al-Samakiyya

The village was located in a volcanic area on the northern coast of Lake Tiberias. It was linked by a secondary road to the highway which wound around the lake shore to the city of Tiberias. The village was built close to the site of the Roman/Byzantine city of Kefar Nachum (or Capernaum). Now in ruins, this city is known as Tall Hum, although there is no actual tell (mound) on the site. In his discussion of the route around the northern edge of Lake Tiberias, Josephus referred to al-Samakiyya as a village that cultivated fertile agricultural land and was called Capharnaum by the inhabitants. It was mentioned in the New Testament as the city where Christ resided most of the time after leaving Nazareth.

The American biblical scholar Edward Robinson mentioned that the small tribe of al-Samakiyya used some houses in Abu Shusha, to the southwest, as storage places. The village of al-Samakiyya had no distinctive settlement pattern; its houses were dispersed southwest of Wadi al-Wadabani. Some of these dwellings were Bedouin tents made of goat's hair, while others were houses built of stone and mud, stone and cement, or concrete. The 380 inhabitants of the village consisted of 330 Muslims and 50 Christians. They relied for their livelihood on livestock breeding and agriculture (mainly grain). In 1944/45 only 2 dunums were devoted to citrus and bananas while 4,034 dunums were allocated to cereals; 66 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Several churches and monasteries were located in the hills between al-Samakiyya and the nearby village of al-Tabigha, including an Italian monastery, a Franciscan church, and a Greek Orthodox church. (The residents in the area claim that Christ delivered his 'Sermon on the Mount' on one of these hills, called Khirbat al-Mubaraka, or 'the blessed.')