Hebron
Hebron is a city in the southern West Bank, Palestine, and the capital of the Hebron Governorate, which is the largest in the West Bank. It is located south of Jerusalem. The population inside in the city limits is 201,063, while the adjacent metropolitan area within the governorate is home to over 700,000 people. Hebron spans across an area of. It is the third largest city in the country after Gaza and East Jerusalem. The city is often considered one of the Four Holy Cities in Judaism, as well as in Christianity and Islam.
It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Levant. According to the Bible, Abraham settled in Hebron and bought the Cave of the Patriarchs as burial place for his wife Sarah. Biblical tradition holds that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, along with their wives Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, were buried in the cave. The city is also recognized in the Bible as the place where David was anointed king of Israel. Following the Babylonian captivity, the Edomites settled in Hebron. During the first century BCE, Herod the Great built the wall that still surrounds the Cave of the Patriarchs, which later became a church, and then a mosque. With the exception of a brief Crusader control, successive Muslim dynasties ruled Hebron from the 7th century CE until the Ottoman Empire's dissolution following World War I, when the city became part of British Mandatory Palestine.
The 1929 Hebron massacre of nearly 70 Jews and the Arab uprising of 1936–39 led the British government to evacuate the Jewish community from Hebron. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw the entire West Bank, including Hebron, occupied and annexed by Jordan, and since the 1967 Six-Day War, the city has been under Israeli control. Following Israeli occupation, Jewish presence was restored in the city. Since the 1997 Hebron Protocol, most of Hebron has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority. The city is often described as a "microcosm" of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The 1997 protocol divided the city into two sectors—H1 Hebron, governed by the Palestinian National Authority, and H2 Hebron, occupied by Israeli authorities. All security arrangements and travel permits for local residents are coordinated between the Palestinian Authority and Israel via the COGAT. The Jewish settlers have their own governing municipal body, the Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron.
The largest city in the southern West Bank, Hebron is a chief commercial and industrial center in the region. It is a busy hub of trade, generating roughly a third of the area's GDP, largely due to the sale of limestone from quarries in its area. Hebron has a local reputation for its grapes, figs, ceramics, plastics, pottery workshops, metalworking and glassblowing industry. The city is home to numerous shopping malls. The Old City of Hebron features narrow, winding streets, flat-roofed stone houses, and old bazaars. It is recognized as a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. Hebron is also known as a regional educational and medical hub.
Etymology
The name Hebron appears to trace back to two northwest Semitic languages, which coalesce in the form ḥbr, having reflexes in Hebrew and Amorite, with a basic sense of 'unite' and connoting a range of meanings from 'colleague' to 'friend'. In the proper name Hebron, the original sense may have been 'alliance'.Early Muslim sources refer to the city as Ḥabra or Ḥabrūn. al-Khalīl emerged as the Arabic name for the city in the 13th century, derived from the Qur'anic epithet for Abraham, Khalīl al-Raḥmān. Thus, the epithet is a calque of the original Hebrew toponym Ḥeḇrōn, understood as ḥaḇēr.
History
Bronze and Iron Age
Archaeological excavations reveal traces of strong fortifications dated to the Early Bronze Age, covering some 24–30 dunams centered around Tel Rumeida. The city flourished in the 17th–18th centuries BCE before being destroyed by fire, and was resettled in the late Middle Bronze Age. This older Hebron was originally a Canaanite royal city. Abrahamic legend associates the city with the Hittites. It has been conjectured that Hebron might have been the capital of Shuwardata of Gath, an Indo-European contemporary of Jerusalem's regent, Abdi-Ḫeba, although the Hebron hills were almost devoid of settlements in the Late Bronze Age.Ancient Israel
The Abrahamic traditions associated with Hebron are nomadic. This may also reflect a Kenite element, since the nomadic Kenites are said to have long occupied the city, and Heber is the name for a Kenite clan. In the narrative of the later Hebrew conquest, Hebron was one of two centers under Canaanite control. They were ruled by the three sons of Anak. or may reflect some Kenite and Kenizzite migration from the Negev to Hebron, since terms related to the Kenizzites appear to be close to Hurrian. This suggests that behind the Anakim legend lies some early Hurrian population. In Biblical lore they are represented as descendants of the Nephilim. The Book of Genesis mentions that it was formerly called Kiryath-arba, or "city of four", possibly referring to the four pairs or couples who were buried there, or four tribes, or four quarters, four hills, or a confederated settlement of four families.The story of Abraham's purchase of the Cave of the Patriarchs from the Hittites constitutes a seminal element in what was to become the Jewish attachment to the land in that it signified the first "real estate" of Israel long before the conquest under Joshua. In settling here, Abraham is described as making his first covenant, an alliance with two local Amorite clans who became his ba'alei brit or masters of the covenant.
The Hebron of the Israelites was centered on what is now known as Tel Rumeida, while its ritual center was located at Elonei Mamre. Hebrew Bible narrative also describes the city.
File:Samson Fenster aus Alpirsbach.jpg|thumb|Samson removes gates of Gaza and brings them to Mount Hebron. Strassburg, Württemberg State Museum in Stuttgart|220px
It is said to have been wrested from the Canaanites by either Joshua, who is said to have wiped out all of its previous inhabitants, "destroying everything that drew breath, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded", or the Tribe of Judah as a whole, or specifically Caleb the Judahite. The town itself, with some contiguous pasture land, is then said to have been granted to the Levites of the clan of Kohath, while the fields of the city, as well as its surrounding villages were assigned to Caleb, who expels the three giants, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, who ruled the city. Later, the biblical narrative has King David called by God to relocate to Hebron and reign from there for some seven years. It is there that the elders of Israel come to him to make a covenant before Elohim and anoint him king of Israel. It was in Hebron again that Absalom has himself declared king and then raises a revolt against his father David. It became one of the principal centers of the Tribe of Judah and was classified as one of the six traditional Cities of Refuge.
