A Look at the History of Jerusalem

Dr. Nazmi Ju'beh

Associate Professor of History at Birzeit University

In order to establish the historical background for many of the political questions of current interest, this presentation will focus mainly on the development of the city during its long history.

It is important to differentiate between history and history of tradition. We know a lot about tradition in Jerusalem, but we know very little about the history of the city. It is very difficult to approach a city like Jerusalem that is full of symbolic elements and legends, and as a result most prior research conducted on the city was based on myths and legends, rather than on facts.

Furthermore, the religious approach has contributed to the inauthenticity of Jerusalem's history, as religious scholars look to the city to confirm biblical stories. Such a correlation does not always exist, however, and often the actual findings have been distorted to match religious expectations. 

Finally, modern political interests have distorted Jerusalem's history as competing political agendas, each claiming ownership of the city, turn to historians to support their claim.

For these reasons, scientific interest in the city began only in the second half of the19th century.  A large flow of scholars, mainly from Europe and United States, came to the city to examine its historical and archeological evidence and to adapt them to biblical research. A good deal of evidence was destroyed through this process.

The system of documentation was quite poor during this time with little accountability, so anyone could publish a book claiming a discovery that could never be verified as the evidence was either thrown away or removed from its context. 

It is generally accepted that the history of the city began about the third millennium BC, making it approximately five thousand years old. However, there is no written evidence from the third or even the second millennium, as the earliest references to the city come from later texts, written as much as one thousand years later than the period they supposedly describe, and these texts are themselves problematic.

We know that a small village-like settlement was established very close to the only water resource of the city, a small water spring in Jerusalem called “Jihon” or “pool of Silomo” in the eastern valley of the modern city. Archaeological excavations have established that this village was small and poor, living off a very small amount of water.

The written evidence of this settlement are not historical records, but rather consist of an occasional mention of the name of a person or a place. The archaeological evidence about this settlement also are not accurate, and cannot be depended on when constructing the history of this city. Of course, the Old Testament played a major role in shaping the history of Jerusalem, though in the last 50 years both biblical archaeologists and biblical historians have admitted that one can no longer depend on the Bible as historical guide.

A lot of the early history of the city was written according to biblical stories, and even the identification of certain areas of the city itself took place mainly according to the Bible. If the Bible is now discarded as a historical reference, most of the identifications that occurred during the last century and a half must be re-examined. In 1925 a German archaeologist managed to buy some Egyptian pottery of the 18^th century BC on which appeared some texts written in the Greek language. Among the text was the name Ur Salem, which is generally accepted, though with little proof, to be the name of the city–Jerusalem. The name Maliki Sadik is also mentioned in connection with they city, for he was the priest of Ur Salem. An additional mention of Ur Salem comes from the Tal Ammareneh in Egypt, where Ur Salem was used as a curse against uncooperative kings.

During the Bronze Age, which dated to about 2000-1550 BC, archaeological evidence indicated the existence of a small clumsy village called Ur Salem. Later reports of the size of the city were greatly exaggerated, however, for the area of the city during the eras of Kings David and Solomon covered not more than 2000m², with a population of only 2000.

Archeologists have experienced difficulty in examining even the city wall, for it is an accumulation of different stones from different periods reused several times. During the times of kings David and Solomon from about 1000–922 BC Jerusalem was a central city, but was less important for the Jewish religious tradition in Palestine than Hebron to the south or Shekhem Nablus in the north. Jerusalem was chosen because of its location between these two cities, and also because of the Jabousiter citadel that it housed. Because of the mountains Jerusalem has never been strategically important, and it has no natural resources and very little water.

Excavations have determined the City of David to be 350 meters long and 100meters wide; a very small village. The population has been determined both by the number of houses excavated and by the availability of water.

In the 8^th Century B.C the kingdom was divided and internal conflict broke out among the Jewish population, which was the majority in and around Jerusalem at that time. There is not as much documentation of the other peoples existing in the same area at that time. For the most part they are referred to as Canaanites, and a phonological analysis of their names reveals that they were Arab, and that Arabic was the main administrative language during the Solomon period.

