Mamelukes and Mongols: AD 1250-1260
The decade beginning in 1250 provides a succession of dramatic events in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. In 1250 the last sultan of Saladin's dynasty is murdered in Egypt by the slaves of the palace guard. This enables a Mameluke general, Aybak, to take power. He rules until 1257, when his wife has him killed in a palace intrigue. His place is immediately taken by another Mameluke general, Qutuz. In the following year, 1258, Baghdad and the caliphate suffer a devastating blow. Mongols, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghiz Khan, descend upon the city and destroy it. The Middle East appears to be open to conquest and destruction.
In 1259 Hulagu and the Mongols take Aleppo and Damascus. The coastal plain and the route south to Egypt seem open to them. But in 1260 at Ayn Jalut, near Nazareth, they meet the army of the Mameluke sultan of Egypt. It is led into the field by Baybars, a Mameluke general.
In one of the decisive battles of history Baybars defeats the Mongols. It is the first setback suffered by the family of Genghis Khan in their remorseless half century of expansion. This battle defines for the first time a limit to their power. It preserves Palestine and Syria for the Mameluke dynasty in Egypt. Mesopotamia and Persia remain within the Mongol empire.
Baybars and his successors: AD 1260-1517
Baybars is ruthless - in the best Mameluke tradition. Seized as a boy from the Kipchak Turks, north of the Caspian, he has been brought to Egypt as a slave. His talents have enabled him to rise to high command in the Mameluke army. In 1260, the year of his great victory at Ayn Jalut, he defeats and kills his own Mameluke sultan. He is proclaimed in his place by the army.
During his reign of seventeen years Baybars crushes the Assassins in their last strongholds in Syria, drives the crusaders from Antioch, and extends the rule of Egypt across the Red Sea to control the valuable pilgrim cities of Mecca and Medina.
In exercising this extensive rule, Baybars takes the precaution of pretending that he does so on behalf of an Abbasid refugee from the ruins of Baghdad - whom he acclaims as the caliph. His many successors maintain the same fiction. These Mameluke sultans are not a family line, like a traditional dynasty. They are warlords from a military oligarchy who fight and scheme against each other to be acclaimed sultan, somewhat in the manner of the later Roman emperors.
But they manage to keep power in their own joint hands until the rise of a more organized state sharing their own Turkish origins - the Ottoman empire.
The Ottomans, cautious about Mameluke military prowess, tackle other neighbouring powers such as the Persians before approaching Egypt. But in 1517 the Ottoman sultan, Selim I, reaches the Nile delta. He takes Cairo, with some difficulty, and captures and hangs the last Mameluke sultan.
Mameluke rule, spanning nearly three centuries, has been violent and chaotic but not uncivilized. Several of Cairo's finest mosques are built by Mameluke sultans, and for a while these rulers maintain Cairo and Damascus (500 miles apart) as twin capitals. A pigeon post is maintained between them, and Baybars prides himself on being able to play polo within the same week in the two cities.
The Ottoman centuries: AD 1516-1917
Ottoman rule over the region of Palestine and Syria lasts for four centuries from the arrival of the sultan and his army in 1516. The region is ruled for most of that period by a provincial administration in Damascus. From time to time there is unrest, turmoil and violence - but as if in a vacuum. Firm Ottoman control seals the area from outside influence or intrusion (apart from a few dramatic months in 1799, when Napoleon arrives in the district).
A longer and more significant interlude is the period from 1831 to 1840, when Mohammed Ali - the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt - seizes Palestine and Syria from his own master, the sultan.
The military campaign is conducted by Mohammed Ali's son, Ibrahim Pasha, who becomes governor general of the area. He rules rather better than the Ottoman administration, allowing a degree of modernisation. But Britain, Austria and Russia come to the aid of the sultan in 1840, forcing Mohammed Ali to withdraw his armies to Egypt.
During the following decades the most significant development is the beginning of European Jewish settlement in Palestine, from 1882. But it is World War I which changes the region out of recognition, ending the Ottoman centuries. British forces reach Palestine in 1917.
Sections are as yet missing at this point.
Sections Missing
Sections are as yet missing at this point
Arabia and Palestine: AD 1916
When the Turks enter the war, in 1914, the hereditary emir of Mecca (Husayn ibn Ali) sees a chance of extricating his territory from Ottoman rule. He secretly begins negotiating with the British. By June 1916 he is ready to launch an Arab revolt along the Red Sea coast.
The most effective part of this uprising is conducted by Faisal, one of Husayn's sons, in conjunction with T.E. Lawrence, a young British officer seconded for the purpose. Together they attack the most strategically important feature in the region, the railway which runs south from Damascus, through Amman and Ma'an, to Medina. This is the only route by which the Turks can easily send reinforcements to Arabia.
The policy succeeds and by the summer of 1917 the Arabs have moved far enough north to capture Aqaba. This is achieved on July 6 in a dramatic raid by Lawrence and some Arab chiefs with a few hundred of their tribesmen. Together they kill or capture some 1200 Turks at a cost of only two of their own lives.
The port of Aqaba occupies an important position at the head of the gulf of the same name. It offers relatively easy access up towards the Dead Sea. Faisal's army is now well placed to support a British thrust into Palestine, by operating from the desert region of the Negev to bring pressure on the eastern flank of the Turks.
During the winter of 1916 the British have been laying a railway along the northern coast of the Sinai peninsula. This makes possible an attack on Gaza, the gateway into Palestine. But on two separate occasions - in March and April 1917 - the campaign is seriously bungled. As a result a new commander, Edmund Allenby, is brought in.
Allenby succeeds in taking Gaza on November 7. He follows this with the capture of Jerusalem a month later, on December 9. Meanwhile Britain's fortunes in Mesopotamia have also been transformed by a new commander, Stanley Maude. Maude retakes Kut on 24 February 1917 and captures Baghdad on March 11.
So by the end of 1917 the Allies, occupying both Jerusalem and Baghdad, have completed half the necessary task in the Middle East. But they are still a long way from the frontier of Turkey itself. On the Mediterranean front Damascus and Aleppo lie ahead, in Mesopotamia there is still Mosul to be taken. And even then there is the almost impenetrable terrain of Anatolia before one can reach Istanbul.
With massive armies confronting each other on the western front, this all seems a long way from the centre of the action. But this year of 1917 has meanwhile brought two major developments, in the USA and Russia, which in their very different ways profoundly alter the equation of the war.
This History is as yet incomplete.
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Nur ed-Din, Ayub and Saladin: AD 1154-1186
When Nur ed-Din arrives in 1154 to besiege Damascus, the inhabitants open the gates to his army. The ruling dynasty is evicted. Nur ed-Din places Ayub, a Kurdish chieftain, in charge of the city.
With Damascus secured to the north of Jerusalem, Nur ed-Din's strategy is to surround the crusader kingdom by gaining control of Egypt to the south. He sends Syrian armies to support the Fatimid rulers of Egypt against crusader attacks.
Saladin, the son of Ayub (the governor of Damascus), plays a prominent role in these Egyptian campaigns. In 1169 Nur ed-Din appoints him commander of the Syrian forces in Egypt. In 1171 Saladin deposes the Fatimid caliph. Though officially acting on behalf of Nur ed-Din, the young campaigner, aged thirty-three, is now in effect the ruler of Egypt. When Nur ed-Din dies, three years later, he is well placed to assert himself in a wider context.
From his base in Egypt, where he establishes the Ayubid dynasty (named after his father, Ayub, who has died in 1172), Saladin extends his power through Nur ed-Din's extensive territory.
Damascus easily falls to him, thanks to his father's links with the city. Northern Syria and Iraq remain for a while loyal to the family of Nur ed-Din, but by a combination of force and diplomacy (making much of the theme of jihad) Saladin secures control of Aleppo in 1183 and Mosul in 1186.
The entire Muslim world surrounding the crusader territories, from Egypt to Syria, is now united in a holy cause. Disunity among the Franks soon provides both the opportunity and the pretext for action.
The fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem: AD 1187
In 1185 an 8-year old, Baldwin V, inherits the kingdom of Jerusalem. Rivalries during the regency erupt into virtual civil war when the child dies, only a year later, in 1186. In that same year a Frankish nobleman breaks the terms of a truce with Saladin and plunders a rich caravan making its way from Egypt to Damascus. Travelling with the caravan, as if to aggravate the offence, is Saladin's sister.
In May 1187 Saladin crosses the Jordan into the kingdom of Jerusalem with an army of some 20,000 men. In July he meets a Christian army of about the same size beneath two projecting hills, the Horns of Hattin, west of the sea of Galilee.
The Franks make the mistake of camping overnight on a plateau where the wells are dry. By the morning of the battle, in the July heat, they are desperate with thirst. They are destroyed by Saladin's army. The kingdom of Jerusalem lies open to him. Hattin, in 1187, is the turning point in the story of the crusades.
Saladin spends the next two months securing crusader fortresses in Galilee and on the coast. Acre and Gaza capitulate. Jaffa and Ascalon are besieged and taken. Only Tyre holds out against him. By September he is ready for the final challenge. He besieges Jerusalem. On the last day of the month the city surrenders.
