Khirbat al-Minya (), also known as Ayn Minyat Hisham (Arabic) or Horvat Minnim (Hebrew) is an Umayyad-built palace in the eastern Galilee, Israel, located about west of the northern end of Lake Tiberias. It was erected as a qasr complex, with a palace, mosque, and bath built by a single patron.
History
Umayyad construction
Khirbat al-Minya, also spelled Khirbet el-Minya, was likely built during the reign of the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I (705-715 CE) and an inscription on a stone found at the site mentions his name. The supposed patron of the palace was al-Walid's son, Umar ibn al-Walid, who served as the governor of Tiberias during his father's reign, but fell out of favour when his uncle Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik became caliph in 715. This makes the palace's mosque one of the earliest to be built in Palestine.
Khirbat al-Minya served a number of purposes, including as local administrative center for a subregion of the Jund al-Urdunn ("District of Jordan") and as a contact point for 'Umar and local Arab tribes. It also could have served as a caravanserai for merchants travelling along the Sea of Galilee or northeast from the lake shore to the coast. Khirbat al-Minya also served as a winter retreat for the governor of Tiberias or an alternative for the traditional summer retreat for the governor at Baysan.
There is evidence that the palace was in use until at least the end of the Umayyad period in 750 CE. A strong earthquake hit the region, probably in 749. This damaged the building, causing a rift to run through the eastern wing, going straight through the mosque's mihrab. The damage in the niche were never repaired. It thus remains uncertain whether the palace was ever finished: Fallen debris from the earthquake was discovered in the 20th century in situ on the floor tiles of the main entry. The unused raw materials of a mosaic builder were found in the antechamber of the mosque.
Khirbat al-Minya was abandoned at an uncertain date.
Mamluk reuse, khan
Khirbat al-Minya was later temporarily resettled.
Based on the stratification established in the western part of the site and the discovery of Mamluk pottery in 1959, the palace was settled again during the late Mamluk period (14th-15th centuries). It is likely that the building was used as a khan in this period, due to its position at a cross-road between the main Damascus-Cairo route, dubbed "Via Maris" in modern times, and a secondary route to Safad via Khan Jubb Yusuf. A Khan al-Minya was constructed 300 m due north of the palace by Saif al-Din Tankiz (reigned 1312–1340), the Mamluk governor of Syria, during the reign of Al-Nasir Muhammad. Parts of Khirbat al-Minya might have been used as building material for the new khan; baked bricks and a marble capital found during excavations of the khan were assumed to be taken from the palace.
Ottoman period village
In 1596 a village by the name of Mina (Minya) appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as part of the nahiya (subdistrict) of Jira in the Sanjak (district) of Safad. It had an all-Muslim population, consisting of 110 households and 2 bachelors, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, vegetable and fruit garden, orchard, special products, beehives, water buffaloes, in addition to occasional revenues, marked toll and a water mill; totalling 26,476 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf for Madrasa Tahiriyya (com) in Quds Sarif.
Parts of the ruin were used as a water reservoir (likely for a mill) and later a large brick oven was built in the south wing and used to process sugar cane from nearby plantations. In the 19th century locals built huts on the rubble heaps.
Rediscovery and excavations
In the second half of the 19th century, Charles William Wilson and other European travellers discovered ancient ruins among the huts of a local fellah settlement. Some thought it to be Capernaum where, according to the New Testament, Jesus had taught at the local synagogue. This was likely an argument for the purchase of the area along with nearby Tell el-Oreme ('Oreimeh), by the Deutscher Verein vom Heiligen Lande (German Association of the Holy Land), a Catholic society from Germany, in 1895.
Pre-WW II excavations
After the true Capernaum synagogue was discovered in 1904, :de:Andreas Evaristus Mader (1881-1949), an archaeologist and Salvatorian patre, conducted exploratory excavations at the ruin and its environments on behalf of the Görres Society in 1911-4 and again in 1931. Identifying a large square structure with outer walls and corner towers, he thought it to be a Roman fort or castrum.