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M.Besant E.Walter
Jerusalem, the city of Herod and Saladin

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M.Besant E.Walter
Jerusalem, the city of Herod and Saladin
page 476



that the excavations are discontinued and the shafts closed the pilgrim will be grievously disappointed if he expect to find a single stone in situ. The houses are all built of roughly-hewn blocks of stone. Syrian houses have flat roofs, but the want of timber for beams renders this construction impossible in the southern part of Palestine, and the deficiency is supplied by furnishing the buildings with large stone domes. From the nature of the ground there is not a single level street in Jerusalem. The streets are paved with the hard limestone of the country, worn smooth with constant traffic, and this makes them cleaner than those of many other Eastern towns. Nothing could be more out of harmony with all sacred associations than the interior appearance of modern Jerusalem. True, there is something picturesque and romantic about the narrow streets, the quaint old archways, and the ruins upon which you stumble at every turn; but the ruins are those of Saladin's city not of Herod's, while the Jerusalem of David and of Solomon lies crushed and buried twenty fathoms under ground. Of course, the two principal objects of attraction in Jerusalem are the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Haram es Sherif. The actual Sepulchre is covered by a small chapel coated with reddish marble, and is surrounded by a circular building of fine proportions, with a magnificent dome. The Greek church is immediately to the east of this rotunda, and Calvary to the south-east, and some twelve or thirteen feet above it. The only entrance is by a door leading into an open court on the south, and this is never opened except by the Mohammedan official who has charge of it, and with the permission of the patriarch of one of the Christian sects. On a bench inside the door sits a Turkish guard, whose duty it is to see that the Christians do not cut each other's


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