Saladin's lasting reputation among Christians, as a man of chivalry and honour, derives above all from his treatment of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The contrast, eighty-eight years earlier, with the behaviour of the crusaders in Jerusalem could not be greater. Instead of pillage and massacre, there is an orderly handing over of the city. Holy places are respected. A ransom is to be paid for each Christian to depart in freedom, but it is not high. Among those who cannot afford it, many are released by Saladin instead of being sold into slavery.
To the very end, the Christian authorities set an appalling example. The patriarch, after buying his freedom with ten dinars, departs with wagonloads of valuable treasure which could have been used to free fellow Christians.
Egypt, Palestine and Syria: AD 1174-1250
Saladin's control of Egypt, Damascus and Aleppo, together with his campaign of 1187-8 against the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, brings almost the entire eastern Mediterranean once again under unified rule. The region will remain united during the rest of Saladin's Ayubid dynasty (until 1250), then under the next dynasty in Egypt (that of the Mameluke sultans) and finally under Ottoman rule from Turkey.
The only exceptions, in the short term, are the few strongholds which the Franks retain after 1188 - Tyre, Tripoli and a coastal strip up to Antioch. This region is briefly enlarged by the efforts, in the third crusade, of Richard I in 1191-2, but a more significant change comes with the fall of the Ayubid dynasty in 1250.
The kings of England and France, Richard I and Philip II, arrive by sea at Acre during the early summer of 1191. On July 12 they accept the surrender of the Muslim garrison, agreeing to spare their lives on stipulated terms (payment of large sums and the release of 1500 Christian prisoners). At the end of the month the king of France, with this symbolic task achieved, sets off home to France. In August Richard, impatient that Saladin has not yet been able to keep the Muslim side of the bargain, orders the massacre of the 2700 members of the captured garrison.
He then sets off on a campaign of conquest - the purpose, after all, of his crusade.
For the next twelve months Richard and Saladin test each other's strength by military and diplomatic means. Richard wins most of the military encounters, often showing outstanding personal courage. But his forces are too few to hold much of Palestine or, the real prize, to take Jerusalem. Time and diplomatic advantage are on Saladin's side.
Eventually a truce is made, in 1192. The Franks are to retain a strip along the coast from Acre down to Jaffa, and Christian pilgrims may freely visit all the holy places of Palestine. With this much accomplished, Richard sets off on a long and disastrous journey homewards.
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Although Palestine and Syria have been in Muslim hands since the 7th century, many of the inhabitants are still Christian. Moreover the region has in recent years been fought over by two rival Muslim powers, the Seljuk Turks and the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt. In these circumstances there is an element of welcome for the crusaders.On June 7 they reach their destination, arriving outside the mighty walls of Jerusalem. The city is at present held by the Fatimids. In the heat of the summer the crusaders toil for five weeks building two huge siege towers. Finally, in mid-July, they push them into place. On July 15 they breach the walls.
The resulting massacre of the Muslims and the Jews of Jerusalem shocks even medieval public opionion. The only Muslims to escape are the garrison of the main keep of the city, the tower of David. For a large quantity of treasure they are allowed to leave unharmed.
All other Muslims are slaughtered wherever they may be, in streets or houses or holy places. Many lock themselves in one of their holiest shrines, the al-Aqsa mosque. Crusaders force the door and slay them. The Jews suffer a similar fate when they take refuge in their chief synagogue. It is burnt with them all inside. One of the crusaders describes these scenes in Jerusalem as a " just and wonderful judgement of God ".
The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem: 12th century AD
With the official purpose of the crusade achieved, in the recovery of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, attention turns to a problem of at least equal concern to many of the crusaders - how to establish feudal kingdoms in the captured territories, with fiefs of land distributed to nobles and their followers in due degree.
The administration of Palestine and Syria evolves over the next ten years, as more areas are annexed. By 1109 the region consists of four feudal states. Jerusalem is a kingdom, whose king is owed allegiance by the other three rulers. Antioch is a principality. Tripoli and Edessa are counties, the fiefs of hereditary counts.
These regions form a continuous strip along the east Mediterranean. The coastal towns benefit from increased trade as ships from Venice, Genoa and Barcelona arrive with supplies, reinforcements and pilgrims. They return home with the pilgrims and a cargo of eastern goods for the markets of the west.
Enabling pilgrims to reach the holy places of Palestine has been one of the main purposes of the crusade. Protecting pilgrims from illness or attack is seen as an important task for the crusaders once they are in Palestine (where they become known as the Franks, since the majority are French or Norman and their language is French). These duties prompt the founding of two famous orders of knighthood, the Knights of St John and the Templars.
The years before the fall of Edessa: AD 1099-1144
In the early years of the Latin kingdom the crusaders establish themselves in Palestine more securely than might have been expected. The Fatimids of Egypt attack Jerusalem in 1105 but are repelled. Thereafter the Latin kingdom seems to settle down as one power among many in an unsettled region, taking part in the endemic local warfare but not in any fanatically sectarian mood. Nor are the neighbouring states particularly inflamed against the Christians, in spite of the crusaders' appalling treatment of Muslim Jerusalem.
One exception to this surprising mood of tolerance is the Turkish governor of Mosul.
Zangi, the governor of Mosul, is a Mameluke appointed to his position in 1127 by the Seljuk Turks. He immediately begins to extend his power westwards, taking Aleppo in 1128. Recognizing that the presence of the crusaders can be used to unify the Muslims of this fragmented region under his own leadership, he urges a jihad against the intruders. The Arabic word means any struggle on behalf of Islam, the extreme form of which is a holy war.
From Aleppo, Zangi is well placed to threaten the elongated line of crusader states at a vulnerable point between Antioch and Edessa. But first he tries to make a more direct advance on Jerusalem, through Damascus.
Zangi fails to take Damascus, which is held by an independent Muslim dynasty, but eventually he strikes, in 1144, against Edessa. After a four-week siege the city falls to him, soon followed by the rest of this northern crusader territory. Zangi's campaign breaks the Christian barrier which for half a century has separated the Turks of Iran from the Turks of Anatolia.
The Muslims of the Middle East discover a new sense of purpose, while the loss of Edessa causes consternation in western Christendom. The pope preaches a second crusade, urging the kings and princes of Europe to go to the defence of their colleagues in the east.
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The Arab conquests: 7th century AD
One of the most dramatic and sudden movements of any people in history is the expansion, by conquest, of the Arabs in the 7th century (only the example of the Mongols in the 13th century can match it). The desert tribesmen of Arabia form the bulk of the Muslim armies. Their natural ferocity and love of warfare, together with the sense of moral rectitude provided by their new religion, form an irresistible combination. When Muhammad dies in 632, the western half of Arabia is Muslim. Two years later the entire peninsula has been brought to the faith, and the Arab nomads are Muslim in the desert to the east of Palestine and Syria.
The great Christian cities of Syria and Palestine fall to the Arabs in rapid succession from AD 635. Damascus, in that year, is the first to be captured. Antioch follows in 636. And 638 brings the greatest prize of all, in Muslim terms, when Jerusalem is taken after a year's siege.
It is a moment of profound significance for the young religion, for Islam sees itself as the successor of Judaism and Christianity. The city of the people of Moses, in which Jesus also preaches and dies, is a holy place for Muslims too. Moses and Jesus are Muhammad's predecessors as prophets. A link with Muhammad himself will also soon emerge in Jerusalem.
Muslim Jerusalem: from the 7th century AD
The courtesy of the Arab captor of Jerusalem, in his treatment of the Christian defenders, has become legendary. He is Omar, the second caliph (his young daughter, Hafsa, is one of Muhammad's widows). Entering the city on a white camel, he is invited by the Christian patriarch to pray in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. He declines - on the grounds that if he does so, his followers will wish to turn the building into a mosque.
Instead he turns his attention to the Temple Mount, site of both Solomon's and Herod's temples, which has remained in ruins since the destruction of the temple by the Romans six centuries earlier. Here Omar builds a mosque. And from here, it is later believed, his father-in-law Muhammad ascends one night to heaven.
The mosque built by Omar no longer exists (its name, al-Aqsa, is reused for a subsequent building). Soon, under another caliph, the Temple Mount acquires the magnificent monument which is the third holiest shrine in Islam after Mecca and Medina. This is the Dome of the Rock (Al-Qubbat as-Sakhrah), covering the bare rock at the highest point of the Temple Mount - later also believed by the faithful to be the place from which Muhammad ascends. Jerusalem is launched on its long career as a largely Muslim city.
The caliph has two good reasons to build a superb shrine here. He wants to attract pilgrims (Mecca is in the hands of a rival), and he wants to outdo in splendour the domed Christian church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Dome of the Rock: AD 691
The Dome of the Rock, completed in 691 and the earliest surviving example of Muslim architecture, borrows in spectacular fashion the themes of Byzantine mosaic and domed roof. This city of Jerusalem, taken from the Christians only half a century previously, still has the skills and crafts first developed for use in imperial churches.
The dome itself is a great wooden structure. The caliph has both interior and exterior of the shrine lavishly decorated in a combination of polished marble and glittering glass mosaic against a gold background. Much of the material is acquired in Constantinople, and it is possible that some of the craftsmen are imported with it.
