The Templars

by Michael Haag

  Israel

  Jerusalem is central to the story of the Templars. Here in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Christmas Day 1119 the founding knights took their vows before patriarch and king, and in the al-Aqsa mosque atop the Temple Mount they established their headquarters. When Saladin captured Jerusalem in 1187, the Templars removed themselves to Acre, the port city which now became the principal metropolis of Outremer, and here too the story of the Templars can be traced among the stones of its walls and towers, and through the secret Templar tunnel to the harbour from where they spirited away their treasure at the final fall of Outremer.

  JERUSALEM: THE OLD CITY

  Jerusalem has been the centre of the Jewish faith for three thousand years, since Solomon built his Temple here in the tenth century BC. As the site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in the first century AD, Jerusalem also stands at the fulcrum of the Christian world. For Muslims the Prophet Mohammed’s Night Journey in the seventh century AD made Jerusalem Islam’s third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. The key Jewish, Christian and Muslim sites are all within the Old City, enclosed within its medieval walls.

  The Walls

  The walls that enclose the Old City of Jerusalem today were rebuilt by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1537–41, though they have been restored many times since. They closely follow the line of the walls as they were at the time of the First Crusade in 1099. Today visitors can gain excellent views of the city and its surroundings by walking the circuit of its walls, partly atop its ramparts and partly along the outer footing, a distance of four kilometres in all.

  The ramparts can be walked from the Jaffa Gate in the west to Saint Stephen’s Gate in the east via the Damascus Gate and Herod’s Gate along the northern wall. Just to the east of Herod’s Gate is the spot where, during the successful First Crusade, at around noon on 15 July 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon fought his way onto the northern battlements and was quickly followed by Tancred and his men, who pushed into the city towards the Temple Mount. Eighty-eight years later, Saladin directed his attack against this same stretch of the northern wall when he laid siege to the city in 1187, leading to its surrender on 2 October. To walk the southern half of the circuit, from Saint Stephen’s Gate back to the Jaffa Gate, you must come down from the ramparts and follow the outside of the city wall. The route takes you round the massive retaining walls of the Temple Mount at the southeast corner of the Old City.

  Since medieval times the Old City enclosed within these walls has been home to four distinct religious communities, which have gathered into neighbourhoods: the Muslim quarter in the northeast, the Christian quarter in the northwest (but excluding the Armenians, who have their own quarter in the southwest) and the Jewish quarter in the south-central part of the city.

  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in the Christian quarter in the northwest corner of Jerusalem and stands on the traditional sites of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus, which in the first century AD were outside the city walls.

  The discovery of the True Cross and also the site where Jesus was entombed and rose on the third day was made by Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, during her visit to the Holy Land in 326–8. First Constantine ordered that a basilica called the Martyrium (meaning place of witness) be built to encompass the site of Golgotha, that is Calvary, the place of crucifixion, and this was dedicated on 17 September 335. The interior of Constantine’s Basilica was faced with multi-coloured marble and its coffered ceiling was covered with gold which was said to ripple and swell like an ocean in the changing light. But the great domed Rotunda, also called the Anastasis (meaning resurrection), erected over the tomb of Jesus took longer to build and was not completed until 340.

  The Martyrium and the Rotunda were linked by a court and surrounded by lesser buildings, to which a tumultuous history has lent a hand, so that the church you see today has often been restored. In 614 the Persians attacked Jerusalem, stole the True Cross and set the church alight, destroying its roof and many of its decorations. The church was again put to the torch by rioting Muslims in 938 who also devastated the Golgotha Chapel within Constantine’s Basilica and the tomb chapel within the Rotunda. Yet again, and this time on the orders of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, in 1009, the church and the tomb were destroyed. A few decades later, and with permission from Cairo, Byzantine emperors rebuilt the church on the old foundations using salvaged material.

