Al-Sinnabra 1.49

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 tell upon which al-Sinnabra was situated, Khirbet Kerak or Bet Yerah, is 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.