GILEAD, a name used to denote the whole of the territory occupied by the Israelites between the plateaus of Moab and the Hauran, and sometimes in a wider and more general sense to denote the region extending from the river Arnon, to the base of Hermon. It is a country of high forest ridges (average height, 2,500 ft.) lying between the Jordan and the desert plateau. The base slopes are of sandstone partly covered by white marls and the upper of limestone scored and riven by numerous wadis. Whilst the gentle declivities towards the eastern plateau have tended to be bare of trees, the western slopes, prior to the World War, were well clothed with oak, terebinth and pine. Gilead is in the main a fertile and beautiful land. "The pastures are everywhere luxuriant, and the wooded heights and winding glens, in which the tangled shrubbery is here and there broken up by open glades and flat meadows of green turf, exhibit a beauty of vegetation such as is hardly to be seen in any other district of Palestine." History.—The name Gilead first appears in the narrative of the reconciliation of Jacob and Laban (Gen. xxxi.), where the composite nature of the narrative renders identification of locality difficult, and was in use in the time of Josephus, and even later, but with no precise geographical definition. In the Israelitic con quest of the territory east of the Jordan Sihon was crushed at Jahaz, south of Heshbon (Num. xxi., 23) and Og, king of Bashan, smitten at Edrei (Dent. i. 5). In the division of the land the southern half of Gilead fell to Reuben and Gad (according to one account) and the northern half to Manasseh. Gideon on the soil of Gilead swept back the routed hosts of Midian ( Judges viii.) ; Jephthah the Gileadite smote the Ammonites from Aroer to Minnith (Judges xi.) and dealt faithfully with the treacherous men of Ephraim when their tongues betrayed them at the fords of Jordan (Judges xii.) . Gilead was the scene of the fierce battle between David and Absalom. Round Ramoth-Gilead many bitter struggles were waged and Ahab perished before its walls. The land, too, played a prominent part in the Maccabean revolt.
It was the fate of the Gileadites to meet the first shock of the Syrian onslaughts and the rolling tide of Assyrian invasion. The Gilead hill country appears to have bred a bold, independent people, but kindly and hospitable. Its intricate country formed a refuge for royalty expectant or in eclipse. Saul's son, Ishbosheth, was here made king by Abner. To its friendly shelter Absalom fled before the anger of his father and abode three years, and David, too, when Absalom's rebellion was at its height, found harbourage and a kindly welcome. It was men of Jabesh-Gilead who risked their lives to recover the bodies of Saul and his sons from the walls, or market-place of Beth-Shan (Beisan). From his home amongst the Gilead hills Elijah emerged to become one of the world's great spiritual leaders, and twice at least did Jesus visit the region—the land beyond Jordan. To Josephus it was Peraea, a land of small provinces whose names re-echoed the cen tres in which Greek colonists had established themselves during the reign of the Seleucidae. Gilead had as chief cities in Old Testament times, Mahanaim, Succoth, Penuel, Mizpeh, Jazer, Ramoth-Gilead, Jabesh-Gilead, and in later times Pella (Fihl), Gerasa (Jerash) and others. Ramoth and Mahanaim were stations of two out of three of Solomon's commissariat officers. The coun try was later extensively and intensively Romanized, as architec tural monuments witness, and it is difficult, apart from excavations still to be undertaken, to determine where the Old Testament cities of Gilead lie under their Roman covering. Ramoth-Gilead especially has been sought in a variety of places.
The balm associated with Gilead is probably to be identified with mastic, the resin furnished by the Pistachia Lentiscus. Gilead is now part of the new territory of Trans-Jordan under British mandate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-L. Oliphant, Land of Gilead 0880); C. R. Conder, Bibliography.-L. Oliphant, Land of Gilead 0880); C. R. Conder, Heth and Moab (1883) ; S. Merrill, in Hasting's Dict. Bible; T. K. Cheyne in Encyc. Biblica (bibs.) ; G. A. Smith, Hist. Geog. of the Holy Land (1895, etc.) ; C. Steuernagel, "Der Adschlun," Zeitsch. Deutsch. Pal. Vereins, 47 (1894). (E. Ro.)