which David bought, purchasing at the same time the whole of Mount
Moriah. Solomon built the Temple over this rock, and it was probably
the “stone of sacrifice.” At the time Solomon built the Temple, the
level place on Moriah was scarcely large enough for the naos of that
building, and Solomon extended the ground to the east and south by
erecting arches and filling in on top of them, and constructing a heavy
retaining-wall outside. On the east side also he built a porch, or
magnificent colonnade, which must have produced a fine effect of
Oriental grandeur when seen from the deep valley below or from the Mount
of Olives opposite.
To this rock the Jews used to come, in the fourth century, and anoint it
with oil, and wail over it, as the site of the Temple. On it once stood
a statue of Hadrian. When the Moslems captured Jerusalem, it became,
what it has ever since been, one of their most venerated places. The
Khalif Omar cleared away the rubbish from it, and built over it a
mosque. The Khalif Abd-el-Melek began to rebuild it in a. d. 686. During
the Crusades it was used as a Christian church. Allowing for decay and
repairs, the present mosque is probably substantially that built by
Abd-el-Melek.
At the extreme south of the area is the vast Mosque of Aksa, a splendid
basilica with seven aisles, which may or may not be the Church of St.
Mary built by Justinian in the sixth century; architects differ about
it. This question it seems to me very difficult to decide from the
architecture of the building, because of the habit that Christians
and Moslems both had of appropriating columns and capitals of ancient
structures in their buildings; and because the Moslems at that time used
both the round and the pointed arch.
This platform is beyond all comparison the most beautiful place in
Jerusalem, and its fairy-like buildings, when seen from the hill
opposite, give to the city its chief claim to Oriental picturesqueness.
The dome of the mosque Kubbet-es-Sukhrah is perhaps the most beautiful
in the world; it seems to float in the air like a blown bubble; this
effect is produced by a slight drawing in of the base. This contraction
of the dome is not sufficient to give the spectator any feeling of
insecurity, or to belittle this architectural marvel to the likeness
of a big toy; the builder hit the exact mean between massiveness and
expanding lightness. The mosque is octagonal in form, and although its
just proportions make it appear small, it is a hundred and fifty feet in
diameter; outside and in, it is a blaze of color in brilliant marbles,
fine mosaics, stained glass, and beautiful Saracenic tiles. The lower
part of the exterior wall is covered with colored marbles in intricate
patterns; above are pointed windows with stained glass; and the spaces
between the windows are covered by glazed tiles, with arabesque designs
and very rich in color. In the interior, which has all the soft warmth
and richness of Persian needlework, are two corridors, with rows of
columns and pillars; within the inner row is the Sacred Rock.
This rock, which is the most remarkable stone in the world, if half we
hear of it be true, and which by a singular fortune is sacred to three
religions, is an irregular bowlder, standing some five feet above the
pavement, and is something like sixty feet long. In places it has been
chiselled, steps are cut on one side, and various niches are hewn in
it; a round hole pierces it from top to bottom. The rock is limestone,
a little colored with iron, and beautiful in spots where it has been
polished. One would think that by this time it ought to be worn smooth
all over.
If we may believe the Moslems and doubt our own senses, this rock is
suspended in the air, having no support on any side. It was to this rock
that Mohammed made his midnight journey on El Burak; it was from
here that he ascended into Paradise, an excursion that occupied him
altogether only forty minutes. It is, I am inclined to think, the
miraculous suspension of this stone that is the basis of the Christian
fable of the suspension of Mohammed's coffin,—a miracle unknown to
all Moslems of whom I have inquired concerning it.
“Abd-el-Atti,” I said, “does this rock rest on nothing?”
“So I have hunderstood; thim say so.”
“But do you believe it?”
“When I read him, I believe; when I come and see him, I can't help
what I see.”
At the south end of the rock we descended a flight of steps and stood
under the rock in what is called the Noble Cave, a small room about six
feet high, plastered and whitewashed. This is supposed to be the sink
into which the blood of the Jewish sacrifices drained. The plaster and
whitewash hide the original rock, and give the Moslems the opportunity
to assert that there is no rock foundation under the big stone.
