Q
Gabala, a titular see of Syria Prima. Ten bishops
of this city are known between 325 and 553, the most
famous being St. Hilary, writer and martyr (fourth
century), and Severian, first the friend but later the
enemy of St. John Chrysostom (see Echos d'Orient,
IV, 15-17; IX, 220). Since the sixth century Ga-
bala has been an exempt archdiocese directly depend-
ent on the Patriarch of Antioch. The diocese is again
noticed in the tenth century (Echos d'Orient, X, 97
and 140). When the Arabs took possession of the
city in 639, they found there a Byzantine fortress,
beside which the Caliph Moaviah erected a second.
According to the Arabian geographer Yaqout, the
Greeks recovered the city from the Mussulmans in 969,
who recaptured it in lOSl. The crusaders entered
Gabala in 1109, and it was henceforth the seat of a
Latin diocese. For the Latin titulars see Le Quien,
III, 1169; Ducange, "Les families d'outre-mer", 795-
796, and especially Eubel, I, 267; II, 173. Saladin
took the city in 1187, and in 1517 it fell into the
hands of the Sultan Selim. Gabala, at present called
Djebeleh, is a caza of the vilayet of Beirut, and
numbers 3000 inhabitants, all of whom are Mussul-
mans. There are to be seen here a small harbour,
numerous ruins, sepulchral chambers, and ancient
Christian chapels hewn in the rock, a Roman theatre,
baths and mosques, one of w-hich, formerly the cathe-
dral, contains the tomb of the Sultan Ibrahim-Eddem,
who died in 778.
CuiNET, Syrie, Liban et Palestine, 165-168; Baedeker, Pa- lestine et Syrie, 386.
S. Vailh6.
Gabbatha (Aramaic xn3J) is the Aramaic appella- tion of a place in Jerusalem, designated also under the Greek name of Lithostrotos. It occurs only in John, xLx, 13, where the Evangelist states that Pontius Pi- late " brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judg- ment seat, in the place that is called Lithostrotos, and in Hebrew Gabbatha." The name "Gabbatha" is certainly an Aramaic word, for by " Hebrew" St. John, like other New Testament writers, denotes the Ara- maic language which was spoken commonly at the time in Judea. It is not a mere translation of " Litho- strotos", which properly means the tessellated or mosaic pavement whereon stood the judgment-seat, but which was extended to the place itself in front of Pilate's prstorium, where that pavement was laid. This is proved by the practice of St. John, who else- where gives Aramaic names as distinctly belonging to places, not as mere translations of the Greek. This is proved also by the fact that "Gabbatha" is derived from a root (2J "back", "elevation"), which refers, not to the kind of pavement, but to the " elevation " of the place in question. It thus appears that the two names "Lithostrotos" and "Gabbatha" were due to different characteristics of the spot where Pilate delivered Our Lord to death. The Aramaic name was derived from the configuration of that spot, the Greek name from the nature of its pavement. Efforts have been made by commentators to identify " Gabbatha" either with the outer court of the Temple, which is known to have been paved, or with the meeting-place of the Great Sanhedrin, which was half witliin, half without the Temple's outer court, or again wifli the ridge at the back of the House of the Lord; but these efforts can-
not be considered as successful. The only thing that
can be gathered with certainty from St. John's state-
ment (xix, 13) is that " Gabbatha" denotes the usual
place in Jerusalem, where Pilate had his judicial seat,
and whither he caused Jesus to be brought forth, that
he might deliver in His hearing, and in that of the
Jewish multitude, his formal and final sentence of
condemnation.
Kn.\benbauer, In Joannem (Paris. 1898); Calmes, Evangile selon St. Jean (Paris, 1904); Le Camus, Life of Christ (tr.. New York, 1908); Nestle in Hast., Diet, of the Bible, s. v. Gab- batha.
Francis E. Gigot.
Gaboon (G.\bdn), Vicariate Apostolic of, for- merly called the Vicariate Aposlnlic of the Two Guin- eas. — The name Gaboon (Gabao) was originally given by the Portuguese to the estuary on which stands the town of Libreville, and to a narrow strip of territory on either bank of this arm of the sea. In the days of the slave trade it was merely a trading station on the Coast of Guinea which at that time extended from the Senegal to the mouth of the Congo River. At the present time the name of Guinea for this territory and the ecclesiastical title "The Two Guineas" have gone out of use both in the civil and the religious sense, and Gaboon designates the northern portion of French Congo, south of the Equator and lying between the Atlantic ocean and longitude 12 east of Paris. It is coextensive with the basin of the Ogowai River, to which should be added several small subsidiary streams as the Muni, the Konio, and the Rembo- Nkomi. Its surface though broken and uneven is at no point of great elevation, and is covered by a great dense, tropical forest interrupted only by some rocky plains in the south. The only roads are the tracks used by the natives, along which caravans travel on foot. The rivers are often blocked by rapids, so that navigation is both uncertain and hazardous. The climate is sultrj', humid, and subject to storms, but the temperature remains almost stationary; the rainy season lasts from September to May. On the whole it is a healthy climate for men of temperate lives, and the mortality there is one of the lowest on the West- African coast. The population of Gaboon is very mixed, Gaboon being the geographical terminus of the migration drawn from the interior by trade. No doubt man}' of the races become broken up on the way, but those that reach the coast are slowly absorbed among the earlier settlers there. Indeed many of these tribes are semi-nomadic by habit, and change the sites of their ^^llages as soon as the lands in their vicinity have become exhausted by crop-growing. It thus comes to that pass every four or five years a new ethnographical map of the country is necessary.
However it is possible to divide the peoples into several groups. Lender the first group may be in- cluded the old slave-trading races that have been established a long time on the Coast. Of theee the most important people are the Mpongwe, dwelling along the Gaboon estuary; they are mentioned in the eighteenth century by Dutch navigators. As a race they are intelligent and keen and enjoy an undoubted ascendancy over the other black races. They are, moreover, gentle and hospitable, too hospitable perhaps. They easily fall victims to European vices.
