Kedesh (alternate spellings: Qedesh, Cadesh, Cydessa) was an ancient Canaanite and later Israelite settlement in Upper Galilee, mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible.

In the Hellenistic period, Kedesh was the site of battles involving Jonathan Apphus and Seleucid king Demetrius II.

As Qadas (also Cadasa; Arabic: قدس), it was a Palestinian village located 17 kilometers northeast of Safad that was depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war.

[2][3] One of seven villages populated by Shia Muslims, called the Metawalis, that fell within the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine, Qadas is today known as the tell of the ancient biblical city of Kedesh.

In the 8th century BCE, during the reign of Pekah, king of Northern Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III of the Neo-Assyrian Empire took Kedesh and deported its inhabitants to Assyria.

[12][13] According to Josephus, after the Jerusalem riots of 66, the Jews attacked a series of gentile cities, including Cydessa (Kedesh), then a Tyrian village,[14] now in Roman Syria.

Its expensive decoration and the variety and quantity of artifacts have revealed a dominating administrative presence in the Kedesh valley and the Upper Galilee lasting nearly 350 years.

"[20] From 1997–2012, archaeological excavations were conducted at the Tel Kedesh site by Sharon Herbert and Andrea Berlin on behalf of the University of Michigan.

Over the next 350 years, this complex provided a stage for interactions between imperial powers, provincial administrators and local elites – as control shifted from the Achaemenid Persians, to the Ptolemies of Egypt, and then the Seleucids of Syria.

"[27] In 1517, Qadas was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after it was captured from the Mamluks, and by 1596, it was under the administration of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Tibnin, under Sanjak Safad.

Rainfall and the abundance of springs allowed the village to develop a prosperous agricultural economy based on grain, fruit, and olives.

The flat portions of the surrounding lands are planted with apple trees; the spring provides drinking water for cattle.

[39] Team leader Raphael Greenberg noted that his project was unusual in its focus on Palestinian remains, contrary to the usual practice of digging around or through them to reach what is beneath.