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Mamilla Pool
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Mamilla Pool
Mamilla Pool (also known as Birket Mamilla) is one of several ancient reservoirs that supplied water to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is located outside the walls of the Old City about 650 metres (710 yd) northwest of Jaffa Gate in the centre of the Mamilla Cemetery. With a capacity of 30,000 cubic metres, it was connected by an underground channel to Hezekiah's Pool in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. It was believed to have received water via the Upper or High-Level Aqueduct from Solomon's Pools, but 2010 excavations discovered the aqueduct's final segment at a lower elevation near the Jaffa Gate, so functioning as feeding source for the Mamilla Pool seems unlikely.
There are a number of theories on the origin of the name Mamilla. John Gray writes that it may be a corruption of the Hebrew word for 'the filler' (m'malle'), though that is uncertain.According to Vincent and Abel, the name of the pool may be derived from a Byzantine-period woman, Mamilla being a Latin female name, possibly abbreviated from Maximilla. They mention in this context a 9th-century pilgrim who wrote that the pool was named after a pious matron, Mamilla, the wife of Thomas, who survived the 614 fall of the city. This they find to be plausible, conceding that there was no proof for the connection as of 1922. They further speculated that she might have sponsored the construction of the pool in a year of drought, for the benefit of the quarter adjacent to the Church of the Resurrection. Pringle concurs in 1993 with Vincent & Abel that it is more likely that the church was named after the pool, rather than the other way around, a theory proposed for instance by George Williams and Robert Willis in 1849, who saw the pool named for a church that once stood near the pool and dedicated to Saint Mamilla or Babila.
Yet another theory is that the name comes from the Arabic for "water from God" (ma'e min Allah).
The original date of construction is unknown. Biblical scholar Edward Robinson speculated that the pool may have been the Upper Pool mentioned in the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 36:2), seeing that it is the only pool situated on the highest ground outside of Jerusalem, and entraps the runoff waters of the upper watercourse of the Hinnom valley. Others have speculated that it may have been the Serpent's Pool mentioned by Josephus.
A Herodian construction date, proposed by older researchers, has been disputed by more recent studies, which attribute the construction to the Byzantine period.The older theory is based on the fact that during the rule of Herod the Great (37–4 BCE), improvements were made to the water supply system in Jerusalem. It posits that two new pools constructed during his reign, the Pool of the Towers and the Serpent's Pool (Birket es-Sultan or Sultan's Pool), were fed by the Mamilla Pool via aqueducts. Itzik Schwiki of the Jerusalem Center Site Preservation Council attributes the construction of the Mamilla Pool itself to Herod.
The theory that the pool was built during the Byzantine period was upheld by researchers for at least a century.Following the Persian capture of Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 614, local Jews were said to have aided the Persian forces and carried out a massacre of Christian prisoners near Mamilla pool in revenge for centuries of Jewish persecution.While the figures may be exaggerated and impossible to verify, Israeli archaeologist Ronny Reich estimates a death toll of 60,000 before the Persian authorities stopped the killing.According to the eyewitness account of Strategius of St. Sabas, "Jews ransomed the Christians from the hands of the Persian soldiers for good money, and slaughtered them with great joy at Mamilla Pool, and it ran with blood." The Sulha al-Quds, the treaty of Jerusalem's capitulation to Muslim forces in 638, in which the Christian Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem required that the Arab ruler Umar protect the people of Jerusalem from the Jews, can only be understood in this context.
During the period of Crusader rule over Jerusalem in the 12th century, Mamilla pool was known as the Patriarch's Lake, and the Pool of Hezekiah inside the city walls that it fed was known as the Pool of the Patriarch's Bath.
Throughout the late Ottoman period, the area around the pool was a burial ground, as attested to by the numerous Muslim tombstones.
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Mamilla Pool
Mamilla Pool (also known as Birket Mamilla) is one of several ancient reservoirs that supplied water to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is located outside the walls of the Old City about 650 metres (710 yd) northwest of Jaffa Gate in the centre of the Mamilla Cemetery. With a capacity of 30,000 cubic metres, it was connected by an underground channel to Hezekiah's Pool in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. It was believed to have received water via the Upper or High-Level Aqueduct from Solomon's Pools, but 2010 excavations discovered the aqueduct's final segment at a lower elevation near the Jaffa Gate, so functioning as feeding source for the Mamilla Pool seems unlikely.
There are a number of theories on the origin of the name Mamilla. John Gray writes that it may be a corruption of the Hebrew word for 'the filler' (m'malle'), though that is uncertain.According to Vincent and Abel, the name of the pool may be derived from a Byzantine-period woman, Mamilla being a Latin female name, possibly abbreviated from Maximilla. They mention in this context a 9th-century pilgrim who wrote that the pool was named after a pious matron, Mamilla, the wife of Thomas, who survived the 614 fall of the city. This they find to be plausible, conceding that there was no proof for the connection as of 1922. They further speculated that she might have sponsored the construction of the pool in a year of drought, for the benefit of the quarter adjacent to the Church of the Resurrection. Pringle concurs in 1993 with Vincent & Abel that it is more likely that the church was named after the pool, rather than the other way around, a theory proposed for instance by George Williams and Robert Willis in 1849, who saw the pool named for a church that once stood near the pool and dedicated to Saint Mamilla or Babila.
Yet another theory is that the name comes from the Arabic for "water from God" (ma'e min Allah).
The original date of construction is unknown. Biblical scholar Edward Robinson speculated that the pool may have been the Upper Pool mentioned in the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 36:2), seeing that it is the only pool situated on the highest ground outside of Jerusalem, and entraps the runoff waters of the upper watercourse of the Hinnom valley. Others have speculated that it may have been the Serpent's Pool mentioned by Josephus.
A Herodian construction date, proposed by older researchers, has been disputed by more recent studies, which attribute the construction to the Byzantine period.The older theory is based on the fact that during the rule of Herod the Great (37–4 BCE), improvements were made to the water supply system in Jerusalem. It posits that two new pools constructed during his reign, the Pool of the Towers and the Serpent's Pool (Birket es-Sultan or Sultan's Pool), were fed by the Mamilla Pool via aqueducts. Itzik Schwiki of the Jerusalem Center Site Preservation Council attributes the construction of the Mamilla Pool itself to Herod.
The theory that the pool was built during the Byzantine period was upheld by researchers for at least a century.Following the Persian capture of Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 614, local Jews were said to have aided the Persian forces and carried out a massacre of Christian prisoners near Mamilla pool in revenge for centuries of Jewish persecution.While the figures may be exaggerated and impossible to verify, Israeli archaeologist Ronny Reich estimates a death toll of 60,000 before the Persian authorities stopped the killing.According to the eyewitness account of Strategius of St. Sabas, "Jews ransomed the Christians from the hands of the Persian soldiers for good money, and slaughtered them with great joy at Mamilla Pool, and it ran with blood." The Sulha al-Quds, the treaty of Jerusalem's capitulation to Muslim forces in 638, in which the Christian Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem required that the Arab ruler Umar protect the people of Jerusalem from the Jews, can only be understood in this context.
During the period of Crusader rule over Jerusalem in the 12th century, Mamilla pool was known as the Patriarch's Lake, and the Pool of Hezekiah inside the city walls that it fed was known as the Pool of the Patriarch's Bath.
Throughout the late Ottoman period, the area around the pool was a burial ground, as attested to by the numerous Muslim tombstones.
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