Another one of the oldest mosques in the world discovered to date and the ruins of a grand estate have been excavate in the Bedouin town of Rahat in the Negev Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority reported this week.
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The mosque is estimated to date back some 1,200 years to the arrival of Islam in the Levant and was identified three years after a similar mosque, of approximately the same age, was found in the same area.
The excavation at Rahat is being carried out by the IAA in conjunction with Bedouin officials. The findings reveal new insights into the early days of Islam in what is now southern Israel.
It was challenging for archaeologists to date the mosques, Dr. Elena Kogan-Zehavi, told the Haaretz.
"We cannot say whether the two mosques operated at the same time – but there is no reason to think they didn't," Kogan-Zehavi said.
The newly-excavated was constructed only a few hundred meters [yards] from the ruins of an immense estate, which archaeologists believe was the property of Byzantine Christians.
Researchers still do not know whether the ancient inhabitants of Rahat were Islamic nomads or local converts from Christianity.
This is not the first time that archaeologists found early mosques in Israel, but these mosques differ as they were built in remote areas, Kogan-Zehavi said.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
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