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The city of Jerusalem, located in modern-day Israel, is significant in a number of religious traditions, including the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Jerusalem, Jews and Judaism
Jerusalem in the Tanakh
Jerusalem has long been embedded into the religious consciousness of the Jewish people. Jews have always studied and personalized the struggle by King David to capture Jerusalem and his desire to build the Jewish temple there, as described in the Book of Samuel and the Book of Psalms. Many of King David's yearnings about Jerusalem have been adapted into popular prayers and songs.
Jerusalem and the Jewish religious calendar
Two major Jewish festivals observed by most Jews conclude with the words: "Next Year in Jerusalem" ("l'shanah haba'ah birushalayim") or "Next Year in the Rebuilt Jerusalem" ("l'shanah haba'ah birushalayim hab'nuyah"):
- At the conclusion of the Passover Seder on each night, participants break out into joyous, repetitious singing of "Next Year in Jerusalem".
- The holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, also concludes the synagogue service with the Affirmation of Faith, a final great blast of the Shofar and exclamation and singing of "Next Year in Jerusalem".
Each of these days has an associated holy text, the Hagada for Pesach (Passover) and the Machzor for Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), which stresses the desire to return to Jerusalem.
In Temple times, the three major festivals in Judaism, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot – the Shalosh Regalim, (the "three foot" festivals), were observed by all Jews making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as commanded by the Torah. In Jerusalem they would participate in festivities and ritual worship. After the destruction of the temple, the synagogue service was formulated as a substitute.
The Counting of the Omer is a verbal counting of each of the 49 days between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot. This mitzvah derives from the Torah commandment to count 49 days beginning from the day on which the Omer, a measure of barley, was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, up until the day before an offering of wheat was brought to the Temple on Shavuot.
The Temple in Jerusalem also played the main role during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur servies.
The eight day festival of Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration under Antiochus IV.
The Torah commands that once every seven years, Jews from all over the world, men, women and children, are to be assembled in the Temple courtyard in to hear select portions of the Torah read by the king. This is called Hakhel.
Today, with over a quarter million Jews practicing Orthodox Judaism living in Jerusalem, the Jewish festivals come to life in the Old and New Cities. The Western Wall, as well as synagogues throughout the city, host tens of thousands of fervent worshippers and celebrants.
The saddest day on the Jewish religious calendar is the Ninth of Av, when Jews traditionally spend the day mourning over the loss of their two Holy Temples and the destruction of Jerusalem. In accordance with Jewish mourning custom, hundreds of people come to the Western Wall, site of the former Temples, throughout the night and day of this 24-hour fast to sit on the ground and cry over the destruction.
Besides the Ninth of Av, two minor, dawn to dusk fast days also commemorate aspects of the destruction of Jerusalem. On the Tenth of Tevet, Jews mourn the time when Babylonia laid siege to the First Temple. On the Seventeenth of Tammuz, the mourning recalls the day that the army of Rome broke through the outer walls of the Second Temple.
The words used when Jews console any mourner during the customary Seven Days of Mourning are:
- "May God comfort you among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem"
Jerusalem and prayer
The daily prayers, recited by religious Jews three times a day over the last two thousand years, mention Jerusalem and its functions multiple times. Some examples from the siddur and the amidah are:
- (Addressing God): "And to Jerusalem, your city, may you return in compassion, and may you rest within it, as you have spoke. May you rebuild it soon in our days as an eternal structure, and may you speedily establish the throne of (King) David within it. Blessed are you God, the builder of Jerusalem...May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in compassion. Blessed are you God, who restores his presence to Zion."
Additionally when partaking of a daily meal with bread, the following is part of the required "Grace After Meals" which must be recited:
- "Have mercy Lord our God, on Israel your people, on Jerusalem your city, on Zion the resting place of your glory, on the monarchy of (King David) your anointed, and on the great and holy (Temple) house upon which your name is called...Rebuild Jerusalem, the holy city, soon in our days. Blessed are you God who rebuilds Jerusalem in his mercy, amen."
