Ebal, Mount

We extract some additional particulars from Lieut. Conder's Tent Work in Palestine, 1:88:

"There are three curious places on Ebal: one of which is a rude stone building, enclosing a space of fifty feet square, with walls twenty feet thick, in which are chambers. The Samaritans call it part of a ruined village, but its use and origin are a mystery. It resembles most the curious monuments near Hizmeh, called the 'Tombs of the Sons of Israel.' The second place is the little cave and ruined chapel of Sitt Eslamiyeh, 'The Lady of Islam,' who has given her name to the mountain. It is perched on the side of a precipice, and is held sacred by the Moslems, who have a tradition that the bones of the saint were carried hither through the air from Damascus. The third place is a site the importance of which has not been previously recognised. It is a little Moslem Mukam, said once to have been a church, called 'AmAd ed-Dinl, the 'Monument of the Faith.' The name thus preserved has no connection with Samaritan tradition, but it is undisputed that the sacred places of the peasantry often represent spots famous in Bible history. It is therefore perhaps possible that the site thus reverenced is none other than that of the monumental altar of twelve stones from Jordan, which Joshna erected, according to the Biblical account, on Elal, and not on Gerizim, as the Samaritans believe, charging the Jews with having altered the names (De 27:4). The hill-top on which this monument stands is called Ras el-Kady, 'Hill of the Judge.' It was here that the Crusaders placed Dan, the site of Jeroboam's Calf Temple, and the present name may perhaps be connected with this theory, Dan ('the Judge') being translated into the Arabic Kady ('Judme'), jnust as it has been at the true Dan, now Tell el-Kady, at the source of the Jordan." (See illustration on opposite page.)