The ancient city, which as we have conjectured may have had its origins in the defense of surplus and most certainly developed in tandem with written language, was always conceived of in terms of a less tangible factor: holiness. Homo faber was also homo religiosus and even the most secular trader or craftsman oriented himself to the sacred meaning of life through the sacred institutions of the city. The city-states in Mesopotamia were allegedly founded by gods and had the names of gods as was common throughout the ancient middle east. In ancient Egypt the Pharaoh belonged to a Pantheon of gods and the city gathered around his palace in reverence to the cult. The ancient city had functions that we would recognize, markets, circulation, military defense, but they were also cosmological models as well as places to live.
Jerusalem, the subject of today's lecture, has retained that ancient mandate of holiness and cosmological resonance throughout its long history. But it is an ambivalent construct, a 4,000 year struggle between the real city and some perfected notion of humanity that is yet to come: Jerusalem in all its different editions always carries with it a theory of anti- Jerusalem, not of its own time but of some timeless time.
Jerusalem is thus more than just a place on earth; it represents for the myth structures of the three Abramic faiths, Christians, Jews and Muslims, the preponderant eschatalogical topos (that's not "scatological" which means the study of the obsession with excrement-- but eschatological which is the theological explanation of a final human destiny). For Jews it is the place where the Messiah will come and unite all peoples in peace, for Christians it the place of the Apocalypse where heaven will descend on earth, for Muslims it is the site of the Last Judgement where all souls are waiting for deliverance. The story of mankind for these three theological worldviews inevitably leads to its inexorable conclusion in this place, making it as much a physical reality as a literary necessity for religious texts. Jerusalem is not just a city that can be read for its urban features but is anchored in the heaviest of language and memory by the great sacred texts: the Torah, the Bible, the Qur'an. We can only be thankful that the Buddha and Lao-Tze did not happen to wander through Jerusalem.
The irony has frequently been observed, sometimes bitterly observed, that the name of the city, Jerusalem, in all probability derives from an expression for peace "shalom" or "salam," yet of all the places on earth there is no city that has been quite so unblessed with peace. In its 38 centuries of existence Jerusalem has been destroyed through violent sieges at least 17 times, and its name changed on many of these occasions. While it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, it is probably the least stable city that has ever existed, having been ruled by 25 different peoples. Although I do not have any convenient answers to the two questions that are probably on the tip of your tongue right at this instant: namely why was it destroyed so many times? followed by: why did people bother to rebuild it so many times? I would like to examine some of the physical, artistic, and geographical aspects of Jerusalem to see if we could draw out of the history of its urban form some way of coming to terms with this.
Jerusalem as topos
If you belong to one of the three Abramic religions and look to Jerusalem for some reassuring evidence about God's covenant with man, then you already have an answer to why the place has been destroyed and rebuilt so frequently. But let's say you are more of an agnostic like myself and have no current affiliations to any of the three great Abramic creeds: then Jerusalem becomes for you a problem, a place you would almost rather forget, but historic and contemporary crises never allow you to. The more that one desires to live in the present, the more the idea of Jerusalem pulls from the past and pushes toward the future as an idea that must be defended or rejected. For about half of the world's population it is a topos par excellence, literally a place that has become a concept: remembered by Jews in their prayers, revered by Christians and Moslems as the site of final judgement and entry to paradise. It is absolutely impossible to erase the burden of past injustices unleashed in this place, nor to extirpate the millenial hopes that are associated with it as eschatology. Jerusalem is a city that never lets you forget.
I am going to present Jerusalem to you in a chronological sequence, hoping not to upset anyone along the way with my non-alligned attempts to deconstruct its urban history. We begin with the Fertile Crescent and find our site midway between the two dominant areas of the first urban cultures: the rapidly changing city-states of Mesopotamia and the comparatively static kingdom of the Nile. As the Bible reports it the two progenitors that moved the Jewish tribes to the region of Palestine both seem to have had a problem with pyramids, or at least the people of the pyramids. Abraham is ordered sometime at the beginning of the second millenium to worship a single, intangible god, and leave Ur, where the largest Ziggurat has been built. Moses, a leader of dubious origins, is ordered to keep the monotheistic faith and lead the Jews out of Egypt, where they may have been employed in building pharoahonic monuments, (although unlike the way Hollywood would have us believe, the last pyramid had been built over a half millenium earlier). In each case their big move might be interpretted as a reaction to monumental architecture, which by extension is assumed to be an agent of oppression, or by the righteous as the expression of vanity. The monuments of the two regions were attempts to render tangible the sacred, which was contrary to the intangible nature of Yahweh, the god of the Jews.
