Палестинадағы қасиетті Махпела үңгірі

Holy site in Hebron, Palestine

During the Six Day War of 1967, the entire Jordanian occupied West Bank was seized and occupied by the State of Israel, after which the mosque was divided, with half of it repurposed as a synagogue. Another hypothesis, supported by Samuel b. Meir, Moses b. Nachman, Obadiah Sforno, Moses Mendelssohn, Ernst Rosenmüller, and Samuel David Luzzatto, This hypothesis is supported by the phrasing of some Bible verses, such as , "the cave in the field of the Makhpela . ." The question over the right interpretation of makhpela has been discussed extensively in various Biblical commentaries. Strong's Concordance derives makhpela from kaphal, a verb meaning “to double”.

According to , Abraham's wife Sarah dies in Kiryat Arba near Hebron in the land of Canaan at the age of 127, being the only woman in the Bible whose exact age is given, while Abraham is tending to business elsewhere. Abraham comes to mourn for her. After a while he stands up and speaks to the Biblical Hittites. He tells them that he is a foreigner in their land and requests that they give him a burial site so that he can bury his dead. The Hittites flatter Abraham, call him a Lord and mighty prince, and say that he can bury his dead in any of their tombs. Abraham doesn't take them up on their offer and instead asks them to contact Ephron the Hittite, the son of Zohar, who lives in Mamre and owns the cave of Machpelah which he is offering to buy for "the full price". Ephron slyly replies that he is prepared to give Abraham the field and the cave within it, knowing that it would not result in Abraham having a permanent claim to it. Abraham politely refuses the offer and insists on paying for the field. Ephron replies that the field is worth four hundred shekels of silver and Abraham agrees to the price without any further bargaining. The burial of Sarah is the first account of a burial in the Bible, and Abraham's purchase of Machpelah is the first commercial transaction mentioned. The next burial in the cave is that of Abraham himself, who at the age of 175 years was buried by his sons Isaac and Ishmael. The title deed to the cave was part of the property of Abraham that passed to his son Isaac. The third burial was that of Isaac, by his two sons Esau and Jacob, who died when he was 180 years old. There is no mention of how or when Isaac's wife Rebecca died, but she is included in the list of those that had been buried in Machpelah in Jacob's final words to the children of Israel. Jacob himself died at the age of 147 years. In the final chapter of Genesis, Joseph had his physicians embalm his father Jacob, before they removed him from Egypt to be buried in the cave of the field of Machpelah. When Joseph died in the last verse, he was also embalmed. He was buried much later in Shechem after the children of Israel came into the Promised Land.

In the Ugaritic texts (13th–12th century BCE), three out of the six real estate contracts discovered were for the sum of 400 silver shekels, and the terms of sale in them parallel the Biblical description of the sale of Machpelah. Apparently 400 shekels was a common price for Canaanite real estate transactions in this period.

In 2020, Israeli archaeologists led by David Ben Shlomo (Ariel University) dated pottery from the caves (recovered surreptitiously by local residents in 1981) to the 8th century BCE. Between 31 and 4 BCE, Herod the Great built a large, rectangular enclosure over the cave to commemorate the site for his subjects. It is the only fully surviving Herodian structure from the period of Hellenistic Judaism. Herod's building, with 6 feet (2 m) stone walls made from stones that were at least 3 feet (1 m) tall and sometimes reach a length of 24 feet (7 m), did not have a roof. Archaeologists are not certain where the original entrance to the enclosure was located, or even if there was one. The Piacenza Pilgrim (c. 570) noted in his pilgrimage account that Jews and Christians shared possession of the site.

