Zoara, called Zoar/Tzoar or Bela in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

, and Zughar by medieval Arabs,

Guy Le Strange Guy Le Strange (24 July 1854 – 24 December 1933) was a British Orientalist noted especially for his work in the field of the historical geography of the pre-modern Middle Eastern and Eastern Islamic lands, and his editing of Persian geographic ...

(1890). ''Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500'']. Alexander P. Watt for the Committee of the

Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization i ...

, p
289
Re-accessed 15 Jan 2024. was an ancient city located in the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

basin in the

Transjordan Transjordan may refer to: * Transjordan (region), an area to the east of the Jordan River * Oultrejordain, a Crusader lordship (1118–1187), also called Transjordan * Emirate of Transjordan, British protectorate (1921–1946) * Hashemite Kingdom o ...

. Biblical Zoar is described in Genesis as one of the five "cities of the plain" – a

pentapolis A pentapolis (from Ancient Greek, Greek ''penta-'', 'five' and ''polis'', 'city') is a geographic and/or institutional grouping of five cities. Cities in the ancient world probably formed such groups for political, commercial and military rea ...

at the time of Abram/

Abraham Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...

(see

Patriarchal age The patriarchal age is the era of the three biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, according to the narratives of Genesis 12–50 (these chapters also contain the history of Joseph, although Joseph is not one of the patriarchs). It is prec ...

), situated in a highly fertile valley mentioned in the

Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek language, Greek ; ; ) is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its incipit, first word, (In the beginning (phrase), 'In the beginning'). Genesis purpor ...

, apparently stretching along the lower Jordan Valley and the

plain. The biblical narrative shows the city being spared the "brimstone and fire" which destroyed

Sodom and Gomorrah In the Abrahamic religions, Sodom and Gomorrah () were two cities destroyed by God for their wickedness. Sodom and Gomorrah are repeatedly invoked throughout the Hebrew Bible, Deuterocanonical texts, and the New Testament as symbols of sin, di ...

in order to provide a refuge for Lot and his daughters. The town of Zoara, located at modern-day

Ghor es-Safi Ghor es-Safi, also transliterated Ghawr as-Safi, is an area in the Jordan valley located in the Wadi al-Hasa. It is situated between the governorates of Karak and Tafilah, near the southern Dead Sea. The location is depicted on the 6th-century ...

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, is mentioned in the 1st–5th centuries CE by various geographers and historians. ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'', writing about the time preceding the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

, called it "a flourishing oasis where the

balsam Balsam is the resinous exudate (or sap) which forms on certain kinds of trees and shrubs. Balsam (from Latin ''balsamum'' "gum of the balsam tree," ultimately from a Semitic source such as ) owes its name to the biblical Balm of Gilead. Ch ...

indigo InterGlobe Aviation Limited (d/b/a IndiGo), is an India, Indian airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It is the largest List of airlines of India, airline in India by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 64.1% domestic market ...

, and

date tree ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as the date palm, is a flowering-plant species in the palm family Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle East, ...

s bloom luxuriantly". Arab authors of the 10th century mention its indigo production and praise its dates.

In the Bible

Zoar, meaning "small" or "insignificance" in Hebrew (a "little one" as Lot called it), was a city east of Jordan in the

vale A vale is a type of valley. Vale may also refer to: Places Georgia * Vale, Georgia, a town in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region Norway * Våle, a historic municipality Portugal * Vale (Santa Maria da Feira), a former civil parish in the municip ...

of Siddim, near the Dead Sea. Along with Sodom, Gomorrah,

Admah According to the Bible, Admah (Heb. אַדְמָה) was one of the five cities of the Vale of Siddim. It was destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah. It is supposed by William F. Albright to be the same as the "Adam" of . The location of Admah i ...

, and Zeboim, Zoar was one of the 5 cities slated for destruction by God; but Zoar was spared at Lot's plea as his place of refuge (). A Zoar is mentioned in in connection with the nation of

Moab Moab () was an ancient Levant, Levantine kingdom whose territory is today located in southern Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by ...

. This connection with Moab would be consistent with a location near the lower Dead Sea plain.

