Daliyat al-Karmel (, , "vineyards (دالية) of Carmel") is a Druze town located on Mount Carmel in the Haifa District of Israel, around 20 km southeast of Haifa. In its population was 18,001.
History
In 1283 both Daliyat al-Karmel and Kh. Doubel (just south of Daliyat al-Karmel) were mentioned as part of the domain of the Crusaders, according to the hudna between the Crusaders in Acre and the Mamluk sultan Qalawun.
In 1870 a local guide showed French explorer Victor Guérin extensive ruins located south of Daliyat al-Karmel, called Khirbet Doubel. The ruins were the most extensive on Mount Carmel. Guérin thought it might be the town on Mt. Carmel mentioned by Pliny. Conder and Kitchener of the Palestine Exploration Fund surveyed the area and noted "traces of ruins" at a place SE of the village centre called Dubil. Later excavations have found remains there from Iron Age I, Early Roman and Byzantine periods, together with pottery from first century to the second–third centuries CE. Although inconclusive, Lieutenant Conder thought that Daliyat al-Karmel was to be identified with the biblical Idalah (Joshua 19:15).
Ottoman era
Mount Carmel was progressively settled by Druze beginning in the early 17th century, when a large part of Palestine came under the jurisdiction of Fakhr al-Din II, the paramount Druze strongman of Mount Lebanon and Ottoman governor of the Sidon-Beirut and Safad districts. Druze from the Yamani tribo-political faction may have also migrated to Mount Carmel from Mount Lebanon in the aftermath of the Battle of Ain Dara in 1711, though most of the migration was directed to the Jabal Hauran. Six out of the eight Druze villages established on Mount Carmel were abandoned or destroyed during Egyptian rule in the Levant (1831–1840). The local accounts recorded by Laurence Oliphant, who built himself a summer house in Daliyat al-Karmil in the 1880s, hold that the villages were abandoned for Jabal Hauran due to the oppressive rule of the governor Ibrahim Pasha, while Conder noted that the villages were destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha. Daliyat al-Karmil and Isfiya were the sole Druze settlements left standing on Mount Carmel. The local traditional trace Daliyat al-Karmel's founding to the 18th century when a Druze family from Jabal al-A'la near Aleppo settled on ancient ruins in the village. Successive waves of Druze families from Jabal al-A'la followed and together they formed the Halaby ("Aleppine") clan. Until today the Halaby clan of the town speaks in the Aleppine Arabic dialect rather than the Palestinian dialect.
In 1870 Guérin found four hundred Druze inhabitants in Daliyat al-Karmel. The houses were mostly built of adobe, with only a few stone houses. The locals worshiped inside a cave, where the explorer was not allowed. In 1881 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described the village as a "stone village of moderate size on a knoll of one of the spurs running out of the main watershed of Carmel. On the south there is a well, and fine springs on the west, near Umm esh Shukf. On the north is a little plain or open valley cultivated with corn (Merjat ed Dalieh). The inhabitants are all Druses." A population list from about 1887 showed that Daliyat al-Karmel had about 620 inhabitants, all Druze.
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Daliyat al-Karmel had a population of 993; 921 Druse and 21 Christians, increasing in the 1931 census when Daliyat al-Karmel, together Deir el Muhraqa and Khirbat al-Mansura had a total population of 1,173, of whom 1,154 were Druze, 11 were Christians and 8 were Muslims, living in a total of 236 houses. In the 1945 statistics the population of Daliyat al-Karmel consisted of 2,060 Arabs, (20 Christians and 2,040 Druze). The land area was 31,730 dunams, according to an official land and population survey, of which 1,506 dunams were designated for plantations and irrigable land, 18,174 for cereals, and 60 were built-up (urban) areas.
State of Israel
An Israeli census conducted in November 1948 found 2,932 residents. At the end of 1951 the figure dropped to 2,769. The town was granted local council status that year. In 2003 Daliyat al-Karmel was merged with Isfiya to form Carmel City. In 2008, the communities became separate once again. The town is famous for its colorful market.