  The Templars had their origins here in this rebuilt church when on Christmas Day 1119 Hugh of Payns and his eight companions took their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Calling themselves the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ, they dedicated themselves to defending pilgrims against attack along the roads to the holy places. The Templar Church in London, consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1185, takes its circular design from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest place in the Crusaders’ world.

  Large parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were altered and rebuilt between 1150 and 1180 by the Crusaders. The entrance facade is mostly Crusader work and incorporates Romanesque and Gothic styles, the five-storey bell tower was added in 1153 and Constantine’s Basilica, the Martyrium, was rebuilt in Romanesque style, but the Rotunda was left essentially intact. This is the church you see today. During the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the church was the royal burial place, but the tombs were pillaged in 1244 when the Khorezmian Turks sacked the church and massacred the Christians huddled for safety inside.

  THE TEMPLE MOUNT

  The Hebrew for Temple Mount is Har ha-Bayit, but the mount is better known by its Arabic name, al-Haram ash-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. In the days of Kings David and Solomon in the tenth century BC a limestone ridge rose from the Ophel Hill in the south where David built his city (now the City of David Archaeological Garden outside the city walls) and climbed northwards as Mount Zion, reaching its peak where the Dome of the Rock stands today. Thereabouts was the threshing floor of Araunah, the last Jebusite king, where David built an altar and where perhaps Solomon sited the Holy of Holies, the shrine of the Ark of the Covenant, when he built his Temple.

  Solomon carved the ridge into a platform for the Temple; the same platform was reused for the Second Temple in the sixth century BC; and then Herod constructed a vaster masonry platform atop the ancient bedrock when he built his immense renovated and extended Temple in the first century BC. Though the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, much of the masonry platform and its retaining walls remained.

  Over the centuries Jews from all over the world have come to pray at the Western Wall, famously known as the Wailing Wall for the laments heard here, an exposed section of the retaining wall which has come to symbolise not only the lost Temple of Herod but the Temple of Solomon built on this spot three thousand years ago. After the Arab conquest the Muslims built the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque atop the mount. In Crusader times the Temple Mount became an integral part of the city, and the entire southern half of the mount was a Templar complex; indeed their very name is taken from their close association with the Temple Mount.

  The Temple Mount is administered by the Muslim authorities, and the Western Wall, at its base, by the rabbinic authorities. Access to the Mount is allowed to all religions, although Orthodox Jews will not visit the Temple Mount at all. Only the Jewish high priest was permitted to enter the Temple’s Holy of Holies, and as its exact position remains uncertain, the Orthodox fear walking upon that most sacred of spots.

  The Dome of the Rock

  The sacred nature of Jerusalem is confirmed for Muslims by the Night Journey in which the angel Gabriel brought Mohammed to the Temple Mount, the site of Solomon’s Temple, from where they ascended to Paradise (Koran 17:1). Octagonal in plan and topped with a golden dome, and standing over the oblong rock from where the ascent was made, the Dome of the Rock is more a shrine than a mosque, a place where the faithfu
l come on pilgrimage and circle round the ambulatories in prayer. It is the second most important place of pilgrimage after Mecca.

  Begun in 687 by order of the Umayyad caliph Marwan and completed in its essentials in 691, the Dome of the Rock was built by Syrian craftsmen in the Byzantine tradition and was covered inside and out with mosaics of gold and coloured tesserae. The interior mosaics round the outer ambulatory are original and date to 691; they bear designs of palm trees, sprays of foliage, garlands of flowers and fruits, and bunches of grapes. Elsewhere the interior mosaics have been renewed several times, for example by Saladin though also as recently as the late 1950s, but they faithfully follow the designs of the originals. The exterior mosaics were replaced with Turkish tiles in the sixteenth century and these were renewed in the late 1950s. The present dome was put in place in 1961 but like the original it is made of wood and is covered with gilded lead.

