Samaritan tradition, descendants of Aaron's other son,
Ithamar, remained and took over the office. Following the death of High Priest Shelamia ben Pinhas, Muslim persecution of Samaritans intensified, and they became the target of violent riots that led to many of them converting to Islam. In 1624, access to Mount Gerizim's summit was outlawed for the survivors, and they were only permitted to make Passover sacrifices on the mountain's eastern slopes. By the middle of the 17th century, very small Samaritan communities survived in Nablus, Gaza, and Jaffa. During the 1840s, the
ulama of Nablus began asserting that the Samaritans may not be considered "
People of the Book" and therefore have the same status as
pagans and must convert to Islam or
be executed. As a result, locals attempted to force the conversion of two children of a Samaritan widow who had a Muslim lover in 1841. Her young daughter died from fear, but her 14-year-old boy converted to Islam. Another Samaritan was later coerced into converting to Islam. Appealing to the King of France did not help. The Samaritan people were eventually helped by the Jewish
Hakham Bashi Chaim Abraham Gagin, who decreed that the Samaritans are "a branch of the children of Israel, who acknowledge the truth of the Torah," and as such should be protected as a "People of the Book". As a result, the ulama ceased their preaching against Samaritans. The Samaritans also paid bribes to the Arab Muslims, totaling approximately 1000 GBP, and eventually came out of their hiding places. However, they were prohibited from offering Passover sacrifices on Mount Gerizim until 1849. In the 19th century, with pressure of conversion and persecution from the local rulers, the community fell to just over 100 persons. The censuses of
1922 and
1931 recorded 163 and 182 Samaritans in Palestine, respectively. 147 lived in Nablus, 12 resided in
Tulkarm, 12 in
Jaffa, and 6 in
As-Salt,
Transjordan. Later some moved to
Ramat Gan and even to
Haifa. During the
1929 Palestine riots, Arab rioters attacked Samaritans who were performing the Passover sacrifice on Mount Gerizim and flung stones at them as well as their guests. The
Palestine Police Force got involved and prevented any potential fatalities. and at least one Samaritan,
Nader Sadaqa of Nablus, has been involved in
Palestinian militancy. == Genetic studies ==