In 614, the Sasanid Persians conquered the area and destroyed the castle, leaving only ruins; but in 637, the area came under the control of the Arab Muslims and the building was reconstructed as a roofed mosque. The Muslims permitted the building of two small synagogues at the site. During the 10th century, an entrance was pierced through the north eastern wall, some way above the external ground level, and steps from the north and from the east were built up to it (one set of steps for entering, the other for leaving). The Damascene nobleman and historian Ibn al Qalanisi in his chronicle also alludes at this time to the discovery of relics purported to be those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a discovery that excited eager curiosity among all three communities in the southern Levant, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian. Towards the end of the period of Crusader rule, in 1166 Maimonides visited Hebron and wrote, "On Sunday, 9 Marheshvan (17 October), I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the tombs of my ancestors in the Cave. On that day, I stood in the cave and prayed, praise be to God, (in gratitude) for everything." In 1170, Benjamin of Tudela visited the city, which he called by its Frankish name, St. Abram de Bron. He reported:
"Here that there is the great church called St. Abram, and this was a Jewish place of worship at the time of the Mohammedan rule, but the Gentiles have erected there six tombs, respectively called those of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. The custodians tell the pilgrims that these are the tombs of the Patriarchs, for which information the pilgrims give them money. If a Jew comes, however, and gives a special reward, the custodian of the cave opens unto him a gate of iron, which was constructed by our forefathers, and then he is able to descend below by means of steps, holding a lighted candle in his hand. He then reaches a cave, in which nothing is to be found, and a cave beyond, which is likewise empty, but when he reaches the third cave behold there are six sepulchres, those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, respectively facing those of Sarah, Rebekah and Leah, upon which the names of the three Patriarchs and their wives are inscribed in Hebrew characters. The cave is filled with barrels containing bones of people, which are taken there as to a sacred place. At the end of the field of the Machpelah stands Abraham's house with a spring in front of it".

In 1188 Saladin conquered the area, reconverting the enclosure to a mosque but allowing Christians to continue worshipping there. Saladin also added a minaret at each corner—two of which still survive—and added an existing minbar (pulpit) from the Shrine of Husayn's Head near Ascalon to the mosque's interior. Samuel ben Samson visited the cave in 1210; he says that the visitor must descend by twenty four steps in a passageway so narrow that the rock touches him on either hand.

Between 1318 and 1320, the Mamluk governor of Gaza, a province that included Hebron, Sanjar al Jawli ordered the construction of the Amir Jawli Mosque within the Haram enclosure to enlarge the prayer space and accommodate worshipers. In the late 14th century, under the Mamluks, two additional entrances were pierced into the western end of the south western side and the kalah was extended upwards to the level of the rest of the enclosure. A cenotaph in memory of Joseph was created in the upper level of the kalah so that visitors to the enclosure would not need to leave and travel round the outside just to pay respects.</blockquote>

A contemporary traveller, M. Ermete Pierotti, in 1862 described the great jealousy with which the Muslims guarded the sanctuary and the practice of sending petitions to the patriarchs:

After Jordan occupied the West Bank in 1948, no Jews were allowed in the territory and consequently no Jews could visit the tomb. In the 1960s, Jordan renovated the area surrounding the mosque, destroying several historical buildings in the process, among them, the ruins of the nearby Crusader fortress built in 1168.

