Old City of Jerusalem
The Old City of Jerusalem is a walled area in East Jerusalem.
In a tradition that may have begun with an 1840s British map of the city, the Old City is divided into four uneven quarters: the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, and the Jewish Quarter. A fifth area, the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Al-Aqsa or Haram al-Sharif, is home to the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and was once the site of the Jewish Temple.
The Old City's current walls and city gates were built by the Ottoman Empire from 1535 to 1542 under Suleiman the Magnificent. The Old City is home to several sites of key importance and holiness to the three major Abrahamic religions: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall for Judaism, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity, and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque for Islam. The Old City, along with its walls, was added to the World Heritage Site list of UNESCO in 1981.
In spite of its name, the Old City of Jerusalem's current layout is different from that of ancient times. Most archeologists believe that the City of David, an archaeological site on a rocky spur south of the Temple Mount, was the original settlement core of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. At times, the ancient city spread to the east and north, covering Mount Zion and the Temple Mount. The Old City as defined by the walls of Suleiman is thus shifted a bit northwards compared to earlier periods of the city's history, and smaller than it had been in its peak, during the late Second Temple period. The Old City's current layout has been documented in significant detail, notably in old maps of Jerusalem over the last 1,500 years.
Until the mid-19th century, the entire city of Jerusalem, with the exception of David's Tomb complex, was enclosed within the Old City walls. The departure from the walls began in the 19th century, when the city's municipal borders were expanded to include Arab villages such as Silwan and new Jewish neighborhoods such as Mishkenot Sha'ananim. The Old City came under Jordanian control following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied East Jerusalem; since then, the entire city has been under Israeli control. Israel unilaterally asserted in its 1980 Jerusalem Law that the whole of Jerusalem was Israel's capital. In international law, East Jerusalem is defined as territory occupied by Israel.
Population
In 1967, the Old City contained 17,000 Muslims, 6,000 Christians and no Jews.The population of the Old City resides mostly in the Muslim quarter. In 2007, the total population was 36,965; there were 27,500 Muslims ; 5,681 non-Armenian Christians, 790 Armenians ; and 3,089 Jews. By 2020, Old City's population dropped to 31,120.
Political status
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Old City was captured by Jordan and all its Jewish residents were evicted. During the Six-Day War in 1967, which saw hand-to-hand fighting on the Temple Mount, Israeli forces captured the Old City along with the rest of East Jerusalem, subsequently annexing them as Israeli territory and reuniting them with the western part of the city. Today, the Israeli government controls the entire area, which it considers part of its national capital. However, the Jerusalem Law of 1980, which effectively annexed East Jerusalem to Israel, was declared null and void by United Nations Security Council Resolution 478. East Jerusalem is now regarded by the international community as part of occupied Palestinian territory.History
Israelite period
According to the Hebrew Bible, before King David's conquest of Jerusalem in the 11th century BCE the city was home to the Jebusites. The Bible describes the city as heavily fortified with a strong city wall, a fact confirmed by archaeology. The Bible names the city ruled by King David as the City of David, in Hebrew Ir David, which was identified southeast of the Old City walls, outside the Dung Gate. In the Bible, David's son, King Solomon, extended the city walls to include the Temple and Temple Mount. After the partition of the United Kingdom of Israel, the southern tribes remained in Jerusalem, with the city becoming the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.Jerusalem was largely extended westwards after the Neo-Assyrian destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel and the resulting influx of refugees. King Hezekiah had been preparing for an Assyrian invasion by fortifying the walls of the capital, building towers, and constructing a tunnel to bring fresh water to the city from a spring outside its walls. He made at least two major preparations that would help Jerusalem to resist conquest: the construction of the Siloam Tunnel, and construction of the Broad Wall.
The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE, as Nebuchadnezzar's Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and laid waste to Solomon's Temple and the city.
Second Temple period
In 538 BCE, the Persian King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews of Babylon to return to Judah to rebuild the Temple. Construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, 70 years after the destruction of the First Temple.In about 440 BCE, the city was rebuilt on a smaller scale during the Persian period, when, according to the Bible, Nehemiah led the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Exile. An additional, so-called Second Wall, was built by King Herod the Great, who also expanded the Temple Mount and rebuilt the Temple. In 41–44 CE, Agrippa, king of Judea, started building the so-called "Third Wall" around the northern suburbs. The entire city was totally destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.
File:NinthAvStonesWesternWall.JPG|thumb|Stones from the Western Wall of the Temple Mount thrown during the Roman Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE
Late Roman, Byzantine, and Early Muslim periods
The northern part of the city was rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian around 130, under the name Aelia Capitolina. In the Byzantine period Jerusalem was extended southwards and again enclosed by city walls.Muslims occupied Byzantine Jerusalem in the 7th century under the second caliph, `Umar Ibn al-Khattab who annexed it to the Islamic Arab Empire. He granted its inhabitants an assurance treaty. After the siege of Jerusalem, Sophronius welcomed `Umar, allegedly because, according to biblical prophecies known to the Church in Jerusalem, "a poor, but just and powerful man" would rise to be a protector and ally to the Christians of Jerusalem. Sophronius believed that `Umar, a great warrior who led an austere life, was a fulfillment of this prophecy. In the account by the Patriarch of Alexandria, Eutychius, it is said that `Umar paid a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and sat in its courtyard. When the time for prayer arrived, however, he left the church and prayed outside the compound, in order to avoid having future generations of Muslims use his prayer there as a pretext for converting the church into a mosque. Eutychius adds that `Umar also wrote a decree which he handed to the Patriarch, in which he prohibited Muslims gathering in prayer at the site.