Talk:Ma'ayan Harod

Requested move 5 July 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to interpret the evidence and what evidence is reliable. The move was shown to be supported by Ngrams and Scholar, however that was countered by the fact that Ngrams is unreliable and that most the Scholar results are about the battle. (closed by non-admin page mover) CLYDE ^{TALK TO ME}/_{STUFF DONE} 06:33, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

---

Ma'ayan Harod → Ain JalutAin Jalut – Per clear WP:COMMONNAME as evidenced by the no-contest results on Ngrams and long-term scholarly prominence (787 hits on Google Scholar for "Ain Jalut" / 846 hits on Google Scholar for "Ayn Jalut"), largely in relation to the extremely significant 1260 Battle of Ain Jalut at the locale. "Ain Jalut" is a name of legendary renown that continues to echo across history and appear in the history books as the spot where the Mamluks turned back the tide of the Mongol advance in the Middle East. The current page title, "Ma'ayan Harod", is just a transliterated foreign language-term created as part of a 20th-century rebranding exercise that, by contrast, has little to no presence in English language sources, with just 19 hits on Google Scholar, several of which are not English language sources, leaving maybe a dozen mentions that check out. As the page itself also states, serious archaeologists, such as Israel Finkelstein, actually reject the association between Ain Jalut and the aspirational Biblical association with Herod, so it is a clear WP:COMMONNAME versus an uncommon and contested name. Between the two spellings of Ain/Ayn Jalut it is a fairly even toss up, as the Ngrams and Google Scholar evidence shows, but "Ain Jalut" is simpler, more natural spelling and is consistent with the title of the page for the associated battle. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:26, 5 July 2023 (UTC) This is a contested technical request (permalink). Iskandar323 (talk) 11:24, 5 July 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 18:44, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support I vaguely remember the Afd, I didn't agree at the time but consensus then was to merge Ain Jalut (back to) here and closer said "How to call the resulting article is another matter.."· Since Ain jalut is the apparent commonname and more logically connects with the notable Battle of Ain Jalut, support.Selfstudier (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support per Selfstudier. 〜 Festucalex • talk 05:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. The term "Ain Jalut" is frequent when describing the famous battle that took place there, not the location itself, which lies in modern-day Israel. locally known as Ma'ayan Harod, today part of the Ma'ayan Harod National Park, a name by which the majority of Israelis as well as tourists come to know it. Similarly, the battle of Stalingrad took place in what is known today as Volgograd, and the Gallipoli campaign took place in what is today known as Gelibolu. In those cases, and many others, the articles for the battles use the periodical name, while the articles on the locations use the modern-day name. Tombah (talk) 11:08, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  Perhaps it is indeed known in great frequency as Ma'ayan Harod in Hebrew, but this is en.wiki and we go by English language sources, in which the great paucity of sources using the name "Ma'ayan Harod", as compared to the great abundance of sources mentioning "Ain/Ayn Jalut", is quite plain. This is for obvious reasons: the name Ain Jalut has been used for the spring (/town) since at least the 1260 battle at the site, but presumably longer, and – one might assume – the entire Islamic period, and hence its longevity and persistence in the sources. The site was associated with Herod, as mentioned above, quite possibly erroneously and only in the 1920s. The Hebraization of Palestinian place names was of course quite a deliberate and political process. In the harsher readings it was one of very much intentional erasure. Perhaps it is ongoing. The Ma'ayan Harod National Park works quite hard as a website to not provide up front and generally ignore the site's far more famous name, neglecting it on all but the history page, where it misspells it as "En Jalut". Whether due to ignorance or malfeasance, it does illustrate rather well the lack of interest of proponents of the name of "Ma'ayan Harod" in anything resembling actual history. And not only does the name barely exist in English, but its usage actually appears to be decreasing, with barely a whisper of it since 2000. Volgograd has 326,000 Google Scholar hits by contrast, while the Gallipoli peninsula is in fact still displayed at the page title of Gallipoli. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Adding to the opposing comments above - Ein (another name for a spring = Maayan) Harod is also the Biblical name of the site. Atbannett (talk) 13:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Atbannett: Have you actually read the page? That identification remains spurious at best. It certainly cannot be stated, in Wikivoice, that the site is the biblical Ein Harod, even if one were to assume that the bible is factual as a starting point. Far from it. That supposition basically stands on some idle guesswork by 19th century amateurs. Israel Finkelstein and Oded Lipschits have dismissed it. What do you think you know that these career archaeologists and subject-matter experts do not? Not that it is even relevant. Ein Harod is not the page name, but Ma'ayan Harod, and this RM is about the WP:COMMONNAME case for moving it from the latter to Ain Jalut based on actual usage. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per Tombah's explanation. Dovidroth (talk) 15:28, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• Post-Vote Comment: It sure looks like the !votes are dividing neatly across national lines. Should something be done about this? RfC perhaps? 〜 Festucalex • talk 15:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  Let's wait, the commonname argument is key and the oppose votes do not appear to address that afaics. Selfstudier (talk) 15:41, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  Will you be starting an RFC, since consensus wise there isn't enough support for the change? Crainsaw (talk) 06:33, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