“But,” we said to Abd-el-Atti, “if this rock hangs in the air,
why cannot we see all around it? Why these plaster walls that seem to
support it?”
“So him used to be. This done so, I hear, on account of de women. Thim
come here, see this rock, thim berry much frightened. Der little shild,
what you call it, get born in de world before him wanted. So thim make
this wall under it.”
There are four altars in this cave, one of them dedicated to David; here
the Moslem prophets, Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus, used to pray.
In the rock is a round indentation made by Mohammed's head when he
first attempted to rise to heaven; near it is the hole through which
he rose. On the upper southeast corner of the rock is the print of the
prophet's foot, and close to it the print of the hand of the angel
Michael, who held the rock down from following Mohammed into the skies.
In the mosque above, Abd-el-Atti led us, with much solemnity, to a small
stone set in the pavement near the north entrance. It was perforated
with holes, in some of which were brass nails.
“How many holes you make 'em there?”
“Thirteen.”
“How many got nails?”
“Four.”
“Not so many. Only three and a half nails. Used to be thirteen nails.
Now only three and a half. When these gone, then the world come to an
end. I t'ink it not berry long.”
“I should think the Moslems would watch this stone very carefully.”
“What difference? You not t'ink it come when de time come?”
We noticed some pieces of money on the stone, and asked why that was.
“Whoever he lay backsheesh on this stone, he certain to go into
Paradise, and be took by our prophet in his bosom.”
We wandered for some time about the green esplanade, dotted with
cypress-trees, and admired the little domes: the Dome of the Spirits,
the dome that marks the spot where David sat in judgment, etc.; some
of them cover cisterns and reservoirs in the rock, as old as the
foundations of the Temple.
In the corridor of the Mosque of Aksa are two columns standing close
together, and like those at the Mosque of Omar, in Cairo, they are a
test of character; it is said that whoever can squeeze between them is
certain of Paradise, and must, of course, be a good Moslem. I suppose
that when this test was established the Moslems were all lean. A black
stone is set in the wall of the porch; whoever can walk, with closed
eyes, across the porch pavement and put his finger on this stone may be
sure of entering Paradise. According to this criterion, the writer of
this is one of the elect of the Mohammedan Paradise and his dragoman is
shut out. We were shown in this mosque the print of Christ's foot in
a stone; and it is said that with faith one can feel in it, as he can
in that of Mohammed's in the rock, the real flesh. Opening from this
mosque is the small Mosque of Omar, on the spot where that zealous
khalif prayed.
The massive pillared substructions under Aksa are supposed by Moslems
to be of Solomon's time. That wise monarch had dealings with the
invisible, and no doubt controlled the genii, who went and came and
built and delved at his bidding. Abd-el-Atti, with haste and an air of
mystery, drew me along under the arches to the window in the south end,
and showed me the opening of a passage under the wall, now half choked
up with stones. This is the beginning of a subterranean passage made
by the prophet Solomon, that extends all the way to Hebron, and has an
issue in the mosque over the tomb of Abraham. This fact is known only
to Moslems, and to very few of them, and is considered one of the great
secrets. Before I was admitted to share it, I am glad that I passed
between the two columns, and touched, with my eyes shut, the black
stone.
In the southeast corner of the Harem is a little building called the
Mosque of Jesus. We passed through it, and descended the stairway into
what is called Solomon's Stables, being shown on our way a stone
trough which is said to be the cradle of the infant Jesus. These
so-called stables are subterranean vaults, built, no doubt, to sustain
the south end of the Temple platform. We saw fifteen rows of massive
square pillars of unequal sizes and at unequal distances apart (as if
intended for supports that would not be seen), and some forty feet high,
connected by round arches. We were glad to reascend from this wet and
unpleasant cavern to the sunshine and the greensward.
I forgot to mention the Well of the Leaf, near the entrance, in the
Mosque of Aksa, and the pretty Moslem legend that gave it a name, which
Abd-el-Atti relates, though not in the words of the hand-book:—
“This well berry old; call him Well of the Leaf; water same as Pool
of Solomon, healthy water; I like him very much. Not so deep as Bir
el-Arwâh; that small well, you see it under the rock; they say it goes
down into Gehenna.”
“Why is this called the Well of the Leaf?”