The caliphate in Damascus: AD 661-750
When the first Umayyad caliph becomes firmly established, after 661, he makes Damascus his capital. Syria begin a century at the centre of affairs, a position reflected in the superb Umayyad mosque in Damascus. It is built in 705 on the site of a Christian church dedicated to John the Baptist (whose supposed tomb the mosque still contains).
Unrest between rival Arab factions leads to a revolt in Persia in 747. It is headed by descendants of al-Abbas, an uncle of the prophet Muhammad. Abbasid forces reach and capture Damascus in 750. The Umayyads are hunted down and destroyed. Under the new Abbasid caliphate, the centre of the Muslim world shifts to Mesopotamia and the new city of Baghdad.
Egyptian masters: 9th - 11th century AD
In 877 a Mameluke sultan of Egypt sweeps up through Palestine and Syria. His invasion begins more than two centuries of Egyptian dominance - a familiar situation in this part of the world at many periods of history. Separated from Mesopotamia by a broad swathe of desert, this half of the Fertile Crescent is more easily controlled by Mamelukes in Cairo than from Baghdad.
Three successive Egyptian dynasties (Tulunid, Ikhshidid and Fatimid) retain power in the region until the late 11th century. By then there are new contenders on the scene - the Seljuk Turks, and the Christian crusaders.
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Christian Palestine: 4th - 7th century AD
The adoption of Christianity as the state religion, by the emperor Constantine, gives Jerusalem a new status. Pilgrims begin to arrive, among them even the mother of the emperor, Helena, whose significant achievement - so the story goes - is to discover the actual or true cross on which Christ died. Pilgrims bring wealth, and the interest of the imperial family results in important new buildings. Constantine establishes the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, commemorating the departure of Christ from this earth; Helena builds a church in Bethlehem to do the same for his arrival. This region has a significance in the world again. The bishop of Jerusalem becomes a great dignitary, as the Patriarch of Palestine.
During these Christian centuries the might of neighbouring Persia remains a threat to the security of Palestine and Syria, though local unrest is more often the result of passionate disagreement over Christian doctrine.
However, the capture of Antioch by the Persian emperor Khosrau I in 540 is an unpleasant shock. It is also a foretaste of disastrous experiences at the hands of the Persians a few decades later. The Christian cities of the Middle East are caught up in the last great Persian onslaught against Byzantium, launched in the early 7th century by Khosrau II.
The first Christian city to fall to Khosrau's armies is Antioch, in 611. Damascus follows in 613. In the spring of 614 a Persian army enters Palestine and moves through the countryside, burning churches. Only the church built by St Helena in Bethlehem is spared; the Persians recognize themselves in the costumes of the Magi, seen bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus in a mosaic above the entrance.
The army reaches Jerusalem in April. The Patriarch urges the inhabitants to surrender, so as to avoid bloodshed, but they resist for a month. When the city falls, it is said that some 60,000 Christians are massacred and another 35,000 sold into slavery.
From the point of view of the Christian hierarchy, far away in Constantinople, the Persians commit one even greater affront. After sacking Jerusalem, they carry off to Ctesiphon the most holy relic of Christendom, the True Cross of Christ.
Its restoration to Jerusalem becomes an urgent matter of state.
Recovering the relic: AD 622-629
Under the emperor Heraclius, Byzantium has been quietly regaining its strength. In AD 622 Heraclius feels ready to take the field against the Persians. His successes are as rapid and spectacular as the reverses of the previous decade. By 624 he has swept through Asia Minor and Armenia to reach Azerbaijan, to the north of Persia between the Black Sea and the Caspian.
Here, as if avenging the violation of the True Cross, he destroys one of the most sacred fire temples of Zoroastrianism.
In the next few years the swings of fortune become even more extreme. In 626 a Persian army reaches the Bosphorus, but fails to cross the water to support a siege of Constantinople's massive walls by a barbarian horde of Slavs and Avars. In 627 a Byzantine army under Heraclius penetrates Mesopotamia far enough to defeat the Persians at Nineveh and destroy Khosrau's palace at Ctesiphon.
From a position of strength Heraclius negotiates the return of the True Cross. He takes it back to be displayed in Constantinople, and then personally returns it, in 629, to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. But the relic proves powerless against the next threat to Jerusalem in 638.
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Syria and Palestine: from the 6th century BC
The Roman rulers are not the first to link Syria administratively with Palestine. In the late 6th century Darius makes Syria and Palestine, together with Cyprus, the fifth satrapy of his empire. During the Seleucid dynasty Syria and Palestine are under joint control in the 2nd century. Then, for some 700 years from the 1st century BC, the Roman and Byzantine empires unite the region.
The three main cities are the very ancient Damascus and the more recent Antioch in Syria, and Jerusalem in Palestine. Of these it is Jerusalem which has a turbulent history in Roman times. The Jews of Palestine prove exceptionally hard to govern.
Herod the Great: 37-4 BC
In Palestine one rich local family increasingly enjoys Roman favour - that of Herod. The family are practising Jews, though not descended from one of the tribes of Israel, and they seem able to deliver the stability which the Roman empire requires in the region.
Herod is in Rome in 40 BC, when the senate appoints him king of Judaea (the Roman name for the area round Jerusalem). He returns to the east with a Roman army, and by 37 BC is firmly in control of his new kingdom. He will rule it till his death in 4 BC, becoming known to history as Herod the Great.
Herod and his successors: 37 BC - AD 66
Herod proves a great builder. He founds new Roman cities, in particular Caesarea (now Qesari, on the coast south of Haifa), which later becomes the capital of Roman Palestine. And he creates a spectacular new Temple on the holy mount in Jerusalem.
But many of his actions are violent. In an outburst of jealousy he kills not only a favourite wife, Mariamne, but also her grandfather, mother, brother and two sons. He could well have been capable of the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem (if so in about 4 BC, the last year of his life), but the gospel account of this incident is inherently improbable as history - and no mention is made of the atrocity until Christian documents of a century later.
In his will Herod divides his large kingdom between three of his sons. Their inability to control an increasingly turbulent Palestine prompts Rome to give more power to its provincial governors, or procurators. But they have no greater success in pacifying the Jewish people, resentful of Roman rule and horrified by any encroachment of Roman religious symbolism (which by now includes the idolatrous theme of a divine emperor).
This is the period when the Zealots emerge - a radical political group committed to the ending of Roman rule in Palestine, using terrorism as one of its main forms of argument.
The impossibility of a working relationship between the Jewish and Roman authorities is well suggested in the New Testament account of the last days of Jesus Christ. The Jews of the Sanhedrin are determined that he shall die for blasphemy, but they want the Roman governor of Judaea (Pontius Pilate) to condemn him. Jerusalem is in Pilate's province, but he tries to shift the responsibility on to Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great who is ruling Galilee - on the grounds that Galilee is where Jesus comes from.
The lack of effective government implicit in this story is now typical of Palestine, apart from a brief period starting in AD 41. In that year Herod Agrippa is appointed king of Judaea.
Herod Agrippa is a grandson of Herod the Great and of the Hasmonaean princess Mariamne. He therefore has a direct link with a great Jewish dynasty. He also, like Herod the Great, has valuable contacts in Rome. He has been friendly since childhood with the family of Claudius, and Claudius - in his first year as emperor - appoints Agrippa to the kingdom of Judaea.
For a while, under the rule of this devout Jew who has the confidence of Rome, Palestine seems set to enjoy again the stability associated with the long reign of Herod the Great. But Agrippa dies after only three years, in AD 44. The region returns to Roman governors and revolutionary ferment.
Civil unrest: AD 44-66
The violent creed of the Zealots now acquires growing support, reinforced by their assassination of Jews who collaborate with the Romans. The Zealots have an alarming habit of wandering among the crowd on public occasions, with short daggers under their garments, and stabbing opponents before melting away unseen among a populace increasingly supportive of their aims (or else plain terrified).
Zealots are prominent in a popular uprising which in AD 66 expels the Romans from Jerusalem, and in the revolutionary government which then briefly rules Palestine. Their violent behaviour in power outrages many of their previous supporters. But they remain at the heart of resistance to the Romans.
Vespasian and Titus: AD 67-70
Nero sends a veteran general, Vespasian, to put down the rebellion in Judaea; and Vespasian involves his own son, Titus, in the campaign. Together father and son make steady progress in recovering Palestine, until the suicide of Nero in Rome prompts the crisis which has caused AD 69 to become known as the 'year of the four emperors'.
The last of the four candidates, and the only survivor of that year, is Vespasian. Marching back to Rome, he leaves Titus in command of the campaign in Judaea.
By the year 70 Titus is besieging Jerusalem. With an impressive array of battering rams and catapults, he succeeds in demolishing parts of the city wall against strong resistance from the Jews. The siege lasts six months. Josephus, a Jewish historian who is with the Roman forces, provides vivid details of famine and cannibalism within the beleaguered city.
Those who attempt to escape, as refugees, fare little better. Appalling horrors follow the discovery that one such fugitive has swallowed his wealth in the form of gold coins.
