Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 136, April 2016, pp. 1-35. | Page 15

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"And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went
down, what is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion? And he
said unto them, if ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my
riddle." (The Bible, Judges, 14:18) (Khalaf-von Jaffa, 2006).
The Asiatic or Persian Lion (Felis leo persica), this proud symbol of strength and
courage, must have been abundant in Biblical times. According to the Bible, in
which it appears under several different names, the lion must have been quite
common at that time. The species appears often on mosaics from the Roman and
Byzantine periods. The thickets of the Jordan River were a preferred habitat. It
became extinct after the time of the Crusaders. The last mention of them being by
Arab writers of the 13th and 14th century, when lions still existed near Samaria
and other areas. One specimen has been hunted at Lejun, near Megiddo, in the
thirteenth century. Alfaras Bin Shawer, Wali of Ramla, wrote that he saw eleven
dead lions after heavy rain in Ramla and the area of Nahr (River) Al-Auja in
1294. Sanqarshah Almansouri, Naib of Safad (1304-1307), killed in the coastal
forests 15 lions. At this time, lions certainly roamed over parts of Syria and
Arabia and along the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq, where in ancient times
lions figured prominently in the great royal hunts in Assyria. It is clear that lions
survived in Mesopotamia until the nineteenth century, and there are several
references to them by travellers of that period (Khalaf-von Jaffa, 2006). The last
recorded Palestinian Lion was in 1630 at Al-Shari‟a area (Jordan River) to the east
of Jericho.
In Al-Jaleel (Galilee) there is a hill called Tel el Assad (Lion Hill in Arabic), and
there is a village nearby called Deir el Assad (Monastery of the Lion), that may
refer to a quite late occurrence of this species. Bie‟r Al-Sabe‟e (Well of the Lion) is
a famous Palestinian city in the Naqab (Negev) desert (Khalaf-von Jaffa, 2006).

Persi an Lions in Persia:
The Persian lion is now extinct in Iran, and there are no confirmed modern
records of lion presence in central or eastern Iran, or Baluchistan, but it's believed
that lions that still live in India are the same as lions that once were living in Iran.
According to one story, the last Iranian lion was killed by Zelolsoltan, the son of
Naseredin Shah (before 1919); but on the other hand, the last reliable report of
lion presence in Iran was a 1942 observation of a pair near Dezful, by American
engineers building a railway (Heaney 1943, Harrington 1977, Khalaf-von Jaffa
2006).
The lion motif dates from ancient times in Iran, and it is found on innumerable
objects of daily use such as seals, vessels, horse equipment, weapons, and in the
decoration of palaces, tombs, and temples as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C.
The lion was well known to the Achaemenians (6th-4th century B.C.) as it is
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 136 – April 2016