Hebron, Israel Tourism

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the north. There is an Islamic university, which is periodically closed by the Israeli authorities on the grounds that it has provoked disturbances.

The monumental shrine erected over the cave in which Abraham was buried makes this one of the great sights for visitors with an interest in scriptural history; but since there are frequently violent clashes between Arabs and Israelis in Hebron it is essential before visiting the town to check up on the current situation with the tourist information office in Jerusalem.

History

Hebron is a very ancient city which has been continuously inhabited since its foundation by the Canaanites. The town's religious tradition goes back to Abraham, a patriarch to both the Jews and the Arabs. When his aged wife Sarah died here he bought from Ephron, son of Zohar, the field called Machpelah to the east of Mamre, together with "the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field" (Genesis 23,17-20) and made it his family burial-place. After Sarah Abraham himself, his son Isaac, Isaac's wife Rebecca, his son Jacob and Jacob's wife Leah were likewise buried here. Jacob's son Joseph set out from Hebron to look for his brothers, who were conspiring to kill him (Genesis 37,14).

After the death of King Saul at the end of the 11th century B.C. the thirty-year-old David was anointed in Hebron as king of Judah. He lived here for seven and a half years, until the conquest of Jerusalem, with his six wives (including Ahinoam from Jezreel, mother of his first-born son Amnon, Abigail from Carmel, mother of Chileab, and Maacah, mother of Absalom). During this period his general Joab killed Saul's general Abner in Hebron (2 Samuel 3,27). It was at the pool of Hebron that David ordered the execution of the two men who had murdered Ish-bosheth, Saul's last son, and had brought his severed head to David, who then had it buried in Abner's grave (2 Samuel 4,7-12).

When the Jews were carried off into captivity in Babylon Edomites from the Negev settled in Hebron in the sixth century B.C., and held the town until Judas Maccabeus attacked and destroyed it in 163 B.C. Herod the Great (37-4 B.C.) rebuilt the town and erected the great building which still stands over the cave of Machpelah.

In the sixth century A.D. the Emperor Justinian built a church over Machpelah, which was converted into a mosque in the seventh century, after the end of Byzantine rule. In 1215 the cave was opened by Crusaders, who, it is reported, saw the remains of the patriarchs. In 1267 the town was taken by the Mameluke Sultan Baibars, and thereafter Jews and Christians were banned from entering the sacred precinct - a prohibition which continued into modern times. It required a special firman from the Sultan to allow the Prince of Wales to enter the mosque in 1862.

At that time Hebron had a population of just under 10,000, including 500 Jews. The Jewish community increased in size at the end of the 19th century when Chassidic Jews from Eastern Europe settled in the town, and there was a further influx from Russia in 1925. In 1929, however, many Jews were killed in a pogrom. After the Six Day War, in 1967, Jews were able to enter the shrine of Machpelah for the first time in 700 years, but at the cost of frequent conflicts between Arabs and Jews.

The town

The old town of Hebron has a markedly Oriental character. In the little streets round the Haram el-Khalil are numbers of shops and booths selling foodstuffs, pottery and glass. Northeast of the old town is the settlement of Qiryat Arba, founded in 1968, in which some 700 Israeli families live apart from the Arab population behind barbed wire barricades.