Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/78

62 PART II.

THE WESTERN WATERSHED OF THE JORDAN AND DEAD SEA BASIN.

THE BASIN OF WADY ET TEIM AND NAHR EL HASBANY.

The head of the Jordan basin lies about twenty-four miles beyond the present limits of the Palestine Exploration Survey, among the sources of the Wady et Teim, and surrounded by the villages of Medukhah, Bekka, and 'Ain el Arab. Near it passes the high-road from Beirut on the Mediterranean, over Mount Lebanon to Damascus by way of the Wady el Kuril. The wady runs to the Barada river, and divides the northern flanks of Mount Hermon from the southern extremity of Anti Lebanon.

The Wady et Teim drains the western slope of Mount Hermon ; and, as the Nahr el Hasbany, it comes into the Palestine Exploration Survey. It has on its right bank the Jebel ed Dahar, a narrow ridge on a portion of the water- parting between the Jordan basin and the Kasimiyeh. South of Dibbin, the plain of Merj 'Ayun lies between the Kasimiyeh- Jordan waterparting and the southern prolongation of Jebel- ed-Dahar. The waterparting skirts the western side of the Merj, and is continued along the southern prolongation of the Kasimiyeh, as described in the notice of that basin. The Kasimiyeh rises more than forty miles further north than the Wady ed Teim, on the flanks of the highest summit of Mount Lebanon ; from whence it descends along the eastern base of that mountain, till it passes the Crusaders' fortress of Belfort now Kulat esh Shukif. There it turns abruptly westward to the sea, and falling within the limits of the Survey, it came under notice at the commencement of this investigation.

The Nahr Hasbany and the Wady et Teim are without a record in ancient geography. They are discoveries made