  This RM needs to be closed before any RFC. Selfstudier (talk) 10:19, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Ngrams are not an appropriate barometer of common name here, as most of the "Ain Jalut" hits appear to be about about the battle. Skimming through Google and Google Book searches, every Ain Jalut hit I've seen references historic events, not the spring, whereas every Maayan Harod one is about the spring. WP:MODERNPLACENAME would also seem to require the Hebrew name be used. Number 57 21:49, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Number 57: Quite literally the only sources on the page for "Ma'ayan Harod" as a name are the official/corporate park websites. If you were to produce a standalone article on "Ma'ayan Harod National Park" it might reasonably be challenged under WP:GNG for its lack of independent, secondary sources. WP:MODERNPLACENAME = convention; WP:COMMONNAME = policy. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Maayan Harod — Preceding unsigned comment added by CarlSerafino (talk • contribs) 17:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: Is any editor supporting the existing title even able to tell me when the site was renamed "Ma'ayan Harod"? Because as it stands, nothing on the page and no source that I can find actually states when the national park was established/incorporated (the national park website, shit as it is on details, provides no clues). It could be 20 years or 70 years for all the page currently helps. So currently the page name is one of unknown provenance and entered usage at an unknown date. I don't even get why it is "Ma'ayan Harod", which isn't even the Biblical name, which is En Harod: it's bloody mysterious. There is almost no information. Literally nothing is known about this name except that its the appellation of the national park. And that begs a further question: if the name is principally known in association with the national park, is it even the most prevalent name for the spring/place/locale, or just for the national park (an administrative unit that incorporates it)? Iskandar323 (talk) 12:58, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  Not to mention Ein Harod.. Selfstudier (talk) 13:19, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know the answer, but I can report that Survey of Israel maps changed the name of the spring from Ein Harod to Ma'ayan Harod some time between 1960 and 1966. My guess is that distinguishing it from the other Ein Harod was one motive. Zero^talk 01:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

  To add to the confusion, this from the Australian Jewish News of 7 Nov 1941: "A new training project will be carried through by Hanoar Haoved (Working Youth) in the Jewish year 5702; a group of its members will take up their settlement at Maayan Harod, on the slopes of Mount Gilboa. The Keren Hayesod settlements of Ain Haron and Tel Joseph have granted the group an area of of 250 dunams. The name of the new village will be announced at a conference of Hanoar Haoved to be held during the Succoth week, and it will be the first of 15 such villages for youthful settlers." So the name existed earlier, but that's all I know. Zero^talk 02:12, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Ngrams suggest that the proposed title is the clear WP:COMMONNAME, even when the phrase "Battle of Ain Jalut" is factored out: see Ain Jalut and Ayn Jalut. (Ngram character limits prevented me from putting the permutations of both spellings into the same query.) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 14:05, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - First of all Ngrams is definitely not a reliable source (), it can vary drastically based on capitalization and other factors. As you said yourself: long-term scholarly prominence (787 hits on Google Scholar for "Ain Jalut" / 846 hits on Google Scholar for "Ayn Jalut"), largely in relation to the extremely significant 1260 Battle of Ain Jalut at the locale. "Ain Jalut" is a name of legendary renown that continues to echo across history and appear in the history books as the spot where the Mamluks turned back the tide of the Mongol advance in the Middle East., which would violate WP:MPN. Ma'ayan Harod oesn't haveas many hits because it's a relatively newer name, and not host to the Battle of Ain Jalut. I highly doubt that even 1% of the Google Scholar hits out of the 1500 are about the town rather than the battle. Crainsaw (talk) 11:40, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Ngrams isn't perfect, but I'm not seeing a good argument that this specific use of Ngrams is wrong, and ModernDayTrilobite's data seems to indicate it's not just the battle. If there's an argument to keep it at Ma'ayan Harod, that sounds like a good thing to expand the article with if sources can be found - also agree with thoughts above that if anything, it seems like this article should be at "Ein Harod" with some disambiguator to distinguish it from the kibbutz. SnowFire (talk) 23:38, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support per ModernDayTrilobite, just saying ngrams can be faulty isnt useful, show how this one is. Right now the evidence, all of it, points in one direction here. nableezy - 00:26, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per Tombah, Ain Jalut in scholarly usage obviously refers primarily to the battle (just click on the links in the proposer's post). The ngrams provided by ModernDayTrilobite do not remove all possible combinations ("victory at Ain Jalut", "defeat at Ain Jalut", "setback at Ain Jalut", etc.). Alaexis_¿question? 12:12, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 28 December 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vestrian24Bio 08:41, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

