Mashhad, Israel

Mashhad is approximately three miles northeast of Nazareth and is administered as locality code 520 in the Jezreel subdistrict.[1][2] Reference works place biblical Gath-Hepher either at nearby Tel Gath Hepher or at the village itself, so the association is best presented as a historical identification rather than an archaeologically settled fact.[4][2]

Reference works have long linked Mashhad and its vicinity with biblical Gath-Hepher, Jonah’s hometown. A nineteenth-century work identified el Mesh-hed itself with Gath-Hepher, while a modern Encyclopaedia Judaica entry locates the site at nearby Tel Gath Hepher.[4][2]

A tomb within the village has been venerated as Jonah’s burial place for centuries. Jerome noted the tradition in the preface to his Latin commentary on Jonah, and the medieval traveler Benjamin of Tudela also placed the tomb in this vicinity.[4][5] These accounts show that the association was established by at least late antiquity, although they do not prove the tomb’s identity.

In 2023, investigators uncovered a rock-cut burial cave at a construction site in Mashhad. It contained nine burial niches and three decorated stone ossuaries, which were found empty and outside their original positions, prompting suspicion of antiquities theft. Heavy machinery had completely destroyed another ancient burial cave at the site.[3]

Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Eitan Klein said ossuaries of this type were used by the Jewish population of the Galilee during the second and third centuries CE. He connected the spread of ossuary burial in the region with the arrival of Jews from Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt and interpreted the Mashhad finds as evidence of a Jewish settlement there in the second century CE.[3] The ossuaries bore motifs associated with Jewish burial and influenced by Greek culture, including a mausoleum-like design and a circular wreath. Similar designs had previously been found at Sepphoris.[3]

The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics identifies Meshhed as an Arab local council in the Northern District and Jezreel subdistrict.[1] Its population increased from 8,373 at the end of 2019 to 8,771 in 2022. Both tables record the locality’s entire population in the Arab category.[1][6]

Actor Shadi Marei grew up in Mashhad after moving there with his family at age two and a half. He attended high school in the village before beginning a film career that included a leading role in the Israeli film “Bethlehem,” giving Mashhad a documented connection to contemporary Israeli cinema.[7]

Mashhad’s modern history includes a disputed episode of land expropriation. In 1976, the state expropriated a parcel of approximately 250 dunams within Mashhad’s municipal territory as part of a wider effort to expand the Har Yona neighborhood of Nazareth Illit, which was then being prepared to absorb immigrants. The parcel was not included in subsequent construction plans and was never transferred to Nazareth Illit’s jurisdiction.[8]

A 2009 Ynetnews report separately stated that the Har Yona Alef and Bet neighborhoods had been built on land expropriated in 1967 from Mashhad, Kfar Kana and Ein Mahil, and linked that move to events commemorated as Land Day.[9] A later Ynetnews explainer dates Land Day to March 30, 1976, and says that year’s confiscation decision concerned Sakhnin, Arraba, Deir Hanna, Tur’an, Tamra and Kabul. Six people were killed during the resulting protests.[10] Because the reports describe different expropriations and village lists, they should not be read as establishing a single, undisputed chronology.

Landowners later initiated a plan to expand Mashhad and address a housing shortage. The District Committee approved the plan in November 2016, providing for approximately 500 housing units on 260 lots.[8] The Israel Land Authority opposed the plan, but its objection was rejected. After approval, the Authority said it intended to implement the plan and market the lots itself rather than give priority to the families that had held the land.[8]

The landowners said they had continued to possess and cultivate the property, had received no compensation, and that the state had neither taken possession nor completed registration of its rights. The Israel Land Authority and State Attorney’s Office characterized the parcel as part of a larger tract lawfully expropriated for urban development and said earlier applications for its return had been rejected in accordance with the law.[8]

The Encyclopaedia Judaica identifies nearby Khirbat al-Zurra, now called Tel Gath Hepher, with biblical Gath-Hepher. It places the tell approximately 2½ miles (4 km) southeast of Sepphoris and reports Iron Age pottery on its surface.[4] Within Mashhad, a tomb traditionally identified as Jonah’s remains the focus of a religious tradition documented in late-antique, medieval and nineteenth-century sources.[4][2]

The identification of the tomb in Mashhad as Jonah’s is a longstanding religious tradition, not an established archaeological finding.[4][2] The two Encyclopaedia Judaica entries also frame the site’s distance from Sepphoris differently: one places Tel Gath Hepher approximately 2½ miles (4 km) southeast of the city, while the other says a Talmudic city identified with Gath-Hepher was approximately 12 miles (19 km) away.[4][5]

Klein’s conclusion that the 2023 ossuary finds indicate a Jewish settlement at Mashhad in the second century CE is an archaeological interpretation attributed to him by the report rather than an independently established determination.[3]