Our tour guide met us at the entrance of the Jaffa Gate, “good afternoon my friends, my name is Amit and I will be your tour guide today…” it was a free guided tour of the city, and it made more sense to have people show me broadly around the old city of Jerusalem before making a more in depth exploration on my own on another day.
This is the reason that most people travel to Jerusalem, to be pilgrims in this Old City. I was in Jerusalem for work and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see these world famous sites, not when I had a weekend free.
We turned past the Tower of David (which was named not by King David and apparently has absolutely no connection to David, it was a tower that looked like what the Bible said and the Crusaders called it thus when they entered the city) and continued walking.
Armenians have been in Jerusalem since the 4th century. The small nation, surrounded by pagan Rome was the first to adopt Christianity (then outlawed in Rome) as the state religion and Armenian monks had made their way to Jerusalem from the 300s, setting up the St James Monastry in the Armenian Quarters. Residents soon arrived and formed a small district around the monastery, making it the oldest Armenian diaspora outside of Armenia. While Christians too, the Armenians differ from the majority of residents in the Christian Quarter because they are neither Arab nor Palestian.
The Armenian Quarters is the smallest in the old town, occupying only 14% of the space and containign less than 10% of the Old City’s population (about 2000). One of the most improtant streets running through this quarter is Ararat Street, which is home to the Monastery of St Mark, thought to be the home of writer of the Gospel of Mark.
The street is named after Mount Ararat, traditionally thought to be the resting place of Noah’s Ark, one of the links which the Armenians draw on about their connection to the Christian faith.
We continued our walk through the narrow alleyways. And emerged into an archaeological dig of the first Jewish temple.
A few steps away was the central square in the Jewish Quarter. The site was rare, it was large by the standards of the old town, spacious by the claustrophobic standards in the ancient city and it looked very European.
“Yallah, yallah” we can’t go to the sites themselves, we dont have time on this tour but I’ll show you the next best place to get an unobstructed view of the Western wall, Dome of Rock and the Al-Haram-Al Sharif Mosque”. We climbed up to a small walkway Misgav Ladach Street and were greeted by a grand view of the famous tourist sites. We were separated from these sites only by the air and grill.
A short boundary separated the Jewish from the Muslim Quarter. “This is the largest part of the Old City,and houses the majority of the people in the Old City… yes the old city is majority muslim…” The Muslim Quarters is popular with muslim pilgrims, however the largest bunch of tourist are christians and as since most of the holy sites do not cross all of the Muslim Quarters, there was a stronger sense of authenticity to the place.
We walked across another street and emerged from the Muslim Quarter into the Christian Quarter.
Holy articles (crosses) were laid out on the floor in plastic baskets waiting for tourist to buy them.
I felt sick in my stomach… knowing that these crosses items were probably mostly imported from outside, treated as common goods and then passed of as Holy Articles from the Holy Land to honest pilgrims who have just been awed by the sheer power of the religious sites – making real their religious faiths.
But the tour did not dwell, and the churning in my stomach continued as we walked.
We came to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and a wave of humanity swarmed around us.
Our guide brought us to a quiet corner near the starting gate.