Roman period Herodian period Tiberias was founded sometime around 18–20 CE in the
Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and
Perea by the Roman
client king Herod Antipas, son of
Herod the Great. Herod Antipas made it the capital of his realm in Galilee and named it after the
Roman emperor Tiberius. This name also appears in his work
The Jewish War. Under the
Roman Empire, the city was known by its
Koine Greek name
Τιβεριάς (
Tiberiás, ). In the days of Herod Antipas, some of the most religiously orthodox
Jews, who were struggling against the process of
Hellenisation, which had affected even some
priestly groups, refused to settle there: the presence of a
cemetery rendered the site ritually unclean for the Jews and particularly for the priestly
caste. Antipas settled many non-Jews there from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains in order to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the
acropolis. Tiberias is mentioned in as the location from which boats had sailed to the opposite, eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd seeking
Jesus after the miraculous
feeding of the 5000 used these boats to travel back to
Capernaum on the north-western part of the lake. In
61 CE Herod Agrippa II annexed the city to his kingdom whose capital was
Caesarea Philippi.
Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba revolt During the
First Jewish–Roman War, the Jewish rebels took control of the city and destroyed Herod's palace, and were able to prevent the city from being pillaged by the army of
Agrippa II, the Jewish ruler who had remained loyal to Rome. Eventually, the rebels were expelled from Tiberias, and while most other cities in the provinces of Judaea, Galilee and
Idumea were razed, Tiberias was spared this fate because its inhabitants had decided not to fight against Rome. It became a mixed city after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; with Judea subdued, the surviving southern Jewish population migrated to Galilee. An epitaph found in
Taenarum,
Laconia (modern Kyparissa, Greece) records a man named Justus, son of Andromache, from Tiberias. He is believed to have been a first- or second-generation refugee displaced from Tiberias in the aftermath of the revolt. There is no direct indication that Tiberias, as well as the rest of Galilee, took part in the
Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE, thus allowing it to continue to exist, despite a heavy economic decline due to the war. Following the expulsion of Jews from Judea after 135 CE, Tiberias and its neighbour
Sepphoris (Hebrew name: Tzippori) became the major Jewish cultural centres.
Late Roman period According to the Talmud, in 145 CE,
Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, who was very familiar with Galilee, hiding there for over a decade, "cleansed the city of ritual impurity", allowing the Jewish leadership to resettle there from the Judea, which they were forced to leave as fugitives. The
Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, also fled from Jerusalem during the
Great Jewish Revolt against Rome, and after several attempted moves, in search of stability, eventually settled in Tiberias in about 220 CE. In 614, Tiberias was the site where, during the final
Jewish revolt against the Byzantine Empire, parts of the Jewish population supported the
Persian invaders; the Jewish rebels were financed by
Benjamin of Tiberias, a man of immense wealth; according to Christian sources, during the revolt Christians were massacred and churches destroyed. In 628, the Byzantine army returned to Tiberias upon the surrender of Jewish rebels and the end of the Persian occupation after they were defeated in the
battle of Nineveh. A year later, influenced by radical Christian monks, Emperor
Heraclius instigated a wide-scale slaughter of the Jews, which practically emptied Galilee of most its Jewish population, with survivors fleeing to Egypt.
Early Muslim period Tiberias, or Tabariyyah in Arab transcription, was "conquered by (the Arab commander)
Shurahbil in the year 634/15 [CE/AH] by capitulation; one half of the houses and churches were to belong to the Muslims, the other half to the Christians." Since 636 CE, Tiberias served as the regional capital, until
Beit She'an took its place, following the
Rashidun conquest. The Caliphate allowed 70 Jewish families from Tiberias to form the core of a renewed Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the importance of Tiberias to Jewish life declined. The caliphs of the
Umayyad Dynasty built one of its square-plan palaces on the waterfront to the north of Tiberias, at
Khirbat al-Minya. Tiberias was revitalised in 749, after Bet Shean was destroyed in an earthquake. An imposing mosque, long by wide, resembling the
Great Mosque of
Damascus, was raised at the foot of
Mount Berenice next to a Byzantine church, to the south of the city, as the eighth century ushered in Tiberias's golden age, when the multicultural city may have been the most tolerant of the Middle East. Jewish scholarship flourished from the beginning of the 8th century to the end of the 10th, when the oral traditions of
ancient Hebrew, still in use today, were codified. One of the leading members of the Tiberian
Masoretic community was
Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, who refined the oral tradition now known as
Tiberian Hebrew. Both the
Codex Cairensis and the
Aleppo Codex were written in Tiberias as well as the
Tiberian vocalization was devised here. synagogue floor The Arab geographer
al-Muqaddasi writing in 985, describes Tiberias as a hedonistic city afflicted by heat: "For two months they dance; for two months they gobble; for two months they swat; for two months they go about naked; for two months they play the reed flute; and for two months they wallow in the mud." Tiberias was plagued by incursions by the radical
Shi'ite Qarmatians at the beginning of the tenth century. During that period, the Academy of Eretz Israel left Tiberias for Jerusalem. Later in the same century, the region came under the control by the
Fatimid Caliphate.
