Tantura (, al-Tantura, lit. The Peak; Hebrew and Phoenician: דור, Dor)Benvenisti, 2000, p. 50 was a Palestinian Arab fishing village located northwest of Zikhron Ya'akov on the Mediterranean coast of Mandatory Palestine. Near the village lie the ruins of the ancient Phoenician city of Dor.George Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia, Longmans, Green & Co, 1889 pp.83-84.
The village stood on a low limestone hill overlooking the shoreline of two small bays.Benvenisti, 2000, p. 135 The water was supplied from a well in the eastern part of the village. The al-Bab gate was in the southeast of the village. The Roman ruins were on the coast to the north with the hill of Umm Rashid to the south.Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Spring 2001), pp. 19–39: "The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial" by Ilan Pappe; With eye witness accounts from: Dan Vitkon, Yosef Graf, Salih 'Abn al-Rahman, Tuvia Lishansky Mordechai Sokoler, Ali 'Abd al-Rahman Dekansh, Najiah Abu Amr, Fawsi Mahmoud Tanj, Mustafa Masri In 1945 it had a population of 1,490.
The village was targeted in the early stages of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, with its houses looted and its Arab Palestinian inhabitants expelled and others massacred by the Palmach underground Alexandroni Brigade. The Tantura massacre was first documented by Haj Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib, a Palestinian Muslim cleric and member of the Arab National Committee of Haifa, in his report of The Events of the Disaster (Min Athar al-Nakba), decades before a 2022 Israeli documentary revealed testimony from several IDF veterans affirming that a massacre, involving somewhere between several to 200 Palestinian victims, had taken place. Al-Khatib's account also documented cases of Tantura women who had been raped, reporting that victims received treatment at a hospital in Nablus following the massacre.
History
Iron Age Dor was the most southern settlement of the Phoenicians on the coast of Syria and a center for the manufacture of Tyrian purple, extracted from the murex snail found there in abundance. Dor is first mentioned in the Egyptian Story of Wenamun, as a port ruled by the Tjeker prince Beder, where Wenamun (a priest of Amun at Karnak) stopped on his way to Byblos and was robbed.Tel Dor excavation project The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Haifa
Hebrew Bible reference According to the Book of Joshua, Dor was an ancient royal city of the Canaanites commanding the heights, whose king became an ally of Jabin of Hazor in the conflict with Joshua (). Dor is also mentioned in the Book of Judges as a Canaanite city whose inhabitants were put to 'taskwork' when the area was allotted to the tribe of Manasseh (). In the Book of Kings, Dor was said to be incorporated into David's Israelite kingdom. In the 10th century BCE, it became the capital of the Heights of Dor under Solomon, and was governed by his son-in-law, Ben-abinadab as one of Solomon's commissariat districts ().
Hellenistic and Roman periods Josephus Flavius in his Antiquities of the Jews (14:333) describes Dor as an unsatisfactory port where goods had to be transported by lighters from ships at sea. Dora was the city where Antiochus, ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire with the aid of Simon Maccabaeus, laid siege to the usurper Trypho.Josephus, The Jewish War 1:52 During Pompey's invasion of Judea, Dora was razed, along with all the coastal towns, only to be rebuilt under Gabinius's direction.Josephus, The Jewish War 1:155–1:170
Dor was an important salt production site, as attested to by pools and channels dug along the coast.Safrai, Zeev (1994) The Economy of Roman Palestine, Routledge, p. 186
By the mid-3rd century CE, the city had deteriorated to little more than a fishing village.Tel Dor excavation project, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Byzantine period The importance of Dor/Dora rose again from the 4th to the 7th century CE, becoming by the 5th century the center of a bishopric. Several bishops of Dora of that period are mentioned in Christian church records. The settlement migrated off the ancient tel to the area east of it, centering on the church complex, which served as a way-station for pilgrims traveling to the holy places. In 1950–52 a church was excavated by J. Leibowitz, in 1979–1983 by C. Dauphin, and 1994 by S. Gibson and Dauphin.
Underwater exploration of a Byzantine wreck salvaged a medium-size boat constructed with iron nails. Based on coins recovered from the site, the boat dates to c. 665 CE, a decade after the Muslim conquest. Artifacts include several objects testifying to the practice of light-fishing.Ehud Galili, Baruch Rosen, Fishing Gear from a 7th-Century Shipwreck off Dor, Israel, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 67–76, March 2008, DOI: 10.1111/j.1095-9270.2007.00146.x. First published online: 10 April 2007. Accessed 21 July 2019 via BlackwellSynergy.com
Early Islamic period The village of Tantura, further south, was probably established after the church was abandoned in the Early Islamic period. 34 apparently Muslim graves, dating from the 8th to the 14th century, have been excavated from the area of the ruined Byzantine church.Pringle, 1997, p. 99
Crusader period In the Middle Ages, a small fort surrounded by a moat was built on the southwestern promontory of the tell, overlooking the entrance to the southern bay. Dor has been identified with the Crusader principality of Merle, although excavations at the site, known in Arabic as Khirbet el-Burj, indicate that the moat was dug later, in the 13th century. The fort was in the possession of the Knights Templar until 1187, when it was conquered by Sultan Saladin after the Battle of Hattin. The Templars retook it shortly afterwards, at the latest during the Third Crusade. In the autumn of 1191, Richard the Lionheart rested there with his army as he waited for the Acre fleet. Eventually, the fort was controlled by the Mamluks along with the Château Pèlerin by 1291 or earlier.
