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. Hebron is often considered one of the Four Holy Cities in Judaism. It is also venerated 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 a 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. The settlement was destroyed, probably during the Hasmonean conquest of Idumaea in the late 2nd century BCE. The following period shows a Jewish material culture, which may reflect either Jewish settlers or Judaized Edomites. During the 1st 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'. compares Amorite ḫibru(m). Two roots are in play, ḥbr/ḫbr. The root has magical overtones, and develops pejorative connotations in late Biblical usage.
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 ('Friend of the Merciful [i.e. God]').Qur'an 4:125/Surah 4 Aya (verse) 125, Qur'anKhalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora : A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876-1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991, 61. Thus, the epithet is a calque of the original Hebrew toponym Ḥeḇrōn, understood as ḥaḇēr ('friend').
History
Early Bronze Age Archaeological excavations reveal traces of strong fortifications dated to the Early Bronze Age, covering some 24–30 dunams centered around Tel Rumeida.
Middle and Late Bronze Ages 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.: "[T]he city was a Canaanite royal center long before it became Israelite". 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 (benê/yelîdê hāʿănaq). These non-Semitic names perhaps echo either a tradition of a group of elite professional troops (Philistines, Hittites), formed in Canaan whose ascendancy was overthrown by the West-Semitic clan of Caleb. They would have migrated from the Negev, 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.Joshua 10:3, 5, 3–39; 12:10, 13. doubts this tradition. "The book of Joshua is not a reliable source for either a historical or a territorial discussion of the Late Bronze Age, and its evidence must be disregarded". 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.: (Genesis.ch. 23)
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.
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",, citing and the influence this has had on certain settlers in the West Bank. or the Tribe of Judah as a whole, or specifically Caleb the Judahite.: "certain conquests claimed for Joshua are elsewhere attributed to single tribes or clans, for example, in the case of Hebron (in , Hebron's capture is attributed to Joshua; in to Judah; in Judges 1:20 and Joshua 14:13–14; 15:13–14" to Caleb. 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., citing . 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.. See .
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 (to the king 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..
Persian and Hellenistic periods After the destruction of the First Temple, most of the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron were exiled, and according to the conventional view, Carter challenges this view on the grounds that it has no archeological support. 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 the new area inhabited by the Edomites was called during the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods), as is attested by inscriptions for that period bearing names with the Edomite God Qōs..
During the Hellenistic period, Tell Rumeida was occupied by a settlement whose pottery resembles that of Maresha and, still more closely, that of rural Idumaean sites such as Khirbet er-Rasm, though it lacks the imported ware and fine table vessels characteristic of Maresha. The material culture combines Edomite and Hellenistic elements.
Jews also appear to have lived there after the return from the Babylonian exile (). According to 1 Maccabees, during the Maccabean Revolt, Hebron was burned and plundered by Judah Maccabee, who fought against the Edomites, "sons of Esau", in the 160s BCE. Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. 12, ch.8, para.6. is sceptical.'This should be considered a raid on Hebron instead of a conquest based on subsequent events in the book of I Maccabees.' The city's fortifications, however, had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 587/6 BCE and were not rebuilt in the Hellenistic period, so the account cannot be reconciled with the archaeological evidence; it may preserve the memory of a general campaign against the inhabitants of the Hebron region instead.
Hasmonean and Herodian periods The settlement at Tel Rumeida was destroyed, probably during the Hasmonean conquest of Idumaea by John Hyrcanus, circa 112 or 107 BCE. The destruction layers of Maresha and Khirbet er-Rasm, dated to 112/111 BCE, provide an archaeological anchor. Settlement at Tel Rumeida continued in the following stratum, which yielded pottery typical of Hasmonean sites, together with Hasmonean coins of John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus. During the Herodian period, stone vessels and ritual baths (mikva'ot) also appear.
The finds from the Hasmonean and Herodian periods indicate that the site was then inhabited by a population with Jewish characteristics. The archaeological evidence cannot determine whether the local Idumaean population remained and converted, willingly or under coercion, or was replaced by new Jewish settlers or by converted Idumaeans. As late as the First Jewish–Roman War the area was still considered Idumaean.
Roman rule