What is…
Machpelah

Meaning: portion; double cave

This is the cave which Abraham bought, together with the field in which it stood, from Ephron the Hittite, for a family burying-place (Genesis 23).

It is one of those Bible localities about the identification of which there can be no doubt. It was on the slope of a hill on the east of Hebron, “before Mamre.”

Here were laid the bodies of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah (Genesis 23:19; 25:9; 49:31; 50:13).

Overlooking Machpelah and the city of Shechem is Mount Ebal where the first great altar to YHWH was built by Joshua.

Structures built over the caves

In the 1st century BC, Herod the Great constructed a protective monument over these ancient caves where Abraham and his family are buried. This rectangular stone structure, characterized by large Herodian masonry blocks at its base.

During the Byzantine period (4th–7th centuries AD), Christians adapted this by adding a basilica-style church within or atop the Herodian enclosure, to show reverence for this site in early Christianity.

Following the Muslim conquest of Israel in the 7th century AD, the structure was converted into a mosque, with further Islamic modifications (e.g., minarets and a mihrab) added under rulers like Saladin in the 12th century AD.

Thus, while the mosque incorporates elements from its Byzantine Christian phase, its foundational building predates that era and was neither originally a church nor a fully formed “building” in the modern sense but a monumental enclosure from the Herodian period.

The Islamic structure was surrounded by the el-Haram i.e., “the sacred enclosure,” about 200 feet long, 115 broad, and of an average height of about 50 feet.

On the floor of the mosque are erected six large cenotaphs as monuments to the dead who are buried in the cave beneath. Between the cenotaphs of Isaac and Rebekah there is a circular opening in the floor into the cavern below, the cave of Machpelah.

Here it may be that the body of Jacob, which was embalmed in Egypt, is still preserved.

In the 19th century, the interior of the mosque was visited by the Prince of Wales in 1862 by a special favor of the Islamic authorities. An interesting account of this visit is given in Dean Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church. It was also visited in 1866 by the Marquis of Bute, and in 1869 by the late Emperor (Frederick) of Germany, then the Crown Prince of Prussia. In 1881 it was visited by the two sons of the Prince of Wales, accompanied by Sir C. Wilson and others. (See: Palestine Quarterly Statement, October 1882).