David's capital
For 800 years before the Jews made their definitive settlement in Palestine, Jerusalem had been a Canaanite and then Jebusite town, chosen because of certain natural advantages for settlement. It was well protected by the hills, and it was well served by a natural spring, the Gihon. In this region which is mostly occupied by desert, the climate of Jerusalem is exceptionally nice and it actually gets cool during summer evenings. Jerusalem is verdant, but just beyond the nearby ridge you can see the desert forming. The city was accessible to trade routes between the larger states but never had a fluvial connection necessary to become an important city of trade. There are records in the Egyptian city of Tel el Amarna of diplomatic correspondance with the city around 1400 BC when it was lived in by the Jebusites. The Jebusites worshiped a god named Salem, which can lead us to deduce that the city's name Ur-Salem (city of Salem), probably derived from the genius loci or god of the place.
Egyptian culture had a strong influence on the city that would develop under Jewish rule. Unlike Mesopotamia which was made of many autonomous states, Egypt was a single unified state stretching along the Nile and was dominated by a strong central monarchy. The pyramids were built during the middle centuries of the third millenium BC and have a permanence and architectural presence that Egyptian cities did not. Aside from the magnificent tombs and funeral temples there is little physical evidence of Egyptian cities which have been mostly lost in the silt of the Nile. Literary references describe them as walled, and that the palace of the monarchy was the central feature. The word Pharoah in fact derives from the word for palace, which would lead us to assume that architecture played an important role in establishing hierarchical identity in terms of a sacred political order.
The single archaeological example of an Egyptian city that is known is somewhat of an exception among exceptions. It is the aforementioned Tell el Amarna which was a new capital built for the dissident Pharoah, Akenaten. When a new regime is trying to establish its validity, the strategy of relocating the capital to a neutral site is seen again and again in ancient history as a means of eluding the old political and religious structures. Akhenaten's new capital was naturally defended by a crescent of cliffs. True to the monumental remains found elsewhere in Egypt, the architecture was strictly orthagonal, with long axes. There were three bands of streets. In the center was the palace structure which spread on either side of the central street with an immense hypostyle hall-the profusion of columns being a measure of greatness. A bridge joined the two sides of the palace and a special balcony was located here for royal appearances. This tradition of a divine ruler, or a divinely appointed one, appearing in a special archway or frame is one of the strongest urban traditions that spread throughout the ancient middle east. Ahkenaten's regime was an exception because of his innovative theological program to install monotheism in the cult of the sun-god Ra. His city lasted about as long as his regime, which is probably why some vestiges of it were preserved.
When about the year 1000, David the sheperd-warrior finally succeeded in uniting the Jewish tribes and squelching the local opposition, he chose Jerusalem as his new capital in a move not dissimilar to Ahkenaten's. The choice made sense not only because of the city's natural advantages, but especially because of the political need to settle in a neutral place that did not favor any previous tribe location. Through diplomacy and might David displaced the Jebusites and assimilated them into the new capital, which like an Egyptian city was mostly devoted to the palace for the leader and his army, cult functions, and bureaucracy.
Temple of Solomon
There was no Jewish tradition of architecture or city-building or city administration, and during the 80 years that David and his son Solomon reigned, Jerusalem was built up according to the tradition of the nearby Phoenicians, who spoke a language very similar to ancient Hebrew. David's set of laws was partially derived from the Code of Hammurabi of Babylon, written around 1700 BC: this in fact where the form of justice known as "an eye for an eye" originates.
