The grave of Nabi Lut (AS) lies at Bani Na'im, in the hills eight kilometres east of al-Khalil, at the edge of the high ground that looks out over the country…
The grave of Nabi Lut (AS) lies at Bani Na'im, in the hills eight kilometres east of al-Khalil, at the edge of the high ground that looks out over the country of the Dead Sea. It sits within a mosque in the centre of the town, and has been visited and recorded by travellers for the better part of a thousand years. Nabi Lut Nabi Lut (AS) was the nephew and companion of Prophet Ibrahim (AS), and he travelled with him out of Iraq to the lands of Palestine and Sham. He was then sent to the cities of the plain below these hills, where he called his people away from open transgression and was answered with rejection. When the punishment came upon those cities, he and the believers with him were delivered. Tradition holds that he returned to these hills and was buried here, above the very landscape in which his mission had been carried out. The mosque and its history The town was known in earlier centuries as Kafr Burayk, and in 1215 the Ayyubid ruler al-Mu'azzam Isa made it part of the endowment of Masjid al-Ibrahimi in al-Khalil. Its present name, Bani Na'im, comes from the tribe that later settled here. The shrine over the grave was rebuilt in 1410 by the Mamluk sultan an-Nasir Faraj, son of Sultan Barquq, the work entrusted to Shams al-Din al-Ansari. Ali al-Harawi described the site in 1173, and Ibn Battuta, passing through in 1326, recorded a fine building of white stone. Nearby Southeast of the town stands Maqam an-Nabi Yaqin, where local tradition holds that Nabi Lut (AS) prayed and left the impress of his feet in the rock, and from which the smoke rising over the ruined cities was seen. A second shrine on the hill opposite the grave is honoured as that of his daughters.