Historical city in extra-biblical sources

Roman period

Zoara is mentioned in the 1st century CE by

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

and in the 2nd by

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

( ''Geography'' V, xvi, 4).

Byzantine period

In the 4th century it is again mentioned by

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...

in his ''

Onomasticon Onomasticon may refer to: *Onomasticon (Eusebius) *Onomasticon of Amenope *Onomasticon of Joan Coromines *Onomasticon of Julius Pollux Julius Pollux (, ''Ioulios Polydeukes''; fl. 2nd century) was a Greeks, Greek scholar and rhetorician from Naucr ...

'', and in the 5th by Saint

Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known ...

in his annotated version of the work. Egeria the pilgrim tells of a bishop of Zoara that accompanied her in the area, in the early 380s.

Antoninus of Piacenza Saint Antoninus of Piacenza (or Placentia) (died AD 303), also known as Antoninus Placentinus, is a patron saint of Piacenza in Italy. He is venerated as a saint and martyr in the Roman Catholic Church, with a feast day of 30 September. The s ...

, in the 6th century, describes its monks and extols its palm trees. Zoara is mentioned in Tractate Pesachim of the

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

(3rd–6th century) as a place where date palms grew. In Tractate Yevamot, the city is mentioned in regards to a woman's testimony, when a traveling Levite died at an inn, and the woman innkeeper had him buried. The ''

Notitia Dignitatum The (Latin for 'List of all dignities and administrations both civil and military') is a document of the Late Roman Empire that details the administrative organization of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. It is unique as one of very ...

'', 72, probably reflecting the reality of the late 4th century, places at Zoara, as a garrison, the resident ''equites sagitarii indigenae'' (native unit of cavalry archers);

Stephen of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephen of Byzantium (; , ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD) was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethnica'' (). Only meagre fragments of the dictionary survive, but the epit ...

(fl. 6th century; ''De urbibus'', s.v. Addana) speaks also of its fort, which is mentioned in a Byzantine edit of the 5th century (''Revue biblique'', 1909, 99); near the city was a sanctuary to Saint Lot mentioned by Hierocles (6th century; ''

Synecdemus The ''Synecdemus'' or ''Synekdemos'' () is a geographic text, attributed to Hierocles, which contains a table of administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists of their cities. The work is dated to the reign of Justinian Justinia ...

'') and

George of Cyprus George of Cyprus (; Latinized as ''Georgius Cyprius'') was a Greek Byzantine geographer of the early seventh century. Nothing is known of his life save that he was a Byzantine Greek born at Lapithos in the island of Cyprus. He is known for his ...

(early 7th century). In the sixth-century

Madaba Map The Madaba Map, also known as the Madaba Mosaic Map, is part of a floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church of Saint George in Madaba, Jordan. The mosaic map depicts an area from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in the south, and fro ...

, it is represented in the midst of a grove of palm trees under the names of ''Balac'' or ''Segor''. Zoar on the Madaba map

Early Muslim period

Istakhri Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri () (also ''Estakhri'', , i.e. from the Iranian city of Istakhr, b. – d. 346 AH/AD 957) was a 10th-century travel author and Islamic geographer who wrote valuable accounts in Arabic of ...

and

Ibn Haukal Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (), also known as Abū al-Qāsim b. ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born in Nisibis, Upper Mesopotamia; was a 10th-century Arab Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler who travelled from AD 943 t ...

, two Arab geographers of the 10th century, highly praise the sweetness of Zughar's dates, but are less impressed by the quality of the indigo produced there.

Crusader period

During the Crusader period it took the name of Palmer or Paumier.

William of Tyre William of Tyre (; 29 September 1186) was a Middle Ages, medieval prelate and chronicler. As Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tyre, archbishop of Tyre, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from his predecessor, William I of Tyr ...

(XXII, 30) and

Fulcher of Chartres Fulcher of Chartres ( in or near Chartres – after 1128; ; ) was a priest who participated in the First Crusade. He served Baldwin I of Jerusalem for many years and wrote a Latin chronicle of the Crusade. Life Fulcher was born . His appointment ...

