Ein Hemed, National park and archaeological site in Jerusalem District, Israel

Ein Hemed is a national park and nature reserve in the Jerusalem hills, about seven kilometres west of the city, in the Kisalon streambed. Its main structure is a Crusader courtyard building of 30 by 40 metres, built of local stone, some dressed at the edges, with several gates and two vaulted halls; its southern wall stands 12 metres high. Four small layer springs once fed a 400-metre channel, and dams along it form pools, the largest 20 by 20 metres and about one metre deep.

The earliest remains at this location come from Roman times, but the most visible structures were built by Crusaders in the 12th century. The fortress then served to control the main route between Jaffa and Jerusalem.

The Arabic name Khirbat Iqbalā corrupts the Crusaders' Latin Aqua Bella, and 19th-century Arabs called the place Deir el-Benat, "convent of the maidens". Local villagers hold that the spring water of Ein Hemed strengthens male potency and helps conceive sons. The adjacent Muslim cemetery, still used by Ein Rafa and Ein Naqquba, holds the grave of Sheikh Abdullah, in whose honour the old oaks and terebinths were never cut.

The national park, 59 dunams around the Crusader building, has drinking water, toilets, picnic tables and lawns. The adjacent 8.5-dunam nature reserve, with its old oaks, is reached only from the access road to Ein Rafa, not from inside the park. The springs no longer flow naturally; since 2009 water has been pumped through a closed system into the pools.

The spring water is not from the Kisalon alone: four small layer springs rise in the riverbed and nearby caves and once joined into a stream about 400 metres long. Since droughts in the first decade of the 2000s, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority has fed the pools from a closed system storing rainwater and spring water, pumping it back up in winter. Local villagers long held that the water aided male potency and helped women bear sons.