“Peace!” they reply optimistically. The Nusseibehs and Judehs have been opening the Sepulchre doors at least since 1192 when Saladin appointed the Judehs as “Custodian of the Key” and the Nusseibehs as “Custodian and Doorkeeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre” (as specified on Wajeeh’s business-card). The Nusseibehs, who were also appointed hereditary cleaners of the Sakhra (the Rock) in the Dome, claim that Saladin was simply restoring them to a position they had been granted by Caliph Omar in 638. Until the Albanian conquest in the 1830s, they were extremely rich but now they earn a scanty living as tour guides.
Yet the two families exist in vigilant rivalry. “The Nusseibehs have nothing to do with us,” says the octogenarian Judeh, who has held the key for twenty-two years, “they are merely, just doorkeepers!” Nusseibeh insists “the Judehs aren’t allowed to touch the door or the lock,” suggesting that Islamic rivalries are just as vivid as those among the Christians. Wajeeh’s son, Obadah, a personal trainer, is his heir.
Nusseibeh and Judeh spend some of the day sitting in the lobby as their ancestors have for eight centuries—but they are never there at the same time. “I know every stone here, it’s like home,” muses Nusseibeh. He reveres the Church: “We Muslims believe Muhammad, Jesus and Moses are prophets and Mary is very holy so this is a special place for us too.” If he wishes to pray, he can pop next door to the neighbouring mosque, built to overawe the Christians, or walk the five minutes to al-Aqsa.
At precisely the same time as the Rabbi of the Wall is waking up and Custodian Nusseibeh hears the pebble on the window announcing the delivery of the Sepulchre key, Adeb al-Ansari, forty-two years old, a father of five in a black leather jacket, is coming out of his Mamluk house, owned by his family waqf, in the Muslim Quarter and starting the five-minute walk down the street, up to the north-eastern Bab al-Ghawanmeh. He passes through the checkpoint of blue-clad Israeli police, ironically often Druze or Galilean Arabs charged with keeping out Jews, to enter the Haram al-Sharif.
The sacred esplanade is already electrically illuminated but it used to take his father two hours to light all the lanterns. Ansari greets the Haram security and begins to open the four main gates of the Dome of the Rock and the ten gates of al-Aqsa. This takes an hour.
The Ansaris, who trace their family back to the Ansaris who emigrated with Muhammad to Medina, claim that they were appointed Custodians of the Haram by Omar but they were certainly confirmed in the post by Saladin. (The black sheep of the family was the Sheikh of the Haram, bribed by Monty Parker.)
The mosque is open one hour before the dawn prayer. Ansari does not open the gates every dawn—he has a team now—but before he succeeded as hereditary Custodian, he fulfilled this duty every morning and with pride: “It’s firstly just a job, then it’s a family profession, and an enormous responsibility, but above all, it’s noble and sacred work. But it is not paid well. I also work on the front desk of a hotel on the Mount of Olives.”
The hereditary posts are gradually disappearing on the Haram. The Shihabis, another one of the Families, descended from Lebanese princes, who live in their own family waqf close to the Little Wall, used to be Custodians of the Prophet’s Beard. The beard and job have disappeared yet the pull of this place is magnetic: the Shihabis still work on the Haram.
Just as the rabbi walks down to the Wall, just as Nusseibeh is tapping on the doors of the Church, just as Ansari opens the gates of the Haram, Naji Qazaz is leaving the house on Bab al-Hadid Street that his family have owned for 225 years, to walk the few yards along the old Mamluk streets up the steps through the Iron Gate and on to the Haram. He proceeds directly into al-Aqsa, where he enters a small room equipped with a microphone and bottles of mineral water. Until 1960, the Qazaz family used the minaret but now they use this room to prepare like athletes for the call. For twenty minutes, Qazaz sits and stretches, an athlete of holiness, he then breathes and gargles the water. He checks that the microphone is on and when the clock on the wall shows it is time, he faces the qibla and starts to chant the adhan that reverberates across the Old City.
The Qazaz have been the muezzins at al-Aqsa for 500 years since the reign of Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay. Naji, who has been muezzin for thirty years, shares his duties with his son Firaz and two cousins.
