Abilene

Abilene was a district on the eastern slope of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, named after its chief city Abila. It lay in the Suk Wady Barada between Baalbek and Damascus, approximately eighteen miles northwest of Damascus. In the New Testament it appears only in Luke 3:1, where it is identified as the territory administered by Lysanias as tetrarch at the time John the Baptist began his ministry. It was subsequently incorporated into the growing kingdom of Herod Agrippa I.