ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

The House of the Temple of Jerusalem is a set of buildings located on the Temple Mount, at the site of the current Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which houses the chief house of the Order of Templars between 1129 and 1187. The Templars gradually built the site, made available to them by the King of Jerusalem Baudoin II. At the fall of the city, Saladin destroyed the Temple house and rebuilt the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Origin of name
The original name of the Order of the Temple was , the militia of Christ, which appeared as early as 1129 in the Latin rule. In the early years of the order, the acts of donations reveal a very large number of denominations, sometimes fanciful. It was from the house of Jerusalem in Palestine that the order took its full name "the poor knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon" who established the order in the East and especially in the Holy Land. It was quickly shortened into "the order of the Temple" and its members called the Templars. These were called knights of religion and thus distinguished from knights of the century.

Buildings
It was the King of Jerusalem Baudoin II who first housed in a wing of his palace, the former Al-Aqsa Mosque, the first Templars including Hugues de Payns. The master of the order later obtained from the king the loan of the entire palace in front of the Temple. Baudoin II immediately understood his military interest in supporting this new order in Jerusalem. He therefore agreed to transfer his residence to the Tower of David, which was easier to defend, and left to the templars his former palace, which became the chieftain house of the order. The templars enlarged it, transformed it and built a chapel. Jerusalem then became the capital of the order in which the master resided.

Bernard de Clairvaux, who never went to the East, however, recalls in 1129, in his praise to the new chivalry, the Temple of Jerusalem: "There is in Jerusalem a temple where they (the Templars) live in common (...)". The tone is full of emphasis and the idealized description is inspired by the Cistercian spirit, counting and sobriety, which will prevail later in the constructions of the commanderies.

Another description from John of Würzburg's pilgrimage book in 1170 is realistic. This pilgrim writes: "Between the walls of Jerusalem and the Golden Gate, is the Temple. There is a space there more than a large line of arrow in length, and wide of a stone's throw, and there we arrive at the Temple. This land is paved, where it comes from. On the left is the Temple of Solomon, where the Templars remained. »

The buildings consist of:
an underground stable, so large that it could "house more than two thousand horses or one thousand five hundred camels"
many "large and large" buildings
"a new and magnificent church" with pentus roofs, dedicated to the Virgin and called