Christ spent His early youth and taught in the synagogue, occurs in the Old Testament; and in the time of Christ the place was so insignificant that the term Nazarene was applied to Him in derision. Down to the time of Constantine Nazareth was inhabited by Samaritans; then dwindled rapidly in importance after the Arab conquest; revived during the Crusades only to contract again when the Franks left Palestine; but grew once more in the seventeenth century, when the Franciscans were enabled by the Druse Emir Fakhr al-Din to establish a church and convent on the supposed site of the House of the Virgin before its miraculous journey to Loretto. The enterprising ʾOmar al-Daher (cf. Part I., § 6) increased the prosperity of the place, which is now a flourishing town of about 9,000 inhabitants.
Nazareth is, like Jerusalem, a place of religious and charitable establishments, and the heights around it are crowned by imposing orphanages, hospitals and schools. There are no buildings of great antiquity, unless we except the church of the Melchites, which, it is claimed, is the synagogue where Christ preached (S. Luke, iv., 16 sqq.). The general aspect of Nazareth, with its hilly background, its orchards, its cypresses and its many churches, is reminiscent of some Tuscan or Umbrian hill-town. Rising abruptly from the plain south-east of Nazareth is the dome-shaped Mt. Tabor.
Tiberias.—The road from Nazareth to Tiberias (16 miles) passes Kafr-Kanna, the traditional scene of the Miracle of Cana (S. John, ii.), and, farther on, runs close to the hill of the "Horns of Hattin," the scene of the disastrous defeat of the Crusaders in 1187 (cf. Part I., § 5).
Tiberias lies on the west bank of the Lake, and was founded by Herod Antipas in honour of the Emperor Tiberius, whose name it received. During the Jewish war the town voluntarily surrendered to Vespasian, and on this account the Jews were permitted to continue to reside there. During the second, third and fourth centuries A.D. it was the headquarters of the Jewish remnant in Palestine
