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.

“Foucher of Chartres (1059- after 1128), the chaplain of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, writes (in his Chronicle Gesta Francorum Iherusalem Peregrinantium, started about 1101 and finished around 1128, TN) that because of lack of money the king was unable to repair the building’s roof, and when lead fell from it, he would sell it to merchants. Indeed he would even order the lead to be stripped, and then sell it. Later, in the second redaction of his chronicle, Foucher describes the building (probably mainly the building’s eastern part, TN) as already largely ruined.

In about 1120 King Baldwin II assented to lend for some time the Temple or Palace of Solomon to the young Templar Order. Its Primitive Rule (after 1129, TN) implies that the palace, after having come into Templar hands, would have comprised a refectory, a church, a chapter house, and an infirmary. Usāma ibn Munqidh (1095-1188) relates that beside the Aqsa Mosque stood a small mosque that the Franks turned into a church. Al-Idrīsī (1100-1166), the Muslim geographer who worked at the Norman court in Palermo, wrote around 1154 that the Templars converted the Aqsa Mosque into chambers in which their companies were lodged.

Yet, even as the Templars adjusted the building to their needs, the kings of Jerusalem continued to regard it as their property. To demonstrate that the Templars were holding it merely on loan, they would host there a festive dinner immediately upon their coronation. (…) Nevertheless the Templars engaged in extensive building activities near the erstwhile
mosque. Johann of Würzburg, whose pilgrimage has been dated to 1160-1170, relates that the Templars have near the Palace of Solomon many large and spacious edifices and that they are erecting there a large new church that has not yet been completed.

Theoderich, who visited Jerusalem probably in 1169, describes the Templar buildings in
greater detail.” His description is the subject of a another blog.

This blog quotes extensively, with minor edits from the paper “Vestiges of Templar presence in the Aqsa Mosque” by Benjamin Z. Kedar, from: The Templars and their Sources, Edited By Karl Borchardt, Karoline Döring, Philippe Josserand, Helen Nicholson (2017, Routledge). The illustration shows Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif today, with the Al-Aqsa mosque situated at the Southern end (the square building with the small dome). picture Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

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The first Templar House at Temple Mount, Jerusalem

“To the south of this holy Mussulman temple (the well-known dome-shaped Dome of the Rock, TN), on the extreme edge of the summit of Mount Moriah, and resting against the modern walls of the town of Jerusalem, stands the venerable christian church of the Virgin (now the Al-Aqsa Mosque; TN), erected by the Emperor Justinian, whose stupendous foundations, remaining to this day, fully justify the astonishing description given of the building by Procopius. (It is this building and its surroundings that was in about 1120 made available by king Baldwin to the newly formed group of the “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon”; TN).

That writer informs us that in order to get a level surface for the erection of the edifice, it was necessary, on the east and south sides of the hill, to raise up a wall of masonry from the valley below, and to construct a vast foundation, partly composed of solid stone and partly of arches and pillars (todat known as King Solomon’s stables; TN). The stones were of such magnitude, that each block required to be transported in a truck drawn by forty of the emperor’s strongest oxen; and to admit of the passage of these trucks it was necessary to widen the roads leading to Jerusalem.

The forests of Lebanon yielded their choicest cedars for the timbers of the roof, and a quarry of variegated marble, seasonably discovered in the adjoining mountains, furnished the edifice with superb marble columns. The interior of this interesting structure, which still remains at Jerusalem, after a lapse of more than thirteen centuries, in an excellent state of preservation, is adorned with six rows of columns, from whence spring arches supporting the cedar beams and timbers of the roof; and at the end of the building is a round tower, surmounted by a dome. The vast stones, the walls of masonry, and the subterranean colonnade raised to support the south-east angle of the platform whereon the church is erected, are truly wonderful, and may still be seen by penetrating through a small door, and descending several flights of steps at the south-east corner of the inclosure.

Adjoining the sacred edifice (at the left of the building on the above illustration; TN), the emperor erected hospitals, or houses of refuge, for travellers, sick people, and mendicants of all nations; the foundations whereof, composed of handsome Roman masonry, are still visible on either side of the southern end of the building.”

source text: The history of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church and the Temple, by Charles G. Addison of the Inner Temple. London 1842; source illustration; links added bij TemplarsNow (TN).

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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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