Josephus claims that Titus, no doubt aware of the Temple's contents, attempts to save it from harm. He says that Jewish partisans first set fire to the Temple colonnade after enticing Roman soldiers into a trap. Whatever the truth, the great building with its golden trimmings is soon destroyed by fire and by looting Romans. The best loot, taken by Titus himself, later features prominently on Titus's triumphal arch in Rome.
So ends the central shrine of Judaism. In the words of Josephus, 'neither its long history, nor its vast wealth, nor its people dispersed through the whole world, nor the unparalleled renown of its worship could avert its ruin'. The destruction of the Temple is another turning point in Jewish history.
Masada: AD 73
For three years groups of Zealots hold out against Roman domination in a few rocky fortresses in Palestine. The last to fall, Masada, is the most dramatic site of all.
Standing high and sheer on the western shore of the Dead Sea, Masada is a natural stronghold. Its top forms a large flat area of some 20 acres. Herod the Great has recently added to the defences of the summit, providing powerful walls, an administrative building, storehouses for grain and massive reservoirs for natural water. A Roman garrison here is massacred in the Jewish rebellion of AD 66. The Zealots, occupying the fortress, build a synagogue, ritual baths and family houses.
After the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jews of Masada - under an inspirational leader, Eleazar ben Jair - prepare for a siege by the Romans. In 72 the tenth legion arrives in the plain below, armed with elaborate siege engines. For several months they make little impact on the stone defences. But eventually flaming torches, catapulted against a temporary wall, succeed in starting a fire.
Eleazar decides that the time has come to make a dramatic end. In the words of Josephus, 'he had a clear picture of what the Romans would do to men, women and children if they won the day; and death seemed to him the right choice for them all'.
Without any sense of irony, Josephus - who has himself escaped deceitfully from a suicide pact urged upon his followers - describes with admiration the oratory by which Eleazar persuades the Jews of Masada to die, and the courageous discipline with which the deed is carried out.
Each man, after final caresses and tears, kills his wife and children. He then lies down beside them, for his own throat to be cut by one of the ten men selected by lot for this task. Then the ten draw lots as to who among them shall die first. The final survivor kills himself - the only case of suicide in the death of 960 men, women and children. Two women, who escape by hiding, live to tell the tale.
The last Jewish rebellion: AD 132-135
For two generations an uneasy truce prevails between the Jews and their Roman conquerors. Although there is no Temple in Jerusalem and the city has been largely destroyed, the Jews continue to worship freely in their synagogues.
But any suggestion of calm is shattered after the emperor Hadrian, visiting Jerusalem in AD 130, decides to rebuild it as a Roman city. It is to be called Aelia Capitolina, echoing the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Most offensive of all is the emperor's plan for Jerusalem's most prominent hill, the Temple mount.
On the ruined Temple mount there is to be a shrine to Jupiter, in which Hadrian himself will be honoured. Jewish opposition to this sacrilege is led by Simon Bar-Cochba, calling himself the prince of Israel. Simon's prestige increases dramatically when a leading rabbi recognizes him as the Messiah. In 132 his Jewish forces defeat a Roman legion and capture Jerusalem.
Not till 135, after a large army has been sent to regain control, is Jerusalem recovered by the Romans. In a bitter campaign, fought village by village throughout the region, half a million lives are lost. The whole area of Palestine is devastated. Aelia Capitolina becomes, for the moment, an unimportant provincial town.
In the reprisals after Simon Bar-Cochba's revolt, the Jews are forbidden to set foot in Jerusalem. They even seem to have been expelled from the surrounding region of Judaea. Only further north, in Galilee, do they retain a presence within their ancient kingdom of Israel.
There is by now another significant community in Jerusalem - the Christians, who have played no part in the recent rebellion. They survive within the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina. Two centuries later these Christians in Jerusalem, and the city, benefit from a change of religious policy in the Roman empire.
PALESTINE AND PHOENICIA
Imagine a merchant in the days when goods are carried on pack animals, or in wooden boats of a size to hug the shore. Show this hypothetical trader a map of the world. Ask him where, given the choice, he would ideally like to set up shop. If he is a wise man, with an eye for the main chance, the odds are that he will choose the eastern coast of the Mediterranean - the region now occupied by Israel, Lebanon and northwest Syria.This is a natural crossing point of rich trade routes: north from the Nile, the coast of Africa and western Arabia up round the Fertile Crescent to Mesopotamia; west from Asia to the sea trade of the Mediterranean. It is no wonder that the area has been constantly fought over.
In the Old Testament the region is called Canaan, which possibly means the land of 'purple'. Later the Canaanites are called Phoenicians, a word also meaning purple but now from a Greek source.
The names relate to a valuable local commodity, the rock whelks (in particular murex brandaris) from which a rich purple dye can be extracted. Robes coloured by this costly substance become a symbol of high status in Greek and Roman society. Purple is eventually associated with Roman emperors, and through them with cardinals of the Roman Catholic church - who are described as being 'promoted to the purple', though the colour of their robes is now closer to crimson.
Canaan, a land of promise: from the 3rd millennium BC
The Canaanites are Semitic tribes who enter the region during the 3rd millennium BC. They lead a settled agricultural life - occupying the site of Jerusalem, for example, in about 2600 BC - and they establish trading communities along the coast.
Politically the area does not achieve unity or independence at this stage (and only rarely in history will it do so). The Fertile Crescent, from Egypt to Mesopotamia, is too large to be controlled for any length of time as a single empire. So the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip becomes the focus of border conflict between the rulers of each end of the Crescent.
One of the contenders for power is invariably Egypt. From the 14th century their opponents to the north are the Hittites. Then, in about 1200 BC, this whole coastal region is raided and ravaged by the mysterious Sea Peoples. Some of them settle in the area. They are known to history as the Philistines.
Soon after the Philistines are established on the coast, the Hebrews begin to infiltrate the inland area - arriving from the south, through the Sinai desert. The Philistines and the Hebrews become, in the 11th and 10th centuries, the main rivals for the territory subsequently known as Palestine (a name commemorating the Philistines, though it is the Hebrews who prevail).
By the 10th century the Hebrews, or Israelites, are firmly installed in the southern part of the region with their capital at Jerusalem. The same period is one of prosperity and stability in the north, with several independent Phoenician cities developing along the coast. This is the period when the Phoenicians begin to establish a clear and influential identity.
The leading Phoenician city of the time is Tyre, which seems to have lived in peaceful coexistence with its larger neighbour, Israel. Hiram, the king of Tyre, is on good terms with both David and Solomon in the Bible. But Phoenicia and Israel are both subject, in the following centuries, to a succession of ever larger empires.
Imperial masters: 9th - 1st century BC
First the Assyrians dominate the region. They demand tribute from the Phoenicians in the 9th century; they destroy the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 and the Phoenician city of Sidon in 678. The Assyrians are followed by the Babylonians, who overrun the southern kingdom of Judah and destroy Jerusalem in 586.
Neither the Assyrians nor the Babylonians succeed in taking Tyre, almost impregnable on an offshore island. This leading Phoenician city survives long sieges by both these enemies. Even so, in every case the siege ends on terms leaving Tyre in in a subservient position.
Assyrians and Babylonians are brutal overlords. Any change from them can only be for the better. Both the Israelites and the Phoenicians welcome the next imperial power - the Persians in the 6th century.
The Persian system of imperial rule is less onerous than any previously known. Even so, subject peoples are inclined to see any new conqueror as a liberator and most of the Phoenician cities open their gates to Alexander the Great when he moves south towards Egypt in 333 BC. The exception again is Tyre, by now confident of withstanding any siege. In the case of Alexander the confidence is misplaced.
In the following centuries the eastern Mediterranean coast is under constant dispute between Alexander's heirs - the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties, in respectively Egypt and Persia. In the 3rd century, under Egyptian control, the region is reasonably stable. In the 2nd century the interventionist policies of the Seleucids cause continual unrest, particularly in Palestine - where, for almost a century from 142 BC, an independent Jewish dynasty (that of the Maccabees) holds power.
By 63 BC there is a new imperial power. Phoenicia is brought within the Roman province of Syria, to which Palestine is linked as Syria Palaestina.
Jews < Page 6 of 6 >
Hitler and the Jews: AD 1933-1938
Immediately after the Enabling Act is passed, the world is given clear warning that the anti-Semitism of Mein Kampf is not merely the raving of a theorist. It is a basis for action. The German government declares an open-ended boycott of all Jewish shops. The announcement receives wide international attention. On March 27 (just four days after the passing of the act) a mass rally is held in New York. A resolution is taken to boycott all German goods if Hitler's measure is put into effect.
Hitler compromises, revealing his sure touch in international diplomacy. He announces that the boycott will be limited to one day. On the designated day Brownshirts stand outside every Jewish establishment in Germany, warning people not to enter.
But the underlying policy remains unaltered. On April 7 a law is passed ordering the immediate 'retirement' of all civil servants 'not of Aryan descent'. This requires the dismissal of Jewish teachers in schools and universities as well as all those employed in government departments. Some of the German towns, in their enthusiasm, develop the policy beyond the immediate demands of the law. They ban performances by Jewish actors and musicians.
