June, 2019 Abu-Ghosh

Abu Ghosh is the town where it is believed that the Ark of the Covenant was returned when the Philistines gave it back to the Jews because they kept being cursed.  There are ruins from several periods of time, Crusader buildings and now the 2nd largest mosque in Israel, which we visited.


St. Mary of the Resurrection Abbey grounds:

Archaeological excavations have shown that human presence goes back to the Neolithic period (6000 BCE). Nomads became sedentary, apparently because of the spring. Later, the site is mentioned in the Bible as Kyriat Baal (Josh 15:9-10), a town on the border between the tribes of Juda and Benjamin; and as Kyriat Yearim, a hill dominating the village where the Ark of Covenant was (1 Sam 6:21 ff.) until David brought it up to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:2).

 A thousand years later, the Romans came and built cisterns to preserve the spring water.

 During the Arab period, the site was transformed into a caravanserai. n 1143, the Crusaders (the Hospitaller Order of St. John, now the Order of Malta) identified the site with the village of Emmaus and built the crypt and the church, using as its foundation the Roman reservoir. At the end of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1187), the site was abandoned, but the church remained standing. Its history is not known, but it was without doubt used as a barn by the inhabitants of the region.

Crusaders painted frescoes inside the chapel, many remain today.

Fig leaves and fruit in trees on the property.

We were allowed into the Ahmad Haji Kadyrob Mosque:  The Imam spoke a little English and told us a bit about the Mosque.  It was a large, open room with lovely chandeliers and carpets.

The new mosque of the Arab village of Abu Ghosh, several kilometers due west of Jerusalem, was inaugurated on March 23rd, 2014. The people of Abu Ghosh claim that their mosque is the second largest in Israel, only smaller than Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (aka, Haram al-Sharif). The construction of the mosque was funded mostly by the government of the Chechen Republic, while the lot itself, 3.5 dunams (0.86 acres), was donated by the Israel Land Authority.