The most audacious act, although it would seem perfectly normal according to the practice of city building at that time, was the decision to build a temple. In later texts of the Mishnah, the fundamental contradiction of this attempt to give architectural substance to the immaterial faith that belonged to a basically nomadic tradition, is seen as the flaw that inspired God's wrath against the city. David established a ritual life and a plan for a temple that was clearly derived from the earlier Canaanite cults--of his two high priests, one was of Jebusite origin. In order to reify his consolidation of power, the nomadic practice of passing the ark of the covenant between the tribes was to stop. Yahweh, as gods were often did in Mesopotamia, revealed through the dreams of the prophet Nathan (who also seems to have been a Jebusite) the need for a stopping place for the ark. Perhaps because David's people had no previous experience with monumental architecture, the proportions for the new temple were also revealed in the dreams. David's son Solomon shortly after his assumption of power in 961 would fulfill the mandate to build the temple, which in history has done the vary impious thing of taking his name instead of God's, but then again one was not supposed to say the latter's name.
And the program for Solomon's temple was indeed more than just a temple: it involved an immense palace complex like that of Ahkenaten, with great hypostyle halls, separate harem quarters for the alleged 700 wives that Solomon had acquired in his attempts to fulfill good foreign relations (a wife a night in the span of two years I calculate). One of these wives was a daughter of the Pharoah and had her own house. To finish the temple properly thousands of Phoenicians were imported to carve the stones and teach about details. 30,000 Jews were conscripted to work on the Temple and were sent 10,000 at a time to Phoenicia to learn the art of masonry. In the process a large debt was incurred to the neighboring Phoenician king, resulting in the syphoning off of lands.
The Temple of Solomon was situated on the hill known as Mount Moriah, which probably had remained unoccupied as it was also a cult site for the Jebusites. It was oblong with a great forecout for public appearances that led to a double pylon entry to the temple to which only initiated priests were allowed, the Ark was kept in an inner sanctum, the Holy of holies, a room to which only the chief high priest was allowed; this spot was so charged with dread that the high priest would wear a rope, like a life line, when entering, so that in case he expired during his service he could be pulled out without anyone risking profanating the sacred room. All of this, the temple, the palace, the distancing with architecture was a means of creating a visible validation of order on earth that could be recapitulated regularly through ritual. The problem was, that people always see through this sort of order, especially if it is straining their economy, and Solomon's charisma evaporated soon after his passing in the uncertainties of succesion.
The creation of the temple, which was so deleterious to the state's economy, nonetheless established an unalterable urban fact, part natural, part man-made, that became the monumental backdrop for the rest of the city. While the coordinates of the major institutions will often change and 3000 years of devastations will occur after this first move--it offers a presence that wants to be remembered, a stability despite repeated sacking; the temple mount is a great hinge around which the city's fortune swings.
The Diaspora
The considerable territory that had been acquired under David, which stretched from the Red Sea almost to the Euphrates, could not be defended in the succeeding years and the taxes and tribute that were used to build Jerusalem gradually were dissipated. By the end of Solomon's reign in 922 the power of the city over its kingdom was fading; the kingdom eventually divided into two states and fell prey to the imperial aggressions of the Assyrians from the north. When explaining retrospectively the troubles of the Jews, one of the prophets exclaims "What is the sin of the house of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?" The aggressivity of the city and the vanity of its architecture were implicated as hubris by those who belonged to the nomadic tradition.
First the northern territory, known as Israel, fell in the 8th century to the Assyrians led by one of the many empire builders, Sargon II. Sargon, like other rulers we have seen, decided to build a new capital and dragged off most of the inhabitants of Israel in 722 BC to build Khorsobad (Anotolia), a palace complex that surpassed Solomon's to be sure. Khorsobad displays the characteristics of many cities that are built quickly (it was finished in 14 years) on relatively flat terrains (like Houston for that matter). From what has been excavated it apparently was structured on a grid-like set of orthogonal streets that were struck from the positions of the city gates. As is suitable to tyrants, Sargon's palace is in the northern corner, with its own fortifications. A ziggurat is included in his palace complex, as if to appropriate what was once the symbol of community beliefs within his personal power.
