Sunday, October 19, 2025

Hebron - Palestine

 When I found this card in the box of the book fair in Brescia I liked it because it was from a place I didn't have cards from, the building was interresting but when I got home I had reasons to like it even more. I googled about Hebron and found out that the Old City of Hebron is classified as UNESCO WHS. So, I found 2 cards from 2 missing UNESCO sites from Palestine in the last book fairs I've been to. How nice is that?
This is a written and stamped card sent from Nazareth to Brescia in 1976.  

The use of a local limestone shaped the construction of the old town of Hebron/Al-Khalil during the Mamluk period between 1250 and 1517. The centre of interest of the town was the site of Al-Ibrahimi Mosque/The tomb of the Patriarchs whose buildings are in a compound built in the 1st century AD to protect the tombs of the patriarch Abraham/Ibrahim and his family. This place became a site of pilgrimage for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The town was sited at the crossroads of trade routes for caravans travelling between southern Palestine, Sinai, Eastern Jordan and the north of the Arabian Peninsula. - in: https://whc.unesco.org

The Tombs of the Patriarchs (...) is the burial place of three biblical couples — Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah.
The second holiest site in Judaism (after the Western Wall in Jerusalem), it is also sacred to the other two Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam.
It was the patriarch Abraham who bought the property when his wife Sarah died, around 2000 years before Christ was born. Genesis 23 tells how Abraham, then living nearby at Mamre, bought the land containing the Cave of Machpelah to use as a burial place. He paid Ephron the Hittite the full market price — 400 shekels of silver.
Today the site is the dominant feature of central Hebron, thanks to the fortress-like wall Herod the Great built around it in the same style of ashlar masonry that he used for the Temple Mount enclosure in Jerusalem. - in:
https://www.seetheholyland.net

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