Ashyan
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Asia
Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aux dem Judenthume Aufgcniinimrittp.SS; Hirschfeld, Beitrllge zur ErkUlrung des
Koran,
p.
77; Spreuger,
Das Lehen Mohammeds,
Hi. 55;
Grimme, Mohammed, i. 55; Pautz, Muhammad's Lehre von der Offenbarung, p. 131; and especially Goldziher. in Revue Etudes Juives, xxviii. 83 et acq. For the modern celebration, see Lane,
Modem
Egyptians,
i.
343,
ii.
165
et seq.
K.
G.
ASHYAN
The name
2.
Aha's
to
Amora in
circle,
the fourth century, belonged
and handed down utterances of
Cities of Asia (Drawn
Jonah (Yer. Ter.
i.
Ashyan bar Jakim,
who
belonged to Assi's circle (Yer. Yeb. xi. 12a) and perhaps identical with the Ashyan named in Ber. 4. Ashyan b. Nid14n, as the father of R. Isaac. bak, probably of Babylonian origin, whose father-inlaw, Yeba, transmitted an utterance of Rab (B. B. 22b), and who himself repeated another of Rab's teachings (Men. 29<i, according to the better reading, Rabbinowicz, "Dikduke Soferim," ad loc, note 60, while Zeira taught in his name (Yer. Meg. i. 71c, where Nidbah stands for Nidbak).
ASIA
65cx et seq.
W.
sr.
B.
largest continent, and the most ancient seat of civilization, constituting the greater part of the Eastern hemisphere.
The
—
tury b.c. shows Israel installed in some district of southern Syria, which can not now be precisely located, among peoples and cities of varying importance Hittites, Canaan, Gezer, Aske-
The Jews in
Ion,
Yenu'amu.
Three centuries later, Judea taken by
in the list of cities of
Shishak, Israel reappears among the conquered. Momentous events had occurred in the meantime, of which only the BibPalestine had been conlical books give an account. quered by the various tribes; a relatively powerful kingdom having Jerusalem for its capital had been
Palestine.
" The Jewish Encyclopedia.")
is
j.
—
Meneptah, of about the middle of the thirteenth cen-
Showing Distribution of the Jews.
especially for
41« Yer. Yoma viii. 45J). 3. of the end of the third century,
Bibliography; Frankei, Mebo,
The earliest record that makes mention of the Hebrew people the triumphal stele of Pharaoh
—
of several Palestinian
amoraim and of one, probably Babylonian, amora. 1. Ashyan, "the Carpenter (Naggara)," of the third century, who handed down certain utterances of Johanan (Yer. 'Ab. Zarah iii. 424; Gen. R. lxxxii. 5, in which latter passage the name has been corrupted)
208
established and, during the very lifetime of Shishak, the rupture of the union that had existed but a short time under David and Solomon, and the separation of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, had occurred. Menaced in turn hj the Canaanites and the Arameans of Syria, by Egypt, and, above all, by the powerful Semites of the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the two states successively disappeared the northern one in 722 B.C., under the attacks of the Assyrians the southern, 135 years later,
—
under those of the Babylonians. Sargon transported 27,000 inhabitants of Samaria to the Balikh and the Khabur, and to the frontiers of Media. Nebuchadnezzar carried off from Jerusalem some 20,000 Jews who in the land of exile awaited the fall of the second Chaldean empire. During the reign of the first king of the dynasty of
