Blessings in Disguise

This year Purim coincided with International Women’s Day.  That seems fitting because the miracle of Purim came about through a woman.  Esther had both the courage to confront Achashverosh and accuse Haman of planning genocide and the wisdom to unify the Jewish people and bring them back to G-d in their time of trouble.   In a city holy to three religions and with as long a history as Jerusalem there are inevitably many conflicting traditions and confusions of identity.  As with Purim, not everything is as it seems.  Today’s post honours both Purim and International Women’s Day by looking at sites in the city connected to women whose identity is in some way in doubt.

The Chapel of the Ascension
Photo: Adriaticus

Rabia al-Adawiyya

Near the crest of the Mount of Olives in the neighbourhood of At-Tur is a small domed building surrounded by a wall.  It is known as the Chapel of the Ascension or the Mosque of the Ascension.  At its side is a burial crypt revered by each of the three Abrahamic religions.  All agree that it is the burial place of a holy woman but each one has a different opinion as to who is buried there.   For Muslims it is Rabia al-Adawiyya an 8th Century Sufi mystic born in Basra, Iraq.  Christians believe it to be the burial place of a 5th Century saint, Pelagia, who was born in northern Lebanon and who lived an ascetic life disguised as a monk.  Only after she died was it discovered that she was really a woman.  The Jewish tradition is that the 7th Century BCE prophetess Huldah is buried here.  Hulda is mentioned briefly in the Tanach in Kings and Chronicles.   The King, Josiah, had ordered the refurbishment of the Temple.  During this work a book of the Law was discovered.  The High Priest and royal officials consulted Huldah.  She confirmed that the book was authentic and prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem.  She reassured Josiah that, because of his piety, the destruction will not be in his lifetime.   

The eastern Hulda Gates today

At the top of the monumental staircases leading to the southern wall of the Temple Mount are two sets of gates that are now blocked up.   In the days of the Second Temple they were the main entrances to the Temple platform.  One name for them is the Huldah Gates.  Some say this is because of a tradition that Huldah is buried in Jerusalem.  Others point out that the Hebrew word “huldah” means “rat” and that on entering these gates you would walk like rats through underground tunnels up to the Temple plaza.

Imaret Haseki Sultan entrance

Endowment charter
of Haseki Sultan Waqf

Three women are also connected with a building on Aqabat et-Takiya (in Hebrew Ma’alot Hamadrasa Street) in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.  In the late 14th Century a woman known as Sitt Tunshuq built a palace in magnificent Mamluk style here to serve as a hostel for dervishes.  Across the street from the palace she built a tomb building (turba) for herself and was buried there in 1398.  Very little is known about Tunshuq though she was clearly a wealthy woman.  It is thought that she may have been the wife of a Mamluk sultan.  Haseki Hurrem Sultan, known in the west as Roxelana, was the favourite wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, the 16th Century Ottoman ruler who built the walls of Jerusalem.  In 1552 she endowed the building of a charitable complex that contained a soup kitchen, a mosque, a pilgrim hostel and an inn for travellers.  Haseki Sultan’s complex was built next to Tunshuq’s Palace which was incorporated into it.   In the 1870s the building became the Saraya, an Ottoman local government office that included the residence of the Pasha. 

Christians came to call the complex the Hospital of Saint Helena.  They believed that it had been established in the 4th Century by Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, to house workers building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and that it became a hostel for poor pilgrims once the church was completed.  The tradition that this had been the Hospital of Saint Helena or at least stood on the site of the former hospital persisted and was widely believed.  It was even reported in the 1906 edition of Baedeker’s Guide to Palestine and Syria.