Jabal al-Lawz


Jabal al-Lawz, also known as Gebel el-Lawz, is a mountain located in northwest Saudi Arabia, near the Jordanian border, above the Gulf of Aqaba at above sea level. The name means 'mountain of almonds'. The peak of Jabal al-Lawz, consists of a light-colored, calc-alkaline granite that is intruded by rhyolite and andesite dikes which generally trend eastward.
Between 1300 and 2200 meters elevation, Jabal al-Lawz has relict Mediterranean woodlands of Juniperus phoenicea, with an understory of Achillea santolinoides, Artemisia sieberi, and Astracantha echinus subsp. arabica.
In discussions about the location of biblical Mount Sinai, Jabal Maqlā is often confused with and misidentified as Jabal al-Lawz by various authors such as Bob Cornuke, Ron Wyatt, and Lennart Moller as shown by local and regional maps and noted by other investigators. In contrast to the real Jabal al-Lawz, the summit of Jabal Maqlā consists mainly of dark-colored hornfels derived from metamorphosed volcanic rocks that originally were silicic and mafic lava flows, tuff breccias, and fragmental greenstones. The middle and lower slopes of Jabal Maqlā consist of light-colored granite, which has intruded into the overlying hornfels. This is the same granite that comprises Jabal al-Lawz. Jabal Maqla is about 7 kilometers to the south, and a few hundred meters lower.
Claims made by some writers, including Bob Cornuke, Ron Wyatt, and Lennart Moller, that Jabal Maqlā, misidentified as Jabal al-Lawz, is the real biblical Mount Sinai have been rejected by such scholars as James Karl Hoffmeier, who details what he calls Cornuke's "monumental blunders". Creationist Gordon Franz has also argued against this identification.
Remains both of pillars and cairns at the site have been described as "similar to rock cairns of uncertain use and often uncertain date found at other sites throughout northern and western Arabia."