Hebron beads are a kind of vintage trade beads made with salts from the Dead Sea, and they date to the mid 1800's and earlier. The most common color of Hebron glass beads is yellow. These antique African beads also come in different shades of blue, green, and occasionally black but these colors are much more difficult to find. Hebron beads are very often referred to as "Kano beads" and are cherished by antique bead collectors. Get your Hebron Kano beads from The Bead Chest today!

Hebron is said to be one of the oldest cities in world with an ancient tradition of glassmaking dating back to the phoenician period. Hebron is located in the West Bank and is the burial place of the patriarchs of Jewish, Muslim & Christian faiths. There are records of the Europeans making pilgrimage to Hebron even after the demise of glass beadmaking following the the Crusader invasion of Tyre in Lebanon.

Hebron subsequently became the successor of Middle Eastern bead industry and for many centuries it has furnished the Muslim world with glass objects including coarse glass beads that was named Harish and Munjir.

Hebron beads were made using Dead Sea salts and common colors of these beads were dull yellow. These African Hebron beads generally come in a variety of different colors of green, yellow, and blue, but these latter colors were more difficult to find. Hebron beads are referred often as the "Kano beads". The oldest way to make Hebron glass bead is using the wound bead technique in a furnace.

Munjir beads are considered the larger beads, while Harish are the smaller beads. They were well known and traded as far as Egypt, the Nile, in Sudan and even beyond. Harish beads have traveled as far as Ghana

By 1930s A.J. Arkell recorded that Hebron beads were sold by Sudanese women to Hausa traders.

These traders took the beads and ground the ends of the beads making them rounded so that beads fit together better on a strand. They later called them, Kano, after chief of city, giving birth to a myth that glass beads are prepared in Kano.

No need to go to Hebron today when you can buy your very own African Hebron beads from The Bead Chest!