A Brief History
Jerusalem’s recorded history begins with its mention in
Egyptian court records 4,000 years ago, but there had been human
settlements here for centuries, probably millennia, before that. At the
beginning of the second millennium b.c. , Jerusalem was a Canaanite
mountain stronghold on a secondary trade route, far less important than
biblical cities such as Hazor, Megiddo, Beth Shean, and Shechem. The
earliest name associated with the city, Ur usalim, perhaps meant “city
of Shalim” or “founded by Shalim. ” Scholars speculate that Shalim
might have been an ancient Semitic deity of peace, for the name
resembles the modern Hebrew and Arabic words for “peace”: shalom and
salaam, respectively. If true, this is an ironic name for a city that
would become one of the most constantly and bitterly embattled places
on the face of the earth.
Biblical Jerusalem
In the Bible, Genesis 14:18–20 records that Abraham visited
the city of “Salem” in approximately 1800 b.c. and was blessed by the
city’s ruler, Melchzedik, who offered him bread and wine. The city is
not mentioned again in the Bible until the time of the great poet
warrior, King David, who captured the city from the Jebusites in about
1000 b.c. The Bible describes how David’s soldiers conquered Jerusalem
by discovering a water tunnel under the walls and using it to take the
city by surprise. Warren’s Shaft, part of a Canaanite water system
discovered by 19th-century archaeologists and open to visitors, might
be the very tunnel infiltrated by David’s army.
Perhaps because Jerusalem was in neutral territory not
allotted to any of the twelve rival tribes of Israel, David made it the
capital of his newly formed kingdom and brought the most talented
artisans, dedicated priests, magical poets and musicians, and the most
formidable soldiers from each of the tribes to live in his city. He
also brought the Ark of the Covenant, the portable tabernacle
containing the Tablets of the Law received on Mount Sinai, to the
Spring of Gihon, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. There the Ark
rested until it was placed in the Temple, built in approximately 960
b.c. on Mt. Moriah, the high point at the northern end of the city.
The Temple (today known as the “First” Temple) was completed
by David’s son and successor, King Solomon. According to biblical
tradition, although David bought the land for the Temple and carefully
assembled its building materials, he was deemed unworthy of
constructing the Temple because he was a man of war with blood on his
hands. At the Temple’s dedication, Solomon addressed his God: “... the
Heavens, even the Heaven of the Heavens, cannot contain Thee; how much
less this House that I have built? ”
The site of the Temple eventually became identified as Mt.
Moriah, on which it stood, where Abraham was called to sacrifice his
son Isaac. Along with this splendid house of worship, Solomon built a
royal palace, mansions for his wives, temples for the foreign gods
worshipped by the princesses he had married, and towers for the defense
of the capital. Under the wise reign of Solomon, the city flourished as
the capital of an empire that stretched from Damascus to the Red Sea
and controlled the trade routes from Egypt to Phoenicia. The Temple and
royal palace were adorned with gold and ivory from Africa and with
cedar from Lebanon; the beauties and glories of Jerusalem under Solomon
have captivated readers of the Bible for almost 3,000 years. But with
his death the empire collapsed, and the Israelite kingdom was divided
into two separate, impoverished, often warring nations: Israel, with
its capital at Shechem in the north, ruled by a series of northern
dynasties; and the smaller kingdom of Judah, with its capital at
Jerusalem, from which the Davidic dynasty continued to rule. The Bible
tells us that the cruelty and impiety of the rulers of both kingdoms
aroused the fury of the great Prophets.
In 701 b.c. the Assyrian armies of Sennacherib destroyed
Israel and moved southward to besiege Jerusalem. Thanks to King
Hezekiah’s hidden water tunnel, the city narrowly escaped destruction.
The end of David’s dynasty came in 587 b.c. , when Nebuchadnezzar, King
of Babylon, invaded Judah to lay siege to Jerusalem. When it fell, the
Temple and all the buildings were burned. The people of the
once-glorious city were forced into an exile known as “the Babylonian
Captivity. ”
In time, the kingdom of Babylon was overthrown and the
Israelites were permitted to return to Jerusalem in 539 b.c. The city
was now under the more tolerant rule of the Persians, but rebuilding
was slow work. The Second Temple was finished in 515 b.c. , but much of
the city still lay in ruins.
Jerusalem submitted peaceably to the rule of the Greeks in
332 b.c. under Alexander the Great and, subsequently, to his
Hellenistic successors as well as the Egyptian Ptolomeys and the Syrian
Seleucids. When Seleucid rulers outlawed Judaism, Jews led by Judah
Maccabee and his brothers staged a revolution in 167 b.c. and, against
all odds, restored the primacy of Jewish religious life in Jerusalem.
