High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sanballat the Horonite or Sanballat I (in Neo-Assyrian Aramaic, Sinballidh or "The god Sin has vivified") was a Samaritan leader and official of the Persian Achaemenid Empire who lived in the mid to late fifth century BC. He is best known from the Book of Nehemiah, which casts him as one of the chief opponents of the Jewish governor Nehemiah during the latter`s efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and carrying out his reforms among the Jews. He was called "the Horonite," (another possible "the Harranite") and was associated with Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian. His home was evidently at Samaria.