Golan

Golan is a city of refuge named in the Hebrew Bible, set in Bashan east of the Jordan River and allotted to the half-tribe of Manasseh. It was the most northerly of the three cities of refuge east of the Jordan and was given to the Gershonite Levites. The town is later known from the first century historian Josephus and from Eusebius, whose early fourth century Onomasticon describes it as a large village that gave its name to the surrounding country. Its exact site has never been settled: most researchers place it at Sahm el-Jaulan in Daraa Governorate, Syria, while Zev Vilnay proposed in 1954 the ruin of ej-Jelebine near the Hula Valley. Josephus is the first to use the name for a wider district, which he calls Gaulanitis, and the later name Golan Heights was not used before the 19th century.