Tribe of Dan
The Tribe of Dan (דן "Judge", Standard Hebrew Dan, Tiberian Hebrew Dān) is one of the Hebrew tribes, founded by Dan, son of Jacob and Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant (Genesis 30:4).
The tribe originally settled in the central coastal area of of the promised land (Joshua 19), in proximity to the area controlled by the Philistines. Samson, the legenday warrior against the Philistines, was a member of this tribe. Later the tribe moved to the northern part of the land (Judges 18), apparently due to military pressure by the Philistines. There, its principal settlement there was Tel Dan. The move involved a religious act of definace, when the Dan people installed their own independent legacy of Levite clergy.
When Jeroboam led the revolt of the northern tribes and established the Kingdom of Israel, Dan was one of the tribes in it, and so it is one of the "lost tribes" exiled by the Assyrians.
The original territory of Dan, before the move to the North, is approximately the metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. Hence this metropoling is known in Hebrew as Gush Dan - the Dan area.
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