Mom was sick in bed all day yesterday and today, so John and I struck out on our own. I found us some walking tours through the Old CIty of Jerusalem and to the Mount of Olives. Having spent the last two days not knowing what I was looking at, I decided it was time to have a guide give me some context. Our guide, Erez, certainly had a lot to say, although I'm not sure quite all of it was factual... The first tour, featured in this post, took us through all four quarters of the Old City: the Armenian Quarter, the Jewish Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Muslim Quarter. The Muslim Quarter is actually more than half of the whole area of the Old City, so "quarter" is a bit loose of a term. Below are some photos and quotes from the trip.
What I can't capture in photos are the sounds and smells of the place. Part of the tour took us to the rooftops of houses and churches, and from there we could hear Muslim calls to prayer from the minerets and bells ringing on the church steeples. We smelled incense and falafel, schwarma and honeysuckle. Large groups of Hasidic men would part as our group of women walked through, and int he Muslim Quarter we ran into a pedestrian traffic jam as a mosque let out from prayer. I was most suprised to see that there was really still an active life going on all around us, that people were living and working in one of the largest archeologically significant places in the world. As Erez said, "life goes on."
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| We started near a bread-seller. These loops of bread are sold everywhere, along with these sort of doughnutty-bear-claw types of bread. And falafel, always falafel. |
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| Our first stop was in the Armenian Quarter. Armenians lived in what is now Turkey, and were some of the first adopters of Christianity. They adopted it before it was popular, and thus got persecuted quite a bit. They have continued to be persecuted over the centuries, and so have established a tight enclave here in the Old City. One man said that the passageways were designed in a labyrinthine manner on purpose, so that the corners were too tight for horses to turn in, and so that enemies would easily get lost. Most of this quarter was indeed dark passageways. Occasionally we would see into a door, though, and it revealed large, bright courtyards within. I fell in love with this century plant hanging from this window. |
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| This is a colonnade recently excavated from under a road in the Old City. Turns out it's the Cardo, a Roman thoroughfare, from Jesus' time. It's quite possible that he walked on some of the stones in this picture. This was the sidewalk area, with shops that came out to meet where you see the arches. This would have been covered. No one knew it was there because it kept getting buried further and further under the rubble of later conquerors of Jerusalem. This happened so many times that the streets are now about fifteen feet higher than they were 2000 years ago. |
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| This is a madras, or school, in the Muslim Quarter. Our guide said that the striped stonework was very typical of Muslim architecture. He also said that the prevalence of madrases here, in this remote outpost of the Muslim world, showed the Muslim's investment in making a good life for themselves here. They weren't just here to conquer land, but to live and teach their children. I didn't have time to take a good photo, because just then the mosque down the street let out, and we were surrounded by people! |
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| This was taken on the roof of the homes that straddled the Armenian and Christian Quarters. It's possible to go from quarter to quarter entirely on rooftops. Our guide said, "Jerusalem is a city connected by its roofs, and divided by its inhabitants." |
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