Traditionally held to be a part of Nubia, or Ethiopia (because it is in Kush, or Cush, which is traditionally held to be in Ethiopia), though textual as well as archaeological evidence shows this to be false.
According to Genesis 2:11, the river Piyshon, one of the four rivers of Eden, encircles it; it was rich in gold and bedelium and carnelian. Piyshon is in Mesopotamia; Eden is usually reckoned to be in Mesopotamia too, rather than in Ethiopia.
Genesis 10:7 names Chaviylah as a son of Kush and a brother of Nimrod (cf 1 Chronicles 1:9), thus fixing it in Babylonia. Egyptian texts refer to a Kushu as the southern Negev desert, and it is plausible, though unlikely - as per my notes to EDEN, CHEVRON and elsewhere, there are legends that link EDEN with Chavah (Eve) and the Cave of Machpelah at Chevron.
Genesis 10:29 names him as a son of Yaktan, residing in the eastern hill-country between Mesha and Sephar, both of which are identified as being in Arabia, though it is likely that they were the names of kings, and thence their territories, rather than places in themselves.
Genesis 25:18 states that "Yishma-El's sons inhabited the land from Chaviylah to Shur, which is east of Mitsrayim (Egypt) on the way to Ashur, having settled to the east of his brothers." An interesting quote if one allows for the anachronism of Ashur, which did not yet exist, in Yishma-El's time, by that name. Ashur was anyway in the southern part of Padan Aram, on the Mesopotamian fringe, and the Beney Yishma-El were Edomites, inhabiting the Judean desert south and south-east of the Dead Sea, much further south than Ashur, in Arabia Deserta. As to the linking of Shur and Ashur, see below.
1 Samuel 15:7 makes it a district of the Beney Amalek themselves; Amalek later became an Edomite chieftain, and Amalekites are known from Sinai to Saudi Arabia; so again the location in the Arabian desert is evidenced.
The text of 1 Samuel 15 states that "Then Sha'ul cut the Amalekites to pieces, all the way from Chaviylah to Shur on the borders of Egypt." As with the previous reference to Shur, which this seems almost to plagiarise as though one mis-reference can justify another, the geography is skew-wiff; the reference is not to Ashur at all, but to another place nearer the Egyptian border. It is also highly unlikely that Sha'ul chased anyone into Assyria, given that the Samuel text makes clear he scarcely left the area around his royal palace at Giv'ah (Gibeah), or his winter quarters at Gil-Gal on the river Yarden, at any point in his life.
Josephus believed Chaviylah to be the ancient land of Hodu (India), with Piyshon as the Ganges. As usual with Josephus, a mild case of cognitive dissonance synthesised with pure fantasy. Even if he was correct about the general area (which he wasn't), from his description of the geography, he meant the Indus.
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