Jerusalem: The Biography

Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan during an Israeli cabinet meeting, 1967 (Micha Bar Am/Magnum Photos)

Israeli paratroopers advancing to Lions’ Gate, 7 June 1967 (Avner Offer)

Israeli soldiers praying at the Western Wall, 7 June 1967 (Cornell Capa/Magnum Photos)

The sheikh in charge of the mosques on the Temple Mount, 7 June 1967 (Micha Bar Am/Magnum Photos)

Israeli troops making their way towards al-Aqsa (Micha Bar Am/Magnum Photos)

Israeli paratroopers at the Dome of the Rock (Avner Offer)

FAMILY TREES

The Maccabees: Kings and High Priests, 160–37 BC

The Herods, 37 BC–AD 100

The Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic Caliphs and Dynasties

Crusader Kings of Jerusalem, 1099–1291

The Hashemite (Sherifian) Dynasty, 1916–

MAPS

The Kingdom of David and Solomon, and the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 1000–586 BC

The Empires, 586 BC–AD 1918

Jerusalem in the First Century AD and Jesus’ Passion

The Crusader Kingdoms, 1098–1489

Mamluk and Ottoman Jerusalem, 1260–1917

The Sykes-Picot Plan, 1916

Sherif Hussein’s Imperial Dream, 1916

UN Plan, 1947

Israel since 1948

Jerusalem: The Old City

Jerusalem in the Early Twentieth Century

PREFACE

The history of Jerusalem is the history of the world, but it is also the chronicle of an often penurious provincial town amid the Judaean hills. Jerusalem was once regarded as the centre of the world and today that is more true than ever: the city is the focus of the struggle between the Abrahamic religions, the shrine for increasingly popular Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism, the strategic battlefield of clashing civilizations, the front line between atheism and faith, the cynosure of secular fascination, the object of giddy conspiracism and internet myth-making, and the illuminated stage for the cameras of the world in the age of twenty-four-hour news. Religious, political and media interest feed on each other to make Jerusalem more intensely scrutinized today than ever before.

Jerusalem is the Holy City, yet it has always been a den of superstition, charlatanism and bigotry; the desire and prize of empires, yet of no strategic value; the cosmopolitan home of many sects, each of which believes the city belongs to them alone; a city of many names – yet each tradition is so sectarian it excludes any other. This is a place of such delicacy that it is described in Jewish sacred literature in the feminine – always a sensual, living woman, always a beauty, but sometimes a shameless harlot, sometimes a wounded princess whose lovers have forsaken her. Jerusalem is the house of the one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions and she is the only city to exist twice – in heaven and on earth: the peerless grace of the terrestrial is as nothing to the glories of the celestial. The very fact that Jerusalem is both terrestrial and celestial means that the city can exist anywhere: new Jerusalems have been founded all over the world and everyone has their own vision of Jerusalem. Prophets and patriarchs, Abraham, David, Jesus and Muhammad are said to have trodden these stones. The Abrahamic religions were born there and the world will also end there on the Day of Judgement. Jerusalem, sacred to the Peoples of the Book, is the city of the Book: the Bible is, in many ways, Jerusalem’s own chronicle and its readers, from the Jews and early Christians via the Muslim conquerors and the Crusaders to today’s American evangelists, have repeatedly altered her history to fulfil biblical prophecy.

When the Bible was translated into Greek then Latin and English, it became the universal book and it made Jerusalem the universal city. Every great king became a David, every special people were the new Israelites and every noble civilization a new Jerusalem, the city that belongs to no one and exists for everyone in their imagination. And this is the city’s tragedy as well as her magic: every dreamer of Jerusalem, every visitor in all ages from Jesus’ Apostles to Saladin’s soldiers, from Victorian pilgrims to today’s tourists and journalists, arrives with a vision of the authentic Jerusalem and then is bitterly disappointed by what they find, an ever-changing city that has thrived and shrunk, been rebuilt and destroyed many times. But since this is Jerusalem, property of all, only their image is the right one; the tainted, synthetic reality must be changed; everyone has the right to impose their ‘Jerusalem’ on Jerusalem – and, with sword and fire, they often have.