A little over a century later in 587 BC, Jerusalem was invaded by the neo-Babylonians (this is to differentiate them from Hammurabi who lived 1000 years earlier). The Temple was leveled on this occasion and the entire population, which probably was around 20,000 was deported to Nebuchadnessar's Babylon, the most famous and grand city of the age. This marked the beginning of the Diaspora, or scattering of Jewish people.
Babylon sparkled from its shining blue-brick gateway, The Ishtar gate to the palace with its hanging terraces, to the Great Ziggurat. Perhaps the most impressive feature of the city, which is thought to have had a population of 300,000, aside from its double line of defensive walls, was the major cerimonial route, a paved processional avenue 73 feet wide and following a perfectly straight axis. 73 feet may not seem so wide if you consider the average Houston street is about 90 feet wide--but compared to the normal 7 to 10 foot width that we saw at Ur and which is still found in most Middle Eastern cities, the width of the processional way is quite astounding and the obvious result of a plan. Herodotus reports that all of the streets of Babylon were straight, so we can assume that like Khorsobad, some sort of grid was present. We should note in particular the use of the street which is creating a horizontal axis as bold as the vertical axis of the Ziggurat. The street, not just the void of the temenos, or the mass of monuments is used as a structuring element of the plan. Babylon gained part of its strenghth through tolerance of different peoples; it was stocked with people from all over the middle east with 20 different language groups and 53 different cults. Ritual and architecture were tactics for integrating these groups through the language of form.
For the provincial hostages from Jerusalem, the encounter with this multi-cultural, multi-lingual, politheistic, artistically progressive culture must have been more than a shock than the injuries of captivity. The great literary vendetta of the story of the tower of Babel, which is an allegorical critique of the greatest metropolis the world had yet seen, the success of the city, the pooling of its resources, the tolerance between races and linguistic groups, the ability through language to organize a great collective product such as a ziggurat, these marvels were to be condemned as hubris, the worst sin of antiquity, trying to be like god, and punished by god in striking the tower down and scrambling their tongues.
The Jews had more literal reactions to the Babylonian captivity such as that found in Psalm 137: "Fair Babylon, you predator a blessing on him who repays you in kind what you have inflicted on us a blessing on him who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks." this is followed by a reminder of the value to preserve, the first literary document that establishes the Jerusalem topos: If I forget you O Jerusalem let my right hand wither let my tongue stick to my palette If I cease to think of you if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour"
From that invocation, attached to vendetta, the die is cast forever and Jerusalem becomes something more than just a place but a word that every member of the Diaspora carries with them, a word that every Christian will transfer typologically to the rewards and punishments of the next world, a word that every Muslim will associate with the final judgement and entry to paradise. This word fulfills the need for monotheism to have a single focus, a word that gathers together the logic of the universe. This is why Jerusalem is such an unvanguishable memory.
The Second Temple
After the Persian amnesty of 516, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and the Persians contributed to the rebuilding of the temple. Although there was some hesitancy to resume restoring the Temple, the impoverished circumstances and political uncertainty of those who returned 50 years later delayed the effort for a generation. The period of the Second Temple which is begun in 516 BC with the complete rebuilding of the temple of Solomon. The city will never attain the autonomy or power of Solomon's times until its fortunes are linked with those of imperial Rome. The city will be dominated by Alexander the Great in 332, be absorbed by the Ptolomies for a while and then by the Seleucids who try to introduce Greek culture such as the hedonistic gymnasium and the theater. These hellenistic influences which were leading the people towards a general practice of politheism, will be briefly interupted by a 70 year period of autonomy under the Jewish Hasmonean Kings. Pompey's troops occupy Palestine during the time of Julius Caesar, and press the province into quick colonization as part of the Roman Empire.
Herod, was a general of Arab origin who established an alliance with the Romans. He claimed descent from the Hasmonians and worked out a deal of semi-autonomy from the empire first with Mark Anthony and then with Augustus. His sense of insecurity can only be measured by the ponderousness of his monuments, and it is to Herod that we owe the enduring power of the Temple Mount.
