No person is allowed to enter the mosque wherein the holy patriarchs lie (see page 60), as was the case in the 15th century, unless provided with the sultan’s firman. We are told by Novairi and other authors (Makrizi by Quatremère, ii, 249), that when the sultan Bibars, 1260-1264, visited Khalil (Hebron), and learnt that Christians and Jews were permitted to enter upon payment of a fee, he at once put a stop to the practice. Hammer (_Gesch. der Ilchane_, etc., 129) states that Mussulmans have held Hebron in great estimation since the reign of the caliph Mostershid (stabbed to death by an assassin in 1120), when the remains of several bodies found in the caves, were passed off as being those of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, although, according to Moses, they were interred at Hebron, where their places of sepulture are pointed out by Christians. The author of Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum (Parthey et Pinder, _Itiner. Ant. Aug._, etc., 283) thus writes with reference to the beautiful church constructed by Constantine the Great near the turpentine tree of Abraham: “Inde Terebinth Cebron mil. ii, ubi est memoria per quadrum ex lapidibus miræ pulchritudinis, in qua positi sunt Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarra, Rebecca et Lea.” About the year 600, there was already a cathedral in the quadrum, and twelve months later Bishop Arnulphus found the monolith cenotaphs of the three patriarchs, one being that of Adam; other smaller ones were assigned to their wives. At that period Hebron belonged to the Arabs, who gloried in their descent from Abraham, which accounts for the erection by them of a mosque over the remains of their ancestor. It was only after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders that the place was made over to the Christians for religious purposes; this we learn from Sœwulf (_Recueil de Voy. et de Mém._, etc., 817–854) who went to Palestine in 1102, and the Russian pilgrim Daniel (Noroff, _Péler. en T. S._, 95), who in 1115 saw a superb edifice at Hebron, in the crypt of which was the sepulchre of the patriarch within a chapel of circular form. Rosen says that the presence of Jews within this sanctuary was tolerated by the Crusaders, a privilege, however, for which they had to pay, according to the evidence of Benjamin of Tudela, and of his co-religionist Petachy of Ratisbon, who travelled in Palestine twelve years later. Hebron passed into the hands of the Mussulmans long before the fall of Acre, after which event the Christians in their turn were taxed for the liberty of entering. Among those of Schiltberger’s predecessors who have left an account of what they saw and learnt during their sojourn in Palestine, are the German monk, Brocardus, towards the close of the 13th century—Sir John Mandevile, 1372—and the German pilgrim, Ludolph von Suchem, whose work, _Libellus de Itinere ad T. S._, is considered the best itinerary for the Holy Land in the 14th century.