have been given to the site on account of an Arab legend which claimed that when the prophet Job was sick and eaten of worms, he went and bathed in a hole full of water, which stood where the well now stands, and that, at length, Job recovered his health and his body turned youthful, while the pool turned into a plenteous spring. Well of Nehemiah or Well of Fire It is also known as the Well of Nehemiah, or Puteus ignis (well of fire), in reference to the location in which the sacred fire was hidden during the Jewish captivity in 2 Macc. i. 19-22. Description Robinson, during his tour of Palestine in 1838, describes Bir Ayoub (Job's Well) as being "a very deep well, of an irregular quadrilateral form, walled up with large squared stones, terminating above in an arch on one said, and apparently of great antiquity. There is a small rude building over it, furnished with one or two large troughs." The well, he said, went down to a depth of . A water plant was established near Bir Ayoub, which involved large expenses and a lot of labor. A canal was hewn in the rock, 2 meters high and 0.5 to 1 meter wide. The conduit is more than 600 meters long and passes under the western side of the stream channel at a depth of 23 to 30 meters below the surface. The place can be reached by a staircase that is interrupted in some places. It appears that the purpose of this conduit was to store the water flowing between the layers of limestone. It is located just south of the junction of the three valleys - Wadi er-Rababi, Central and Kidron. Today there is a modern pumping station there, drawing water from a 38 m deep well, whose stone lining may be partially of Roman date. Today the Bir Ayoub Mosque of Silwan stands above the Bir Ayoub well. Gustaf Dalman who visited Palestine in the early 20th-century mentions a custom of the local inhabitants of Silwan to visit Bir Ayoub (Well of Job) and to recite a blessing for the coming rain. During periods of great rain downpour, as happened in February 1927, a gushing spring would issue out of the earth some downstream from the Well of Job. Dispute As of 1901, the identification of the well with Biblical Ein