After partaking of a light meal, the thanksgiving blessing states:
- "...Have mercy, Lord, our God, on Israel, your people; on Jerusalem, your city; and on Zion, the resting place of your glory; upon your altar, and upon your temple. Rebuild Jerusalem, the city of holiness, speedily in our days. Bring us up into it and gladden us in its rebuilding and let us eat from its fruit and be satisfied with its goodness and bless you upon it in holiness and purity. For you, God, are good and do good to all and we thank you for the land and for the nourishment..."
When the Jews were exiled, first by the Babylonian Empire about 2,500 years ago and then by the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, the great rabbis and scholars of the mishnah and Talmud instituted the policy that each synagogue should replicate the original Jewish temple. Moreover, it should be constructed in such a way that all prayers in the siddur (prayer book) would be recited while facing Jerusalem, as that was where the ancient temple stood and that location was the only permissible place for the sacrificial offerings.
Thus synagogues in Europe face south, synagogues in North America face east, synagogues in countries to the south of Israel, such as Yemen or South Africa, face north, and synagogues in countries to the east of Israel, such as India or Thailand, face west. Even when a Jew prays privately, he faces Jerusalem, as mandated by Jewish law compiled by the rabbis in the Shulchan Aruch. In Jerusalem itself, he should face the direction of the Western Wall in the Old City, and when he is standing at the Western Wall, he turns slightly to the left to face the location of the Holy of Holies (which is currently covered by the Dome of the Rock. (Compare qibla, liturgical east.)
Customs in remembrance of Jerusalem
In some circles, a tiny amount of ash is touched to the forehead of a Jewish groom before he goes to stand beneath the bridal canopy. This symbolically reminds him not to allow his own rejoicing to be "greater" than the ongoing need to recall Jerusalem's destruction. The well-known custom of the groom breaking a glass with the heel of his shoe after the wedding ceremony is also related to the subject of mourning for Jerusalem. The groom recites the sentence from Psalms, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." (Psalms 137:5). The translation given is from the KJV, the italicized words are not present in the Hebrew. All traditional Jewish commentators, however, agree with this translation; it was common in Biblical Hebrew to not explicitly express any possible negative consequence.
Another ancient custom is to leave a patch of interior wall opposite the door to one's home unpainted, as a remembrance of the destruction (zecher lechurban), of the Temples and city of Jerusalem.
Western Wall in Jerusalem
The Western Wall, in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, is generally considered to be the only remains of the Second Temple from the era of the Roman conquests. There are said to be esoteric texts in Midrash that mention God's promise to keep this one remnant of the outer temple wall standing as a memorial and reminder of the past. Hence the significance of the "Western Wall" (kotel hama'aravi) - also called the "Wailing Wall" by non-Jews, attesting to their perception of Jews' propensity to cry whenever they came before it.
Rabbis and Jerusalem
The Talmud records that the rabbinical leader Yohanan ben Zakkai (c. 70 C.E.) urged a peaceful surrender, in order to save Jerusalem from destruction, but was not heeded as the city was under the control of the Zealots. An early expression of the Jewish desire to "return to Zion" is the journey of Yehuda Halevi, who died in about 1140. Jewish legend relates that as he came near Jerusalem, overpowered by the sight of the Holy City, he sang his most beautiful elegy, the celebrated "Zionide" Tzion ha-lo Tish'ali and that at that instant he was ridden down and killed by an Arab.
He was followed by Nahmanides, the Ramban, who, in 1267 emigrated to the land of Israel, and came for a short stay to live in Jerusalem. He wrote that he found barely ten Jews, as it had been desolated by the Crusades, nevertheless, together they built a synagogue that is the oldest that still stands to this day, known as the "Ramban Synagogue".
