Palestine: Hebron -Tomb of the Patriarchs
Tomb of the Patriarchs is the same as the Ibrahim’s Mosque (see post 15). This is the second most sacred place in Judaism after the amount Temple. There are multiple caves here where supposedly graves of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives are located. The caves are underground and no access to them is allowed, while the cenotaph tombs are above ground inside the building. Patriarch Abraham bought this land for 40 silver shekels when his wife Sarah died, nearly 2000 years BC. King Herod built a massive enclosure (same construction as the Western Wall in Jerusalem), with the interior open to the sky. During Byzantine times, a church was built inside the walls around 570 AD, and then later converted by Muslims into a mosque in the 7th century, then changed into a church again by Crusaders in the 12th century, and then reconverted into a mosque Saladin later in the same century. Israel took control of the building in 1967, and the access to it was completely divided between Jewish and Muslim parts. The Jewish part of the Tomb of the Patriarchs has a several synagogues and views of the cloth-covered tombs, much less hectic then the Muslim side, with religious settlers studying the books in various rooms.
