Nazareth

• 1. Introduction

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  Nazareth is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel, and many people call it "the Arab capital of Israel." The nickname reflects its role as a cultural, political, religious, economic and commercial center for the country's Arab citizens. Roughly 69% of those inhabitants are Muslim and 31% are Christian. Many more people know the name for another reason, because Nazareth is the hometown of Jesus. He is the central figure of Christianity, and a prophet in Islam and the Baháʼí Faith.

  Yet the evidence behind that fame is thin and often disputed. Scholars argue over what the name means, how large the village really was, and which ancient writers meant this exact place. This documentary follows the town from prehistoric burials to Crusader lords, Ottoman sheikhs, British rule and a modern Israeli city. Along the way it asks how a hamlet that early writers outside the gospels rarely mentioned became a destination for pilgrims. It also asks how that hamlet grew into a city where Muslims and Christians live together.

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• 2. Names Within Names

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  One reading of Nazareth ties it to the Hebrew word netzer, which means branch. Isaiah 11:1 says a Branch will bear fruit from the roots of Jesse, and that line may lie behind the name. A related view sees a place name used by groups who resettled after exile. A rival explanation starts with the verb na·ṣar, meaning to watch, guard or keep. That could describe a watchtower on a hilltop, or a village preserved by its secluded position. Doubt remains, because the Gospel of John speaks of Nazareth in negative terms. That suggests ancient Jews did not connect the name to prophecy.

  The Greek form Nazará, used in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, raises a puzzle of its own. A tsade in the original Semitic name would normally appear in Greek as a sigma, yet the text has a zeta. Some scholars therefore doubt that the New Testament place is the traditional Nazareth in Lower Galilee. Others reply that Palestinian Aramaic sometimes softened that sound into a z when it fell between two voiced consonants. English translations of the New Testament print "Jesus of Nazareth" seventeen times. The Greek original instead uses forms such as Nazarēnos and Nazōraios.

  In Arabic the town is an-Nāṣira, and Jesus is called an-Nāṣirī. That label follows an Arab habit of naming a person by the place or tribe he comes from. The Qur'an calls Christians naṣārā, meaning those who follow Jesus of Nazareth. A related word, Nasrani, still names the Saint Thomas Christians of India, who trace their origins to the apostle Thomas in the 1st century.

  Around 331, Eusebius recorded that Christ was called a Nazoraean because of the town, and that Christians had once been called Nazarenes. Tertullian wrote that "for this reason the Jews call us 'Nazarenes'." The Hebrew word notzrim, used for Christians, is thought to share that origin. In Acts, the lawyer Tertullus accuses Paul of belonging to the sect of the Nazarenes. Some medieval Jewish texts instead link notzrim to the netsarim, or watchmen, of Ephraim in Jeremiah 31:6. Even the Mandeans, whose scriptures use the word nașirutha for priestly craft, linked the name to a different city, Qom.

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• 3. Evidence From the Ground

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  About 9,000 years ago, a funerary and cult center at Kfar HaHoresh was already in use, roughly two miles from today's Nazareth. Archaeologists found the remains of some 65 people buried beneath huge horizontal headstone structures. Some of those structures held up to 3 tons of locally made white plaster. Decorated human skulls led researchers to call it a major cult centre of its era. Prehistoric finds in the neighboring Qafzeh Cave show that the wider area had people even earlier. From 1955 to 1965, the Franciscan priest Bellarmino Bagatti dug in the Nazareth basin. He uncovered Middle Bronze Age pottery from 2200 to 1500 BC, plus Iron Age silos and grinding mills.

  The written record is far later. Around AD 200, Sextus Julius Africanus, cited by Eusebius, called Nazara a village in Judea near Cochaba, which is modern Kaukab. He also wrote that relatives of Jesus kept their family records with great care. In 1962, a marble fragment from a synagogue at Caesarea Maritima gave the town's name in Hebrew as נצרת. It dates to about AD 300 and lists the towns where twenty-four priestly courses settled after the Bar Kokhba revolt of AD 132-35. Nazareth appears there as the home of the priestly Hapizzez family.

  James F. Strange, a professor at the University of South Florida, argues that Jewish sources ignored Nazareth before the 3rd century AD because it lacked prominence. He first put its population in Jesus's time at roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people. After more than a decade of further research, he lowered that to "a maximum of about 480." Other sources give a population of 400 and one public bath, used as a mikva. The scholar John Dominic Crossan read Bagatti's drawings as showing an insignificant hamlet. Yet Ken Dark calls the idea that Nazareth did not exist in Jesus's day "archaeologically unsupportable."

