Women of Jerusalem

For International Women's Day, today on the 8th of March, I prepared a tour in the old city of Jerusalem, that takes you through the history of Jerusalem with women as the main characters! 

Unfortunately the old city is closed to visitors due to the war with Iran and the tour is canceled. I decided to record some of the stories of these important historical women and share this episode with you on International Women's Day. 

This virtual guided journey through Jerusalem highlights the lives of several women whose stories shaped the city’s faith, art, politics, and daily life. From Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary to Melisende, Rabia al Adawiya, Khassaki Hürrem Sultan, Helena, Eudocia, and Hind al‑Husseini, we trace witness, rule, charity, and education across centuries.

If you enjoyed it and if you want to support me, because in these times of war, as a tour guide, we don't have any income, then I would highly appreciate if you went to my Ko-fi page where you can buy me a coffee.

Transcript

Return On Women’s Day

SPEAKER_00 0:05

After a long gap of not recording any podcast episodes, I think the last one was published more than a year ago, I am back today with a special episode on International Women's Day. I was supposed to give a tour today with the title Important Historical Women in Jerusalem, but due to the current reality of war with Iran, the tour had to be postponed. And I decided to record an episode and pick up podcasting for as long as this war is keeping us at home. If you are a longtime listener, you will realize that I changed the name of the podcast, but I'm still the same crystal with a lot of new stories and interesting information to share with you. In the last year, I've worked on a number of new themed tours in and around the old city of Jerusalem, and I've practiced on members of the expat community that live and work in Jerusalem because hardly any revival of tourism actually in the last two years. But thanks God for the expats. And I hope you will enjoy this episode. And if the state of war continues, I will probably be uploading more new content. As my dear friend and colleague Nadia said, we always speak about history, but what about her story? History is often written by men and more precisely by the winners, by the victors, the men with power and money, and it's much harder to find information about the women that played an important role in the history of Jerusalem in this case. But there are many women who made it into the history books and into the memory of the residents of the city. Of course, there are many stories of individual women that have contributed to the social fabric and the important events that color the history of Jerusalem. You can't name them all and you can't name everyone. There is only so much publicly available. So in the tour I designed, we will be talking about 20 women from different time periods with different social and cultural and religious backgrounds. We will start the tour from the Virgin Mary tomb in the Kidron Valley and then move through the old city to the David's Tower near Jaffa Gate. It's called David's Tower, but it was actually built by King Herod the Great, originally as his palace. He lived there with his wife Mariamna, the one whom he later killed because he was so jealous. But I will talk about that during the tour, obviously. We will also be talking about women from the Old and New Testament of the Bible, such as Bathsheba, the mother of King Solomon, about Mariam or Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her mother, Hannah or Anna, or Anne, and of course Mary Magdalene, the apostle who was closest to Jesus, who witnessed his crucifixion and was the first one to see him after his resurrection. We'll also talk about women with real power such as the Byzantine Empress Eudochia and the Crusader Queens Morphia and Melisand. We'll learn about ascetic religious women such as Rabbi Al Adawiya, a Sufi mystic, and the Jewish prophetess Hulda, and the Christian nun Pelagia, who lived as a hermit on Mount Olives, but disguised as a monk because it was not common for women to live in seclusion. And these three women shared the same tomb on the Mount of Olives. There were also many women who became famous for their charitable acts, for example, the wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, Haseki Sultan, and there was Hint Husseini who established a school for the orphans of the Deryasin massacre in 1948. The tour is mostly about historical women, but we will talk about one woman who is still living in the old city in Jerusalem, who is a great inspiration. She's part of the Dumari Gypsy community, and against all odds, she has successfully established a center to support her community. Her name is Amun Slim. So let's dive into some of the history, some of the stories of this women, but not all of them, because I want to keep some for you when you come and join the tour of the women in Jerusalem, inshallah in the future. Let us start with Mary Magdalene. She is perhaps the most