Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and AdventureConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Palestine -- Description and travel
The early Christians placed Mizpeh in quite another direction, and Nob
at Beit Nûba, which is famous in the history of Richard Lion-Heart.
Their site for Mizpeh was near Sôba, west of Jerusalem, and here we
found a ruin with the title Shûfa, which in meaning is equivalent to the
Hebrew Mizpeh, but this place cannot be described as “over against
Jerusalem,” and its recovery is thus a matter of minor interest.
There is one other site which has been proposed for Mizpeh, though it is
merely a conjecture and not a name which might lead to the
identification; this site is the remarkable hill called Neby Samwîl,
north of Jerusalem. The place is conspicuous from the tall minaret which
crowns the old Crusading church on the summit, and within the church is
the cenotaph now revered by the Moslems as the tomb of Samuel,--a modern
monument covered with a green cloth.
The Crusaders, with their usual contempt for facts, fixed on this hill
as the ancient Shiloh; they also called it Ramah, and added besides a
title of their own. “Two miles from Jerusalem,” says Sir John
Maundeville, “is Mount Joy, a very fair and delicious place. There
Samuel the prophet lies in a fair tomb, and it is called Mount Joy
because it gives joy to pilgrims’ hearts, for from that place men first
see Jerusalem.”
The tradition which places Samuel’s tomb here seems, however, to be only
recent. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who is a tolerably safe guide as
regards Jewish sacred sites, discredits the story and speaks of a change
of site. “When the Christians took Ramleh, which is Ramah, from the
Mohammedans,” says the Rabbi, “they discovered the sepulchre of Samuel
the Ramathi, near the Jewish Synagogue, and removed his remains to
Shiloh, where they erected a large place of worship over them called St.
Samuel of Shiloh to the present day.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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