CISON (Hebr. Qīšōn, “winding”). - Biblical name of the torrent that rolled in its muddy whirlpools the corpses of Sisera’s army, 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 near the torrent (I Kings 18, 40).
The biblical data apply precisely to the present-day Nahr el-Muqatta', which has Tabor to the north-east, Megiddo and the site of Elijah’s sacrifice to the south, and Hārōšeth (el-Harī-ṭijjeh) to the west, at the outlet of the plain of Esdrelon. 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 Bethlehem of Galilee, and from the south those of Megiddo and Carmel, it becomes marshy and remains impassable. After el-Harī-ṭijjeh, in the narrow passage linking the plain of Esdrelon to the coastal plain, in the last 10 km of its course (40 km), it becomes perennial, fed by numerous springs; but before flowing into the sea, slowed by the sand dunes, it becomes a lagoon amid small groves of reeds, oleanders, and rosebushes. At Tabor, on 16 Apr. 1799, the Arab-Turkish army, routed by the French, suffered in the river’s whirlpools the same fate as Sisera’s army. Donato Baldi