misunderstood and misrepresented woman in Christian history. You may have seen, if you know Jerusalem, on Mount of Olives the Russian Orthodox Church with the golden onion shaped domes. The church is named after Mary Magdalene because it was built by Tsar Alexander for his mother, and her patron saint was Mary Magdalene. But who was the real Mary Magdalene? She came from Magdala. Magdala was a prosperous fishing town on the Sea of Galilee, so she was not a village girl, she was from a city where there was quite a lot of economic activity and it was under Roman influence. And then the Bible tells us that Jesus cast out seven demons of her. Now, in the ancient world, casting out demons often meant that you were suffering severely from something. It didn't necessarily mean moral failure. Somehow, later in the tradition, she was turned into a prostitute who repented and went away from her old sin. But that is never mentioned like that in the Bible. When she became the apostle of Jesus, she was one of his closest apostles, and she is the one who was with him when he was crucified, while all the male disciples had fled, she stood near the cross and she saw where he was buried. And then, an astonishing detail, she was the first one to witness his resurrection. Not the male apostles, it was Mary Magdalene to whom Jesus first appeared. It's written in the Gospel of John that she meets Jesus near to his tomb, and at first she thinks that he's the gardener. And then when he calls her by her name, Mary, that's the moment where she recognizes him, and she has been given the title Apostle to the Apostles. So it's quite interesting that in the first century, in a Jewish environment in the Greco-Roman world, where women were not generally much accepted as legal witnesses in court, the central miracle of Christianity is now first entrusted to a woman. That is historically intriguing. If someone were inventing the story in that culture, would they then have chosen a woman as the primary witness? So the most important news in Christian history was first carried through the streets of Jerusalem by a woman. And maybe it's also interesting to mention that in the 19th century a Coptic manuscript was found in Egypt that dated to the second century and it is titled The Gospel of Mary. Now scholars do not have a consensus if Mary Magdalene really wrote it herself, but what we know is that the Gospel of Mary reflects early Christian mystical agnostic traditions. It is named after Mary Magdalene because it portrays her as the most important spiritual teacher, and that she received secret teachings from Jesus Himself. But it doesn't mean that she wrote the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. And in that gospel, there are seven pages that are missing, and it seems that those pages were very relevant teachings that Mary Magdalene had received from Jesus Himself. But we don't know what they say because unfortunately they have been lost. Not far. From Mary Magdalene's church, there is another church called the Tomb of Virgin Mary. And in the tomb of Virgin Mary, it is Mother Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was buried. But when you visit the tomb, you will soon realize that it is an empty tomb. Just like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Holy Tomb, was built around the tomb of Jesus. This is a church built around a rock-cut tomb in which Mary, according to the tradition, lay down on a piece of bedrock, and then she was, as they call it, assumpted. This is the assumption of Mary. She didn't ascend like Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives, she just fell in a deep sleep and her body disappeared. This is not something that's mentioned in the Bible. This comes from apocryphal book that explains the Domitian of Mary. And there is another site in Jerusalem where that is commemorated, and that is on Mount Zion, that is the Dormition Abbey, a German Benedictine church, that basically commemorates the same story, just on the other side of the old city. Now, Mother Mary is a very interesting figure because she is highly venerated both amongst Christians as well as amongst Muslims. She's actually mentioned in the Quran more often than in the Bible. In the Bible, Mary is mentioned 19 times. In the Quran, Mary, Mariam, is mentioned 34 times by name, twice as much almost. She's actually the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran. There's even an entire chapter in the Quran mentioned after her, Surah Mariam. That's the nineteenth sura. What do we know about Mary? Mary was a girl probably from Nazareth, although her mother, in English Anne, in Hebrew Hannah, she was probably born in Jerusalem, and so there is a church, the Saint Anne Church, which is built over the cave that was part of the house where they used to live. So there is also a tradition that says that Mariam or Mary grew up in Jerusalem. We know that according to the tradition, she was in Nazareth when Angel Gabriel visited her and told her that at a very young age, she wasn't even married yet to Joseph, that