They flew into Rhodes for a stop-over between Paris and Tel-Aviv; O’Connelly wanted to research the background history of the island, which had been the home of the Templar Knights, legend had credited them with discovering the treasure of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was early summer and the island was overflowing with tourists. Laura had found a hotel on the Internet in the old city, it was said to be four hundred years old and had been built by a Turkish merchant.
‘It’s definitely four hundred years old!’ said O'Connelly dryly as he examined the bathroom and a notice that asked guests to deposit used toilet paper in a waste bin.
‘There’s no way I’m going to spend my time looking at my waste bum paper,’ he said sourly.
‘Stop complaining, it’s their sewerage system.’
‘They should have taken a few lessons from the Jews!’
‘Forget that and look at the view.’
Laura had opened the window and climbed out onto a small terrace, it reality a flat roof equipped with two plastic chairs and a table. There was no denying that there was a magnificent view over the old city and the port where a couple of huge cruise ships were berthed.
As they left the hotel and following the old stone streets towards the town centre Laura recounted how Rhodes had been the home of the Hospitallers. She had done a little preparatory work in Paris and on the flight and told O’Connelly how the Hospitallers together with the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon had been the greatest of the monastic Crusading Orders. These orders with the help of several Papal bulls levied taxes and tithing in the territories under their control. The Templars had got their name from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which tradition held was the site of the Temple of Solomon. The order was founded in 1118AD and in 1128AD and entrusted by the Council of Troyes with the task of aiding Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land.
They selected one amongst the many restaurants on the main tourist street, the menu announced the day’s specialities what seemed to be almost every known language on the earth, they opted out of the aperitif proposed by the owner and chose to commence with a bottle of the local rosé wine. Laura continued her story with the legend of the Templars’ treasure said to be hidden in the tunnels beneath the Esplanade.
Certain believed that one of Sir Charles Warren of the Palestine Survey Fund’s goals had been to find the treasure and one of his assistants, a certain Captain Parker, had written in a letter in 1912 how on one of their underground explorations they had discovered a secret room cut into the rock beneath the temple site with a passage leading from to the Mosque of Omar. Parker described how he broke through the wall at the end of the passage and found himself in the mosque and had to flee to save himself from the angry Muslims.
According to the legend the Templars had discovered the treasure of the Temple beneath the Esplanade and had transmitted its secrets from generation to generation.
The Sovereign Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, the Hospitallers, occupied Rhodes from 1309 to 1523, and Malta from 1530 to 1798. The order began as a hospital founded in Jerusalem to provide care for poor and sick pilgrims in the Holy Land, before the Crusades, the Order was then recognized by the Pope in 1113 and developed a military branch, provided men for castles such as the Krak des Chevaliers.
After the Fall of Acre in 1291, the Hospitallers first moved to Cyprus and then on to Rhodes, which they invaded in 1307 and conquered. For two centuries they resisted the Mamluks and the Ottomans, until the Suleyman the Magnificent reduced them to surrender in 1523.
After the fall of Rhodes, a new base of operations was found in 1530 thanks to the Emperor Charles V. The rocky and isolated island of Malta, where the local Catholic population, speaks a language related to the Arabic introduced by the Arab conquest in 870. The Order became identified with Malta, and Cross of the Order became the Maltese Cross.
After the young Suleyman had driven the Knights out of Rhodes, his father sent an army to drive them out of Malta. The Turks besieged the island in 1565, without success leaving thousands dead on the island and the Hospitallers secured their new home for two centuries, until the arrival of Napoleon on his way to Egypt in 1798.
When Charles V gave Malta to the Knights, the tribute was a falcon a year, which was to inspire the novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon and the John Huston movie in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Peter Laurie.