Following the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the Six Day War, Hebron came under Jewish control for the first time in 2,000 years and the 700 year long restriction limiting Jews to the seventh step outside was lifted. According to the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Major general Rabbi Shlomo Goren's autobiography on 8 June 1967, during the Six Day War, he made his way from Gush Etzion to Hebron. In Hebron he realized that the Arabs had surrendered and quickly made his way to the Cave of the Patriarchs. He shot at the doors of the mosque with his Uzi submachine gun. But when that was ineffective in prying the doors open, he attached chains to his Jeep and the doors, proceeding to pull them down. He entered the mosque and began to pray, becoming the first Jew to enter the compound for about 700 years. While praying, a messenger from the Mufti of Hebron delivered a surrender note to him, whereby the rabbi replied "This place, Ma'arat HaMachpela, is a place of prayer and peace. Surrender elsewhere." The first Jew to enter the burial caves was Michal Arbel, the 13 year old daughter of Yehuda Arbel, chief of Shin Bet operations in the West Bank, because she was slender enough to be lowered into the narrow, wide hole on 9 October 1968, to gain access to the tomb site, after which she took photographs. Israeli settlers reestablished a small synagogue under the mosque. The first Jewish wedding ceremony to take place in it was on 7 August 1968. The stone stairway leading to the mosque was also destroyed in order to erase the humiliating "seventh step". In 1968, a special arrangement was made to accommodate Jewish services on the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement. This led to an attack on worshippers, with a hand grenade being thrown on the stairway leading to the tomb on 9 October; 47 Israelis were injured, 8 seriously. On Yom Kippur eve, 3 October 1976, an Arab mob destroyed several Torah scrolls and prayer books at the tomb. In May 1980, an attack on Jewish worshippers returning from prayers at the tomb left 6 dead and 17 wounded. In 1981, a group of Jewish settlers from the Hebron community led by Noam Arnon broke into the caves and took photos of the burial chambers. Tensions would later increase as the Israeli government signed the Oslo Accords in September 1993, which gave limited autonomy to the PLO in the West Bank city of Jericho and the Gaza Strip. The city of Hebron and the rest of the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank were not included in the initial agreement. The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre committed by Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli American settler in February 1994, left 29 Palestinian Muslims dead and scores injured. The resulting riots resulted in a further 35 deaths. The increased sensitivity of the site meant that in 1996 the Wye River Accords, part of the Arab–Israeli peace process, included a temporary status agreement for the site restricting access for both Jews and Muslims. As part of this agreement, the waqf (Islamic charitable trust) controls 81% of the building. This includes the whole of the southeastern section, which lies above the only known entrance to the caves and possibly over the entirety of the caves themselves. As a consequence, Jews are not permitted to visit the Cenotaphs of Isaac or Rebecca, which lie entirely within the southeastern section, except for 10 days a year that hold special significance in Judaism. One of these days is the Shabbat Chayei Sarah, when the Torah portion concerning the death of Sarah and the purchase by Abraham of the land in which the caves are situated, is read. The Israeli authorities do not allow Jewish religious authorities the right to maintain the site and allow only the waqf to do so. Tourists are permitted to enter the site. Security at the site has increased since the Intifada; the Israel Defense Forces surround the site with soldiers and control access to the shrines. Israeli forces also subject locals to checkpoints and bar all non Jews from setting foot on some of the main roads to the complex and ban Palestinian vehicles from many of the roads in the area. On 21 February 2010, Israel announced that it would include the site in a national heritage site protection and rehabilitation plan. The announcement sparked protests from the UN, Arab governments and the United States. A subsequent UNESCO vote in October aimed to affirm that the "al Haram al Ibrahimi/Tomb of the Patriarchs in al Khalil/Hebron"
was "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories." Israeli authorities have placed restrictions on calling the faithful to prayer by the muezzin of the Ibrahimi mosque. The order was enforced 61 times in October 2014, and 52 times in December of that year. This was following numerous complaints by the Jewish residents who claim that the calls violate legal decibel limits. In December 2009 Israeli authorities banned Jewish music played at the cave following similar complaints from the Arab residents.

The rectangular stone enclosure lies on a northwest–southeast axis, and is divided into two sections by a wall running between the northwestern three fifths, and the southeastern two fifths. The northwestern section is roofed on three sides, the central area and north eastern side being open to the sky; the southeastern section is fully roofed, the roof being supported by four columns evenly distributed through the section. Nearly the entire building itself was built by King Herod and it remains the only Herodian building surviving today virtually intact. In the northwestern section are four cenotaphs, each housed in a separate octagonal room, those dedicated to Jacob and Leah being on the northwest, and those to Abraham and Sarah on the southeast. A corridor runs between the cenotaphs on the northwest, and another between those on the southeast. A third corridor runs the length of the southwestern side, through which access to the cenotaphs, and to the southeastern section, can be gained. An entrance to the enclosure exists on the southwestern side, entering this third corridor; a mosque outside this entrance must be passed through to gain access. At the center of the northeastern side, there is another entrance, which enters the roofed area on the southeastern side of the northwestern section and through which access can also be gained to the southeastern (fully roofed) section. This entrance is approached on the outside by a corridor which leads from a long staircase running most of the length of the northwestern side. The southeastern section, which functions primarily as a mosque, contains two cenotaphs, symmetrically placed, near the center, dedicated to Isaac and Rebecca. Between them, in the southeastern wall, is a mihrab. The cenotaphs have a distinctive red and white horizontal striped pattern to their stonework but are usually covered by decorative cloth. Under the present arrangements, Jews are restricted to entering by the southwestern side, and limited to the southwestern corridor and the corridors that run between the cenotaphs, while Muslims may enter only by the northeastern side but are allowed free rein of the remainder of the enclosure.

