Adullam (, ) is an ancient ruin once numbered among the thirty-six cities of Canaan whose kings "Joshua and the children of Israel smote" (Joshua 12:7–24). After that, it fell as an inheritance to the tribe of Judah and was included in the northern division of the Shephelah "lowland" cities of the land of Judah (Joshua 15:35). Adullam is mentioned multiple times in the Hebrew Bible, including events featuring David who took refuge at Adullam, escaping King Saul. At this time Adullam was close to the land of the Philistines.
The current site is also known by the Arabic name Khurbet esh-Sheikh Madhkur, 9 mi. (15 km.) northeast of Bayt Jibrin, and was built upon a hilltop overlooking the Elah valley, straddling the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, and with its suburban ruin, , lying directly below it.Survey of Israel, Map 15-11 "Zurif", 1962.[:File:15-11-Zurif-1962.jpg] By the late 19th century, the settlement, which had been a town, was in ruins.; On Palestine Exploration Fund Map: Hebron (Sheet XXI), the ruin of Khurbet 'Aid el Ma appears directly to the north of Khurbet esh-Sheikh Madhkur, in the valley below. The ancient ruin is distinguished by its many razed structures lying in a field the size of a football field, interspersed with terebinths, directly alongside a small paved road that runs parallel to the main Roglit – Aderet road: see Survey of Western Palestine, 1878 Map, Map 21: IAA, Wikimedia commons, as surveyed and drawn under the direction of Lieut. C.R. Conder and H.H. Kitchener, May 1878. Victor Guerin believed that there was once an Upper Adullam and a Lower Adullam. The hilltop ruin is named after Madkour, one of the sons of the Sultan Beder, for whom is built a shrine (wely) and formerly called by its inhabitants Wely Madkour..
The hilltop is mostly flat, with cisterns carved into the rock. The remains of stone structures which once stood there can still be seen. Sedimentary layers of ruins from the old Canaanite and Israelite eras, mostly potsherds, are noticeable everywhere, although olive groves now grow atop of this hill, enclosed within stonewall enclosures. The villages of Aderet, Aviezer and Khirbet al-Deir are located nearby. The ruin lies about south of moshav Neve Michael. The site has been surveyed archaeologically and was partially excavated in 2015.
Main archaeological sites; identification Kh. esh-Sheikh Madkur (Palestine grid: 1503/1175) sits at an elevation of above sea-level and is thought by modern historical geographers to be the "upper Adullam", based on its proximity to Kh. 'Id el-Minya. The name of this latter site is believed by historical geographers to be a corruption of the word "Adullam." The identification of the upper site with the biblical Adullam is still inconclusive, as archaeological evidence attesting to its Old Canaanite name has yet to be found. In the late 19th century, the hilltop ruin and its adjacent ruins were explored by French explorer, Victor Guérin, who wrote:
[Upon leaving the hilltop ruin, Khirbet el-Sheikh Madkour], at 11:20 [AM], we descend to the east in the valley. At 11:25 [AM], I examine other ruins, called Khirbet A'id el-Miah. Sixty toppled houses in the wadi formed a village that still existed in the Muslim period, as [proven by] the remains of a mosque there observed. In antiquity, the ruins that cover the plateau of the hill of Sheikh Madkour and which extend in the valley were probably one and the same city, divided into two parts, the upper part and the lower part.
While Guérin does not specifically say that the site in question was the ancient Adullam, he holds that and are to be recognised as the same city; the upper and the lower. The site is maintained by the Jewish National Fund in Israel, and archaeological surveys and partial excavations have been conducted. The site features ancient caverns, cisterns carved into the rock, and a Muslim shrine known as .
, also known as (Palestine grid: 1504/1181), is the site recognised as Adullam proper,, citing M. Clermont-Ganneau. being now a tell at the southern end of , an extension of the Elah valley. The site was first recognised as the biblical Adullam by French archaeologist Clermont-Ganneau in 1871, based on its location, a close approximation of the name and the ceramic finds it yielded. The ruin sits at an elevation of above sea-level. The ruin is overgrown with vegetation and trees on the northern flanks of the mountain whereon lies . Razed stone structures, a stone water trough, and the shaft of a stone column can still be seen there. Palestine Exploration Fund surveyor, C.R. Conder, mentions having seen in an ancient well having stone water-troughs round it.
Earlier attempts at identification have led some to call other cave systems by the name of "Cave of Adullam." Early drawings depicting the so-called "Adullam cave" have tentatively been identified with the cavern of Umm el-Tuweimin, and the cave at Khureitun (named after Chariton the Ascetic),Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement of 1875, pp. 173–174. although modern day archaeologists and historical geographers have rejected these early hypotheses as being the Cave of Adullam,C.R. Conder, Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement of 1875, p. 145. and have accepted that is the Adullam of old.
It has been pointed out that , if indeed it is the biblical Adullam, lies only southwest of Timnah, a site mentioned in Genesis, ch. 38, as being visited by Judah when he went up from Adullam to shear his sheep.
