Burial place of a prophet?

Kever Shmuel refers the the tomb of the Prophet Samuel, relegated to the basement sometime during Christian or Muslim control. Currently it's the only tomb accessible, in what's become an ultra-Orthodox synagogue/study room.

At one time what was called Shmuel's tomb was in the center of the basement room, now divided between a room for men and a room for women. And it was possible to enter a mosque on an upper level, and see a similar tomb (Nebi Samwil), but currently that section is behind a locked door. 

Two tombs of Samuel, one the real and the other make believe, or neither? It was more than a thousand years after his death, ostensibly in a nearby village, that travelers began telling stories about the resting place of Shmuel/Samwil/Samuel at the present site. If any bones or dust are in one or both tombs, they may be those of the Hebrew/Muslim Prophet, a Crusader Knight, a Muslim Sheikh, or lesser persons whose bodies were chosen for the purpose. 

The site has passed through periods of being a village said to be biblical by some archaeologists and denied as such by others, with the central structure built as a Byzantine church, then used as a Crusader fortress, refurbished as a mosque with minaret, then after 1948 a Jordanian army position from which artillery shells were fired on Jerusalem, and most recently a synagogue within an Israeli development called the Nebi Samuel National Park. 

The locale is controversial. Googling produces pages promoting Israeli and Biblical tourism in several languages, and others with assertions that Israelis violated the writer's morality or international law by bulldozing most of what was an Arab village and sending away residents on short notice. The names of army archaeologists who excavated old ruins were kept secret in order to protect them from international sanctions. 

The checkered history of Nebi Samuel reflects several elements of modern Israel. There are historical layers of contending communities and military forces on a strategic high point, each with their own sense of something deeply spiritual along with armed might. At various periods there was a tolerant co-existence, with each religious community having the place it considered sacred as the true tomb, and at other times one has relegated the other to the basement, or behind a locked door. Scholars quarrel as to what is likely to have happened in the distant past when records are incomplete, unreliable, and whose stones do not talk. 

There's also what may variously be called an indeterminate location, against the reality that possession is 100 percent of what is. The site is on a seam between the outskirts of what Israel says is Jerusalem, and an area of the West Bank left to Israeli control in the Oslo Accords of 1993 (Area C). No government other than Israel recognizes that Jerusalem includes the nearby neighborhood of Ramot, even though its substantial population of 50,000, many of them Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, are not inclined to move elsewhere.

We see Nebi Samuel from our daily walks around French Hill. From that vantage point the main structure and its minaret resemble a ship on a distant hilltop sea.

​On our recent visit, our first encounter was with a horse tethered​ across the road from the small Arab village that continues to function.

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Comments welcome--