The Legacy of Solomon

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The Legacy of Solomon Page 43

by John Francis Kinsella

Historical texts indicate that the western rampart of the Haram, commonly called the Wailing Wall, or preferably the Western Wall or more correctly Kotel ha-Ma’aravi, Kotel for short, did not become a central point for worship until the 16th or 17th century. Prior to this time there was no mention of the Western Wall in any texts.

  The Haram, which was the supposed site of the Temple of the Jews that had been razed by the Romans, had been occupied by the Christians from the time of the Crusades, who transformed the Dome of the Rock into the Templum Domini and the Al Aqsa Mosque into the Templum Solomis.

  The Jews at the time of the Crusades obtained the authorisation to pray in a small forecourt inside the Golden Gate near to what they believed was the court of their Temple. This however led to violent attacks by the Muslims who were insulted by what they considered a public exhibition by infidels.

  This led the Jews to using the nearby Mountain of Olives as a place of prayer as it had the advantage being situated outside of the city and was to the east of the Temple site and corresponded to the laws concerning the direction of prayer.

  For the Jews the Western Wall was the wall of the Holy of Holies in the Temple, situated to the west side of the sanctuary and against which was placed the Ark of the Covenant. The entrance to the Temple was to the east, therefore the high priests and the worshippers would have been to the east of the Temple where they prayed.

  In 950AD, a guide to Jerusalem was written by the Geniza of Cairo, which described the different holy places of Jerusalem where the Jews prayed following the transformation of the Esplanade to the Haram esh-Sharif by the Muslims, made no mention of the rampart, or of the Western Wall, but mentions the places of pilgrimage or prayer and the gathering of Jews were principally situated to the south and to the east of the Haram and in particular on the Mountain of Olives.

  In 1244AD the defensive walls of Jerusalem were demolished on the order of the Sultan of Damascus and the city was sacked by the Muslim Tartars who massacred the Christians and the Jews. Then in 1250AD, the Mamluks, mercenary slaves converted to Islam, in the pay of the Ayyubids, seized power in Cairo, Egypt, and then defeated the Mongols in 1260AD. The Mamluks then ruled Jerusalem for the next three centuries until the arrival of the Ottoman Turks in 1517AD.

  In 1267AD after the sack of Jerusalem by the Mongols and at the beginning of the Mamluks rule of Jerusalem, Nahmanides wrote a letter to his son:

  What can I say of this country? Great is the solitude, great is the waste, in a word the more sacred the places the greater is their desolation!

  And Jerusalem is even more devastated than the rest of the country and Judah is more ravaged than Galilee. But in spite of this terrible destruction, it is a blessed land! Jerusalem has about 2,000 inhabitants, of which 300 are Christians who escaped the sword of the Sultan. There are no Jews. Because since the attack of the Tartars. There are only two brothers who are dyers, and must by their ingredients from the Muslim authorities. Ten Jews (of which eight are outside of Jerusalem) gather together for the Sabbath and the service is held in the house of these two brothers.

  But we encouraged them and we succeeded to find a vacant house, built with pillars and marble with a fine vault (perhaps part of the remains of a Crusader church). We made it into a synagogue.

  Because this city has not a real master, and whoever wants to take possession of a ruin can do so. We contributed to the repairs of this synagogue. We also sent someone to Sichem so that he could bring back Rolls of the Law, that had been kept in safekeeping there, at the time of the Tartar invasion.

  In fact the Jews come to Jerusalem, men and women, from Damascus, from Aleppo, from all of these regions to contemplate the Sanctuary and there to mourn for it.

  During the 12th century, a new Muslim power emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean – the Ottoman Turks. The first wave of development of Ottoman power took place around Constantinople and in Anatolia, where the remaining Christian lands were conquered. Constantinople the capital of the Christian Orient was taken in 1453 and between 1359 and 1463AD the Ottomans had advanced into the Balkans conquering Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and Bosnia, and had reached the gates of Vienna in the north,

  The name of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who had transformed the whole of the Roman Empire into Christianity and had created Constantinople into a living junction between paganism and Christianity, was swept away. In its place the Christian capital, taken by the Muslim Ottomans, was to become from then onwards the capital of Islam during four centuries, was renamed Istanbul.

  From 1453 the Ottomans spread south conquering Arabia with its holy cities Medina and Mecca where Islam was born, then Egypt, Syria, and Palestine with Sultan Selim entering Jerusalem in 1517, whose son Suleyman the Magnificent rebuilt the ramparts of Ancient Jerusalem.

  The Ottoman Empire ruled Jerusalem for four centuries, until the arrival of the British in WWI and the abolition of the Turkish Sultanate in 1920 thus bringing to an end the last Caliphate.

  It was sometime between the 16th and 17th centuries, under the Ottomans, that it prayers at the Wailing Wall came into being. At that time the Jews of Jerusalem lived in a quarter near to the eastern rampart of the Haram. Since access to the Haram was forbidden to the Jews by the Muslim authorities and the Mountain of Olives was far it appears that some Jews came to the wall to pray so as to be near to the site of their never forgotten Temple, which had disappear one thousand five hundred years previously but was constantly recalled in their sacred texts and prayers.

  At the base of the western rampart of the Haram in the Old City was a passage of about thirty metres long and four metres wide that terminated in a cul-de-sac. This could be reached from David Street and a passage enclosed by the walls of a mosque and other buildings that offered protection from the regards of the Muslims. The ancient western wall was formed by huge stone blocks offering an evocative place for prayer near to the site of the Temple.

  The fact that this rampart was situated at the west of the Haram facilitated the identification of the Western Wall with the Temple’s Holy of Holies. The Jewish texts give eyewitness accounts referring to the Wailing Wall in the 17th and 18th centuries. But prior to this time no references exist as to the existence of the wall.

  One of the first texts that mentions Jewish prayer at the western rampart of the Haram dates to 1658 with a description that speaks of the wall as part of the Temple where the Jews could pray after paying a yearly tax.

  This text affirms the confusion between the western rampart of the Esplanade and a wall of the Temple. Another text by a Jew from about the same time describes of the supposed remaining Western Wall of the Temple as long, very high, and very old. Some of stones measured between two and three metres long. It continues by recounting that on the day of the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple the Jews went to the Wall to pray with loud lamentations.

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  Cuneiform

 

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