  In 2009, the Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre excavated a house from the early Roman period beside the Basilica of the Annunciation. She told reporters it revealed "for the very first time a house from the Jewish village of Nazareth." The Israel Antiquities Authority noted that finds were few, mostly pottery fragments from the first and second centuries AD. A hewn pit with a camouflaged entrance nearby was probably prepared for the Great Revolt against the Romans in 67 AD. About two dozen tombs in the basin are of the kokh type, which reached Galilee around the middle of the 1st century AD. In 2020, Alexandre confirmed that Jews from Judea moved into Galilee from the late Hellenistic-Hasmonean period. Priestly families led them in observing ritual purity laws. They settled a region left largely empty for about five centuries after the Assyrian conquest of 732 BCE.

  A tablet sent from Nazareth to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1878 carries the "Ordinance of Caesar." It dates to AD 50 and sets the death penalty for violating graves. Bagatti warned that Nazareth "lived various vendors of antiquities who got ancient material from several places." C. Kopp was blunter and said outside merchants brought it to the Nazareth market. In the mid-1990s, a shopkeeper near Mary's Well found tunnels under his shop. They proved to be the heating system of an ancient bathhouse, and digs in 1997-98 found Roman, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman remains.

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• 4. Pilgrims, Crusaders, Sultans

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  Around AD 375, Epiphanius listed Nazareth among the towns with no non-Jewish residents. He told of Joseph of Tiberias, a wealthy Jew who converted under Constantine. Joseph claimed an imperial order to build churches in Jewish towns such as Tiberias, Sepphoris, Capernaum and Nazareth. Building seems to have begun only after 352. At the start of the 5th century, the monk Jerome still called Nazareth a viculus, a mere village.

  In the 6th century, local Christian stories about the Virgin Mary began to draw pilgrims. They founded the first church beside a freshwater spring, now called Mary's Well, on the site of today's Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. Around 570, the Anonymous of Piacenza walked from Sepphoris to Nazareth. In the synagogue he saw the books from which Jesus learned his letters, and a bench where Jesus sat. Christians could lift the bench, he wrote, but Jews could not. He also reported that "The house of St. Mary is a basilica." Archaeologists have found that Judeo-Christians built a synagogue-church there before a Byzantine church rose in the mid-5th century.

  In 614, the Persians invaded Palestine, and the Byzantine author Eutychius claimed the Jews of Nazareth helped them slaughter Christians. When the emperor Heraclius drove the Persians out in 629-630, he expelled the Jews. The village became entirely Christian.

  The Arab Muslim conquest of 638 brought no immediate change. Bishop Arculf saw two churches around 670, one at Joseph's house and one at Mary's, but no synagogue. In 721, an edict by Caliph Yazid II apparently led to the destruction of the church at Joseph's house. When Willibald visited in 724-26, only the church of St. Mary remained, and Christians paid repeatedly to save it. An Arab geographer mentioned it again in 943.

  In 1099, the Crusader Tancred captured Galilee and made Nazareth his capital. He ruled the Principality of Galilee as a vassal of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Nazareth became a seigneury in 1115, and a Martin of Nazareth is documented as probable viscount. Tancred also placed the Latin Patriarch there, and the Archbishop of Nazareth became one of four archbishops in the kingdom. Saladin's victory at the Battle of Hattin returned the town to Muslim control in 1187, and the Crusaders and European clergy had to leave. Frederick II negotiated safe passage for pilgrims in 1229. In 1251, Louis IX of France attended mass in the grotto with his wife.

  In 1263, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars destroyed the Christian buildings and barred Latin clergy from the site. Arab Christian families stayed, but Nazareth shrank to a poor village. Pilgrims in 1294 found only a small church guarding the grotto. In the 14th century, Franciscan friars were allowed to return and live among the ruins of the basilica.

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• 5. Daher's Town

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  In 1584, the Franciscans were evicted from the ruined basilica again. In 1620, the Druze emir Fakhr al-Din II, who controlled this part of Ottoman Syria, let them build a small church at the Grotto of the Annunciation. The friars organized pilgrimage tours to nearby sacred sites. Bedouin tribes harassed them and often kidnapped them for ransom.

  Stability came with Daher al-Umar, an Arab sheikh who ruled Galilee and later much of the Levantine coast and Palestine. He turned Nazareth from a minor village into a large town by encouraging people to settle there. The town let him control the farmland of central Galilee. He also protected its Christians to strengthen ties with France, and one of his wives lived there. In 1730 he authorized a Franciscan church, which stood until 1955 and made way for a larger building finished in 1967. He allowed the Franciscans to buy the Synagogue Church in 1741, and he authorized the Greek Orthodox to build St. Gabriel's Church in 1767.

  Around 1740, Daher built the Seraya, which was his home, an Ottoman government house, a stable and a prison. It later served as the municipal headquarters until the early 1990s. His descendants, called the Dhawahri, joined the Zu'bi, Fahum and 'Onallah families as Nazareth's traditional Muslim elite.

