The Mosque of Ibrahim

A 10th-Century Shrine at al-Lajjun

Authors

  • Roy Marom Polonsky Academy, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
  • Matthew J. Adams Center for the Mediterranean World
  • Yotam Tepper Israel Antiquities Authority and University of Haifa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jia.28376

Keywords:

Early Islam and Muslim historiography, Ibrahim, Islamic archaeology, Lajjūn, Mamluk period, Jezreel Valley

Abstract

This paper discusses the Mosque of Ibrahim/Abraham at Lajjūn, a now lost building known from Early Islamic and Mamluk historical sources (10th–15th centuries CE). These sources describe the mosque as a pilgrimage site: early Muslim tradition attributes Ibrahim with the miraculous creation of Lajjūn’s main spring, and it is written that the mosque was constructed to commemorate this event. However, despite featuring prominently in geographical treaties, pilgrimage compendia and chronicles over six centuries, the mosque had disappeared from the historical record by the Ottoman period, and even its location in relation to Lajjūn has been forgotten.

This paper aims to recover the history and location of the mosque and presents for the first time all the currently available historical and archaeological evidence concerning it. It outlines methodologies for the proper interpretation of these sources and analyzes their veracity as historical evidence. As an original amalgam of various Abrahamic topoi, the Ibrahim spring tradition forms part of the larger corpus of “tales of the prophets” (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ).

Most references to the mosque in Muslim sources are secondary, and thus of limited epistemological value. However, combining them with archaeological survey and research undertaken during the 19th and 20th centuries makes it possible to identify the mosque with the remains of a monumental structure near Lajjūn’s main spring. The article may present a test case for other studies dealing with the epistemological challenges of matching scant archaeological remains with disparate historical sources.

Author Biographies

  • Roy Marom, Polonsky Academy, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

    Roy Marom is a Polonsky Academy Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Previously, he served as the Ernest S. Frerichs Annual Professor at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Jerusalem, 2024), as a Dan David Postdoctoral Fellow at Tel Aviv University (2023–24) and as Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow (University of California, Berkeley, 2022–23). Marom earned his PhD in 2022 from the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Haifa. As curator of the Palestine Rural History Project (PRHP), Marom’s research focuses on Palestine’s historical geography from the Umayyad to the British Mandate periods.

  • Matthew J. Adams, Center for the Mediterranean World

    Matthew J. Adams is the Director of the Center for the Mediterranean World and former Director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He earned his PhD in 2007 from Pennsylvania State University in History and Archaeology of Egypt and the Near East. His research interests are temporally broad, focused on the eastern Mediterranean. As director of the Jezreel Valley Regional Project, his archaeological and historical research focuses on the extensive landscape of that region through time and includes excavations at Bronze and Iron Age Megiddo, Roman and Byzantine Legio/Maximianopolis and Islamic Lajjūn.

  • Yotam Tepper, Israel Antiquities Authority and University of Haifa

    Yotam Tepper has worked at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) as a research archaeologist since 2001, initially in the northern region and in recent years as a supervising academic archaeologist in the central region. Yotam submitted his MA in 2003 and his PhD in 2014 at Tel Aviv University, both focused on the region of Legio from the Hellenistic period to the modern period. His MA thesis was based on data from an intensive survey and his doctoral thesis on the results of excavations conducted on behalf of the IAA, with an emphasis on social and cultural aspects of the archaeological finds. During his postdoctoral period (2015–19) Yotam focused on the study of Negev settlements during the Roman through Early Islamic periods, and he has since served as a Research Fellow at Haifa University.

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2025-06-30

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Vol. 11 No. 2 (2024)

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How to Cite

Marom, R., Adams, M. J., & Tepper, Y. (2025). The Mosque of Ibrahim: A 10th-Century Shrine at al-Lajjun. Journal of Islamic Archaeology, 11(2), 123-146. https://doi.org/10.1558/jia.28376