History of Jerusalem

Entrance of Jerusalem
on December 11, 1917

(Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם‎, Yerushaláyim. Arabic: القُدس, al-Quds is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of 125.1 square kilometres (48.3 sq mi) if disputed East Jerusalem is included. Located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern tip of the Dead Sea, modern Jerusalem has grown beyond the boundaries of the Old City.

The city has a history that goes back to the 4th millennium BCE, making it one of the oldest cities in the world.Jerusalem has been the holiest city in Judaism and the spiritual center of the Jewish people since the 10th century BCE, contains a number of significant ancient Christian sites, and is considered the third-holiest city in Islam Despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometer (0.35 square mile), the Old City is home to sites of key religious importance, among them the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. The old walled city, a World Heritage site, has been traditionally divided into four quarters, although the names used today — the Armenian,Christian,Jewish, and Muslim Quarters — were introduced in the early 19th century. The Old City was nominated for inclusion on the List of World Heritage Sites in danger by Jordan in 1982. In the course of its history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.

Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem has been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations and related bodies, and Arab Palestinians foresee East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.In the wake of United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 (passed in 1980), most foreign embassies moved out of Jerusalem, although some countries, such as the United States , still own land in the city and pledge to return their embassies once political agreements warrant the move.

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Etymology

The Semitic root of the name was sometimes thought to be meaning peace, harmony or completeness. A city called Rušalimum or Urušalimum appears in ancient Egyptian records as one of the first reference to Jerusalem. These Egyptian forms are thought to derive from the local name attested in the Amarna letters, eg in EA 287 (where it takes several forms) Urusalim. The form Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) first appears in the book of Joshua. This form has the appearance of a portmanteau of yerusha (heritage) and the original name Shalem and is not a simple phonetic evolution of the form in the Amarna letters.Some believe there is a connection to Shalim, the beneficent deity known from Ugaritic myths as the personification of dusk. Typically the ending -im indicates the plural in Hebrew grammar and -ayim the dual thus leading to the suggestion that the name refers to the fact that the city sits on two hills. However the pronunciation of the last syllable as -ayim appears to be a late development, which had not yet appeared at the time of the Septuagint. The Greeks added the prefix hiero ("holy") and called it Hierosolyma. To the Arabs, Jerusalem is al-Quds ("The Holy"). "Zion" initially referred to part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole. Under King David, it was known as Ir David (the City of David).

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History

Ceramic evidence indicates the occupation of Ophel, within present-day Jerusalem, as far back as the Copper Age, c. 4th millennium BCE, with evidence of a permanent settlement during the early Bronze Age, c. 3000-2800 BCE. The Execration Texts (c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called Roshlamem or Rosh-ramen and the Amarna letters (c. 14th century BCE) may be the earliest mention of the city. Some archaeologists, including Kathleen Kenyon, believe Jerusalem as a city was founded by West Semitic people with organized settlements from around 2600 BCE. According to Jewish tradition the city was founded by Shem and Eber, ancestors of Abraham. In the biblical account, when first mentioned, Jerusalem is ruled by Melchizedek, an ally of Abraham (identified with Shem in legend). Later, in the time of Joshua, Jerusalem was in territory allocated to the tribe of Benjamin> (Joshua 18:28) but it continued to be under the independent control of the Jebusites until it was conquered by David and made into the capital of the united Kingdom of Israel (c. 1000s BCE). Recent excavations of a large stone structure are interpreted by some archaeologists as lending credence to the biblical narrative.

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Temple periods

According to Hebrew scripture, King David reigned until 970 BCE. He was succeeded by his son who built the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah. Solomon's Temple (later known as the First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in Jewish history as the repository of the Ark of the Covenant. For over 450 years, until the Babylonian conquest in 587 BCE, Jerusalem was the political capital of firstly the united Kingdom of Israel and then the Kingdom of Judah and the Temple was the religious center of the Israelites. This period is known in history as the First Temple Period. Upon Solomon's death (c. 930 BCE), the ten northern tribes split off to form the Kingdom of Israel. Under the leadership of the House of David and Solomon, Jerusalem remained the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.

