Meleke - History

History

Used as a building material since ancient times, this "royal stone" has been of great importance to the history of the city of Jerusalem. When it is first exposed to the air it can be soft enough to be cut with a knife, but exposed to the air it hardens to make a stone of considerable durability, useful for building. Hundreds of caverns, cisterns, tombs and aqueducts in Jerusalem have been excavated from this stone. According to a long-standing legend, "Zedekiah's Cave", a large ancient meleke cave/quarry near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, was the source of the building material for Solomon's First Temple. Richard S. Barnett writes that ashlars in the Western Wall and the outer retaining wall of the extended Herodian Temple platform were apparently cut from meleke quarries near Bezetha.

The courtyard of the Tomb of Helena of Adiabene was originally a meleke stone quarry, and the staircase once a ramp upon which the blocks extracted were hauled. Of the four types of limestone found in the Jerusalem region, two were used in building during the Islamic period in Palestine: meleke and mizzi, the latter being a harder stone, also known as "Palestinian marble".

The use of meleke was popular among the Frankish stonemasons of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in Palestine, who quarried it to make fine, carefully drafted building stones for use in door and window features, among other architectural features. Frankish markings from the distinctive diagnol tools used by their stonemasons can be seen on meleke stones put to secondary use in the walls surrounding the Old City of Jerusalem.