The Macabbees cleansed the Temple of Hellenistic idols and the blood of
pagan sacrifices; the eight-day celebration of Hanukkah (Feast of
Dedication) commemorates their victory. The Hasmonean dynasty,
descendants of the Maccabee family, ruled an independent Jewish
Commonwealth that stretched from the Negev to the Galilee. Jerusalem
grew, surrounded with a formidable wall and defended by towers beside
the Jaffa Gate. The Hasmoneans ruled until Pompey’s Roman legions
arrived in 63 b.c.
Roman Jerusalem
After the initial years of Roman administration and
political infighting, Rome installed Herod (scion of a family from
Idumea, a Jewish kingdom in the desert) as King of Judea. He reigned
from 37 to 4 b.c. , during which time he fortified the Hasmonean wall
and rebuilt the defense towers beside Jaffa Gate, the foundation of
which still stand. Several palaces were built and a water system
installed. Herod also completely rebuilt the Temple, making it one of
the most important religious centers in the Roman Empire. The courtyard
around the Temple was expanded to accommodate hundreds of thousands of
pilgrims, and the Temple Mount was shored up by retaining walls made
with great stone blocks. One of these walls, the Western Wall, is today
a major reminder of Jerusalem’s greatness under Herod. A massive
fortress was built overlooking the Temple Mount, which Herod named
“Antonia” in honor of his Roman friend and benefactor, Mark Antony.
For all his accomplishments, Herod was nevertheless hated
by his subjects; he taxed, he tortured, and he ordered the massacre of
male Jewish infants in an attempt to do away with the heralded Messiah.
When Jesus was born in about 4 b.c. , Joseph and Mary escaped Herod’s
paranoia by fleeing into Egypt with the new-born infant. They returned
to live in the Galilee village of Nazareth, making pilgrimages to
Jerusalem.
According to biblical accounts, Jesus spent his life
ministering in the Galilee Valley. In about a.d. 30 he and his
followers went for Passover to Jerusalem, which was in unrest at this
time, dissatisfied with Roman domination. Jesus’s entry into the Temple
caused a commotion; after the Passover dinner he was arrested by the
temple priests, who were under direct Roman rule. Jesus was put on
trial quickly and condemned to crucifixion, a Roman form of execution
for political and religious dissidents as well as for common criminals.
In a province rife with rebellion and retaliation, the execution in
Jerusalem of yet another religious leader from the Galilee did not by
itself have an immediate effect on history.
After Jesus’s crucifixion, harsh Roman rule continued until
a.d. 66, when the Jews rebelled. For four years Jewish zealots fought
against the might of Rome. At the end, the Roman general Titus laid
siege to Jerusalem in a.d. 70, finally attacking its starved and
weakened defenders. Those who didn’t escape were executed or sold into
slavery. The Holy City and the Temple were destroyed. The last of the
zealots held out for another three years at Masada (see page 76). Half
a million civilians died in the Galilee and Judea as a result of this
first revolt against Rome, a number unequaled in ancient warfare.
Christian and Islamic Jerusalem
For 60 years Jerusalem lay in ruins, until the Roman
Emperor Hadrian ordered the city rebuilt as a Roman town dedicated to
Jupiter. In outrage, the Jews began a second revolt against Rome, led
by Simon bar Kochba. The ruins of Jerusalem were briefly liberated,
but, in the end, Jewish resistance to Rome was defeated with great loss
of life. The planned new Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, was built over
the ruins of Herodian Jerusalem, and Jews were barred from residing
there for all time. Jerusalem’s physical existence as a spiritual city
seemed finished, but its spiritual power for Jews, and for the
struggling new Christian religion, remained. For the next two centuries
Aelia Capitolina enjoyed an innocuous history.
But the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth
century, and Jerusalem became a center of religion once again. Queen
Helena, a devout Christian and the mother of Emperor Constantine the
Great, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 326 to identify the sites
associated with Jesus’s life. She found that the city’s most beautiful
Roman temple, dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, stood on the site of
the crucifixion. The temple was demolished and a vast, Classical-style
church was built around Golgotha (the hill where Jesus’s crucifixion
was believed to have taken place). Throughout Jerusalem, other spots
important to Jesus’s life were commemorated with religious structures.
Pilgrims came from all over the Roman (and, later, Byzantine) Empire
during the following centuries, but the prosperity they brought lasted
only until 614, when Persian armies overtook Judea and reduced
Jerusalem to rubble again. In 629, Jerusalem was recaptured by the
Byzantines.
Still reeling from the effects of the Persian devastation,
Jerusalem was conquered in 638 by the forces of Islam. The Temple Mount
was identified in Islamic tradition as “the farthest spot” (in Arabic,
el-aksa), the site to which the Prophet Muhammad was transported in one
night from Mecca on a winged horse, as described in the 17th chapter of
the Koran. From here the Prophet ascended to the heavens and was
permitted to glimpse paradise. The rock on the Temple Mount from which
he ascended, at or close to the site of the ruined Temple, was
commemorated by the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 691. The
Dome of the Rock remains Jerusalem’s most striking monument; it is
counted among the most beautiful buildings ever created. By about 715,
the El-Aksa Mosque, third holiest place of prayer in Islam (after Mecca
and Medina), had been built on the southern side of the Temple Mount.
