The battle for the holy city

In a tour de force of 500 pages of text Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian of Stalin and Potemkin, turns to a totally different subject: the city of Jerusalem. Founded around 1000 BC by Jews on Canaanite foundations, it has been, in turn, capital of the Kingdom of Judah; scene of the crucifixion of Jesus and of Mohammed’s night ride to heaven; a provincial city in the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Arab, Ottoman and British empires; and finally the capital of Israel.

Using the latest archaeological evidence, Montefiore recounts with verve the manias and massacres of the different dynasties which ruled the city. The line of David, the blood of the Prophet, the Crusader dynasties of Flanders and Lusignan dominated the city as well as competing religions. Kings were as important as high priests; family trees, as much as articles of belief, determined events.

In some of his most original passages Montefiore shows the flexibility of sanctity. In the city sacred to three faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, shrines were shared, traditions invented, when needed. The Dome of the Rock, so different in style and design to other mosques, may have been in part an attempt by early Muslims, strongly influenced by Judaism, to rebuild the Jewish temple and present themselves as the true people of Israel. Montefiore calls it Jerusalem’s defining shrine, the divine esplanade where heaven and earth meet, where God meets man.

His narrative quickens after 1900. Jerusalem again became a battlefield between faiths and empires — and the power-base of Palestinian dynasties like Husseini and Nashashibi. For a time it became a Levantine city. Its mix of races and languages, Arabs, Jews, Armenians and Europeans, was recorded with delight by, among others, the lute-playing party-planner Wassif Jawhariyyeh: extracts from his diary are here published for the first time in England.