  Under the Ottoman governor Jazzar Pasha, who ruled from 1776 to 1804, Nazareth's Christians fared badly. Friction grew between them and Muslim peasants from nearby villages. Troops of Napoleon Bonaparte briefly captured the town in 1799. Napoleon toured the holy sites and considered making his general Jean-Andoche Junot the duke of Nazareth. Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt governed much of Ottoman Syria from 1830 to 1840 and opened Nazareth to European missionaries and traders. In 1860, the Bedouin leader Aqil Agha protected the town's Christians during the massacres.

  In 1838, Nazareth had 325 Christian families and 120 Muslim families. An estimate for 1856 gave 4,350 people, with Muslims at 52%. By 1862 the estimate fell to 3,120 and Christians made up over 78%. The figure reached 5,660 in 1867, with Christians about two-thirds. A list from about 1887 counted 6,575 inhabitants. These figures were likely crude.

  In 1864, the Armenian Kaloost Vartan arrived from Istanbul and founded the first medical mission, the Scottish "hospital on the hill." The Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society sponsored it, and today it is the Nazareth Hospital. The Ottoman Sultan, who favored the French, allowed them to open an orphanage run by the Society of Saint Francis de Sale. In 1871, Christ Church, the city's only Anglican church, was finished under the Rev John Zeller and consecrated by Bishop Samuel Gobat.

  By 1914 Nazareth had eight quarters, nine churches, two monasteries, four convents, two mosques, four hospitals and eight souks. Separate souks sold produce, metalwork, jewelry and leather to peasants from dozens of nearby villages. After World War I, Nazareth's importance declined, because most Arab villages in the Jezreel Valley had been replaced by new Jewish communities.

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• 6. Mandate Years

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  In 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration, the United Kingdom took control of Palestine. Nazareth sent a delegation to the 1919 First Palestine Arab Congress. In 1920 its representatives issued a letter condemning the Zionist movement while declaring solidarity with the Jews of Palestine. A Muslim-Christian Association formed in 1922, largely sponsored by the Muslim al-Zu'bi family. A united religious front proved hard to hold, and rival groups, including the National Muslim Association, appeared in Nazareth later that decade.

  The 1922 census counted 7,424 residents: 4,885 Christians, 2,486 Muslims and 53 Jews. They spoke 16 languages, led by 7,035 Arabic speakers. There were also 135 speakers of English, 72 of French, 43 of Hebrew and 42 of German. Smaller groups spoke Armenian, Greek, Italian, Maltese, Turkish, Polish, Yiddish, Abyssinian, Magyar and Spanish. The 1931 census listed 8,756 people, including 5,445 Christians, 3,226 Muslims, 79 Jews, five Baha'i and one Druze.

  Nazareth modernized slowly. Other towns already had electricity, but it waited until the 1930s while the town built two reservoirs on the northwestern hills and new cisterns for water. By 1930 there was a Baptist church and a municipal garden at Mary's Well.

  In the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt, Nazareth played a minor role. It supplied two of 281 rebel commanders, Fu'ad Nassar and Tawfiq al-Ibrahim. The nearby villages of Saffuriya and al-Mujaydil supplied nine between them. Rebel leaders wanted to use Nazareth as a staging ground against the British proposal to place Galilee inside a future Jewish state. On the 26th of September 1937, local rebels assassinated the British district commissioner of Galilee, Lewis Yelland Andrews, in the town.

  By 1946, Nazareth had 15,540 residents, roughly 60% Christian and 40% Muslim. New neighborhoods such as Maslakh and Nimsawi had appeared, and the town still held orchards and fields. Two cigarette factories, two cinemas and a tile factory had lifted the economy. The 1947 UN Partition Plan placed Nazareth in the Arab state. In April and May 1948, Arab Palestinians fleeing Tiberias, Haifa and Baysan took refuge there as the Haganah captured those cities.

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• 7. A Contested City

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  On the 16th of July 1948, during Operation Dekel, Nazareth surrendered to Israeli troops. Some 200-300 militiamen held the hills, and the southern and western defenses collapsed after shelling. The police chief raised a white flag, and the Muslim mayor Yusef Fahum asked residents to stop resisting. A written agreement promised that no harm would come to civilians. Soon afterwards, General Chaim Laskov ordered the brigade commander Ben Dunkelman to evacuate the city's Arabs. Dunkelman refused and said he was 'shocked and horrified.' He was relieved of command twelve hours later, but only after winning assurances for the population's safety. David Ben-Gurion backed him, fearing an outcry across the Christian world.

  An Israeli army census in July 1948 counted 17,118 people. Of these, 12,640 were Nazarenes and 4,478 were internally displaced persons. At one point about 20,000 displaced people, mostly Muslim, were in the city. Those from Saffuriya founded the Safafra Quarter, named after their village. By 1951 the population was 20,300, and 25% were displaced people from over two dozen villages. Around 20% of Nazareth's native inhabitants left Palestine during the war.

