Beersheba
[key] [Heb.,=seven wells or well of the oath], city, S Israel,
principal city of the Negev Desert. It is the trade center for surrounding
settlements and for Bedouins, who hold
a weekly market in Beersheba. Construction is the city's main industry.
Manufactures include chemicals, textiles, ceramics, glass, diamond cutting,
plastics, and food products. Beersheba is an important rail and road hub for
S Israel. The city was one of the southernmost towns of ancient Palestine;
hence the expression “from Dan to Beersheba,” meaning the
whole of Palestine. It is especially connected, in the Bible, with Abraham,
Hagar, Isaac, Jacob, and Elijah. A well believed to have been dug by Abraham
when he made his covenant with Abimelech is in the city. Beersheba
flourished during the late Roman and Byzantine eras but was deserted soon
thereafter. It was merely a group of wells for Bedouin flocks when the
Ottoman Turks reestablished it c.1900 as an administrative center for Negev
tribes. Beersheba was the first city taken by the British in the Palestine
campaign (1917) of World War I. Under the British mandate (1922–48)
it was a city (Bir-es-Seba) inhabited by about 4,000 Muslim Arabs. Given to
the Arabs in the partition of Palestine (1948), it was retaken by Israel in
the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Its population and economy have grown
considerably since 1989 as a result of immigration from Russia and other
countries that formerly constituted the USSR. Beersheba is the seat of the
Arid Zone Research Institute and the Ben-Gurion Univ. Remnants of a fortress
and shards of the Bronze Age have been found nearby at Tell el-Sheba, the
most ancient site of Beersheba.
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