Taybeh () is a Christian Palestinian village in the West Bank, northeast of Jerusalem and northeast of Ramallah, in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of Palestine. It is above sea level. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Taybeh had a population of 1,340 in 2017.
Taybeh is one of the about a dozen majority-Christian villages in the West Bank.
Etymology
"Taybeh" means "The goodly". According to a village tradition recorded by W. F. Albright, the place was formerly known as "Afrah". In 1882, SWP suggested that Taybeh might have been ancient Ophrah of Benjamin, and prominent scholars have backed this identification since then.
According to local tradition, Saladin met a delegation of its inhabitants during his wars against the Crusaders. Impressed by the hospitality of the locals, he renamed the village Taybeh, or "goodly" in Arabic. Another version of the story is that he was charmed by their goodness and the beauty of their faces, ordering the village to be renamed Tayyibat al-Isem ("beautiful of name") instead of what sounded like Afra ("full of dust"). Israeli archaeologist Hanan Eshel suggests that during the adoption of the Arabic language in the Palestine region, several locations originally called Ofrah underwent a name change to Taybeh in order to avoid mentioning Ifrit, a demon in Islamic mythology.
History
Ancient period
Taybeh is identified with ancient Ophrah. The town is mentioned in Josephus' The Jewish War during the time of the First Jewish-Roman War under the Greek appellation Ephraim (), or Apharaema (). The town was cut off from Samaria and incorporated into Judaea in 145 BCE. It served as a toparchy's administrative center before Gophna took its position.
According to Conder and Kitchener, Taybeh was an important place during both Jewish and Crusader times. They noted a rock-cut tomb in the village with multiple kokhim, which they thought was originally Jewish but was later reused by Christians as evidenced by the double Latin cross relief cut above the entrance.
Byzantine period
In the 5th century, a church, known today as St George's Church, was built in the east of the town.
Crusader period
In the 12th century, another church was built by the Crusaders attached to the first one. The Crusaders fortified Taybeh by means of a castle named in English the Castle of St Elias. In February 1182, Joscelin III gave the castle to king Baldwin IV of Jerusalem along with some other properties in return for the lordship of Mi'ilya.
In 1185, the king Baldwin V of Jerusalem granted the castle to his grandfather William V, Marquess of Montferrat.
However, in 1187 Taybeh fell to Saladin in the wake of the Battle of Hattin. Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani (1125–1201) described it as a Crusader fortress taken by Saladin, while Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229) described it, under the name of 'Afra, as "a fortress in the Filastin Province, near Jerusalem."
Ottoman period
In 1596, the village was named Tayyibat al-Isem as it appeared in the Ottoman tax registers, located in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 63 Muslim households and 23 Christian families. The village paid taxes on wheat, barley, vines or fruit trees, and goats or beehives; a total of 22,100 akçe. All of the revenue went to a Waqf.
Around 1810–1820, a large battle was fought in the village between rival factions of the Kais and the Yamani. Eventually the Yamani faction, led by the sheikh of Abu Ghosh, managed to regain Taybeh from the Kais faction. When Edward Robinson visited in 1838, he found it to contain 75 taxable inhabitants, indicating a population of about 300–400 people. It was noted as a Greek Christian village in the District of Beni Salim, east of Jerusalem.
French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village in 1863, and described Thayebeh as having an estimated 800 villagers, 60 Catholics, and the rest Greek Orthodox. He further noted the remains a large building on the top of a hill. An Ottoman village list from circa 1870 showed Taybeh to be a Christian town with 87 houses and a population of 283, though the population count included only men.
In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Taiyibeh as a "large Christian village in a conspicuous position, with well-built stone houses. A central tower stands on the top of the hill; on either side are olive and fig gardens in the low ground. The view is extensive on either side. A ruined church of St George exists near, and there are remains of a ruined castle in the village. The inhabitants are Greek Christians."