Belz

Belz lies between the Solokiya River and the Richytsia stream, in the old frontier country between Poland and Rus'. Once a princely seat, it gave its name to a province of the Polish Crown. Its Jewish community later made the town a centre of Hasidic life.

The duchy of Belz emerged in the twelfth century. After a period of Lithuanian rule, the town came under Polish authority in 1366, initially as a fief. Władysław Opolczyk granted it Magdeburg rights in 1377, and in 1462 Belz became the capital of its own voivodeship. It passed to the Habsburg monarchy in the first partition of Poland in 1772. In the early nineteenth century Rabbi Shalom Rokeach established the Belz Hasidic dynasty, whose followers gathered around him here.