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Judea....
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Judea is a mountainous and arid region, much of which is
considered to be a desert. It varies greatly in height, rising to an
altitude of 1,020m (3,346 ft) in the south at Mount Hebron, 19 miles (30 km)
southwest of Jerusalem, and descending to as much as 400m (1,312ft) below
sea level in the east of the region. |
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Geographers divide Judea into several distinct regions:
the Hebron hills, the Jerusalem saddle, the Bethel hills and the Judean
desert east of Jerusalem, which descends in a series of steps to the
Dead
Sea. In ancient times the hills were forested and the
Bible records
agriculture and sheep farming being practiced in the area. Animals are still
grazed today, with shepherds moving them between the low ground to the
hilltops (which have more rainfall) as summer approaches. The region dried
out over the centuries and much of the ancient tree cover has since
disappeared. |
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Archaeological evidence of human
settlement dates back 11,000 years in the case of the city of
Jericho,
believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world. In
historic times, the region was inhabited by a number of peoples, most
famously the Israelites. Judea is central to much of the narrative of the
Torah, with the Patriarch
Abraham said to have been buried at Hebron in the
Tomb of the Patriarchs.
In historic times, Judea was ruled by the Kingdom of Judah and later by the
Kingdom of Judea, a client-kingdom of the Seleucid dynasty of
Persia. It
gained its independence briefly in the mid-2nd century BC and again from 140
BC. During the 1st century BC Judea lost its autonomy to the
Roman Empire by
becoming first a client kingdom, then a province of the Empire. |
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The region was conquered by Muslim
Arabs in 640 but fell
to the Crusaders in 1099. Arab control was restored in 1291. In 1516, the expanding
Ottoman Empire took control of Judea, which it retained until the
British defeated the Turks at the Battle of
Megiddo on the site of the
Biblical Battle of Armageddon.
It then became part of the British Mandate of
Palestine, with the territory
of Judea split between British-ruled Palestine and the autonomous Emirate of
Transjordan (a territorial unit within the Mandate,
later to become the independent Kingdom of Jordan). |
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