Deir kifa

E. H. Palmer wrote in 1881 that it meant The convent of Kifa. p.n. [1] Kifa is a Syriac Aramaic word that means rock in Arabic and Peter in Greek. It is the title of Saint Simon, son of Jonah, a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Deir Kifa is located in the South Governorate, Tyre District.[2] It is 390 m above sea level and 107 kilometers to the southwest of Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, or about two hours, and 16 km from the center of its district Tyre. Its population is about five thousand people; about a thousand live in the village, while the rest are distributed in expatriate countries such as Brazil, the United States, Germany, and some Arab Gulf countries. A large number of her sons settled in the capital, Beirut, in order to search for ways of life and work that are missing in the village.

Among its monuments is the Maroun Castle; it is historically named after the castle of Maroun, the French Crusader leader who renovated its construction. [3] The castle has seven huge circular towers, some parts of which have collapsed due to time. Deir Kifa Castle was built on a mountainous hill by Aram ibn Yaqoub, adjacent to the agricultural plains. Yaron and Tibnin, and a commercial and military relationship arose between them. Deir Kifa Castle consists of three layers and extends over an area of twenty thousand square meters. It has four springs, and 12 towers, some of which are circular, Aramaic-Canaanite, and some are square-cruciform. Inside are gymnasiums and others for meetings. It contains the king’s palace to the west and vaults that take a square shape. And Christ stayed there. The town of Deir Kifa was considered one of the ten villages that Hiram, King of Tyre, gave him. The area of the castle is 17,000 square meters and consists of three floors. It contains many cellars, destroyed inns, rooms, multiple stone houses, horse stables, prisons, playgrounds, courtyards, and wheat stores. 365 wells are spread to collect water and 4 springs that dried up years ago. Its wall is 6 to 12 meters high and two meters wide. It has seven corners on each of them, a semi-circular watchtower with a diameter of 8 meters, used for guarding, hunting and defense. It rises 400 m above sea level. It overlooks many towns: from the east, Jebel Maroun and Burj Qalawiya, from the south, Deir Kifa, from the north Srifa and Al-Nafakhiya, and the west, the valleys to the sea.[4]

• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 2: IAA, Wikimedia commons