This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Ein Karem (Hebrew: עֵין כֶּרֶם, ʿEin Kerem lit.

[13] During the Iron Age, or Israelite period, Ein Karem is usually identified as the location of the biblical village of Beth HaKerem (Jeremiah 6:1; Nehemiah 3:14).

[19] In the Byzantine period, as part of the establishment of the “Liturgy of Jerusalem", Ein Karem was identified with the "Visitation", an event mentioned in the New Testament where Mary, expecting Jesus, encountered her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist.

[10] Byzantine sources link Ein Karem with the residence of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, a place not specified in the New Testament.

[10] In around 530 CE, the Christian pilgrim Theodosius places Elizabeth's town at a distance of five miles (8.0 km) from Jerusalem,[20] which suits Ein Karem.

Al-Tamimi, the physician (d. 990), refers to a church in Ein Karem that was venerated by Christians, and notes a particular plant he collected there.

After conquering Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin granted the village of Ein Karem to Abu Maydan, a renowned Sufi teacher from Seville, Andalusia.

Abu Madyan had fought in the 1187 Battle of Hattin against the Crusaders before returning to the Maghreb, where he eventually died in Tlemcen, in what is today Algeria.

"[10]The Waqf Abu Maydan endowment, which included the Mughrabi Quarter in Jerusalem, has been supported by agricultural and property revenues from the village of Ein Karem until the 1948 war.

[23] Most of the village – some 15,000 dunams – was waqf land set aside charitably to benefit the Moroccan Muslim community in Jerusalem, belonging to the endowment established by Abu Madyan in the 14th century.

[24] In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as 'Ain Karim, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Quds of the Liwa of Al-Quds.

The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards, grape syrup/molasse, goats and beehives in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 5,300 akçe.

Israeli geographer Yehoshua Ben-Arieh described Ein Karem as "the most important village west of Jerusalem" in the 19th century.

[31] Guérin describes them as rowdy and fanatical, until a few years before his visit having very often attacked the Catholic monks at the Monastery of St John in order to extort from them food and money, a habit that had subsided only lately.

[32][33] In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Ain Karim as: "A flourishing village of about 600 inhabitants, 100 being Latin Christians.

It stands on a sort of natural terrace projecting from the higher hills on the east of it, with a broad flat valley below on the west.

[43] During the 1929 riots in Palestine, Arab residents of 'Ain Karim launched raids against the nearby Jewish neighborhood of Bayit VeGan.

[47] The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine placed 'Ayn Karim in the Jerusalem enclave intended for international control.

[52] Only the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible, the base for the Christian Old Testament, names a place in the hills of Judah as "Carem" (Joshua 15:30).

[2][53] According to the New Testament, Mary went "into the hill country, to a city of Judah" (Luke 1:39) when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah.

[54] The English writer Saewulf, on pilgrimage to Palestine in 1102–1103, wrote of a monastery in the area of Ein Karim dedicated to St. Sabas, where 300 monks had been "slain by Saracens", but without mentioning any tradition connected to St.

The current structure received its outlook as the result of the latest large architectural intervention, finished in 1939 under the guidance of the Italian architect, Antonio Barluzzi.

[58][59] Some remnants below the southern part of the porch suggests the presence of a mikve (Jewish ritual bath) that is dated to the Second Temple Period.

The spring waters are considered holy by some Catholic and Orthodox Christian pilgrims who visit the site and fill their bottles.