Kafr Kanna (Israel)

Kafr Kanna (Arabic: كفر كنا, Kafr Kanā; Hebrew: כַּפְר כַּנָּא) is an Arab town in the Galilee, part of the Northern District of Israel. It is associated by Christians with the New Testament village of Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. In 2024 its population was 25,374. It has a religiously mixed population of Muslims and Christians from different denominations. A Jewish village during antiquity, Kafr Kanna is mentioned in an extant 9th-century Islamic marble stele. Under Crusader rule, from the 12th to mid-13th centuries, it was a casale (country estate). Kafr Kanna had become a large village by 1300, during Mamluk rule. It flourished as one of the largest localities in Palestine and one of the two market towns of the Safed Sanjak under Ottoman rule in the 16th century, when its population was mostly Muslim with a significant Jewish minority. By the 19th century, its population was roughly equal parts Muslim and Christian, a state which persisted through British Mandatory rule (1917–1948). Since 1948, it is a part of Israel.