Shobak

Is the ruins of a Crusader castle called Mons Realis or Le Krak de Montreal that was built in 11 15 by Baldwin and inhabited by 6,000 people. The castle was demolished in the 14th century and the town dwindled. Today a small village struggles below the shadow of the Crusader castle. It is picturesque from descending tunnel to a small subterranean pool.

It was also the location of Solomon’s copper mines (Deuteronomy 8:7-9); (I1 Chronicles 4:16-18). Khirbet Nuhas (Arabic for Copper Ruins) has extensive ruins of mining and smelting. During the Greco-Roman times Nabataeans and Romans worked these copper mines. From ruined campsites, it seems the Romans worked slaves to their deaths. The Byzantine name was The Desert, as according to the Madaba Map.

During Islamic times the roads, mines and villages fell intodisrepair and became occupied by marauding Bedouins. Today it is a dry, barren land which never flows as a river and one of the poorest economic regions in Jordan.