Jaffa Gate Wall Breach
The Jaffa Gate is one of the eight gates of the Old City Wall in Jerusalem, built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Seven of the gates are open, while one, the Golden Gate, is blocked.
The Jaffa Gate was completed in 1538, as described by the dedication inscription on top of it, and it is on the western side of the city wall. The gate is named after the ancient road that leads west from Jerusalem to the city of Jaffa and its port, which served as the main port of Israel until the British Mandate period. In Arabic it is called the Hebron Gate, after the name of the road that leaves towards the south to the cities of Bethlehem and Hebron. During the Crusader period it was also called David's Gate, after the Tower of David fortress next to it. Due to its strategic location, the Jaffa Gate is one of the most important and central gates of the Old City Wall. The entrance into the city through the gate is built in an angular way, to make it difficult for an invading force to storm through it.
During the Ottoman period and until the British Mandate period, the gate area was bustling and busy. In its vicinity there was a market, a carriage station, hotels, various businesses and shops. In the Ottoman period, the gate was shut at night, same as the other city gates, and near it a small hotel was built outside the wall for those who did not have time to enter the city before dark.
In 1898, the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, visited the land of Israel. The gates of the Wall of Jerusalem are narrow and the entrance through them is shifting, therefore the Ottoman authorities decided to breach the city wall to allow the emperor and his empress to enter the city while riding their magnificent carriage. For this purpose, the moat that was next to the Jaffa gate was filled with dirt and the wall that was built inside it was destroyed. Since the Ottoman wall of Jerusalem was built in the first half of the 16th century, this is the only breach in it, and the passage that was opened for the German Kaiser is still used today to allow entry of vehicles into the old city.
It is interesting to note that in 1917, when the British General Allenby captured Jerusalem from the Turks, he chose out of modesty to dismount from his horse and enter the old city on foot with his officers as a pilgrimage act, and not through the breach while riding his horse as a conqueror in a military parade.
Adjacent to the gate, inside the old city, there are a pair of Ottoman tombs decorated with stone Tarboosh (a traditional Ottoman hat). According to a popular legend these are the graves of the engineers who built the wall. Sultan Suleiman decided to behead them after they completed constructing the wall, so that they would not reveal its secrets to his enemies.
In 1907, the Turks built a clock tower above the gate, a twin of the famous tower that still stands today in Clock Square in Jaffa, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. However, in 1922, the British authorities decided to remove the tower, because they claimed it disturbed the general appearance of the gate.
(Anecdote authored by: עמיר)
(Number of views: 52)
English 
עִבְרִית