Thread by @MichaelDPress

An interesting article on a 14th-century waqf oath by the heads of the village of Zakariyya (in the foothills southwest of Jerusalem), and the fate of the village.

Zakariyya has an interesting story, including its name . . .
972mag.com/palestinian-vi…

As the article notes, there is an apparent connection with the site of Azekah.
Near Zakariya is the mound of Tell Zakariya, identified by scholars since the 19th century as biblical Azekah.

(Mandate Survey of Palestine map via palopenmaps.org)

Azekah appears a number of times in the Bible -- for example, as part of the setting for the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17)

(JPS 1917 translation via mechon-mamre.org)

Azekah also appears in Jeremiah 34:7, as one of the last fortified cities of the kingdom of Judah at the time of the Babylonian invasion (586 BCE).

Jeremiah 34:7 is paralleled by one of the Lachish Letters (#4), found at Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) in the 1930s & written at the time of the Babylonian invasion:
"We are watching for the fire signals of Lachish...because we cannot see Azekah"
britishmuseum.org/collection/obj…

The translation is taken from Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past, 2008 (via Wikipedia)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachish_l…

Azekah continued to be inhabited in later periods.
Eusebius (Onomasticon, early 4th century?) indicates it was a village in his time between Eleutheropolis & Jerusalem

(trans. C. Umhau Wolf, 1971)
tertullian.org/fathers/eusebi…

My guess is the 4th century village was at the site of the Arab village Zakariya, not at the nearby tell.

In the classical periods settlements typically expanded off tells to the lower land around, & eventually those lower lands became the new cores of settlement

In 19th/20th century maps we can see a connection between nearby tells & khirbehs w/the same name: the khirbeh is usually the later core of settlement & the Bronze/Iron Age tell was gradually abandoned

In Zakariyya's case, the village wasn't abandoned, so never became a khirbeh

But when we turn to the 6th century Madaba map & look in this area (near Socoh, as in 1 Samuel 17), we see not Azekah but Beth Zachar[ia].
This is presumably the village of Zakariya -- but why did it's name change?

(Palmer and Guthe, Die Mosaikkarte von Madeba, 1906)

Sozomen (Ecclesiastical History 9.17) appears to give us an answer in the early 5th century.

Around this time, he notes that the remains of the prophet Zechariah were suddenly found at a village called Caphar Zechariah (literally "the village of Zechariah") near Eleutheropolis.

In the 4th and 5th centuries, once Christianity became the dominant religion in the empire, local Christians wanted their holy places -- and pilgrims wanted to visit the holy sites.
So holy sites had to be found. Tombs of biblical prophets started to pop up everywhere.

If this is correct, then in the Byzantine period the village of Azekah ditched its name, a name with a biblical pedigree, to rename itself after the body of the prophet Zechariah that was found on its land: (Caphar/Beth) Zachariah.

As the +972 article notes, there is a real connection between Azekah and Zakariyya, not a rupture (even if Zionism saw its settling the land as a revival of ancient settlement).

Palestinians kept a name -- and a village -- going back to
the Byzantine period, like many others