C. R. Conder

“ The Jew, the Greek, the Copt, the Georgian, the Armenian, the Arab, and the Turk mingle with the modern European and with the Franciscan monk from Italy in the narrow lane; and black-veiled ladies with white cloaks, seated on crimson saddles high up on the white Damascene asses, are led to the shops, or to the lower fruit-market which glows with colour, its green and gold contrasting with the violet or rich brown robes of the merchants. The whole history of Jerusalem is represented by its crowd to-day. ”

“ But however sincere the beliefs of the past may have been, we cannot but confess, when studying in detail the traditional topography of Jerusalem, that it has grown and changed just as the city itself has done, because of the succession of various ruling races, and because to Jew, Christian, and Moslem alike there has always been a Holy City here which they coveted, and for which they shed their blood. ”

“ The horrors of the siege, famine, rapine, and dissension within, crucifixion and torture for those who deserted, are detailed by Josephus. “A deep silence also and a kind of deadly night had seized on the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves”; yet there was no thought of submission among those desperate men who fought on for all that was dear to them—for faith and freedom as of old. They had been goaded to rebellion after years of oppression, and Nero was as guilty of the burning of Jerusalem as he was of the burning of Rome. ”

“ They contrasted the splendours of the sunny South, in Italy and in Syria, with the gloom of the North. They learned from the palmer, or the Jewish trader, wonderful legends of Indian and Arab origin, and heard of sacred places and miraculous relics. Palestine was a fairy-land to them; Damascus was a city to sack. They learned also that Christians in the East were persecuted, and trade obstructed, by savage Tartars who demanded endless taxes, who danced on the altar of the Holy Sepulchre, and pulled the patriarch by the beard. ”

“ THE ROMAN CITY When the last smouldering fires had burned out among the ruins, the silence of death came over the desolate heaps which had once been Jerusalem, nor does it appear certain that any buildings were erected, or any native population allowed to dwell on the site, for sixty-five years after the fall of the city. The camp of the 10th legion was built on the plateau of the upper city, and was defended by the three great towers, which would form a citadel still in case of need. ”

“ The law of public safety is there such that if they find in the city, or on the sea, or on the road, any man journeying by night or by day without a letter, or some mark of a king or prince of that land, he is at once thrown into prison, till such time as he can give good account whether he be a spy or not.” The Jerusalem Christians benefited by this peaceful rule in the East, and we have evidence of their undisturbed possession of property, in the Greek inscriptions of the rock tombs on the south precipice of the Hinnom Valley. ”

“ The Romans despised a civilisation and a religion which were far more ancient and more lofty than their own. The Jews, when governed honestly, were content to remain under the empire; they only asked for freedom to follow their own law, as they had asked the Greeks in earlier days. But Roman prejudices against them can best be understood by reading Tacitus, who hated them, or the poets, who knew only the more degraded class of Jewish hucksters crowded in the ghetto in Rome. ”

“ Gethsemane—the “oil-press”—except that it was a “garden” beyond the valley of the Kidron. We can only conjecture the sites of the Prætorium, or of the palaces where Annas and Caiaphas lived, and where Herod Antipas lodged as a Galilean visitor at the time of the Passover. We are uncertain as to where the Pool of Bethesda may have been, and we dispute as to the Way of Sorrow, the Mount of Calvary, and the Sepulchre. It is well that we should not know; and that we should not localise at any footprint, or on any rock, that which was meant to be for all the world. ”

“ Like Bœmund, he was taller than most men, strong and ruddy bearded, loved and respected by all—a true knight, faithful and pure of life, brave and just, courteous to all, and humble of heart. With him came his brother Baldwin, who was the first to establish a Latin province in Asia as Count of Edessa, and who succeeded him as King of Jerusalem. The Lorrainers whom they led numbered 10,000 knights and 24,000 foot. Raymond of Toulouse, who had fought in Spain beside the Cid, led 100,000 men by land to Byzantium with Godfrey. ”

“ On the fifteenth day of the siege, after the corner of a tower was shaken by the battering ram of the 15th legion, and a sally from the “secret gate” near Hippicus had been repulsed, the wall of Agrippa was taken, in spite of the destruction of three siege towers. The defenders apparently found the line of defence too extended for their numbers, and many—grown weary of fighting and watching—had retired to the inner city to sleep. The Romans demolished the rampart, and wasted the north quarter of the town, which had already been partly destroyed by Cestius Gallus. ”

