TERRITORY OF THE TRIBE OF GAD

1. GAD
2. GILEAD
3. JABBOK RIVER

The tribe of Gad was descended from Gad, the seventh son of Jacob by Zilpah, handmaid of Leah. Leah considered the birth of Gad to be fortunate, hence his name which, in Hebrew, means “fortune”. During the Exodus from Egypt, the tribe was credited with 40,000 men able to bear arms. Rich in flocks, it sought permission from Moses, along with the tribes of Reuben and the half-tribe of Menasheh, to occupy the district east of the Jordan – permission which Moses granted on the condition that they help the other tribes in the conquest of the territory on the west side of the Jordan. Apparently, according to Numbers 32:34, Gad became the first of the Israelite tribes to receive their tribal territory as described in this passage as well as in Joshua 13:25-28. It consisted of all of Gilead, half of the Kingdoms of Ammon and Heshbon, and parts of Bashan. Among its cities were: Aroer, Atarot, Atrot, Bet Aram, Bet Haran, Bet Nimrah, Betonim, Dibon, Mahanaim, Ramat Mizpe, Shophan, Succot, Yaazer, Yogbehah, and Zaphon.  

---GILEAD

The region of Gilead was allotted mostly to the tribe of Gad with the remainder going to the half-tribe of Menasheh. The town of Ramot Gil’ad, according to Joshua 20:8, became one of the cities of refuge. It was later apportioned to the Levites. Yavesh Gil’ad was the principal city and it was first mentioned in connection with the war between the Benjamites and the other tribes of Israel. Because its inhabitants had refused to march against the Benjamites, 12,000 Israelites were sent against it. All the people of the city were slain except 400 virgins, who were spared to be given as wives to the surviving Benjamites. In the beginning of the reign of Saul the city was attacked by Nahash, King of Ammon, and was forced to apply to Saul for help. The inhabitants of Yavesh Gil’ad remained grateful to Saul for his assistance, and when he and his three sons were killed by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, they went by night, took the bodies from the wall of Beth She’an, brought them to Yavesh, burned them, buried the remains, and fasted seven days. For this deed Yavesh Gil’ad was afterward highly lauded.

During the Islamic period, the territories on the east side of the Jordan, being so close to the Arabian Desert, were one of the first of the ancient Israelite territories to be settled by Arab tribes, and throughout the centuries, both Arab and Jewish Bedouin would traverse the area.

Ajlun (the Arabic name for Gilead) was an important Jewish center in the Middle Ages. In the 12^th century, the Spanish Jewish traveler and explorer Benjamin of Tudela wrote of a Jewish community in Ajlun with a population of 60 families lead by three sheikhs – Zadok, Yitzhak, and Shlomo. For a period of time, the rabbis of Jerusalem debated whether certain parts of the territories east of the Jordan, including Ajlun, were part of the Land of Israel according to halacha, and therefore subject to the laws that can only be observed in Israel. People often expressed their opinions, but one opinion that carried much weight was that of the Palestinian geographer Ashturi Farhi who considered the town as part of Israel. The matter was finally settled at the end of the 16^th century when Ajlun, along with other towns in the area, were officially considered a part of Israel according to halacha. (NOTE: At that time, whether a rabbinic authority was pro or con, no one even discussed the possibility of uprooting Jews from there. And the Jews from there never said that they were there in order to protect Jaffa.)

In 1879, the region was proposed as a place of Jewish settlement by the English adventurer Laurence Oliphant. By that time, Ajlun had long been abandoned but there was still an intermittent Jewish presence in the region among the local Bedouin. Many Jews would come to Jerash, for example, for trade making that town, a major commercial center, a status it retained until the 1920s.

In the 1890s, one of the earliest halutzim, Isaiah Rafalovich, lived for a while in es Salt. During World War I, the Battle of es Salt, one of many battles that were fought in the Gilead region, and fought between the Turks and the Jewish Legion, was among the most decisive battles in the War that allowed the British to take control of Palestine. When the British authorities created Transjordan in 1922, the territories east of the Jordan, including Gilead, became off limits to Jews. Today, in spite of the peace treaty with Jordan, the ban on Jewish residency in the area is still in force.

---JABBOK RIVER

One of the principal tributaries of the Jordan. In Genesis 32:23, it is first mentioned in connection with the meeting of Jacob and Esau after Jacob’s return from Syria, and it was in the river valley that Jacob struggled with the angel. The Jabbok was the scene of an important battle between the Israelites and the Amorites. According to Numbers 21:22-24, Sihon, King of the Amorites, refused to allow the tribes of Israel to pass through his land on their way to Canaan and instead, sent an army against them. “And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from Arnon unto Jabbok…”

Over the centuries, Jewish travelers such as Ashturi Farhi in the 14^th century and Yehoseph Schwarz in the 19^th have identified the river with the Arabic name “Zarqa”. Scholars tend to disagree as to why the river received this name. Schwarz states that the Arabs named it the Zarqa because it touched the fortress of Zarqa on the route between Damascus and Mecca. Today however, the general opinion is that the name "Zarḳa" is given to this river on account of the bluish color of its water. But whatever the origin of this Arabic name, researchers tend to agree that the Zarqa is the Jabbok.

Today, Jews are prohibited from residing in any part of the river valley as they are in the rest of the Kingdom of Jordan.