Between sunrise and dusk, he would find nothing to eat outside the Christian quarter, and even there only in a private home.
The Christian quarter contains about 40 Christian holy places.
In the mid 19th-century, Hebron was still divided into four quarters, but the Christian quarter had disappeared.
A few days afterward, a fire destroyed half the city and most of the Christian quarter.
This letter was left with a boy from the Christian quarter.
There was also a Christian quarter with 35 houses populated by ethnic Serbs.
There were the Christian quarters with the church spire, the convent, the boarding school to the immediate east and the market by the lake.
"I've always had very good relations with them," he explained to me as we sat in the stone courtyard of his church in the Christian quarter.
The gate also gives its name to the Christian quarter surrounding it.
With no barricades or roadblocks between the Christian quarters, travel is easier.