Dung Gate

The Dung Gate (Hebrew: שער האשפות‎ Sha'ar Ha'ashpot), or Mughrabi Gate (Arabic: باب المغاربة‎ Bab al-Magharibeh), or Silwan Gate (since medieval times) is one of the gates in the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was built in the 16th century.

The gate is situated near the southeast corner of the Old City, southwest of the Temple Mount.

Directly behind the gate lies the entrance to the Western Wall Plaza. Dung Gate is a main passage for vehicles coming out of the Old City and for buses headed to the Western Wall.

The 16th-century gate was much smaller, but was enlarged in 1952, after the Old City came under Jordanian control in 1948. After its capture by Israel in 1967, architect Shlomo Aronson was commissioned to renovate it.

Name

The name Sha'ar Ha'ashpot appears in the Book of Nehemiah 2:13-14. It is probably named after the residue that was taken from the Jewish Temple into the Valley of Hinnom, where it was burned. This ancient "Dung Gate" may not have been in the same location as the 16th-century gate, which only received this name in the 19th century.

Although Dung Gate is also known as the Mughrabi Gate, that name normally refers to one of the gates of the Temple Mount, which is inside the Old City walls. The name alludes to the Mughrabi Quarter, a neighborhood of North African Kutama Fatimids which was situated between both gates until 1967.

The name Silwan Gate refers to the village of Silwan that lies outside and just south of the gate.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Dung Gate" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.