Local time Tuesday 7:48 PM | ||
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Name meaning "The spring of the barren land." Weather 12°C, Wind W at 8 km/h, 92% Humidity | ||
Ein Mahil (Arabic: عين ماهل; Hebrew: עֵין מָהִל) is an Arab local council in the Northern District of Israel, located about five kilometers north-east of Nazareth. It was declared a local council in 1964. In 2015 it had a population of 12,484, the majority of which are Muslims.
Contents
Map of Ein Mahil, Israel
History
In 1596, Ein Mahil appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Liwa of Safad. It had a population of 28 Muslim households, and paid taxes on wheat, barley, fruit trees, and goats or beehives. A map by Pierre Jacotin, from 1799 showed the place named Ain el Mahel.
The French explorer Victor Guérin passed by the village in the 1875, and described it as having 10 poor dwellings, surrounded by gardens of olives, figs and pomegranates. In 1881 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as a "Stone village, situated on very high ground, surrounded by figs and olives and arable land. It contains about 200 Moslems, and has near it a fine group of springs."
In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, 'Ain Mahel had a population of 516, all Muslims. The population increased in the 1931 census of Palestine to 628, of whom 1 was Christian and the rest Muslims, in a total of 109 occupied houses.
In 1945 the population was 1,040, all Arabs, with 13,390 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,486 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 6,748 for cereals, while 35 dunams were built-up land.