Crusader period During the
First Crusade Tiberias was occupied by the
Franks soon after the capture of
Jerusalem. The city was given in fief to
Tancred, who made it his capital of the
Principality of Galilee in the
Kingdom of Jerusalem; the region was sometimes called the Principality of Tiberias, or the Tiberiad. In 1099 the original site of the city was abandoned, and settlement shifted north to the present location.
St. Peter's Church, originally built by the Crusaders, is still standing today, although the building has been altered and reconstructed over the years. In the late 12th century Tiberias' Jewish community numbered 50 Jewish families, headed by rabbis, and at that time the best manuscripts of the
Torah were said to be found there. This could have been reflecting the fact that at the time, the town had a notable non-Muslim population. In 1187,
Saladin ordered his son
al-Afdal to send an envoy to Count
Raymond of Tripoli requesting safe passage through his fiefdom of Galilee and Tiberias. Raymond was obliged to grant the request under the terms of his treaty with Saladin. Saladin's force left
Caesarea Philippi to engage the fighting force of the
Knights Templar. The Templar force was destroyed in
the encounter. Saladin then
besieged Tiberias; after six days the town fell. On 4 July 1187 Saladin defeated the Crusaders coming to relieve Tiberias at the
Battle of Hattin, outside the city. However, during the
Third Crusade, the Crusaders drove the Muslims out of the city and reoccupied it. Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, (
Maimonides) also known as Rambam, a leading Jewish legal scholar, philosopher and physician of his period, died in 1204 in
Egypt and was later buried in Tiberias. His tomb is one of the city's important pilgrimage sites.
Yakut, writing in the 1220s, described Tiberias as a small town, long and narrow. He also describes the "hot salt springs, over which they have built
Hammams which use no fuel."
Mamluk period In 1265 the
Crusaders were driven from the city by the
Egyptian Mamluks, who ruled Tiberias until the Ottoman conquest in 1516.
Ottoman period 's sketch of Tiberias, published in 1822. Burckhardt noted that the a quarter of the population was Jewish, and had originated in Poland, Spain, North Africa and other parts of Syria. During the 16th century, Tiberias was a small village. Italian Rabbi
Moses Bassola visited Tiberias during his trip to Palestine in 1522. He said on Tiberias that "it was a big city ... and now it is ruined and desolate". He described the village there, in which he said there were "ten or twelve" Muslim households. The area, according to Bassola, was dangerous "because of the Arabs", and in order to stay there, he had to pay the local governor for his protection. As the
Ottoman Empire expanded along the southern Mediterranean coast under Sultan
Selim I, the
Reyes Católicos (
Catholic Monarchs) began establishing
Inquisition commissions. Many
Conversos, (
Marranos and
Moriscos) and
Sephardi Jews fled in fear to the Ottoman provinces, settling at first in
Constantinople,
Salonika,
Sarajevo,
Sofia and
Anatolia. The Sultan encouraged them to settle in Palestine. In 1558, a Portuguese-born
marrano,
Doña Gracia, was granted tax collecting rights in Tiberias and its surrounding villages by
Suleiman the Magnificent. She envisaged the town becoming a refuge for Jews and obtained a permit to establish Jewish autonomy there. In 1561 her nephew
Joseph Nasi, Lord of Tiberias, encouraged Jews to settle in Tiberias and rebuild the city. Securing a
firman from the Sultan, he and
Joseph ben Adruth rebuilt the city walls and lay the groundwork for a textile (
silk) industry, planting
mulberry trees and urging craftsmen to move there. In 1624, when the Sultan recognized
Fakhr-al-Din II as Lord of
Arabistan (from Aleppo to the borders of Egypt), The
1660 destruction of Tiberias by the
Druze resulted in abandonment of the city by its Jewish community, Unlike Tiberias, the nearby city of
Safed recovered from its
destruction, and was not entirely abandoned, remaining an important Jewish center in Galilee. 's walls, part of Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Twelve Apostles In the 1730s, the Arab ruler
Daher al-Umar, of the
Zaydani clan, fortified the town. Accounts from that time tell of the great admiration people had for Daher, especially his war against bandits on the roads.
