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        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.
      
    
  
