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Damascus Gate
Sign in to saveAlso known as Bab al-Amud
one of seven open Gates in Jerusalem's Old City Walls
Key facts
- Former names
- St. Stephen's Gate ( Latin : Porta Sancti Stephani ; Crusader period)
- Location
- Jerusalem
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- city gate
- Part of
- Gates of Jerusalem
- Named after
- column
- Country
- Palestine
- Located in
- Jerusalem
- Location
- Old City of Jerusalem
- Image
- Damascus Gate IMG 3146.jpg
Show 5 more facts
- Commons category
- Damascus Gate
- inception
- 1537-00-00
- name in native language
- بَابُ الْعَامُودِ
- architectural style
- Islamic architecture
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Damascus Gate is one of the main Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is located in the wall on the city's northwest side and connects to a highway leading out to Nablus, which in the Hebrew Bible was called Shechem or Sichem, and from there, in times past, to the capital of Syria, Damascus; as such, its modern English name is the Damascus Gate, and its modern Hebrew name is Sha'ar Shkhem (שער שכם), meaning Shechem Gate, or in modern terms Nablus Gate. Of its historic Arabic names, Bāb al-Naṣr (باب النصر) means "gate of victory", and the current one, Bāb al-ʿĀmūd (باب العامود), means "gate of the column". The latter, in use continuously since at least as early as the 10th century, preserves the memory of a Roman column towering over the square behind the gate and dating to the 2nd century CE.the gate name in Hebrew ("שער שכם") meaning Nablus gate.
History
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Damascus Gate” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.