When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE, as the Babylonians conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and laid waste to Solomon's Temple. In 538 BCE, after fifty years of Babylonian captivity, Persian King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews to return to Judah to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple. Jerusalem resumed its role as capital of Judah and center of Jewish worship. When Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, Jerusalem and Judea fell under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty under Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE, Ptolemy V lost Jerusalem and Judea to the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenized polis came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias the High Priest and his five sons against Antiochus Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in 152 BCE with Jerusalem again as its capital.

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Jewish-Roman wars

As Rome became stronger it installed Herod as a Jewish client king. Herod the Great, as he was known, devoted himself to developing and beautifying the city. He built walls, towers and palaces, and expanded the Temple Mount, buttressing the courtyard with blocks of stone weighing up to 100 tons. Under Herod, the area of the Temple Mount doubled in size. In 6 CE, the city, as well as much of the surrounding area, came under direct Roman rule as the Iudaea Province and Herod's descendants through Agrippa II remained client kings of Judea until 96 CE. Roman rule over Jerusalem and the region began to be challenged with the first Jewish-Roman war, the Great Jewish Revolt, which resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. In 130 CE Hadrian Romanized the city, and renamed it Aelia Capitolina. Jerusalem once again served as the capital of Judea during the three-year rebellion known as the Bar Kochba revolt, beginning in 132 CE. The Romans succeeded in recapturing the city in 135 CE and as a punitive measure Hadrian banned the Jews from entering it. Hadrian renamed the entire Iudaea Province Syria Palaestina after the biblical Philistines in an attempt to de-Judaize the country. Enforcement of the ban on Jews entering Aelia Capitolina continued until the 4th century CE.

In the five centuries following the Bar Kokhba revolt, the city remained under Roman then Byzantine rule. During the 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine I constructed Christian sites in Jerusalem such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Jerusalem reached a peak in size and population at the end of the Second Temple Period: The city covered two square kilometers (0.8 sq mi.) and had a population of 200,000 From the days of Constantine until the 7th century, Jews were banned from Jerusalem.

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Roman-Persian wars

Within the span of a few decades, Jerusalem shifted from Roman to Persian rule and returned to Roman dominion once more. Following Sassanid Khosrau II's early seventh century push into Byzantine, advancing through Syria, Sassanid Generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin attacked the Byzantine-controlled city of Jerusalem (Persian:Dej Houdkh).

In the Siege of Jerusalem (614), after 21 days of relentless siege warfare, Jerusalem was captured and the Persian victory resulted in the territorial annexation of Jerusalem. After the Sassanid army entered Jerusalem, the holy "True Cross" was stolen and sent back to the Sassanian capital as a battle-captured holy relic. Persians massacred up to 90,000 Christians. The conquered city and the Holy Cross would remain in Sassanid hands for some fifteen years until the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered them in 629.

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Islamic rule

Jerusalem is considered Islam's third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. Among Muslims of an earlier era, it was referred to as al-Bayt al-Muqaddas; later, it became known as al-Quds al-Sharif. In 638, the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem. With the Arab conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city. The Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with Monophysite Christian Patriarch Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule. Umar was led to the Foundation Stone on the Temple Mount, which he cleared of refuse in preparation for building a mosque. According to the Gaullic bishop Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679-688, the Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodated 3,000 worshipers. The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the Dome of the Rock in the late 7th century. The 10th century historian al-Muqaddasi writes that Abd al-Malik built the shrine in order to compete in grandeur of Jerusalem's monumental churches. Over the next four hundred years, Jerusalem's prominence diminished as Arab powers in the region jockeyed for control.

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Crusaders, Saladin and the Mamluks

In 1099, Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders, who massacred most of its Muslim inhabitants and the remnants of the Jewish inhabitants; the Crusaders later expelled the native Christian population and created the Kingdom of Jerusalem. By early June 1099 Jerusalem’s population had declined from 70,000 to less than 30,000. According to Benjamin of Tudela, Two hundred Jews were in the city in 1173. In 1187, the city was wrested from the Crusaders by Saladin who permitted Jews and Muslims to return and settle in the city. In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the Kharezmian Tartars, who decimated the city's Christian population and drove out the Jews. The Khwarezmian Tatars were driven out by the Egyptians in 1247. From 1250-1517, Jerusalem was ruled by the Mamluks, during this period of time many clashes occurred between the Mamluks on one side and the crusaders and the Mongols on the other side. The area also suffered from many earthquakes and black plague.

