Lions' Gate
Lions' Gate
Location in Old Jerusalem
Alternative names	St Stephen's Gate, Bab Sitti Maryam (lit. 'Gate of My Lady Mary')
General information
Location	Jerusalem Old City,Muslim Quarter
Coordinates	31°46′51″N35°14′13″E / 31.78083°N 35.23694°E /31.78083; 35.23694
Completed	1538/9 (AH 945)[1]
Renovated	2012[2]
Dimensions
Other dimensions	Height: 13.7 m (45 ft)[3]

Lions' Gate (Hebrew:שער האריות,romanized: Sha'ar ha-Arayot,lit. 'Lions' Gate',Arabic:باب الأسباط,romanized: Bab al-Asbat,lit. 'Gate of the Tribes'), alsoSt Stephen's Gate, is one of the seven openGates of the Old City of Jerusalem. It leads into theMuslim Quarter of theOld City.

The start of the traditionalChristian observance of the last walk ofJesus from prison tocrucifixion, theVia Dolorosa, begins at the Lions' Gate, called St Stephen's Gate by Christians. Carved into the wall above the gate are four lions, two on the left and two on the right.Suleiman the Magnificent had the carvings made to celebrate the Ottoman defeat of theMamluks in 1517. Legend has it that Suleiman's predecessorSelim I dreamed of lions that were going to eat him because of his plans to level the city. He was spared only after promising to protect the city by building a wall around it. This led to the lion becoming the heraldic symbol of Jerusalem.^{[4][dubious –discuss]}

HistorianMoshe Sharon notes the similarity of the sculpted felines to similar pairs atJisr Jindas andQasr al-Basha inGaza. All represent the sameMamluk sultan,Baibars. Sharon estimates that they all date to approximately 1273 C.E.^[5]

The gate is part of the city's extant walls, built byOttoman Sultan Suleiman in 1538. The walls stretch for approximately 4.5 kilometers (2.8 mi) and rise to a height of 5–15 meters (16–49 ft), with a thickness of 3 meters (9.8 feet).^[6] All together, the Old City walls contain 43 surveillance towers and 11 gates, seven of which are presently open.

In 1967, it was through this gate that Israeli paratroopers broke into the Old City of Jerusalem, along with the rest ofEast Jerusalem and the wholeWest Bank, fromJordan at the time.^[7]

• 
  Detail of Lions' Gate carvings, actuallyleopards^[8] (panthers).^[4]
• 
  British imperial troops fromIndia andBritain guard the gate in 1920

• Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem

Wikimedia Commons has media related toLions Gate.

• Photos of the gate at theManar al-Athar photo archive
• The Old City Gates: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.orgArchived 2016-11-29 at theWayback Machine

• Gates in Jerusalem's Old City Walls
• Muslim Quarter (Jerusalem)

• Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Coordinates on Wikidata
• Articles containing Hebrew-language text
• Articles containing Arabic-language text
• All accuracy disputes
• Articles with disputed statements from January 2022
• Commons category link is on Wikidata