BOZRAH (bderah),(Heb. bawls-ray?).
1. An ancient city, known also to the Greeks and Romans by the name of Rostra. In most of the passages of the Old Testament where it is mentioned, it appears as a chief city of the Edomites (Is, xxxiv :6; lxiii:t ; Amos i:12; Jer. xlix :13, 22). Since Bozrah lay not in the origi nal territory of the Edomites, f. c., southeast of Judah, but north of the territory of the Ammon ites, in Auranitis, or Hauran, we must suppose that the Edomites had become masters of it by conquest, and that it was afterwards taken from them by the Moabites, who for a time retained it in their possession. Bozrali lay southward from Edrei, one of the capitals of Bashan, and, according to Eusebius, twenty-four Roman miles distant from it. The Romans reckoned Bozrah as belonging to Arabia Deserta Marcell. xiv :27). Alexander Severus made it the seat of a Roman colony, in the acts of the Nicene. Ephesian and Chalcedonian councils mention is made of bishops of Bozrah, and at a later period it became an important seat of the Nestorians (Asseman, liiblioth. Orient. tom. iii. pt. 2, pp. 595. 73o). Abulfeda makes it the capital of the Hauran, in which, according to Burckhardt, it is still one of the most important towns.
The same writer gives a very ample descrip tion of the various ruins, the extent and im portance of which are alone sufficient to evince the ancient consequence of the place. They are of various kinds, Greek, Roman and Saracenic, with traces of the native works in the private dwellings.
These monuments of ancient grandeur serve but to heighten the impression which is created by the present desolation and decay. 'Bozrah,' says Lord Lindsay, 'is now for the most part a heap of ruins, a most dreary spectacle; here and there the direction of a street or alley is discernible, but that is ail. The modern inhabitants—a mere handful—are almost lost in the maze of ruins.
Olive trees grew here within a few years, they told us—all extinct now, like the vines for which the Rostra of the Romans was famous. And such, in the nineteenth century. and under Mos lem rule, is the condition of a city which even in the seventh century, at the time of its capture by the Saracens, was called by Caled "the market place of Syria, Irak and the Iledjaz." "I have sworn by myself, said) the Lord of Hosts, that Bozrah shall become a desolation and reproach, a waste and a curse, and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes!" (ier. xlix :13). 'And it is so' (Kitto). W. Ewing, Hastings' Rib. Dirt., says: El-Bilteir1h seven miles southwest of Tufilch, the ancient Tophel (Dent. i:1), on the main road, north from Petra. suits the geograph ical conditions, but the ruins are insignificant. Another possible identification is A'usur Rachair, These towers lie about fifteen miles southeast of Dibon (Dhibdio, and more probably represent Bezer 'in the wilderness,' the city of refuge (Dent. iv:43), and the Bezer of the Moabite Stone. (See, however, BEZEL) 2. In Jer. xlviii :24 Bozrah is named among the cities of Moab, but it does not hence follow, as Raumcr and others contend, that we should regard them as different cities, for, in conse quence of the continual wars, incursions and conquests which were common among the small kingdoms of that region, the possession of par ticular cities often passed into different hands, Thus Sclah, f. c., Petra, the capital of the Edomites, taken from them by Amaziah, king of Judah (2 Kings xiv:7), is also mentioned by Isaiah (xvi ) among the Moabitish cities. How ever Porter identifies it with Busrah, which lies in the open plain about sixty miles south of Damascus. The vineyards are destroyed.