Jiddin

Jiddin (Arabic: جدين), also known as the Jiddin Fortress (Arabic: قلعة جدين, romanized: Qalʾat Jiddīn) or Khirbet Jiddin (Arabic: خربة جدين, lit. 9 mi) northeast of the port city of Acre. The fortress was originally built on the site of a Byzantine-era settlement by the Crusaders' Teutonic Order in the 13th century when it formed part of the Acre-based Kingdom of Jerusalem. The castle, then called Judin, was destroyed by the Mamluk sultan Baybars after he conquered the nearby fortress of Montfort from the Crusaders in 1271.

In the 18th century, Jiddin was rebuilt and enlarged into a stately headquarters by the Husayn sheikhs and Daher al-Umar, local strongmen and tax farmers. At the time, Jiddin acted as the effective center of the cotton-rich Sahil Akka (plain of Acre) subdistrict. After Daher was killed by the Ottomans in 1775, the new governor of Acre, Jazzar Pasha, destroyed the fortress. Its ruins, Khirbat Jiddin, were afterward used as shelter by Bedouin shepherds and their flocks.

Jiddin's lands were largely uncultivable and no population was listed in British Mandate (1920–1948) records...