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The Chapel of the Ascension (Hebrew: קפלת העלייה Qapelat ha-ʿAliyya; Greek: Εκκλησάκι της Αναλήψεως, Ekklisáki tis Analípseos; Arabic: كنيسة الصعود) is a chapel and shrine located on the Mount of Olives, in the At-Tur district of Jerusalem. Part of a larger complex consisting first of a Christian church and monastery, then an Islamic mosque, it is located on a site the faithful traditionally believed to be the earthly spot where Jesus ascended into Heaven after his Resurrection. It houses a slab of stone believed to contain one of his footprints.

Origin and traditions

Almost 300 years after the ascension of Jesus, early Christians began gathering in secret to commemorate it at a small cave-church on the Mount of Olives. The issuance of the Edict of Milan by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 313 made it possible for Christians to worship overtly without fear of government persecution. By the time of the pilgrim Egeria's travels to Jerusalem in 384, the spot of veneration had been moved to the present location, uphill from the cave, which had been integrated into the Constantinian Church of Eleona, dedicated by then just to Jesus' teachings about good and evil (Matthew 24:1-26:2). Egeria witnessed the celebration of the Ascension at an "open hillock" near the cave. The first church was erected there a few years later, sometime before 392, by a lady from the imperial family, Poimenia. Later a legend attributed the church to Saint Helena, mother of Constantine I. The legend holds that during Saint Helena's pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 326 and 328, she identified two spots on the Mount of Olives as being associated with Jesus' life - the place of his Ascension, and a grotto associated with his teaching of the Lord's Prayer - and that on her return to Rome, she ordered the construction of two sanctuaries at these locations.^{[citation needed]}

The zawiya of Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya

Analysis of the architecture

The mosque that stands southwest to the former Church of the Ascension, known as the zawiya of Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya, consists of two edifices: the upper one, or the mosque proper; and an underground chamber at the lower end of a staircase, which includes a 2 m deep, 1.2 m wide, and 1.8 m high cell on its east side.[13] Archaeologists Jon Seligman and Rafa Abu Raya, who carried out a short salvage excavation outside the southern wall of the mosque in 1995, have dated the underground chamber to the Byzantine period, identifying it as the burial crypt of a chapel that was part of the Church of the Ascension.[14]

Seligman and Abu Raya date the upper building to the medieval period, and hold an Ayyubid date to be the most likely. [14] However, Denys Pringle suggests a Crusader date, based on features such as the western entrance which could indicate an east–west orientation of the structure, and the fact that the mihrab is set into an older window niche.[13]

Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions

The burial crypt is revered by three separate monotheistic religions, although opinion differs on the occupant. Jews believe it contains the 7th-century BCE prophetess Huldah, Christians believe it to be the tomb of the 5th-century Saint Pelagia the harlot, or the penitent, one of three saints all known as Pelagia of Antioch, while Muslims maintain that the 8th-century Sufi mystic and wali, Rabi'a al-Adawiyya is buried there. According to a 19th-century witness, Rabbi Yehosef Schwartz, worshippers of all three religions used to pray next to each other at the tomb.

In all three traditions, the venerated figures are women. Both Christians and Jews have long had the custom of walking through the narrow space between the tomb and the wall. Christians recognize sinners as those who cannot preform the task, and Jews who managed to walk around the tomb seven times expected forgiveness of all sins and prosperity.

Christian tradition

The Christian tradition of Saint Pelagia is the oldest. "The Life of Saint Pelagia the Harlot", the vita of a legendary 4th or 5th-century Christian hermit and penitent, Saint Pelagia of Antioch, states that she "built herself a cell on the Mount of Olives." There, she lived a holy life disguised as a monk and "wrought...many wonders." She died few years later due to her severe asceticism, "and the holy fathers bore her body to its burial." Christian tradition places her cell and tomb at the site of the zawiya, adjacent to the southwest of the former Church of the Ascension.

However, most Western Christian pilgrims of the 14th century venerated the tomb as that of Saint Mary the Egyptian, although the Pelagia tradition also lives on.

Jewish tradition

The Jewish tradition attributing the tomb to the prophetess Huldah is recorded from 1322 onwards, starting with Estori Ha-Parhi. Another tradition exists starting in the 2nd-century, Tosefta, which places the tomb of Huldah within Jerusalem's city walls.

Muslim tradition

The mid-14th-century counter-crusade propaganda work Muthir al-gharam fi ziyarat al-Quds wa-sh-Sham ("Arousing love for visiting Jerusalem and Syria"; c. 1350-51) places the death year of Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya around 781/82 and has her buried in this burial crypt. Other historians, such as al-Harawi (d. 1215) and Yaqut (1179–1229) locate Rabi'a's grave in her hometown of Basra, and attribute the Mount of Olives tomb to another Rabi'a, wife of a Sufi, Ahmad Ibn Abu el Huari, from the late Crusader and early Ayyubid period. Yet another Muslim tradition attributes the grave to Rahiba bint Hasn, a woman of whom nothing is known.