Thread by @matthewteller

Like any tourist city, Jerusalem is full of misinformation. Stories about people and places pass through so many hands, and are filtered through so many minds or adapted for so many audiences, the truth of them can get lost.

Here's a story about a place.

1/16

2/ There are many, many stories to tell about Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate. It's where the Roman army camped 2000 yrs ago. It's where in 1898 the Ottoman sultan punched a gap in the encircling city wall, already 360 years old, so the German Kaiser could ride through on his white horse

3/ Stand outside the gate and a road passes in front.

↙️ Look to the right, the road climbs the slope northward & bends west, continuing to Jaffa on the coast.

↘️ Look to the left, the same road drops to the valley floor & extends south to Bethlehem, Hebron & into the desert

4/In European langs & Hebrew you turn right—this is Jaffa Gate, Porte de Jaffa, Jaffator, Shaar Yafo, linking city w coast & world beyond

But in Arabic you turn left—it is Hebron Gate/Bab al-Khalil (also Bethlehem Gate), binding the city with hinterland.

Contrast is instructive

5/ Anyways, here's one story from when Suleiman the Magnificent built Jerusalem's city walls (incl Jaffa Gate) in 1537-41.

Just inside the gate on the left, in a tiny courtyard beside the Israeli govt tourist office, are 2 Ottoman tombs, one with a rather splendid marble turban

6/Tour guides will tell you
👉🏻 Suleiman was so furious his new walls didn't include Mount Zion—with Prophet David's tomb—he executed his 2 architects in punishment
👉🏻 Suleiman was so delighted with his new walls he executed his 2 architects to stop them building anything better

7/ "Cruel old Sultan Suleiman," you're supposed to respond. "So irrational, so bloodthirsty. But hey, that's Muslims for you."

8/ Even overlooking the crude stereotyping, the stories don't stand up.

If this was a burial of disgrace, why decorate the tombs?

If this was a burial of gratitude, why not in a sanctified cemetery?

9/ Suleiman’s walls followed previous walls, and Mount Zion had never been walled. Considering the mount's natural defences—steep slopes on three sides—there was no need for Suleiman's engineers to spend time and resources diverting the wall to include it.

So what's the truth?

10/ The real story of the tombs lies in the hands of this man, Fawaz Attiyeh, a judge in the Ramallah Appeals Court. His family has been intimately linked with Jaffa Gate's history for 500+ years, since a forebear, Nasreddin bin Dabbous, created a property endowment here in 1437

11/ Judge Attiyeh has looked into the family history. Nasreddin’s grandson Ibrahim Safouti (c.1519-1592), a merchant and property trader, added to his grandfather’s endowment with more land at Jaffa Gate, shared equally between two sons and four daughters

12/ Sultan Suleiman died in 1566. But we know no tombs existed inside Jaffa Gate on May 17th 1590, because that's when Judge Attiyeh's ancestor Ibrahim Safouti made an endowment covering 3 adjoining homes & a bakery on this exact spot

13/ Jerusalem historian Yusuf Natsheh has unearthed a document dated Oct 8th 1656 that DOES refer to the tombs, under the name “al-Safadiyya”—that is, related to the town of Safad in northern Palestine. He published his findings in @JQuarterly in 2005 palestine-studies.org/sites/default/…

14/ So some time between 1590 & 1656—at least 50 & perhaps 100+yrs after Suleiman’s city walls had been completed—this small part of the Safouti endowment was given over for the burial of, most likely, 2 scholars or nobles from Safad.

There they lie still, behind their railings

15/ No architects. No blood. No fury.

Maybe now Jaffa Gate’s tour guides & other unreliable narrators can retire the myth of the executed architects, and call these "the Safadiyya tombs" again.

Jerusalem's Islamic heritage is rich enough without making extra stuff up, right?

16/ Thank you to my dear friend @KhalilAssali, who put me in touch with Judge Attiyeh.

For a thousand more stories like this, my book NINE QUARTERS OF JERUSALEM is out in March next year with @ProfileBooks.

You can preorder it now :)
linktr.ee/matthewteller