A 'non-Aryan' is defined as anyone with one or more Jewish grandparents. At first some exceptions are made, because of the insistence of the president, Hindenburg, that the law should not apply to Jews who had fought in the 1914-18 war or had lost a father or son in that conflict. But the law of April 7 is amended in 1935, after Hindeburg's death, and by the end of the following year there are no 'non-Aryans' in public employment.
Meanwhile, in 1935, even harsher measures are imposed, in the so-called Nuremberg Laws. At a Nazi rally in Nuremberg in September of that year it is announced that Jews are to be deprived of German citizenship, and that any sexual relationship between a Jew and a German citizen is henceforth illegal. The penalty, where the Jew in question is male, is to be death.
As yet there is no systematic and coordinated violence against Jews, but this changes drastically in November 1938. The pretext is the murder by a Jew of a diplomat in the German embassy in Paris. This occurs on November 7. Two days later a nation-wide pogrom is unleashed on the Jews of Germany and Austria (recently annexed by Hitler in the Anschluss). Organized bands of Nazis rampage through the towns, burning synagogues, smashing the windows of Jewish shops and looting their contents.
The smashed windows provide Germans with a name for this night of terror - Kristallnacht, the night of cut glass. Hitler personally orders the violence to continue throughout the night, telling Goebbels (who notes it in his diary) that 'the Jews should be made to feel the wrath of the people' and ordering 20,000 or 30,000 Jews to be arrested immediately. Approximately 20,000 are sent to the concentration camps during the next few days.
To pile on the agony, it is decreed that insurance money due on the damaged buildings is to be paid to the state. The Jews themselves are to bear the cost of repairs to their premises. And for good measure a fine of one billion marks is imposed on the German Jewish community.
The Holocaust: AD 1941-1942
The term holocaust, originally meaning a sacrifice consumed by fire in a Greek temple, has been used since the early 19th century for the murder of a large number of people. In recent decades it has acquired a much more specific significance. It now defines, almost exclusively, the systematic attempt by Hitler and the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish people. In the 20th century, which far outstripped all others in the horrors perpetrated by humans on their own kind, the Holocaust has come to stand as the defining atrocity.
It is also the atrocity, in the whole of world history, most deliberately planned as the fulfilment of a theory. A flawed and fanatic theory, but one of fatal potency.
The theory, articulated by Hitler in Mein Kampf and in frequent ranting speeches, taps into a deep-rooted European tradition of anti-Semitism, blends in some 19th-century fantasies about ethnic identity and racial purity, and finally adds a dash of 20th-century neurosis about socialism. The troubles of Germany and Austria are thereby blamed on a conspiracy of Jews , working like a virus in all spheres of national life to take over the economy and even, through sexual intermingling, to degrade the pure Aryan stock.
The misfortune underlying the tragedy of the Holocaust is that someone with these views succeeds in becoming the leader of a powerful nation and then, for a brief while, the conqueror of Europe.
From achieving power in 1933 until the outbreak of war in 1939 (an event for which he holds the Jews responsible), Hitler's ambition is to rid Germany and Austria of the nations' long-resident Jews by making them move elsewhere. But with his invasion of Russia in 1941 he begins to conceive a more drastic outcome. The 'final solution of the Jewish problem' (a phrase used in Nazi documents from early in 1942) will be death.
Within the first few days of the Russian campaign Hitler's Special Task forces round up and shoot large numbers of Jews. In two weeks of continual executions in early July, in the city of Kishinev alone, one such task force kills 10,000 people.
On June 27, in Bialystok, German soldiers chase Jews through the narrow streets around a blazing synagogue, like devils in a medieval scene of the Last Judgement. Hundreds of Jews have been locked into the synagogue before it is set on fire. Once it is blazing, the doors are broken down and others are shoved into the cauldron.
But the Nazis are already working on a less visible and more efficient method of achieving their purpose. It is first employed at Chelmno, in Poland, during 1941. Three vans are specially adapted for the killing of people through exposure to lethal gas. During the first six months 97,000 Jews die in these vans. The scheme is considered highly successful. So steps are taken to provide larger-scale death camps with permanent buildings.
These death camps are built on Polish or Russian soil. One of the first and largest is Treblinka (in Poland) where more than 750,000 Jews are killed during 1942, most of them brought there from the Warsaw ghetto.
The placing of the concentration camps in the east, relatively out of sight, is a practical measure of discretion by the Nazi high command. On 20 January 1942 a meeting is convened at Wannsee, a lakeside villa near Berlin, by Himmler's second-in-command in the SS, Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich has been put in charge of the 'final solution'. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the practical arrangements.
It is taken for granted by now in these high Nazi circles that the solution must apply to Jews in all the nations occupied by the Germans. But death camps in France or the Netherlands will be more exposed to view. So it is decided that Jews from such countries must be brought to the Polish camps.
Thus begins one of the abiding images of the holocaust - trains of cattle trucks into which Jews are crowded, heading for an unknown destination. The programme is described as 'transportation of the Jews towards the Russian East'. Early in 1942 the prospect facing these people is immediate death. But later there are two possibilities - immediate death by gas, or slow death by hard labour and deprivation.
The Holocaust: AD 1942-1945
During 1942 it occurs to the Nazis that, as with the Soviet prisoners of war, they are wasting valuable slave labour in their policy of automatic murder of the Jews. So a new form of camp is planned in which those on the trains will be classified, on arrival, as 'fit' or 'unfit' to work. The fit go one way, to the prison huts where they will live for a while as unpaid and underfed labourers. The unfit go the other way, to the gas chambers.
The first camp of this kind, ready for use in March 1942, is built at Auschwitz in Poland. An unknown number of people (certainly well in excess of a million) die in this camp in the next three years. More than half of them - the unfit, the elderly, the children - are killed in the four gas chambers within a day or two of their arrival.
Those judged fit 'to be worked to death' (a phrase used by Himmler) are put to the service of Germany's war production. Factories are moved from the vulnerable Ruhr, in the west, to the neighbourhood of Auschwitz - beyond the range of Allied bombers. Several of Germany's great industrial enterprises tarnish their reputation by benefiting during these years from Jewish slave labour.
By the end of 1942 knowledge of what is going on is not limited to those actively involved on the German side. On December 17 Anthony Eden tells the House of Commons in London that reliable reports have been received 'regarding the barbarous and inhuman treatment to which Jews are being subjected in German-occupied Europe'.
Eden is putting before the House an international declaration, published on that day, which is more direct in its account of what is actually going on. Issued jointly by the USA, the USSR, Great Britain and the governments in exile of nine occupied European countries, the declaration condemns in the strongest possible terms Germany's 'bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination'.
This is straightforward language, in stark contrast to the terms used in Nazi documents about a solution to the Jewish question and journeys to the east. But it is this veil of German euphemism which has enabled a few extreme right-wing historians to argue the preposterous theory that Hitler did not know what the terms meant and so was perhaps personally unaware of the Holocaust.
This History is as yet incomplete.
Jews < Page 5 of 6 >
A new diaspora: AD 1492-1510
The Spanish expulsion of the Jews in 1492 has wide repercussions, because of the growing power of Spain at this period. The Portuguese king is forced to expel his Jews in 1497 as a condition of marrying a Spanish princess. Spanish rule in Sicily and Naples means that from 1510 Jews have no place in the Italian peninsula south of the papal states. No expulsion of Jews is perpetrated by the papacy, but from 1555 the Jews even here are forced to live in ghettos and to wear a distinctive badge.
Meanwhile, copying the Spanish example, France expels its few remaining Jews. In England there have been no Jews since 1290. By the early 16th century the entire west of Europe is out of bounds to the Jewish people.
The majority of the Jews displaced in this wave of state persecution are those with a background in Spain. They become known as the Sephardim (from Sepharad, the Hebrew word for Spain) by contrast with the Jews of Germany and central Europe (the Ashkenazim, from Ashkenaz meaning Germany). The Sephardim, fleeing from the hostility of Christian Europe, make their way east to the more welcoming Muslim communities of north Africa, Palestine and above all Turkey.
The Ottoman sultan Bayazid II positively encourages Jewish settlement in the newly Muslim city of Istanbul.
In their new homes around the eastern Mediterranean the Sephardim continue the traditions and rituals of Spanish Jewry.
In particular they preserve through the centuries the language known as Ladino. This derives from medieval Spanish, mixed with a certain amount of Hebrew, and is usually written in Hebrew characters. It is the equivalent of the Yiddish of the Ashkenazim, which has its roots similarly in medieval German.
The ghetto: from AD 1516
For three centuries, from the 16th to the 18th, the ghetto becomes the environment of Jewish communities in Europe. Part of the reason is the Christian community's wish to control the Jewish minority in its midst; and part is the need of the Jews themselves for protection from Christian mobs. Each of the great waves of persecution - at the time of the crusades, or the Black Death - is followed by a tighter isolation of Jewish quarters.
The word ghetto is first used in Venice, where from 1516 the Jews are forced to live in a particular area of the city, with access controlled by Christian janitors. The name is said to derive from the Venetian term for an iron foundry which was previously on the site.
