Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, after Israel (the ten tribes) and Judah became two independent states. It was founded by Omri, on a commanding site, about 5 miles NW. of Shechem, and near the middle of Palestine. It stood on the long flat summit of an isolated hill (1450 feet), that was reached by a succession of terraces, and itself commanded a magnificent view on all sides. Consequently it was easy to make it a place of considerable strength; the Syrians indeed laid siege to it unsuccessfully more than once during the following reigns. But about 721 B.C. it fell before the three years' persistency of the Assyrian monarchs, Shalmaneser and Sargon. These potentates carried away nearly all the Hebrew inhabitants of Samaria and the country of the Israelites, to which it had by then given its own name, captive into Babylonia. In their place they sent Assyrian colonists, from Babylon, Hamath, Sepharvaim, and Cuthah; hence the Jews call the Samaritans 'Cithæans.' The new settlers, whilst retaining a good deal of their heathen forms of worship, adopted many of the characteristic religious practices and beliefs of the remnant of the Israelites amongst whom they dwelt. When the Jews returned from the Captivity and set about the rebuilding of the temple under the leadership of Ezra, the Samaritans came desiring to participate in the work. But the Jews rejected their assistance, and would not permit them to have any part or share in the revival of the worship of Jehovah, on the ground that they were unorthodox and condoners of idolatry. This of course caused an estrangement between the two sections of the nation, and the Samaritans tried to prevent the Jews from fortifying their new city. The breach seems to have grown suddenly wider after the expulsion in 432 B.C. from Jerusalem of a member of the high priest's family and a son-in-law of Sanballat, the civil governor of the Jews. Not many years later the Samaritans, augmented from time to time by numbers of renegade Jews, built (409 B.C.) on Mount Gerizim beyond Shechem a sanctuary to Jehovah intended as a rival to the temple at Jerusalem. This converted them into bitter enemies, so that henceforward, at all events for very many years, the 'Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans,' and the Samaritans none with the Jews. At some time during the growth of this enmity between the two peoples, the Samaritans introduced the revised Pentateuch of Ezra as their religious code-book, and became extremely strict and puritanical in the observance of its laws. Of the prophets and other historical books of the Old Testament they had no knowledge. Thus they began a separate religious development from that of the Jews. In contrast to the Jews, they had no belief in the resurrection or in a Messiah, and gave no tithes to their priests; but in common with the Jews, especially the Talmudic sects, they practised circumcision, observed the Sabbath, kept up synagogues, and entertained beliefs as to the existence of demons and other superstitions. Yet they never made much real headway; and at the present day there do not survive more than 150 of them, collected at Náblus, the ancient Shechem. The Samaritan language is an archaic Hebrew, or rather Hebrew-Aramaic, dialect; and in it are written a very ancient version of the Pentateuch (see below), certain chronicles, hymns, and books of religious devotion (see Schirer's Jewish People).
Samaria was taken by Alexander the Great, and colonised by Macedonians and Hellenised. They fortified it, and it grew and prospered. Twice it was besieged and taken by the successors of Alexander—viz. by Ptolemy I. (312), and by Demetrius Poliorcetes (circa 296). The Jewish captain John Hyrcanus laid siege to it (circa 110 B.C.), and at the end of a year destroyed it utterly. Nevertheless the Samaritans joined the Jews in offering fierce resistance to the Romans: they entrenched themselves on Mount Gerizim, and only submitted after a desperate and bloody siege. Their city was again destroyed; but the consul Gabinus ordered it to be rebuilt. Augustus gave it to Herod the Great, who refounded it under the name of Sebaste. The Samaritans seem to have been involved in the 'dispersal' of the Jews, as they were well known at Byzantium, at Rome, in Egypt, and elsewhere. Yet some of them remained in the old city, and in 529 revolted against the rulers of the eastern empire. On the ruined site of the ancient place, now called Sebastiya, there still exist parts of a colonnade of the age of Herod, remains of a temple to Augustus, and an old crusading church (now a mosque) built over the tomb of John the Baptist. The tombs of six or eight (Omri, Ahab, Jehu, &c.) of the kings of Israel and those of the prophets Obadiah and Elisha were also at Samaria. See Memoirs of Palestine Survey.