CISON (Heb. Qîšōn, "Tortuous"). - Biblical name of the torrent that rolled in its murky whirlpools the corpses of the army of Sisera defeated by the troops of Deborah (Judg. 4:7, 13; Ps. 83:9) and those of the priests of Baal killed by order of the prophet Elijah in the vicinity of the torrent (1 Kings 18:40).
The biblical data apply precisely to the present-day Nahr el-Muqatta', which has Mount Tabor to the northeast, Megiddo and the place of Elijah's sacrifice to the south, and Hārōšeth (el-Harī-ṭijjeh) to the west at the exit from the plain of Esdraelon. The river, which rises west of Tabor and the mountains of Gilboa, is always dry in summer, but during the rainy season, receiving from the north the torrential waters of the hills of Nazareth and of Bethlehem of Galilee, and from the south those of Megiddo and of Carmel, becomes marshy and remains impassable. After el-Harī-ṭijjeh, in the narrow passage that links the plain of Esdraelon to the coastal plain, in the last 10 km. of its course (40 km), it becomes perennial, fed by numerous springs; but before emptying into the sea, slowed by the sand dunes, it becomes a lagoon amid small groves of reeds, oleanders and rose bushes. At Tabor, on Apr. 16, 1799, the Arab-Turkish army, routed by the French, suffered in the whirlpools of the river the same fate as that of Sisera.
Donato Baldi