Cave of El-Khader

11 October 2022

El-Khader (literally 'The Green One') is a mysterious figure described—but not named—in the Quran as a righteous servant of Allah, possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge. In various Islamic and non-Islamic traditions, he is described as a messenger, prophet or wali (saint), who guards the sea, teaches secret knowledge, and aids those in distress. There are many traditions as to whom he is and to whom he is equivalent in other traditions. In Asia Minor and the Levant he is considered among Christians to be St George, and among the Druze he is considered to be Elijah the Prophet. Sunni Muslims consider him to be associated with Elijah or even equated with him. Although El-Khader is associated with various other figures from Iran, Asia Minor and Armenia to Sindh and Punjab, as well as the archangel Samael in Judaism, it is the local associations with Elijah and St George which are relevant here, as we shall see, and the stories of each have over time become mixed in one site.

Left: A depiction of Elijah and El-Khader praying together, from an illuminated Manuscript collection of Stories of the Prophets [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]. Right: Painting of St George, Ararat Street, Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem [Credit: Djampa, CC BY-SA 4.0]

The El-Khader Cave presides over the Beit HaKerem (al-Shaghur) valley, on the Matlul-Tzurim Escarpment above the Arab towns of Deir al-Asad and Bi'ina—which were formerly Christian and Druze—and the predominantly Jewish town of Karmi'el, in an area which in Byzantine times was filled with Christian monasteries and communities.

The Beit HaKerem valley from the path to El-Khader Cave

Although often referred to as Maqam El-Khader (מקאם אל-נבי אל-ח'דר, مقام الخضر)—a maqam being a shrine built on the site associated with a religious figure or saint, frequently but not always marking a grave,—El-Khader is not buried here, although there is a small subsidiary cave venerated as the shrine of an unnamed sheikh. For more than a decade I have seen the three tiny arches against the backdrop of the Matlul-Tzurim Escarpment, when travelling north towards Karmi'el, but it was only now that I finally made the trek to investigate it, with Amber and Yonatan, towards sunset one evening in October. There is a more-or-less horizontal, if precarious, path, from the upper part of Deir al-Asad which we took.

Long evening shadows as Amber and Yonatan walk ahead

Deir al-Asad (دير الأسد, דייר אל-אסד, 'the lion's monastery')—together with the adjacent town of Bi'ina (البعنة, בענה)—formed the site of the Crusader administrative centre and monastery town of St George de la Beyne. Beyne is a corruption of Bi'ina, and in fact Deir al-Asad was previously known as Deir al-Bi'ina, or Deir al-Khader—referring to the nearby cave of that name. It changed hands between various Crusader orders before coming under Mamluk rule in the late 13th century, but the monastery is still mentioned in the late 14th century, as treating the mentally ill. In 1516, Ottoman sultan Selim I granted the monastery as a waqf (religious endowment) to the Sufi sage Shaykh Muhammad al-Asad, who settled in it with his family and devotees, establishing the modern Muslim character of the town by expelling the Christian population to nearby Bi'ina. A Druze community which established itself in the town emigrated to the Golan by the late 1870s.

Deir al-Asad in the sunset, with the evening Adhān (call to prayer)

The remains of the large Crusader church and abbey were still visible when Victor Guérin, the French explorer and amateur archaeologist, visited Deir al-Asad in 1875. He wrote that it was:

"Constructed of small stones very regularly cut, this church had three naves and three apses. Its windows were narrow, and fashioned like actual loopholes, and several details of its architecture show a knowledge of art. Unfortunately, the Druses have half demolished it, and what they have spared has been converted into a stable."

Conder and Kitchener—in their 1881 Galilee volume of PEF’s Survey of western Palestine—found a "Ruined church without an apse, the door with a pointed arch; masonry small; some stones drafted; probably a Crusading village." They continue:

"Deir el Asad is probably the Dersoet [demesne] of the 'Cartulary [codex or collection of title deeds etc] of the Holy Sepulchre' (Nos. 123, 124), mentioned with other places in Galilee as property of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre. The prominent Mukam of el Khŭdr (St. George), east of the village, probably preserves the tradition of the Frank name of a town of St. George — perhaps identical with Deir el Asad— shown in about the same position on the map of Marino Sanuto (1322 A.D.). Fetellus in 1150 A.D. describes the village of St. George as five leagues from Safed and three leagues from Acre; and Marino Sanuto speaks of it as lying in a fat valley, extending towards the Sea of Galilee between mountains. The position thus indicated agrees with that of Deir el Asad, and of the Mukam of el Khŭdr. A church of 'Black Monks' is mentioned here in the 'Citez de Jherusalem' [a French description of the holy city, written by Ernoul, a squire of Balian of Ibelin, around 1187]."

We see that Conder and Kitchener associated the maqam with St George owing to its relation to the Crusader monastery, but in a somewhat circular way, that establishment may have been set up on the perhaps false assumption that the El-Khader of the cave was St George. In fact, the remains of the arched structure outside the cave today—visible from afar—may partly date from that time. As already noted, the area was heavily Christianized in Byzantine times, when the caves in the hills were used by monks and hermits, and our cave may well have been so-used. St George was born in Cappadocia and died in Lod, and there is no known association of his with the cave, other than its proximity to the Byzantine churches and monasteries nearby and the Crusader monastery dedicated to him.

The ruined structure in front of the cave

However, by local Arabic tradition, the cave is venerated as Elijah’s hiding place. Since there are a number of other caves around the Galilee and on Mt Carmel (as well as near Bethlehem) that are associated with this tradition, it is always possible that the tradition pre-dates that ascribed by the Crusaders. Amongst Sunni Muslims, El-Khader is commonly associated with Elijah or even equated with him. When Elijah was asleep in the desert under a juniper bush, having asked G-d to let him die, he was woken by an angel who told him to journey, which he did, for forty days and nights, up to Mont Horeb, where he came and lodged in a cave. In the first book of Kings, it says, “And he came there to the cave, and he lodged there. And behold! The word of the Lord came to him. And He said to him: ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” Although Mt Horeb is synonymous with Mt Sinai, the local Arabs believed it was in the northern cliffs of the Beit Hakerem valley.

Elijah's cave on the tip of Mount Carmel in Haifa, one of two (the other is under the altar of the main church of the Stella Maris Monastery, further up the mountain, has for centuries been more generally recognised by Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze as the place where the prophet hid, and is also known as also known as el-Khader by the Arabs.

Finally, according to Druze tradition, in the 16th century the cave was a hiding place of Fakhr ad Din II al-Ma’ani who, as governor of Sidon, united the Druze and Maronites of the Lebanon mountains.