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Ottoman rule

In 1517, Jerusalem and environs fell to the Ottoman Turks, who generally remained in control until 1917. Jerusalem enjoyed a period of renewal and peace under Suleiman the Magnificent - including the rebuilding of magnificent walls around the Old City. Throughout much of Ottoman rule, Jerusalem remained a provincial, if religiously important center, and did not straddle the main trade route between Damascus and Cairo. However, the Muslim Turks brought many innovations: modern postal systems run by the various consulates; the use of the wheel for modes of transportation; stagecoach and carriage, the wheelbarrow and the cart; and the oil-lantern, among the first signs of modernization in the city. In the mid 19th century, the Ottomans constructed the first paved road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and by 1892 the railroad had reached the city.

With the annexation of Jerusalem by Muhammad Ali of Egypt in 1831, foreign missions and consulates began to establish a foothold in the city. In 1836, Ibrahim Pasha allowed Jerusalem's Jewish residents to restore four major synagogues, among them the Hurva.

In the 1834 Palestinian Arab revolt Qasim al-Ahmad led his forces from Nablus and attacked Jerusalem, aided by a clan from Abu Ghosh, together they entered the city on May 31 1834. The Christians and Jews of Jerusalem were subjected to attacks. Ibrahim's Egyptian army routed Qasim's forces in Jerusalem the following month.

Turkish rule was reinstated in 1840, but many Egyptian Muslims remained in Jerusalem. Jews from Algiers and North Africa began to settle in the city in growing numbers. In the 1840s and 1850s, the international powers began a tug-of-war in Palestine as they sought to extend their protection over the country's religious minorities, a struggle carried out mainly through consular representatives in Jerusalem. According to the Prussian consul, the population in 1845 was 16,410, with 7,120 Jews, 5,000 Muslims, 3,390 Christians, 800 Turkish soldiers and 100 Europeans. The volume of Christian pilgrims increased under the Ottomans, doubling the city's population around Easter time.

In the 1860s, new neighborhoods began to go up outside the Old City walls to house pilgrims and relieve the intense overcrowding and poor sanitation inside the city. The Russian Compound and Mishkenot Sha'ananim were founded in 1860.

In 1867 an American Missionary reports an estimated population of Jerusalem of 'above' 15,000. With 4,000 to 5,000 Jews and 6,000 Muslims. Every year there were 5,000 to 6,000 Russian Christian Pilgrims.

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British Mandate and 1948 War

Israeli policemen meet a Jordanian
Legionnaire near the Mandelbaum Gate

In 1917 after the Battle of Jerusalem, the British Army, led by General Edmund Allenby, captured the city, and in 1922, the League of Nations at the Conference of Lausanne entrusted the United Kingdom to administer the Mandate for Palestine.

From 1922 to 1948 the total population of the city rose from 52,000 to 165,000 with two thirds of Jews and one-third of Arabs (Muslims and Christians). The situation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine was not quiet. At Jerusalem, in particular riots occurred in 1920 and in 1929. Under the British, new garden suburbs were built in the western and northern parts of the city and institutions of higher learning such as the Hebrew University were founded.

As the British Mandate for Palestine was expiring, the 1947 UN Partition Plan recommended "the creation of a special international regime in the City of Jerusalem, constituting it as a corpus separatum under the administration of the United Nations." The international regime (which also included the city of Bethlehem) was to remain in force for a period of ten years, whereupon a referendum was to be held in which the residents were to decide the future regime of their city. However, this plan was not implemented, as the 1948 war erupted, while the British withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared its independence.

