Cave of the Patriarchs

The Cave of the Patriarchs stands in the Old City of Hebron over the cave that the Book of Genesis says Abraham bought as a family tomb. Tradition holds it to contain the graves of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah.

The rectangular enclosure above it was raised by Herod the Great between 31 and 4 BCE. The Sasanian Persians sacked it in 614, and after the Arab conquest of 637 it was roofed and turned into a mosque.

Crusaders made it a church after taking Hebron in 1100, and in 1119 a monk reopened the buried cave and claimed to find the patriarchs' bones, drawing pilgrims of all three Abrahamic faiths. Saladin retook the city in 1188 and restored it as a mosque, in which form it passed through Mamluk and Ottoman rule.