Jerusalem prospered under Herod and Hellenism and grew to the largest population it will ever attain until recent times about 150,000. Herod's first act was to build a fortress at the north edge of the temenos surrounding the temple and name it after his current ally Mark Anthony. The Antonia Fortress demonstrated both where the power was and how close it was linked to religious authority--this is the site by the way where Pontius Pilate will sentence the doomed prophet Jesus. Herod also built a new palace compound. almost as large as the temple mount on the western ridge of the city and connected it to the Temple Mount with an aerial walkway. Now the upper section of the city was under the architectural order of a single person.
The temple mount was the real focus of Herod's monumental solution to the tenuousness of his own power. It was much opposed by the religious community who understandably suffered from the lessons of the 6th century, and did not trust a king who was in effect a convert. The temple was already there, they argued, god doesn't require greater buildings, he wants faith. But most rulers like to believe that faith is encouraged by monuments. To placate his critics Herod trained 1000 priests to be the masons for his new temple so that religious functions could be continued in the more sacred zones of the complex while the immense project was under way. The result of the campaign was the biggest temple platform of antiquity: greater than the Akropolis in Athens, or the great sanctuary in Lindos. Herod doubled the size of the Temple Mount, making it 900 ft x 1500 (about four times the size of the Rice quadrangle). The Mount was raised to a height of nearly 100 feet on massive ashlar blocks, some of the lower ones 4 feet high and as long as 20 feet. To heighten the thrill of the Temple Mount some hellenistic architectural features were added. Rome itself did not at this time have anything to compare. An immense stairway, 350 feet wide occupied the southwest corner, giving the kind of grandeur one experienced climbing the Akropolis. Ringing the perimeter of the temple mount were double porticoes that framed the platform and focused the view back out. It was an engineering feat that was unparalled in the history of architecture. Begun in 22 Bc. the temple was completed in 18 months but the rest of the building program of the Temple Mount with its surrounding porticoes and elaborate stairs and impressive walls was not really finished until 80 years later. This colossal podium, jutting above the city with its precise geometry, became the topos, the idea of the city that would lodge in the collective memory. The Western, or Wailing Wall is one place of intense memory, while on the other side of the mount was the Golden Gate, intentionally closed, through which the Messiah was to pass.
Romam Jerusalem
True to Roman planning, there were also a number of infrastructural improvements to the city carried out before and during the time of Herod, so that the poor inhabitants of Palestine might find some other benefits to the Pax Romana than just the aggrandizement of their new leaders. New city walls were added, and new water works, among which was a 7 mile aqueduct bringing water from Solomon's pools near Bethlehem brought a new sense of welfare to the town.
The costs were high and Rome was far away, and the sense of righteousness among the population was endemic. The inhabitants of Palestine were not as susceptible to Pax Romana as their rulers had hoped and the tax rebellions and skermishes caused by the Zealots finally drew out the major military machinery of the empire. The emperor's son Titus came personally to apply the screws. The city was sieged by the Romans for four and a half months, a sign that the town had both remarkable fortifications and water supply, but also that it had a truly resistant population. When the smoke cleared, Jerusalem once again laid in ruins, and that great tax burden of the temple was ground to smithereens, verifying yet again what the Jeremiahs said about incurring god's wrath through materialism. The Arch of Titus in Rome commerorates the victory of the Jewish Wars, showing the sacking of the temple, carrying off the great seven pronged Menorah candlepeice as spoils.
One of those moralisers was a young man named Jesus, who according to the legend had not much respect for what went on at the Temple as a great tourist attraction, chasing out the poor money changers. We might remember also that his family were emeritus tax dodgers, and that his troubling epigram: give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's could be interpretted as a revolutionary slogan to resist taxes since everything belongs to God. Jesus no doubt represents some of the mood of disaffection and resistance to the Roman way that was present in this part of the world.
After the obliteration of the city, the Romans insured that there would be no reprisal by forbidding anyone to settle there for 50 years. The lonely 10th legion was left behind. But an act as horrifying as the decimation of an entire city, a sacred city at that, did naturally inspire neo-zealots: A second wave of rebellion, by the Jews who survived was led in 132 by Bar Kochba, and the Jews retook the Jerusalem and inhabited it for 3 years.
