Saturday, November 14, 2009
El Khader Remains, West Bank
The only community in the West Bank that remains completely Christian is At Tayyibah, and three churches tend its 1,300 souls. The remains of El Khader (above), a cross-shaped church built sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries and rebuilt by 12th-century crusaders, still stand on the outskirts of the town. For nearly a millennium after Christ, such Christian villages dominated the rocky hilltops of Palestine, declared holy ground by the emperor Constantine after his conversion to Christianity in 312.