Both Elijah ben Solomon (d. 1797) known as the Vilna Gaon, and Israel ben Eliezer (d. 1760) known as the Ba'al Shem Tov instructed and sent small successive waves of their disciples to settle in Jerusalem then under Turkish Ottoman rule. They created a Jewish religious infrastructure that remains the core of the Haredi Jewish community in Jerusalem to this day.
The British Mandate of Palestine authorities created the new offices of "Chief Rabbi" in 1921 for both Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews with central offices in Jerusalem. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (d. 1935) moved to Jerusalem to set up this office, associated with the "Religious Zionist" Mafdal group, becoming the first modern Chief Rabbi together with Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir. The official structure housing the Chief Rabbinate was completed in 1958 and is known as Heichal Shlomo.
In contrast, the Chareidi Jews of Jerusalem formed the anti-Zionist Edah HaChareidis, an umbrella organization for all Chareidi Jews, who were not Zionists and fiercely opposed the activities of the (Religious) Zionist movement. The first Chief Rabbi of the Edah HaChareidis was Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld. The Edah has both Ashkenazi and Sefardi branches, though the Ashkenazi branch is the more famous one. Several groups formerly aligned with the Edah gradually broke away from it; these include the Chassidic movements Belz and Ger.
Jerusalem is also home to a number of the world's largest yeshivos (Talmudical and Rabbinical schools), and has become the undisputed capital of Jewish scholarly, religious and spiritual life for most of world Jewry.
Jerusalem in the Bible
Jerusalem appears in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) 669 times while Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) appears 154 times. Jerusalem is not written in the Torah but in later parts of the Tanakh (or Old Testament), a text sacred to both Judaism and Christianity. In Judaism it is considered the Written Law, the basis for the Oral Law (Mishnah, Talmud and Shulkhan Arukh) studied, practiced and treasured by Jews and Judaism for three millennia (list of Jewish prayers and blessings). The Talmud elaborates in great depth the Jewish connection with the city. In Christianity, it is considered as the account of God's relationship with His chosen people - the original covenant - and the essential prelude to the events narrated in the New Testament, including both universal commandments (eg the Ten Commandments) and obsolete or Judaism-specific ones.
For example, the book of Psalms, which has been frequently recited and memorized by Jews and Christians for centuries, says: (etc.)
- "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." (Psalms 137:1)
- "For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning . If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof; O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that repayeth thee as thou hast served us." (Psalms 137:3-8) (King James Version, with italics for words not in the original Hebrew)
- "O God, the nations have entered into your inheritance, they have defiled the sanctuary of your holiness, they have turned Jerusalem into heaps of rubble...they have shed their blood like water round Jerusalem..." (Psalms 79:1-3);
- "...O Jerusalem, the built up Jerusalem is like a city that is united together...Pray for the peace of Jerusalem..." (Psalms 122:2-6);
- "Jerusalem is surrounded by mountains as God surrounds his people forever" (Psalms 125:3);
- "The builder of Jerusalem is God, the outcast of Israel he will gather in...Praise God O Jerusalem, laud your God O Zion." (Psalms 147:2-12)
Jerusalem in Christianity
For Christians, Jerusalem's place in the life of Jesus gives it great importance, in addition to its place in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, as described above.
Jerusalem is the place where Jesus was brought as a child, to be 'presented' at the Temple (Luke 2:22) and to attend festivals (Luke 2:41). According to the Gospels, Jesus preached and healed in Jerusalem, especially in the Temple courts. There is also an account of Jesus' 'cleansing' of the Temple, chasing various traders out of the sacred precincts (Mark 11:15). At the end of each of the Gospels, there are accounts of Jesus' Last Supper in an 'upper room' in Jerusalem, his arrest in Gethsemane, his trial, his crucifixion at Golgotha, his burial nearby and his resurrection and ascension.
Tradition holds that the place of the Last Supper is the Cenacle, on the second floor of a building on Mount Zion where David's Tomb is on the first floor. The place of Jesus' anguished prayer and betrayal, Gethsemane, is probably somewhere near the Church of All Nations on the Mount of Olives. Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate may have taken place at the Antonia Fortress, to the north of the Temple area. Popularly, the exterior pavement where the trial was conducted is beneath the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. Other Christians believe that Pilate tried Jesus at Herod's Palace on Mount Zion.
