Excavations near the town of Rahat in the Negev Desert shed new light on the transition from the Byzantine to Islamic periods in the southern Levant. The excavations, carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority, uncovered a luxurious estate and a small mosque that both date to the very beginning of the Islamic period in the seventh and eighth centuries. The team also uncovered a Byzantine farmstead that dates only a century earlier. These finds illustrate the rapid transition from Christianity to Islam in the northern Negev. Likely only able to hold a few dozen worshipers, the mosque is a […]
