Weekly Meeting - Jerusalem - whose City? (David Lees)

Jerusalem - Whose City?

David Lees gave a fascinating and erudite talk on the history of Jerusalem spanning more than 5000 years.  His ability to pull out key events and weave them into an interesting timeline was notable; it would have been easy for this to have been a dry topic but David ensured that it definitely kept all the members focussed.

Archaeological evidence suggested that the city was founded near the Gihon Spring; water was essential for early settlements and the Canaanites built walls to protect this precious commodity in the 17th century BCE.  This was followed by King David’s sack of the city in 1000BCE and many years later King Solomon built the Temple of Solomon as well as other important structures.  A split of the lands followed and Jerusalem became the capital of the Kingdom of Judah while Shechem became the capital of the Kingdom of Israel.  Political instability was rife in the region and Jerusalem was subsequently sacked or occupied by Babylonians, the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire amongst others.  The Romans held sway from about 63BCE until 324AD. 

In the Middle Ages, the hadith assert that Muhammad  ascended to heaven in the Night Journey and the city was one of the Arab Caliphates first conquests.  The Dome of the Rock was built at the site of his ascent and the Al-Aqsa Mosque was also built in Jerusalem.  After a period of religious tolerance, the Caliphate entered a period of decline and the Crusader period followed before Jerusalem was recaptured by Saladin in 1187.  The Mamluks then took over the city for 3 - 400 years before it came part of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th – 19th centuries and enjoyed a period of renewal and peace under Suleiman the Magnificent when the Dome of the Rock was restored. 

Inevitably, that Empire also declined and the city had a heterogeneous make-up of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian populations because of its significance to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  The communities were located around their primary shrines and these formed the basis of the 4 quarters at the time of the British Mandate from 1917 – 48.  The decline of the Ottoman Empire had led the European Colonial powers to try and establish footholds in a historically significant city.  However, there was increasing tension between the Arab and Jewish communities as well as resentment of the British with increasing violence including the blowing up of the King David Hotel in 1946 by a Zionist group leading to the death of 91 civilians.  In 1947, the UN General Assembly approved a plan to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states; the city was ultimately divided between Jordan and Israel from 1948 – 67.  However, the Arab area of the city was captured by Israeli Defence Forces in the 1967 Six-Day War.

At the end of the meeting, we were all better informed and had greater insight into the complexities surrounding the city of Jerusalem.  It is a unique city with fundamental importance to 5 main monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bahai and Druze.   David probably summed it up well by concluding with the statistic that Jerusalem had been captured 44 times, attacked 52 times, besieged 23 times and destroyed twice.  There was no easy answer to his question ‘Jerusalem – Whose City’.           
                 
David Bruce