PLace

Nimrin

Place
Nimrin — نِمْرِين
District
Galilee
Subdistrict
Tiberias
Average Elevation
350 m
Distance from Tiberias
10.5 km
Population
Year Arab Total
1931 316
1944/45 320
Land Ownership (1944/45) in dunums
Year Arab Jewish Public Total
1944/45 8306 3224 489 12019
Land Use (1944/45) in dunums
Use Arab Public Total
Non-Cultivable & Built-up (Total)
Use Arab Public Total
Non-Cultivable 2 489 491
Built-up 64
66 489 555 (5%)
Cultivable (Total)
Use Arab Jewish Total
Cereal 7905 3224 11129
Plantation and Irrigable 335 335
11464 (95%)
Number of Houses (1931)
71

The village was located on the saddle between two hills to the northwest and southeast. It faced the Tur'an Plain to the southwest. Mount Tabor (Jabal al-Tur) could be seen in the distance, to the south. In Roman times it was a settlement of priests known as Kefar Nimra. In 1596, Nimrin was a village in the nahiya of Tiberias (liwa' of Safad) with a population of 110. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, and olives, as well as on other types of property, such as goats and beehives.

Nimrin was described in the late nineteenth century as a stone-built village on the slope of a hill, with a population of about 250. The village had a small oval core in which houses were densely clustered. New houses were scattered to the northeast of this core. The houses were built of stone, cement, mud, or concrete; their roofs were made of wood or reeds and covered with a layer of mud. The entire population was Muslim. An elementary school for boys was founded in Nimrin in the Ottoman period but was closed during the British Mandate. The villagers drew their drinking water from a well that was 1.5 km to the south and from cisterns that collected rainwater.

The main economic pursuits were agriculture and livestock; grain was the most important crop, and vegetables were planted in small areas. In 1944/45 a total of 7,905 dunums was allotted to cereals and 335 dunums were irrigated or devoted to orchards, 300 dunums of which were for fruit-bearing olive trees. The village had one manual olive press. Nimrin was built over the remains of the Roman site; evidence of this could be seen in the rock-cut presses, tombs, and the remains of cisterns.

The fate of Nimrin was probably the same as that of Lubya and Hittin, villages in the vicinity that fell at the end of Operation Dekel (see 'Amqa, Acre sub-disctrict). Israeli historian Benny Morris indicates that the village fell on 16-17 July 1948, towards the end of the Ten Days that separated the two truces of the war. Morris does not describe the exact circumstances of its occupation and it is not clear what made the villagers leave.

The settlement of Achuzzat Naftali (194244) was built on village land in 1949.

The site and a major part of the lands are surrounded by a fence.

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