Jebel Aqra (Arabic: جبل الأقرع, romanized: Jabal al-ʾAqraʿ, [ˈd͡ʒæbæl al ˈʔaqraʕ]; Turkish: Kel Dağı) is a limestone mountain located on the Syrian–Turkish border near the mouth of the Orontes River on the Mediterranean Sea.
A mound of ash and debris remains; an archaeological investigation was broken off because of military restrictions imposed due to the mountain's border location.
Texts discovered there in the 1920s, including the Baal Cycle, showed its residents considered the peak of Mount Sapan to house the lapis and silver palace of their storm god Baʿal (lit.
The form Baʿal Zephon was worshipped widely: his temple at Ugarit held a sandstone relief dedicated to him by a royal scribe in Egypt and the king of Tyre called on him as a divine witness on a treaty with the emperor of Assyria in 677 BCE.
Tiles from the Greco-Roman sanctuary at the site, stamped with the god's name, were reused in the Christian monastery that came to occupy the eastern, landward slopes of Kazios.
[citation needed] Greek theophoric names Kassiodora and Kassiodorus,[24] equally a "gift of Kasios", recall a vow of one or both parents made to ensure fertile conception.
[25] Christian hermits were drawn to the mountain; Barlaam challenged its demons by founding a monastery near the treeline on its eastern slopes, and Simeon Stylites the Younger stood for forty years on a pillar near its northern flanks until his death in 592.