The Old City

The 'Old City' of Jerusalem is today defined by the city-wall that Jerome Murphy-O'Connor describes so well:

"The walls enclose without dominating, limit but do no define. The impression of strength is an illusion; the city is not a fortress and its walls are not a barrier but a veil. The visitor is drawn forward, challenged, and finally embraced. The city inspires passion, and the expansion and contraction of the walls [over the course of its history] show how it has struggled to accommodate the expectations it has aroused" (The Holy Land, 4th rev. ed.).

Jerusalem seemed always to have been a walled city since biblical times. The present wall is a legacy from Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. He intended his walls to honour and protect all the places of popular veneration. Work began in the north in 1537, continued east and west and finished in the south. When construction reached what is now called Mount Zion, the authorities demurred at extending the wall further just to enclose the one building there that belonged to the Franciscans. So they tried to get the Franciscans to pay for the wall to enclose it but they had no money; the church was left outside the wall. Sultan Suliman was so enraged by this failure to honour his intention he had the architects executed.

Access into the Old City was originally provided for via six gates: Zion Gate in the south, Jaffa Gate in the west and New Gate in the north-west (unfortunately, these two gates lie outside the frame of this photo), Damascus Gate, and Herod's Gate in the north, and Jordan Gate in the east. The name Jordan Gate, however, never stuck, and today it is called St Stephen's Gate or Lion's Gate. The Dung Gate was added during the British Mandate.

As the city grew over the centuries, it was only natural that the communities gathered around those who shared their own cultural and ethic or religious roots. Today it is a custom, therefore, to speak of the four quarters of the city where they predominate: the Christian Quarter in the north-west quardrant, the Armenian Quarter to its south, the Jewish Quarter just west of the Temple Mount, and the Muslim Quarter in the north-east (though it is a name they never use themselves, since, for them, the entire city is Muslim; it is al-Quds, 'the holy city'). The four communities live in uneasy tensions, each highly protective of their own space, that irrupts occasionaly into real anger as, e.g., when Ariel Sharon (then Defence Minister and, later, Prime Minister) took possession of a house in the Muslim Quarters, turned it into his residence and, provocatively, draped a huge Israeli flag over its front.