It is now one hour before dawn on a day in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is open: Muslims are praying. The Wall is always open: the Jews are praying. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is open: the Christians are praying in several languages. The sun is rising over Jerusalem, its rays making the light Herodian stones of the Wall almost snowy—just as Josephus described it two thousand years ago—and then catching the glorious gold of the Dome of the Rock that glints back at the sun. The divine esplanade where Heaven and Earth meet, where God meets man, is still in a realm beyond human cartography. Only the rays of the sun can do it and finally the light falls on the most exquisite and mysterious edifice in Jerusalem. Bathing and glowing in the sunlight, it earns its auric name. But the Golden Gate remains locked, until the coming of the Last Days.2
a Kollek, born in Hungary, raised in Vienna, and named after Theodor Herzl, had specialized in secret missions for the Jewish Agency, liaising with the British secret service during the campaign against the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and then buying arms for the Haganah. He then served as director of Ben-Gurion’s private office.
b The chief academic work on Jerusalem madness describes the typical patients as “individuals who strongly identify with characters from the Old or New Testament or are convinced they are one of these characters and fall victim to a psychotic episode in Jerusalem.” Tour guides should look out for “1. Agitation. 2. Split away from group. 3. Obsession with taking baths; compulsive fingernail/toe-nail clipping. 4. Preparation, often with aid of hotel bed-linen, of toga-like gown, always white. 5. The need to scream, sing out loud biblical verses. 6. Procession to one of Jerusalem’s holy places. 7. Delivery of a sermon in a holy place.” The Kfar Shaul Mental Health Centre in Jerusalem, which specializes in the Syndrome, is said to stand on the site of the village of Deir Yassin.
c Faisal Husseini, the son of Abd al-Kadir, emerged as one of the leaders of the Intifada. Husseini had trained as a Fatah explosives expert and spent years in Israeli jails, the essential badges of honour for any Palestinian leader, but, released from prison, he was one of the first to come round to talks with the Israelis, even learning Hebrew to put his case more clearly. Husseini attended the Madrid talks and now became Arafat’s Palestinian minister for Jerusalem. When the Oslo Accords fell apart, the Israelis confined him to Orient House before eventually closing it down. When he died in 2001, buried like his father on the Haram, the Palestinians lost the only leader who could have replaced Arafat.
d Archaeologists had started exploring tunnels beneath the Arab homes that bordered the entire western wall of the Temple Mount during the 1950s and Professor Oleg Grabar, the future doyen of Jerusalem scholars, remembers how they would frequently appear as if by magic out of the floors in the kitchens of the surprised residents. Under Israeli archaeologists, the tunnel yielded—and continues to do so—the most breathtaking finds from the immense stones of the foundations of Herod’s Temple, via Maccabee, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad buildings, to a new Crusader chapel. But the tunnel also contained the place closest to the Temple’s Foundation Stone where Jews could now pray—and it united Jerusalem by linking the Jewish and Muslim Quarters.
e These struggles reveal the complexities of both sides, sometimes bringing Israelis and Arabs together: when Rabbi Goren tried to commandeer the Khalidi house overlooking the Wall for a yeshiva, Mrs. Haifa Khalidi was defended in Israeli courts by two Israeli historians, Amnon Cohen and Dan Bahat, and still lives today in her house above the famous Khalidiyyah Library. When religious Jews tried to expand their digs and settlement in Silwan below the City of David, they were stopped by lawsuits brought by Israeli archaeologists.
f In 2009/2010, the population of Greater Jerusalem was 780,000:
514,800 Jews (who include 163,800 ultra-Orthodox) and 265,200 Arabs. There were around 30,000 Arabs in the Old City and 3,500 Jews. There are around 200,000 Israelis living in new suburbs in eastern Jerusalem.
