Dair el Asad (Israel)

Deir al-Asad (Arabic: دير الأسد; Hebrew: דֵיר אֶל-אַסַד) is an Arab village in the Galilee region of Israel, near Karmiel. Together with the adjacent village of Bi'ina it formed the site of the Crusader monastery town of St. George de la Beyne, an administrative center of the eponymous fief which spanned part of the central Galilee. Control of the fief changed several times from the noble Milly family to Joscelyn III of Courtenay and ultimately to the Teutonic Order before the area passed to Cairene Mamluk rule in the late 13th century. Settlement continued under the Mamluks and the village's St. George monastery was mentioned as treating the mentally ill in the late 14th century. The modern Muslim village of Deir al-Asad, previously known as Deir al-Bi'ina or Deir al-Khidr, was established in 1516 when the Ottoman sultan Selim I granted its monastery as a waqf (religious endowment) to the Sufi sage Shaykh Muhammad al-Asad, who settled in it with his family and devotees. The village's original Christian population was expelled by the same order and relocated to Bi'ina, while a Druze community which established itself in the village emigrated to the Hauran by the late 1870s. The village was captured by Israel in the 1948 Palestine War, immediately after which it was emptied of its inhabitants as part of the 1948 Palestinian expulsions and looted by Israeli troops. Its residents were allowed to return, though several became Palestinian refugees in the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon. A significant area of agricultural land nearby was used by the authorities to create part of the new Jewish city of Karmiel in 1962. Most of Deir al-Asad's residents belong to the clans of Asadi, descendants of Shaykh Muhammad al-Asad, and Dabbah, established in the village in the 18th century. In 2003 Deir al-Asad was merged with Bi'ina and nearby Majd al-Krum to form the single municipality of Shaghur, the Arabic name of the valley in which the towns are located, but the union was dissolved in 2008.