Posted on 01/31/2014 6:39:02 PM PST by marshmallow
Since 1844, millions of photographs have probably been taken of Jerusalem. But these blurry snaps are the very first.
Few places in the world are as revered, fought over and thought about as Jerusalem. For millenia, people have made pilgrimages here, often at great expense and great risk. So imagine for a second what it would be like to hear, from a young age, about this holy city, and then to see the first photographs ever taken of it:
These photos come from 1844 and were taken by French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey. According to Retronaut, they weren’t discovered until the 1920s, in a store room on Girault’s estate. Retronaut adds:
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
The lens is surprisingly sharp in the center.
Is there a current photograph shot from the same spot?
Is there any way of determining where that picture was taken from?
Mark Twain in the Holy Land
Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:
“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
He was amazed by the smallness of the city of Jerusalem:
“A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.”
And he described the Temple Mount thus:
“The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around it, occupy a fourth part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount Moriah, where King Solomon’s Temple stood. This Mosque is the holiest place the Mohammedan knows, outside of Mecca. Up to within a year or two past, no christian could gain admission to it or its court for love or money. But the prohibition has been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh.”
Looks like the al-Aqsa mosque. Photo probably taken from just outside the walls of the old city.
This was the beginning.....when the Arabs started photobombing Israel.
I googled it up and it looks like you’re right.
However, it looks like the angle for the pictures is different because in every other picture, the tower is to the left of the mosque instead of to the right of it.
Unless this picture was developed backwards.
Interesting.
“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.
“His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.
“The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmaties, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
—Mark Twain, September 1897
What a nice tribute!
For the tower to be in that place in the photo, to the right and in front of the mosque, then the photo was taken from somewhere all the way on the left side of the drawing, about 2/3 of the way up.
It’s not uncommon for photos from that era to be mirror imaged, one such was the reason people thought Billy the kid was left handed!
See the First Photographs Ever Taken of Jerusalem
If you google Al Aqsa minaret, you get a picture of a square tower, the same one that you can see to the left at the edge of the modern picture. I don’t know what happened to the round minaret from the old pic, it doesn’t seem to exist today. I insist, it looks like the picture is showing the Western Wall with the Temple Mount behind it!
bump
Fascinating. Thanks for posting.
God, and their faith in Him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.