(Hist. hierosol., V) have left descriptions of it. The Syriac Chronicles of Patriarch

Michael the Syrian Michael the Syrian (),(), died AD 1199, also known as Michael the Great () or Michael Syrus or Michael the Elder, to distinguish him from his nephew, was a patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1166 to 1199. He is best known today as th ...

(12th century) and of

Bar Hebraeus Gregory Bar Hebraeus (, b. 1226 - d. 30 July 1286), known by his Syriac ancestral surname as Barebraya or Barebroyo, in Arabic sources by his kunya Abu'l-Faraj, and his Latinized name Abulpharagius in the Latin West, was a Maphrian (region ...

(13th century; part up to his own time based on Michael) contain some obscure traditions regarding the founding of some of the "cities of the plain". According to these accounts, during the lifetime of Nahor (Abraham's grandfather), a certain Armonius the Canaanite had two sons named Sodom and Gomorrah, for whom he named two newly built towns, naming a third, Zoar, after their mother.

Mamluk period

According to the 14th-century travelogue ''The Travels Of Sir

John Mandeville ''The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'', commonly known as ''Mandeville's Travels'', is a book written between 1357 and 1371 that purports to be the Travel literature, travelogue of an Englishman named Sir John Mandeville across the Near East as ...

'':

"Zoar, by the prayer of Lot, was saved and kept a great while, for it was set upon a hill; and yet sheweth thereof some part above the water, and men may see the walls when it is fair weather and clear."

It is not known when the city disappeared.

Christianity

Bishopric

Zoara was part of the late

Roman province The Roman provinces (, pl. ) were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as Roman g ...

Palaestina Tertia Palaestina Salutaris or Palaestina Tertia was a Late Roman and Byzantine province, which covered the area of the Negev, Sinai (except the north-western coast) and south-west of Transjordan, south of the Dead Sea. The province, a part of the Dio ...

. It became a

bishopric In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

and is included in the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

's list of

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbi ...

Le Quien Michel Le Quien (8 October 1661, Boulogne-sur-Mer – 12 March 1733, Paris) was a French historian and theologian. Biography Le Quien studied at , Paris, and at twenty entered the Dominican convent in Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he made ...

gives the names of three of its bishops; * Musonius, present at the

Second Council of Ephesus The Second Council of Ephesus was a Christological church synod in 449 convened by Emperor Theodosius II under the presidency of Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria. It was intended to be an ecumenical council, and it is accepted by the miaphysit ...

(449) and the

Council of Chalcedon The Council of Chalcedon (; ) was the fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Church. It was convoked by the Roman emperor Marcian. The council convened in the city of Chalcedon, Bithynia (modern-day Kadıköy, Istanbul, Turkey) from 8 Oct ...

(451); * Isidore, mentioned in 518 when Isidore signed the synodal letter of Patriarch John of Jerusalem against Severus of Antioch. * John, in 536 signed the acts of the synod of Jerusalem convoked by Patriarch Peter against Antime of Constantinople and saw the bishops of the Three Palestines together. In the same year, in May, John also took part in the synod of Constantinople by Patriarch Mena to condemn Antimo. *An anonymous bishop is mentioned in the Itinera hierosolymitana of the end of the fourth century (Vailhé).

Catholic titular see

The

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

still recognizes the diocese of Zoara (in Latin: Dioecesis Zoarensis) as a suppressed and

of the

, in

, though the seat is vacant since August 25, 2001. Known Catholic bishops include: *

Francesco Maria Cutroneo Francesco, the Italian (and original) version of the personal name "Francis", is one of the most common given name among males in Italy. Notable persons with that name include: People with the given name Francesco * Francesco I (disambiguation) ...

(March 15, 1773 – November 1780) * (July 18, 1783 – 1807) *

Jean-Henri Baldus Jean-Henri is a French masculine given name. Notable people with the name include: * Jean-Henri d'Anglebert (1629–1691), French composer and harpsichordist * Jean-Henri Dunant (1828–1910), Henry Dunant, a Swiss businessman * Jean Henri Fabre ...

