Muristan | |
|---|---|
 The market area of the Muristan, Suq Aftimos, with the Muristan fountain at its centre | |
  Muristan | |
| Coordinates:31°46′39″N35°13′47″E / 31.77750°N 35.22972°E /31.77750; 35.22972 | |
| City | Old City of Jerusalem |
| Quarter | Christian Quarter |
| Established | 11th century |
TheMuristan (Arabic:مورستان;Hebrew:מוריסטן) is a complex of streets and shops in theChristian Quarter of theOld City of Jerusalem. It was the location of the firstBimaristan of theKnights Hospitaller. The nameMuristan is derived from thePersian wordBimārestān, meaning "hospital".
The area just south of theChurch of the Holy Sepulchre has a long tradition dating to the days ofJudas Maccabeus in the 2nd century BC, based on incidents recorded in theSecond Book of Maccabees.[1] According to the legend, KingAntiochus V proceeded toJerusalem to punish theHigh Priest for plunderingDavid's Tomb. While onGolgotha, the king was directed in a divine vision to pardon the High Priest, and to build a hospital for the care of the sick and poor on that spot. In 1496, William Caoursin, Vice-Chancellor of the Hospitallers, wrote that Judas Maccabaeus andJohn Hyrcanus founded the hospital on that spot.[2]
Doron Bar suggested that theTenth Legion's camp, established on the ruins of Jerusalem following itsdestruction in theFirst Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), was located in the area of the Muristan and its neighboring regions.[3]
In 130,Hadrian visited the ruins of Jerusalem inJudaea and rebuilt the city, renaming itAelia Capitolina after himself andJupiter Capitolinus, the chief deity of Rome. Hadrian placed the city's mainforum at the junction of the main two streets, theCardo Maximus and theDecumanus Maximus, now the location for the (smaller) Muristan. Hadrian built a large temple to thegoddessVenus, at whose location EmperorConstantine the Great later built theChurch of the Holy Sepulchre.[4]
The earliest historical mention of the location Muristan[clarification needed] is in AD 600, when a certain Abbot Probus was commissioned by PopeGregory the Great to build a hospital in Jerusalem to treat and care for Christianpilgrims to theHoly Land. This hospice was most likely destroyed aboutfourteen years later when Jerusalem fell to thePersian army, the Christian inhabitants were slaughtered, and their churches and monasteries destroyed (seeRevolt against Heraclius). The building was probably restored after Jerusalem fell again under Byzantine dominionin 628.
Arab rule after 637 allowed freedom of worship, and the restored hospice was probably allowed to continue serving its original purpose. In 800,Charlemagne, Emperor of theHoly Roman Empire, enlarged the hostel and added a library to it.Bernard the Monk, who wrote an account of his visit to Jerusalem in 870, mentions a Benedictine hospital close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 993, Hugh Marquis of Tuscany and his wife endowed the hospital with considerable property in Italy.
In 1009,Fatimid caliphAl Hakim destroyed the hostel and a large number of other buildings in Jerusalem.[5] In 1023, merchants fromAmalfi andSalerno inItaly were given permission by the caliphAli az-Zahir to rebuild the hospice, monastery and chapel in Jerusalem. Among these merchants from Amalfi and Salerno was also Mauros, merchant from Amalfi, of a family fromConstantinople,Miletus and Amalfi, who gave together with his mother Anna and her brother Constantine a gift to the convent ofSaint Lawrence in Amalfi,[6] which probably had some connection toblessed Gerard the founder of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem theKnights Hospitaller.
InPalestine andSyria, there was a revolt among theBedouins (1024–1029). In an agreement in 1027 betweenAli az-Zahir andConstantine VIII, Constantine VIII allowed the name of the caliph to be acknowledged in the mosques in the emperor's domain and the mosque at Constantinople to be restored.[7] The hospice, which was built on the site of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist, took in Christian pilgrims travelling to visit the holy sites. To the east of this hospital, separated from it by a lane, a new hospital for pilgrims was built in 1080. Both hospitals remained under the control of the Benedictine abbot.[8]In 1078, Jerusalem was captured by theSeljuk Turks who abused the Christian population, forced pilgrims to pay a heavy tax to visit the Holy Places, and even kidnapped thePatriarch of Jerusalem. In spite of the persecution, the Benedictine hospital continued its ministry. Archbishop John of Amalfi records that during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1082, he visited the hospital. In August 1098, the Turks were ousted by the Egyptian vizier, Al Afdal.[9] Towards the end of the Egyptian occupation (July 1099), the Hospital for Women was being managed by a noble Roman lady, named Agnes, while the Hospital for Men was under the direction of a monk known asBrother Gerard.[10]
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In theFirst Crusade, during thesiege of Jerusalem (1099), the Egyptian governor, Iftikhar ad Dawla, imprisoned Brother Gerard. When Jerusalem fell toGodfrey of Bouillon, he freed Brother Gerard, allowed him to resume his management of the Hospital for Men, and contributed resources to his work. Gerard adopted the policy of receiving all needy patients, irrespective of religion. While the Hospital for Women remained under the control of the Benedictines, Brother Gerard broke off from that Order, adopted theAugustinian rule and organised theFratres Hospitalarii into a regularly constitutedReligious Order under the protection of saint John the Baptist. The members of the Order thus became known as Knights of St. John or Hospitallers.
