Jerusalem Book Summary - Jerusalem Book explained in key points

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Jerusalem summary

Name: Jerusalem
Rating: 4.1 (101 reviews)
Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Biography

4.1 (101 ratings)

39 mins

Topics

European History The Middle East

Table of Contents

Jerusalem
Summary of 16 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Understand how Jerusalem’s long and complex history affects us to the present day.

It is said that one man can change history, but can the same be said for a city? Well, if there was one city that could claim such a legacy, it would definitely be Jerusalem. Serving as a center for the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – it’s known as the Holy City, and continues to be a site of conflict to this very day.

So how did Jerusalem take on such significance to these three religions, as well as human history in general? To answer that question, these blinks journey through the millennia, beginning some 5,000 years ago, to understand the remarkable city of Jerusalem.

In these blinks, you'll find out

how the Temple of Solomon took on such importance for Jews and Judaism;
why Christians and Muslims also see Jerusalem as central to their religions; and
how foreign powers have influenced the Holy City throughout history.

Jerusalem was inhabited as early as 5000 BC, and the Israelites arrived 4000 years later.

The Bible, in addition to being a holy text, also offers an early history of Jerusalem. However, since the Bible contains a great deal of contradictory information, it’s not a reliable factual account in and of itself.

That’s why we have to use archaeology and other ancient texts to verify certain biblical events.

For instance, the origins of the name “Jerusalem” date back to ancient Egyptian texts that refer to “URSALIM,” a variation on the word “Salem,” meaning “god of the evening star.” And while widespread archaeological research in the area is restricted by the land’s holiness, excavations conducted in surrounding areas have found that people inhabited the region as early as 5000 BC.

From there, we know that the first texts attributed to a Jerusalemite date back to 1458 BC, when the Egyptian empire included the entirety of modern-day Palestine. Those early texts show that King Abdi-Heba requested that Egyptian archers defend the city.

Then, about a century later, the first Hebrews, or Israelites, arrived. These newcomers proved considerably different from the Egyptians as they worshiped a single God.

Moses would later help the Israelites escape from Egypt, but it was his successor, Joshua, who brought the Israelites to Jerusalem. They struggled for more than a century after their arrival there, from 1200 to 1050 BC. That’s when the Philistines defeated them in the Battle of Ebenezer and stole the Ark of the Covenant, their holiest object, which contained the remains of the Ten Commandments.

David was born after this battle, though, and he would go on to fight and defeat Goliath, the Philistines’ best warrior. David became a great leader, uniting the tribes of Israel to beat the Philistines and retake the Ark.

In the wake of this victory, Jerusalem grew – but not by too much.

The settlement called City of David was built just outside the old town, along with a palace, but Jerusalem remained quite small, especially when compared to the neighboring city of Babylon. It was also during this time that David planned to build the city’s first temple, although it wouldn’t be completed until after his death, by his son, Solomon.

Jerusalem’s first two temples offered a connection to God and played a central role in the development of Judaism.

The first of Jerusalem’s temples was built on a hill in the city known as the Temple Mount, sometime around 900 BC. A room was constructed in this sacred edifice called the “holy of holies,” which was solely intended for the Ark of the Covenant and God.

In fact, once the Ark was placed in the room, it’s said that God’s divine presence filled the room, speaking to Solomon and saying, “I will establish the throne for thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.” Because of this, Jerusalem, and Temple Mount in particular, was henceforth known as a site for divine communication.

Jesus was born in a tumultuous time, which led to his crucifixion and contentious resurrection.

The Israelites had returned to Jerusalem, but their sovereignty wouldn’t last. Around 66 BC, the Romans seized control of the region. After the death of the city’s longtime ruler Herod the Great, the resulting turmoil was inevitable.

Many people took Herod’s death as an indication of the coming apocalypse. They ranted and raved in the streets, calling themselves prophets or kings and were crucified by the Roman governor for their troublesome behavior.

The Roman emperor ordered an attack on Jerusalem, leading to the fall of the second temple.

James went on to lead his brother’s followers, but the transformation of this sect into the religion now known as Christianity would largely be led by the apostle Paul, a man who claimed that the resurrected Christ had told him to preach his message to the Gentiles.

Paul’s work to convert people into the first “Christians” meant he was eventually taken to the ruler of Rome, Nero, for judgment and beheading. But Paul’s fate wasn’t the worst of it.

The Romans converted to Christianity and began building their empire around it.

Following the fall of the second temple, Jerusalem was known as Aelia Capitolina and Jews were banned from the city. Some of the rubble from the temple was used to build the Damascus Gate in the wall of the Holy City, and a statue of Aphrodite was erected on the stone upon which Jesus was crucified.

Around 193 AD, as the Roman Empire was becoming less concerned with the Jews in the city, and increasingly concerned with the threat posed by the spread of Christianity, a small group of practicing Jews were finally allowed to hold services in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives.

Muhammad led his followers on a spiritual journey to Jerusalem.

The Roman Christian Empire was huge and ambitious – but succumbed to the classic mistake of spreading itself too thin, which left Jerusalem vulnerable to conquests.

The first of these conquests was led by the Persians in 614 AD, who were joined by 20,000 Jews to take the city. Following the battle, the Persian Shah Khusrau II granted Jews control over Jerusalem.

Attempts at Muslim unity were disrupted when the First Crusade ravaged Jerusalem.

The first Muslim dynasty brought an entirely new sense of freedom to Jerusalem.

