were Beduin women.
After what has been said, we cannot assign to the Hebr. בּשׁן any other signification than that of a fertile stoneless plain or low country. This appellation, which was given, properly and originally, only to the heart of the country, and its most valuable portion, viz., the Nukra, would then a potiori be transferred to the whole, and when the kingdom of Basan was again destroyed, naturally remained to that province, of which it was the proper designation.)
The home of Job is more definitely described in the following passages. Muhammed el-Makdeshi[1] says, p. 81 of his geography: “And in Haurân and Batanaea lie the villages of Job and his home (diâ' Êjûb wa-diâruh). The chief place (of the district) is Nawâ, rich in wheat and other cereals.” The town of Nawâ is still more definitely connected with Job by Jâkût el-Hamawi under the article Nawâ: “Between Nawa and Damascus in two days' journey; it belongs to the district of Hauran,[2] and is, according to some, the chief town of the same. Nawâ was the residence (menzil) of Job;” and Ibn er-Râbi says, p. 62 of his essay on the excellences of Damascus:[3]
- ↑ Orient. MSS in the Royal Library at Berlin; Sect. Sprenger, No. 5.
- ↑ If writers mention Haurân alone, they mean thereby, according to the usage of the language of the Damascenes, and certainly also of the prophet Ezekiel (Eze 47:16, Eze 47:18), the plain of Haurân as far as the borders of the Belkâ, including the mountains of Haurân, the Legâ, and Gêdûr; it is only in the district itself, where special divisions are rendered necessary, that the three last mentioned parts are excluded. If writers mention Haurân and Bethenîje together, the context must determine whether the former signifies the whole, and the latter the part, as in the above quotation from Makdeshi, or whether both are to be taken as coordinate, as in a passage of Istachri (edited by Möller, Botha 1839): “And Haurân and Bethenîje are two provinces of Damascus with luxuriant corn-fields.” Here the words are related to one another as Auranitis (with the chief town Bostra) to Batanaea (with the chief town Adratum, i.e., Edre'ât), or as the Haurân of the Beduins and the Nukra of the same. The boundary between both is the Wâdi 'Irâ, which falls into the Zêdî south of Edre'ât.
- ↑ Catalogue of Arab. MSS collected in Damascus, No. 26.