  The structure is also decorated both inside and out with calligraphic inscriptions which are composed of all the Koranic references to Jesus, including the warning to Christians (Koran 4:171) that their faith, based on the divinity of Jesus, is false: ‘People of the Book, do not transgress the bounds of your religion. Speak nothing but the truth about God. The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was no more than God’s apostle and His Word which He cast to Mary: a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His apostles and do not say: “Three”. Forebear, and it shall be better for you. God is but one God. God forbid that He should have a son! His is all that the heavens and the earth contain. God is the all-sufficient protector.’

  But traditions about the rock directly beneath the dome long antedate the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. The rock is the peak of the mount now covered over by the man-made platform, and so it is the highest point in the Old City. An early Christian source, known only as the Bordeaux Pilgrim, who visited the Holy Land in AD 333, noted the Jewish attachment to the rock, writing that it is a ‘perforated stone to which the Jews come every year and anoint it, bewail themselves with groans, rend their garments, and so depart’. To Jews it is known as the Foundation Stone, for they believe that this is where David offered up his sacrifice after purchasing the threshing floor from Araunah the Jebusite.

  Though secular scholars may debate the exact position of Solomon’s Temple and its plan, many Jews have no doubt that the rock formed the base of the Holy of Holies and was the spot where the Ark of the Covenant stood. They also believe that during the Second Temple, when the Ark had vanished or was hidden, the stone was where the high priest sprinkled the blood of sacrifices and offered up the incense during the Yom Kippur service.

  There is a chamber beneath the rock, reached by a flight of marble stairs; the chamber is about six feet high and nearly square with each side measuring about fifteen feet. The first mention of an opening in the rock was made by the Bordeaux Pilgrim, but the first documented reference to the cave beneath the rock was made by an Arab visitor called Ibn al-Faqih in 903: ‘Under the rock is a cavern in which the people pray. This cavern is capable of containing 62 persons.’ The Crusaders installed the marble entrance to the stairway and recut the chamber, which they used for confession.

  After the Crusader capture of Jerusalem in 1099 the Dome of the Rock was turned into a church, the Templum Domini or Temple of the Lord, and also served as the residence of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre established a convent in the northeast corner of the outer court and the Templars also built some living quarters here and planted gardens.

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  The Mystery of the Rock and Its Subterranean Chamber

  There is no mention of the rock nor the chamber beneath it during the Jewish period. This is not surprising as the man-made platform on which the Temples of Solomon and Herod stood entirely covered the rock. There is evidence to suggest that the Roman emperor Hadrian reduced the summit of the Temple Mount by several feet with the purpose of erasing the Jewish nature of Jerusalem. Only then, as the upper level of Herod’s platform was cleared away, did the rock become exposed. Originally the rock had marked the summit of the mount, but once it was covered by the platform it bore no particular relationship to the siting of the altar nor to the Holy of Holies in the Temples of Solomon and Herod. As for the chamber beneath the rock, it is thought to have been a tomb cut four thousand years ago and forgotten long before Araunah had his threshing floor here. After lowering the platform, Hadrian had intended to build a shrine to Jupiter on this spot, but he never did. The rock and subterranean chamber were left exposed, leaving Jewish and Muslim traditions to lend religious significance to the site.

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  Al-Aqsa Mosque

  After the Arab conquest of Jerusalem in 638 the Muslim commander, Umar, had a temporary mosque built at the southern end of the Temple Mount. Umar’s mosque was replaced sixty years later when work began on the mosque of al-Aqsa, which was completed in 715. Al-Aqsa means ‘the farthest’ and was originally applied to the entire Temple Mount, being that farthest place where Mohammed ascended into Paradise according to an interpretation of Sura 17:1 in the Koran. Al-Aqsa, a basilica with a lead dome that shines silvery in the sun, became the great congregational mosque of Jerusalem, the place of Friday prayers and the midday sermon.

  Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamelukes, Ottomans and, since the 1920s, the Supreme Muslim Council have altered, extended or rebuilt the mosque, so that it is a palimpsest of thirteen centuries of architectural history. The Crusaders also played an important role. In 1099 it became the headquarters of the Crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon, and for several years it served as a palace for Baldwin I, the first king of Jerusalem. The Crusaders called it the mosque of the Templum Solomonis because they believed that it stood on the site of Solomon’s Temple, so that when Baldwin gave the building to the new knighthood of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ in 1119 it was not long before they were calling themselves the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon–or, simply, the Templars.

  Al-Aqsa was the Templars’ administrative, military and religious headquarters for over sixty years. They made various structural alterations and extensions to provide chambers for the Grand Master and other officers of the order and their staff, living quarters for the knights, and storage rooms for food, clothing and arms, but they took care not to damage the fine Arab decorations. Some Templar work survives, most notably the annexe they built to the east of the mosque which is now incorporated in the Women’s Mosque and the Islamic Museum, and they also left their mark on Solomon’s Stables.

  Solomon’s Stables

  Solomon’s Stables were in fact vaulted cellars built by Herod the Great to support his immense platform of the Temple Mount when he extended and refurbished the Second Temple in the first century BC. The vast masonry underpinning raised the ground level at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount by 150 feet. There are thought to be four levels of vaulting, but only the topmost level is accessible, and at present this is closed to tourists. The Umayyads reused Herodian masonry to restore this topmost level in the late seventh and early eighth centuries, and later the Templars rebuilt the arches. In addition to offering structural support for the Temple Mount platform and later the al-Aqsa mosque built above this spot, the cellars may have served Herod’s Temple as storerooms. The Templars were probably the first to use them as stables, and there are still rings attached to many of the pillars which were used to tether their horses.

  A tunnel runs from the southern retaining wall of the Temple Mount underneath Solomon’s Stables. At a distance of 100 feet the tunnel is blocked by pieces of stone and debris, and archaeologists have not been able to examine it further because of objections from the Muslim authorities. But from the way the tunnel was constructed, often using large blocks from the period of Herod’s Temple, archaeologists have concluded that it was built as a postern by the Templars. The entrance would have been somewhere on the surface of the Temple Mount, and its exit in the southern wall would have allowed the Temp
lars to emerge and make sudden surprise attacks against their enemies.

  The Islamic Museum

  Architectural fragments and other objects removed from the various structures on the Temple Mount during renovations have been put on display at the Islamic Museum. Among these are some items of Crusader workmanship. But the finest thing about the museum is the Templar vaulted hall, which serves as the chief exhibition space. The hall was built in the 1160s and was part of that magnificent complex described by Theoderich, a pilgrim who visited the Holy Land in 1172.

  On another side of the [al-Aqsa] palace, that is to say, on the western side, the Templars have erected a new building. I could give the measurements of its height, length and breadth of its cellars, refectories, staircases and roof, rising with a high pitch, unlike the flat roofs of that country; but even if I did so, my hearers would hardly be able to believe me.

  In fact what you are seeing is only the western half of the hall, which after Saladin captured Jerusalem in 1187 became the assembly hall of a madrassa. The eastern half of the Templar hall was converted into the Women’s Mosque of the al-Aqsa, which it remains to this day.

  ACRE

  Acre, or Akko in Hebrew, is on a low promontory about twelve miles north of Haifa. As the maritime gateway to Outremer throughout the Crusader period, Acre was the chief port of trade and the principal landing point for pilgrims. In 1191, four years after Jerusalem was lost to Saladin, Acre also became the capital of the truncated Kingdom of Jerusalem, and both the Templars and the Hospitallers established their headquarters here. Acre was the most powerfully defended city in Outremer, and the Templar fortress by the sea was the strongest place in the city. But in 1291, after a long siege, Acre fell to the overwhelming Mameluke forces, which effectively marked the end of the crusading venture in the Holy Land. On the orders of the victorious Mameluke Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil, everyone remaining alive within the town was brought outside the walls and decapitated, and Acre was levelled to the ground.