Jerusalem map from Cambrai

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Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 437, fol. 1r.

The Jerusalem Map of Cambrai is a medieval city map titled Civitas Jherusalem , "City of Jerusalem". This card is kept in the Cambrai library. It is a sheet of parchment (height 33.6 cm, width 23.5 cm). This is as fol 1r. incorporated into a code (Ms. 437), which from fol 1v. contains a commentary on the biblical books of the kings , then decrees of Pope Gregory I on monastic life, three letters from Friedrich Barbarossa and other things.

The pen drawing, made in the middle of the 12th century, stands out among the 14 Jerusalem city plans from the time of the Crusaders due to its good local knowledge and a comparatively high proportion of current historical references. The city's floor plan is a parallelogram (not a circle, as is usually the case); the map is north.

City walls

Jerusalem is surrounded by a crenellated wall with several towers; there are five city gates:

  • in the north the Stephanustor ( Porta S. Stephani ), today Damascusor ;
  • in the east the Josaphattor ( Porta Josaphat ), today the Lion Gate , and the now walled-up Golden Gate ( Porta aurea );
  • in the south the Zion (mountain) gate ( Porta montis Syon );
  • in the west the Davidstor ( Porta David ), today Jaffator .

For topographical reasons, Jerusalem was always conquered from the north in ancient and medieval times. On the map of Cambrai you can see a cross drawn in red ink on the northern city wall between two towers. It stands for a stone cross that the Crusaders placed on the northern city wall to mark the place of their breakthrough into the city in 1099. It was precisely at this point that Saladin's army entered Jerusalem in 1187, whereupon the cross was removed. The inscription Hic capta est civitas a francis , “Here the city was conquered by the Franks”, shows that the map maker did not want to depict the timeless Holy City, but the concrete city of the 12th century. "The map thus appears both as a memorial to the deed, as well as a possible orientation plan on site." The Jerusalem maps of the crusaders represented a relatively new political claim on the city, but at the same time they showed Jerusalem as a Christian memory landscape, that of the pilgrims could be hiked.

Road network

The street network of the old city ​​of Jerusalem goes back to the late antique city complex of Aelia Capitolina . The Cardo maximus was the old north-south axis, ie the connection between Damascus Gate and Zion Gate. On the Cambrai map it is called Stephanusstraße in the northern part and Zionsbergstraße in the southern part. From the western city gate, David Street leads to the city center and continues as Temple Street ( Via Templi , today Tariq Bab as-Silsila ) to the Temple Mount. From the eastern city gate, one got into the center of Jerusalem via Josaphat Street.

Churches

Churches are marked as such by bell towers.

Unusually the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is referred to by its Byzantine name as “ Anastasis ”. It is located on the "Alley of the (Holy) Sepulcher" ( Platea Sepulcri ), which branches off the north-south main road to the west. The bell tower is depicted at its original height, above the Anastasis dome. The map enables a view into the interior of the main Christian shrine: under the dome of the Anastasis is the Holy Sepulcher Aedicula , next to it rises as a small mountain the rock of Golgotha and on its crest a chapel called Calvaria .

The Temple Street of the Crusaders (today Tariq Bab as-Silsila) leads to the "beautiful gate" ( Porta speciosa ) of the temple square. Here the Dome of the Rock , used by the Latins as St. Mary's Church, is the most important and correspondingly large building. The draftsman has given him four towers that the Dome of the Rock never had in reality.

Six churches of oriental Christians are depicted in the urban area of ​​Jerusalem: the Church of St. Sabas (probably part of the Mar Saba Monastery ), the Syrian Church of St. Chariton , the Jacobite Maria Magdalena Church, the Georgskirche on the market, the Abrahams and Bartholomäus Church.

The Church of Abraham ( Ecclesia S. Habrahe ) was, according to the Cambrai map, in what is now the Christian Quarter between the Stephanus Gate (now Damascus Gate) and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. A more precise localization is not possible. Literary sources testify that the Abrahamic monastery in Jerusalem owned land in southern Italy in 1179. Possibly the church got its name because of a connection to the Shrine of Abraham in Hebron. But instead of the biblical patriarch, Abraham could also mean the abbot Abramios, who founded a monastery on the Mount of Olives in the 6th century.