g In Israel’s dysfunctional democracy, with weak coalition governments, national-religious organizations have become ever more powerful in questions of Jerusalem’s planning and archaeology. In 2003, Israeli building started in the vital East One (E1) section, east of the Old City, which would have effectively cut off east Jerusalem from the West Bank, undermining the creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli liberals and America persuaded Israel to stop this, but plans to build Jewish settlements in the Arab neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan continue. The latter stands next to the much-excavated ancient City of David where a Jewish nationalist-religious foundation, Elad, funds the invaluable archaeological excavations and runs a visitors’ centre telling the story of Jewish Jerusalem. It also plans to move Palestinian residents to nearby housing to make way for more Jewish settlers and a King David park called the King’s Gardens. Such situations can challenge archaeological professionalism. Archaeologists, writes Dr. Raphael Greenberg, a historian who has campaigned against this project, represent “a secular academic approach,” yet their backers hope for “results that legitimise their concepts of the history of Jerusalem.” So far his fears have not materialized. The integrity of the archaeologists is high and as we saw earlier, the present dig has uncovered Canaanite not Jewish walls. Nonetheless these sites have become flashpoints for protests by Palestinians and Israeli liberals.
h The Russian reverence for Jerusalem has been modernized to suit the authoritarian nationalism fostered by Vladimir Putin who in 2007 oversaw the reunion of the ex-Soviet Moscow Patriarchate and the White Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Thousands of singing Russian pilgrims again fill the streets. The Holy Fire is flown back to Moscow on a plane, chartered by an organization called the Centre for National Glory and the Apostle Andrei Foundation, headed by a Kremlin potentate. A kitsch life-sized golden statue of “Tsar David” has appeared outside David’s Tomb. An ex-prime minister, Stephan Stepashin, is the chief of the restored Palestine Society: “a Russian flag in the centre of Jerusalem,” he says, “is priceless.”
i The Families remain important in Jerusalem. After the death of Faisal Husseini, Arafat appointed the philosopher Sari Nusseibeh (cousin of Weejah) as Palestinian representative in Jerusalem, but sacked him after he rejected suicide bombings. The founder of al-Quds University, Nusseibeh remains the city’s intellectual maverick, admired by both sides. At the time of writing, the Palestinian representative for Jerusalem is Adnan al-Husseini; another cousin, Dr. Rafiq al-Husseini, advises President Abbas. As for the Khalidis, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York, advises Barack Obama.
j On a last visit to Jerusalem in 1992 before his death, Edward Said called the Church “an alien, run-down, unattractive place full of frumpy middle-aged tourists milling about in a decrepit and ill-lit area where Copts, Greeks, Armenians and other Christian sects nurtured their unattractive ecclesiastical gardens in sometimes open combat with each other.” The most famous sign of that open combat is a little ladder belonging to the Armenians on the balcony outside the right-hand window in the façade of the Church which tour guides claim can never be moved without other sects seizing it. In fact, the ladder leads to a balcony where the Armenian superior used to drink coffee with his friends and tend his flower garden: it is there so that the balcony can be cleaned. To the façade’s right—as one looks at it—stands a small grey door to the cavernous storeroom which holds the full collection of lifesized crosses to be rented out to—and borne by—pilgrims along the Via Dolorosa: at Easter, these crosses are in such demand that runners collect them in relays so they are ready for the next group to begin to re-enact Jesus’ journey to Crucifixion.
