The name Qasr al-Abd can be translated as Castle of the Slave or Servant, a title which may refer to Hyrcanus himself, who, as governor, was a "servant of the king". The biblical Book of Nehemiah mentions "Toviyya, the Servant, the Ammonite" (). According to Josephus, Hyrcanus left Jerusalem after losing a power struggle, and established his residence east of the Jordan, apparently on the ancestral lands of the Tobiad dynasty. The area was then a border zone between Judea and Arabia, and Josephus mentions that Hyrcanus was in constant skirmishes with Arabians, killing and capturing many. He took his own life in 175 BC, following the ascent to power in Syria of the strongly anti-Jewish Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, fearing the latter's revenge for his support for the Egyptian Ptolemies against the Syrian Seleucids. The building was unfinished at the time of his death (as indicated by several incomplete carvings and columns on site), and was seized by Antiochus Epiphanes. Josephus mentions the "beasts of gigantic size carved on it" (Antiquities of the Jews, Book XII, 230), and carved tigers or lions are still perfectly preserved on the remains visible today.