, (March 2, 1844 – September 29, 1869) * Claude-Thierry Obré (December 14, 1877 – December 14, 1881) *

Pedro José Sánchez Carrascosa y Carrión Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning ...

(March 30, 1882 – 1896) *

Patrick Vincent Dwyer Patrick Vincent Dwyer (1858-1931) was the first Australian born Roman Catholic Bishop. Life Patrick Vincent Dwyer was born on 21 August 1858 at Albury, New South Wales, to William Dwyer, schoolteacher, and his wife, Anastasia, née Dermody, both ...

(January 30, 1897 – July 9, 1909) * René-Marie-Joseph Perros, (September 17, 1909 – November 27, 1952) *

Antonio Capdevilla Ferrando Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language–speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular m ...

(March 24, 1953 – August 12, 1962) * (November 21, 1962 – August 25, 2001)

Archaeology

Locating Zoara: sources

Prior to the major archaeological excavations in the 1980s and 1990s that took place in Zoara, scholars proposed that several sites in the area of Khirbet Sheikh 'Isa and al-Naq' offered further evidence of Zoara's location and history. Further information regarding Zoara in different historical epochs were obtained through the descriptions of Arabian geographers, suggesting that Zoara served as an important station in the

Aqaba Aqaba ( , ; , ) is the only coastal city in Jordan and the largest and most populous city on the Gulf of Aqaba. Situated in southernmost Jordan, Aqaba is the administrative center of the Aqaba Governorate. The city had a population of 148, ...

-to-Jericho trade route, and through Eusebius' statement that the Dead Sea was situated between Zoar and Jericho. Researchers who have studied ancient texts portray Zoara as a town erected in the middle of a flourishing oasis, watered by rivers flowing down from the high Moab Mountains in the east. The sweet dates that grew abundantly on the palm trees surrounding Zoara are also mentioned in some historical texts.

Surveys and digs (1986–1996)

Several excavation surveys have been conducted in this area in the years 1986–1996.

Sanctuary of Saint Lot

Ruins of a basilical church that were discovered in the site of Deir 'Ain 'Abata ("Monastery at the Abata Spring" in Arabic), were identified as the Sanctuary of Agios (Saint) Lot. An adjacent cave is ascribed as the location where Lot and his daughters took refuge during the destruction of Sodom.

Mixed Christian-Jewish cemetery

About 300 engraved funerary steles in the Khirbet Sheikh 'Isa area in

were found in 1995. Most gravestones were inscribed in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and thus attributed to Christian burials, while several stones were inscribed in

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

, suggesting that they belong to Jewish burials. Of these, two inscriptions reveal the origins of the deceased as being Jews that hailed from

Ḥimyar Himyar was a polity in the southern highlands of Yemen, as well as the name of the region which it claimed. Until 110 BCE, it was integrated into the Qatabanian kingdom, afterwards being recognized as an independent kingdom. According to class ...

(now

Yemen Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...

) and are funerary inscriptions dating back to 470 and 477 CE; these inscriptions are multilingual and written in the combined

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

and

Ancient South Arabian script The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian: ; modern ) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE, and remained in use through the late sixth century CE. It is an abjad, a writing system where only con ...

s, the latter as employed for the

Sabaean language Sabaic, sometimes referred to as Sabaean, was a Sayhadic language that was spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of South Arabia, inc ...

. In one of them it was noted that the deceased was brought from Ẓafār, the capital of the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, to be buried in Zoar.; ; Joseph Naveh, ''A Bi-Lingual Tomb Inscription from Sheba'', Journal: ''Leshonenu'' (issue 65), 2003, pp. 117–120 (Hebrew); G.W. Nebe and A. Sima, Die aramäisch/hebräisch-sabäische Grabinschrift der Lea, ''Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy'' 15, 2004, pp. 76–83. These gravestones have all been traced back to the fourth-fifth centuries, when Zoara was an important Jewish center. Unusually, Christians and Jews were buried in the same cemetery.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* {{coord, 31, 02, 49, N, 35, 30, 09, E, region:JO_type:landmark_source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title Hebrew Bible cities Catholic titular sees in Asia Jews and Judaism in Jordan