In 732 BC 732 the Ashuryans invaded Jerusalem, and the sons of Babel and his house continued to administer Jerusalem in the name of the Ashuryan Kingdom. Three centuries later the Deborarions invaded and systematically destroyed the city. Reports of the deportation of the Jewish population, however, now appear to be exaggerated. Current thought holds that the Jewish elite and intelligencia were deported to Babel, but the normal population remained in the country. We do know that the number of Jews in the country began to decrease at that time, and that there was a rise in the number of Bedouin coming to the country. These changes in demography in the country damaged the Jewish existence, but were reversed in the year 539 BC when the Persians invaded the country under the leadership of Ciros of Korash, who allowed the Jewish intellengcia to return to Jerusalem. Some Jews chose to return, some remained in Babylon, and others worked in the Persian bureaucracy and administrative system, among them Nehemiya, after whom a book in the Old Testament is named. The Jews did not reconstruct the Jewish Temple or the city wall during this time, and lived around as well as inside Jerusalem. Furthermore, texts indicate that many Jews took non-Jewish wives, and that they generally integrated well with the local population.

In 332 BC Alexander the Macedonian managed to conquer Jerusalem, and most of the remaining old structures in the city date back to this period.  Alexander made Jerusalem a very strong fortified city, located in what is now old Jerusalem, including part of the Temple Mount that currently houses the Aqsa mosque.  Alexander and his followers utilized the administrative skills of the Jewish population and allowed them to rule the city, but insisted on presenting the gods of the Greeks as the main gods of the city, rather than Yahwe or Ba’al, the original god of the Canaanites of the city.

In 63 BC the Romans invaded Jerusalem when Bombay conquered the city. Clear texts from this period indicate that the largest populations of the city were Nabatians, Arabs and Assyrians. One third of the population was Jewish, and the remaining two thirds were local Semitic people. The Herodian Period of intensive construction began at this time. Herodus, an Arab Jew from East Jordan, became a very important Roman administrator who was appointed ruler of Palestine. Herodus built the so-called second Temple, as well as most of the walls of the city and many individual structures. In 70 AD, however, the Jews revolted against Romans rule, who then sent Titus to re-conquer the city of Jerusalem. He destroyed the whole city including the second Temple, and exiled part of its Jewish population. The Romans retained control of the area until the year 135 AD when another Jewish revolution broke out. As a result of this revolution, Jews lost their right under Roman law to reside in Jerusalem, or anywhere between Jerusalem and Hebron. Archeological evidences confirms that from this time until the Islamic conquests in the 7^th century there were no Jewish activities, no synagogues, discovered in any part of this area.

Hadrian rebuilt the city after its destruction according to a Roman master plan, and re-named it “Elia Capitolina”.  Elia Capitolina took on all the standard characteristics of a Roman city with two main streets crossing each other, a theater, etc. Christianity was gradually introduced during this period, though not yet recognised by the Roman empire. Most of the population spoke Roman, produced Roman literature, poems etc.

In the 4^th century AD Costantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Eastern Roman Kingdom.  Suddenly, Jerusalem became the spiritual center for Christian communities, not just in Palestine but all over the world. Christian communities developed in Persia, Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, the Arab desert and all over the Middle East as well as parts of Europe.

Jerusalem became a place of pilgrimage for Christians all over the world and therefore flourished during this period. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed, as well as at least fifteen other churches inside the city walls.  

Some of these churches were funded by local communities, others were established as national churches. The Armenians, for instance, sent delegations to Palestine to build national churches for the purpose of maintaining relationships to the holy sites. Churches were built in a dramatic form all over the country, and the population of the region reached its peak during this time. I am not referring to the city of Jerusalem, for the city walls have always enclosed a very limited number of people due to water shortages. The Romans invested in a project that would bring water to the south of Bethlehem, digging tunnels as long as 61 kilometers, as water was the key factor throughout the history of the city. Jerusalem flourished when the water was secured, and declined when it was scarce.

Church records reveal that during the 4^th and 5^th Centuries AD, 11 small cities or villages were identified as Jewish, six as Sumarian, three as Christian, and 287 were not religiously identified, meaning that they still believing in the old gods of the Canaanites. Based on this data, even the most optimistic estimates of the Jewish population of Palestine in the 4th Century could not be more than 9% of the total population.

The flourishing of Christian Palestine ceased when the Persian invasion of 614 AD, conquered the whole Greater Syrian region, including Jerusalem. The Christian communities suffered during this time as the Jews allied with the Persians, taking revenge for the three centuries they had been denied entrance into the city. All of the churches and most of the monasteries in and around the city were destroyed, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and hundreds of Christians were massacred.

Although Horatius re-conquered Jerusalem for the Byzantine Empire in 628 and began to restore Christian life, in 637 the Muslim army surrounded the city. The Muslim Second Orthodox Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab issued a famous document to the Christian population of Jerusalem, protecting their lives, their churches, their holy activities and their freedom in return for their surrender. With the entrance of Islam, the city began to gain a new character as Caliph Abdel Malek Ibn Marwan undertook dramatic construction activity, including the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.