History Chalcolithic period Surface finds of late Chalcolithic pottery have been recovered from Tel Adullam and the archaeological site at the foot of the tell. Further evidence of human activity from this period has not been discovered through excavation.
Late Bronze Age, Iron Age and Hebrew Bible
The "Adullam" mentioned in the Hebrew Bible is thought to be identical with Tell Sheikh Madkhur., who wrote: "The term Shephelah is used in the Talmud to mean the low hills of soft limestone, which, as already explained, form a distinct district between the plain and the watershed mountains. The name Sifla, or Shephelah, still exists in four or five places within the region round Beit Jibrîn, and we can therefore have no doubt as to the position of that district, in which Adullam is to be sought. M. Clermont Ganneau was the fortunate explorer who first recovered the name, and I was delighted to find that Corporal Brophy had also collected it from half a dozen different people, without knowing that there was any special importance attaching to it. The title being thus recovered, without any leading question having been asked, I set out to examine the site, the position of which agrees almost exactly with the distance given by Jerome, between Eleutheropolis and Adullam—ten Roman miles." The so-called "Biblical period", for time reference-sake, has been referred to by historians and archaeologists as the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, meaning, the Late Canaanite and Israelite periods, respectively. A.F. Rainey recognized Adullam (Kh. esh-Sheikh Madhkûr) as a Late Bronze Age site.
By the Iron Age, Adullam is referred to in the Hebrew Bible as being one of the royal cities of the Canaanites, and is listed along with the cities Jarmuth and Socho as occupying a place in the region geographically known as the Shefelah, or what is a place of transition between the mountainous region and the coastal plains.
It was here that Judah, the son of Jacob (Israel), came when he left his father and brothers in Migdal Eder. Judah befriended a certain Hirah, an Adullamite. In Adullam, Judah met his first wife (unnamed in the Book of Genesis), the daughter of Shuah.
During the period of the Israelite conquest of the land of Canaan, Adullam was one of many city-states with independent and sovereign kings. According to the same biblical source, the king of Adullam was slain by Joshua and the Israelites during their conquest of the land. The immediate lands were, by what was thought to be a "divine act" of casting lots, given as a tribal inheritance to the progeny of Judah.;
More than 400 years later, the scene of David's victory over Goliath in the Elah valley was within a short distance from Adullam, at that time a frontier village. Although David was elevated and allowed to sit in King Saul's presence, he soon fell into disrepute with the king and was forced to flee.
David sought refuge in Adullam after being expelled from the city of Gath by King Achish. The Book of Samuel refers to the Cave of Adullam where he found protection while living as a refugee from King Saul. Certain caves, grottos and sepulchres are still to be seen on the hilltop, as well as on its northern and eastern slopes. It was there that "every one that was in distress gathered together, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented." There, David thirsted for the well-waters of his native Beth-lehem, then occupied by a Philistine garrison. A party of David's mighty-men of valor went and fetched him water from that place, but, when they returned, David refused to drink it.
In the 10th-century BCE, Adullam was thought to have strategic importance, prompting King David's grandson, Rehoboam (c. 931–913 BCE), to fortify the town, among others, against Ancient Egypt. According to Israeli historian Nadav Na'aman, this was not a fortress in the real sense, but only a town inhabited by a civilian population, although it functioned as an administrative military center in which a garrison was stationed and food and armor stored.
Assyrian and Chaldean conquests In the late 8th-century BCE, the Book of Micah recalled the cities of the lowlands of Judah during a time of Assyrian encroachment in the country: "I will yet bring unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah, him that shall possess thee; he shall come even unto Adullam, O glory of Israel.", following the interpretation of the verse by Rashi.
Sennacherib, during his third military campaign, despoiled many of the cities belonging to Judah. The Assyrian period was followed by the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, a time marked by general unrest and the eventual deportation of the inhabitants of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian army in the sixth century BCE. Adullam, as with other towns of the region, would not have gone unaffected.
Persian period The only record of Adullam for this time-period (c. 539–331 BCE) is taken from the Hebrew canonical books, specifically the account of Nehemiah who returned with the Jewish exiles from the Babylonian captivity, during the reign of Artaxerxes I. According to Ezra, the acclaimed author of the book,Among the 24 books of the Hebrew canon, the Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah are numbered as one book, and which, according to Babylonian Talmud (Baba Bathra 15a), was compiled by Ezra the Scribe. some of these returnees had settled in Adullam. According to Nehemiah, the postexilic community that resettled in Adullam traced their lineage to the tribe of Judah.
The political entity that was established in Judea at the time was that of a vassal state, as Judea became a province of the Persian Empire, governed by a satrap.
Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods Few records abound for the site during the classical period. In 163 BCE, it was in Adullam that Judas Maccabaeus, the principal leader of the Maccabean Revolt during a time of foreign dominion in the country, retired with his fighting men, after returning from war against the Idumaeans and the Seleucid general, Gorgias.2 Maccabees 12:32–38; Josephus (Antiquities 6.12.3.; 8.10.1.) Adullam stood near the highway which later became the Roman road in the Valley of Elah, which road led from Jerusalem to Beit Gubrin.