No person is allowed to enter the mosque wherein the holy patriarchs lie (see [page 60]), as was the case in the 15th century, unless provided with the sultan’s firman. We are told by Novairi and other authors (Makrizi by Quatremère, ii, 249), that when the sultan Bibars, 1260–1264, visited Khalil (Hebron), and learnt that Christians and Jews were permitted to enter upon payment of a fee, he at once put a stop to the practice. Hammer (Gesch. der Ilchane, etc., 129) states that Mussulmans have held Hebron in great estimation since the reign of the caliph Mostershid (stabbed to death by an assassin in 1120), when the remains of several bodies found in the caves, were passed off as being those of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, although, according to Moses, they were interred at Hebron, where their places of sepulture are pointed out by Christians.
The author of Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum (Parthey et Pinder, Itiner. Ant. Aug., etc., 283) thus writes with reference to the beautiful church constructed by Constantine the Great near the turpentine tree of Abraham: “Inde Terebinth Cebron mil. ii, ubi est memoria per quadrum ex lapidibus miræ pulchritudinis, in qua positi sunt Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarra, Rebecca et Lea.”
About the year 600, there was already a cathedral in the quadrum, and twelve months later Bishop Arnulphus found the monolith cenotaphs of the three patriarchs, one being that of Adam; other smaller ones were assigned to their wives. At that period Hebron belonged to the Arabs, who gloried in their descent from Abraham, which accounts for the erection by them of a mosque over the remains of their ancestor. It was only after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders that the place was made over to the Christians for religious purposes; this we learn from Sœwulf (Recueil de Voy. et de Mém., etc., 817–854) who went to Palestine in 1102, and the Russian pilgrim Daniel (Noroff, Péler. en T. S., 95), who in 1115 saw a superb edifice at Hebron, in the crypt of which was the sepulchre of the patriarch within a chapel of circular form. Rosen says that the presence of Jews within this sanctuary was tolerated by the Crusaders, a privilege, however, for which they had to pay, according to the evidence of Benjamin of Tudela, and of his co-religionist Petachy of Ratisbon, who travelled in Palestine twelve years later. Hebron passed into the hands of the Mussulmans long before the fall of Acre, after which event the Christians in their turn were taxed for the liberty of entering.
Among those of Schiltberger’s predecessors who have left an account of what they saw and learnt during their sojourn in Palestine, are the German monk, Brocardus, towards the close of the 13th century—Sir John Mandevile, 1372—and the German pilgrim, Ludolph von Suchem, whose work, Libellus de Itinere ad T. S., is considered the best itinerary for the Holy Land in the 14th century.
De Lannoy was in Palestine at about the same time as the author, but does not report having been at Hebron; he however supplies a list of the holy places, that was compiled, as he states, by Pope Sylvester at the request of the emperor Constantine and of “Sainte Helaine”, his mother. Three cities of “Ebron” are included: “La neufve et la moienne, de laquelle est l’esglise où sont ensepvelis Adam, Abraham, Isaac et Jacob et leurs femmes”.... “Item, Ebron, la vielle, en laquelle David regna sept ans et six mois.” It is desirable that these two passages should be quoted, because in the works I have cited, such as Noroff’s, Raumer’s, Rosen’s, and in others which dwell largely on Hebron, one city only of the name is mentioned.—Bruun.
[(3.)] “but now there is only a pillar.”—If tradition is to be relied on, it was the mother of Constantine who built the Church of the Annunciation, which had already ceased to exist in Schiltberger’s time. In 1620 a handsome church was erected on the same site (Raumer, Palæstina, etc., 136), and a column at the foot of seventeen steps indicated the spot where the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin; it was possibly the pillar referred to in the text. The pilgrim Daniel describes the earliest church, situated in the centre of the city, as being large and handsome, and enclosing three altars. It was destroyed by the sultan Bibars in 1263 (Weil, Gesch. der Chal., iv, 46; Makrizi by Quatremère, I, i, 200).—Bruun.
CHAPTER XL.
[(1.)] “I went twice to Jherusalem with a koldigen.”—Schiltberger’s commentators have not been able to identify the word “koldigen”, to which Koehler (Germania, vii, 371–380) puts a mark of interrogation, observing that it is written in precisely the same manner in two early editions. Frescobaldi in 1384 (Viaggi in Terra Santa) speaks of the monks at the monastery on Sinaï as Calores, instead of Καλογέροι. If Joseph, Schiltberger’s companion, was a Christian, he might very possibly have been a Kalogeros, a title turned into “Koldigen”.—Bruun.
(1A.) Another suggestion! Khodja is a corruption of the Persian word Khaja, a term that in the East generally denotes a merchant (Garcin de Tassy, Les Noms Propres et les Titres Musulm., 68). Or an interpretation of “Koldigen” is perhaps to be found in Koul, the Turkish for a detachment or small body of men, and jy, a termination significative of office, profession, or trade, as for instance, arabajy, one who drives; kayikjy, a boatman; ghemijy, a sailor, and similarly, Kouljy, one who leads a body of men. In European Turkey, however, Kouljy means also a coast-guard-man, and in other parts of that empire the term is applied to a keeper or custodian. In his Russian edition, Professor Bruun submits the word Koljy derived from Koll, the title of those of the second class of the Monastic Order of Kalender, the founder of which Order, singularly enough, was one named Joseph. With the reader must remain the privilege of deciding upon Joseph’s calling, whether monk, merchant, coast-guard-man, or custodian!—Ed.
[(2.)] “The Infidels call Jherusalem, Kurtzitalil.”—Jerusalem is called by the Turks, Kouds Shereef, with the first part of which name might be associated the first syllable “Kurtz”; but Shereef could scarcely have been corrupted to “italil”, which reminds me of Halil, a term pre-eminently applied to Abraham the friend of God, and given to the gate of the city that leads to Hebron, known as the Bab-el-Halil (Raumer, Palæstina, etc., 201).—Bruun.