The formal establishment of the Knights Hospitaller under Brother Gerard was confirmed by aPapal bull ofPope Paschal II in 1113. Gerard acquired territory and revenues for his order throughout theKingdom of Jerusalem and beyond. His successor,Raymond du Puy de Provence, significantly enlarged theinfirmary. The earliest description of the first hospital of the Sovereign Military Order of St. John in Jerusalem was written by a German pilgrimJohn of Würzburg who visited Jerusalem in about the year 1160:
Over against the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the opposite side of the way towards the south, is a beautiful church built in honour of John the Baptist, annexed to which is a hospital, wherein in various rooms is collected together an enormous multitude of sick people. Both men and women. Who are tended and restored to health daily at very great expense. When I was there I learned that the whole number of these sick people amounted to two thousand, of whom sometimes in the course of one day and night more than fifty are carried out dead, while many other fresh ones keep continually arriving. What more can I say? The same house supplies as many people outside it with victuals as it does those inside, in addition to the boundless charity which it daily bestowed upon poor people who beg their bread from door to door and do not lodge in the house, so that the whole sum of its expenses can surely never be calculated even by the managers and stewards thereof. In addition to all these moneys expended upon the sick and upon other poor people, this same house also maintains in its various castles many persons trained to all kinds of military exercises for the defence of the land of the Christians against the invasion of the Saracens.[11]
After theSiege of Jerusalem in October 1187, all Christians were driven out of Jerusalem by SultanSaladin. The Hospitallers were permitted to leave ten of their number in the city to care for the wounded until they were able to travel. Saladin turned the Hospitallers buildings over to theMosque of Omar. His nephew in 1216 instituted a lunatic asylum in what had been the conventual church, and it was at this time that the area came to be referred to as theMuristan.[12] The hospital facilities continued to be used for the care of the sick and wounded. The site was deserted in the 16th century, and the magnificent structures eventually fell into ruin.
In 1868, theSultanAbdulaziz presented the eastern part of this area toCrown Prince Frederick William ofPrussia, during his visit to Jerusalem. The prince was at the time the Master of theJohanniterorden, theProtestant successor to a former branch of the Knights Hospitaller. The German knights built a road through the Muristan from north to south, calling it Prince Frederick William Street, and the property became the centre of the German colony in Jerusalem. Beginning in 1841,German Protestant Christians came toPalestine to support the Christian minority in the area throughdiaconal and missionary work. The German government contributed to the process of removing rubble in the area and rebuilding. In the late 1800s, they rebuilt the Crusader church of St. Mary Latina as theLutheran Church of the Redeemer (Erlöserkirche). The old cloisters, refectory, and original plan of the medieval church were preserved in the presentneo-Romanesque building.Kaiser Wilhelm II personally attended thededication of the church on 31 October 1898 (Reformation Day), when he and his wife,Augusta Victoria, became the first western rulers to visit Jerusalem. The Church of the Redeemer, under control of theEvangelical Church in Germany (EKD) through the Evangelical Jerusalem Foundation (Evangelische Jerusalemstiftung, EJSt) currently houses theELCA-sponsoredEnglish-speaking congregation, aGerman-speaking congregation, and an indigenousArabic-speaking congregation. The church is also the headquarters of the GermanPropst and the Bishop of theEvangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan (ELCJ).
In order to secure equal representation, in 1868 the Sultan assigned the western part of the Muristan to theGreek Orthodox Patriarchate. It is now occupied by the Greekbazaar, which specializes in leather goods. A ceremonial gateway off of Muristan Street leads to this Muristan area, calledSuq Aftimos, and from thence to a set of short intersecting streets with shops and a few cafes. The street arrangements were constructed in 1903 by the Greek Orthodox authority. In the centre of the bazaar area is an ornamental fountain (19th century); at the north end is theMosque of Omar, built in 1216 by Saladin's son to commemorateCaliph Omar's visit to Jerusalem in 638, when he prayed on the steps of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre instead of inside so that it could remain a Christian holy place.
Excavations of the Muristan were conducted around the start of the 20th century, and showed that the Hospitaller complex occupied an approximately square area measuring 160 yards (east-west) and 143 yards (north-south). In the early decades of the twentieth century little was left of the original buildings. The remains included the Church of Mar Hanna, a series of arches on David Street, and the remains of the north door of the Hospitaller's church of St. Mary Latina, which were incorporated into the modern Church of the Redeemer. What remains of the hospital today is a modern memorial situated in a small recess barred from the street with an iron gate and an enclosed yard.
The "Durch die Zeiten" (lit. "Across Time") archaeological park opened in November 2012, located below the nave of the Church of the Redeemer offers the possibility to commit more than 2000 years of history of the city of Jerusalem by walking through it.[13]
On that basis, we propose that the location of the Tenth Legion's camp was confined to the area between the Second Wall and the Third Wall (Avi-Yonah 1968). This area, which today is included within the boundaries of the Christian Quarter, the Muristan and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, enabled the Legion soldiers to control the entire city easily. Josephus tells us that this area was a commercial centre during the Second Temple period, and that the Tenth and Fifteenth Legions tried to break through it into the 'upper city' and the three towers at the beginning of the siege (Josephus, War, v.8. I). We can assume that this area suffered greatly from the ravages of war and that many of the buildings there were destroyed. It seems that at the end of the fighting Titus ordered that the area, close to the three towers and fortified by walls on three sides, be spared, so as to serve as a camp for the Legion. That area was chosen because of the relative sparsity of construction there and mostly because of the topographical and military advantages it offered.