Within the ghetto the Jewish community is allowed control over its own affairs, through law courts, schools and other such institutions. The enclosed nature of the community, with safety and opportunity inside the perimeter and danger outside the gates, causes an intense and self-aware culture. Here, particularly in northern Europe through the medium of Yiddish, there thrives the rich Jewish tradition of story-telling and music.
Intolerance is the usual attitude of the surrounding Christian community. But sometimes a ruler favours the Jews. One example is Stephen Báthory, in Poland in the 1570s.
Appreciating the value of the skills of the Jews, Stephen Báthory takes special steps to protect their interests - restricting, for example, the trading rights of merchants and pedlars arriving in Poland at this time in large numbers (rather surprisingly) from Scotland.
He also grants the Polish Jews their own parliament, which meets twice a year and has tax-raising powers. It remains in existence for nearly two centuries, till 1764.
The ghettos of Italy, Germany and Poland begin to be demolished in the Napoleonic period, when the notions of the French Revolution make such segregation seem medieval. The ghettos of modern times, such as Warsaw, are deliberate revivals by the Nazis of a long disused system.
The European countries which never had Jewish ghettos have little reason to be proud of that distinction. They are the ones - England, France and Spain - which at one time or another expelled every Jew.
New beginnings: 17th century AD
With the development of trading empires in northwest Europe in the 17th century, Jews begin to be appreciated again for their commercial skills. The Dutch, having rid themselves of the fervently Catholic Spaniards, encourage the return of the Jews. The English, during the Commonwealth, repeal the law of 1290 which made Jewish residence in the country illegal. Similarly Protestant colonies in north America welcome Jewish immigrants.
The Jews become gradually better placed to play a full role in Christian countries. But the process is one of long and painful struggle, extending well into the 19th century.
The Rothschild dynasty: AD 1801-1815
William IX, ruler of the German state of Hesse-Kappel and possessor of a vast fortune, has for some years consulted in a private capacity his friend Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a Jewish banker and merchant of Frankfurt. He values Rothschild's advice both on matters of finance and on additions to his art collection. In 1801 he formally appoints him his court agent, and encourages him to offer his financial skills to other European princes in these troubled years when Napoleon is unsettling the continent.
Rothschild responds energetically to this opportunity. By 1803 he is in a position to lend 20 million francs to the Danish government.
The Danish loan is the first of many such transactions on behalf of governments which rapidly establish the Rothschild family as Europe's most powerful bankers, rising to a pre-eminence comparable to that of the Medici and the Fugger in earlier centuries.
The family is soon represented in all the important centres of the continent. Mayer Amschel has five sons. He keeps the eldest, Anselm Mayer, at his side to inherit the Frankfurt bank. The four younger sons establish branches elsewhere: Solomon in Vienna, Nathan Mayer in London, Karl in Naples and Jacob in Paris.
The Rothschild family gambles heavily on the eventual defeat of Napoleon. Their loans are all to his enemies (surprisingly Napoleon allows Jacob, operating from Paris, to raise money for the exiled Bourbons). Their network of contacts enables them to move money around Europe even in wartime conditions. A famous example, but only one of many, is Nathan's transfer of large sums of money from London to Portugal to pay the British troops in the Peninsular War.
By the end of the war the Rothschild family has a vast reputation among the allies, and a close involvement in the government finances of many nations.
The qualities soundly underpinning their good fortune, in addition to undoubted financial flair, are that they are trustworthy and very well informed.
An example of the former is the fortune left in Mayer Amschel Rothschild's care when his patron flees from Hesse-Kassel after Napoleon's victory at Jena in 1806. It amounts to perhaps half a million pounds in the money of those days. In spite of every attempt by Napoleon's agents to make him make him hand it over, Rothschild keeps it safe and returns it, with interest, to its owner in 1815.
As to reliable information, the most famous incident concerns that same year, 1815. On June 20 Nathan Mayer Rothschild calls on the government in London, during the morning, with a startling piece of good news. The duke of Wellington, he informs the officials - who are at first somewhat incredulous - has two days earlier won a decisive victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.
Confirmation arrives that afternoon through the government's own channels. The Rothschild network of communication includes, famously, the use of homing pigeons. But on this occasion their success is due to one of their couriers, who was waiting in the harbour at Ostend for the first scrap of news.
Sections are as yet missing at this point.
Jews < Page 4 of 6 >
Jews under Christian rule: from the 4th century AD
The Jews of the Diaspora have spread throughout the Roman empire long before its rulers become Christian, in the 4th century AD. The change of imperial religion does not benefit the Jews. In spite of their struggles against the Roman authorities in Palestine, the Jews in other cities of the empire have won a considerable degree of acceptance.
Judaism is referred to in Roman legal documents as insignissima religio, certe licita ('a well-known religion, certainly lawful'). In Christian imperial pronouncements Jews are more often described as secta nefaria, a 'nefarious sect'.
Once the Roman emperors are Christian, the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus is naturally laid more at the door of the Jews than of the Roman authorities - although it is Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judaea, who orders the deed. But St Matthew's Gospel contains one terrible line, responsible surely for much suffering in subsequent centuries. It reports that the Jews, clamouring for the death of Jesus, cry out to Pilate: 'His blood be on us, and on our children'.
The pretext is in place for centuries of persecution. Not until 1974 does the Vatican formally declare that the Jewish people are not to be held collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.
Wandering Jews: from the 7th century AD
Over the centuries the treatment of the Jews within the territory of the old Roman empire ranges from outright persecution to occasional encouragement. The variation, unpredictable and often sudden, greatly affects the distribution of Jewish communities.
A wave of persecution and forced conversion in the early 7th century is at its worst in Visigothic Spain. Later in the same century there is a welcome swing in the other direction, not so much in Europe as in the Asian and African parts of the old Roman empire.
The Muslims, conquering half the Roman empire, tolerate the 'people of the book' on principle. Jewish communities thrive under Islam in the oldest regions of the Diaspora, such as Egypt, and they acquire important new areas of settlement - in particular Muslim Spain, soon to be the region in which Jews are more fully integrated than anywhere else. One of the strangest details of Jewish history dates also from this period - the conversion of the Khazars.
In northern Europe encouragement by Charlemagne and his successors brings Jewish communities to the Rhine. Spain and Germany become the two great centres of European Jewry. But a large and prosperous population in good times tends to attract the worst of any subsequent persecution.
A wide range of circumstances make the Jews dangerously exposed to persecution. The Christians claim a religious motive for hostility. The Jews, both by preference and by necessity, tend to live as a separate and easily identifiable community - an easy target in times of stress. And the economic role of the Jews aggravates the situation.
Arriving peacefully in fully settled areas, the option of living on the land is not open to Jews. Their first activity in a new area is usually that of the merchant, making use of their international network of contacts. But Christian merchants tend to crowd out their Jewish rivals.
Soon the richer Jews have only one way to use their wealth - lending it on interest, in the practice of usury which is forbidden by the Christian church but is tolerated (since the function is needed in any mercantile society) if carried out by non-Christians.
No debtor loves his creditor (even today banks are not universally popular). The Jewish moneylender and his entire community can easily fall victim to mass hysteria. The first catastrophic example of this is in 1096, when undisciplined mobs in Germany make the Jews the first target of their crusade.
The German crusade and the Jews: AD 1096
No great feudal lord in Germany answers the pope's call to go on crusade. Instead three lesser figures gather large bands of simple German pilgrims and then inflame them with hatred of the Jews in their own communities - using the argument that before going to punish the Muslims who have seized Christ's sepulchre in Jerusalem, it makes sense to punish the Jews, closer to hand, whose ancestors are held responsible for his actual death.
In Spier in early May, in Worms and Mainz later in the month, and in Cologne, Trier and Metz in June, communities of Jews are seized and massacred by crusaders on their way east.
Prague is reached at the end of June and the city's Jews are killed. In most of these places the local bishops make efforts to protect the Jewish population, but they prove unable to do so. The king of Hungary, Kálmán, shows greater resolve.
Each of the three German crusading rabbles tries to makes its way onwards through Hungary. Kálmán at first attempts to give them peaceful passage, but they soon provoke violence - after which the Hungarian army annihilates all three groups. Many thousands of Jews and Christians die in Europe in this first summer of the first crusade. It is an ominous setback to the crusading ideal.
Dark centuries: 12th - 14th century AD
Persecution of the Jews becomes increasingly a feature of European life during the later centuries of the Middle Ages. The imagination of gullible Christians is seized by a succession of hysterical slanders. One, surfacing in the 12th century, is the belief that Jews engage in the ritual murder of Christian children. The most common charge in the next century is that they desecrate the Host, or communion wafer.
This follows the church's adoption of the doctrine of Transubstantation, stating that the body of Christ is physically within the consecrated Host. To desecrate this is seen as ritual murder and blasphemy. At times of stress any of these charges can become the pretext for a massacre.
The economic status of the Jews declines in the same period. Their position as money-lenders to the rich and powerful is eroded from the 13th century when merchants from northern Italy (collectively described as Lombards) develop banking activities. The Jews, no longer indispensable, are expelled from England in 1290 and from France in 1306.
