Jerusalem, the Labyrinth of Peace!

Amman → Jerusalem
65.6 mi (105.5 km)

Shalom, chaverim!

Today I woke up to my last Salat al-Fajr for this trip and rolled out of bed to catch a taxi to a place where no Jordanian road signs point. Sure, I had seen signs pointing to Saudi Arabia and even Yemen, but Israel? Heck no! As we headed toward the heavily fortified border, I got a real sense of the ongoing unease in this corner of the Middle East!

After about an hour drive, we arrived at the Allenby, or King Hussein, Bridge to begin the crossing. A few of us early arrivals ambled into a small waiting room to hand over our passports in one line, then pay the exit tax in another. None of these lines were labeled; we had to ask the guards where to go. After a busload of other crossers arrived, we boarded a different bus and only then got our passports back. It was a slow crossing over the Jordan River into Israel, where we encountered a second checkpoint with more passport checks, questioning, a hat change, and finally, admittance into the Promised Land! 45 minutes in a shared van later, I was standing at the Damascus Gate leading into Old Town Jerusalem!

Old Town was a maze of narrow streets jam-packed with vendors of foods and trinkets, as had been the scene for thousands of years! The earliest known settlement here dates back to the 19th century BC, but this city has been destroyed, sacked, and rebuilt many times since then. Nevertheless, its roots come from the Canaanite terms yeru for “settlement” and shalem for “peace!”

It’s a city that three different religions, and their denominations, all consider holy, and after years of exploring missions, churches, and the tombs of saints, it made sense to start at Ground Zero for all of this history: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre! Here, Christian tradition holds, Jesus was crucified and buried! The first church here was built under direction of Constantine I in 326 AD, who claimed to have found the tomb of Jesus underneath an old temple to Jupiter or Venus. It was destroyed twice, by the Persians in 614 AD, then the Fatimids in 1009. This church, with some modifications, dates back to 1048, and concern over its safety launched the Crusades!

As a major pilgrimage site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was jam-packed with pilgrims and visitors from many different denominations beyond the big three who jointly run it: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic. Inside the door, folks were on their knees to kiss the Stone of Anointing, where Jesus’ body was supposedly prepared after he died, though this stone was only installed here in 1810. A multi-hour line wound around the Aedicule, a chapel like the Porziuncola, which covered the original tomb. But, like at St. Peter’s Basilica, the crushing crowds took a toll on the wonder of the place, and I was soon pushed out.

I set off into the Souk, or marketplace, to break for some freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. After some short nights of rest, I wasn’t exactly operating on a ton of energy, but I was determined to see as much as I could! In the souk, the scents of falafels and shawarmas mixed with invitations to step in and view knick-knacks of a wide range in quality! But I was in search of history, and once I’d gulped down my overpriced juice, I was ready to keep exploring.

There was a sprinkling of rain as I wandered an area called Muristan, a corruption of the Persian-Turkish word Bimaristan, which meant “hospital.” Here, in 1099, the Knights Hospitallers of St. John set up a hospital to tend to wounded Crusaders in the city!

But the Crusades were far from the first time that cultures had mixed here in Jerusalem. I crossed into a new Quarter, the Jewish Quarter, where the merchandise and decor shifted from crosses to stars, and I beheld for the first time one of the holiest and most controversial spots in all of Jerusalem: the Temple Mount!

At this site, Jewish tradition holds that Solomon built his first Temple to house the Ark of the Covenant and Ten Commandments. When built, it measured 180 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 50 feet high and served as a major place of worship for about four hundred years! Then the Babylonians destroyed it in 586 BC, and the Romans destroyed the second Temple in 70 AD! The temple was never rebuilt and can’t be for the foreseeable future, because as of 692 AD, there is a golden dome and a mosque on top, the work of Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik!

Today, Jewish folks must content themselves by praying at the Western Wall of the Temple, while Muslims worship at the mosque on top, where it is believed that Mohammed ascended to Heaven! Since I was visiting during the month of Ramadan, only Muslim folks were allowed to visit the Dome of the Rock, which also means the prophesied third and final Temple can never be rebuilt!

I left the Western Wall as they were holding a military ceremony nearby, and ran around looking for an ATM because I was out of shekels to pay for my passion fruit juice! I ended up on the rooftops of Jerusalem where I spotted the Protestant representation: the Church of the Redeemer, built by the Prussians between 1893 and 1898 on land gifted to Wilhelm I, later known by the title of Kaiser!

A storm was rolling in, and since I couldn’t visit the Dome of the Rock or Al-Aqsa Mosque, I wandered toward the Mount of Olives, where Eastern Orthodox Tradition holds that the Virgin Mary died and ascended into Heaven after three days. The Catholic Church doesn’t believe she died at all but went straight to Heaven! The church here, like most of Jerusalem, has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, but this version dates back to the 14th century!

By now, the wind was whipping, and the Garden of Gethsemane was closed next door. I decided it was best to head back into town as the sun set and have some tasty falafel. I had a nice apartment at Magas House very close to the Damascus Gate, and I was all too happy to settle in for the night.