Related Papers
Cross Currents
NOTES FROM JERUSALEM
2008 •
Daniel Noah Moses
Journal of Islamic Architecture
Jerusalem: A Tale of a City
2012 •
Alaa Mandour
Frontiers the Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad
Jerusalem: City of Dreams, City of Sorrows
2011 •
Thomas M Ricks
A Day in the Land: (From Jerusalem to the West Bank and Back Again)
2011 •
Aditya Prabhu
Jerusalem. Brief History
Jerusalem. A Brief History. Sample chapters
2018 •
Michael Zank
Jerusalem - A Brief History shows how Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures confer providential meaning to the fate of the city and how modern Jerusalem is haunted by waves of biblical fantasy aiming at mutually exclusive status-quo rectification. It presents the major epochs of the history of Jerusalem’s urban transformation, inviting readers to imagine Jerusalem as a city that is not just sacred to the many groups of people who hold it dear, but as a united, unharmed place that is, in this sense, holy. Jerusalem - A Brief History starts in modern Jerusalem—giving readers a look at the city as it exists today. It goes on to tell of its emergence as a holy city in three different ways, focusing each time on another aspect of the biblical past. Next, it discusses the transformation of Jerusalem from a formerly Jewish temple city, condemned to oblivion by its Roman destroyers, into an imperially sponsored Christian theme park, and the afterlife of that same city under later Byzantine and Muslim rulers. Lastly, the book returns to present day Jerusalem to examine the development of the modern city under the Ottomans and the British, the history of division and reunification, and the ongoing jostling over access to, and sovereignty over, Jerusalem’s contested holy places. Offers a unique integration of approaches, including urban history, the rhetoric of power, the history of art and architecture, biblical hermeneutics, and modern Middle Eastern Studies Places great emphasis on how Jerusalem is a real city where different people live and coexist Examines the urban transformation that has taken place since late Ottoman times Utilizes numerous line drawings to demonstrate how its monumental buildings, created to illustrate an alliance of divine and human power, are in fact quite ephemeral, transient, and fragile Jerusalem - A Brief History is a comprehensive and thoughtful introduction to the Holy City that will appeal to any student of religion and/or history.
City & Community
Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History and the Future of the Holy City, by Michael Dumper. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2014. 360 pp. ISBN: 978-231-16196-1 ($35 cloth)
2015 •
Anne Shlay
Why Jerusalem, why separated, why walled? A call for Spatial Justice
Maha Samman
Menachem Klein, Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Hebron. Middle East Journal, 2016
Itamar Radai
Menachem Klein, professor of political science, and a leading expert on Jerusalem and the Arab-Israeli conflict, has produced an innovating and original study, which is also a fascinating and engaging account, a fresh look in the often-exhausted feld of research and other literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict. His work challenges common wisdom and perceptions. This “tale of three cities,” each has played a central role in the conflict, takes us on a historical tour of Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Hebron, all in detail, since the late nineteenth century to present, and rewrites the modern history of relationship between Arabs and Jews in the “holy land.” Lives in Common is rich in compelling vignettes and anecdotes that portray a rich fabric of joint life, mainly before 1948... and follows the development of the conflict since then. Given this praise, the book is not free of some problems, and even faults... It seems that the full complexities, sensitivities, and delicate nuances of this term [Arab Jews] still need a more thorough approach... Despite the erudite translation by Haim Watzman, the skillful reader will find more than just commonly mistakes in transliteration or type errors... The book is also not free of occasional factual mistakes... Finally, yet importantly, the book is based mainly on diaries and memoirs... mostly of the writings of Israeli Jews in Hebrew... However, in a work that engages in Jewish-Arab relations, Palestinian Arab published sources... should have been also thoroughly mined.
Palgrave Macmillan
The Lost City: The Pathos of Arab Jerusalem
2022 •
Carlos Diz
The invisible city of Calvino’s Invisible Cities is narrated with affects of loss, melancholy, and nostalgia. Marco Polo, the ostensible narrator, draws his descriptions, arguably, from a register of loss. That is, his invisible cities are those through which the Venetian traveler passed and to which he is likely never to return. For Marco Polo, the invisible city is a lost city. What is this relationship between the invisible city and the lost city? This chapter explores the lost city of Arab Jerusalem, in many ways still, in parts, the medieval city of arabesques that Marco Polo narrates, and itself now greatly afflicted with affects of loss, deterioration, destitution. Arab Jerusalem, founded in 638 CE, and since Israel’s conquests in 1948 and 1967 being rapidly transformed into a Jewish city, is an invisible city in the contemporary world. Its toponymy in Arabic, its human memories, its prestige as a site of Muslim and Christian pilgrimage, are all increasingly displaced towards a past tense that is, in a sense, “visible” only in signs and narration as it vanishes in real time. This chapter puts the lost city of Arab Jerusalem—Al-Quds, in Arabic—into conversation with Calvino’s literary city, and explores the question of what renders a city invisible in text but visible in signs.
MEPEI Website
The historical hardships of Jerusalem as a holy city
2024 •
Ecaterina MAȚOI
In the context of the 2021 Israeli-Palestine crisis during which civilians were killed or severely wounded on both sides, that reminds the world of past attrocities, Jerusalem remains a central point of contention in scholar, political and public discourse. The dispute related to who and how should own, rule or inhabit the city represents probably one of the oldest unanswered set of questions and the odds to obtain definitive answers in the near future are not at the horizon yet. This article does not aim to provide such answers, but it will reassess the historical trajectory of this place and hardships it had to overcome despite being considered a holy city in the three major monoteistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The preliminary assesment of major historical accounts and specialist literature on this topic, which is immense, indicates fundamentally different perspectives on this city, its history and particularly the meaning of various historical events. Furthermore, the invocation of religious texts-not accepted in nowadays scientific proceedings as historical accounts-with the purpose of asserting various rights or justifying grave, large-scale, armed aggressions that the world considers a problem of the past, becomes an ambiguous paradigm in the broadly accepted framework of modern international relations. The preliminary assessment has also indicated that the dichotomy between Jerusalem as a geographical location, a concept variable in time, and the religious concepts associated with Jerusalem that have been pursued by certain followers of one of the three monotheistic religions mentioned above has given birth to many conflicts among various groups throughout history.
