Old City of Hebron
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How it came to be
Hebron/Al-Khalil is a town in the West Bank. At its centre is a massive stone enclosure, built about 2,000 years ago, around the cave held to be the tomb of Abraham/Ibrahim and his family. The place became a site of pilgrimage for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
In the Byzantine period a church stood inside the enclosure, and after the Muslim conquest it became a mosque. When the Crusaders took the area in 1100 it was turned into a church again, and the Ayyubid sultan Saladin retook it in 1188. The town stood where caravan routes between southern Palestine, Sinai, eastern Jordan and northern Arabia met.
The old town as it stands was built of local limestone in the Mamluk period, between 1250 and 1517. It is laid out in quarters grouped by ethnicity, religion or trade, with houses whose rooms branch off in a tree-like pattern. Under the Ottomans (1517–1917) upper storeys were added, but the Mamluk layout survived. In July 2017 the World Heritage Committee inscribed the old town and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger at the same time.
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