History of Hebron

aksurah are many fine Mihrabs. He further recorded that "They grow at Hebron for the most part barley, wheat being rare, but olives are in abundance. The [visitors] are given bread and olives. There are very many mills here, worked by oxen and mules, that all day long grind the flour, and further, there are working girls who, during the whole day are baking bread. The loaves are [about three pounds] and to every persons who arrives they give daily a loaf of bread, and a dish of lentils cooked in olive-oil, also some raisins....there are some days when as many as five hundred pilgrims arrive, to each of whom this hospitality is offered."

Geniza documents from this period refer only to "the graves of the patriarchs" and reveal there was an organised Jewish community in Hebron who had a synagogue near the tomb, and were occupied with accommodating Jewish pilgrims and merchants. During the Seljuk period, the community was headed by Saadia b. Abraham b. Nathan, who was known as the "haver of the graves of the patriarchs."

Crusader rule

The Caliphate lasted in the area until 1099, when the Christian Crusader Godfrey de Bouillon took Hebron and renamed it "Castellion Saint Abraham". It was designated capital of the southern district of the Crusader Kingdom and given to the bishop Gerard of Avesnes, as the fief of Saint Abraham, As a Frankish garrison of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, its defence was precarious being 'little more than an island in a Moslem ocean'. The Crusaders converted the mosque and the synagogue into a church. In 1106, an Egyptian campaign thrust into southern Judea and almost succeeded the following year in wresting Hebron back from the crusaders under Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who personally led the counter-charge to beat the Muslim forces off.In the year 1113 during the reign of Baldwin II of Jerusalem, according to Ali of Herat