Aaiha

Aaiha (or Aiha) (Arabic: عيحا, romanized: ʿAyḥā) is a village, plain, lake, and temporary wetland situated in the Rashaya District and south of the Beqaa Governorate in Lebanon. It is located in an intermontane basin near Mount Hermon and the Syrian border, approximately halfway between Rashaya and Kfar Qouq. The village sits c. 3,750 feet (1,140 m) above sea level and the small population is predominantly Druze. Wild wheats Triticum boeoticum and T. urartu grow in this area, also used for farming goats. There is a nearby tomb of a Muslim saint and a Roman ruins thought to be a temple or citadel that is now totally destroyed

The village is situated on a ridge next to Aaiha plain, an intermittent lake that forms a near perfect circular shape, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter and enclosed by mountains and the ridge on the west. The plain is completely level with no particularly visible outlet for water, which occasionally floods the basin to a depth of several feet to form a lake. The creation of the lake is assisted by fountains that well up through a large chasm in the northwest and a smaller fissure in the southeast. It has also been noted that when the waters subside, they drain down these fissures. Investigative potholers have claimed a permanent stream flows underneath these fissures.

The smaller southeastern fissure was investigated and found to be 15 feet (4.6 m) in diameter, 8 feet (2.4 m) to 10 feet (3.0 m) deep with no sign of water at the bottom. Robinson did not record any investigation of the larger one to the northwest of the plain, which was not flooded at the time, during the summer. The villagers suggest the underground stream leads to and is the original source and fountain of the Hasbani river, the most northern source of the Jordan River. This is notably similar to that described in the tale of "The Chaff of Phiala" in The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus. Josephus tells a geographically inaccurate tale of a cavern in an ancient place called Phiala or Phiale (modern Birkat Ram), discovered to be the initial source of the Jordan by Philip the Tetrarch of Trachonitis. He threw chaff into Phiala and found it was carried by the waters to

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).