IIAURAN ; Sept. A6paarts, and 'Opavi TIS ; Vulg. Auran), a province of Palestine, east of the Jordan, embracing a portion of the ancient kingdom of Bashan. Ezekiel is the only one of the sacred writers who mentions it. In describing the northern border of the 'promised land,' he gives as one of its landmarks Hazor-hatticon, which is by the coast of Haatran' (ch. xlvii. 16) ; and in defining the east border he says, Ye shall measure from between (pmn ; Sept. civailecou; Vulg. a'e meclio) Haaran, and from between Damascus,' etc. (ver. 18). These statements would seem to indicate that Hauran lay on the north of Damas cus, or at least extended as far north as that city and this, as we shall see below, was quite correct.
The Greek province of .4iiranit1r was one of the four into which the kingdom of Bashan \vas divided. The names of these provinces were all Semitic, though the Greeks remodelled them. Thus Ba tanaea is li.V1 ; Gaitlanites, Trathonites, WIZ-1U (called in the Bible =IN) ; and Auranitis, ron (see Joseph. Anti q. iv. 5, 3 ; Bell. Yud. 3, 5 ; iv. 7, 3 ; Lightfoot, Qp.p. 1.. 316 • ii. 474 ; Reland, Pal. pp. 199, sq. ; younzal 'of Sacred Literature for July 1854). These were doubtless the most ancient divisions of the country, inhabited by distinct tribes ; but when brought under one rule, perhaps by Og, the name Basilan was given to the whole (Deut. iii.) Yet the names of the older provinces were still occasionally used (Dent. iv. 43 ; Kings iv. 13 ; Ezek. xlvii. 18). On the conquest of the country by the Assyrians, that political unity which the Jews maintained was de stroyed, and the old sectional names came again into common use (Josephus, /.c.) Of the four pro vinces Gaulanitis lay on the west, along the banks of the Jordan ; Batanaea on the extreme east, bordering on Arabia ; Trachonitis on the north, between the former two, and adjoining the terri tory of Damascus ; and Auranitis, south of Trach onitis, including the whole of that fertile plain which extends from Mezareib to Sulkhud, and from the Lejah to Um el-Jemal In the midst of it lie the ruins of its once great and splendid capital Busrah (Porter's Damascus, ii. 250, sq.) On a careful examination of the references in ancient authors to this whole region, we find that very often the name of one province is applied to the whole. Thus the evangelist Luke says Philip \vas tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis ;' and we know that under the latter name were comprised both Auranitis and Batanaea (Luke iii. ; cf. Joseph. Antiq. xvii. H. 4). So again Josephus
uses the name Batanaea to designate the whole of Bashan (Ant iq. iv. 7. 4). Eusebius employs it in the same way (Onomast., s. v. Basan ; Reland, Pal. p. 197, sq.) By Arabic authors the name Haurdn ( .
Heb. ; Greek, AI:Taal-iv) is used in the same general way. Bohadin, in his Life of Saladin, makes it include the whole country north of Perm. (ed. Schultens, p. 7o) ; and Abulfeda describes it as a wide region under the rule of Damascus, to ward the south, in which are large towns and villages ; Busrah is its capital, and in it are Edhra, Zera, and other towns' (Index Geog. vitam Saladini, s. v.) In the present day the name Hauran is usually applied to the whole country reaching from the plain of Damascus to Bozrah— that is, to all Bashan. But the .natives, when speaking more accurately, confine it to the plain south of the Lejah—that is, to the small province called by the Greeks Auranitis (Porter's Damascus, 1.c.) In the more extended signification it appears to have been used by Ezekiel ; and hence he rightly represents it as running as far to the north as Damascus. Hauran in this case was not equi valent to the Greek province Auranitis, which lay much farther southward, but to the kingdom of L'ashan.
Lightfoot (o c.), Reland (1. c.), and other more recent geographers (Wells, Geogra-phy of the O. I:, i. 298 ; and even Winer, Realuverterbuck, s.v. Havran), have overlooked the above facts, and have thus been led into serious errors. The Hauran of Ezekiel included the wild and rugged province of Lejah (TaAcHorirrts) ; the mountain ous district of Batanaea, where the oaks of 13ashan still flourish around the ruins of its old cities ; and the district of Hauran proper. The latter is one uniform plain of surpassing fertility. Not a rock or stone can be seen except on the little conical hills that appear here and there on its surface. It is thickly studded with ruined towns and viliages, numbering above a hundred in all—most of them now a'eserted, though no/ ruined ! The houses in them are most remarkable. The flat roofs, mas sive doors, and even window-shutters are of stone, and in niany cases perfect. The dates on some of them shew that they are older than our era ; and their simple and massive style of architecture seems to indicate that these are the very citics referred to so emphatically by Moses (Deut. iii. 5 ; see Hand book for S. anti' P., ii. 507, sq. ; Graham in Cam bridge Essays, 160; Stanley's Lectures on the Yew ish Church, 213, sq.)—J. L. P.