Showing posts with label Al-Aqsa Mosque. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al-Aqsa Mosque. Show all posts

Where was the first Templar Church on Temple Mount?

In about 1120 King Baldwin II decided to lend his palace at what now is called the Al-Acsa Mosque, temporarily to the juvenil Templar Order. Its Primitive Rule (after 1129, TN) implies that their compound at the palace, after having come into Templar hands, would have comprised a refectory, a chapel or church, a chapter house, and an infirmary. Where was in the early days that church?

Details of the Templar compound on Temple Mount Jerusalem

What did Temple Mount look like during Templar times, so between about 1120 and 1187? Theoderich, who visited Jerusalem probably in 1169, describes the Templar buildings in great detail. 

The Templar compound on Temple Mount Jerusalem

 "Shortly after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the Al-Aqsa mosque became the residence of the Frankish kings of Jerusalem. But the kings were not able to maintain the building in the condition in which they had found it." Perhaps that is what inspired king Baldwin II to lend the site to the young Templar Order. A reconstruction.

The site of first Templar House on Temple Mount, Jerusalem

The now Al-Aqsa mosque is the building that, with its surroundings, was in about 1120 made available by king Baldwin to the newly formed group of knights of the "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon", later simply called Templars. In 1845 Addison described its preceding history as follows.  

Jerusalem Temple Mount: The Charles Wilson and Charles Warren map collection

This link leads to the Charles Wilson and Charles Warren map collection with notes (1864 AD) of the Jerusalem Temple Mount, with detailed descriptions and reconstructions.



Note "Salomon's Stables" in the right hand corner (the dotted pattern), which probably were used by the Knights Templars, while their House was at what now is the Al-Aqsa  Mosque, located near the southwestern tip of the Temple platform.

Source www.bible.ca

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The Knights Templar in Arab sources of the 12th century

In the period 1118-1156, the Military Orders played a relatively minor role in the Holy Land. In fact, they are not well documented even in Latin sources. Among the Arabs their existence went completely unnoticed. In 1157 the rising importance of the Orders began to attract the attention of Muslim writers. 

Birth of the Knights Templar

In order to understand better the position of Knights Templar at the beginning of the second millennium as well as their (potential) meaning today, it is important to have a clear picture of their origin and original intent. What is known?