Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital city; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, while Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim is widely recognised internationally.
Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period Jerusalem was named as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 10th century BCE, and by the 9th century BCE the city had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538 the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today those walls define the Old City, which since the 19th century has been divided into four quarters—the Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Since 1860 Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In Jerusalem had a population of. In 2022 60% were Jews and almost 40% were Palestinians. In 2020 the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100, Muslims 353,800, Christians 16,300 and 10,800 unclassified.
According to the Hebrew Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel, and his son King Solomon commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Israelites branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centred on El/Yahweh. These foundational events assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians adopted as the Old Testament, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection there. Meanwhile, in Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. The city was the first standard direction for Muslim prayers, and in Islamic tradition, Muhammad made his Night Journey there in 621, ascending to heaven where he spoke to God, per the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only, the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
At present, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, Jerusalem was to be "established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime" administered by the United Nations. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas incorporated into Israel, while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was occupied and annexed by Jordan. Israel occupied East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into the city's municipality, together with additional surrounding territory. One of Israel's Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the country's undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the prime minister and president, and the Supreme Court. The international community rejects the annexation as illegal and regards East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel.
Etymology and names
Etymology
The name "Jerusalem" is variously etymologised to mean "foundation of the pagan god Shalem"; the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city.Shalim or Shalem was the name of the god of dusk in the Canaanite religion, whose name is based on the same root S-L-M from which the Hebrew word for "peace" is derived. The name thus offered itself to etymologisations such as "The City of Peace", "Abode of Peace", "Dwelling of Peace", or "Vision of Peace" in some Christian authors.
The ending -ayim indicates the dual, thus leading to the suggestion that the name Yerushalayim refers to the fact that the city initially sat on two hills.
Ancient Egyptian sources
The Execration Texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which refer to a city called rwšꜣlmm or ꜣwšꜣmm, variously transcribed as Rušalimum, or Urušalimum, may indicate Jerusalem. Alternatively, the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, which reference an Úrušalim, may be the earliest mention of the city.Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources
The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua. According to a Midrash, the name is a combination of two names united by God, Yireh and Shalem.Oldest written mention of ''Jerusalem''
One of the earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states: "I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem", or as other scholars suggest: "Yahweh is the God of the whole earth. The mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem". An earlier example of the name appears in a papyrus from the 7th century BCE.In extra-biblical inscriptions, the earliest known example of the -ayim ending was discovered on a column about 3 km west of ancient Jerusalem, dated to the first century BCE.
Jebus, Zion, City of David
An ancient settlement of Jerusalem, founded as early as the Bronze Age on the hill above the Gihon Spring, was, according to the Bible, named Jebus. Called the "Fortress of Zion", it was renamed as the "City of David", and was known by this name in antiquity. Another name, "Zion", initially referred to a distinct part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole, and afterwards to represent the whole biblical Land of Israel.Greek, Roman and Byzantine names
In Greek and Latin the city's name was transliterated Hierosolyma/Hierosoluma, and was the term used by Matthew and Mark in their gospels instead of the Hebrew term.Up until the 2010s the consensus among historians was that following Alexander the Great's conquest, Hierosoluma was set to be incorporated into the larger temple cities of the Seleucid kingdom, and to be Hellenised as Hierapolis. However, modern historians dispute this as a proper Ancient Greek translation for the polis would be similar to Hierolophos.
After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the city was renamed Aelia Capitolina during the Roman period of its history. Named for the Roman emperor Hadrian and the deities of Rome, the name lasted until the Byzantine era.
Salem
The Aramaic Apocryphon of Genesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls equates Jerusalem with the earlier "Salem", said to be the kingdom of Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Other early Hebrew sources, early Christian renderings of the verse and targumim, however, put Salem in Northern Israel near Shechem, now Nablus, a city of some importance in early sacred Hebrew writing. Possibly the redactor of the Apocryphon of Genesis wanted to dissociate Melchizedek from the area of Shechem, which at the time was in possession of the Samaritans. However that may be, later Rabbinic sources also equate Salem with Jerusalem, mainly to link Melchizedek to later Temple traditions.Arabic names
Originally titled Bayt al-Maqdis, today, Jerusalem is most commonly known in Arabic as القُدس, transliterated as al-Quds and meaning "the holy" or "the holy sanctuary", cognate with. The name is possibly a shortened form of مدينة القُدس Madīnat al-Quds "city of the holy sanctuary" after the Hebrew nickname with the same meaning, Ir ha-Qodesh. The ق is pronounced either with a voiceless uvular plosive, as in Classical Arabic, or with a glottal stop as in Levantine Arabic. Official Israeli government policy mandates that أُورُشَلِيمَ, transliterated as Ūrušalīm, which is the name frequently used in Christian translations of the Bible into Arabic, be used as the Arabic language name for the city in conjunction with القُدس, giving أُورُشَلِيمَ-القُدس, Ūrušalīm-al-Quds. Palestinian Arab families who hail from this city are often called "Qudsi" or "Maqdasi", while Palestinian Muslim Jerusalemites may use these terms as a demonym.History
Jerusalem is one of the world's oldest cities, with a history spanning over 5,000 years. Its origins trace back to around 3000 BCE, with the first settlement near the Gihon Spring. The city is first mentioned in Egyptian Execration texts around 2000 BCE as "Rusalimum." By the 17th century BCE Jerusalem had developed into a fortified city under Canaanite rule, with massive walls protecting its water system. During the Late Bronze Age Jerusalem became a vassal of Ancient Egypt, as documented in the Amarna letters.The city's importance grew during the Israelite period, which began around 1000 BCE when King David captured Jerusalem and made it the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. David's son King Solomon built the First Temple, establishing the city as a major religious centre. Following the kingdom's split Jerusalem became the capital of the Kingdom of Judah until it was captured by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, leading to the Babylonian exile of the Jewish population. After the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return and rebuild the city and its temple, marking the start of the Second Temple period. Jerusalem fell under Hellenistic rule after the conquests of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, leading to increasing cultural and political influence from Greece. The Hasmonean revolt in 164 BCE briefly restored Jewish sovereignty, with Jerusalem as the capital of an independent state.
In 63 BCE Jerusalem was captured by Pompey and brought under the rule of the Roman Republic. The city was embellished by Herod the Great, who expanded the Second Temple, making it one of the largest sanctuaries in the ancient world. Tensions between the Jews and the Roman Empire eventually escalated into the First Jewish Revolt, resulting in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. A few decades later, the city was rebuilt as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, dedicated to Jupiter, provoking the Bar Kokhba Revolt. After the revolt's suppression, Jews were banned from the city. During the Byzantine period, Jerusalem gained prominence as a centre of Christian pilgrimage, especially after Constantine the Great supported the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 638 CE, Jerusalem was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, and under early Islamic rule, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque were built, solidifying its religious importance in Islam.
During the Crusades Jerusalem changed hands multiple times, being captured by the Crusaders in 1099 and recaptured by Saladin in 1187. It remained under Islamic control through the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, until it became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In the modern period Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Israel captured East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967, uniting the city under Israeli control. The status of Jerusalem remains a highly contentious issue, with both Israelis and Palestinians claiming it as their capital. Historiographically, the city's history is often interpreted through the lens of competing national narratives. Israeli scholars emphasise the ancient Jewish connection to the city, while Palestinian narratives highlight the city's broader historical and multicultural significance. Both perspectives influence contemporary discussions of Jerusalem's status and future.