Jerusalem was important to Muslims because Islam adapted all the beliefs of Judaism and Christianity; therefore all Jewish and Christian traditions related to Jerusalem became an essential part of Muslim practice. Even in the early years when Muslims were still a minority in Mecca they prayed for Jerusalem, and the Islamic tradition connected the two cities when Muhammad journeyed from Mecca to Jerusalem as described in the Qur’an. The Dome of the Rock still holds the same form that it did in the seventh Century AD; little has changed in more than 1300 years. Muslims did not impose their culture or their religion on the city, but instead added new things, even allowing Jews to come back and live in the city in 637 AD, after more than 500 years of exile.

In spite of the Islamization process, the majority of the city’s population remained Christian until the tenth century AD. The transfer of religion, from both Christianity and Judiasm to Islam, was very gradual, and occurred over a period of three or four hundred years.

Most of the structures in Al-Aqsa Mosque date back to this period, and most of the streets laid on the foundations of Roman roads were constructed then as well. These three centuries were quite stable; there were changes inside the Islamic system, the dynasties were empowered, but cultural and religious life continued without any break or dramatic change, allowing culture, science and pilgrimage to flourish. 

The next stage of the city’s development began in the year 1099, when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem. This conquest was one of the most destructive conquest in the history of the city, because it drastically changed the demography. The Crusaders, according to their own estimates, massacred about 70 thousand people. The absolute majority of those killed were Muslim, but Jews as well as local Christians from the Eastern Church perished in the slaughter.

After conquering the city many of the crusaders returned to their homeland, and others sought land outside of the city to cultivate. Therefore the Crusaders managed to settle only one area of the city, the Latin Quarter around the Holy Sepulchre, and most of the city was empty. They attempted to attract Christians from Jordan to populate the city, and established the Sa’adiyeh neighborhood Bab Hottah in the north-eastern quarter, yet still left the city with two empty quarters.

The crusaders converted the Dome of the Rock into a Temple, and the Aqsa Mosque became the administrative center of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Christian rule continued until the year 1187, when the famous Salah Ad-Din re-conquered the city. He was a Muslim from Kurdish origin, and did not massacre the Crusaders because Islam dictates that one cannot massacre a people, even during a time of war. Most of the residents of the city were obliged to leave, but the local Jordanian Christians were permitted to remain and Salah Ad-Din gave the Christian holy places to the Greek Orthodox Church.

This period is called the Ayoubites period, named after Salah Ad-Din El-Ayyoubi and the Ayoubites Dynasty. Salah Ad-Din returned Jerusalem to its original form, building mosques and Islamic schools (Madrassah) and therefore restoring Arab Islamic scientific life to the city. He brought some of his family to the city as well as ethnic groups from all over the Muslim world, including Turks, Kurds, Turkmans, and north Africans, and designated an area of the city for each group.

The city was re-conquered again by the Crusaders in the year 1219, but then experienced a dramatic change in 1250 with the rise to power of the Mamluk slave-leaders. The Ayoubites brought these slaves from Russia, from the Qawqazan area, from Greece, from Germany and various other parts of the world, and used them to fill the ranks of the Ayoubite army. In time, this army managed to gain control of the Kingdom, which included all of Egypt and Palestine, and thus began the dynasty of the Mamluks, the slave-rulers, who controlled this region from 1250 till 1517. These slaves were well accepted as rulers because they managed to market themselves as good Muslims. According to theoretical Muslims belief, there is no difference between human beings except in their beliefs towards God, and therefore race or social status should not be important.

Jerusalem benefited from this period, as the Mamluks constructed the most beautiful buildings of the old city. They built 200 public buildings that were used as schools, monasteries for Islamic Sufis, public kitchens and caravansaries for travelers and pilgrims. Jerusalem became one of the most important scientific centers of the region, as an Islamic foundation was designated for each building to secure its future.

In 1517 Jerusalem fell under the control of a new Muslim dynasty, which later became known as the Ottoman Turkish empire. The Ottomans controlled Jerusalem until World War 1; from 1517 until 1916.  The first that they did was to rebuild the walls of the old city, thereby giving the city its current boundaries. They built all but one of the gates that are open today, and made very systematic restorations of the holy places as well as the public buildings of the city. The survival of most of these buildings to the present can be attributed to the Ottoman restorations.  The Dome of the Rock took its final outside form, complete with mosaics and ceramics during this time, and a very large public kitchen built by Solomon the Magnificent and his wife, was opened to every visitor of the city regardless of his religion or ethnic origin.

