| Jiddin | ||
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Jiddin
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| Arabic | خربة جدّين | |
| District | Acre | |
| Coordinates | ||
| Population | 1,500 (1945) | |
| Area | 7,587[1] dunums | |
| Date of depopulation | 11 July 1948 | |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Military assault by Yishuv forces | |
| Current localities | Yehiam[2], Kiryat, and Ga'aton[2][3] | |
Khirbat Jiddin (Arabic: خربة جدين) is a former Palestinian village in the Galilee located 16 km northeast from city of Acre. According to a 1945 census the village had a population of approximately 1,500 Arabs. Khirbat Jiddin lands then comprised 7,587 dunums, 4,238 owned by Arabs and 3,349 dunums owned by Jews.
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The village has a khirba which contains the remains of buildings, building foundations, columns, and cisterns.
The Crusaders referred to the village as Judyn. During this period the Crusaders built a fortress in the center of the village. Indirect evidence suggest that the Crusader castle was first built some time after May 1220, when the Teutonic Order acquired the nearby village of Shifaya, and that it fell to Sultan Baybars between 1268 and 1271. In around 1283, Burchard of Mount Sion described Iudin as a destroyed castle that had formerly belonged to the Teutonic Order.[4]
The Teutonic castle was built around two towers with an outer enclosure wall.[5]
The castle was rebuilt in the eighteenth century by Dhaher al-Omar, the Palestinian Ottoman governor of the Galilee.[6]
The rebuilding in the eighteenth century consisted of the outer enclosure walls and moat,[7] together with an angled entrance gatehouse. The center of the eighteenth-century castle was at the west end of the site where a vaulted hall was built over the Crusader walls. This hall formed a basement for a palatial residence which included a mosque and a bathhouse. The vaulted roof of the hall rested on a series of square pillars standing directly on the original sloping ground of the hill side. A number of features were built into the sides of the walls, including well shafts and gun-slits. The mosque was a small square structure which was originally roofed with four cross-vaults resting on a central pillar. The bath house appears to have been a small domestic structure supplied with water from the wells below.[5]
The Italian abbe Mariti, who travelled there (to "Geddin") in the 1760s´, reports being given a generous reception by the local sheik who commanded the place for Daher.[8]
Dhaher al-Omar successor, Jezzar Pasha, razed the fortress around 1775.[9]
Until 1948 the al-Suwaytat Bedouin lived in the ruined fortress. They were Muslim, and their primary occupation was animal husbandry. In 1944/45 it is recorded that they also cultivated a little barley and tobacco on a total of 22 dunums of land.[2]
The village was situated in the territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, but in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the village was captured by Israel's Sheva' Brigade during Operation Dekel on 11 July 1948.
Khirbat Jiddin was completely destroyed and defaced, with the exception of the Crusader fortress & the 1948 battle positions, which have been preserved as a national park.
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