Elsewhere they survive by engaging in a lower level of usury, as pawnbrokers to ordinary citizens - a dangerous situation, since debtors often welcome an excuse to turn on their creditors. In these circumstances, when Europe's town face the terrifying crisis of the Black Death, the Jews are the almost inevitable victims.
Poisoned wells: AD 1348-1349
As Europe's citizens succumb in vast numbers to the plague, a rumour spreads that the cause lies in polluted water. The wells, it is said, have been deliberately poisoned by the Jews. The first massacres of Jews occur in France in the spring and summer of 1348. The situation rapidly becomes worse after a Jewish doctor, tortured on the rack at Chillon in Switzerland, says that he has poisoned wells with powder sent to him for the purpose by a rabbi in Spain.
Basel burns all its Jews later that month. In November the hysteria spreads to Germany.
In town after town during the next nine months, through Germany and up into Flanders, Jews are burnt in their tens of thousands (in addition to those dying anyway of the plague). Jews fleeing from this horror make their way mainly into Poland, where they are protected by the king, Casimir III. He is said to be influenced in the direction of tolerance by Esther, his Jewish mistress.
This migration brings into Poland, and subsequently into Russia, large communities of Jews speaking Yiddish - their own version of German, developed in the medieval centuries.
The Spanish Inquisition: AD 1478-1834
In 1478 the pope, Sixtus IV, allows Ferdinand and Isabella to establish a special branch of the Inquisition in Spain. There is believed to be a danger to the church from Jews masquerading as Christians.
Such Jews are referred to as marranos ('swine'). Their conversion is the result of anti-Semitic violence during the previous century. To escape the likelihood of death at the hands of Christian mobs, many Jews (probably about 100,000) accept baptism. But a considerable number continue to practise their Jewish faith in secret. The concept of secret groups of heretics particularly alarms the church; and the remarkable tenacity of the Jews of Belmonte, in maintaining their faith behind a Catholic facade, proves that there is good cause for the inquisitors' suspicions.
The first Grand Inquisitor is appointed in 1480. He is Tomas de Torquemada, who himself comes from a family of converted Jews. His dedication to his task will become legendary. And the public much appreciates the great ceremonies which he stage-manages - the famous auto-da-fés.
The auto-da-fé (Spanish for 'act-of-faith') is a solemn religious ceremony in a tradition going back to the inquisition against the Cathars. The inquisitor and those accused of heresy process into a public place, such as the main square of a town. After the holding of a mass, the verdicts on the accused and the sentences on the guilty are announced.
In 1492 Torquemada persuades Ferdinand and Isabella to expel from Spain all Jews who are unwilling to convert to Christianity. About 160,000 of them leave the country. Ten years later the same demands are made of the Spanish Muslims.
From being one of the most tolerant countries in Europe, in the heyday of Cordoba and Toledo, Spain becomes the most intolerant. The Inquisition extends its sway to Latin America, to Portugal and to the Spanish Netherlands. It is not finally suppressed until 1820 in Portugal and 1834 in Spain.
Jews < page 3 of 6 >
Judah and the Greeks: 4th - 3rd century BC
Judah remains a province of the Persian empire until 332 BC when a new conqueror, Alexander the Great, passes by. The high priest of Jerusalem makes him welcome.
Jerusalem suffers a certain amount of turmoil during the warfare which follows the death of Alexander in 323, but by 301 it is firmly under the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. The Ptolemies prove benevolent - so much so that a thriving community of Jews develops in their capital city, Alexandria.
The Jews of Alexandria demonstrate the ability of a Jewish community to flourish in a new context without losing its identity. They integrate so fully with the secular life of the city that their own first language becomes Greek. It is they who first use the word diaspora (Greek for 'dispersion') to describe Jewish communities living outside Israel.
Soon many of them no longer understand Hebrew. But they refuse to let this diminish their strong sense of a shared identity as God's special people, according to the covenant revealed in a book which they now cannot read. They commission, with Ptolemy's support and approval, the first translation of the Bible, the famous Greek version known as the Septuagint.
Sadducees and Pharisees: 200 BC - AD 70
After the return from exile in Babylon, in the late 6th century BC, the Jewish community in Jerusalem is ruled by the Temple priests. Control of the Temple has remained with the descendants of Zadok, high priest in the time of David and Solomon. This priestly family is the central element of the party of the Sadducees, formed in about 200 BC and deriving its name from Zadok.
Linked with the priests are the aristocratic families and leading merchants of Jerusalem. Priests, aristocrats and the rich often form an alliance of this kind, conservative in mentality and intolerant of opposition. But from 141 BC the Sadducees find themselves confronted by an opposing party in the new Sanhedrin.
The members of the Sanhedrin include scholars and teachers who are learned in the Jewish law but are not themselves priests. They tend to be more flexible than the Sadducees in their understanding of the Torah, arguing that the Mosaic law must be interpreted in a way relevant to contemporary life. They also give much greater weight than their rivals to the large body of oral law and custom which has developed over the centuries.
The Sadducees, who insist on a literal reading of the Torah, describe their opponents dismissively as Pharisees - a word meaning 'dissenters'. As often with religious dissent (the Methodists among Christians, for example), the reformers proudly adopt the abusive name.
The Pharisees become associated with the piety of the synagogue (where words are central, in the reading of holy texts or in prayer) as opposed to the rituals of Temple worship (blood and sacrifice).
The pattern of development in other religions suggests that the future must eventually lie with the Pharisees and with their new form of priest - the rabbi (meaning 'master' or 'teacher'), a man distinguished by his learning rather than his caste. Rabbinical schools will later become the heart of Judaism.
Zeus in the Temple: 2nd century BC
Judah benefits during the 3rd century from the religious tolerance of the Ptolemies. But it suffers, subsequently, from the aggressively Greek attitude of the other great Hellenistic power in this region - the Seleucid empire in Persia. The Seleucid rulers attempt on several occasions to dislodge the Ptolemies from the whole region of Palestine. They finally succeed in doing so in about 200 BC.
At first the priests in Jerusalem may not notice the difference. But a king who comes to the Persian throne in 175 makes it very plain what he thinks of their religion. Antiochus IV gives himself the Greek title Ephiphanes - meaning 'god revealed'. In this he identifies himself with Zeus.
In 168 Antiochus sets up a statue of Zeus above the great altar in the Temple at Jerusalem, and sacrifices are made to the idol. He employs an Athenian philosopher to supervise the temple worship, and (a necessary precaution in view of all this) he instals a Greek garrison in a new fortress in Jerusalem, on the site of the citadel of David.
Similar Greek rituals are organized in provincial centres. One of them provokes violent resistance. An elderly priest, Mattathias, refuses to sacrifice to the idol and kills a colleague who is willing to do so. Mattathias has five sons, three of whom play leading roles in the resulting revolution.
The dynasty of the Maccabees: 2nd - 1st century BC
One of the sons of Mattathias is Judas, who has the surname Maccabaeus or the Maccabee (it is thought to mean either the 'hammer' of the Seleucids, or the 'appointed one' of God). After a rapid series of victories over Seleucid armies, Judas is able in 165 BC to cleanse the Temple in Jerusalem of Greek abominations. He then rededicates it to the one God - an event celebrated each year in the Jewish festival of Hannukah.
Judas is killed in battle in 160. His brother Jonathan picks up the torch. He is succeeded, after his death in 143, by a third brother, Simon. In 142, after twenty-five years of warfare against the Seleucids, Simon secures a treaty which gives Judah political independence as well as religious freedom.
The people of Judah (or Judaea as the Romans will call it) appoint Simon Maccabaeus political leader and high priest. Both positions are declared hereditary within his family. He therefore becomes the founder of a ruling house sometimes known as the Maccabees but more often called by historians the Hasmonaean dynasty (from Hasmon, a distant ancestor).
The Hasmonaean rulers bring prosperity to Judah, though not without a considerable amount of internal strife and drama. Opposition to them appears to have driven the Essenes into the desert. And an innovation of 141, the Sanhedrin, becomes the forum for hostility between two religious sects, Sadducees and Pharisees.
Judaea and the Romans
The Jews and their former persecutors, the Seleucids, fall in successive years to a far greater power - the Romans. In 64 BC Pompey annexes Syria, the last remaining territory of the once great Seleucid empire. In 63 he takes Jerusalem.
Roman rule starts brutally, with priests slain at the altar of the Temple. For the next two decades the Hasmonaean family try to lead a new rebellion, fired by the same sense of outrage as prompted their ancestors a century earlier, but in 40 BC Mark Antony captures and executes the last of the dynasty. Their line does nevertheless continue in the next Judaean dynasty - that of Herod, who marries the Hasmonaean princess Mariamne.
Herod's position is anomalous. He is a Jew, but he has been appointed king of Judaea by the conquering Romans. His reign involves a constant balancing act between Jewish religious sensibilities (a Roman eagle above the Temple gate is taken as inflammatory evidence of idolatry) and Rome's demand that he control this troublesome region.
On the whole Herod balances well. The Jews are free to practise the religion which he shares with them. The Romans are grateful for peace in the region. Step by step they extend Herod's kingdom until it includes all of Palestine together with modern Jordan and much of Lebanon.
