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HAURAN

(Heb. ḥawrān)

The area of Transjordan which extended from Mt. Hermon and the River Pharpar in the north to the Yarmuk River in the south and from the Sea of Galilee on the west to Jebel ed-Druze on the east. It encompasses basically the same territory as Bashan. The northern part is tableland with many volcanoes and rocky soil well known for its pastureland. The southern part contains an ancient layer of very fertile decomposed lava.

The name means either “hollow land” or “black-land,” the latter referring evidently to the black basalt which covers much of the region. It appears for the first time in Egyptian texts of the 19th century b.c. and in Assyrian cuneiform texts as early as the 15th century. Shalmaneser III mentions the “mountains of the land of Hauran,” and Assurbanipal refers to the “district of Hauran.” Hauran occurs in Ezekiel’s vision of restored Israel as the ideal border of the land (Ezek. 47:16, 18).

After the Exile Hauran was settled by Jews, Greeks, and Nabateans who struggled for its control. It came under Hasmonean domination in the 2nd century, only to be lost to the Nabateans in 90 b.c. By the Roman period it was known as Auranitis (Josephus Ant 17.11.4 [319]) and was made a part of the Decapolis by Pompey. Augustus gave it to Herod the Great ca. 23 b.c., and it was later under the control of Herod Philip, Agrippa I, Agrippa II, and the Nabateans before finally becoming part of the province of Syria (a.d. 106).

Paul J. Ray, Jr.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HAURAN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)