Kosher and Jewish Life in Daliyat al Carmel

Daliyat El Karmel is a Druze town in the Haifa District of Israel, located around 20 km southeast of Haifa. In 2017 its population was 17,201. Daliyat al-Karmel, situated on Mount Carmel, is the country’s largest and southernmost Druze town. In the 17th century, during the Ottoman period, Druze came from the hill country near Aleppo, Syria to Daliyat al-Karmel (lit. “Vine of the Carmel"), and in 1859 they were numbered by the English Consul Rogers to be 300 souls, who tilled twenty feddans. In 1870, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village. He found four hundred inhabitants, all Druze. The houses were mostly built of adobe, with only a few stone houses. The locals worshipped inside a cave, where the explorer was not allowed.