An excavation conducted to the east of Damascus Gate exposed the remains of a rampart and a moat, which had been dug into earlier, Second-Temple period quarries. Remains of a rampart and a moat, documented elsewhere along the Ottoman city wall, were mentioned as being part of the northern extra muros fortification system in various medieval sources describing the Crusader siege of Jerusalem in 1099. Therefore, they must have been constructed some time earlier by the Seljuks (1073–1098).