Abana River

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Abana (or Amanah, classical Chrysorrhoas) is the more important of the two rivers of Damascus, Syria mentioned by the Book of Kings (2 Kings 5:12), and is now generally identified with the Barada (i.e. cold). Together with its companion river, the Pharpar, the stream runs from west to east across the plain of Damascus, which owes to them much of its fertility, and the stream loses itself in marshes, or Meadow lakes, as they are called, on the borders of the great Arabian desert. As the Barada rises in the Anti-Libanus, and escapes from the mountains through a narrow gorge, its waters spread out fan-like, in canals or rivers, the name of one of which, the Banias river, retains a trace of Abana.

John MacGregor, who gives an interesting description of them in his Rob Roy on the Jordan, affirmed that as a work of hydraulic engineering, the system and construction of the canals, by which the Abana and Pharpar were used for irrigation, might be considered as one of the most complete and extensive in the world. In the Bible, Naaman exclaims that the Abana and Pharpar are greater than all the waters of Israel.