she would bear a child. And she just courageously said yes to that, which is quite intriguing, also. She didn't question it, she didn't complain, she just accepted this new reality. And then she went with Joseph when she was far into her pregnancy to Bethlehem, and that's where she gave birth to Jesus. And then the angel warned them that Herod the Great wanted to kill their son, so they had to flee and they became refugees. So Mary was a refugee in Egypt for two years until they could return when King Herod the Great had died. And then we don't read a lot about Mary. We do know that when Jesus was 12 years old, they went to the temple in Jerusalem, and by the end of the day they had left to the north to start walking back to Nazareth. And then they realized at some point that they missed and lost Jesus. And for a mother, that must be very hard. And when they went back to Jerusalem and they found him in the temple, she said something very motherly. Son, why have you treated us like this? She took it very personally. Well, Jesus was teaching. He was twelve years, but he had a lot of authority and he was teaching in the temple. We also know that Mary basically instigated the first miracle that Jesus did in the town of Cana, where he turned water into wine during a wedding when the wine had run out, and that was, of course, scandalous. So she told him to do something about it, and he said, But I am not ready yet, it's not my time yet. But you know, motherly authority, and she convinced him and he did his first miracle in Cana. And then, of course, she watched her son being crucified, which must have been a most heartbreaking event. She was present at his crucifixion, but she also trusted in his resurrection. When you visit the tomb of Virgin Mary, you'll be entering into the crypt of a crusader church of which the upper part no longer exists. You'll go down a long stairs and then you'll find the empty tomb of Virgin Mary. And just behind the tomb, there is a beautiful icon of Mother Mary and Jesus, which has a miracle story of its own, which I'll tell you when you join one of my tours. In the same church, as you go down those stairs towards the tomb of Mary, there are two niches on the left and right, two small chapels, and that is the place where the two Armenian queens of Jerusalem were buried in the twelfth century. Queen Morphia was not a Western European queen. She was Armenian, she was the daughter of a ruler from Meliten in today's Eastern Turkey. She married King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, and she brought something unusual to the Crusader court, which was Eastern Christian heritage. The crusaders who had come they were all Catholics, but the Armenians were Eastern Christians. Unlike many crusader marriages, this was not just a strategic marriage. Morphia became very influential. She did not have any sons, she only had daughters, which was in the medieval period considered a weakness. But she and her husband Baldwin, they did something extraordinary and they prepared their daughter Melisant to rule over the kingdom of Jerusalem. Morphia herself was known for her diplomacy and her intelligence, and when Baldwin, her husband, was captured by Muslim forces, she personally organized the negotiations for his release. She acted as a strategist and she chose to be buried at the tomb of the Virgin Mary. Her daughter, Melisand, was crowned as a queen in eleven thirty one, not as a consort, but as a ruling monarch, and that is rare in the 12th century. When her father died, she was ruling together with her husband Fulk, Fulk of Anjou. But tensions rose and Fulk tried to sideline her. But the notables of Jerusalem, they trusted in Melisant and they sided with her. Eventually she was the one who emerged as the true power of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and she governed for over 20 years. She did a lot of things, she built churches, she strengthened the fortifications, the walls, she supported a lot of monastic communities. And also in that time, the famous Melisant Psalter, which was a beautiful illuminated manuscript that reflected the cultural riches of her court, was produced. So she was not just a symbolic queen, she was a real political force. And when she died, she was buried beside her mother at the tomb of the Virgin. And so by resting beside the tomb of the Virgin Mary, Morphia and Melisand linked their rule to the most revert woman in Christianity. It was theology and politics intertwined. In Jerusalem, women were not only witnesses and mothers, they were also negotiators, rulers and builders of kingdoms. Also on the Mount of Olives we have a very special tomb. It is called the Makam of Rabi al-Adawiyah, but there are two other women who are referred at the same place. It's right next to the Ascension Chapel that is visited by Christians, but that is under the Muslim Wakf. It is right next to the mosque, and it is known as the tomb of the Sufi mystic Rabia al Adawiya. Rabi al-Adawi was not originally from Jerusalem. She was born in Basra in today's Iraq, and