CABUL

CABUL (Heb. כָּבוּל), city in Western Galilee S.E. of Acre, mentioned in the territory of Asher (Josh. 19:27). Its area probably constituted the "land of Cabul" which did not please Hiram, king of Tyre, when he received 20 cities in the land of Galilee from Solomon (i Kings 9:13). In another passage, however, Solomon is said to have built and settled Israelites in these cities (ii Chron. 8:2). Various suggestions have been proposed to resolve these contradictions; a possible explanation is that Cabul and its vicinity had become the border region between Ereẓ Israel and Phoenician Acre as in the Second Temple period when Cabul was a city on the border of Galilee and Ptolemais-Acre (Jos., Wars, 3:38). It was attacked by Cestius Gallus in 66 c.e. (ibid., 2:503) and served for a time as Josephus' headquarters in Galilee in 67 c.e. (Life, 213, 227, 234). Judah and Hillel, sons of R. Gamaliel iii, were guests at Cabul, where they were received with great honor and paid a visit to a local bath (Tosef., Shab. 7:17; Tosef., mk 2:15). It was the seat of R. Zakkai (tj, Meg. 4, 78b, etc.) and was famous for its abundance of wine and oil; it also had a synagogue and public baths. After the fall of Jerusalem, priests of the Shecaniah (Shekhanyah) family settled there. In the Latin kingdom it was the seat of a seigniory known as Cabor. Still known by its ancient name, it is a Muslim village where Middle Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman remains have been found.

bibliography:

S. Klein (ed.), Sefer ha-Yishuv, 1 (1939); Alt, in: pjb, 25 (1929), 43ff.; Aharoni, in: Ma'aravo shel Galil (1961), 171–8.

[Michael Avi-Yonah]