Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Gerasa

​Gerasa, the modern Gerash or Jerash, a city of Palestine, in the Decapolis of Peræa, situated amid the mountains of Gilead, about 1757 feet above the level of the sea, at a distance of 20 miles from the Jordan and 21 miles to the north of Philadelphia. Of its origin nothing is known. Its name is never mentioned in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament the only reference to its existence is the alternative reading of Gerasenes for Gadarenes in Matthew viii. 28. From Josephus we learn that it was captured by Alexander Jannæus, burned by the Jews in revenge for the massacre at Cæsarea, and again plundered and depopulated by Annius the general of Vespasian; but in spite of these disasters it was still in the 2d and 3d centuries of the Christian era one of the wealthiest and most flourishing cities of Palestine. As late as 1121 it gave employment to the soldiers of Baldwin II., who found it defended by a castle built by a king of Damascus; but at the beginning of the following century the Arabian geographer Yakut speaks of it as deserted and overthrown. The ruins of Jerash, discovered by Seitzen about 1806 and since then frequently visited and described, still attest the splendour of the Roman city. They are distributed along both banks of the Kerwan, a brook which flows south through the Wady-ed-Dêr to join the Zerka or Jabbok; but all the principal buildings are situated on the level ground to the right of the stream. The town walls, which can still be traced and indeed are partly standing, had a circuit of not more than 2 miles, and the main street was less than half a mile in length; but remains of buildings skirt the road for fully a mile beyond the south gate, and show that the town had far outgrown the limit of its fortifications. The most striking feature of the ruins is the profusion of columns, no fewer than 230 being even now in position: the main street is a continuous colonnade, a large part of which is still entire, and it terminates to the south in a forum of similar formation. Among the public buildings still recognizable are a theatre capable of accommodating 6000 spectators, a naumachia or circus for naval combats, and several temples, of which the largest was probably the grandest structure in the city, possessing a portico of Corinthian pillars 38 feet high. The desolation of the city is probably due to earthquake; and the absence of Moslem erections or restorations would seem to show that the disaster took place before the Mahometan period.