| Meiser | |
| Arname: | ميسر |
| Altunosp: | Shaykh Maysar, Shaykh Maysir, Khirbat Maysar |
| Meaning: | Sheikh Meisir, p.n.; meaning a certain gambling game with arrows.[1] |
| District: | haifa |
| Council: | Menashe |
| Pushpin Map: | Israel haifa#Israel |
| Pushpin Mapsize: | 250 |
| Pushpin Label Position: | top |
| Coordinates: | 32.4447°N 35.0419°W |
| Palgrid: | 154/205 |
| Itmgrid: | 203/705 |
Meiser (ar|ميسر; he|מֵיסַר, also known as Shaykh Maysar or Khirbat Maysar) is an Arab village in northern Israel. Located half a kilometre west of the Green Line, north of the city of Baqa al-Gharbiyye in the triangle area of Wadi Ara, it is one of three Arab villages under the jurisdiction of Menashe Regional Council. In it had a population of .
Remains from the Early Roman era (end of the first century BCE–beginning of the first century CE) have been found here.[2] [3] [4]
Three strata from the Roman-Byzantine periods was excavated in the centre of the village.[5] A bathhouse, dating from the same time, has also been found.[6]
Ceramics and other remains from the Byzantine era have been found here.[3] [7] [8]
An excavation revealed remains dating from the end of the Byzantine period (7th century CE), and above it were remains of a residential house from the Abbasid period (9th–10th centuries CE).[9]
In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) found at Sheikh Meisir "foundations near a modern Mukam" (Muslim tomb).[10] In spite of this, Andrew Petersen, who inspected the Maqam in 1994, suggested "that the building may be considerably older than the nineteenth century."[11]
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kherbet Maisir had a population of 49 Muslims.[12]
In the 1945 statistics Meiser was counted with Qaffin and Kh. el Aqaba, together they had a population of 1,570 Muslims,[13] with a land area of 23,755 dunams, according to an official land and population survey.[14] Of this, 5,863 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 8,371 were used for cereals,[15] while 40 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[16]
. Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Sami Hadawi. 1970. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center.
. Edward Henry Palmer. 1881. The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
. Adam Zertal . The Manasseh Hill Country Survey. 3. Boston. BRILL. 2016. 978-9004312302 .
