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al-Khalil (Hebron)

الخليل

A town with a mosque where the tomb of Abraham is said to lie, with graves set facing one another and wooded hills of olive trees around it. 1

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Region
Levant & Iraq
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Overview

al-Khalil: a town with a mosque, in which the grave of Ibrahim is mentioned, and with graves facing one another around it. It has dense mountains with trees like the olive. 2

Al-Umari's visit

Ibn Fadl Allah al-Umari visited it in the year 745 AH. He described its sanctuary and its daily meal, which distributed thousands of loaves to those who came. At the place of the trust's administrator, Nasir al-Din al-Tamimi al-Dari, he saw the Prophetic document concerning the grant of Hebron and Aynun. 3

Connections

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Contains
the Ibrahimi Sanctuary (Haram al-Khalil)

People and things also explored

the Ibrahimi Sanctuary (Haram al-Khalil)

Sources

  1. Al-Idrisi, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2002), 2 vols., p. 363
  2. Al-Idrisi, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2002), 2 vols., p.363
  3. Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar — al-Umari (1924 printing), p.168-176
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “al-Khalil (Hebron)”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/place/al-khalil/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Accessed 2026-10-17.

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Place

Cities, sites and routes on a map that moves through time. Related

the Ibrahimi Sanctuary (Haram al-Khalil)

The great walled sanctuary over the Machpelah cave at Hebron; al-Umari records Abraham buying the plot from Habri for fifty dirhams, then Sarah, Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Jacob and Leah buried within, and Solomon raising the enclosure where a pillar of light touched down. It had no door until the Muslims opened one after the conquest; its masonry holds stones thirty-seven spans long. From a door in the qibla, steps descend to a cramped underground passage the author himself crawled through, ending at a chamber with three grave-markers said to be Abraham, his wife and Isaac; the shrine tombs above stand paired — Isaac and Rebecca in the qibla, Abraham and Sarah under facing domes to the north, Jacob under a lone dome. Al-Harawi tells that in King Baldwin's day a spot collapsed in 513 and Franks entered to find the three prophets' bodies leaning against a wall in worn shrouds with lamps at their heads; the king renewed the shrouds and sealed it. Behind the sanctuary lies a grave ascribed to Joseph, kept outside since a voice cried 'he bears Egypt's tribute'. Every afternoon a simat feeds all comers — over thirteen thousand loaves in one night of 745 — the Crusaders having kept and even enlarged the endowment.