Nahmanides Comes to Jerusalem

…[we] found a ruined house, built on pillars, with a beautiful dome, and made it into a synagogue for the town has no ruler and whoever wishes to take a ruin can do so. And so we volunteered to restore the building and…sent to the city of Nablus for the Scrolls of the Law which had been in Jerusalem, but were taken away when the Tatars came…and now they come to pray…For people regularly come to Jerusalem, men and women from Damascus and from Aleppo and from all parts of the country, to see the Temple and weep over it.

LETTER OF NAHMANIDES, A. DAVID, SHA’ALU SHLOM YERUSHALAYIM, P. 42

In 1267 Rabbi Moshe Ben Nahman (known as Nahmanides, or the Ramban) came to the Land of Israel from Barcelona, Spain. He stayed in Jerusalem for a while, after which he went to live in Acre. In a letter that he wrote to his sons he describes the sorry conditions in the city and its ruins (this was the period after the Mongol invasion of the land). He tells how he helped the few Jews remaining in the city to establish a synagogue. The building in question, which was on Mount Zion, did not survive, but in the Jewish Quarter is an ancient synagogue that commemorates the Ramban.