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Havilah () refers to both a land and people in several books of the Bible; one is mentioned in Genesis 2:10–11, while the other is mentioned in the Generations of Noah (Genesis 10:7).
In Genesis 2:10–11, Havilah is associated with the Garden of Eden. Two individuals named Havilah are listed in the Table of Nations as descendants of Noah. The name also appears in , defining the territory of the Ishmaelites. Extrabiblical literature mentions Havilah as the source of precious jewels used by the Amorites.
The exact location of Havilah is debated, with various scholars suggesting southwest of the Arabian Peninsula or Somalia.
In addition to the region described in chapter 2 of Genesis, two individuals named Havilah are listed in the Table of Nations. The Table lists the descendants of Noah, who are considered ancestors of . Besides the name mentioned in , another is mentioned in the Books of Chronicles (). One person is the son of Cush, the son of Ham. The other person is a son of Joktan and descendant of Shem.
The name Havilah appears in , where it defines the territory inhabited by the Ishmaelites as being "from Havilah to Shur, opposite (or "east of" according to other translations) Biblical Egypt in the direction of Assyria"; and in the Books of Samuel (), which states that king Saul smote the Amalekites who were living there, except for King Agag, whom he took prisoner.
One passage mentions Israelites being sent to Assyria and Halah. According to the monk Antoine Augustin Calmet, Halah most likely indicates Havilah.
There is an extra-biblical tradition found in the Kitab al-Magall (Clementine literature) and the Cave of Treasures. According to this tale, in the early days after the Tower of Babel, the children of Havilah, son of Joktan built a city and kingdom, which was near to those of his brothers, Sheba and Ophir.
Albright goes on further to illustrate:
The Havilah (or Hawilah in Hebrew) which Albright is referencing is Hawila, Sudan, a place found in the Khartoum region of the country.
Saadia Gaon's tenth-century Arabic translation of the Hebrew Bible substitutes Havilah with Zeila in Somalia. The ancient city of Avalites is thought to have been a demonym for Havilah. Wilhelm Gesenius identified Avalites as a city belonging to the sons of Cush. Benjamin Tudela, the twelfth-century Jewish traveler, claimed Zeila region was the land of Havilah confined by Al-Habash on the west. Zeila (Havilah) had been sacked by the Portuguese governor of Old Goa, Lopo Soares de Albergaria, while its Harla chief Mahfuz invaded Abyssinia in 1517.
Havilah has also been associated with the ancient Macrobians kingdom, whose inhabitants according to Franz Delitzsch, had close ties with the neighbouring people of Southern Arabia.
Hawiye could be an abbreviation of Havilah. A Somali clans who inhabit central and southern Somalia. A Cushite people, they are said to have colonised parts of the Arabian Peninsula and from there returned to Somalia (cf. Genesis 25:18 Havilah).
Augustus Henry Keane believed that the land of Havilah was centered on Great Zimbabwe and was roughly contemporaneous with what was then Southern Rhodesia. The Gold of Ophir – Whence Brought and by Whom? (1901) Havilah Camp was the name of the base camp of a group of British who studied the Great Zimbabwe ruins from 1902 to 1904. In the end, they rejected any biblical connection with the settlement.Richard Nicklin Hall, Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia: An Account of Two Years' Examination Work in 1902-4 on Behalf of the Government of Rhodesia. London: Methuen & Co., 1905.
W. W. Müller, in the 1992 Anchor Bible Dictionary, believes that biblical Havilah refers to two different locations on western Arabia.
The Arabian hypothesis is further strengthened by former curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum James A. Sauer's identification of the Pishon, which is described as encircling Havilah in the Bible,Genesis 2:11 as the Wadi al-Rummah,Wadi al-Rummah a dry channel which begins in the Hijaz Mountains, near Medina, to run northeast to Kuwait. Sauer makes this identification based on geology and history.James A. Sauer, "The River Runs Dry," Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 22, No. 4, July/August 1996, pp. 52–54, 57, 64 In addition, Bible commentators believe that Havilah should be Arabian because the Ishmaelites, who settled between Havilah and Shur, were ancestors of Arabs.
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