Richard Pococke, who visited Tiberias in 1737, witnessed the building of a fort to the north of the city, and the strengthening of the old walls, attributing it to a dispute with the governor of Damascus. Under instructions from the
Ottoman Porte,
Sulayman Pasha al-Azm of Damascus
besieged Tiberias in 1742, with the intention of eliminating Daher, but his siege was unsuccessful. In the following year, Sulayman set out to repeat the attempt with even greater reinforcements, but he died en route. Under Daher's patronage, Jewish families were encouraged to settle in Tiberias. He invited Rabbi
Chaim Abulafia of
Smyrna to rebuild the Jewish community. The synagogue he built still stands today, located in the Court of the Jews. In 1775,
Ahmed el-Jazzar "the Butcher" brought peace to the region with an iron fist. In 1780, many
Polish Jews settled in the town. During the 18th and 19th centuries it received an influx of
rabbis who re-established it as a center for Jewish learning. An essay written by Rabbi
Joseph Schwarz in 1850 noted that "Tiberias Jews suffered the least" during an Arab rebellion which took place in 1834. An American expedition reported that Tiberias was still in a state of disrepair in 1847/1848. Rabbi Haim Shmuel Hacohen Konorti, born in Spain in 1792, settled in Tiberias at the age of 45 and was a driving force in the restoration of the city. In the 19th century, the
Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem purchased lands that were incorporated into its growing network of rural estates.
British Mandate , ca 1925 In the
1922 census of Palestine conducted by the
British Mandate authorities, Tiberias had a population of 6,950 inhabitants, consisting of 4,427 Jews, 2,096 Muslims, 422 Christians, and five others. Initially the relationship between Arabs and Jews in Tiberias was good, with few incidents occurring in the
Nebi Musa riots in 1920 and the Arab riots throughout
Palestine in 1929. The first modern spa was built in 1929. The city rebuilt on the slopes and the British Mandatory government planted the
Swiss Forest on the slopes above the town to hold the soil and prevent similar disasters from recurring. A new seawall was constructed, moving the shoreline several yards out from the former shore. In October 1938, Arab militants
murdered 19 Jews in Tiberias during the
1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. Between 8–9 April 1948, sporadic shooting broke out between the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods of Tiberias. Arab Liberation Army and irregular forces attacked and closed the Rosh Pinnah road, isolating the northern Jewish settlements. On 10 April, the Haganah launched a mortar barrage, killing some Arab residents. The local National Committee refused the offer of the
Arab Liberation Army to take over defense of the city, but a small contingent of outside irregulars moved in. The Jewish population looted the Arab areas and had to be suppressed by force by the
Haganah and Jewish police, who killed or injured several looters. On 30 December 1948, when
David Ben-Gurion was staying in Tiberias,
James Grover McDonald, the
United States ambassador to Israel, requested to meet with him. McDonald presented a British ultimatum for Israeli troops to leave the
Sinai peninsula, Egyptian territory. Israel rejected the ultimatum, but Tiberias became famous.
Destruction of the old city During the months after the occupation of the city, a large part of the buildings of the old city in Tiberias was destroyed, and this for various reasons - problems of
hygiene, rickety construction, and the fear that the Arabs would return to the city, when it became known that this was a requirement of
Jordan as part of the negotiations conducted in
Rhodes. Finally, the authorities acceded to the initiative of the
Jewish National Fund, Yosef Nahmani, who argued that the houses of the Old City should be demolished, despite the opposition of Mayor Shimon Dahan. The destruction began in the summer of 1948 and continued until the first months of 1949. A visit by
David Ben-Gurion to the city brought an end to the destruction, after 477 out of 696 houses were destroyed according to official estimates. After the destruction remained the remains of the wall and the citadel, several houses on the outskirts of the city, as well as the two mosques that operated in the city. The area stood abandoned for decades, until operations began to restore it in the 1970s.
State of Israel The city of Tiberias has been almost entirely Jewish since 1948. Many
Sephardic and
Mizrahi Jews settled in the city, following the
Jewish exodus from Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Over time, government housing was built to accommodate much of the new population, like in many other
development towns. In 1959, during
Wadi Salib riots, the "
Union des Nords-africains led by David Ben Haroush, organised a large-scale procession walking towards the nice suburbs of
Haifa creating little damage but a great fear within the population. This small incident was taken as an occasion to express the social malaise of the different
Oriental communities in Israel and riots spread quickly to other parts of the country; mostly in towns with a high percentage of the population having North African origins like in Tiberias, in
Beer-Sheva, in
Migdal-Haemek". Over time, the city came to rely on tourism, becoming a major Galilean center for
Christian pilgrims and internal Israeli tourism. The ancient cemetery of Tiberias and its old synagogues are also drawing religious Jewish pilgrims during religious holidays. Tiberias consists of a small port on the shores of Galilee lake for both fishing and tourist activities. Since the 1990s, the importance of the port for fishing was gradually decreasing, with the decline of the Tiberias lake level, due to continuing droughts and increased pumping of fresh water from the lake. It was expected that the lake of Tiberias will regain its original level (almost higher than today), with the full operational capacity of Israeli desalination facilities by 2014. In 2020, the lake raised above the level it was in 1990. In 2012, plans were announced for a new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, Kiryat Sanz, on a slope on the western side of the Kinneret. ==Demographics==