---

Ma'ayan Harod → Ain JalutAin Jalut – In 2023 an RM was held with a 6-7 vote outcome, including two later-confirmed socks on the oppose side. The arguments made by the support side were that Ain Jalut is the common name in scholarship due to the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut and that the Israeli renaming of the site in the 20th century after a minor biblical event has since been refuted by scholars. The argument made by the oppose side was that the Israeli renaming is the official name today of the surrounding Ma'ayan Harod National Park. All in all, a classic wiki naming dispute.
Having looked into this more deeply, we now have statistical evidence available. WikiNav shows that a clear majority of readers to this article come here from Battle of Ain Jalut, and our Redirects PageViews tool shows that a majority of views to the article come from the Ain Jalut / Ain Jalud redirects. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:08, 28 December 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 08:38, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Oppose and support Ma'ayan Harod. The name Ain Jalut is of course significant and used in scholarship related to the medieval battle, Wikipedia article titles are determined primarily by current, official, and unambiguous usage for the geographic subject itself. Today, the site is officially designated and administered as Ma'ayan Harod National Park, and this name is used consistently by the relevant authorities, signage, maps, and modern reference works when referring to the physical location. In contrast, Ain Jalut is most often used in historical and military contexts and may be understood by readers primarily as the name of the battle rather than the present-day site, raising issues of ambiguity. Using a historically obsolete name as the article title for a modern, officially designated location risks confusing readers and diverges from common contemporary usage. Wikipedia's practice usually retains historical names in the context where they are relevant (Siege of Constantinople (1422) and not Siege of Istanbul (1422)), while titling articles about present-day places according to their current name (Istanbul). Ma'ayan Harod is the appropriate title for the article on the modern site, with Ain Jalut prominently noted in the lead and preserved via redirects. IshtoriHaparchi (talk) 09:17, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I didn't decide which title to support, but I want to note that your rationale is based on an incorrect understanding of policy. Article titles are based primary on common English usage not on official names. Both "common" and "English" are more important than "official". Otherwise we would have Roma in place of Rome. Zero^talk 10:39, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose for the same reasons as last time, including WP:MODERNPLACENAME (and if participants in the last RM are relevant, its worth noting two of the five support !votes came from editors since topic banned by ARBCOM for consistently non-neutral editing). Cheers, Number 57 11:24, 29 December 2025 (UTC)
• Support Ain Jalut, far better known. "Ma'ayan Harod" is a name only used in Israel, same as "Bnot Ya'akov Bridge" is used for Daughters of Jacob Bridge, Huldra (talk) 21:08, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Geography, WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration, WikiProject Palestine, WikiProject Israel, and WikiProject Water have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 08:43, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Coordinates: big confusion, lead to kibbutz, not spring

Ma'ayan Harod is a spring. The name Ein Harod, while meaning the same, belongs to a kibbutz, or actually to two adjacent ones, Ein Harod (Ihud) - name not marked on Google Maps - and Ein Harod (Meuhad), the precursor of both being initially established at a 3rd location, nearer to the spring. They still are close to the spring, but not identical with it; a national park is the right location of the cave at the foot of Mt Gilboa where the spring gushes out. Google Maps also has an "'Ain Jalud" marked nearby ([dot app [dot] goo [dot] gl/MasxHuY5igrG1DF97?g_st=ac here], near Gid'ona) - no idea what for.

We have 2 sets of coordinates, one right under "Short description" and "About" and one in the infobox, differing just in the decimals. Only one seems to affect the options visible to the user:

Both the infobox map and infobox coord. are leading to a spot inside the built-up area of Kibbutz Ein Harod (Ihud), so are very wrong.

The topic of this article is the spring; neither the fmr Arab village (medieval or Sursock's), nor the battle site, which I don't know if it has been archaeologically located.

Hi Zero0000, I'm afraid it's again one for you. I'd like to ask you and others to please implement the result, I'm just pointing out the problem.

Squabbling about the name, Arabic or Hebrew (twice in 2 years), ate up most energy, as usual. But it left the most basic work not yet done. What else is new. Arminden (talk) 10:28, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

The spring is on the west edge of Gidona. I fixed the coords. Zero^talk 01:26, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Archaeology

Normally, an archaeology section should be organised chronologically; here that's not the case. The new IAA website does not facilitate the access to the pages used here as refs, so I cannot check what periods several findings are attributed to; judging by the terms used (burial tomb and an oil press), they might be Roman or Byzantine, but guessing is not OK. The settlement remains at Gidona and Giv'at Yehonatan could be from any old period. I'm sorry, but this is sloppy editing. Arminden (talk) 11:34, 27 June 2026 (UTC)