Ti'inik

Ti'inik, also transliterated Ti’innik (تعنّك), or Ta'anakh/Taanach (תַּעְנַךְ), is a Palestinian village, located 13 km northwest of the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank.

The village is located on the slopes of an archaeological tell identified with the biblical city of Ta'anach, which has seen intermittent habitation spanning 5000 years.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the village had a population of 1,095 inhabitants in mid-year 2006.

Tell Ta'annek/Tel Ta'anach: Bronze Age to Abbasid period


Just to the north of Ti'inik is a 40-metre-high mound which was the site of the biblical city of Taanach or Tanach (תַּעֲנָךְ; Θαναάχ and Θανάκ), a Levitical city allocated to the Kohathites.

Excavations at the tell were carried out by Albert Glock mostly during the 1970s and 1980s. Twelve Akkadian cuneiform tablets were found here. Approximately one third of the names on these tablets are of Hurrian origin, indicating a significant northern ethnic presence. Pottery remains from the Roman, Byzantine, and the Middle Ages have been found here. The main remains visible today are of an 11th-century Abbasid palace.

In Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic times, the inhabited site was located on the lower slopes rather than the tell itself.

Ottoman period
Ti'innik, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Ti'innik belonged to the Turabay Emirate (1517-1683), which encompassed also the Jezreel Valley, Haifa, Jenin, Beit She'an Valley, northern Jabal Nablus, Bilad al-Ruha/Ramot Menashe, and the northern part of the Sharon plain.

In the census of 1596, the village appeared as "Ta'inniq", located in the nahiya of Sha'ara in the liwa of Lajjun. It had a population of 13 households, all Muslim. They paid a taxes on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 7,000 akçe.

In 1838, Ta'annuk was noted as a Muslim village in the Jenin district; It only contained a few families, but was said to have been much larger, and to contain ruins.

In 1870 Victor Guérin found that the village consisted of ten houses. He further described it as: 'Once the southern sides and the whole upper plateau of the oblong hill on which the village stands were covered with buildings, as is proved by the innumerable fragments of pottery scattered on the soil, and the materials of every kind which are met with at every step: the larger stones have been carried away elsewhere. Below the village is a little mosque, which passes for an ancient Christian church. It lies, in fact, east and west, and all the stones with which it is built belong to early constructions; some of them are decorated with sculptures. Farther on in the plain are several cisterns cut in the rock, and a well, called Bir Tannuk.

In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village in the nahiya of Shafa al-Gharby.

In 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as "A small village, which stands on the south-east side of the great Tell or mound of the same name at the edge of the plain. It has olives on the south, and wells on the north, and is surrounded with cactus hedges. There is a white dome in the village. The rock on the sides of the Tell is quarried in places, the wells are ancient, and rock-cut tombs occur on the north near the foot of the mound."

By 1917, the village was home to eight family groups residing in 17 single-room houses.

British Mandate
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Ti'inik had a population of 65; all Muslims. In the 1931 census it had 64; still all Muslim, in a total of 15 houses.

In the 1945 statistics the population was 100; all Muslims, with 32,263 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. 452 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 31,301 dunams for cereals, while a total of 4 dunams were built-up, urban land.

Jordanian period
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Ti'inik came under Jordanian rule.

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 246 inhabitants.

Post-1967
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Ti'inik has been under Israeli occupation.

Local origins
Some residents of Ti'inik have their origins in Silat al-Harithiya and Arraba, while others originated from the area of Bayt Nattif.