The shrine is attributed to Sheikh Ghanem Al-Ansari, who died in 1232 AD. He is one of the commanders who participated with the leader Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi who participated in the Battle of Hattin in 1187 CE. The novels mention that he resided in this place, then departed to Damascus, where he lived and died. The shrine was built on the ruins of the northeastern tower of the wall of the Church of the Virgin Mary from the Byzantine period, hundreds of years after the church had been destroyed; it had the same area and plan as the church tower, with dimensions of about 6 square meters from the outside, and the church rubble stones were used in the construction of the shrine. Despite the Israeli authority's deliberate neglect of the site, it still maintains its architectural layout.The shrine consists of two rooms; the upper room is accessed through a narrow stone staircase on the inner facade of the ground floor room from the western side. It includes a single entrance in the middle of the west frontispiece, overlooking a small cemetery believed to have contained the graves of several warriors in the army of the leader Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi.The occupation authorities removed these graves, and isolated the shrine after the archaeological excavations they carried out during the eighties and nineties of the last century. They closed the area of Mount Gerizim summit with all its archaeological monuments, including the Al-Ghanem shrine. They prevented the residents from visiting it, and enjoying the beauty of its view and its archaeological surroundings.
The shrine is located at the top of Mount Gerizim, at an altitude of 890 meters above sea level. It is in the middle of a vast archaeological area that included an integrated city during the Hellenistic period during the second century BC, followed b...
PS-NBS
Palestinian Territories