Al-Sinnabra or Sinn en-Nabra, is the Arabic place name for a historic site on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee in modern-day Israel. The ancient site lay on a spur from the hills that close the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, next to which towards its south being the tell, Khirbet Kerak or Bet Yerah, one of the largest in the Levant, spanning an area of over 50 acres. Bet Yerah was the Hellenistic era twin city of Sennabris (), as al-Sinnabra was known in Classical antiquity, and its remains are located at the same tell.
The city or village was inhabited in the Hellenistic, Roman-Byzantine, and early Islamic periods. An Arab Islamic palatial complex or qasr located there was also known as al-Sinnabra and served as a winter resort to caliphs in Umayyad-era Palestine (c. 650-704 AD). By the Crusader period, the qasr of al-Sinnabra was in ruins. Though the date of destruction for the village itself is unknown, by the Ayyubid period descriptions of the area mention only the "Crusader Bridge of Sennabris", constructed over the Jordan river which at the time ran to the immediate north of the village.
For decades, part of the palatial complex of al-Sinnabra was misidentified as a Byzantine era (c. 330-620 CE) synagogue because of a column base engraved with a seven-branched candelabrum. This thesis was questioned by Ronny Reich in 1993. Donald Whitcomb suggested the complex was the qasr of al-Sinnabra in 2002, and excavations carried out in 2010 showed his analysis to be correct. Constructed in the 7th century by Mu'awiya and one of his successors, Abdel Malik, who also commissioned the building of the Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem, it likely represents the earliest Umayyad complex of this type yet to be discovered.
Name
In Greek (Hellenistic) sources the name is given as Sennabris, while in the Aramaic used in Talmudic sources it is referred to as Sinnabri, and is described as sitting alongside Bet Yerah.
The Arabic rendering of the name is al-Sinnabra or Sinn-en-Nabra.
Location
Though described in the writings of early Arab historians, the precise location of al-Sinnabra had long been unknown. Josephus, the 1st-century Jewish historian, described Sennabris as the northernmost point of the Jordan valley, situating it some 30 stadia to the south of Tiberias. In Buldan, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229), the Syrian geographer, situated al-Sinnabra opposite 'aqabat Afiq (meaning "the Afeq pass"), from Tiberias.
Josef Schwarz, a rabbi who came to reside in Jerusalem in the 19th century, transliterated its name as it appears in the Talmud as Senabrai, and citing Josephus for its location, he noted that "Even at the present day there are found in this vicinity traces of ruins called by the Arabs Sinabri." A map of the area produced by the Palestine Exploration Fund around this time depicted Khirbet Sinn en-Nabrah to the immediate northwest of Khirbet Kerak, today's Kinneret village.
Al-Sinnabra's location is now confirmed to have been off the main Ramla-Beisan-Damascus highway about south of Tabariyya (the Arabic name for Tiberias), a city that served as the capital of the el-Urdunn province under the Umayyad dynasty. It is situated on the tell of Khirbet Kerak (Arabic: Khirbet al-Karak, "the ruins of the castle") or Beth Yerah (, "House of the Moon (god)"), which lies where the Sea of Galilee empties into the Jordan river and rises 15 meters above sea level. The Jordan river runs to the south, although it previously (until the medieval period at the earliest) ran north and west of it.
History
Hellenistic period
In Hellenistic times, the city was known as Sennabris. Parts of the city walls from this period have been identified, and it is estimated that the wall (on the south and west of the tel) was at least 1600 meters long. The wall was built of piles of basalt, with bricks at the top and was strengthened by alternating rectangular and rounded towers with spiral staircases. Similar towers from this period have been found at Tel Zeror. A portion of the town discovered in the southern part of the mound included a street along which houses were built, one of which had a paved court around which were eleven rooms. Some of the houses facing the lake have survived to the height of the window sills.