The Via Dolorosa, or way of suffering, is the traditional route to Golgotha, the place of crucifixion, and is an important pilgrimage. The route ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (perhaps the most holy place for Christians). The Holy Sepulchre is traditionally believed to be the location of Golgotha and Jesus' nearby tomb. The original church was built in 336 by Constantine I. The Garden Tomb is a popular pilgrimage site near the Damascus Gate. It was suggested by Charles George Gordon that this site, rather than the Holy Sepulchre, is the true place of Golgotha.
The Acts of the Apostles and Pauline Epistles show James the Just, the brother of Jesus, as leader of the early Jerusalem church. He and his successors were the focus for Jewish Christians until the destruction of the city by Emperor Hadrian in 135. The exclusion of Jews from the new city of Aelia meant that gentile bishops were appointed under the authority of the Metropolitans of Caesarea and, ultimately, the Patriarchs of Antioch. Emperor Constantine I and his mother, Helena, endowed Jerusalem with churches and shrines, making it the foremost centre of Christian pilgrimage. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 raised the bishop of Jerusalem to the rank of patriarch, fifth in rank behind Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. However, Byzantine politics meant that Jerusalem simply passed from the Syrian jurisdiction of Antioch to the Greek authorities in Constantinople. For centuries, Greek clergy dominated the Jerusalem church.
In 638, Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, handed over the keys of the city to Calif Umar's Muslim forces. The Muslim authorities in Jerusalem were not kind to their Christian subjects, forcing them to live a life of "discrimination, servitude and humiliation." The mistreatment of Christians would only worsen as the armies of the First Crusade approached Jerusalem. Fearing that the Eastern Christians had been conspiring with approaching crusaders, the Muslim authorities of Jerusalem massacred much of the cities Christian population, seeing the fortunate escape the city in terror.
On 15 July 1099, the army of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem. Although Eastern Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem were not slaughtered like their Islamic and Jewish counterparts they were, however, exiled from the city, as their new Latin rulers believed they were conspiring with the Muslims. Jerusalem became the capital of a 'Latin Kingdom' with a Latin church and a Latin Patriarch, all under the authority of the Pope. The city's first Latin ruler was Godfrey de Bouillon, who was elected in 1099. Throughout his short reign Godfrey struggled to increase the population of Jerusalem until his death in 1100. In 1100 Godfrey was succeeded by his brother Baldwin I who, unlike Godfrey, took the title of King of Jerusalem. With Jerusalem's population dwindling Baldwin I, as early as 1115, offered the Christians of Transjordan a section of Jerusalem. These Christians were often the target of Muslim aggression and therefore promptly accepted Baldwin's proposal. In 1187, when Saladin captured the city, the Holy Sepulchre and many other churches were returned to the care of Eastern Christians.
From the 17th to the 19th century, various Catholic European nations petitioned the Ottoman Empire for Catholic control of the 'holy places'. The Franciscans are the traditional Catholic custodians of the holy places. Control swung back and forth between the western and eastern churches throughout this period. Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid I (1839-1861), perhaps out of despair, published a firman that laid out in detail the exact rights and responsibility of each community at the Holy Sepulchre. This document became known as the Status Quo, and is still the basis for the complex protocol of the shrine. The Status Quo was upheld by the British Mandate and Jordan. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and the passing of the Old City into Israeli hands, the Knesset passed a law protecting the holy places. Five Christian communities currently have rights in the Holy Sepulchre: the Greek Patriarchate, Latins (Western Rite Roman Catholics), Armenians, Copts and Syriac Orthodox.
The 'New Jerusalem' is the focus of a vision at the end of the Book of Revelation. It is the perfect city where God lives among his people.
