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Lake Phiala, near the Lake of Huleh, is also situated to the west of the Jordan valley. Its origin, according to Tristram, is volcanic. Schumacher, "The Jaulân," Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1886 and 1888; and Across the Jordan, London, 1886. Tristram, Land of Moab, London, 1873; and Land of Israel, 1866. Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien, 1773.
The Jarmuk, or Sheriat-el-Mandhur, anciently the Hiero-max, drains the water, not only from Gaulonitis or Jaulan, the country immediately east and south-east of the sea of Tiberias, but also from almost the whole of the Hauran. At its mouth it is 130 feet wide, and in the winter it brings down a great body of water into the Jordan.
Opposite rise the eastern heights of the Jaulân, with almost level top and steep flanks, furrowed by rocky ravines, descending precipitously to a strip of smooth, green shore. Behind us the mountains are more broken and varied in form, lifted into sharper peaks and sloped into broader valleys.
At the northern extremity the generally wild and rugged tract of the Jaulân and Haurân, called in the Bible Trachonitis, and still farther to the eastward the plateau of the Lejah, with its row of volcanic peaks sloping down to the vast level of Bashan, is covered throughout nearly its whole extent by great sheets of basaltic lava, above which rise at intervals, and in very perfect form, the old crater-cones of eruption.
Here, again, no excavations have been carried out, and we do not even know what was the purpose of these structures. It is, however, probable that these trilithons were not, like the dolmens, tombs, but served some religious purpose, possibly connected with the worship of the menhirs. In the Jaulân, where the rock consists of a slabby type of basalt, there are many dolmens of fine appearance.
In summer, however, it shrinks up into an inconsiderable brook, having no more remote sources than the perennial springs at Mazarib, Dilly, and one or two other places on the plateau of Jaulan.
The general resemblance of these Arabian volcanoes to those of the Jaulân is unquestionable; and as they are connected with each other by sheets of basaltic lava at intervals throughout the land of Moab, it is tolerably certain that the volcanoes lying at either end of the chain belong to one system, and were contemporaneously in a state of activity.
The volcanic hills which rise above the plateau are described in detail by Schumacher. Of these, Tell Abû Nedîr is the largest in the Jaulân. It reaches an elevation of 4132 feet above the Mediterranean Sea, and 1710 feet above the plain from which it rises; the circumference of its base is three miles, and the rim of the crater itself, which is oval in form, is 1331 yards in its larger diameter.
Seetzen left Aleppo in 1805 for Damascus. His first expedition led him across the provinces of Hauran and Jaulan, situated to the S.E. of that town. No traveller had as yet visited these two provinces, which in the days of Roman dominion had played an important part in the history of the Jews, under the names of Auranitis and Gaulonitis. Seetzen was the first to give an idea of their geography.
Extinct Craters in the Jaulân, north-east from the Sea of Galilee, called Tell Abû en Nedâ and Tell el Urâm, with a central cone. The highest point of the rim of one of the craters reaches a level of 4042 feet above the sea. A lava-stream issues forth from Abû en Nedâ, and unites with another from a neighbouring volcano.
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