IV
BÂB EL ASBÂT
Four different sets of traditions are associated with, and furnish as many names to the only open gate-way (there being others walled-up) in the Eastern wall of Jerusalem. It is known to the Moslems, as “Bab el Asbat,” or Gate of the Tribes, a name derived from that of the adjacent “Birket Asbat Beni Israil,” or Pool of the Tribes of the Children of Israel, which is generally abbreviated to “ Birket Israil,” a huge reservoir lying along part of the northern side of the Temple area, and said by learned Mohammedans to have been one of three constructed by Ezekiel or Hezekiah, King of Judah. Amongst the native Christians the gate is called of “Our Lady Mary,” because just inside it is the traditional site of the birthplace of the Virgin, and also because the road leading through the gate is that by which her supposed tomb, in a great underground church of the crusading period down in the valley, is reached. For several centuries past, Europeans have called the gate by the name of St Stephen, because a tradition, not older than the fourteenth century, states that he was stoned on a bare rock which is pointed out by the road-side not far from the above-mentioned church. In crusading times the gate that stood where the Bab el Asbat now is, was called “the Gate of Jehoshaphat,” from the valley that runs past it; whilst amongst the modern German-speaking Jews,
