It was at Jericho, ‘the city of palms,’ that the passage into Canaan was forced. The army of Israel crossed the Jordan dry-shod, for ‘the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan; and those which came down towards the sea of the plain, even the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off.’ A similar phenomenon is recorded as having occurred in the Middle Ages. M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out a passage in the Arabic historian Nowairi, in which an account is given of the construction in A.D. 1266 of a bridge across the Jordan by the Sultan Beybars I. of Egypt, when in consequence of a landslip the bed of the river was for a time left dry. The bridge was built on five arches between the stream of the Qurawa and Tel Damieh, perhaps the Adam of the Old Testament. But no sooner was it completed than ‘part of the piers gave way. The Sultan was greatly vexed, and blamed the builders, and sent them back to repair the damage. They found the task very difficult, owing to the rise of the waters and the strength of the current. But in the night preceding the dawn of the 17th of the month Rabi the First of the year of the Hijra 666 (_i.e._ the 8th of December, A.D. 1267) the water of the river ceased to flow so that none remained in its bed. The people hurried and kindled numerous fires and cressets, and seized the opportunity offered by the occurrence. They remedied the defects in the piers, and strengthened them, and effected repairs which would otherwise have been impossible. They then despatched mounted men to ascertain the nature of the event that had occurred. The riders urged their horses, and found that a lofty mound (_Kabâr_) which overlooked the river on the west had fallen into it and dammed it up. A _Kabâr_ resembles a hill, but is not actually a hill, for water will quickly disintegrate it into mud. The water was held up, and had spread itself over the valley above the dam. The messengers returned with this explanation, and the water was arrested from midnight until the 4th hour of the day. Then the water prevailed upon the dam and broke it up. The water flowed down in a body equal in depth to the length of a lance, but made no impression upon the building owing to the strength given to it.’[257] The megalithic ‘circle’ of Gilgal commemorated the passage of the Jordan. The camp was fixed there, and a popular etymology explained the name by the circumcision that had ‘rolled away the reproach of Egypt.’[258] Jericho, the city of the ‘Moon-god’ Yârêakh, was next invested and captured in spite of its strong walls. All its inhabitants were put to the sword, Rahab only being spared to become the founder of a family in Israel because she had sheltered the Israelitish spies. The city was razed to the ground, and was not again rebuilt till the reign of Ahab.