“Once, time of Suleiman [it was Omar], a friend of our prophet come
here to pray, and when he draw water to wash he drop the bucket in the
bottom of the well. No way to get it up, but he must go down. When he
was on the bottom, there he much surprised by a door open in the ground,
and him berry cur'ous to see what it is. Nobody there, so he look
in, and then walk through berry fast, and look over him shoulder to
the bucket left in the well. The place where he was come was the most
beautiful garden ever was, and he walk long time and find no end, always
more garden, so cool, and water run in little streams, and sweet smell
of roses and jasmine, and little birds that sing, and big trees and
dates and oranges and palms, more kind, I t'ink, than you see in the
garden of his vice-royal. When the man have been long time in the garden
he begin to have fright, and pick a green leaf off a tree, and run back
and come up to his friends. He show 'em the green leaf, but nobody
have believe what he say. Then they tell him story to the kadi, and the
kadi send men to see the garden in the bottom of the well. They not
find any, not find any door. Then the kadi he make him a letter to the
Sultan—berry wise man—and he say (so I read it in our history),
'Our prophet say, One of my friends shall walk in Paradise while he
is alive. If this is come true, you shall see the leaf, if it still keep
green.' Then the kadi make examine of the leaf, and find him green. So
it is believe the man has been in Paradise.”
“And do you believe it?”
“I cannot say edzacly where him been. Where you t'ink he done got
that leaf?”
Along the east wall of the Harem there are no remains of the long
colonnade called Solomon's Porch, not a column of that resplendent
marble pavilion which caught the first rays of the sun over the
mountains of Moab, and which, with the shining temple towering behind
it, must have presented a more magnificent appearance than Babylon, and
have rivalled the architectural glories of Baalbek. The only thing in
this wail worthy of note now is the Golden Gate, an entrance no longer
used. We descended into its archways, and found some fine columns with
composite capitals, and other florid stone-work of a rather tasteless
and debased Roman style.
We climbed the wall by means of the steps, a series of which are placed
at intervals, and sat a long time looking upon a landscape, every foot
of which is historical. Merely to look upon it is to recall a great
portion of the Jewish history and the momentous events in the brief life
of the Saviour, which, brief as it was, sufficed to newly create the
earth. There is the Mount of Olives, with its commemorative chapels,
heaps of stone, and scattered trees; there is the ancient foot-path up
which David fled as a fugitive by night from the conspiracy of Absalom,
what time Shimei, the relative of Saul, stoned him and cursed him; and
down that Way of Triumph, the old road sweeping round its base, came the
procession of the Son of David, in whose path the multitude cast their
garments and branches of trees, and cried, “Hosanna in the highest.”
There on those hills, Mount Scopus and Olivet, were once encamped the
Assyrians, and again the Persians; there shone the eagles of Rome, borne
by her conquering legions; and there, in turn, Crusaders and Saracens
pitched their tents. How many times has the air been darkened with
missiles hurled thence upon this shining prize, and how many armies
have closed in about this spot and swarmed to its destruction! There the
Valley of Jehoshaphat curves down until it is merged in the Valley of
the Brook Kidron. There, at the junction of the roads that run over and
around Olivet, is a clump of trees surrounded by a white wall; that is
the Garden of Gethsemane. Near it is the tomb of Mary. Farther down
you see the tomb of Absalom, the tomb of St. James, the monolith
pyramid-tipped tomb of Zacharias (none of them apparently as old as they
claim to be), and the remains of a little temple, the model of which
came from the banks of the Nile, that Solomon built for his Egyptian
wife, the daughter of Pharaoh, wherein they worshipped the gods of her
country. It is tradition also that near here were some of the temples he
built for others of his strange wives: a temple to Chemosh, the Moabite
god, and the image of Moloch, the devourer of children. Solomon was
wiser than all men, wiser than Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons
of Mahol; his friend Hiram of Tyre used to send riddles to him which no
one in the world but Solomon could guess; but his wisdom failed him with
the other sex, and there probably never was another Oriental court so
completely ruled and ruined by women as his.
