Mount Carmel

Mount Carmel is seaward extension of the Samara range. It stretches along fourteen miles and is 3-4 miles wide, jutting across the coastal plain to meet the sea at Haifa. Carmel was extolled by the prophets for its beauty and fertility (Songs 7:5, Isa. 35:2, Amos 1:2) and as a place if worship and retreat (I Kings 18:19, II Kings 2:25, Amos 9:3).

Today the mountain is covered with oak and carob groves with several settlements scattered on its broad rolling plateau. In biblical times this plateau was heavily cultivated. A number of villages here, Daliat el Carmel and Isafiya re inhabited by a non Moslem Arab people called the Druze. This sect broke with formal Islam in the 11th century and was founded by Ismael Lebanon, Galilee, Carmel and the Golan heights.

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