Herod and his successors: 37 BC - AD 66
Herod proves a great builder. He founds new Roman cities, in particular Caesarea (now Qesari, on the coast south of Haifa), which later becomes the capital of Roman Palestine. And he creates a spectacular new Temple on the holy mount in Jerusalem.
But many of his actions are violent. In an outburst of jealousy he kills not only a favourite wife, Mariamne, but also her grandfather, mother, brother and two sons. He could well have been capable of the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem (if so in about 4 BC, the last year of his life), but the gospel account of this incident is inherently improbable as history - and no mention is made of the atrocity until Christian documents of a century later.
In his will Herod divides his large kingdom between three of his sons. Their inability to control an increasingly turbulent Palestine prompts Rome to give more power to its provincial governors, or procurators. But they have no greater success in pacifying the Jewish people, resentful of Roman rule and horrified by any encroachment of Roman religious symbolism (which by now includes the idolatrous theme of a divine emperor).
This is the period when the Zealots emerge - a radical political group committed to the ending of Roman rule in Palestine, using terrorism as one of its main forms of argument.
The impossibility of a working relationship between the Jewish and Roman authorities is well suggested in the New Testament account of the last days of Jesus Christ. The Jews of the Sanhedrin are determined that he shall die for blasphemy, but they want the Roman governor of Judaea (Pontius Pilate) to condemn him. Jerusalem is in Pilate's province, but he tries to shift the responsibility on to Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great who is ruling Galilee - on the grounds that Galilee is where Jesus comes from.
The lack of effective government implicit in this story is now typical of Palestine, apart from a brief period starting in AD 41. In that year Herod Agrippa is appointed king of Judaea.
Herod Agrippa is a grandson of Herod the Great and of the Hasmonaean princess Mariamne. He therefore has a direct link with a great Jewish dynasty. He also, like Herod the Great, has valuable contacts in Rome. He has been friendly since childhood with the family of Claudius, and Claudius - in his first year as emperor - appoints Agrippa to the kingdom of Judaea.
For a while, under the rule of this devout Jew who has the confidence of Rome, Palestine seems set to enjoy again the stability associated with the long reign of Herod the Great. But Agrippa dies after only three years, in AD 44. The region returns to Roman governors and revolutionary ferment.
Civil unrest: AD 44-66
The violent creed of the Zealots now acquires growing support, reinforced by their assassination of Jews who collaborate with the Romans. The Zealots have an alarming habit of wandering among the crowd on public occasions, with short daggers under their garments, and stabbing opponents before melting away unseen among a populace increasingly supportive of their aims (or else plain terrified).
Zealots are prominent in a popular uprising which in AD 66 expels the Romans from Jerusalem, and in the revolutionary government which then briefly rules Palestine. Their violent behaviour in power outrages many of their previous supporters. But they remain at the heart of resistance to the Romans.
Vespasian and Titus: AD 67-70
Nero sends a veteran general, Vespasian, to put down the rebellion in Judaea; and Vespasian involves his own son, Titus, in the campaign. Together father and son make steady progress in recovering Palestine, until the suicide of Nero in Rome prompts the crisis which has caused AD 69 to become known as the 'year of the four emperors'.
The last of the four candidates, and the only survivor of that year, is Vespasian. Marching back to Rome, he leaves Titus in command of the campaign in Judaea.
By the year 70 Titus is besieging Jerusalem. With an impressive array of battering rams and catapults, he succeeds in demolishing parts of the city wall against strong resistance from the Jews. The siege lasts six months. Josephus, a Jewish historian who is with the Roman forces, provides vivid details of famine and cannibalism within the beleaguered city.
Those who attempt to escape, as refugees, fare little better. Appalling horrors follow the discovery that one such fugitive has swallowed his wealth in the form of gold coins.
Josephus claims that Titus, no doubt aware of the Temple's contents, attempts to save it from harm. He says that Jewish partisans first set fire to the Temple colonnade after enticing Roman soldiers into a trap. Whatever the truth, the great building with its golden trimmings is soon destroyed by fire and by looting Romans. The best loot, taken by Titus himself, later features prominently on Titus's triumphal arch in Rome.
So ends the central shrine of Judaism. In the words of Josephus, 'neither its long history, nor its vast wealth, nor its people dispersed through the whole world, nor the unparalleled renown of its worship could avert its ruin'. The destruction of the Temple is another turning point in Jewish history.
The rabbi at Jamnia: AD 70
The end of the Temple is also a beginning, dramatically captured in a story from the siege. It is said that the learned rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai has himself smuggled out of the city in a coffin. Coming into the presence of Titus, he prophesies that the young man will become emperor and asks for a favour - to be allowed to establish a rabbinical school at Jamnia (modern name Yavne).
He is granted what seems like a small concession. But the resulting college (which soon moves elsewhere, and prompts the founding of other similar establishments) is of great importance in the history of Judaism. In such institutions, known as yeshiva, the Jewish sense of identity is nourished by intense scholarship.
The tradition of the yeshiva spreads round the world and through the centuries. In yeshivoth (the plural of the word) Jewish scholars compile the Talmud, an encyclopedic collection of oral traditions and customs. Ranging over the wide fields of law, history, religion, legend, folklore and philosophy, these texts encapsulate the Jewish experience.
For a people scattered and persecuted, as the Jews are after the destruction of the Temple, the Talmud - along with the Torah and the synagogue - makes it possible to put down roots no matter how alien the soil.
Masada: AD 73
For three years groups of Zealots hold out against Roman domination in a few rocky fortresses in Palestine. The last to fall, Masada, is the most dramatic site of all.
Standing high and sheer on the western shore of the Dead Sea, Masada is a natural stronghold. Its top forms a large flat area of some 20 acres. Herod the Great has recently added to the defences of the summit, providing powerful walls, an administrative building, storehouses for grain and massive reservoirs for natural water. A Roman garrison here is massacred in the Jewish rebellion of AD 66. The Zealots, occupying the fortress, build a synagogue, ritual baths and family houses.
After the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jews of Masada - under an inspirational leader, Eleazar ben Jair - prepare for a siege by the Romans. In 72 the tenth legion arrives in the plain below, armed with elaborate siege engines. For several months they make little impact on the stone defences. But eventually flaming torches, catapulted against a temporary wall, succeed in starting a fire.
Eleazar decides that the time has come to make a dramatic end. In the words of Josephus, 'he had a clear picture of what the Romans would do to men, women and children if they won the day; and death seemed to him the right choice for them all'.
Without any sense of irony, Josephus - who has himself escaped deceitfully from a suicide pact urged upon his followers - describes with admiration the oratory by which Eleazar persuades the Jews of Masada to die, and the courageous discipline with which the deed is carried out.
Each man, after final caresses and tears, kills his wife and children. He then lies down beside them, for his own throat to be cut by one of the ten men selected by lot for this task. Then the ten draw lots as to who among them shall die first. The final survivor kills himself - the only case of suicide in the death of 960 men, women and children. Two women, who escape by hiding, live to tell the tale.
It is a matter of controversy, particularly in Israel, how much reliance can be placed on Josephus' account of these events. Archaeological excavations in 1963-5 were at first assumed to provide evidence of his heroic version, though the findings of human remains or artefacts were relatively scanty. Thirty years later doubt is cast by some on the reliability of the first archaeological assumptions.
Underlying the controversy is the debate about Israel today. Was Eleazar ben Jair a heroic nationalist or a bigoted extremist preferring death to compromise? The question of whether peace was possible with Rome becomes transferred to opposing ideas of the peace process in Israel in the 1990s.
The last Jewish rebellion: AD 132-135
For two generations an uneasy truce prevails between the Jews and their Roman conquerors. Although there is no Temple in Jerusalem and the city has been largely destroyed, the Jews continue to worship freely in their synagogues.
But any suggestion of calm is shattered after the emperor Hadrian, visiting Jerusalem in AD 130, decides to rebuild it as a Roman city. It is to be called Aelia Capitolina, echoing the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Most offensive of all is the emperor's plan for Jerusalem's most prominent hill, the Temple mount.
On the ruined Temple mount there is to be a shrine to Jupiter, in which Hadrian himself will be honoured. Jewish opposition to this sacrilege is led by Simon Bar-Cochba, calling himself the prince of Israel. Simon's prestige increases dramatically when a leading rabbi recognizes him as the Messiah. In 132 his Jewish forces defeat a Roman legion and capture Jerusalem.
Not till 135, after a large army has been sent to regain control, is Jerusalem recovered by the Romans. In a bitter campaign, fought village by village throughout the region, half a million lives are lost. The whole area of Palestine is devastated. Aelia Capitolina becomes, for the moment, an unimportant provincial town.
In the reprisals after Simon Bar-Cochba's revolt, the Jews are forbidden to set foot in Jerusalem. They even seem to have been expelled from the surrounding region of Judaea. Only further north, in Galilee, do they retain a presence within their ancient kingdom of Israel.
There is by now another significant community in Jerusalem - the Christians, who have played no part in the recent rebellion. They survive within the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina. Two centuries later these Christians in Jerusalem, and the city, benefit from a change of religious policy in the Roman empire.