The caves under the enclosure are not themselves generally accessible; the waqf have historically prevented access to the actual tombs out of respect for the dead. Only two entrances are known to exist, the most visible of which is located to the immediate southeast of Abraham's cenotaph on the inside of the southeastern section. This entrance is a narrow shaft covered by a decorative grate, which itself is covered by an elaborate dome. The other entrance is located to the southeast, near the mihrab, and is sealed by a large stone, and usually covered by prayer mats; this is very close to the location of the seventh step on the outside of the enclosure, beyond which the Mamelukes forbade Jews from approaching. When the enclosure was controlled by crusaders, access was occasionally possible. One account, by Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela dating from 1163 CE, states that after passing through an iron door, and descending, the caves would be encountered. According to Benjamin of Tudela, there was a sequence of three caves, the first two of which were empty; in the third cave were six tombs, arranged to be opposite to one another. These caves had been rediscovered only in 1119 CE by a monk named Arnoul, after an unnamed monk at prayer "noticed a draught" in the area near the present location of the mihrab and, with other "brethren", removed the flagstones and found a room lined with Herodian masonry. Arnoul, still searching for the source of the draught, hammered on the cave walls until he heard a hollow sound, pulled down the masonry in that area, and discovered a narrow passage. The narrow passage, which subsequently became known as the serdab (Arabic for passage), was similarly lined with masonry, but partly blocked up. Having unblocked the passage, Arnoul discovered a large round room with plastered walls. In the floor of the room, he found a square stone slightly different from the others and, upon removing it, found the first of the caves. The caves were filled with dust. After removing the dust, Arnoul found bones; believing the bones to be those of the biblical Patriarchs, Arnoul washed them in wine and stacked them neatly. Arnoul carved inscriptions on the cave walls describing whose bones he believed them to be. Michal explored the round chamber, but failed to find the square stone in the floor that led to the caves. Michal did, however, explore the passage and find steps leading up to the surface, though the exit was blocked by a large stone (this is the entrance near the mihrab). Findings published in the Israel Exploration Journal in 2020 stated that the pottery dated from the 8th century BCE and originated from various locations in the Hebron and Jerusalem areas.

Muslims believe that Muhammad visited Hebron on his nocturnal journey from Mecca to Jerusalem to stop by the tomb and pay his respects. For this reason the tomb quickly became a popular Islamic pilgrimage site. It was said that Muhammad himself encouraged the activity, saying "He who cannot visit me, let him visit the Tomb of Abraham" and "He who visits the Tomb of Abraham, Allah abolishes his sins." After the conquest of the city by Umar, this holy place was "simply taken over from the Jewish tradition" by the new rulers; the Herodian enclosure was converted into a mosque and placed under the control of a waqf. The waqf continues to maintain most of the site, while the Israeli military controls access to the site. According to some Islamic sources the cave is also the tomb of Joseph. Though the Bible has Joseph buried in Shechem (the present day Palestinian city of Nablus), Jewish aggadic tradition conserved the idea that he wished to be interred at Hebron, and the Islamic version may reflect this. The Jewish apocryphal book, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, also states that this is the burial place of Jacob's twelve sons. According to some sources, the mosque is the 4th holiest in Islam; other sources rank other sites as 4th. A Fatimid era minbar is kept at the mosque. According to an Arabic inscription written on the minbar, it was commissioned by Fatimid vizier Badr al Jamali during the reign of Caliph al Mustansir when he discovered the head of Husayn ibn Ali in 1092 CE (448 AH) at Ascalon and kept it at a mosque and shrine there.