The Blocked Gate of the Messiah
The Gate of Mercy 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 the Mercy Gate is the only one that is blocked.
The Mercy Gate was the only gate among the city gates that led directly to the Temple Mount. It is located on the eastern side of the city wall, in a section that also forms the eastern wall of the Temple Mount. It consists of two brick-blocked openings, the name of the northern opening is "The Gate of Repentance” and the southern one is called "The Gate of Mercy." Today, the gate house is used as a place of Muslim prayer and study, and entry to it is possible only from the Temple Mount.
In the days of the Second Temple there were gates on the eastern side of the wall, but they were located south of the Gate of Mercy. The current gate structure was apparently built at the beginning of the 7th century, but there is a dispute regarding its origin. Some researchers claim that it was built by the Byzantines, and others think that the Muslim rulers of the Umayyad dynasty, who conquered the land of Israel in 638, built it. The caliph Abd al-Malik wanted to fortify the Temple Mount in order to build the Dome of the Rock, and integrated the gate structure, whether the existing or the new one, into the wall surrounding the compound. It is possible that the gate was already sealed at that stage for security reasons, but other researchers believe that it was only closed later in the 10th century for religious reasons. During the Crusader period, the gate was breached and opened twice a year for Christian religious processions. At the beginning of the 16th century, when the Ottomans built the current city wall, the gate was integrated into the wall and sealed with stones similar to the wall’s.
A number of different traditions are associated with the gate. According to the common Jewish belief, the Gate of Mercy is the gate through which the Messiah, the redeemer or savior, will enter the Temple Mount upon Judgment Day. According to this tradition, this is also the reason why the Muslims blocked the gate - to prevent the Jewish Messiah from arriving, and for that reason they also established a Muslim cemetery outside the wall adjacent to the gate, to prevent the Messiah from passing through for fear of being defiled. By the way, according to Jewish law, a gentile cemetery does not defile, so if the Messiah is delayed, then the Muslim cemetery at the feet of the Gate of Mercy is not the reason for that...
According to Christian tradition, the Gate of Mercy is the gate through which Jesus entered Jerusalem, hence its other name “The Golden Gate”. In 628, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius passed through it in a great procession in which the true cross was returned to Jerusalem. The cross, identified by the Empress Saint Helena in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 326 during her famous visit to the Holy Land, was looted by the Persians when they conquered Jerusalem in 614, and the Byzantine emperor managed to recover it. Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade and conqueror of Jerusalem, also entered the city through it in a triumphal march after breaking through the blocked gate, similar to Heraclius. In 1917, by the way, a proposal was made that the British General Allenby enter Jerusalem after its conquest from the Turks through the Gate of Mercy, which would be breached for this purpose again, as Jesus, Heraclius and Gottfried did before him. However, Allenby, who resented messianic pretensions, refused and eventually entered the city through the Jaffa Gate, walking on foot and not riding his horse as an act of humility and respect.
(Anecdote authored by: עמיר)
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