Jews were once again allowed to pray on the Temple Mount and the early Muslim leader, Abd al-Malik, brought a sense of unity to both Shia and Sunni Muslims by having the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque built.

Muslim rebellion led to future crusades and a continual battle over Jerusalem.

The crusades may have dismantled Muslim power in Jerusalem, but by 1187 the city had changed hands once again, as a remarkable Muslim leader by the name of Saladin brought the city under his control. Starting out as the talented young nephew of a general, he rose to become Sultan and united an area that now comprises the territory of modern-day Egypt, Syria, Yemen and most of Iraq.

After defeating the Crusader armies in a desert battle outside of Jerusalem, Saladin captured Guy, the king of the city. He took him to Damascus and left the city under the protection of two knights.

An army of slave-soldiers retook Jerusalem, leading to the city’s reconstruction.

On July 11, 1244, 10,000 saber-rattling Tatar horsemen invaded Jerusalem and set the Holy Sepulchre ablaze, killing the monks and nuns who lived there and disemboweling the priests. This onslaught cleared the way for a new empire to rule the land: the Mamluks.

Their rise to power is quite extraordinary since the name “Mamluk” refers to a slave soldier – not someone you would necessarily expect to rule over an empire. Nevertheless, their leader Baibars the Panther did just that.

After the Mamluks, Jerusalem was taken over by the Ottomans and the city grew.

Before Mamluk rule came to an end, Jews were finally allowed to rebuild their synagogues, and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem grew to host a well-established population of about 1,000 people. In addition, the city was bringing in considerable revenue by placing exorbitant taxes on European Christian pilgrims.

By now, however, you’ve surely noticed that Jerusalem was rarely stable. Indeed, by 1516, the city had changed hands once again. This time, the conqueror was the Ottoman Empire.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, hopes for Jewish and Arab independence flourished.

The Ottomans held Jerusalem for centuries, but their grip loosened in the nineteenth century as unforeseen immigration changed the existing dynamics of the city.

Jews had been wrongly blamed for the assassination of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and, as a result, 2 million of them fled Russia between 1888 and 1914. Thousands of them went to Jerusalem.

Following World War I, a number of international treaties increased tensions in Jerusalem.

The Allies of World War I had made a strategic decision to support Zionism through the Balfour Declaration. Ironically though, if this resolution had been delayed by just a couple of days, it probably would have never been released.

The declaration was primarily designed to maintain the alliance with Russia, but the night before it was signed, the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded and Russia withdrew from the war entirely.

The decades after WWI were filled with escalating violence and increased extremism.

Tensions in Jerusalem were steadily rising, and in 1921, certain changes were made with the goal of rapid de-escalation. Winston Churchill, then UK Secretary of State for the Colonies, put Emir Faisal in charge of the Kingdom of Iraq and the notion of a “Greater Syria” was dropped.

Then, as Churchill tried to convince the residents of Jerusalem that the Jews had an ancient claim to the land, he went on to establish a two-tiered system of city leadership involving a mayor at one level, and a mufti – the highest Muslim legal authority – on the other. The position of mayor was filled by Ragheb Nashashibi and that of mufti by Haj Amin Husseini.

Escalating violence led to the Battle of Jerusalem in 1948.

While there was once a will to find a compromise in Jerusalem, this mindset rapidly vanished in the 1940s as both sides became more violent, and even the British became a target.

For example, take the King David Hotel, Jerusalem’s most luxurious accommodation at the time and the home of British military intelligence in the region. It was bombed by Israeli extremists on July 22, 1946. The incident claimed 91 lives and demolished the entire wing that housed British intelligence offices.

An angered Egyptian President spurred on a brief conflict that secured a decisive victory for Israel.

Even though the city was now split in half between Arabs and Jews, on December 11, 1949, Jerusalem was officially declared the capital of Israel. And for the first time since the Crusades, it had a king: Abdullah of Jordan.

It wasn’t long before coup attempts began, leading to Abdullah’s assassination in the al-Aqsa Mosque in 1951 and the crowning of his grandson Hussein. King Hussein was more willing to work with the Israelis and was better able to cope with the tyrants of the region, like Saddam Hussein.

The situation in Jerusalem remains a complicated standoff.

Upon breaking through the Lions’ Gate, Israeli soldiers secured access to the Western Wall for the first time in roughly 20 years. It was a poignant moment and many of them wept upon gazing at this holy site that most had only seen in photos.

The Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, then issued a statement saying, “to our Arab neighbors, Israel extends the hand of peace and to all peoples of all faiths we guarantee full freedom of worship.” It had taken 2,000 years for Jews to once again be able to visit the Temple Mount, but Dayan made it clear that the site would be controlled by the Islamic charitable fund, waqf, not by Israel.

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What is Jerusalem about?

Jerusalem (2011) tells the story of a city considered holy by three of the world’s major religions, and which is central to some of the greatest conflicts in human history. These blinks detail the history of Jerusalem, the near-constant battles it has inspired and the fundamental role it has played in shaping humankind over the course of millennia.

Best quote from Jerusalem

Some have doubted the existence of David, but in 1993, an ancient inscription providing historical verification of his life was found in northern Israel.

—Simon Sebag Montefiore

Who should read Jerusalem?

Anyone interested in theology, history and war
Jews, Christians and Muslims
Anyone interested in the crucial precursors to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East

About the Author

Simon Sebag-Montefiore is an award-winning British author of historical nonfiction. His titles, including Young Stalin, Catherine the Great and Potemkin and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar have received multiple awards and have attracted worldwide critical acclaim.

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