CHAPTER XVIII

THE GREAT MOSQUE

The one object of archæological interest in Gaza is the Great Mosque (Djamia el Kebîr) which rises on the top of the hill in the middle of the upper city. This mosque is built upon the site of the Basilica, which the Empress Eudoxia founded, where the Marneion formerly stood, and was built of ancient materials.

In the twelfth century it was a splendid cathedral dedicated to St. John Baptist.

The style of architecture is severe, and the ornamentation very plain. The fine groined roof is entire.

The mosque has three aisles, two of which formed part of the mediæval church.

Rows of pillars, with Corinthian capitals, divide them one from the other.

The roof of the central nave is supported by rows of pillars, one above the other, each pillar of the lower row having a cluster of small marble pillars round it, for greater strength.

One of the upper pillars on the north-east side of the mosque, of grey veined marble, bears a bas-relief of a seven-branched candlestick, with a Greek and Hebrew inscription of three lines inside a wreath. It belongs, as M. Clermont-Ganneau surmises, to one of the thirty columns sent by the Empress Eudoxia, and probably comes from the Synagogue of Cæsarea.[43]

The walls and ceiling are now whitewashed. The church was undoubtedly decorated with mosaic and pictures.

The three apses have disappeared to make room for a large octagonal minaret.

On the south side the Moslems have built an additional aisle.

The total length of the building is one hundred and eight and a half feet, interior measure, the nave being twenty-one and a half feet wide, and the aisles thirteen feet.

The west doorway is a beautiful mediæval specimen of the Italian Gothic of the twelfth century churches in Palestine, with delicate clustered shafts and pillars, deeply undercut lily-leaves adorning the capitals.

Lieut. Kitchener, in 1874, took a photograph of the western door as well as the interior of the mosque.

The large marble cruciform font has been removed and it now lies in the courtyard adjoining the mosque, where two other Christian symbols may be seen, viz. a bishop's staff, and chalice in marble.

Another view of the history of this mosque is given by the Archimandrite Meletius Metaxakis, in an article on the Madaba Mosaic Map, in _Nea Sion_, March and April 1907, pp. 262-304, in which he states that the modern authors of _Guides to Palestine_ hold that the Eudoxian Church is the modern Great Mosque, Djamia-el-Kebîr, taking into consideration, it seems, the information that the Eudoxian Church was to be built in the middle of the city. If, however, we are to accept that the sketch on the chart shows the Eudoxian Church, then we ought to treat the Eudoxian Church as identical, not with the mosque, but rather with the Modern Orthodox Church, built in 1856, during the Patriarchate of Kyrillus II (1845-1872), and through the expenditure of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre. With regard to its position, the Greek Church is wholly identical with the sketch on the chart.

With regard to the mosque, this is really a three-branched church, being perhaps one of the churches built by Marcian; the columns of this church (having no connection with those from Constantinople for the Eudoxian Church) appear to have been transported from some Hebrew synagogue, perhaps that of Cæsarea, because there is engraved on one of them a seven-branched lamp, under which appears the Hebrew and Greek inscription, "Hananias the son of Jacob."

FOOTNOTE:

[43] The reader is referred for additional information to Chap. XIV, "Inscriptions," in Meyer's _History of the City of Gaza_.