Carpe Diem: Jerusalem - final instalment

On the Sunday we toured the Western Wall tunnels. The guide had an excellent take apart and put together model to show the various stages in the history of Temple Mount. The masonry from the retaining wall of the Herodian Temple is massively impressive – huge blocks of stone, carefully shaped with a sort of frame effect round each block, and each layer set back two centimetres from the lower one, so the wall sloped upward. There are huge cisterns and mikvahs for ritual purification before going up to the Temple, and a little secret underground synagogue, used to get as close as possible to the Holy of Holies.

Then we had a quick look round the Jewish Quarter, which is practically all new. There is one ruin, which is controversial, apparently, because it’s the chapel and hospice of the Teuton Knights.

We joined the queue for the Temple Mount. Non muslims can only enter at certain times and stay for three quarters of an hour. As the queue doesn’t move that fast, because of the security arrangements, you don’t get very long up there, but as you aren’t allowed to go in anywhere, it’s enough. Actually, the Christian churches come out of it rather well, as they are the only religion to welcome anyone inside. There were parties of Muslim children being taken round Holy Sepulchre, but the only Mosque we could go in was in Nazareth, the White Mosque, which has a reputation of working for peace and community relations, where we were made welcome. No synagogues seemed to open.

The White Mosque, Nazareth

Just near Holy Sepulchre is the Mosque of Omar, founded by the second Caliph to prevent Muslims trying to take over the Christian church. He guaranteed that the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity would remain Christian shrines. It’s a pity that Omar, in 637 A.D., was more tolerant than most of the “religious” are nowadays.

Holy Sepulchre, from Temple Mount - minaret of Mosque of Omar to left.

Observant Jews are forbidden to go onto Temple Mount, as no one is absolutely sure where the Holy of Holies was, and because they can’t complete the full necessary ritual purification, which involves being sprinkled with the ashes of a perfect red heifer, killed and then incinerated. This sounds the opposite of purification to me, but there you go. I can’t see how washing helps either, unless your mind is pure. (That’s my Christian teaching speaking, I know. It does stick.)

The Golden gate from the Mount of Olives

There’s a bit of the Haram you aren’t allowed in, and I don’t know why, since it seemed to be just garden; it was the bit towards the Golden Gate which is closed until the Messiah enters in, so whether that has something to do with it…………….. but it seems improbable.

Door of Al Aqsa

Al Aqsa

There are quite a lot of Byzantine columns and arches, and Al Aqsa which was a Crusader church has magnificent Crusader style doors. There is a kind of subsidiary Dome of the Rock, with open sides, not enclosed, called the Dome of the Chain, in the same style, with a magnificent mihrab.

The Dome of the Rock is strikingly beautiful, and of course the views are tremendous.

Mihrab, Dome of the Chain

The Dome of the Rock and the Dome of the Chain

We left by Bab al Sisila (the Cotton merchants Gate); a clearly Mamluk gate from the Haram led straight into a very old souk in a sort of tunnel, which had sold cotton and now was largely sweets, and then to a gate at the other end which was clearly Crusader. The Jerusalem Arabs seem to have a passion for sweets.