by the river Dan, which falls into the Jordan between (Tiberias and Scythopolis (Bîsân).” This river, the same as that which Sanuto means by his aquae Dan (Mê Dân), is none other than the Wâdi el-Meddân, called “the overflowing one,” because in the month of March it overflows its banks eastward of the Gezzâr-bridge. It is extremely strange that the name of this river appears corrupted not only in all three writers mentioned above, but also in Burckhardt; for, deceived by the ear, he calls it Wâdî Om el-Dhan.[1]
The Meddân is the boundary river between the Suwêt and Nukra plains; it loses its name where it runs into the Makran; and where it falls into the valley of the Jordan, below the lake of Tiberias, it is called el-Muchêbî.
We have little to add to what has been already said. The Fiale of Sanuto is not the Lake Râm, but the round begge, the lake of springs of Muzêrîb, the rapid outflow of which, over a depth of sixty to eighty feet, forms a magnificent waterfall, the only one in Syria, as it falls into the Meddân near the village of Tell Shihâb.
The unfortunate confusion of the localities was occasioned by two accidental circumstances: first, that both the springs of the Jordan below Bâniâs and the lake of Muzêrîb, have a village called Rahûb (רחוב) in their vicinity, of which one is mentioned in Jdg 18:28., and the other, about a mile below the Cavea Roob, is situated by a fountain of the same name, from which village, cavern, and wadi derive their names; secondly, that there, as here, there is a village Abil (אבל): that near Dan is situated in the “meadow-district of 'Ijôn” (Merg. 'Ijûn); and that in the Suwêt lies between Rahûb and the Makran, and was visited by Seetzen as well as by myself. Perhaps the circumstance that, just as the environs of Muzêrîb have their Mîdân,[2] so the environs of Bâniâs
- ↑ Burckhardt, Travels in Syr. and Pal. (ed. Gesenius, S. 392).
- ↑ The word el-mı̂dân and el-mêdân signifies originally the hippodrome, then the arena of the sham-fight, then the place of contest, the battle-field, and finally a wide level place where a large concourse of men are accustomed to meet. In this sense the Damascenes have their el-mı̂dân, the Spanish cities their almeidân, and the Italians their corso.
