A stone on the high ridge above Bani Na'im, east of al-Khalil (Hebron), bears the impression of the blessed feet of Nabi Lut (AS). The maqam that shelters it…
A stone on the high ridge above Bani Na'im, east of al-Khalil (Hebron), bears the impression of the blessed feet of Nabi Lut (AS). The maqam that shelters it stands at the edge of the escarpment, where the Hebron hills break away and fall towards the Dead Sea — the very plain to which he was sent. Who Nabi Lut was Nabi Lut (AS) was the nephew of Prophet Ibrahim (AS), the son of his brother Haran, and among the first to believe in him. He left Iraq with his uncle and travelled with him through Syria into Palestine, and when Prophet Ibrahim (AS) settled in the land around al-Khalil, Nabi Lut (AS) was sent as a prophet to the towns of the plain below. He is named seventeen times in the Qur'an. His people rejected what he brought, and Allah delivered him and those of his household who believed before the towns were overturned. The footprints in the stone Tradition holds that this ridge is where Prophet Ibrahim (AS) stood at dawn and looked out over the plain after the destruction, and where Nabi Lut (AS) came after his deliverance. Footprints are preserved in the rock here — those of Nabi Lut (AS) outside the maqam and those of Prophet Ibrahim (AS) within — and the place carries the name Nabi Yaqin, from the certainty granted at that moment. Bani Na'im and the grave Bani Na'im sits about eight kilometres east of al-Khalil at some 950 metres, one of the highest towns in the district, with the Jordan Valley opening below it to the east. It was known in earlier centuries as Kafr Barik, and took its present name from the Bani Nu'aym who settled there. In the centre of the town, a short drive from the ridge, stands the grave of Nabi Lut (AS) inside a mosque built over it — the town's best-known site, and visited together with the footprints on the hill.