Mashhad is located on the site of
Gath-hepher, an ancient
Israelite town mentioned in the
Hebrew Bible as the home of
Jonah; its supposed
tomb is still pointed out by locals.[6]
Archaeological findings in Mashad include a third-century
Aramaic gravestone, indicating
Jewish settlement at the site during the Late Roman period, and a stone inscribed with
Greek letters now reused in Mashad's mosque.[7]
Ottoman Empire
In 1517, the village was incorporated into the
Ottoman Empire with the rest of
Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the Ottoman
tax registers under the name of Mashad Yunis, as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of
Tabariyya, part of
Safad Sanjak. It had a population of 31 households and 6 bachelors, all
Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 20% on agricultural products, which included
wheat and
barley, fruit trees, vegetable and fruit garden, orchard, as well as on goats and/or beehives; a total of 865
Akçe. All of the revenue went to a
waqf.[8][9]
In 1838 it was noted as a Muslim village in the Nazareth district.[11][12]
In 1875, the French explorer
Victor Guérin visited the village, which he estimated had at most 300 inhabitants.[13]
In 1881, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Meshed as "A small village, built of stone, surrounding the traditional tomb of Jonah -a low building surmounted by two white-washed domes. It contains about 300 Moslems, and is situated on the top of a hill, without gardens. The water supply is from
cisterns."[14]
A population list from about 1887 showed that el Meshed had about 450 inhabitants; all Muslims.[15]
In the
1945 statistics the population was 660, all Muslims,[18] with 11,067
dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[19] Of this, 378 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 4,663 for cereals,[20] while 24 dunams were built-up land.[21]
^"This place is probably the Gittah-Hepher or (Gath ha Hepher of (Joshua 19:13), and (2 Kings 14:25). Jerome says that the prophet
Jonah was buried at Gath, about two miles from Sepphoris.
Benjamin of Tudela says that the prophet's tomb was on a hill near Sepphoris. Conder and Kitchener, 1881, p.
413
^Note that Rhode, 1979, p.
6 writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied from the Safad-district was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9