In 135 Emporer Hadrian led the campaign to put an end to the rebellion and established a Roman military city in its stead--it is almost as drastic a change of urban fabric as the post-war changes to European cities, or urban renewal in America. A new city structure was laid over the ruins to ensure control and efficiency: the Roman stamp was impressed into the fabric. Hadrian changed its name to Aelia Capitolina. The capitol of Palestine had 100 years earlier been moved to Cesarea because of all the difficulties. Jerusalem was to be an outpost without any religious or political prominence. On the temple mount, which was now outside the boundary of the city he raised statues of Hadrian and Anthony, and placed a temple dedicated to Jupiter. Neither Jews nor Christians were allowed to enter the city. The walls were left intentionally unbuilt, The 10th legion occupied the site of Herod's palace.
Like the other middle eastern Roman cities of the time, Gerasa in Jordan, or Palmyra in Syria, Aelia Capitolina had highly leggible urban design features: straight collonnaded avenues, a tetrapylon at the crossing of the major streets to indicate the center and off from this a large forum with a public fountain, and a temple dedicated to Venus.
At the northern Damascus gate entry was a celebratory column and a rounded entry plaza, similar in effect to the one still visible at Gerasa in Jordan. An ideal plan, the orthogonal grid of roman law, and armature of roman architecture was now printed on the city, trying to blot out its memory. Traces of this Roman armature can still be witnessed, such as the Cardo, with its set of columns, uncovered by archaeologists a short while ago, but they of course can not compare in mnemonic power to the great rising walls of the temple mount.
Byzantine Jerusalem
The story of Christ, which had no topological obstacle and was not really subject to the diaspora, might have ended back in the first century if it were not for the political role that Christians were to play in the fourth century in tilting the power of the city of Rome itself toward emperor Constantine, the first ruler to confess himself a Christian, though throughout his career he behaved pretty much like a polytheist. His mother, Helena, however, was a much better convert and took it upon herself in the 330s to go establish the Christian topos that would burn Jerusalem into the consciousness of all the newly converted Christians. She helped create a new breed of wanderer known as the pilgrim.
Architecture was again called on to invent a reason for faith. The true cross on which Christ was martyred was miraculously located after over 300 years, and the sites of Jesus's agony were determined. Christians could now relive the story of the passion and earn a place closer to the Savior through their emulation and memory of his sacrifice. The Church of the Holy Sepulcre was conveniently located on top of Hadrian's temple of Venus, to wipe out the memory of Roman paganism. It was determined that this site on the edge of the Roman forum was the location of the Mount of Golgatha, even if the site is flat. Here the matrix for a new architecture was formulated by the Greek architects Zenobius and Eustatius combining the basilical plan of Roman audience halls with a rounded domical structure used for funerary architecture, and since known as a Martyrium. Within this new shell the reenactment of the story could be dramatically achieved. Believers could march through the columns to receive communion, they could cluster in the center of the building to hear sermons, and they could make a devotional visit to the holy relics of sacrifice (the Anastasis, or tomb of Christ). Initially the Byzantines treated the Jews with the same intolerance as the Romans had, forbidding them to take up residence in the city, allowed only to visit the Wailing Wall once a year. In the 5th century this ban was lifted.
Muslim Jerusalem
The Byzantines from their capitol in Constantinople held on to Palestine for more than 300 years: by 614, however, the Persians swept through Jerusalem, killing much of the 30,000 population and inviting the Jews to resettle. Not long after, in 638 the new Islamic empire laid claim to the city. Islam held the site to be sacred, not only as the alleged site of Abraham's Mount Moriah, but also for the legendary "night flight" of Mohammed the prophet who around the year 621 was escorted by the archangel Gabriel from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from the rock ascended on a stairway of light to heaven to return the next day on the same stair to Mecca. If this sounds like a useful story, most miracles are. To absorb the most important ritual site in the middle east, the one that is topologically closest to the origin of the cult, is a smart political move. The story must be supported by Faith. The city's name can now be changed again to fit a new circumstance: call it Al Quds, "the Holy" and during the first decade of the Islam faith all prayers were directed to Jerusalem rather than Mecca.
