City of the Great King: Jerusalem from David to the Present

This volume brings to life the ancient drama of the world's holiest city on the eve of a new millenium. Some 3000 years ago King David captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites and made the city his capital. There Solomon built the Temple and the Jewish people found their spiritual centre. From its glory under the House of David to its emergence 1000 years later as the birthplace of Christianity, from its destruction by the Romans to its conquest by the forces of Islam and its Crusader and Ottoman periods, Jerusalem has been endlessly revered and warred over, celebrated and desecrated. Mining the evidence of this history, the authors gathered here conjure the Holy City as it has appeared in antique Hebrew texts; in the testimony of Jewish and Christian pilgrims and in art; in mediaeval Islamic literature and in Western 19th-century accounts; in maps and mosaics and architecture through the ages. Here is Jerusalem with the sun rising over the Mount of Olives to touch the crown of the Dome of the Rock and warm the walls of the Old City, with its foundations from the days of the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great, its seven gates and Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim quarters marked out by the Roman "decumanus" and the Byzantine "cardo". Above the Rambam Synagogue, established by Machmanides in 1267, looms the minaret of the 15th-century Sidi Umar Mosque. Remnants of the Nea Church erected by Justinian in 543 and of the Ayyubid tower from the 13th century stand within the Garden of Redemption, a memorial to the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis. Amid these marvels of geography and architecture, the authors evoke Jerusalem's spiritual history, the events and legends that have made the city the touching point between the divine and the earthly for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. They trace Jerusalem's fortunes as the City of David, as the site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, as the "Furthest Shrine" from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. Writing from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, the authors impart an immediacy to their depiction of the city in all its historic and religious complexity. An Armenian Jerusalemite once wrote that in the Holy City each person carries a mirror, but each holds it in only one direction. This book brings all these reflections together to create a living picture of Jerusalem not only in history but also in the those who call it home and those who revere it as a Holy City.