this was in the 8th century. She was born in a very poor family who sold her into slavery. But then because she was always meditating and she was so close to God, her master saw this miraculous light over her while she was praying, and he decided to free her. And then Rabi al-Adawiya dedicated her life to preaching love for God and especially love for God for his own sake, not out of fear for hell, not for reward, heaven, but for the true nature of God. She famously said that she wanted to burn paradise and extinguish hell to remove any selfish motives for her worship of God. She refused many marriage proposals. She said, My heart is filled with God, I have no room for others. And she lived in poverty, in solitude, but she became a renowned spiritual guide for many people. And she also wrote a lot of poetry. Many of her poems and quotes are still being read by Sufis all over the world. For example, this is a quote from Rabi al Adawiya. Your prayers are your light, your devotion is your strength. Sleep is the enemy of both. Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you. If you ignore it, if you waste it, you will only turn to dust. And she said, I love Allah. I have no time left in which to hate the devil. Now what's so interesting is that if you visit the Makam for Rabi al Adawiya, a maqam is a place where a holy sacred Of Islam is being venerated. It can be a place where the saint was actually buried, but it can also be a place where the saint spent time, passed by, was meditating, was teaching. So it is a place of veneration. And inside there is a cenotaph, which means an empty tomb. And there are very few people who believe that Rabbi al-Adawiyya was really buried there, but she is venerated there. But there are also others who come there or who venerate that place, and that is for the Jewish tradition, the prophetess Hulda. And Hulda is one of seven female prophets that are mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible in the Torah. She was consulted by the king of that time for advice when they found in the temple a text, and they wanted to verify if this text was indeed the law of Moses that had been given by God and that had actually gone lost. So they went to Hulda, the prophetess, to verify that this was truly the word of God. She lived in the seventh century before Christ. I have been there and seen Russian Orthodox nuns coming in and they came to venerate the nun Pelagia, who was originally a wealthy, famous actress and singer in Antioch, who lived a life of a lot of luxury and sin. But after she heard a sermon by Bishop Nonus, she experienced a profound conversion and repented for her sinful life. She donated all her possessions to the poor and then dedicated herself completely to God. And she wanted to move to live as a hermit on the Mount of Olives, but that was very uncommon for women to do. So what did she do? She dressed as a monk and she went by the name Pelagius instead of Pelagia. She lived a very ascetic lifestyle. It actually killed her eventually. She stopped eating. And when she died was the only moment when they found out that Pelagius was actually Pelagia. So three women of three different faiths are venerated at the same place on the top of the Mount of Olives. Now let me take you from the Mount of Olives into the old city and let's talk about Hasaki Huram Sultan. Hasaki Hurim Sultan, which means the Sultan's own joy, was actually from Eastern Europe, from the area that today is Ukraine. She was known as Roxalana. And that was probably a nickname that was given to her because she came from Ruthenia. And she was brought to the harem of the Ottoman Sultan. When he got to know her, he liked her company so much that he decided to do something very unusual, and that was to marry a woman from his harem. And so she was granted the title, the imperial title Haski Hurem Sultan, and that means the Sultan's own joy. Now she's never been to Jerusalem, but what she did was that she gifted a lot of money as an endowment to establish an Islamic orphanage, school, mosque, a pilgrim's rest place for those pilgrims coming from abroad to visit Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, and a soup kitchen, a takiya, where they would serve soup for free for the poor. She even wrote up the recipe for the soup, what it should contain. It needed to have grains, it needed to have chickpeas, and it needed to have a lot of clarified butter so that people really could fill up their stomachs. For this project, she bought a big house that had been built also for a woman, for Sit Tunshuk, as she is known. And Sit Tunshuk, we don't know much about her, we just know that she was probably the wife of an important Mamluk governor, and that she loved Jerusalem so much that she had a very big palace built very close to the Aksak compound, and that eventually she was buried in the building right across from it, that until today is known as the tomb of Sid Tunshuk. So her palace was bought by Khaseki Sultan, who then established all these charitable societies there, and the soup kitchen