This valley below us is perhaps the most melancholy on earth: nowhere
else is death so visibly master of the scene; nature is worn out, man
tired out; a gray despair has settled down upon the landscape. Down
there is the village of Siloam, a village of huts and holes in the
rocks, opposite the cave of that name. If it were the abode of wolves it
would have a better character than it has now. There is the grim cast
of sin and exhaustion upon the scene. I do not know exactly how much of
this is owing to the Jewish burying-ground, which occupies so much of
the opposite hill. The slope is thickly shingled with gray stones, that
lie in a sort of regularity which suggests their purpose. You fall to
computing how many Jews there may be in that hill, layer upon layer; for
the most part they are dissolved away into the earth, but you think that
if they were to put on their mortal bodies and come forth, the valley
itself would be filled with them almost to the height of the wall. Out
of these gates, giving upon this valley of death, six hundred thousand
bodies of those who had starved were thrown during the siege, and long
before Titus stormed the city. I do not wonder that the Moslems think of
this frightful vale as Gehenna itself.
From an orifice in the battlemented wall where we sat projects a round
column, mounted there like a cannon, and perhaps intended to deceive
an enemy into the belief that the wall is fortified. It is astride this
column, overhanging this dreadful valley, that Mohammed will sit at
the last, the judgment day. A line finer than a hair and sharper than a
razor will reach from it to the tower on the Mount of Olives, stretching
over the valley of the dead. This is the line Es-Serat. Mohammed will
superintend the passage over it. For in that day all who ever lived,
risen to judgment, must walk this razor-line; the good will cross in
safety; the bad will fall into hell, that is, into Gehenna, this blasted
gulf and side-hill below, thickly sown with departed Jews. It is in view
of this perilous passage that the Moslem every day, during the ablution
of his feet, prays: “O, make my feet not to slip on Es-Serat, on that
day when feet shall slip.”
IV.—NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM.
WHEREVER we come upon traces of the Knights of St. John, there a door
opens for us into romance; the very name suggests valor and courtesy
and charity. Every town in the East that is so fortunate as to have any
memorials of them, whatever its other historic associations, obtains an
additional and special fame from its connection with this heroic order.
The city of Acre recalls the memory of their useless prowess in the last
struggle of the Christians to retain a foothold in Palestine; the name
of the Knights of Rhodes brings before every traveller, who has seen it,
the picturesque city in which the armorial insignia of this order have
for him a more living interest than any antiquities of the Grecian Rose;
the island fortress at the gate of the Levant owes all the interest we
feel in it to the Knights of Malta; and even the city of David and of
the Messiah has an added lustre as the birthplace of the Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem.
From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, they are the chief figures
who in that whirlwind of war contested the possession of the Levant with
the Saracens and the Turks. In the forefront of every battle was seen
their burnished mail, in the gloomy rear of every retreat were heard
their voices of constancy and of courage; wherever there were crowns to
be cracked, or wounds to be bound up, or broken hearts to be ministered
to, there were the Knights of St. John, soldiers, priests, servants,
laying aside the gown for the coat of mail if need be, or exchanging
the cuirass for the white cross on the breast. Originally a charitable
order, dwelling in the Hospital of St. John to minister to the pilgrims
to Jerusalem, and composed of young soldiers of Godfrey, who took the
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they resumed their arms upon
the pressure of infidel hostility, and subsequently divided the order
into three classes: soldiers, priests, and servants. They speedily
acquired great power and wealth; their palaces, their fortifications,
their churches, are even in their ruins the admiration and wonder of our
age. The purity of the order: was in time somewhat sullied by luxury,
but their valor never suffered the slightest eclipse; whether the field
they contested was lost or won, their bravery always got new honor from
it.
Nearly opposite the court of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the
green field of Muristan, the site of the palace, church, and hospital of
the Knights of St. John. The field was, on an average, twenty-five feet
above the surrounding streets, and a portion of it was known to rest
upon vaults. This plot of ground was given to the Prussian government,
and its agents have been making excavations there; these were going on
at the time of our visit. The disclosures are of great architectural
and historical interest. The entrance through a peculiar Gothic gateway
leads into a court. Here the first excavations were made several years
ago, and disclosed some splendid remains: the apse of the costly church,
cloisters, fine windows and arches of the best Gothic style. Beyond, the
diggings have brought to light some of the features of the palace and
hospital; an excavation of twenty-five feet reaches down to the arches
of the substructure, which rest upon pillars from forty to fifty feet
high. This gives us some notion of the magnificent group of buildings
that once occupied this square, and also of the industry of nature as
an entomber, since some four centuries have sufficed her to bury these
ruins so far beneath the soil, that peasants ploughed over the palaces
of the knights without a suspicion of what lay beneath.