As is shown by the discovery at Lachish, the second most important city in the Kingdom of Judah after Jerusalem, of seals with the inscription lmlk Hebron, Hebron continued to constitute an important local economic center, given its strategic position on the crossroads between the Dead Sea to the east, Jerusalem to the north, the Negev and Egypt to the south, and the Shepelah and the coastal plain to the west. Lying along trading routes, it remained administratively and politically dependent on Jerusalem for this period.
After the destruction of the First Temple, most of the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron were exiled, and according to the conventional view, some researchers found traces of Edomite presence after the 5th–4th centuries BCE, as the area became Achaemenid province, and, in the wake of Alexander the Great's conquest, Hebron was throughout the Hellenistic period under the influence of Idumea, as is attested by inscriptions for that period bearing names with the Edomite God Qōs. Jews also appear to have lived there after the return from the Babylonian exile. During the Maccabean revolt, Hebron was burnt and plundered by Judah Maccabee who fought against the Edomites in 167 BCE. The city appears to have long resisted Hasmonean dominance, however, and indeed as late as the First Jewish–Roman War was still considered Idumean.
Roman rule
The present day city of Hebron was settled in the valley downhill from Tel Rumeida at the latest by Roman times. Herod the Great, king of Judea, built the wall that still surrounds the Cave of the Patriarchs. During the First Jewish–Roman War, Hebron was captured and plundered by Simon Bar Giora, a leader of the Zealots, without bloodshed. The "little town" was later laid to waste by Vespasian's officer Sextus Vettulenus Cerialis. Josephus wrote that he "slew all he found there, young and old, and burnt down the town". After the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, innumerable Jewish captives were sold into slavery at Hebron's Terebinth slave-market.The city was part of the Byzantine Empire in Palaestina Prima province at the Diocese of the East. The Byzantine emperor Justinian I erected a Christian church over the Cave of Machpelah in the 6th century CE, which was later destroyed by the Sassanid general Shahrbaraz in 614 when Khosrau II's armies besieged and took Jerusalem. Jews were not permitted to reside in Hebron under Byzantine rule. The sanctuary itself however was spared by the Persians, in deference to the Jewish population, who were numerous in the Sassanid army.
Muslim conquest and Islamic caliphate
Hebron was one of the last cities of Palestine to fall to the Islamic invasion in the 7th century, possibly the reason why Hebron is not mentioned in any traditions of the Arab conquest. When the Rashidun Caliphate established its rule over Hebron in 638, the Muslims converted the Byzantine church at the site of Abraham's tomb into a mosque. It became an important station on the caravan trading route from Egypt, and also as a way-station for pilgrims making the yearly hajj from Damascus. After the fall of the city, Jerusalem's conqueror, Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab permitted Jewish people to return and to construct a small synagogue within the Herodian precinct.Catholic bishop Arculf, who visited the Holy Land during the Umayyad period, described the city as unfortified and poor. In his writings he also mentioned camel caravans transporting firewood from Hebron to Jerusalem, which implies there was a presence of Arab nomads in the region at that time. Trade greatly expanded, in particular with Bedouins in the Negev and the population to the east of the Dead Sea. According to Anton Kisa, Jews from Hebron founded the Venetian glass industry in the 9th century.
Hebron was almost absent from Muslim literature before the 10th century. In 985, al-Muqaddasi described Hebron as the village of Abraham al-Khalil, with a strong fortress and a stone dome over Abraham's sepulchre. The mosque contained the tombs of Isaac, Jacob, and their wives. Surrounding the area were villages with vineyards producing exceptional grapes and apples. Hebron had a public guest house offering lentils and olive oil to both the poor and the rich. The guest house was established through the bequest of Prophet Muhammad's companions, including Tamim-al Dari, and received generous donations. It was highly regarded as an excellent house of hospitality and charity in the realm of al-Islam. The custom, known as the 'Table of Abraham', was similar to the one established by the Fatimids. In 1047, Nasir-i-Khusraw described Hebron in his Safarnama as having many villages providing revenues for pious purposes. He mentioned a spring flowing from under a stone, with water channeled to a covered tank outside the town. The Sanctuary stood on the town's southern border, enclosed by four walls. Barley was the primary crop, with abundant olives. Visitors were provided with bread, olives, lentils cooked in olive oil, and raisins. Hebron had numerous mills operated by oxen and mules, along with working girls baking bread. The hospitality extended to about three-pound loaves of bread and meals for every arriving person, including up to 500 pilgrims on certain days.
The tradition survives to this day in the form of the Takiat Ibrahim soup kitchen, which has been active in providing food for thousands over Ramadan, which coincided with food shortages during the 2024 Gaza war. Geniza documents from this period mention "the graves of the patriarchs" and attest to the presence of an organized Jewish community in Hebron. The Jews maintained a synagogue near the tomb and earned their livelihood accommodating Jewish pilgrims and merchants. During the Seljuk period, the community was headed by Saadia b. Abraham b. Nathan, known as the "haver of the graves of the patriarchs."