Jerusalem in Islam
The city of Jerusalem is considered sacred in th eyes of Islam. The al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is considered the third holiest sites in Islam, after mosques of Mecca and Medina. Regarding the mosque, the Quran states,
- سبحان الذي أسرى بعبده ليلاً من المسجد الحرام إلى المسجد الأقصى الذي باركنا حوله
- "Glory be to Him Who made His servant (Muhammad) to go on a night from the Sacred Mosque to the remote mosque of which We have blessed the precincts, so that We may show to him some of Our signs; surely He is the Hearing, the Seeing." (17:1)
According to the vast majority of Islamic scholars, the "Sacred Mosque" referred to is the al-Aqsa mosque of Jerusalem. The reasons that Muslims present for the holiness of the city are:
- Jerusalem was the first Qiblah for the early Muslim community, before Mecca.
- Muhammad is believed to have been taken by the flying steed Buraq to visit Jerusalem, where he prayed, and then to visit heaven, in a single night in the year 620.
- Jerusalem is a site to which the encouraged pilgrimage in Islam.
- It is strongly associated with people regarded as Prophets of Islam - in particular, David, Solomon, and Jesus.
The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (a branch of the OIC) states that the al-Aqsa "holds a prominent place in the hearts and minds of all Muslims" however, it is the location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered by many Muslims to be the third holiest site. Also in particular:
Many Muslims celebrate the anniversary of this event, the Isra and Miraj, on Rajab 27 with dhikr, gatherings and feasting, although Salafis (including Wahhabis) take the position that no regular festivals are permissible except the two Eids.
According to sound hadith (sayings of Muhammad) transmitted by Bukhari and others (and thus generally accepted by Sunnis, but not necessarily Shia) Jerusalem was the site of the second mosque built on earth, forty years after Mecca (), and is one of only three cities to which pilgrimage is permissible, along with Mecca and Medina (, , , .) Its conquest is described as one of the signs of the approach of the Hour (that is, the Day of Judgement). Some hadith also specify Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) as the place where all mankind will be gathered on the Day of Judgement.
The earliest dated stone inscriptions containing verses from the Qur'an appear to be Abd al-Malik's in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, from 72 AH (692 CE).
After the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, parts of the city soon took on a Muslim character. According to Muslim historians, the city insisted on surrendering to the Caliph directly rather than to any general, and he signed a pact with its Christian inhabitants, the Covenant of Umar. He was horrified to find the Temple Mount - known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary - being used as a rubbish dump, and ordered that it be cleaned up and prayed there. However, when the Bishop invited him to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he refused, lest he create a precedent for its use as a mosque. He visited the church, but when his companions were overcome by emotion and wished to pray he instead ordered them to recite the fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur'an. According to some Muslim historians, he also built a crude mosque on the Temple Mount, which was later replaced by Abd al-Malik. The Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Confessor (751-818) gives a somewhat different picture of this event, claiming that Umar "began to restore the Temple at Jerusalem" with encouragement from local Jews.
In 688 the Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock on the Haram al-Sharif; in 728 the cupola over the Al-Aqsa Mosque was erected, the same being restored in 758-775 by Al-Mahdi. In 831 Al-Ma'mun restored the Dome of the Rock and built the octagonal wall. During the Qarmatian rule of the Hejaz in the middle of the 10th century CE, Jerusalem was the destination for the hajj. In 1016 the Dome was partly destroyed by earthquakes; but it was repaired in 1022.
Controversial claim
In the context of proposals to radically reinterpret early Islamic history, certain Orientalists, such as John Wansbrough, have proposed that Muhammad's night journey to Jerusalem - the Isra and Miraj, one of the principal foundations of Jerusalem's sanctity in Islam - was a later invention intended to account for an otherwise obscure verse. Others, such as Patricia Crone, have proposed that Jerusalem was in fact the original Islamic holy city, and that the sanctity of Mecca and Medina was a later innovation. Neither of these controversial theories enjoys wide acceptance, least of all among Muslims.
