Its Old City is divided into Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters
An area of only about 0.9 square kilometres inside the walls
Geography · Cities
Jerusalem
Israel and Palestine — in the Judaean Hills, between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea
A hill city with no river, holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and fought over more often than almost anywhere on earth. Its walled Old City, less than a square kilometre in area, contains the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock, and is divided into four quarters. Its status is disputed: Israel calls it its capital, while most states keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.
How to spot them
- ▸A walled old city of four quarters on a hill, with no river
- ▸Quiz clue: 'the Western Wall', 'the Dome of the Rock', 'the Holy Sepulchre', 'Temple Mount'
- ▸Renamed Aelia Capitolina by a Roman emperor after a revolt
- ▸Its present walls were built by an Ottoman sultan in the 1530s
Key facts
Hadrian refounded it as a Roman colony named for himself and for Jupiter after the Bar Kokhba revolt (c. AD 130)
Aelia Capitolina; Jews were barred from the city
Its gold-topped octagonal shrine of 691 is the oldest surviving Islamic monument (691)
The Dome of the Rock, built under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik
Its present walls, with gates including the Damascus, Jaffa and sealed Golden gates, were built by Suleiman the Magnificent (1537–1541)
Ottoman construction on older foundations
The keys to its holiest church have been held by two Muslim families for centuries to keep the peace between Christian sects
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the Nusaybah and Joudeh families, and the unmoved 'immovable ladder'
It was captured by the First Crusade in 1099 and retaken by Saladin in 1187 (1099, 1187)
It became the capital of a crusader kingdom in between
A retaining wall of Herod's temple platform is Judaism's most sacred place of prayer
The Western Wall, also once called the Wailing Wall
Quick-fire facts
- •It stands in the Judaean Hills at about 750 m, with no river; its ancient water source was the Gihon Spring
- •Earlier names include Jebus, Salem, Urusalim in the Amarna letters, and Aelia Capitolina under Rome
- •Hebrew Yerushalayim, Arabic al-Quds ('the Holy')
- •Israel's largest city by population, with around a million people
- •The Temple Mount, known in Arabic as the Haram al-Sharif, holds the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque
- •Hezekiah's Tunnel, cut around 700 BC, brought water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam
- •The Old City and its Walls were inscribed by UNESCO in 1981 and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1982
- •The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the Israel Museum, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls, are in the western city
- •'Jerusalem syndrome' is the name for religious delusions experienced by some visitors
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls
- Simon Sebag Montefiore — Jerusalem: The Biography