The war led to displacement of Arab and Jewish populations in the city. The 1,500 residents of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City were expelled and a few hundred taken prisoner when the Arab Legion captured the quarter on 28 May. Residents of many Arab villages and neighborhoods west of the Old City left with the approach of the war, but thousands remained and were driven out or killed, as at Lifta or Deir Yassin.

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Division and reunification

The no-man’s land between East and West Jerusalem came into being in November 1948: Moshe Dayan, commander of the Israeli forces in Jerusalem, met with his Jordanian counterpart Abdullah a-Tal in a deserted house in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood and marked out their respective positions: Israel’s position in red and Jordan's in green. This rough map, which was not meant as a an official one, became the final ceasefire line in the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which divided the city and left Mount Scopus as an Israeli exclave. Barbed wire and concrete barriers ran down the center of the city and military skirmishes frequently threatened the ceasefire. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Jerusalem was declared its capital. Jordan formally annexed East Jerusalem in 1950, subjecting it to Jordanian law. Only the United Kingdom and Pakistan formally recognized such annexation, which, as regards Jerusalem, was on a de facto basis. Also, it is dubious if Pakistan recognized Jordan's annexation.

Jordan assumed control of the holy places in the Old City. Contrary to the terms of the agreement, Israelis were denied access to Jewish holy sites, many of which were desecrated, and only allowed very limited access to Christian holy sites. During this period, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque underwent major renovations.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured East Jerusalem and asserted sovereignty over the entire city. Jewish and Christian access to holy sites was restored, while the Temple Mount remained under the jurisdiction of an Islamic waqf. The Moroccan Quarter, which was located adjacent to the Western Wall, was vacated and razed to make way for a plaza for those visiting the wall. Since the war, Israel has expanded the city's boundaries and established a ring of Jewish neighbourhoods on vacant land east of the Green Line.

However, the takeover of East Jerusalem was met with international criticism. Following the passing of Israel's Jerusalem Law, which declared Jerusalem, "complete and united", the capital of Israel, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that declared the law "a violation of international law" and requested all member states to withdraw all remaining embassies from the city.

The status of the city, and especially its holy places, remains a core issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jewish settlers have taken over historic sites and built on land confiscated from Arabs in order to expand the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem, while prominent Islamic leaders have insisted that Jews have no historical connection to Jerusalem. Palestinian Arabs envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, and the city's borders have been the subject of bilateral talks.

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Geography

Jerusalem is situated on the southern spur of a plateau in the Judean Mountains, which include the Mount of Olives (East) and Mount Scopus (North East). The elevation of the Old City is approximately 760 m (2,500 ft). The whole of Jerusalem is surrounded by valleys and dry riverbeds (wadis). The Kidron, Hinnom, and Tyropoeon Valleys intersect in an area just south of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Kidron Valley runs to the east of the Old City and separates the Mount of Olives from the city proper. Along the southern side of old Jerusalem is the Valley of Hinnom, a steep ravine associated in biblical eschatology with the concept of Gehenna or Hell. The Tyropoeon valley commenced in the northwest near the Damascus Gate, ran south-southeasterly through the center of the Old City down to the Pool of Siloam, and divided the lower part into two hills, the Temple Mount to the east, and the rest of the city to the west (the lower and the upper cities described by Josephus). Today, this valley is hidden by debris that has accumulated over the centuries.

In biblical times, Jerusalem was surrounded by forests of almond, olive and pine trees. Over centuries of warfare and neglect, these forests were destroyed. Farmers in the Jerusalem region thus built stone terraces along the slopes to hold back the soil, a feature still very much in evidence in the Jerusalem landscape.

Water supply has always been a major problem in Jerusalem, as attested to by the intricate network of ancient aqueducts, tunnels, pools and cisterns found in the city.

Jerusalem is 60 kilometers (37 mi) east of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea. On the opposite side of the city, approximately 35 kilometers (22 mi) away, is the Dead Sea, the lowest body of water on Earth. Neighboring cities and towns include Bethlehem and Beit Jala to the south, Abu Dis and Ma'ale Adumim to the east, Mevaseret Zion to the west, and Ramallah and Giv'at Ze'ev to the north.

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Source: Wikipedia