Some authorities have questioned the role of Jerusalem in Islam. An example of this is neoconservative columnist Daniel Pipes, who states that, due to the lack of mention of Jerusalem in the Quran and the possible late adoption of the concept of Jerusalem as the 'third holiest shrine', the Muslim claim to Jerusalem is without merit.
The significance of Jerusalem in Islam has been questioned and debated for centuries by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The Iraqi historian Abdul Aziz Duri and many others find "political reasons" behind it. It is pointed out and argued that :
- Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Qur'an, let alone the story of Muhammad's ascension to heaven from there
- There is no account of Muhammad re-visiting Jerusalem after his first trip
- The first extant inscriptions of Qur'an 17:1 in Jerusalem date only since the 11th century
- The title of Jerusalem being the third holiest was not commonly used until the early 20th century
- Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya, a close relative of the Prophet Muhammad, is quoted denigrating the notion that the prophet ever set foot on the Rock in Jerusalem; "these damned Syrians (Umayyads) pretend that God put His foot on the Rock in Jerusalem, though one person ever put his foot on the rock, namely Abraham."
- Muhammad's initial choosing of Jerusalem for the direction of prayer was most likely a tactic to win Jewish converts. "He chose the Holy House in Jerusalem in order that the People of the Book would be conciliated," notes At-Tabari, an early Muslim commentator on the Qur'an, "and the Jews were glad." Modern historians, such as William Montgomery Watt, a leading biographer of Muhammad, interprets the prophet's "far-reaching concessions to Jewish feeling" in the light of two motives, one of which was "the desire for a reconciliation with the Jews."
- The quotation from the Qur'an: "Glory to He who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the furthest mosque. (Subhana allathina asra bi-‘abdihi laylatan min al-masjidi al-harami ila al-masjidi al-aqsa.)" is particularly controversial:
- The "furthest mosque" was apparently identified with places inside Arabia: either Medina or a town called Ji‘rana, about ten miles from Mecca, which the Prophet visited in 630
- Elsewhere in the Qur'an (30:1), Palestine is called "the closest land" (adna al-ard)
- Palestine had not yet been conquered by the Muslims and did not contain any mosques
- The earliest Muslim accounts of Jerusalem, such as the description of Caliph Umar's reported visit to the city just after the Muslims conquest in 638, still did not identify the Temple Mount with the "furthest mosque" described in the Qur'an
- The Qur'anic inscriptions that make up a 240-meter mosaic frieze inside the Dome of the Rock do not include Qur'an 17:1 and the story of the Night Journey, suggesting that even as late as 692 the idea of Jerusalem as the lift-off for the Night Journey had not yet been established
- The Muslim Umayyads built a second mosque in Jerusalem during their occupation calling it Furthest Mosque (al-masjid al-aqsa, Al-Aqsa Mosque) in 715, nearly a century after the Qur'an was received. Palestinian historian A. L. Tibawi writes it "gave reality to the figurative name used in the Koran."
- Muhammad Abu Zayd wrote a book in Egypt in 1930 that had been considered by some to be too unorthodox that it was withdrawn from circulation. In it, among many other points, he dismissed the notion of the Prophet's heavenly journey via Jerusalem, claiming that the Qur'anic rendition actually refers to his Hijra from Mecca to Medina; "the more remote mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa) thus had nothing to do with Jerusalem, but was in fact the mosque in Medina.
- Jerusalem has gone through different periods in history of religious neglect by Muslims
- The city was described in the tenth-century "a provincial town attached to Ramla," an insignificant town serving as the administrative capital city of the Syrian province of Palestine under the Abbasid Arab Muslim empire.
- Muslims had been competing with the Christians in various wars, conquests, and crusades, which could have prompted Muslim leaders to make Jerusalem more central to Islam. Some leaders tried to essentially connect the territories by (unsuccessfully) attempting to move the pilgrimage (hajj) from Mecca to Jerusalem.
