The city of JerusalemConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
The city of Jerusalem
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Jerusalem -- Antiquities; Jerusalem -- History
The ancient map of the city in the early years of the fourteenth
century, which is to be found in the elaborate work of Marino Sanudo,
has been already mentioned. This writer presented his book to the Pope,
and was zealous in endeavouring to revive the enthusiasm of Europe
for the recovery of Palestine, but his efforts met with no success.
His map represents the Holy City much as it was in Saladin’s time.
The House of Caiaphas and the Cœnaculum appear surrounded by the wall
of the barbican. The Pool of Bethesda is shown in its present site at
the Birket Isrâïl, and St. Stephen’s Gate is on the east instead of on
the north; but the mediæval pool west of St. Anne is also marked as
a “piscina.” The apocryphal “Upper and Lower Gihon” are shown on the
west; the Church of the “Spasm” is at the corner where the Via Dolorosa
bends south, just where its remains have now been found. These are the
chief features of the map demanding notice.
The later history of Jerusalem may be very briefly summed up.[572]
Immediately after the loss of Acre, the Turks of Asia Minor began to
become powerful. The Osmanli sulṭâns of Iconium were descended from
’Othmân, a Kharezmian vassal of the Seljuk family, which, down to
1288, retained power in Asia Minor. The new dynasty made their capital
at Broussa, and already threatened Constantinople before they were
crushed by Timur at Angora in 1402. The Osmanlis soon recovered, and
when they at length conquered Byzantium, in 1453, the terror of the
Turk fell on Europe, and led incidentally to the toleration of the
Protestants in Germany. In 1516 the sulṭân Selîm invaded Syria, and in
the next year he entered Cairo. He thus attained a practical right to
the title of Khalîfah of the Prophet, because that office was always
purely elective, and was bestowed on the “guardian of the two shrines”
(_Ḥâmi el Ḥaramein_) of Mekkah and Jerusalem, which the present sulṭân
still is. Besides this claim, Selîm was acknowledged by El Mutawakkil,
son of ’Amr el Ḥakîm, a descendant of the ’Abbaside khalifs found
living, as titular khalîfah, in the Egyptian capital, as well as by
the sherîf of Mekkah. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, in 1542, by
Sulṭân Suleimân, and are noticed by Pierre Belon, the naturalist, in
the following year, as being “new.” They are those which still exist,
and Suleimân’s name is recorded in an inscription upon them at the
Jaffa Gate, as also in another which shows that he restored the Birket
es Sulṭân, or old “Pool of the Germans,” in the upper Hinnom Valley.
His gift of beautiful windows, and his other work, in the Dome of the
Rock have already been noted. In 1555 the Franciscans were allowed to
place a new roof on the Holy Sepulchre, and to execute repairs in the
interior of the chapel, as already mentioned.
[Sidenote: ZUALLARDO]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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