Muristan

The Muristan (from Persian Bimārestān بیمارستان meaning "hospital") is a complex of streets and shops in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The site was the location of the first hospital of the Knights Hospitaller.

The area just south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has a long tradition dating to the days of Judas Maccabeus (the 2nd century BC) based on incidents recorded in the Second Book of Maccabees. According to the legend, King Antiochus V proceeded to Jerusalem to punish the High Priest for plundering David's Tomb. While on Golgotha, the king was directed in a divine vision to pardon the High Priest, and to build a hospital for the care of the sick and poor on that spot. In 1496, William Caoursin, Vice-Chancellor of the Hospitallers, wrote that Judas Maccabaeus and John Hyrcanus founded the hospital on that spot.

In 130, Hadrian visited the ruins of Jerusalem, in Judaea, left after the First Roman-Jewish War of 66–73. He rebuilt the city, renaming it Aelia Capitolina after himself and Jupiter Capitolinus, the chief Roman deity. Hadrian placed the city's main Forum at the junction of the main Cardo and Decumanus Maximus, now the location for the (smaller) Muristan. Hadrian built a large temple to the goddess Venus, which later became the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The earliest historical mention of the location Muristan is in 600 AD, when a certain Abbot Probus was commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great to build a hospital in Jerusalem to treat and care for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. This hospice was most likely destroyed about fourteen years later when Jerusalem fell to the Persian army and the Christian inhabitants were slaughtered, and their churches and monasteries destroyed (see Revolt against Heraclius). The building was probably restored after Jerusalem fell again under Roman dominion in 629.

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