Illustrations
Section One
The Temple Mount—Har HaBayit in Hebrew, Haram al-Sharif in Arabic, known in the Bible as Mount Moriah—is the centrepiece of Jerusalem. The Western Wall, the holiest shrine of Judaism, is part of Herod’s western supporting wall of the esplanade, the setting for the Islamic shrines, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. To many, these 35 acres remain the centre of the world. (illustration credit ill.1)
In 1994, archaeologists found this stele at Tel Dan on which Hazael, King of Aram-Syria, boasts of his victory over Judaea, the “House of David,” thereby confirming David’s existence. (illustration credit ill.2)
The site of Solomon’s temple has been ravaged and rebuilt so often that little remains, except this ivory pomegranate inscribed “to the house of holiness.” It was probably used as the head of a staff during religious processions in the First Temple. (illustration credit ill.3)
In 701 BC, King Hezekiah fortified the city against the approaching Assyrian army. His so-called broad wall can be seen in today’s Jewish Quarter. (illustration credit ill.4)
Meanwhile, two teams of his engineers started digging the 533-metre-long Siloam Tunnel to provide water for the city: when they met in the middle, they celebrated with this inscription, which was discovered by a schoolboy in 1880. (illustration credit ill.5)
Before he turned to Jerusalem, Sennacherib, master of the mighty, rapacious Assyrian em-pire, stormed Hezekiah’s second city, Lachish. The bas-reliefs in his Nineveh palace depict the bloody siege and the punishments suffered by its citizens. Here Judaean families are led away by an Assyrian. (illustration credit ill.6)
King Darius, seen here in a relief from his Persepolis palace, was the real creator of the Persian empire that ruled Jerusalem for more than two centuries. He allowed the Jewish priests to govern themselves, even issuing this Yehud (Judaea) coin). (illustration credit ill.7)
(illustration credit ill.8)
After Alexander the Great’s early death, two Greek families vied to control his empire. Ptolemy I Soter (above left) hijacked Alexander’s corpse, founded a kingdom in Egypt and stormed Jerusalem. After a century under the Ptolemies, their Seleucid rivals grabbed Jerusalem. The effete, flamboyant King Antiochus IV (above right) polluted the Temple and tried to annihilate Judaism, provoking a revolt by Judah the Maccabee (shown here in a fanciful medieval engraving, below), whose family created the new Jewish kingdom that lasted until the arrival of the Romans.
(illustration credit ill.9)
The Roman strongman of the East, Mark Antony (above left), backed a new ruler, Herod, but his mistress Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen (above right), wanted Jerusalem for herself. (illustration credit ill.10)
Ruthless, murderous and brilliant, Herod the Great, half-Jewish and half-Arab, conquered Jerusalem, rebuilt the Temple (shown here in a model reconstruction) and created the city at its most splendid. (illustration credit ill.11)
Above left This ossuary, marked “Simon the builder of the Sanctuary,” probably contained the bones of the architect. Above right The inscription in Greek from the Temple warning gentiles not to enter the inner courts on pain of death. (illustration credit ill.12)
Most of the southern and western walls of the Temple Mount, including the Jewish holy place, the Wall, are Herodian. The impregnable south-eastern corner was the Pinnacle where Jesus was tempted by Satan. A seam in the wall (just visible on the far right of this picture) seems to show Herod’s giant ashlars to the left and the older, smaller Maccabean stones to the right. (illustration credit ill.13)
Jesus’ Crucifixion, depicted by van Eyck in this painting, was almost certainly a Roman measure, backed by the Temple elite, to destroy any messianic threat to the status quo. (illustration credit ill.14)
Herod the Great’s son Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, mocked Jesus but refused to judge him. (illustration credit ill.15)
King Herod Agrippa was an urbane, happy-go-lucky adventurer and the most powerful Jew in Roman history. His friendship with the psychotic Emperor Caligula saved Jerusalem, and he later helped rai
se Claudius to the throne. (illustration credit ill.16)
After four years of independence, Titus, the son of the new Roman Emperor Vespasian, arrived to besiege Jerusalem. (illustration credit ill.17a)
The city and its Temple were destroyed in the savage fighting: archaeologists have discovered the skeletal arm of a young woman trapped in a burned house and the heap of Herodian stones pushed off the Temple Mount by the Roman soldiers as they smashed Herod’s Royal Portico. (illustration credit ill.17b)
The Arch of Titus in Rome celebrates his Triumph in which the candelabra, or menorah, symbol of the Maccabees, was displayed, and this coin, inscribed “Judaea Capta,” commemorates the victory. (illustration credit ill.17c)
(illustration credit ill.18)
Above Restless, petulant and talented, Emperor Hadrian banned Judaism and refounded Jerusalem as a Roman town, Aelia Capitolina, which provoked a Jewish rebellion led by Simon bar Kochba (who issued this coin depicting the restored Temple, below).
(illustration credit ill.19)
This graffito (Domine ivimus, “Lord we have come”) was discovered by the Armenians beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1978. Possibly dating from around AD 300, does it show that Christian pilgrims prayed beneath Hadrian’s pagan temple? (illustration credit ill.20)
Constantine the Great was no saint—he murdered his wife and son—but he embraced Christianity and transformed Jerusalem, ordering the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which he sent his mother Helena to supervise. (illustration credit ill.21)