site.btaResearchers Reveal "Fascinating Story" behind 18th-Century Bulgarian Pilgrims' Graffiti in Jerusalem Monasteries

Shai Halevi, Michel Chernin of the Israel Antiquities Authority did a photographic survey of 18th century graffiti inscriptions on the walls of Greek Orthodox monasteries in the Old City of Jerusalem, bringing to light evidence of the presence of Bulgarian pilgrims in these monasteries. They told BTA they hope that their work will contribute to the recognition and study of history. 

The findings of the researchers were first reported by Jerusalem Post.

“We document the historical paths along which people have walked and left their mark. This documentation tells a fascinating story that describes the human historical story without judgment, out of due respect for those who were here and carved their journeys along their paths,” the researchers said by email after BTA contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The results of their survey were published in Antiqot, a publication of the Antiquities Authority, in 2024. 

The researchers undertook to document pilgrims’ graffiti in a number of key sites throughout the Old City of Jerusalem and its immediate surroundings - monasteries of St. Theodoroi and Abraham, Monastery of the Forerunner and Monastery of St. Charalambos, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Monastery of Mar Elias - in 2023. They used a unique methodology of multispectral and RTI imaging to document the inscriptions.

These methods helped reveal markings that had gone unnoticed prior to their work, providing evidence of the many visitors who made their way to the Holy Land to take part in the city’s religious ceremonies.

Based on the corpus of inscriptions, previously documented contemporary graffiti in other Greek Orthodox compounds and historical sources, they were able to historically identify specific people and their places of origin, further allowing them to reconstruct the Bulgarian pilgrimage to Jerusalem over 500 years of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria. 

In their paper, they presented graffiti left by Bulgarian pilgrims, who visited the Greek Orthodox monasteries in Jerusalem and its vicinity in the Ottoman period, revealing their places of origin and dates. The identification of the pilgrims was further studied against other contemporary written sources, shedding light on the history of Bulgarian Christianity throughout 500 years of Ottoman rule. 

“Our study set out to create a catalogue of Bulgarian inscriptions from the Jerusalem monasteries, while attempting to reconstruct the Bulgarian pilgrimage movement to Jerusalem. The surviving corpus of inscriptions attests to the intensity of Bulgarian pilgrimage to the Holy Land during the Ottoman period, revealing the wide distribution of places of origin of the various pilgrims, as well as the time span of their visits to the monasteries,” the researchers wrote in their study. 

The 26 Bulgarian inscriptions included in this corpus forms only a small part of a larger corpus of inscriptions that were not included in this survey, such as those from the monasteries of St. Nicholas, Archangels, Abraham and St. Demetrius in the Old City, and the monasteries of the Cross and Mar Elias outside it.

The distribution and the chronology of these inscriptions lead the scientists to the conclusion that the mass pilgrimage of Bulgarians to Jerusalem began in the second half of the eighteenth century, probably driven by economic prosperity in Bulgaria at that time. This may be assumed from the pilgrims’ places of origin which were also the important trading centers of the time: Bansko in the southwest of the country, or port cities along the Danube River, such as Vidin, Svishtov and Ruse. Although pilgrimage from Bulgaria to Jerusalem is recorded from the first half of the sixteenth century, the lack of Bulgarian graffiti from that time points to its limited extent and possibly to the low socioeconomic status of the pilgrims, who could not afford the graffiti (which probably required a financial investment in the form of a donation), the study says.