In one corner of this field stands a slender minaret, marking the spot
where the great Omar once said his prayers; four centuries after this,
Saladin is said to have made his military headquarters in the then
deserted palace of the Knights of St. John. There is no spot in
Jerusalem where one touches more springs of romance than in this field
of Muristan.
Perhaps the most interesting and doleful walk one can take near
Jerusalem is that into the Valley of Kidron and through Aceldama, round
to the Jaffa Gate, traversing “the whole valley of the dead bodies,
and of the ashes,” in the cheerful words of Jeremiah.
We picked our way through the filthy streets and on the slippery
cobble-stones,—over which it seems dangerous to ride and is nearly
impossible to walk,—out through St. Stephen's Gate. Near the gate,
inside, we turned into an alley and climbed a heap of rubbish to see
a pool, which the guide insisted upon calling Bethesda, although it is
Birket Israil. Having seen many of these pools, I did not expect much,
but I was still disappointed. We saw merely a hole in the ground, which
is void of all appearance of ever having been even damp. The fact is,
we have come to Jerusalem too late; we ought to have been here about two
thousand years ago.
The slope of the hill outside the gate is covered with the turbaned
tombs of Moslems; we passed under the walls and through this cemetery
into the deep valley below, crossing the bed of the brook near the tombs
of Absalom, Jehoshaphat, St. James, and Zacharias. These all seem to be
of Roman construction; but that called Absalom's is so firmly believed
to be his that for centuries every Jew who has passed it has cast a
stone at it, and these pebbles of hate partially cover it. We also added
to the heap, but I do not know why, for it is nearly impossible to hate
any one who has been dead so long.
The most interesting phenomenon in the valley is the Fountain of the
Virgin, or the Fountain of Accused Women, as it used to be called. The
Moslem tradition is that it was a test of the unfaithfulness of women;
those who drank of it and were guilty, died; those who were innocent
received no harm. The Virgin Mary herself, being accused, accepted
this test, drank of the water, and proved her chastity. Since then the
fountain has borne her name. The fountain, or well, is in the side-hill,
under the rocks of Ophel, and the water springs up in an artificial
cave. We descended some sixteen steps to a long chamber, arched with
ancient masonry; we passed through that and descended fourteen steps
more into a grotto, where we saw the water flowing in and escaping by a
subterranean passage. About this fountain were lounging groups of Moslem
idlers, mostly women and children. Not far off a Moslem was saying his
prayers, prostrating himself before a prayer-niche. We had difficulty
in making our way down the steps, so encumbered were they with women.
Several of them sat upon the lowest steps in the damp cavern, gossiping,
filling their water-skins, or paddling about with naked feet.
The well, like many others in Syria, is intermittent and irregular
in its rising and falling; sometimes it is dry, and then suddenly it
bubbles up and is full again. Some scholars think this is the Pool
Bethesda of the New Testament, others think that Bethesda was Siloam,
which is below this well and fed by it, and would exhibit the same
irregular rising and falling. This intermittent character St. John
attributed to an angel who came down and troubled the water; the
Moslems, with the same superstition, say that it is caused by a dragon,
who sleeps therein and checks the stream when he wakes.
On our way to the Pool of Siloam, we passed the village of Si-loam,
which is inhabited by about a thousand Moslems,—a nest of stone huts
and caves clinging to the side-hill, and exactly the gray color of its
stones. The occupation of the inhabitants appears to be begging, and
hunting for old copper coins, mites, and other pieces of Jewish money.
These relics they pressed upon us with the utmost urgency. It was easier
to satisfy the beggars than the traders, who sallied out upon us like
hungry wolves from their caves. There is a great choice of disagreeable
places in the East, but I cannot now think of any that I should not
prefer as a residence to Siloam.