Ras el Ain ( ar, راس العين) (Lit. Fountain-head; The head of the Spring) is a place abounding with immense fountains, with reservoirs and aqueducts south of Tyre, and ca. south of

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

, in the

South Governorate South Governorate ( ar, الجنوب; transliterated: al-Janub) is one of the governorates of Lebanon. South Lebanon has a population of 500,000 inhabitants and an area of 929.6 km2. The capital is Sidon. The lowest elevation is sea-level ...

(Liban-Sud), in the municipality of Batouliyat. The place lies in a very green and fertile plain, about one kilometer from the sea coast. It is a popular tourist destination, owing to its

artesian well An artesian aquifer is a confined aquifer containing groundwater under positive pressure. An artesian aquifer has trapped water, surrounded by layers of impermeable rock or clay, which apply positive pressure to the water contained within th ...

s fed by underground springs and collected in stone reservoirs that have been maintained through the ages. It has been the main source of water for ancient Tyre since Phoenician days. One of the reservoirs fed the arched aqueducts of the

Roman period The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...

, and which once stretched all the way to Tyre. Remains of these aqueducts, exhibiting strong and excellent masonry, with round arches and a continuous

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

above them, can still be seen today, and a short stretch of the original aqueduct is still used today in Tyre's present-day waterworks. A-343 - Ras al-Ayin in South Lebanon

A reference to this place is mentioned in the 3rd century

Mosaic of Rehob The Mosaic of Reḥob, also known as the Tel Rehov inscription and Baraita of the Boundaries, is a late 3rd–6th century CE mosaic discovered in 1973, inlaid in the floor of the foyer or narthex of an ancient synagogue near Tel Rehov, south of ...

as ''Rosh Mayya'' (Fountain-head). In 1881, the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described it: "A village built of stone, containing about 100

Metawileh Lebanese Shia Muslims ( ar, المسلمون الشيعة اللبنانيين), historically known as ''matāwila'' ( ar, متاولة, plural of ''mutawālin'' ebanese pronounced as ''metouali'' refers to Lebanese people who are adherents ...

, in the plain, surrounded by gardens of figs, pomegranates, mulberries, and olives. Five mills in the village, and near, in working order,a good many ruined." They further noted about the water-ways: This is the spring-head which supplied ancient Tyre by means of a long aqueduct. The springs are enclosed in four strongly-built reservoirs, as at Tabghah, by means of which the water is raised to a height of from fifteen to twenty feet, in order that an aqueduct with a slight fall should be able to carry it to the neighbourhood of Tyre. The walls of these reservoirs are of large well-dressed

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

-work, and vary in thickness. The stones are joined and coated on the inside with strong cement. The principal reservoir is octagonal in shape, with sides of irregular length. Its diameter measures sixty-six feet, and it is twenty-five feet above the ground. The retaining walls are very thick, and show traces of modern repairs in one part. They have so gentle a slope that it is not difficult to ride up on to the broad border eight feet wide round the spring."Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, pp
69
70

References

Bibliography

* * (p
432
* (pp
203
208) * * *

External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 1:
IAAWikimedia commonsRas el-Ain, in the Tyre District
Lebanon {{Tyre District Populated places in Tyre District Shia Muslim communities in Lebanon Archaeological sites in Lebanon Roman aqueducts outside Rome Geography of Lebanon

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