- Only as the Christian Crusader effort to retake Jerusalem arose in about 1150, did Muslim political leaders seek a "propaganda campaign" to rouse jihad sentiments through heightening Islamic emotions about Jerusalem to justify their war. Volumes of "virtues of Jerusalem" (hadiths, books, poetry), which never appeared earlier than the Crusade, began to be distributed, some containing newly-written legends of Muhammad's words.
- al-Kamil, the Muslim ruler of Egypt and Palestine, traded Jerusalem and its holy sites to the European Christians for leaving Egypt and a peace treaty
- In negotiations with Sharif Hussein of Mecca in 1915-16 over the terms of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans, the British government decided not to include Jerusalem in territories to be assigned to the Arabs because, as the chief British negotiator, Henry McMahon, put it, "there was no place … of sufficient importance … further south" of Damascus "to which the Arabs attached vital importance."
- Israeli scholar Itzhak Hasson expands on Abdul Aziz Duri's findings: "The construction of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, the rituals instituted by the Umayyads on the Temple Mount and the dissemination of Islamic-oriented Traditions regarding the sanctity of the site, all point to the political motives which underlay the glorification of Jerusalem among the Muslims."
- Jerusalem has never been requested by Muslims to be the capital city of any political entity until recent decades
Jerusalem in Mandaeism
In Mandaeism (an ancient Gnostic-like non-Christian religion, once significant in numbers but now a small group found primarily in parts of southern Iran and Iraq) Jerusalem is considered a city of wickedness, dedicated to the god of Judaism, whom they call Adunay (Adonai) or Yurba (possibly YHWH) and consider to be an evil spirit. According to Sidra d-Yahia 54, Jerusalem is "the stronghold that Adunay built ... brought to it falsehood in plenty, and it meant persecution against my tarmidia (Manda d-Hiia's disciples)." In the Ginza Rba (15.11), it is said to have come into being as a result of the incestuous union of the seven planets with their evil mother Ruha d-Qudsha, who "left lewdness, perversion, and fornication in it. They said: 'Whoever lives in the city of Jerusalem will not mention the name of God.'" (Elsewhere, however, it more prosaically says the city was built by Solomon.) However, Yahya (John the Baptist), an important figure in the religion, is said to have been born there.
Later on, in the days of Pontius Pilate, it states that the good spirit Anush Utra went there, healed the sick and worked miracles, and made converts, confronting Jesus (whom they consider a false prophet) and refuting his arguments; but its inhabitants opposed him and persecuted the converts, 365 of whom were killed (GR 15.11) or forced out (GR 2.1.) Miriai, a Jewish or Chaldean princess, was converted, and fled to the shores of the Euphrates. This angered Anush Utra, who received permission from God to destroy Jerusalem and the temple, smash the "seven columns," and slay the Jews who lived there, after bringing out the remaining "believers." Elsewhere, the Ginza Rba (18) prophesises that Jerusalem "must flourish for a thousand years, remain a thousand years destroyed, and then the entire Tibil (material world) will be destroyed."
In the Abahatan Qadmaiia prayer, repeated during baptism of the dead, the Mandaeans invoke blessings upon the 365 who they believe were killed or forced out of Jerusalem:
- "Those 365 priests who came forth from the city of Jerusalem, the city of this masiqta and dukhrana, a forgiveness of sins may there be for them."
Notes
- Prawer, Joshua. "The Settlement of the Latins in Jerusalem," Speculum 27.4 (1952): 491.
- Ibid, 492.
- Ibid, 493.
- Riley-Smith, Jonathan. "The Motives of the Earliest Crusaders and the Settlment of Latin Palestine." The English Historical Review 98.398 (1983): 724.
- Prawer, Joshua. "The Settlement of the Latins in Jerusalem," Speculum 27.4 (1952): 496.
- Ali (1991), p. 58
- Ali (1991), p.772
References
- Ali, Abdullah Yusuf (1991). The Holy Quran. Medina: King Fahd Holy Qur-an Printing Complex.
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External links
Christians: We'll fight for Israel Ynetnews. 2006-09-27
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