The Cave of the Patriarchs — known in Arabic as the Ibrahimi Mosque and in Hebrew as the Cave of Machpelah — is the most contested religious site in the world after Jerusalem. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham purchased this cave and the field above it as a burial ground, and tradition holds that it contains the tombs of the six patriarchs and matriarchs: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. The structure above the cave is a massive rectangular enclosure built by Herod the Great in the first century BC, later converted into a church and then a mosque.
Today the building is split along a partition wall. Muslims enter the mosque section from one side; Jewish visitors enter the synagogue section from the other. Both sides contain cenotaphs draped in green (Muslim) or velvet (Jewish) cloth. The atmosphere on both sides is genuinely devotional. The cenotaph of Abraham, visible from both sections through a grated window in the dividing wall, is the closest thing to neutral ground the building has. Non-Muslim, non-Jewish visitors are generally admitted to the mosque side during certain hours; check locally as rules shift with security conditions.