that was established is still functioning until today and has been functioning for 500 years, handing out food for the poor people, but not only poor people. There are many people who come to eat from the soup because they believe it gives barakan. So during the tour, I will take you to this place. The complex was named Al-Imara Al-Amira from the Ottoman meaning a building that provides food as a charity, also known as the Takiya or Public Kitchen. And here it's known amongst the people simply as Khasaki Sultan. Continuing a little bit further up towards the Holy Sepulchre Church, we have to talk about a very important woman whose name is Helena, Queen Helena. She was the mother of Constantine, yes, the emperor who adopted Christianity, who made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire, and his mother was a Christian, and she came to Jerusalem and lived in Jerusalem for a period of time. But let's first talk about where she was from originally. She was from a place called Drepanium in Asia Minor. Later it was actually renamed after her in her honor, Helenopolis, the city of Helena. She was probably a very simple stable maid or innkeeper with a low status, which makes her very unusual among all the imperial concerts. But she met Constantius, the father of Constantine, when she was around 20 years old. We don't know if she was actually his wife or his concubine, but she did give birth to Constantine. And then she was cast out by Constantius, the father, when Constantine was around seven years old. So she became a single mom. And Constantius didn't want her to spend a lot of time with her son, so he brought him to the palace. And it took a lot of years until she would see him again. But then Constantine had a very strong relationship with his mother, and he elevated her later when he became the emperor to be the Augusta. He gave her the title of Empress, and that gave her a lot of status and influence. Now Helena came to visit Jerusalem on a pilgrimage in the year 326. And this is one of the earliest recorded pilgrimages, Christian pilgrimages, by a woman, and it has transformed the religious landscape of the city completely because she was the one who started to look for those sites where Jesus was born, where he did his miracles, where he did his teachings, where he eventually was crucified and buried and resurrected and ascended, and all those places that she found out through the memory of the people of Jerusalem, the traditions that had been handed over from generation to generation, some of the things that she found in writings, she appointed the locations and had churches built. So for example, the church of Nativity in Bethlehem was built because of Helena. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, over the tomb and over the place of crucifixion, was built by Queen Helena. And there is a church on the Mount of Olives that was called the Eliona Church, was built there because Queen Helena said this is the place from where Jesus ascended into heaven. And so she was very important for the early Christian traditions in Jerusalem. She is also said to have found the true cross of Christ. In their excavations, trying to look for remains of the crucifixion story, they found three crosses, it is said. And through a miracle, they could identify the one of the three crosses that they found that was the one on which Jesus died, because she brought an old lady, sick lady, from the city and let her touch the three crosses. And the one that healed and cured the lady was considered the true cross of Christ. Helena died at the age of 80 years. She was buried in Rome, and her sarcophagus is in the Vatican Museum in Rome. Her work, Helena's work, actually laid the groundwork for another woman, a later Byzantine empress called Alia Eudochia, and she expanded the Christian infrastructure of Jerusalem. Her real name in Greek was Atenis, but she became known as Alia Eudochia. She was born around 400 in Athens in a family with Greek origins. And her father was a very prominent man, a sophist and a teacher of rhetorics, but he was a pagan and he provided her with a classical education. So a lot of reading and writing poetry. When her father passed away, she was left with nothing because her brothers didn't really provide for her, so she had to live with her aunt in Constantinople. But that was a good thing because her aunt then introduced her to Augusta Pulgaria, and Pulgaria told her brother that she had found the perfect wife because she was very beautiful and smart, and that's how she eventually married Theodosius, who became the emperor, and so she was the wife of Emperor Theodosius, and she held the title of Augusta. And what did she do for Jerusalem? Well, she was the one who expanded the city walls of Jerusalem, and she decided to include the Mount Zion because on the Mount of Zion there was a very big Byzantine church, very important. It was called the Mother of All Churches, and it venerated Mother Mary, but it's also the area where they believe that the Last Supper had taken place. So she included