“ But it is necessary, in endeavouring to ascertain the truth, to distinguish between their beliefs and their accounts of existing buildings, and we must found our study of the history of Jerusalem on existing monuments and inscriptions, and as far as possible on contemporary statements—on science, not on legend—even if such examination of facts leads us to discard as improbable sites which have so long been sacred to Christians; while we must also admit that certainty and finality are still impossible, in cases where the actual evidence is meagre. ”

“ The power of the Papacy was not in the end secured, nor was the union of Christendom, under the bishop of Rome as its feudal head, established more than a hundred years. Pride led to the fall of the Roman Church; and education gained in Asia led to the Renaissance and to the Reformation. The Eternal Purpose which works for the rise of man guided these unwitting agents by ways which they followed with unwilling feet, and a half-savage Europe became a new centre of civilisation in consequence mainly of the Crusades. ”

“ But it was the Christianity of Syrian and Arab Gnostics, not of the Gospels, just as Muḥammad’s ideas about the faith of Israel were taken from Talmudic Jews, and not from the Old Testament. Islâm was a revolt, not only from the savage superstitions of Arabia but from the formalism of Jews and Byzantine Christians, who, as Muḥammad said truly, had corrupted the truth by teaching the traditions of men. ”

“ Above142 the mighty ramparts the great “wing wall” (not a “pinnacle”) of the House itself towered 150 feet over the gate towers and cloisters of the inner court. The black smoke of the fig-tree logs rose high above the great Altar. The scarps of Antonia frowned down on the Temple from the north. Beyond these great buildings were the white-washed domes of the city, and farther yet the great square towers by Herod’s palace. ”

“ There is something very pathetic in the story of men who came on foot from Gaul and Britain in early times, to fortify their faith by seeing for themselves the very places seen by their Lord, to be buried near Him, or to kiss the footprints and finger prints which they were shown on the rocks of Olivet, or in the Aksa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, where they are now preserved and visited by Moslems only. The adoration of relics is not peculiar to Christianity. It is an outcome of that intense longing for certainty and finality which is natural to all mankind. ”

“ In the last days the Black Stone of Mekkah—according to Syrian Moslems—is to fly to Jerusalem to greet the Ṣakhrah, and the “tongue of the rock” is that which it will use to salute its sister of Paradise. North of the rock itself are still shown the tomb of Solomon, and the nails in a slab (perhaps once covering a Templar’s grave) which fall through into the abyss, and mark the lapse of centuries preceding the last day. Beneath the cave there was said to be a well descending to Hades, called the “Well of Souls” (Bîr el Arwâḥ) to the present day. ”

“ The power of life and death had been taken from the Sanhedrin by the procurators, so that it was not lawful for them to put any man to death. They no longer held their meetings in the Temple court, and though their decisions were obeyed by Israel, their private assembly, in the precincts of the high-priest’s “hall,” had no force under Roman rule. It was necessary to induce the Procurator himself at least to consent to the punishment of Jesus by death, but the priests had scruples which forbade their entering Pilate’s Prætorium at Passover time. ”

“ Our pilgrimage round mediæval Jerusalem thus ends at the appropriate site of Chaudemar (Aceldama) , where the powdered dust of the bones of countless pilgrims still covers the floor of the great pit, on the south precipice of Hinnom. The rock fosse measured 30 feet by 20 feet, and the vaulted roof, supported on two stout piers of masonry—drafted and with rustic bosses—is 34 feet above the floor. The rock to the west is carved with endless rows of crosses. ”

“ The justice and tolerance of the great khalifs of Baghdâd is admitted by Bernard, the pilgrim monk of the ninth century who visited Egypt and Palestine in the time of El Mut’azz, the thirteenth ’Abbaside khalîfah, just before the Turks became powerful in the East. He says that “the Christians and the pagans have there such peace between them that if I should go a journey, and in the journey my camel or ass which carries my baggage should die, and I should leave everything there without a guard, and go to the next town to get another, on my return I should find all my goods untouched. ”

“ Thus the central valley was filled in, to a depth of 20 feet, before the Crusaders began to build, and has been again filled in another 20 feet or more since the thirteenth century; while on the outside of the Temple, as we stand on the pavement at the Jews’ Wailing-place and gaze on the mighty rampart towering above, we must remember that we only see less than half its present height, and that it goes down beneath us nearly 40 feet, to the older pavement of Herod’s age, which was itself 20 feet above the foundation rocks. ”

