TOMB OF THE PATRIARCHS - IBRAHIM MOSQUE

Before his wife Sarah gave birth to Isaac, Abraham is said to have had a first son, Ishmael, by his servant Hagar, who, according to Muslim tradition, is the ancestor of the Arabs. Abraham is said to be buried in this immense sanctuary. For Muslims, the site is called Haram-al-Khalil, the "sanctuary of the friend". Jews, meanwhile, call it the Tomb of the Patriarchs or Cave of Machpelah, the "tomb of double graves". According to Jewish tradition, four major biblical couples are buried here: Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Leah, the four patriarchs and matriarchs of Judaism. It is the second holiest site in the Hebrew religion, after the Temple Mount. The site was fortified by Herod the Great in the ^1st century: the surrounding wall remains today. In the 7th^century , Muslims transformed the funerary monument into a mosque, known as the Ibrahim Mosque. Until the Six-Day War, Jews were forbidden to enter. After the conquest of Hebron in 1967, the Israelis in turn transformed part of the mosque, where Jacob's tomb was located, into a synagogue. This site of major cultural importance was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2017, along with the Old City of Hebron. It is the symbolic source of much conflict between Jewish and Arab communities, and the unfortunate site of a number of massacres and murders against Muslim and Jewish pilgrims over the years.