Land of, was the ancient name of that portion of Palestine which lay to the west of the Jordan; the part beyond the Jordan eastward being distinguished by the general name of Gilead. Canaan included both those districts known amongst the Greeks and Romans as Philistia and Phoenicia; and was inhabited by the descendants of Canaan, from whom it took its name. From being promised to Abraham and his seed, it was known beforehand to the patriarchs as the Land of Promise; and when it came to be possessed by the Jews, it went successively under the names the Land of Israel, the Land of Judah, and the Holy Land. For their idolatry seven distinct Canaanitish tribes were given over to the Israelites to be annihilated; but some of them seem to have escaped and incorporated themselves with the invaders, while according to tradition others fled and emigrated to the coast of Africa. In St Athanasius's time the Africans still pretended they were descended from the Canaanites; and it is said that the Punic tongue was almost entirely the same with the Canaanitish and Hebrew languages. The colonies which Cadmus carried into Thebes in Boeotia, and his brother Cilix into Cilicia, appear to have sprung from the stock of Canaan; and the isles of Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, Cyprus, Corfu, Majorca and Minorca, Gades, and Ebusus, are also supposed to have been peopled by the Canaanites. Besides those seven nations which were put to the sword, there were other tribes of Canaanitish origin scattered along the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who were not driven out by the children of Israel; and hence this tract seems to have retained the name of Canaan long after those other parts of the country, which were inhabited by the Israelites, had lost that appellation. The Greeks called the tract along the Mediterranean, inhabited by the old Canaanites, Phoenicia; and the more inland parts, inhabited partly by Canaanites and partly by Syrians, Syrophoenicia; and hence the woman said by St Matthew to be a woman of Canaan is said by St Mark to be a Syrophoenician by nation, as she was a Greek by religion and language. See Palestine.