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.