SICHAR (Gr. Συχάρ). - A small town in central Palestine, mentioned only once, in Io. 4:5, as the native place of the Samaritan woman, converted by Jesus at the nearby well of Jacob. The locality is generally identified with the present-day village of 'Askar, situated on the southern slopes of Mount Hebal, about 1 km. from Jacob’s well.
The pilgrim of Bordeaux (333), Eusebius, St. Jerome (Onom., 164,1), and the mosaic map of Madaba seem to confirm this identification, distinguishing S. from the city of Shechem, which in their time was an abandoned and deserted site. But archaeological excavations carried out at Tell el-Balāqah, the site of ancient Shechem, have shown that in the Roman period it was still inhabited, though no longer designated by the name of Shechem, but rather by the Aramaic name Sycchora, corresponding in Greek to the evangelical S. Later, the inhabitants, having moved farther east, retained for their new village, built around a copious spring, the name of Sycchora transformed into the Arabic 'Askar, which in tradition came to be regarded as the native place of the Samaritan woman and as a locality distinct from Shechem.