“ No one seems now to doubt that the Temple stood on the top of the eastern ridge. The positions of Olivet and Siloam have never been questioned. Herod’s palace is placed by all in the north-west corner of the upper city, near the so-called “Tower of David,” and Antonia on the rock of the present barracks at the north-west corner of the Temple courts. There was a time when the differences of opinion were much greater. One theorist even went so far as to assert that Hebron was the true site of ancient Jerusalem. But the topography has hardly been changed since Nehemiah’s age. ”

“ Every stone of the Holy House seems to have been deliberately removed. The outer Temple ramparts were overthrown into the valleys, down to the level of the plateau formed by Herod within them. Two buttresses only were left on the north-west, close to Antonia, while on the south-east the corner of the wall stood up alone, as it was seen by the pilgrims down to the time of Justinian in our sixth century, with the spring of a huge arch which supported vaults at this angle. ”

“ HEBREW RAIDS
A later letter,76 referring to four previous messages, gives further details of the war:
“Lo! the land of Gezer, the land of Ashkelon, and the land of Lachish have given them corn, wine, and all else that they have taken away.” “Behold this land of the city Jerusalem—no man aids me, no tribe supports me, nor has risen to support me. Lo! it is done to me as was done to Milkilu, and to the sons of Labaya, who have given the King’s land to the Hebrews. Behold the King my Lord will be just to me, for the men are sorcerers [or malicious] . ”

“ Under Marcus Aurelius the Christians had become numerous in the Roman world, and in the third century—after the persecution by Decius—their bishops began to be recognised by the State, while a congregation under one in Jerusalem certainly existed in Cyprian’s time. He also mentions a female pilgrim to the Holy City, and speaks of Bishop Alexander, who—according to Eusebius—succeeded Narcissus,409 having previously ruled a church in Cappadocia. But during this age of prosperity we hear nothing else about the restored city, nor have we any account of sacred Christian sites. ”

“ In parts of Jerusalem the valleys within the walls have gradually been filled with earth and ruined masonry to a depth of 40 or 50 feet, and it is only where the bare rock is on the surface that we can feel we are standing on the very ground trodden by the feet of our Lord. ”

“ There are at least six successive cities to be studied at Jerusalem, lying one above another where the depth of the debris is greatest. Within quite recent times the level of some streets has been raised when they were repaved. In the twelfth century “Christian Street,” as it is now called, rose gradually northward, being about 15 feet higher up hill at the point where it passed the west door of the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre than at the corner where it joined David Street, and where was the Chapel of St. John Baptist belonging to the Knights of St. John. ”

“ Under El Mustanṣir, in 1047, Jerusalem was visited by the Persian pilgrim Nâṣr-i-Khosrau, who mentions the inscription still extant, giving actual measurements of the length and breadth of the Ḥaram enclosure. He says that there were no buildings along the south wall east of the Aḳṣa. In the city he found “an excellent hospital, which is provided for by considerable sums which were given for the purpose: great numbers of people are here served with draughts and lotions; for there are physicians who receive a fixed stipend to attend at this place for the sick.” ”

“ The town indeed has the appearance of sliding downhill towards the south-east, the Ophel spur being the lowest of those covered by the city at its time of greatest magnitude, when Jerusalem—including the 30 acres of the Temple enclosure—covered about 300 acres in all, being half as large again as the present city within the Turkish walls. The lowest rock stratum, which appears in the low cliffs on the east side of the Kidron, is a hard dolomitic limestone, impervious and forming the bed for streams which sink through the more porous upper limestone. ”

“ Ḥâkim accordingly proclaimed himself divine, but the strangest feature of these systems was that they were not the real beliefs of the higher initiates. ’Abdallah, the founder of the Ism’ailîyeh sect, was a sceptic, and while—like the leaders of many such secret societies back to Ḥasan of Baṣrah, who was hanged by ’Abd el Melek in 704 A. D.—he endeavoured to unite Jews, Christians, and Moslems by teaching the doctrine of successive revelations, which Muḥammad had proclaimed, he in reality renounced all creeds, and sought to rule men by what he regarded as their superstitions. ”