  The early years inside Israel brought martial law, with curfews and travel limits, and fights over land. As the largest Arab town in the country, Nazareth became a center of Arab and Palestinian nationalism. The Communist Party was the only legal group taking up Arab causes, and it gained support. In 1954, the state expropriated 1,200 dunams for government offices. In 1957 it took land for Nazareth Illit, a Jewish town meant to offset the Arab majority. The Knesset member Seif el-Din el-Zoubi opposed the Absentees' Property Law. Most displaced people refused compensation, fearing they would lose their right of return. Tensions peaked at a May Day rally in 1958, where several young protesters were arrested for throwing stones.

  On the 5th of January 1964, Pope Paul VI included Nazareth in the first papal visit to the Holy Land. Martial law ended in 1966. Since March 1975, Land Day has been an annual rally, alongside May Day.

  In the 1980s, the government tried to merge the nearby village of Ilut with Nazareth. Both communities and the Nazareth Municipality objected, and Ilut became a separate local council in 1991. During the First Intifada, a strike in solidarity led to riots on the 22nd of December 1987. A demonstration on the 24th of January 1988 drew between 20,000 and 50,000 people. After a football match riot in Nahariya on the 13th of May 1988-54 people, mostly Arabs, were arrested. Thousands rallied in Nazareth on the 19th of May against "racist attacks."

  No city plan drafted by the municipality has been approved since 1942, under either British or Israeli rule. As a result, the Sharqiya and Jabal el-Daula quarters fell under Nazareth Illit's jurisdiction, and their residents needed permits from that city. In 1993, the Bilal neighborhood's residents became official residents of Reineh. After lobbying, el-Zoubi won annexation of areas northwest of the city.

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• 8. Nazareth Today

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  Nazareth sits in a natural bowl that rises from 320 metres above sea level to hilltops of about 488 metres. It lies about 25 kilometres from the Sea of Galilee and 9 kilometres west of Mount Tabor. Jerusalem is about 146 kilometres away, and Tel Aviv about 108. The Nazareth Range, southernmost of the east-west ranges of Lower Galilee, shelters it. The climate is hot-summer Mediterranean.

  The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics reported in 2009 that the greater Nazareth area had 210,000 residents. Of these, 125,000 were Arabs (59%) and 85,000 were Jews (41%). It is the only urban area in Israel with over 50,000 people and an Arab majority. Nazareth has the largest Arab Christian community in Israel, and Greek Orthodox believers are the biggest group. Christians tend to be wealthier and better educated, and they hold most top posts as judges, bank managers and school principals. That gap with Muslim poverty has sometimes caused sectarian crises.

  About half of Nazareth's students attend its 10 Christian schools. Those schools make up only 4% of the Arab school sector, yet about 34% of Arab university students come from them. Christian schools include the Nazareth Baptist High School and the Nuns of St. Joseph School. The Christian community runs three hospitals, the English, French and Italian Nazareth Hospitals.

  The Church of the Annunciation is the largest Catholic church in the Middle East. In Catholic tradition, the angel Gabriel here told Mary she would bear Jesus. St. Joseph's Church marks the traditional site of Joseph's workshop, and Franciscans run the Mensa Christi Church where Jesus is said to have dined with the Apostles. The Salesians run the Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent on a hilltop north of the city. The Jesus Trail links many sites on a 60 km walk ending at Capernaum. The White Mosque, in the Old Market, is Nazareth's oldest mosque, and the city also has the Nabi Saeen and Peace Mosques.

  In 1997, permission was given for a paved plaza near the Basilica of the Annunciation to handle expected pilgrims. A small group of Muslims occupied the site, where Saladin's nephew Shihab al-Din is believed to be buried. Plans for a large mosque there angered Christian leaders, and a government commission halted it permanently in 2002. In March 2006, firecrackers set off inside the church caused protests. In July 2006, a Hezbollah rocket killed two children in the city. In March 2010 the government approved a $3 million plan to develop tourism, and in 2011 the city had over 20 Arab-owned high-tech companies. The newspaper Haaretz reported it was being called the "Silicon Valley of the Arab community." Riots broke out in 2021, and another Hezbollah rocket struck in September 2024. Yaakov Efrati has led the municipality since the 24th of June 2025.

  The football club Ahi Nazareth plays in Liga Leumit, the second tier. It spent two seasons in the top division, 2003-04 and 2009-10, and plays at Ilut Stadium. The city is twinned with Baguio, Częstochowa, Florence, Nablus and Neubrandenburg. Its Sanctuary of the Annunciation is also twinned with the Sanctuary of the Incarnation in Loreto, Italy.

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