Mount Zion, which today is excluded. If you go to the Mount Zion, you will leave the old city through Zionate and you're outside of the city walls. In the time of Eudochia, the city walls would also protect the Mount Zion. She funded a new church near the pool of Siloam in today's Silwan. Actually, Silwan comes from the pool of Siloam, which was the pool mentioned in the Bible where Jesus healed a blind man. So the pool of Siloam became known for this story of miracle, and that's where she funded a church. Eudochia also made Jerusalem more accessible and attractive for pilgrims that were coming from the Byzantine Empire by creating all kinds of infrastructure and religious buildings and hospices and public works, and she wrote Christian poetry in Greek, often reflecting her devotion and the spiritual significance of the city of Jerusalem. These works were widely read in the Eastern Christian world, and this boosted the cultural prestige of Jerusalem. Eventually, when she fell out of favor at the court of Constantinople, she moved to live permanently in Jerusalem. And she was also buried in the city, probably near the St. Stephen Church that was north of the Damascus Gate. And now for the last woman that I want to discuss during this, let's say, virtual tour. These were definitely not all the women that I would discuss during the real tour, but I think this is enough for a podcast. Let's talk about a woman who lived in the last century, and her name was Hint Al-Husseini. Hint al-Husseini was a Palestinian educator, social worker, and an activist from the very well-known family of Al-Husseini. She was a teacher, she did women's social work, all sorts of campaigns like literacy campaigns. She was active in charity organizations in Jerusalem and in suing centers. And in April 1948, just as the British mandate was ending and there was war in Palestine, Hind was walking through the old city of Jerusalem on her way to a meeting when she passed by the area near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Omar Mosque. And then she noticed something that stopped her in her tracks. There was a group of about 55 children, all under the age of nine. They were wandering in the streets alone, they were exhausted, they didn't have shoes, they were in their pajamas, and they were terrified. Then she found out that these children were children who survived the Deriasin massacre, which was a brutal attack that happened earlier that month, and it had left their families dead, and they had no home to return to. Their homes were destroyed. So they had made their way alone into the old city of Jerusalem looking for shelter. And when Hind asked them where their families were, they told them that they had no homes to return to, that their parents' relatives had been killed. And without any hesitation, Hind took action. She first rented two small rooms in the old market area, Suk Al-Husser. She brought the children there and visited them every day. She brought food, she brought clothes. But the city was also dangerous still. Some areas were being shelled. She brought them to a nearby convent. They agreed to take the children temporarily, which was good because the rooms she had rented were just later bombed. So that underscores how difficult the situation was. And then after the ceasefire, she made a very bold decision. She brought all these children into her own family home. It was a large house in Jerusalem that was built by her grandfather. She herself had been born there. And she formally founded an orphanage in that home that was called Darl-Tifl al-Arabi, the Arab Children's House. It was not just a shelter. She raised funds locally and internationally and established a full educational institution with a kindergarten, primary schools, later also secondary levels. It became one of Jerusalem's most important educational and social institutions. After 1967, the school shifted to be primarily a girls' education with only preschool boys and very young boarders. She also founded a college for women in 1982, and she was very much committed to education and women's empowerment. The story of Hintel Husseini and the Orphanage became known more widely through a film called Meral that was based on a novel by Rula Gibral, a former student of the school, and that was in 2010. So actually, until now, at least two films have been made about her work. So there is a film called 138 Pounds in My Pocket by Sahara Durbaz from 2009, and then there is Miral from 2010. Hint Husseini has been called The Heart of Palestine, the mother of orphans, and also Mother Theresa of Palestine. That's it for now. I wish everybody a very good women's day, and I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it and if you want to support me, because in these times of war, as a tour guide, we don't have any income, then I would highly appreciate if you went to my coffee page where you can buy me a coffee, as they call it, and I will add the link in the show notes. And if this situation continues, then I will be uploading more episodes in the near future.