The Mosque of Ibrahim

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.