In the early period, historians, archaeologists and cranks alike have squeezed, moulded and manhandled the very few sources available to fit every possible theory which they have then advocated with all the confidence of absolute certainty. In all cases, I have reviewed the original sources and the many theories and come to a conclusion. If I covered myself comprehensively in every case, the most common words in this book would be ‘maybe’, ‘probably’, ‘might’ and ‘could’. I have therefore not included them on every appropriate occasion but I ask the reader to understand that behind every sentence is a colossal, ever-changing literature. Each section has been checked and read by an academic specialist. I am fortunate that I have been helped in this by some of the most distinguished professors at work today.
The most fraught of these controversies is that of King David, because its political implications are so charged and so contemporary. Even at its most scientific, this debate has been conducted more dramatically and with greater harshness than one would find in any other place on any other subject, except perhaps the natures of Christ or Muhammad. The source for the story of David is the Bible. His historical life was long taken for granted. In the nineteenth century, the imperialistic-Christian interest in the Holy Land inspired the archaeological quest for David’s Jerusalem. The Christian nature of this investigation was redirected by the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 which gave it passionate religious-political significance because of David’s status as the founder of Jewish Jerusalem. In the absence of much evidence of the tenth century, revisionist Israeli historians downsized David’s city. Some even questioned whether he was a historical character at all, much to the outrage of Jewish traditionalists and to the glee of Palestinian politicians, because it undermined the Jewish claim. But the discovery of the Tel Dan stele in 1993 proved that King David did exist. The Bible, though not written primarily as history, is nonetheless a historical source which I have used to tell the story. The extent of David’s city and the trustworthiness of the Bible are discussed in the text and for the present conflict over the City of David, see the Epilogue.
Much later, it is impossible to write about the nineteenth century without feeling the shadow of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said, a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem who became a literary professor at Columbia University in New York and an original political voice in the world of Palestinian nationalism, argued that the ‘subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture’, particularly among nineteenth-century travellers such as Chateaubriand, Melville and Twain, had diminished Arab culture and justified imperialism. However, Said’s own work inspired some of his acolytes to try to airbrush these Western intruders out of the history: this is absurd. It is true, however, that these visitors saw and understood little of the real life of Arab and Jewish Jerusalem and, as explained above, I have worked hard to show the actual lives of the indigenous population. But this book is not a polemic and the historian of Jerusalem must show the dominating influence of Western romantic-imperial culture towards the city because it explains why the Middle East so mattered to the Great Powers.
Similarly, I have portrayed the progress of British pro-Zionism, secular and evangelical, from Palmerston and Shaftesbury to Lloyd George, Balfour, Churchill and their friend Weizmann for the simple reason that this was the single most decisive influence on the fate of Jerusalem and Palestine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
I end the main body of the book in 1967 because the Six Day War essentially created the situation today and it provides a decisive stop. The Epilogue cursorily brings the politics up to the present and ends with a detailed portrait of a typical morning in the three Holy Places. But the situation is ever changing. If I were to continue the history in detail up to today, the book would lack any clear ending and have to be updated almost hourly. Instead I have tried to show why Jerusalem continues to be both the essence of and obstacle to a peace deal.
This work is a synthesis based on a wide reading of the primary sources, ancient and modern, on personal seminars with specialists, professors, archaeologists, families and statesmen, and on innumerable visits to Jerusalem, the shrines and archaeological digs. I have been fortunate to uncover some new or rarely used sources. My research has brought three special joys: that of spending much time in Jerusalem; that of reading the wondrous works of writers from Usamah bin Munqidh, Ibn Khaldun, Evliya Celebi and Wasif Jawhariyyeh to William of Tyre, Josephus and T. E. Lawrence; and, thirdly, that of being befriended and helped, with such trust and generosity, amid ferocious political crises, by Jerusalemites of all sects – Palestinians, Israelis and Armenians, Muslims, Jews and Christians.
I feel I have been preparing to write this book all my life. Since childhood, I have been wandering around Jerusalem. Because of a family connection, related in the book, ‘Jerusalem’ is my family motto. Whatever the personal link, I am here to recount the history of what happened and what people believed. To return to where we started, there have always been two Jerusalems, the temporal and the celestial, both ruled more by faith and emotion than by reason and facts. And Jerusalem remains the centre of the world.
Not everyone will like my approach – after all, this is Jerusalem. But in writing the book I always remembered Lloyd George’s advice to his Governor of Jerusalem, Storrs, who was being savagely criticized by both Jews and Arabs: ‘Well, if either one side stops complaining, you’ll be dismissed.’1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have been helped in this huge project by a wide cast of scholars outstanding in their fields. I am deeply grateful to them for their help, advice and, where stated, reading and correcting of my text.
In the archaeological–biblical period, thank you, above all, to the following for reading and correcting this section: Professor Ronny Reich; Professor Dan Bahat, formerly the Chief Archaeologist of Jerusalem, who also gave me detailed tours of the city; Dr Raphael Greenberg, who likewise treated me to site visits; and Rosemary Eshel. Thanks for help and advice to Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper of Ancient Iraq and magical-medical texts at the British Museum; and to Dr Eleanor Robson, Reader in Ancient Middle Eastern Science, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, for her correction of the sections on Assyria–Babylon–Persia, and Dr Nicola Schreiber for her advice on the pottery implications for the dating of the gateways of Megiddo; to Dr Gideon Avni, Director of Excavations and Surveys Department, IAA; Dr Eli Shukron, for his regular tours of the dig in the City of David; Dr Shimon Gibson; Dr Renee Sivan of the Citadel. And special thanks to Dr Yusuf al-Natsheh, Director of the Department of Islamic Archaeology of the Haram al-Sharif, for his help throughout the project and for arranging access to closed sites on the Haram and tours with Khader al-Shihabi. On the Herodian–Roman–Byzantine period, I am immensely grateful to Professor Martin Goodman of Oxford University and to Dr Adrian Goldsworthy for the reading and correction of my text.
On the early Islamic period, Arabs, Turks and Mamluks, I owe huge thanks for his advice, guidance and detailed correction of my text to Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and also to Dr Nazmi al-Jubeh, Dr Yusuf al-Natsheh and Khader al-Shihabi. On the Mamilla Cemetery, I thank Taufik De’adel.