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Jerusalem

Also Known As Jerusalemite
Israel

Jerusalem is a walled hill city in the Judean highlands holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, the setting of the First and Second Temples, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Muhammad's Night Journey. Fought over and rebuilt for three thousand years, its Old City still holds four adjoining quarters, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian, each home to living communities and to shrines no other city holds all three of at once.

Facts
Status
UNESCO World Heritage
Inscribed on the World Heritage List and on the List in Danger 1
The Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1981 on the nomination of Jordan, not Israel, and has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1982
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Armenian and Latin are all living liturgical or communal languages of the city's resident religious communities 1
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war and regards the whole city as its capital; that annexation is not recognized under international law, most states maintain embassies elsewhere, and sovereignty over the city remains the central unresolved issue in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations 1
Attributions
Tradition
Judaism, Christianity and Islam 1
Origins
Founded
A Canaanite (Jebusite) hill town on the Ophel ridge above the Gihon spring, named in the fourteenth century BCE Amarna letters; tradition holds King David captured it and made it his capital around 1000 BCE 1
Site
Pilgrimage
Major pilgrimage destination today 1
A major pilgrimage destination for all three Abrahamic faiths, drawn to the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Haram al-Sharif alike
Learn More
A City Conquered and Rebuilt

Jerusalem's recorded history begins as a Bronze Age Canaanite hill town, mentioned in the fourteenth century BCE Amarna letters, standing on a narrow ridge above the Gihon spring, its one reliable water source. Biblical tradition holds that King David captured the Jebusite stronghold around 1000 BCE and made it his capital, and that his son Solomon built the First Temple on the ridge above it, the Temple Mount, to house the Ark of the Covenant. Babylon destroyed that temple in 586 BCE and deported much of the population; a Second Temple rose after the return from exile and stood, rebuilt on a vastly expanded platform by Herod the Great, until Rome destroyed it in 70 CE while crushing the Jewish revolt the historian Josephus records in detail.

The city was rebuilt as the pagan colony Aelia Capitolina after a further Jewish revolt in 135 CE, then reclaimed as a Christian holy city once Constantine's mother Helena identified the site of the crucifixion and burial around 325 CE, marked ever since by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Muslim armies took the city in 638 CE; the Dome of the Rock, completed in 691 CE on the Temple Mount, marks the traditional site of Muhammad's night journey. Crusaders held Jerusalem from 1099 to 1187, after which Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman rule followed in turn until the British Mandate began in 1917. The 1948 and 1967 wars divided and then reunited the city under Israeli control, an annexation of the eastern half not recognized under international law and still the unresolved center of the city's modern politics, with Montefiore's Jerusalem: The Biography tracing the full arc from Jebusite ridge to contested capital.

Four Quarters, Three Faiths

Within its sixteenth century Ottoman walls, the Old City of Jerusalem, barely a square kilometer, is conventionally divided into four quarters: Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian. The division is more a matter of living neighborhood than of tidy border, since the Christian and Muslim quarters in particular interleave shrines belonging to communities that have prayed within a few hundred meters of one another for centuries. The Jewish Quarter, rebuilt after 1967 following its loss in 1948, holds the Western Wall, the retaining wall of Herod's Temple platform and Judaism's holiest accessible prayer site. The Armenian Quarter, the smallest, has hosted a continuous Armenian Christian presence since at least the fourth century, older than the Armenian Apostolic Church's own formal separation from Byzantine Christianity.

The Christian Quarter centers on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, jointly and often contentiously administered under a nineteenth century Ottoman arrangement, the Status Quo, by Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian Apostolic and other communities down to the precise placement of a single ladder left untouched on a window ledge for generations. The Muslim Quarter, the largest, surrounds the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount platform holding the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina. Beyond the walls, the Mount of Olives holds an ancient Jewish cemetery, the Garden of Gethsemane and Christian churches marking Jesus's final days, while modern Jerusalem has grown into a religiously mixed city of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and small Baha'i and Druze communities whose daily coexistence and periodic conflict both continue in the same streets.

Connections

Associated With

This source names Jerusalem directly: "including Bana Ba Isiraele, Hosana and Jerusalem, alongside Sione Moria Thabakgone, which names the church's holy city of Moria directly."

