Ti'inik, also transliterated Ti’innik (Arabic: تعنّك), or Ta'anakh/Taanach (Hebrew: תַּעְנַךְ), is a Palestinian village, located 13 km northwest of the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank.
The village is located on the slopes of an archaeological tell identified with the biblical city of Ta'anach, which has seen intermittent habitation spanning 5000 years.[3]
Just to the north of Ti'inik is a 40-metre-high mound which was the site of the biblical city of Taanach[7] or Tanach (Hebrew: תַּעֲנָךְ; Ancient Greek: Θαναάχ and Θανάκ),[5][8][9] a Levitical city allocated to the Kohathites.[10][11]
Excavations at the tell were carried out by Albert Glock mostly during the 1970s and 1980s. Twelve Akkadian cuneiform tablets were found here. Approximately one third of the names on these tablets are of Hurrian origin, indicating a significant northern ethnic presence.[12][13] Pottery remains from the Roman, Byzantine, and the Middle Ages have been found here.[14] The main remains visible today are of an 11th-century Abbasid palace.[15]
In Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic times, the inhabited site was located on the lower slopes rather than the tell itself.[3]
In the census of 1596, the village appeared as "Ta'inniq", located in the nahiya of Sha'ara in the liwa of Lajjun. It had a population of 13 households, all Muslim. They paid a taxes on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 7,000 akçe.[18]
In 1838, Ta'annuk was noted as a Muslim village in the Jenin district;[19] It only contained a few families, but was said to have been much larger, and to contain ruins.[20]
In 1870 Victor Guérin found that the village consisted of ten houses.[21] He further described it as: 'Once the southern sides and the whole upper plateau of the oblong hill on which the village stands were covered with buildings, as is proved by the innumerable fragments of pottery scattered on the soil, and the materials of every kind which are met with at every step: the larger stones have been carried away elsewhere. Below the village is a little mosque, which passes for an ancient Christian church. It lies, in fact, east and west, and all the stones with which it is built belong to early constructions; some of them are decorated with sculptures. Farther on in the plain are several cisterns cut in the rock, and a well, called Bir Tannuk.[22]
In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village in the nahiya of Shafa al-Gharby.[23]
In 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as "A small village, which stands on the south-east side of the great Tell or mound of the same name at the edge of the plain. It has olives on the south, and wells on the north, and is surrounded with cactus hedges. There is a white dome in the village. The rock on the sides of the Tell is quarried in places, the wells are ancient, and rock-cut tombs occur on the north near the foot of the mound."[24]
By 1917, the village was home to eight family groups residing in 17 single-room houses.[3]
In the 1945 statistics the population was 100; all Muslims,[27] with 32,263 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[28] 452 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 31,301 dunams for cereals,[29] while a total of 4 dunams were built-up, urban land.[30]
^ a b cZiadeh, Ghada (1995). "Ethno-history and 'reverse chronology' at Ti'innik, a Palestinian village". Antiquity. 69 (266): 999–1008. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00082533. ISSN 0003-598X.
^ a bGauthier, Henri (1929). Dictionnaire des Noms Géographiques Contenus dans les Textes Hiéroglyphiques Vol. 6. p. 5.
^Wallis Budge, E. A. (1920). An Egyptian hieroglyphic dictionary: with an index of English words, king list and geological list with indexes, list of hieroglyphic characters, coptic and semitic alphabets, etc. Vol II. John Murray. p. 1052.
^Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), Taanach
^Joshua 21:25
^Freedman et al., 2000, p. 1228: "Its identification with modern Tell Ta'annek (171214) is undisputed because of the continuity in the name and because of its location on the southern branch of the Via Maris, next to the pass of Megiddo."
^Gustavs, A. (1927) "Die Personennamen in den Tontafeln von Tell Ta-annek" (in German). ZDPV 50, 1-18.
^Glock, A.E. (1971) "A New Ta-annek Tablet". BASOR 204,
17-30.
^Zertal (2016), pp. 177-179
^Winter. Dave. Israel handbook: with the Palestinian Authority areas, p. 644
^Marom, Roy; Tepper, Yotam; Adams, Matthew. "Lajjun: Forgotten Provincial Capital in Ottoman Palestine". Levant: 1–24. doi:10.1080/00758914.2023.2202484.
^Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 159
^Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, 2nd Appendix, pp. 126,131
^Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, pp. 156, 159
^Guérin, 1875, p. 226
^Guérin, 1875, pp. 226 -228; as translated by Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 68
^Grossman, David (2004). Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. p. 256.
^Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 46
^Barron, 1923, Table IX, Sub-district of Jenin, p. 30
^Mills, 1932, p. 71
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 17
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 55
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 99
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 149
^Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p. 25
^Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 349
Bibliography
Barron, J.B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922. Government of Palestine.
Dauphin, C. (1998). La Palestine byzantine, Peuplement et Populations. BAR International Series 726 (in French). Vol. III : Catalogue. Oxford: Archeopress. p. 743. ISBN 978-0-860549-05-5.
Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics (1964). First Census of Population and Housing. Volume I: Final Tables; General Characteristics of the Population (PDF).
Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics (1945). Village Statistics, April, 1945.
Guérin, V. (1875). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine (in French). Vol. 2: Samarie, pt. 2. Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale.
Hadawi, S. (1970). Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center.
Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. ISBN 978-3-920405-41-4.
Mills, E., ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas. Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
Palmer, E.H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration FundPalestine Exploration Fund.
Robinson, E.; Smith, E. (1841). Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea: A Journal of Travels in the year 1838. Vol. 3. Boston: Crocker & Brewster.
Zertal, A. (2016). The Manasseh Hill Country Survey. Vol. 3. Boston: BRILL. ISBN 978-9004312302.
External links
The Archaeology of Ottoman Ti’innik
Welcome To Ti'innik
Survey of Western Palestine, Map 8: IAA, Wikimedia commons