Rama is supposed to have been built with materials, furnished by the ruins of Lydda, three miles distant; and it is the spot in which our titular saint, St. George, is said to have suffered martyrdom; although, according to most authors, his remains repose in a magnificent temple at Lydda.

Notwithstanding the present desolate condition of Rama, it was, when the army of the Crusaders arrived, a magnificent city, filled with wealth, and abundance of all the luxuries of the East. It was exceedingly populous, adorned with stately buildings, and well fortified with walls and towers.

The Musselmans here reverence the tomb of Locman, the wise; also the sepulchres of seventy prophets, who are believed to have been buried here.

Rama is situated about thirty miles from Jerusalem, in the middle of an extensive and fertile plain, which is part of the great field of Sharon. “It makes,” says Dr. Clarke, “a considerable figure at a distance; but we found nothing within the place except traces of devastation and death. It exhibited one scene of ruin: houses, fallen or deserted, appeared on every side; and instead of inhabitants, we beheld only the skeletons or putrifying carcasses of horses and camels. A plague, or rather murrain, during the preceding year, had committed such ravages, that not only men, women, and children, but cattle of all kinds, and every thing that had life, became its victims. Few of the inhabitants of Europe can have been aware of the state of suffering, to which all the coast of Palestine and Syria was exposed. It followed, and in part accompanied, the dreadful ravages, caused by the march of the French army. From the accounts we received, it seemed as if the exterminating hand of Providence was exercised in sweeping from the earth every trace of ancient existence. ‘In Rama148 there was a voice heard; lamentation and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and could not be comforted, because they were not.’”149