The city of JerusalemConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
The city of Jerusalem
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Jerusalem -- Antiquities; Jerusalem -- History
The Latin descriptions never mention the churches of the Greeks,
Syrians, Georgians, Armenians, or Copts in the Holy City. The Latins
had appropriated all the principal holy places. The abbot Daniel speaks
of a monastery of St. Saba, apparently near the Tower of David; and
John Phocas (in 1185 A. D.) mentions the Georgian hermits who lived in
the tombs and caves on the east side of the Kidron Valley. The crosses
that these and other recluses[535] cut on the walls can still be seen.
The large Armenian Church of St. James on Sion probably existed in
the twelfth century. The interior is now cased with porcelain tiles,
and the floor is covered with fine carpets. The shrine on the north,
supposed to contain the head of James the Less, is adorned with
tortoise-shell, and in the great hall to the south is a remarkable
fresco which may be of the twelfth or thirteenth century, representing
Hell (as was then customary) as a monster with a huge mouth, into which
naked souls are driven by the pitchforks of devils.
We hear very little about the water-supply of the city, except that
there were large tanks in the Ḥaram. The “Lake of Baths,” mentioned
in 1137,[536] is probably the present “Patriarch’s Bath,” or Pool of
Hezekiah, and the Piscina Interior--or supposed Bethesda--near St.
Anne has been already mentioned. Outside the city the Mâmilla Pool was
called the Lake of St. Egerius; and, about 1172, the Germans (that is
to say, probably the Teutonic Order) constructed the present Birket
es Sulṭân under the west wall of the upper city.[537] It was for “the
common use of the town,” and was called the German Lake. On the old
map of 1308 these two reservoirs already bear the titles “Upper” and
“Lower Gihon.” The Well of Job, as already explained,[538] was reopened
in 1184 by the Franks. Pilate’s aqueduct does not appear to be ever
mentioned.
[Sidenote: ST. STEPHEN]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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