The Tomb of Nabi Yusha’ in the Upper Galilee: The Evolution of a Sacred Place

Among the six sites regarded as the burial place of Joshua bin Nun, the one of Nabi Yusha’, located on the eastern slopes of the Upper Galilee highlands was regarded with great reverence by the "Matawila" or "Mutawalli" Shi'ites in Southern Lebanon and in the Galilee, including the inhabitants of the village Al-Nabi Yusha’. Jewish tradition tends to reject the identification of Joshua’s tomb at this site but rather identify it with a site in Samaria, and therefore this place did not become part of the traditional sanctified gravesites of saintly figures found throughout the Galilee. This article is related to the date and reason for the construction of the mausoleum in its present form, and of the two domes over it, as well as to the tradition of pilgrimage to the site and the cult of the local Shi’ite inhabitants. In its second part, the article refers to the cultic changes that occurred after the establishment of the State of Israel, and to the question of the location of the tomb today in the process of creating a sacred landscape in the Galilee. The main claim of the article is that tracing the changes in the cult of this site will show the geopolitical importance of this place on the one hand, and the changing social values of the surrounding inhabitants and of the sovereign authority on the other.