Khirbet Tibnah


Khirbet Tibnah, is located on the West Bank, between the villages Deir Nidham and Nabi Salih.

History

According to Schürer, Thamna – a city within the district of Diospolis and which served once as a toparchy during the Roman period, is to be identified with the biblical city of Timnath-serah, but which is now the ruin Tibnah in Samaria.
In 1596, the Tibnah site was listed as village in the nahiya Quds, in the administrative district Liwā` of Jerusalem, in a tax ledger of the "countries of Syria" and which lands were then under Ottoman rule. During that year, Tibna was inhabited by 20 family heads, all Muslim, although the same village ceased to be inhabited in the late mandatory period. The Ottoman authority levied a 33.3% taxation on agricultural products produced by the villagers, besides a marriage tax and supplement tax on goats and beehives. Total revenues accruing from the village of Tibna for that year amounted to 3700 akçe.
Khirbet Tibnah is described in 19th century sources as a Tell overlooking a deep valley on the north and the ancient Roman road to the south. A cemetery was situated on a flat hill nearby, and to the northwest, the spring of Ein Tibnah emerged from a rocky channel. On the southwest was an oak tree some 30 or 40 feet high, and two wells, one of them dry. West of the tree were traces of ruins believed to be those of an Arab village.
Charles William Wilson, who traveled through Palestine in 1866, reported a cemetery containing nine tombs south of the town, which was once capital of the surrounding district: One of these tombs was large, with a portico supported on piers of rock with very simple capitals. One of the piers was apparently destroyed between 1866 and 1873. There were niches for over 200 lamps at the tomb entrance. Inside was a chamber with fourteen graves, or kok'im, with a passage leading into an inner chamber containing one grave. He also wrote about a 40 foot high oak tree near the tomb, known as Sheikh et Teim, and a village about 3 miles to the east, called Kefr Ishu'a, or Joshua's Village.