and by its pool the murderers of Ishbosheth were hanged by David. Except for a small Jewish community Hebron is a Moslem town, and, owing to its connexion with Abraham, is a place of intense Moslem veneration. The town, with its tall stone houses, narrow streets, and the picturesque vaulted bazaars, which display the sheep-skin coats and blown glass for which Hebron is renowned, is a remarkably complete specimen of an Arab city. Characteristic, too, are the figured veils worn by the Hebron women.
Hebron's great monument is the Haram,[1] the sacred area which encloses and surmounts the Cave of Machpelah. The outer wall of the Haram is built to a height of about 40 ft. of very large drafted blocks, apparently of Herodian age, strengthened externally by square buttresses. A flight of steps leads between the old wall and a more recent enclosing wall to the interior of the court; to the left of the sixth step, leading into the outer of the two caves, is a hole in the old wall, by which petitions addressed to Sarah are still thrown by childless women into the cave below. The mosque itself, which occupies the southern side of the Haram, has been adapted by the Arabs from a Crusaders' church of the twelfth century. It stands over the cave; the entrance to the inner cave is sealed, but through a hole in the floor of the mosque a boy is let down at infrequent intervals into the outer cave to collect the petitions which have been thrown in it.
The cenotaphs of Abraham and Sarah occupy two octagonal chapels to the north of the church; those of Isaac and Rebecca are inside the church; those of Jacob and Leah in chambers at the north of the Haram. Ina separate enclosure is the cenotaph of Joseph. All are covered with heavily embroidered palls, and the chapels of Abraham and Sarah are particularly richly decorated.
Noteworthy is the pulpit of the mosque, a noble specimen of twelfth-century Moslem wood carving similar to the pulpit of the Aqsa mosque (cf. § 1. above).
- ↑ See Vincent and Mackay, Hebron: Le Haram El-Khalil, Sépulture des Patriarches, Leroux, Paris, 4to, 1922.
