In 1596 , Jish appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the '' Nahiya '' of '' Jira '' , of the Liwa Safad . It had a population of 71 households and 20 bachelors ; all Muslim . The villagers paid taxes on goats and beehives , but most of its taxes were in the form of a fixed sum , total taxes were 30,750 akçe . In the 17th century , the village was inhabited by Druze . The Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi , who passed by the village in 1648 , wroteThen comes the village of Jish , with one hundred houses of accursed believers in the transmigration of souls ( '' tenāsukhi mezhebindén '' ) . Yet what beautiful boys and girls they have ! And what a climate ! Every one of these girls has queenly , gazelle-like , bewitching eyes , which captivate the beholder — an unusual sight . The Galilee earthquake of 1837 caused widespread damage and over 200 deaths . Three weeks afterward , contemporaries reported " a large rent in the ground ... about a foot wide and fifty feet long . " All the Galilee villages that were badly damaged at the time , including Jish , were situated on the slopes of steep hills . The presence of old landslides has been observed on aerial photographs . The fact that the village was built on dip slopes consisting of soft bedrock and soil has made it more vulnerable to landslides . According to Andrew Thomson , no houses in Jish were left standing . The church fell , killing 130 people and the old town walls collapsed . A total of 235 people died and the ground was left fissured . At the time , the village was noted as a mixed Muslim and Maronite village in the Safad district . At the end of the 19th century , Jish was described as a " well-built village of good masonry " with about 600 Christian and 200 Muslim inhabitants
Galilee earthquake of 1837
Galilee earthquake of 1837
Jish