Herod's Gate

Herod's Gate
Herod's Gate
Location in Old Jerusalem
General information
Town or city	Jerusalem
Coordinates	31°46′58.8″N 35°14′1.5″E / 31.783000°N 35.233750°E / 31.783000; 35.233750

Herod's Gate (Hebrew: שער הפרחים Translit.: Sha'ar HaPrakhim Translated: Flowers Gate, Arabic: باب الزاهرة‎‎, Bab az-Zahra) is a gate in the northern walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. It adjoins the Muslim Quarter, and is a short distance to the east of the Damascus Gate. Its elevation is 755 meters above sea level.

Herod's Gate is the Christian name of the gate. In Luke 23:7 Jesus is sent by Pontius Pilate to Herod Antipas, and a Christian tradition identifies the site of nearby Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicodemus with the palace of Herod Antipas. The current church is built on top of a ruined Crusader church and is called in Arabic Deir al-'Adas, "the monastery of the lentils", based on another tradition claiming that it once had a soup kitchen feeding lentil soup to the poor. Yet another tradition claims that the church is built on top of the prison in which Saint Peter was held by Herod Agrippa, the nephew of Herod Antipas.

Bab az-Zahra is the Arab Muslim name of the gate. In proximity to the gate is an Arab neighborhood called Bab az-Zahra. Az-Zahra is a corruption of the name As-Sahira given to the hill and cemetery across the road, where people are buried who have performed the pilgrimage to Mecca.Sura 79; 6-14 of the Koran speaks of the Day of Resurrection using the phrase "they shall return to the earth's surface ("as-sāhira")", and an old tradition interprets this term as the proper name of a concrete valley or plain, identified at least since the 11th century as the nearby Kidron Valley. The other meaning of "sahira", taken as a verb, is "to be watchful" and would indicate how the newly resurrected would look around waiting for the events to follow. The name "Sahira", once corrupted to "Zahra", sometimes rendered as "Zahara" and on maps from the late 19th-early 20th century as "Zahira(h)", became very similar to an Arabic word for flower or blossom, zahra.