Jerusalem

 

  Is Jerusalem safe to visit? Your Aunt Betsey at the State Department advises against it. The website Wikitravel says you'll be fine. Just don't be stupid. Wikitravel always finds a way through. In some countries that might involve hiring a convoy of Land Cruisers mounted with machine guns as your escort.

  Jerusalem has always been risky. Crossroads always are. Visitors are never content to take things as they find them. They have often insisted on making things the way they are back home. On this day in 1009, Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah moved in from Cairo and razed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre down to the bedrock. 

  The caliphs before Al-Hakim and those after him practiced toleration toward the Christian pilgrims and the resident Jews. Historians say that Hakim's enemies back home were taunting him that he was soft on Christians and that his mother was a Jew. He showed them how wrong they were.

  After Hakim, a new Church of the Holy Sepulcher was erected. The church was built over the site of Jesus' burial and resurrection. Calvary is only 150 feet away so there was a church there too. These sites had been discovered in the early fourth century by the Roman Emperor Constantine's mother, Helena. She was the one who convinced him to stop persecuting the Christians. 

  Constantine sent his mother to Jerusalem to find the holy sites. Locals told her that Jesus' tomb was probably under the temple to Jupiter which the Romans had built after they had destroyed most of Jerusalem and kicked the Jews out after a revolt in the second century. Tearing down and rebuilding a city is hard work but people did it regularly in ancient times.

  Of course Helena had the Roman temple torn down and underneath it found a cave with a carved tomb inside. The locals pointed out the probable site of Calvary nearby and after more digging, three crosses were found. By touching pieces of each cross to sick people they discovered which of the three was the true cross. A steady stream of Christian pilgrims began arriving to venerate the cross and the tomb. The Persians also came, burned the church, and took the cross back to Persia. Not long after, the Byzantine (Roman) emperor went and brought the cross back.

 The arrival of the Muslims in the seventh century did not interfere with the tourist trade until the above mentioned Al-Hakim bi-Amr blew into town. This Al-Hakim closed Jerusalem to pilgrims and banned all Jews from the city. This didn't sit well with the pope who sent a crusade of pugnacious knights from Europe to liberate the Holy Land. The pope didn't mention killing all the Jews they met on their way to Jerusalem but the crusaders took that as a given.

  The crusaders must have believed God was on their side when they were able to defeat much larger Muslim armies. They assumed it was God's will that they slaughter the fifty thousand people inside Jerusalem's city walls once the siege there was broken. The crusaders ruled the Holy Land for a hundred years till Saladin took it back for the Muslims. Pilgrims and Jews continued to be welcome. 

  Over the centuries various parts of the church complex were and still are managed by six different Christian groups: the Franciscans, the Armenians, the Greeks, the Coptics, the Syriacs, and the Ethiopians. Naturally these groups squabbled about how things were to be done. The Muslims (eventually the Ottoman Turks) got sick of adjudicating these disputes and in 1757 put the Status Quo into effect. Henceforth all changes would have to be agreed to by all six groups. Nothing has changed since 1757. There's even a little ladder someone had leaned against an upper wall the day before the Status Quo went into effect. It's still there.

  A Muslim family was given the key to the church by Saladin back in 1187. Another Muslim family was assigned the job of opening the doors once they were unlocked and closing them at night before lock up. Descendants of these two families continue to hold these cushy jobs. Just reading about these quirky turns in Jerusalem's history has made me want to visit. The lines are short to get into the church these days, but I'll wait till peace returns to the Fertile Crescent. Fingers crossed.

If you build it, they will tear it down.