Source The Best Of Z.C.C. (Apple Music and Spotify release listing, 2017)No individual author or compiler is credited; the copyright line on both platforms reads "TopCrew Music under exclusive license to Next Music."

This source names Jerusalem directly: "in 1990 in the Peace Forest, Jerusalem, including the ossuary inscribed with the name Caiaphas."

Source The Caiaphas Tomb in North Talpiyot, JerusalemZvi Greenhut

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the Christian Quarter, marks the traditional site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

Rome destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE while suppressing the First Jewish-Roman War.

Source Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works, and Their ImportancePer Bilde

John's own narrative places the miracle near Passover: John 6:4 notes the feast was close at hand as the crowd gathered around Jesus, tying the episode to the same pilgrimage calendar that draws people toward Jerusalem and to the Eucharistic overtones the discourse that follows develops. The feeding itself takes place beside the Sea of Galilee, not in Jerusalem; what this edge records is that calendrical and thematic link, not a claim about where the event physically happened.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

The First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, beginning nearly a century of Crusader rule.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

The First Temple, built by Solomon on the ridge above the City of David, stood on what became the Temple Mount.

Source Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works, and Their ImportancePer Bilde

This source names Jerusalem directly: "scholar and archaeologist based in Jerusalem for decades, and this guide works from direct, sustained engagement with the excavated remains at each site it covers across Israel, Palestine and the..."

Source The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological GuideJerome Murphy-O'Connor

This source names Jerusalem directly: "First Crusade's July 1099 massacre at Jerusalem, weighing each source's reliability rather than repeating the highest surviving figure."

Source The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the CrusadesBenjamin Z. Kedar

This source names Jerusalem directly: "GAFCON's own page presenting the Jerusalem Declaration, issued at the Global Anglican Future Conference held in Jerusalem from 22 to 29 June 2008."

Source The Jerusalem Statement (GAFCON)

This source names Jerusalem directly: "own account of the aftermath of the Jerusalem Temple's destruction in 70 CE, including his description of the triumph of Vespasian and Titus in Rome, in which the golden table and the menorah of the..."

Source The Jewish War (Bellum Judaicum), Book VIIFlavius Josephus (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library)

The Night Journey and Ascension of Muhammad is traditionally located at Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

The Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif, the walled platform holding the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, is the religious center of the Old City.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

This source names Jerusalem directly: "the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, drawing on Biddle's own detailed survey of the structure, its Crusader era and later reconstructions, and the surviving physical and documentary..."

Source The Tomb of ChristMartin Biddle

This source names Jerusalem directly: "fund a waqf complex she had built in Jerusalem from 1552: a mosque, a fifty five room pilgrim hospice, an inn for travelers, and a public soup kitchen intended to feed the city's poor twice a day."

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

The Western Wall, the retaining wall of Herod's Temple platform, is Judaism's holiest accessible prayer site, in the Jewish Quarter.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Anglican Future Conference held in Jerusalem the year before, whose Jerusalem Declaration called for a new orthodox province in North America."

Source Anglican Church in North America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jerusalem directly: "role regarding Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem."

Source Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of JordanState of Israel and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

The Dome of the Rock was completed at Jerusalem in 691 or 692, and its inscriptions address Christians directly on the status of Jesus.

Source The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh CenturyHugh Kennedy

Showing 51 to 69 of 69 in Associated With, page 2 of 2.

Contained In

Israel, Countries

Jerusalem lies within the modern state of Israel; sovereignty over its eastern half is contested and not internationally recognized as annexed.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

Sacred To

Jerusalem is the site of the crucifixion, burial and traditional resurrection of Jesus.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Islam, Religions

Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif is the traditional site of Muhammad's Night Journey and Ascension, Islam's third holiest site.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Judaism, Religions

Jerusalem is the site of the First and Second Temples and the direction of Jewish prayer worldwide.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore

Spread Events Here

Source Hanukkah (Bible Odyssey, Society of Biblical Literature)
Sources
1. Jerusalem: The Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works, and Their Importance
Per Bilde, JSOT Press, 1988
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