The Knights TemplarsAddison, C. G. (Charles Greenstreet)
History
The Knights Templars
Addison, C. G. (Charles Greenstreet)
Templars
At first, we are told, they had no church, and no particular place
of abode, but in the year of our Lord 1118, (nineteen years after
the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,) they had rendered such
good and acceptable service to the Christians, that Baldwin the
Second, king of Jerusalem, granted them a place of habitation within
the sacred inclosure of the Temple on Mount Moriah, amid those holy
and magnificent structures, partly erected by the Christian Emperor
Justinian, and partly built by the Caliph Omar, which were then
exhibited by the monks and priests of Jerusalem, whose restless zeal
led them to practise on the credulity of the pilgrims, and to multiply
relics and all objects likely to be sacred in their eyes, as the TEMPLE
OF SOLOMON, whence the Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ came
thenceforth to be known by the name of “THE KNIGHTHOOD OF THE TEMPLE OF
SOLOMON.”
By the Mussulmen, the site of the great Jewish temple on Mount Moriah
has always been regarded with peculiar veneration. Mahomet, in the
first year of the publication of the Koran, directed his followers,
when at prayer, to turn their faces towards it, and pilgrimages
have constantly been made to the holy spot by devout Moslems. On
the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arabians, it was the first care of
the Caliph Omar to rebuild “the Temple of the Lord.” Assisted by
the principal chieftains of his army, the Commander of the Faithful
undertook the pious office of clearing the ground with his own hands,
and of tracing out the foundations of the magnificent mosque which now
crowns with its dark and swelling dome the elevated summit of Mount
Moriah.
This great house of prayer, the most holy Mussulman Temple in the world
after that of Mecca, is erected over the spot where “Solomon began
to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where
the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had
prepared in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” It remains to
this day in a state of perfect preservation, and is one of the finest
specimens of Saracenic architecture in existence. It is entered by
four spacious doorways, each door facing one of the cardinal points;
the _Bab el D’Jannat_, or gate of the garden, on the north; the _Bab
el Kebla_, or gate of prayer, on the south; the _Bab ib’n el Daoud_,
or the gate of the son of David, on the east; and the _Bab el Garbi_,
on the west. By the Arabian geographers it is called _Beit Allah_, the
house of God, also _Beit Almokaddas_, or _Beit Almacdes_, the holy
house. From it Jerusalem derives its Arabic name, _el Kods_, the holy,
_el Schereef_, the noble, and _el Mobarek_, the blessed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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