Shiloh and Masada mark the two ends of ancient Israel’s story in its land. Shiloh, in the hills north of Jerusalem, was its first sanctuary, where the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant rested for generations. Masada, a fortress above the Dead Sea, was the last stronghold to fall to Rome after the destruction of the Second Temple.
In this article
Shiloh and the Ark
The Book of Joshua says that the whole congregation of Israel assembled at Shiloh and set up the Tent of Meeting there.1 The prophet Samuel grew up at Shiloh in the care of the priest Eli, and from Shiloh the Ark was carried into battle against the Philistines and captured.2 Jeremiah later pointed to the ruin of Shiloh as a warning to Jerusalem.3 Excavations at Khirbet Seilun have uncovered remains from the Bronze and Iron Ages and later churches built on the site.
The Qur’an remembers the Ark, al-tābūt (ٱلتَّابُوت, the chest), in the story of Israel’s first king, as a sign of his authority:
وَقَالَ لَهُمْ نَبِيُّهُمْ إِنَّ ءَايَةَ مُلْكِهِۦٓ أَن يَأْتِيَكُمُ ٱلتَّابُوتُ فِيهِ سَكِينَةٌ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ وَبَقِيَّةٌ مِّمَّا تَرَكَ ءَالُ مُوسَىٰ وَءَالُ هَـٰرُونَ تَحْمِلُهُ ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةُ ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَـَٔايَةً لَّكُمْ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ ٢٤٨
And their prophet said to them, “Indeed, a sign of his kingship is that the chest will come to you in which is assurance from your Lord and a remnant of what the family of Moses and the family of Aaron had left, carried by the angels. Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.”
Qur’an 2:2484
Masada, the last fortress
Herod the Great built a palace-fortress on the flat summit of Masada, a rock that rises some four hundred metres above the shore of the Dead Sea. After Jerusalem fell in 70 CE, a band of Jewish rebels held out there until the Roman legion besieging them broke through in 73 or 74. The historian Josephus, the only ancient source for the siege, says that the defenders chose death over capture.5 The Roman siege ramp and camps still surround the rock, and UNESCO lists Masada as a World Heritage Site.6
Shiloh and Masada in memory
Shiloh speaks of the beginning of Israel’s worship in the land, Masada of the end of its independence in antiquity. Both are places of memory more than of pilgrimage. The verse gives Shiloh a place in the Qur’an’s own account: the chest that rested there carried ‘assurance from your Lord’ and the legacy of Moses and Aaron, and its return was the sign that God had chosen a king for His people. For Muslims the Ark at Shiloh is part of the history of prophecy that the Qur’an confirms.
Further reading: Saul in the Qur’an, The parting of the ways.