Tancred's Tower

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Coordinates: 31°46′43″N 35°13′34″E / 31.7786°N 35.2261°E / 31.7786; 35.2261
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Tancred's Tower
Qaṣr Jālūd, Qalʿat Jālūd, Burj Jālūd
Part of Jerusalem's city walls
Coordinates31°46′43″N 35°13′34″E / 31.7786°N 35.2261°E / 31.7786; 35.2261
Site information
Open to
the public		Yes
ConditionRuins (first courses)
Site history
MaterialsLimestone
Battles/warsSiege of 1099
Remains of Tancred's Tower in front of the Ottoman city walls, and the Collège des Frères behind the walls (top)
Qasr Jalud, the Palestine Survey, 1936. Building "9" is the Collège.
Kalat (Qalʿat) al Jalud, the Jerusalem Survey, 1865
The area of Tancred's Tower in a city model created a century before the excavation of the tower remains (1864-1873)

Tancred's Tower, known in Arabic as Qasr (al-)Jalud ("Goliath's Castle", see below), was a large tower at the northwest corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, of which only meager remains were unearthed by archaeologists.[1][2][3]

Today, much of the area of the original structure is beneath the Collège des Frères of the De La Salle Brothers.[citation needed] Parts of it are in the external base of the city wall[4] where the section coming from the New Gate to the northeast meets the section coming from Jaffa Gate to the southeast.

Names[edit]

The tower is known in Arabic as Qaṣr Jālūd/Jālūt ("Goliath's Castle") or Qalʿat Jālūd ("Goliath's Fortress") or Burj Jālūd ("Goliath's Tower").[N 1] The name may be from traditions about Goliath or an allusion to its size[11] or a reference to the Tower of David.[4] To the Crusaders, it was the Turris Tancredi (Latin for "Tancred's Tower"), after Tancred of Antioch, the commander whose troops breached the Fatimid defenses at this specific point during the 1099 siege.[11][12] There was also a 13th-century map where it is the Turris Nebulosa.[11]

Excavation[edit]

The remains of the tower were discovered during excavations led by Dan Bahat and Menashe Ben-Ari of the Department of Antiquities in 1971–72.[13]

History[edit]

The remains are of a large tower, probably first built in the 11th century during the Fatimid period, when the Christian community was forced by decree in 1063 to erect a new wall complete with towers in the north-western part of the city.[14] Sources speak of a forewall, moat, and main wall.[14] During the 1099 siege at the end of the First Crusade, the city and tower fell to the Franks,[11] who later referred to it as Tancred's Tower because it was at this spot that the Italo-Norman leader first attempted to scale Jerusalem's city wall by ladder on 13 June 1099.[15] During the Crusader reign over the city, there was a postern gate adjacent to the tower.[16] Lepers were housed in the vicinity of the tower already around 1130, and later became organised as the crusading military order of Saint Lazarus.[16] The tower was apparently expanded by the Ayyubids after Saladin's reconquest of the city in 1187,[11] but it was destroyed along with the entire city wall sometime later, possibly in 1219, when Ayyubid ruler al-Mu'azzam Isa razed most of the city fortifications.[12] Part of the remains of the tower on the inside of the Ottoman walls were razed in 1876, when the Collège des Frères was built.[11]

Description[edit]

The tower footprint, which measures approximately 35 × 35 metres, was found to protrude by some 3 metres from underneath the 16th-century Ottoman city wall,[13] built on top of the medieval tower's ruins, which were levelled for the purpose.[17] It was found that the tower was separated from the city wall on its north and west sides by a street.[13] The contemporary city wall follows closely the tower's outline, and is bordered to the north and west by two moat segments, excavated to a depth of c. 7 metres.[13]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Here, Jālūd may also be Jālūt, as with the placename Ayn Jalut. The article al-/el- may be present, hence these variations: Qasr/Ḳasr Jalud (قصر جالود), Qasr Jalut (قصر جالوت), Qasr al-Jalud, Qasr al-Jalut; Qalʿat/Ḳalʿat/Kalaat Jalud (قلعة جالود), Qalʿat Jalut, Qalʿat al-Jalud; Burj Jalud, Burj Jalut (برج جالوت), etc.[5][6][7][8][9][10][4]
  1. ^ S. Weksler-Bdolah, Early Islamic and Medieval City Walls of Jerusalem in Light of New Discoveries
  2. ^ Katharina Galor; Gideon Avni (21 July 2011). Unearthing Jerusalem: 150 Years of Archaeological Research in the Holy City. Penn State University Press. pp. 429–. ISBN 978-1-57506-659-2.
  3. ^ Tancred fortress at Bible Walks.
  4. ^ a b c Boas, Adrian (24 September 2020). "On a Theory of Relativity". Adrian Boas (professor of Crusader studies). Burj or Qasr Jālūt - Goliath's Tower (برج جالوت/قصر جالوت), no doubt a play on the presence of the far more important David's Tower
  5. ^ Smith, G.A. (1907). Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-06351-7. Ḳalaʿat or Ḳaṣr Jâlûd, 'Goliath's Castle'.
  6. ^ Gorbea, Antonio Almagro (1983). El palacio omeya de ʿAmmān. CSIC Press. ISBN 978-84-85873-05-0. the castle of Goliath (Qaṣr Jālūt)
  7. ^ Quarterly. Vol. 8. Department of Antiquities in Palestine. 1939. p. 152. fortress of Goliath (Qalʿat Jālūd)
  8. ^ Ritter, Carl (1870). The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula. D. Appleton. and the so-called citadel of Goliath (Kasr Jalud).
  9. ^ Levant. Council for British Research in the Levant. 1986. the Zahal Square outside of the wall, opposite Qal'at el Jalud — Tancred's Tower
  10. ^ Boas, Adrian (2016). Crusader Archaeology. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-47965-9. Tancred's or Goliath's Tower (Burj Jalud)
  11. ^ a b c d e f Boas, Adrian (2001). "Physical remains of Crusader Jerusalem". Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades. Routledge. pp. 69–70. ISBN 9781134582723. Retrieved 15 June 2020. Qasr al-Jâlûd […], Quadrangular Tower […] Although certain traditions relating to Goliath have been attached to this building, the name may simply be an allusion to the great size of the tower.
  12. ^ a b "Tancred's Tower / Qasr Jalud (Goliath's Castle)". Institute for International Urban Development (I2UD). Archived from the original on 2021-11-24. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  13. ^ a b c d "The Conservation of Jerusalem's City Walls: Zahal Square Section". Israel Antiquities Authority. Retrieved 5 August 2022.
  14. ^ a b Boas (2001), pp. 44-45.
  15. ^ Boas (2001), p. 9.
  16. ^ a b Boas (2001), p. 22.
  17. ^ Cytryn-Silverman, Katia (April 2009). "Khān al-Ẓāhir – bi-Ẓāhir al-Quds!". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 19 (2). The Royal Asiatic Society: 149–171. doi:10.1017/S1356186308009401. S2CID 162245427. Retrieved 5 August 2022 – via Cambridge University Press website. Bahat, Dan and Ben-Ari, M., "Excavations at Tancred's Tower", in Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Yadin, Yigael (Jerusalem, 1975) ... Bahat's and Ben-Ari's excavations also made clear that the north-western corner of the city-walls remained destroyed until the Ottoman period, when the remains of the tower were levelled and built over (ibid., p. 110).

External links[edit]

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