The rock is by legend suspended over the four rivers of paradise and a vast abyss in which all the souls that ever lived are waiting for redemption. Islamic Pilgrims are encouraged to come to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount which is now called Haram as Sherif (or the noble sanctuary). In the Qur'an it is written "Whoever goes on pilgrimage to the Jerusalem sanctuary, and worships there for one and the same year shall be forgiven his sis."
The first religious building on the mount built for Islam was the Aqsa Mosque on the southern wall. In 690 Ummayads sponsored the splendid octagonal pavilion capped by a double shelled guilded Dome. The Dome of the Rock makes a spectacular use of the site, much more inspiring than the original temple I would guess. It is an invitation to variously related faiths to believe that they share the same story. There are in fact no other Islamic buildings like it, it is more like a christian martyrium than anthing else. In fact the dimensions of the dome are quite similar to those of the anastasis dome of the Holy Sepulchre.
Jerusalem will be sacked and seiged several more time before I get to the end of this lecture but that building, light and shining, visible from almost all corners of the city will not be touched. I like to imagine that it is the beauty of the architecture that transcends its political meaning to make it untouchable but surely this is a romantic explanation.
On the southern edge of the Haram as Sherif, where the huge porticoes of Herod once stood, a more conventional mosque, the aqsa Mosque was founded in 670 but rebuilt several times during the next two centuries. It held 3000 people. Jerusalem was ruled by a succession of Islamic regimes, the Ummayads the Abbasyds, the Tulunids from Cairo, and after them the next Cairene lords the Fatimids. One of their pashas, El-Hakim, said to be deranged, persecuted the Christians living in Jerusalem and had all of the churches destroyed, including the Holy Sepulcre at the beginning of the 11th century.
The Crusaders
By the end of the century a European movement, mostly of French feudal knights took it upon themselves to defend the honor of Jesus's buildings in Jerusalem and invaded the city, killing all of its inhabitants (probably 30,000) and forbidding Jews or Muslims to reenter the city. They placed a cross on top of the Dome of the Rock and at first had their king inhabit the Aqsa mosque, which was eventually turned into the headquarters of the Templar knights, which became a kind of righteous crusaders underground movement. They restored the Holy Sepulcre, some of the Norman influences, mixed with Arabic decoration can be notice on the portals of the Holy Sepulcre. French was spoken in Jerusalem for 100 years; and the city was filled with new inhabitants by inviting all christians to fulfill their duty, armenians, syrians, and greek christians in particular came to stay.
In the 15th and 16th century depictions of Jerusalem show the relationship that the crusaders saught to establish of a new connection with the destiny of salvation guaranteed by the topos. In the memory, the city becomes even more ideal--representations of it show it as being impossibly harmonious, round with perfectly cross-axial plan. As the site of religious dogma, the city, which is by nature concrete, becomes wonderfully abstract.
The crusaders established numerous castles throughout the middle east, they refitted Herod's Palace in the west into a superb castle that still stands. But they were unable to maintain their numbers, and fell to the superior forces of Saladin in 1187, almost exactly 100 years after their conquest. Although Fredrick II revived the crusader kingdom for a generation in the early 13th century, the city reverted to its generally more tolerant Arabic hosts. Now with a population greatly reduced by war and not much hope of fitting into the new trade-based economy of the Mediterrenean, Jerusalem became more of a sleepy religious center under the Mameluk rulers, again from Cairo.
Mamluks and Ottomans
Some of the finest architecture in the city was carried out for the Mamluks, the arcades on the Haram ash sherif, the intricate tracery of the turbe funeral decorations, the stupendous framing devices marking the stairs that lead to the Dome known as Qanatir. Around the Haram ash sherif are numerous school buildings for religious studies, known as medresa, 49 of them will be instituted in the next few centuries, and the maintenance of the city will now be a piecemeal enterprise carried out by endowment societies known as Waqfs. The population never grew beyond 20,000.