The first two centuries of the Ottoman period allowed Jerusalem to flourish, but the last two centuries were catastrophic. The Ottoman empire became more involved in eastern Europe and the Balkans, and tried several times to expand their power into western Europe by reaching Vienna. Therefore the Ottomans' attention and efforts were directed westward, to the neglect of Jerusalem and other eastern holdings, which became the source for taxation and soldiers. Those who were sent to fight in Europe never came back; thousands from the region and hundreds from Jerusalem alone.

With the Egyptian invasion of Jerusalem and Palestine in 1831, the country was opened to European interest. Most European countries sent representatives to Jerusalem, opening consulates and establishing contacts with local Christian groups to protect them from the Ottoman Empire. The Russians were the patronage of the Greek Orthodox, France the Catholics, Austria the Jews, etc….

Each of these countries tried to win a space in the old city of Jerusalem, which is why the city now contains a lot of European architecture from the second half of the 19^th century such as churches, monasteries, public buildings and hospitals. European churches began to send missionaries to Jerusalem, each competing to convert the local population to their sect, whether it be Protestant, Evangelical, Anglican, Catholic etc.

The majority of these missionaries were Greek Orthodox, and introduced themselves into the city by providing services in the health sector, education or charitable organizations. This gradual increase in European control over the city continued until Allenby, a British commander of the regional army, entered Jaffa gate. This began the period of British control, which was formalized in 1923 by the British Mandate when the United Nations designated Britain to administer Palestine. 

The Jewish population in the country began to increase markedly in the second half of the 19^th century as many Jews immigrated from Europe. The Jewish quarter of the old city soon became too small for the new immigrants who began to rent houses in other parts of the old city, living among Moslems, Christians, and Armenians, as well as establishing new neighborhoods outside the city wall.

In the 1920s, these Jewish immigrants constituted a majority of the population of the old city. The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in 1948 led to the division of the city into two parts. West Jerusalem was designated as purely Jewish, meaning that Arabs who were living in West Jerusalem were obliged to leave. East Jerusalem, including the old city, was left for the Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, and Jews who were living in East Jerusalem were obliged to leave. Therefore a brutal wall divided the city, regardless of the interests of the city or its population. During this period both halves of the city were peripheral to their respective governments, Israeli and Jordanian, and neither side invested significantly in either West or East Jerusalem..

As a result of this neglect, both halves were collapsing by 1967 when the Israeli army conquered the Eastern part of the city. The Israelis initiated their control over the old city by destroying the Moroccan quarter, which had been housing 177 families. They converted it back into a Jewish quarter, even though only 13% of the property there was under Jewish ownership; the remaining 87% Jews had rented from Muslims and Christians. The population who had been living in this quarter between 1948 and 1967 were refugees that had been expelled from West Jerusalem. Although Israelis regained control over every house that had ever belonged to a Jew in the eastern part of the city, no Palestinian was ever allowed to return to his house in West Jerusalem.

Furthermore, in 1974-75 the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice decreed that non-Jews were no longer allowed to build in the Jewish quarter. Throughout Jerusalem's history its quarters had had fluid boundaries, reflecting mixed populations in different concentrations. The city had never before contained ghettos; it had been an open city with people coming, going and intermingling freely.  The Israeli establishment of a purely Jewish quarter was the first concrete segregation that the city experienced. This segregation was not mutual, however, for the Jews later made a point of establishing settlements in each of the remaining quarters of the city.

Outside the city walls, the Israelis have enacted a deliberate policy of surrounding Arab Jerusalem with a chain of Jewish settlements disconnecting the population of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. It is now impossible to drive out of East Jerusalem in any direction without encountering a Jewish settlement. Although there were no Jews residing in East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, according to Israeli statistics Jews now constitute a majority in East Jerusalem. This is the result of a deliberate policy to systematically alter the demography of East Jerusalem; settlers were brought in to occupy land that had been confiscated from Palestinians. Furthermore, Palestinians retained control of only 9% of the buildings in East Jerusalem, the remaining 90% of which were taken by the Israelis.

As a result of these policies, Palestinians now make up only 48% of the population of East Jerusalem, while Jews are a majority of 52%. In the whole of Jerusalem, east and west, however, Israeli policy has failed to maintain the Palestinian population level at 27%; they now comprise approximately one third of the entire city. Although the Israelis have officially declared that the city is united under their rule, the political, cultural and economic divisions still run deep, and the reality of the situation, as any outside observer will notice walking through the streets, is that Jerusalem remains two cities; one for the Israelis, and one for the Palestinians.

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