True, it cannot of itself make up for the want of an historical testimony, but it attains a certain value if it is old,
i.e., if it can be traced back about to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, when reliable information was still obtainable respecting that district, although its name was no longer in use.
In all the larger works of travel on Palestine and Syria, we find it recorded that Haurân is there called Job's fatherland. In Hauran itself the traveller hears this constantly; if any one speaks of the fruitfulness of the whole district, or of the fields around a village, he is always answered: Is it not the land of Job (bildâd Êjûb)? Does it not belong to the villages of Job (diâ' Êjûb)? Thus to Seetzen[1]Bosrâ was pointed out as a city of Job; and to Eli Smith[2] even the country lying to the east of the mountains was called the land of Job. In Kanawat, a very spacious building, belonging to the Roman or Byzantine period, situated in the upper town, was pointed out to me as the summer palace of Job (the inscription 8799 in Corp. Inscr. Graec. is taken from it). The shepherds of Dâ'il, with whom I passed a night on the Wâdi el-Lebwe, called the place of their encampment Job's pasture-ground. In like manner, the English traveller Buckingham, when he wandered through the Nukra, was shown in the distance the village of Gherbi (i.e., Chirbet el-ghazale, which from its size is called el-chirbe κατ ̓ εξοχήν) as the birthplace and residence of Job,[3] and it seems altogether as though Hauran and the Land of Job are synonymous. But if one inquires particularly for that part of the country in which Job himself dwelt, he is directed to the central point of Hauran, the plain of Hauran (sahl Haurân),[4]
- ↑ Seetzen, Reisen durch Syrien, etc., i. 66.
- ↑ Ed. Robinson, Palâstina, iii. 911 Germ. edit..
- ↑ C. Ritter, Geogr. von Syr. u. Pal. ii. 842 = Erdkunde, xv. Pt. 2, p. 842].
- ↑ Whether the word מישׁר, Deu 3:10, only signifies the plain of Hauran or its southern continuation, the eastern Belkâ, may be doubtful, because in that passage both the Amorite kingdoms are spoken of. But since it is the “cities” of the plain, of which the eastern Balkâ can have had but few or none, that are spoken of, מישׁר will surely exclude the latter.
