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8 PALESTINE monites, and a part of the Amorites lived E. of the Jordan ; while W. of that river dwelt the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and most of the Amorites, in the hill country ^of the south ; the Oanaanites proper, in the mid- dle ; the Girgashites, along the E. border of the lake of Gennesaret ; and the Hivites, most- ly in the north among the mountains of Leb- anon. The southern part of the coast was occupied by the Philistines and the northern by the Phoenicians. After the conquest of Ca- naan by the Israelites under Moses and Joshua, the land was distributed among the tribes. Judah, Simeon, Benjamin, and Dan occupied the south; Ephraini, half of Manasseh, and Issachar, the middle; and Zebulon, Naphtali, and Asher, the north. Keuben, Gad, and the other half of Manasseh were settled beyond the Jordan. After the division into two king- doms by the secession of the ten tribes (about 975 B. 0.), the boundary line between them was the northern limit of the tribe of Benja- min. In the time of Christ Palestine was sub- ject to the Romans, and the country W. of the Jordan was divided into the provinces of Gali- lee, Samaria, and Judea. Galilee was that part of Palestine N". of the plain .of Esdraelon, and was divided into lower or southern and upper or northern Galilee. Samaria occupied nearly the middle of Palestine. Judea as a province corresponded to the N. and W. parts of the an- cient kingdom of Judah ; but the "S. E. portion formed a part of the territory of Idumssa. On the other side of the Jordan the country was called Perm, and was divided into eight dis- tricts, viz. : 1, Per&a in a limited sense, which was the southernmost district, extending from the river or brook Arnon to the river Jabbok ; 2, Gilead, N". of the Jabbok; 3, Decapolis, or the district of ten cities, which, as nearly as can be ascertained, were Scythopolis or Beth- shan (which however was on the W. side of the Jordan), Hippos, Gadara, Pella, Philadel- phia or Rabbah, Dion, Canatha, Galasa or Ge- rasa, Raphana, and perhaps Damascus ; 4, Gau- lonitis, extending 1ST. E. of the upper Jordan and of the lake of Gennesaret ; 5, Batanea, E. and S. E. of Gaulonitis; 6, Auranitis, with Ituraa, N". E. of Batanea, now known as the desert of Hauran ; 7, Trachonitis, N". of Aura- nitis ; 8, Abilene, in the extreme north, among the mountains of Anti-Libanus. The earlier part of the history of Palestine is treated in the article HEBEEWS. The country remained subject to the Roman and Byzantine emperors for more than six centuries after Christ. The Jews, after frequent rebellions, in one of which, A. D. 70, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, were mostly driven from the country and scat- tered as slaves or exiles over the world. With the spread of Christianity, Palestine became the resort of vast numbers of pilgrims, and Je- rusalem was made the seat of a patriarch. The emperor Constantine and his mother Helena erected throughout the land costly memori- als of Christian faith, marking with churches, chapels, or altars every spot supposed to have been the scene of the acts of the Saviour. In 614 the Persians under Chosroes II. invaded Palestine, and, assisted by the Jews to the number of 26,000, captured Jerusalem. It was regained by Heraclius, but was conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs in 637. For the next two centuries the country was the scene of civil war between the rival factions of the Ommiyade, the Abbasside, and the Fatimite caliphs. From the middle of the 8th century it was a province of the Abbasside caliphs of Bagdad till 969, when it fell under the power of the Fatimite rulers of Egypt. In 1076-7 it was conquered by the Seljuk Turks, but in 1096 it was regained by the Egyptian sultans, in whose possession it was when invaded by the crusaders in the following year. The crusaders made Godfrey of Bouillon ruler of Jerusalem, and he and his successors reigned in Palestine till Jerusalem was retaken by Sultan Saladin in 1187, and the Christian kingdom overthrown. Two years afterward another crusade was un- dertaken under Philip, king of France, Richard I. of England, and the emperor Frederick Bar- barossa of Germany. It did not regain Jerusa- lem, but partially restored the Christian rule upon the coast. Another crusade in 1216, chief- ly of Hungarians and Germans, met with little more success. Still another, undertaken by the emperor Frederick II. in 1228, resulted in the recovery of Jerusalem, and the Christian dominion was reestablished over a considerable extent of territory ; but after various vicissi- tudes of fortune, and in spite of repeated suc- cors from Europe, it finally yielded to the arms of the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1291. The sul- tans of Egypt held it till 1517, when it was conquered by the Turks, in whose possession it has remained till the present time, with the exception of a brief occupation in 1839-'41 by the forces of the rebellious pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali. Much attention has been given in recent times to the careful exploration of Palestine, with important results in the identi- fication of places named in Scripture. This began with the work of Dr. Edward Robin- son, the results of which were published in his "Biblical Researches" (3 vols. 8vo, Boston, 1841) and " Later Researches " (1856). Among the most recent explorations have been those of the British society organized in 1865 under the name of the " Palestine Exploration Fund," the reports of which appear in the work of Captains Wilson and Warren, entitled "The Recovery of Jerusalem" (8vo, London, 1871), and in quarterly statements issued since that work. Among the results of the English ex- plorations have been the trigonometrical sur- vey of a great part of Samaria and Judea, the discovery of some remarkable Greek inscrip- tions of Christian origin within the Haram enclosure at Jerusalem, and the identification of a great number of Biblical and classical sites, among which are the rock Etam, Alexandrium, Chozeba, Maarath, the cliff of Ziz, Hareth,