Banias - Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Banias - Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Banias or Banyas (; ; Judeo-Aramaic, Medieval Hebrew: פמייס, etc.;Jastrow, M, 1903, p. 1185 and 1189, or webpage. ) is a site in the Golan Heights near a natural spring, once associated with the Greek god Pan. It had been inhabited for 2,000 years, until it was abandoned and destroyed following the Six Day War.How modern disputes have reshaped the ancient city of Banias, Aeon: "In June 1967, the penultimate day of the Six Day War saw Israeli tanks storm into Banias in breach of a UN ceasefire accepted by Syria hours earlier. The Israeli general Moshe Dayan had decided to act unilaterally and take the Golan. The Arab villagers fled to the Syrian Druze village of Majdal Shams higher up the mountain, where they waited. After seven weeks, abandoning hope of return, they dispersed east into Syria. Israeli bulldozers razed their homes to the ground a few months later, bringing to an end two millennia of life in Banias. Only the mosque, the church and the shrines were spared, along with the Ottoman house of the shaykh perched high atop its Roman foundations." It is located at the foot of Mount Hermon, north of the Golan Heights, in the Israeli portion. The spring is the source of the Banias River, one of the main tributaries of the Jordan River. Archaeologists uncovered a shrine dedicated to Pan and related deities, and the remains of an ancient city founded sometime after the conquest by Alexander the Great and inhabited until 1967. The ancient city was mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, under the name of Caesarea Philippi, as the place where Jesus confirmed Peter's confession that Jesus was the Messiah; the site is today a place of pilgrimage for Christians. Read more on Wikipedia
Source: en.wikipedia.org