I will start this response by saying that I believe I learned more by reading the Palestinian side of things than I did by reading the Israeli side of things. I say this only because I was more knowledgeable about the Israeli side before I took this class, than I was about the Palestinian side. But anyways, what was most interesting to me was learning about the multitude of infrastructure changes that took place throughout the entirety of the Jerusalem story. I understood that there would be many due to the constant power changes, and fighting in the area, but reading in detail about the numerous changes really caught my eye.
Upon conquering Jerusalem, around 1187 Saladin began a new type of Jihad in the city of Jerusalem itself aimed at cleansing out the haram of the European crusaders decor. Saladin started with making the Aqsa Mosque ready for Friday prayer by clearing out all of the old templar latrines, and furniture. According to Umar, the Muslim chroniclers, "Saladin worked all day beside his men, washing the courts and the pavements of the Haram with rose water and distributing alms to the poor" (Armstrong 297). Saladin continued his local jihad against christian topography within Jerusalem by confiscating the residence of the patriarch next to the holy sepulcher, and with state funds he bought the covenant and church of St Anna.
Saladin then turned the Church of St. Anna into a mosque, the convent into a madrasah, and the patriarch's residence turned into a khanaqah all of which were endowed by and held the name of the Sultan. As I mentioned before, I truly enjoyed doing this reading, and I look forward to learning more in the coming weeks.
You did a good job Michael, catching the details of the change of hands of the landscape there...what got me is over, and over, and over, and...well, that's the general idea. It changed, something important to one 'side' was torn down and totally eliminated, and the conquering 'side' built over it, on top of it, and put in place what was important to them. Repeating throughout history, it is amazing...don't you wonder if, somewhere-like they found with the Cairo Genizah-if there's not an entire collection of trashed tiles, stones, carvings, etc. from each of these aggressive changes of hands?
ReplyDeleteI ponder that all the time actually! For the longest time growing up I wanted to be an Archaeologist, and attempt to actually find a place like you have just mentioned. I didn't end up going into Anthropology/Archaeology after all, but I am however still obsessed with topics like this. It's extremely interesting to me to think that there could be this treasure trove of objects hidden somewhere out in the world.
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