Later titular Catholic see of Dora There are records of several 14th and 15th century Latin bishops of the see, which under the name Dora is still a titular see of the Catholic Church.Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013, ), p. 883. The titular Bishops of Dora were (1876-1980) the Grand Priors of the Royal Spanish Military Orders as territorial prelates of Ciudad Real (this prelature became in 1980 the current Diocese of Ciudad Real).
Ottoman period
Tantura rose in importance in the mid-18th century with the increased demand for cotton in Europe. Zahir al-Umar carried out a policy of expansion of trade, increasing the capacity of the port at Tantura, as well as those of Haifa and Acre.Yazbak, 1998, p. 14
Tantura was visited in 1738 by Richard Pococke, who called it "Tortura." He wrote that it was a small village with a port to the south for large boats.Pococke, 1745, vol 2, pp. 57-58
In 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte besieged Acre, he used the anchorage at Tantura as a supply depot. Napoleon camped at Tantura on May 21, 1799, and a garrison was stationed there for the remainder of the French campaign. Napoleon's officer Lambert, who had been sent to investigate the port, reported that it had a population of about 2,000, who seemed sympathetic to the French. After the failure of his campaign, his troops retreated to Tantura, where he hoped to evacuate by sea, but his navy failed to appear. To free up horses for carrying the wounded, he ordered heavy ordnance dumped in the bay. Artillery pieces, muskets and ammunition have been found in underwater surveys around Dor. It appeared as the village Tantourah on the map that Pierre Jacotin compiled during this campaign.Karmon, 1960, p. 163
The British traveller James Silk Buckingham, who visited in 1816, described al-Tantura as a small village with a small port and a khan (caravanserai).Buckingham, 1821, pp. 123-124; Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, pp. 193 -194 Mary Rogers, sister of the British vice-consul in Haifa, reported that in 1855 there were 30–40 houses in the village, with cattle and goats as the chief source of income.Rogers, 1865, p. 91. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 194
In 1859, William McClure Thomson described Tantura/Dor in his travelogue: 'Tantura merits very little attention. It is a sad and sickly hamlet of wretched huts on a naked sea-beach, with a marshy flat between it and the base of the eastern hills. The sheikh's residence and the public menzûl for travellers are the only respectable houses, Dor never could have been a large city, for there are no remains. The artificial tell, with a fragment of the Kùsr standing like a column upon it, was probably the most ancient site. In front of the present village and five small islets, by the aid of which an artificial harbour could easily be constructed. The entrance to which would be by the inlet at the foot of the Kùsr; and should "Dor and her towns" ever rise again into wealth and importance such a harbour will assuredly be made'.Thomson, 1859, vol 2, p. 498
When Victor Guérin visited in 1870, he found the village to have twelve hundred inhabitants, and further noted that the village itself was built largely with materials taken from the ancient city of Dor.Guérin, 1875, pp. 305 -315
In 1882, in the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine, Tantura was described as a village on the coast with a harbour located to the north, and a square, stone building used as a guest house for travellers (probably the khan referred to by Buckingham). The population was engaged in agriculture and conducted a small trade with Jaffa.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 3, Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 194
In 1884 Mordechai Bonstein, a Russian Jewish farmer pioneer from Rosh Pinna, moved to Tantura to farm a tract of land owned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Bonstein, his wife Haya, and their nine children were the only Jews in the village. The farm was successful and the family maintained good relations with their Arab neighbours."History" , Bashan Foundation
A population list from about 1887 showed that Tanturah had about 770 inhabitants, all Muslim.Schumacher, 1888, p. 181 A boys' elementary school was built in Tantura in 1889.
In 1891, Baron Rothschild financed the development of a bottle factory in Tantura,Encyclopedia Judaica, "Dor", p. 172, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1972 as he planned to use the fine sand on the shore to manufacture glass bottles for the fledgling wine industry in Zikhron Ya'akov. A building was constructed under the supervision of Meir Dizengoff, a French glass specialist was brought in, dozens of workers were hired, and three ships were purchased to transport raw material and bottles. But, he abandoned the factory in 1895 after a string of failures.
In 1898, German Emperor Wilhelm II visited the ruins of the crusader castle.
British Mandate period
According to the British Mandate's 1922 census of Palestine, al-Tantura had a population of 750 inhabitants; 749 Muslims and 1 Roman Catholic Christian,Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Haifa, p.34Barron, 1923, Table XVI, p. 49 increasing in the 1931 census to 953; 944 Muslims, 8 Christians and 1 Jew.Mills, 1932, p. 96 During this period Tantura's houses, situated along the beach, were constructed from stone. In addition to the boys' school, a girls' school was founded in 1937-38. There were two Islamic holy sites in the village, including a maqam (shrine) dedicated to an Abd ar-Rahman Sa'd ad-Din.Abu-Sitta, 2007, p. 51
During the British Mandate, the fish catch increased from six tons in 1928 to 1,622 tons in 1944. The major agricultural products were grain, vegetables, and fruit. In 1944/45 a total of 26 dunams was devoted to citrus and bananas, 6,593 to cereals and 287 dunams to orchards, mainly olives.Khalidi, 1992, p. 194Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 92