Meiron (Arabic: ميرون, Mayrûn; Hebrew: מירון הקדומה) located 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Safad.

Associated with the ancient Canaanite city of Merom, excavations at the site have found extensive remains from the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.

[5] In the decade up to 2005 however, new findings seemed to indicate that the site atop Mount Meron was inhabited continuously from the Chalcolithic until after the Roman period.

[6] During the Late Ottoman period, Oliphant (1887) described a mixed Jewish and Muslim settlement,[6] and in the British Mandate it was an Arab village (Khalidi 1992).

[9] In the same 2000 dig near the cave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, Stepansky also excavated sherds and cultic basalt fragments from the Early Bronze Age I.

[10] The economic and cultural affinities of the inhabitants of the Meiron area at this time were directed toward the north, to Tyre and southern Syria in general.

A. Negev identifies the site with Bronze and Iron Age Merom, writing that it was known by the Second Temple period as Meron, with Josephus calling it Meroth.

[13][15] Artifacts uncovered during digs at the site include a coin of Emperor Probus (276-282 CE) and African ceramics dating to the latter half of the 3rd century, indicating that the city was commercially prosperous at the time.

[15] Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell write that Meiron was a prominent local religious centre in the period of late Antiquity.

[16] Denys Pringle describes Meiron as a "[f]ormer Jewish village," with a synagogue and tombs dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries, noting the site was later reoccupied between 750 and 1399.

[25] Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi, who visited about 1648, told that as the Jewish festival approached, thousands of people, "mostly Druzes, Timānis, Yezīdies and Mervāvis", gathered inside a cave at Meiron.

Edward Robinson, who visited Meiron during his travels in Palestine and Syria in the mid-19th century, describes it as "a very old looking village situated on a ledge of bristling rocks near the foot of the mountain.

"[18] The tombs of Simeon bar Yochai, his son R. Eleazar, and those of Hillel and Shammai are located by Robinson as lying within a khan-like courtyard underneath low-domed structures that were usually kept closed with the keys held in Safad.

Robinson indicates that this place was the focal point of Jewish pilgrimage activities by his time; the synagogue is described as being in ruins.

[23] In 1881 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Meiron as a small village of 50 people, all Muslims, who cultivated olives.

[31] Towards the end of World War I, the ruins of the Meiron synagogue were acquired by the "Fund for the Redemption of Historical Sites" (Qeren le-Geulat Meqomot Histori'im), a Jewish society headed by David Yellin.

[42] Jewish pilgrimages to Meiron continue to be held annually on Lag BaOmer, which falls between Passover and Shavuot, at which time hundreds of thousands of Jews gather at the tomb of Simeon bar Yochai to partake in days of festivities, that include the lighting of bonfires at night.

[6] Their alleged sacred powers made Meron into a central pilgrimage site for religious Jews who are still visiting the tombs of the tzadikim.