Muristan Street, Jerusalem
Today Muristan is a small area South of Church of Sepulcher. It is lined by European styled buildings, several shops and a fountain. Today Muristan is a small area South of Church of Sepulcher. It is lined by European styled buildings, several shops and a fountain. The name of the place Muristan is derived from Persian and means hospice for pilgrims. In the early medieval times this area was dotted by several hospitals and hospices for the Christians pilgrims who came to the site to pray. The first hospice was constructed here by Emperor Charlemagne in the 9th century after he got permission from the caliph Haroun el- Rashid. Later three churches were added including Saint John the Baptist that was reserved for the poor pilgrims. It still stands today in a good state of preservation. Other included Saint Mary Major of the Latins that was reserved for man and Saint Mary Minor that was reserved mostly for women. During medieval times a complex of hospitals and hospices houses over 2000 people, but over time the site was abandoned and many structures were torn down or reconstructed for private purposes.
As early as 603, Pope Gregory I commissioned Abbot
Probus from Ravenna to build a hospital in Jerusalem to look after the
pilgrims. In the year 800, Charlemagne had this pilgrim hospice expanded
and a library added. He had previously received the site as a gift from
the caliph of Baghdad, the legendary Hārūn ar-Rashīd.
In 1005 the
Caliph al-Hakim bi-amr Allah had the hospice destroyed along with
numerous other Christian buildings. It was rebuilt in 1023 by Italian
traders from Amalfi and Salerno on the site of the monastery of John the
Baptist and was under the rule of the Benedictines before in 1064
Muristan passed through another donation from an Amalfi merchant. A
pilgrim hostel, which was first mentioned in 1048 and was donated by
merchants from Amalfi long before the first crusade and has since been
destroyed, was also rebuilt. Next to the hospital, which was dedicated
either to John the Baptist or to John the Almsgiver, two Churches of St.
Mary, one of St. John and two monasteries were erected, one of whose
duties was to care for male and female sick pilgrims. A little later, in
1099, the Hospitaller Order (also known as the Order of St. John) was
founded here, which has survived to this day in the Catholic Order of
Malta and the various Protestant Orders of St. John. A memorial stone
erected at this point commemorates the site of this first Hospital of
the Hospitallers. The order, which takes its name from the patron saint
of the hospital, was expelled from Jerusalem when Saladin defeated the
Crusaders in 1187 and the buildings continued as an Islamic foundation.
The sick continued to be cared for here until the 16th century, when the
Muristan fell into disrepair and the buildings were almost completely
destroyed. By the middle of the 19th century there were ruins in many
places, it was the only piece of land left to be built on in the old
city of Jerusalem. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate bought the part west
of today's Muristan Road (formerly: Kronprinz-Friedrich-Wilhelm-Straße)
for the construction of bazaars.
In 1869, the Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire, Abdülhamid II, gave the eastern part of the Muristan
area to the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm as a gift to the
King of Prussia, Wilhelm I. On October 31, 1898, in the presence of the
German imperial couple, the German Evangelical -Lutheran Church of the
Redeemer dedicated.
The archaeological park “Through the Times”,
which opened in November 2012 and is located under the Church of the
Redeemer, offers the opportunity to actually walk through the history of
Jerusalem and, in particular, of Muristan.
Today the Muristan is
owned by the Evangelical Jerusalem Foundation in Hanover.
In 1902, archaeologist Conrad Schick drew up a map of
Muristan, assuming the existence of a vast cistern.
In 2013,
Israeli archaeologists, led by Renée Forestany and Amit Reem, discovered
the remains of a hospital, a structure made up of a vast gallery with
pointed arch doors 6 meters high, which would have housed up to to 2,000
patients. Like modern hospitals, the building was divided into several
wings and sectors according to the nature and condition of the patients.
Members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem cared for sick men and
women of different religions, and received orphans.
The
discovered structure would be only a small part of what was a large
hospital that covered an area of one and a half hectares. It is very
similar to the structure discovered under the citadel of
Saint-Jean-d'Acre and built by the Hospitallers of the order of Saint
John of Jerusalem.