Jerusalem continued under Islamic rule for the next four and a half
centuries. In 1099, under their leaders Godfrey de Bouillon and
Tancred, the Crusaders captured the Holy City for Christendom by
slaughtering both Muslims and Jews.
Crusaders, Mamelukes, and Turks
The Crusaders established a feudal Christian state with
Godfrey at its head. They built many impressive churches during the
term of the first Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, but in 1187 they were
driven out by Muslim forces under the great warrior Saladin. During the
Sixth Crusade (1228– 1229), the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II managed
to secure Jerusalem for the Christians by negotiation.
The Christians, however, could not hold the city. After
they lost Jerusalem, a Mongol invasion swept through, and in 1244 the
Mameluke dynasty of Egypt took control, ruling Jerusalem for the next
250 years. The city struggled to rebuild from Crusader wars and
invasions. Much of the best Islamic architecture in the city was
constructed in the Mameluke era, but the past thousand years had taken
their toll: Jerusalem was unable to regain the prosperity it had
enjoyed in earlier times.
In the early 16th century, the Ottoman Turkish Empire was
advancing through the Middle East. Jerusalem fell to the Ottomans in
1517, remaining under their control for 400 years. Suleiman the
Magnificent rebuilt the walls and gates in the form they retain to this
day. Fountains, inns, religious schools, and barracks were constructed.
But when Suleiman died, his empire, including Jerusalem, began a long
period of decline. The Holy City remained a backwater until the 19th
century, when renewed interest among Christian pilgrims made it the
destination of thousands of travelers each year.
19th-Century Aspirations
At the same time, many Jews sought religious freedom and
fulfillment by moving to Palestine (as the Holy Land was traditionally
called) and especially to Jerusalem. In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl
(1860–1904) worked to organize a movement, Zionism, to create a Jewish
state. Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), a scientist born in Russia but later
a British subject, did much to put Herzl’s hopes into practice.
Weizmann was an important figure in the negotiations with the British
government that led to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, supporting the
idea of a Jewish “national home” in Palestine that also respected the
rights of existing non-Jewish people already living there. The problem
was that British strategists, who were fighting the Ottoman Turks in
1917, had secretly promised the lands to their World War I Arab
allies.
In 1922 the League of Nations granted the British a mandate
to administer Palestine. Jerusalem flourished during the early years of
the Mandate. Modern neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and the Hebrew
University were built in West Jerusalem, the new Jewish enclave. But
Arab opposition to new Jewish immigration and construction in Palestine
led to increasing strife; by 1946, Jerusalem was an armed camp. In 1947
the United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine into two
states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem as an international
city that belonged to neither. But lacking the means to enforce its
decision, the United Nations was powerless to halt the fighting that
erupted as the British withdrew their troops in 1948.
Modern Israel
The State of Israel was declared during this difficult
time. In response, member states of the Arab League sent troops to help
the Palestinian Arabs. West Jerusalem, separated from the rest of the
new Jewish nation, held out under siege for several months until
Israeli forces secured a land corridor connecting the city to the
coastal areas. Jews were evacuated from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter,
and thousands of Arab families fled their homes in West Jerusalem. As a
result of armistice agreements in 1949, Jerusalem was divided: West
Jerusalem was to be under Israeli control, and East Jerusalem
(including the Old City, with its Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and
Armenian quarters) came under Jordanian authority. Free access to holy
sites for members of all religions was guaranteed by the armistice
agreements. However, with the city partitioned by fortifications and
barbed wire, no Israeli or Jewish pilgrims were allowed to visit the
Western Wall or other Jewish sites in East Jerusalem.
For the next 19 years, Jerusalem was two cities. Political
and religious boundaries were aggravated by occasional incidents of
terrorism or sniping until the Six Day War in June 1967. Within three
days the city was completely in Israeli hands, and in two weeks it was
physically and administratively reunited. Jerusalem’s mayor, Teddy
Kollek, spent the next 25 years orchestrating a vast program of
development, adding new cultural institutions and parks and instituting
neighborhood restoration projects while tirelessly me diating the
concerns of Jerusalem’s many communities.
Today, as always, Jerusalem is a city of controversies:
religious Jews in conflict with secular Jews; Palestinians calling for
independence; many residents protesting a wave of high-rise development
that many claim will turn the Holy City into a holy megalopolis. But
the ideas and mystique that have always made this an extraordinarily
special place rise above the ebbing and flowing concerns of present-day
Jerusalem as it continues to tug at the world’s attention into the new
millennium.
