chapter 1 Introduction Jerusalem has been throughout its long history century and well into the second century bce the site of spiritual striving, the home of religious first by Ptolemaic Egypt and then by Seleucid institutions, and the focus of contention among Syria. An independent state, and subsequently and within various groups, all of which continue kingdom, of Judaea was established by Simeon today.1 It has been a great prize for three thou- Maccabeus in 142 bce, which lasted until Pompey sand years, built up, sacked, transformed, sacked stormed and sacked the city in 63 bce, and again, always surviving while changing and Crassus again sacked it in 54 bce. Herod became remaining the same remarkably inspiring center. a Roman client king in 37 bce, and set about According to the Biblical accounts, Jerusalem was building the second Temple, and enlarging the first a Jebusite center until taken or purchased by great earlier platform upon which stood King David as the new political and religious cen- Solomon’s temple and its successor to its pres- ter of his kingdom, an event usually dated to the ent size, with colossal masonry which still eleventh or tenth century bce, and the first remains in large part, spectacularly visible in Temple was then built by David’s son Solomon. the high southwestern corner. Direct Roman Jerusalem remained the capital of ancient Judah rule began in about 6 ce [henceforth all dates (and for a time also Israel) until the sack of the will be ce unless otherwise noted], and eventu- city by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonians in 587 ally led to the revolt of 66–70 that culminated in bce, the destruction of the first Temple, and the the sack of Jerusalem by Titus, and the looting removal of the city’s population. After the con- and destruction of the second Temple. Another quest of Babylon, the Persian empire estab- revolt ending in 135 was put down by the lished control, and as rather confusingly related Romans, and led to the expulsion of the Jews in the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the from the city, which became a provincial city, no Jewish population gradually returned over a longer a capital, known as Aelia Capitolina period of two centuries, rebuilding the Temple rather than Jerusalem. and re-establishing the Temple cult and religious In a non-violent revolution in the early fourth practices. century, in the time of Emperor Constantine, the The city remained under Persian rule until the city became an important Christian city, with later fourth century, when it became part of the many large structures built in various part of the Hellenistic world, being ruled for the third city under his patronage and that of his successors during the following centuries, but with the Temple mount apparently left largely untouched, 1 For recent history of the Haram and Dome of the Rock in left in ruins. Still not an important government current politics and religious thinking see Gershom center, the city thrived and grew as a site of Gorenberg, The End of Days. Fundamentalism and the Christian pilgrimage, especially to the Church of Struggle for the Temple Mount (Oxford, 2000). This is not a topic that I will be addressing in this book, which is con- the Holy Sepulchre and the relics of the Passion cerned with Jerusalem in the past, although I recognize of kept there, including the True Cross. The city was course that our understanding of the past conditions our taken and sacked again by the Sasanian Persian present and our future. army in 614, and the True Cross and other relics © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/978900430�075_00� 2 chapter 1 taken away.2 The extent of the destruction of the point out here at the outset that what is now city by the Sasanians, and the possibility of any regarded as the “old city” (Fig. 1.1) within its new building undertaken by them, is a difficult and remarkably intact walls, is primarily the work of controversial topic.3 The Persians were defeated, the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century. The and the city re-occupied by the Roman Empire troubled recent history of the city figures here only under the emperor Heraclius in 628, but the True insofar as some part of the reason for the difficulty Cross was not restored to it, but was instead taken of access to the early Islamic monuments over to the imperial capital at Constantinople. recent decades and still today.4 It seems that Within a few years of Heraclius’ triumphant hardly a week passes without a new book devoted recovery of Jerusalem, it was lost again to the to Jerusalem at some point in its history, most Roman empire and became part of the new Islamic commonly during the Temple period but often world. This certainly took place in the mid-630s, reaching to the present. Recently the city was even although the exact date is a subject of contentious made the subject of a biography!5 dispute, and the nature of this event is even more The area of Jerusalem commonly known as uncertain, and far more important for this study, either the Temple Mount or the Haram al-Sharif, as will become clear. Jerusalem in its first six rising over the southeastern corner of the walled decades under Islamic rule, until the end of the city (Fig. 1.2), scarcely needs introduction to the seventh century, is the subject of this book. The readers of this book, and it is difficult, at least for city’s later history, its bloody conquest by the first me, to imagine an area where systematic archae- Crusade in 1099 and the establishment as the capi- ological investigation is more desirable, more tal of a short-lived Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, likely to achieve startling results of the widest and its reconquest by Muslims in 1187, will figure possible interest, more troubling, and less likely only occasionally here, as possibly shedding some to happen in the foreseeable future. An enormous light on the history and especially the monuments scholarly literature already exists concerning the from the seventh century, but it is important to Haram al-Sharif, as it is known to Muslims and as it will be referred to here unless in reference to 2 For a recent study of this event and a review of the earlier the pre-Islamic period. That literature continues literature see Yuri Stoyanov, Defenders and Enemies of the to grow with astonishing rapidity, and of course True Cross. The Sasanian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614 and Byzantine Ideology of Anti-Persian Warfare, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische 4 For a recent overview of the city in the pre-Islamic period, see Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 819, Veröffentlichungen zur Zeidan Abdel-Kafi Kafafi and Robert Schick, Jerusalem before Iranistik 61 (Vienna, 2011). See especially here a discussion Islam, bar International series 1699 (Oxford, 2007). Most of of the contrast between the literary sources on the event, the articles deal with much earlier material, but especially which tell of widespread destruction and slaughter, and relevant to what follows here are Chapters 15, on the Roman archaeological evidence, which reveals scant if any evi- city of Aelia Capitolina (by Klaus Bieberstein), 16 on Byzantine dence of such a cataclysm. This study of the immediate Jerusalem (by Robert Schick), and 17 on Churches in pre-Islamic period should be a salutary reminder that the Jerusalem (by Michele Piccirillo). For an overview of the early written sources ought not to be accepted uncritically. Muslim period see H[amilton] A.R. Gibb, ed., Encyclopedia of 3 For a recent review of the archaeological situation see Jodi Islam (new [2nd] ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1954–2007), s.v. “al-Kuds.” Magness, “Archaeological Evidence for the Sasanid Persian For a recent overview of the Haram al-Sharif from its origins Invasion of Jerusalem,” in City of David. Studies of Ancient to the present see Oleg Grabar and Benjamin Z. Kedar, eds., Jerusalem. The Eleventh Annual Conference (Jerusalem, Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade 2010), pp. 41–61, and Gideon Avni, “The Sack of Jerusalem (Jerusalem and Austin tx, 2009). Both volumes offer exten- by the Sassanian Persians (614) – an Archaeological sive notes with earlier bibliography. Assessment,” Bulletin of the American School of Oriental 5 Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem. The Biography (New Research 357(2010), 35–48. York, 2011)..