The Mamluk regime in Jerusalem was easily absorbed by the Ottoman empire in the 16th century, which brought its military superiority and sense of efficient infrastructure to the city. Under Suleyman the Magnificent in the mid 16th century, the walls of the city were given their definitve form, it is from this revision that we owe the Damascus Gate one of the finest pieces of military architecture in the world.
Jerusalem had grown into a more tolerant city under the Ottomans and those with competing memories for the topos of the city slipped into their own quarters as if they had always had the right to them: the Arabs above the Haram ash sherif, the Christians next to the Holy Sepulcre, the Jews next to the Wailing wall where in the 18th century they built a domed synagogue, The Hurva synagogue.
Colonial Palestine and Israeli Statehood
By the time the Ottoman empire collapsed at the end of WWI and the British were delegated by international treaty to administrate over Palestine: this was called the mandate and was veiled colonialism, the arriving British administrators were greeted to the splendid religious melting pot of Jerusalem by this colorful batch of leaders. And they found a fantastic arabic city of narrow streets lined with lively suqs, archways that give on to arch ways, cool courtyards, stone pavements, corners of urban collage dripping with meaning.
As convinced purveyors of the white man's burden the first thing the British did upon arrival was to make a plan, and though I may seem to be making fun of them, we must be thankful they did, because they arrived in the city just about the same time as reinforced concrete. One of the stipulations of the first plan, drawn up in 1918 by MacClean not only prohibits building within 1000 feet of the Dome and restricts building heights and types within an area 9000 feet around the historic center, but it also forces all builders to use the golden stone indigenous to the area.
So despite the descrepancy in style and sometimes in scale, modern Jerusalem is blessed with a certain harmony that very few cities with modern buildings can boast. Has it then become a city at Peace?
Not at all, after the declaration of Israeli state hood in 1948, and the war with the surrounding Arab states was concluded in 1949, Jerusalem was divided in half, with a wall that was not as well designed as the one in Berlin,but was just as obdurate. The historic city was left on the side of Jordan. And so the myth of Jerusalem, now separated from the other two believers by a visible wall became even stronger.
The Israelis meanwhile began planning the new Jerusalem as a great scattered city, placing the new capital or haKyria on one hill, the Hebrew University on another, the Israel Museum on another. Each one is like a lookout point in a coordinated military strategy. The spread of the city makes it impossible to occupy it as a single thing. It rules by dispersal.
After the six-day war was concluded in Israel's favor in 1967, the city was brought back together again, but it has never been peaceful and the intifada movement of the late eighties, made the old city virtually off-limits to those who valued their lives. Peace has now been made with the Palestinians, but the question of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians are requesting to be their capitol as well, remains suspended.
The prophet Isaiah reserved Jerusalem for the righteous and for millenial salvation. The heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse is to descend on the real city and institute an eternal era of human harmony. His prediction was "they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks" Today we should add they should beat their M16s into Macintoshes.
We've watched the macbre dance of death that Jerusalem has made around the fixed center of her archaic rock. Memory is the source of knowledge and the source of pain, and we continue to witness it spin around whenever memory is challenged. Jerusalem has survived as an icon of human salvation, a battlefield for religious righteousness, an obstacle for the memory. The monuments and the structure of urban space itself help promote an eschatological topos that only collective Alzheimers will blot out: we return to the wailing wall to lament the lost temple/ we tread down the via dolorosa in imitation of Christ's sacrifice/ we enter the Dome of the Rock in awe of the Prophet. The crowded memory of the place is in the long run the greatest impediment to yet the strongest reminder of an ideal of lasting peace.
Sources
Mason Hammond, The City in the Ancient World, Cambridge, 1972.
K. J. Asali, ed., Jerusalem in History, Essex, 1989.
Alistair Duncan, The Noble Sanctuary, London, 1972.
F. E. Peters, Jerusalem, The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims,
and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times,
Princeton, 1985.
Yigael Yadin, ed., Jerusalem Revealed, Archaeology in the Holy City, 1968-1974,
New Haven, 1976.
Abdulasis Y Saqqaf, ed., The Middle East City, Ancient Traditions Confront a Modern
World, New York, 1987.
Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. IX, Jerusalem, 1972.
Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem, An Illustrated Historical Atlas, New York, 1978.