Helbon

Fat; i.e., “fertile”, (Ezek. 27: 18 only), a place whence wine was brought to the great market of Tyre. It has been usually identified with the modern Aleppo, called Haleb by the native Arabs, but is more probably to be found in one of the villages in the Wady Helbon, which is celebrated for its grapes, on the east slope of Anti-Lebanon, north of the river Barada (Abana).

(fertile), a place mentioned only in (Ezekiel 27:18) Geographers have hitherto represented Helbon as identical with the city of Aleppo, called Haleb by the Arabs; but there are strong reasons against this, and the ancient city must be identified with a village within a few miles of Damascus still bearing the ancient name Helbon, and still celebrated as producing the finest grapes in the country.

hel'-bon (chelbon; Chelbon, Chebron): A district from which Tyre received supplies of wine through the Damascus market (Eze 27:18); universally admitted to be the modern Halbun, a village at the head of a fruitful valley of the same name among the chalk slopes on the eastern side of Anti-Lebanon, 13 miles North-Northwest of Damascus, where traces of ancient vineyard terracing still exist. Records contemporary with Eze mention mat helbunim or the land of Helbon, whence Nebuchadnezzar received wine for sacrificial purposes (Belinno Cylinder, I, 23), while karan hulbunu, or Helbonian wine, is named in Western Asiatic Inscriptions, II, 44. Strabo (xv.735) also tells that the kings of Persia esteemed it highly. The district is still famous for its grapes--the best in the country--but these are mostly made into raisins, since the population is now Moslem. Helbon must not be confounded with Chalybon (Ptol. v.15, 17), the Greek-Roman province of Haleb or Aleppo.

W. M. Christie