Ain Jalut

Ain Jalut or Ayn Jalud () is a spring in Israel, southeast of Afula. It was the location of the Battle of Ain Jalut, considered a major turning point in world history. The name "Ain Jalut" means the Spring of Goliath ().
History
The Itinerarium Burdigalense (586) notes "ibi est campus, ubi David Goliat occidit" in reference to a location just before Scythopolis. Yaqut al-Hamawi mentions Ain Jalut as "a small and pleasant town, lying between Nablus and Baisan, in the Filastin Province. The place was taken by the Rumi (Crusaders), and retaken by Saladin in 579 (1183 CE)." In the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, the Mamluks defeated the Mongol army of Hulagu Khan which was under the command of Kitbuqa.
Edward Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine describes 'Ain Jalud as "a very large fountain, flowing out from under a sort of cavern in the wall of conglomerate rock, which here forms the base of Gilboa. The water is excellent; and issuing from crevices in the rocks, it spreads out at once into a fine limpid pool, forty or fifty feet in diameter, in which great numbers of small fish were sporting. From the reservoir, a stream sufficient to turn a mill flows off eastwards down the valley." Robinson proposed a connection between the site and the "spring of Jezreel" ( where the "Battle of Gilboa" was fought: "There is every reason to regard this as the ancient fountain of Jezreel, where Saul and Jonathan pitched before their last fatal battle; and where, too, in the days of the crusades, Saladin and the Christians successively encamped."
John Wilson in his 1847 Lands of the Bible wrote that on "a steep descent into the valley north of Jezreel, we unexpectedly came upon a well from which the present village is supplied with water. This, and not the fountain of Ain Jalud, to the east of the village, and at a greater distance from it, visited by Dr. Robinson, we took to be the well of Jezreel noticed in Scripture."
According to the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine in 1882, Victor Guérin stated that the rock from which the fountain springs has been artificially hollowed into a cavern.

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