The Bartholomäuskirche can also only be localized imprecisely. It can be seen on a small hill in the northeast corner of the city in the vicinity of the Maria Magdalenen Church and St. Anne's Church. Today this area belongs to the Muslim old town . An identification with the mosque al-Maulawija (so Bieberstein and Bloedhorn 1994) or with the later Elias Church (Dair al-ʿAdas) is proposed.

The Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Chariton is depicted on the map of Cambrai in the northwest corner of the city; it is mentioned in various sources from the 12th and 13th centuries and was therefore located north of the area of ​​the Holy Sepulcher. This church probably stood where the Convent and Church of St. Charalampos (Greek Orthodox) are located.

Secular buildings

The depiction of profane buildings is unusual:

Architectural details of the Curia regis cannot be found on the map, as it is a symbolic representation. Remnants of the palace were uncovered in what is now the Armenian Garden and in the area of ​​the neighboring police station. The Royal Palace and the Tower of David form a building ensemble; The multi-storey Tower of David towering over the Gate of David (now Jaffa Gate ) is particularly highlighted on the map of Cambrai. As the tallest tower in Jerusalem, it was also depicted on seals of the Latin Kingdom.

Another dominant tower is the Tankred Tower, shown as the northwest corner of the city. This is a massive tower from the crusader era on a square base (35 × 35 m), which bore its name in memory of Tankred of Tiberias , one of the subordinates of the First Crusade , who tried unsuccessfully at this point together with Godfrey von Bouillon Conquer the city. In 1219, Malik al-Muʿazzam had the tankred tower razed as well as other parts of the city fortifications.

Surroundings of Jerusalem

On the right, eastern edge of the picture the Mount of Olives is shown extremely steeply, halfway up Bethany and at the foot of Mount Gethsemane . Next to it is the Marian tomb ( Ecclesia S. Marie in valle Josaphat ). In the nearby Kidron Valley a hermit group had settled according to the map ( Vicus heremitarum ); you can see them at the lower, southern edge of the map. A striking antique grave monument in this hermit village was marked as Manus Absalon , Abschalom monument .

literature

  • Max Küchler : Jerusalem. A handbook and study guide to the Holy City . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-50170-2 , p. 1157.
  • Milka Levy-Rubin: The Crusader Maps of Jerusalem . In: Silvia Rozenberg (Ed.): Knights of the Holy Land - The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem . Israel Museum, Jerusalem 1999, pp. 230-237. ISBN 978-9652782342 . ( PDF )
  • Martine Meuwese: Representations of Jerusalem on Medieval Maps and Miniatures . In: Eastern Christian Art 2 (2005), pp. 139–148. ( PDF )
  • Denys Pringle: The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem , Volume 3: The City of Jerusalem . Cambridge University Press, New York 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-39038-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Qantara Mediterranean Heritage: Map of Jerusalem .
  2. ↑ Auguste Molinier: Cambrai . (= Catalog général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France . Volume 17). Paris 1891, p. 172f.
  3. ↑ a b Milka Levy-Rubin: The Crusader Maps of Jerusalem , Jerusalem 1999, p. 231.
  4. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem. A handbook and study travel guide to the Holy City , Göttingen 2007, p. 103.
  5. ↑ Henrike Haug: Annales Ianuenses. Places and media of historical memory in medieval Genoa . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, p. 146f.
  6. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem. A handbook and study travel guide to the Holy City , Göttingen 2007, p. 461.
  7. ↑ Denys Pringle: The City of Jerusalem , New York 2007, p. 137.
  8. ^ Denys Pringle: The City of Jerusalem , New York 2007, p. 157.
  9. ↑ Denys Pringle: The City of Jerusalem , New York 2007, pp. 158f.
  10. ^ Katharina Galor, Hanswulf Bloedhorn: The Archeology of Jerusalem: From the Origins to the Ottomans . Yale University Press 2013, p. 202.
  11. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem. A handbook and study travel guide to the Holy City , Göttingen 2007, p. 504.
  12. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem. A handbook and study travel guide to the Holy City , Göttingen 2007, pp. 113f.
  13. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem. A handbook and study travel guide to the Holy City , Göttingen 2007, p. 710.