Perhaps no place epitomizes Faulkner’s oft-quoted maxim that “the past is never dead” more than Jerusalem. And there are few other places where there is so little agreement about what the past was, or is. John D Hosler takes a particular slice through this history by focusing on “conquest: those ‘falls’, or moments from the seventh through the thirteenth century when possession of the city passed from adherents of one religious confession to another by way of conflict”—a story, he posits, that “is highly pertinent to its modern controversies.”
Potential pertinence aside, the city-specific story Hosler tells is engrossing and, its provenance from an academic press and 90 pages of endnotes and bibliography notwithstanding, accessible to lay the reader who, like this reviewer, can claim at best only general knowledge going in. Although Hosler provides, succinctly and clearly, the geopolitical background to the events he discusses, there is, for example, more discussion of strategic considerations arising from the state of Jerusalem’s walls than the existential struggle between Islamic forces and Byzantium.

Hosler starts with the (somewhat) lesser-covered siege and conquest of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614. Accounts are, as they always are, somewhat at odds,
with two competing narratives of the events of 614. In the first (Christian) version, the Jerusalem Jews were complicit in the siege and aided and abetted the killing of its Christian population during the sack; once Byzantium regained the city, they were expelled and their lives forfeit on grounds of their duplicity. In a second (Jewish) telling, Byzantium’s anti-Jewish policies in Syria and Palestine sparked legitimate resistance, with many Jews favoring the invading Persians as more likely to respect their lives and traditions. In return for their military assistance, the Jews received control, albeit temporary, over Jerusalem for the first time in ages but were then betrayed and expelled by the Persians within a few years.
Regardless of the account, this seems to have been a traumatic experience: the city was sacked and much of the population slaughtered or taken into slavery. The main significance of this episode for the future was that
in the wake of the Byzantine–Persian war that produced the sack, Jerusalem’s walls were not properly repaired, rendering the city vulnerable to future attacks.
Jerusalem passed back into Byzantine hands in 630 after the stunning defeat of the Persian Empire by the Roman Emperor Heraclius. The restoration was brief, however, for the city fell to the Arabs only a few years later, who took advantage of the still as yet unrepaired defenses.
“Few events have been as consequential to religious history as the Arab capture of the city” in 638 by ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim caliph, to whom Hosler credits the relatively high degree of religious tolerance in the following centuries, something achieved, somewhat ironically, by only partially following the “Assurance” given to Patriarch Sophronius. Christians were allowed freedom of worship while Jews, whom the Christian had demanded be banned from the city, were relatively soon allowed to return.
Much of what characterizes the divisions in Jerusalem today began with ‘Umar:
Three things may seem nearly inconceivable to modern readers: that the Temple Mount, a place of such incredible significance and symbolism, once served as Jerusalem’s garbage dump; that it once went wholly unmentioned in a political treaty; and that a conqueror essentially acquired it with little effort.
Hosler continues the story in the manner up through the Crusades and 1248, when the Franks were removed from Jerusalem for the last time.
As the thirteenth century drew to a close, therefore, a circle had seemingly been completed. Jerusalem’s society was returning to its state during the days of ʿUmar in the seventh century: small, poor, and sparsely populated but, nonetheless, religiously diverse.
Hosler writes that “it is common to attribute to the medieval period only a generalized tale of religious strife”; perhaps it is, but that is not the view I had going in. On the contrary, the conventional wisdom I brought to the subject seemed very close to one that Hosler puts forward:
a dominant theme of medieval Jerusalem’s history is one of military conflict leading to gradations of rapprochement… The result was diversity of religious worship and a measure of a pluralistic society over exceedingly long stretches of time.
Even the Crusades were exceptions that largely proved the rule:
This arrangement was dramatically sundered by the First Crusade, which no doubt did enormous damage to pluralism by expelling Jews and Muslims outright. But as we have seen, those prohibitions did not last long. By the 1130s Muslims could again pray on the Temple Mount, and by the 1160s Jewish visitors could pray at the Western Wall.
Hosler, then, has little time for for those who would invoke one aspect or another of Jerusalem’s religious past for contemporary political gain:
So many interpretations of the city’s history end up being superficial treatments that either foster or buttress ignorant and jaundiced memories of the past, through which individuals, peoples, governments, and interest groups make claims about respective rights in, and to, the city on grounds of historical legitimacy that can only ever be partial.
One can agree with Holser and yet still question whether the search for “historical legitimacy” has any valid purpose at all. Injustice is in the moment: the past, whatever past, can at best only inform it, but never really justify or excuse it. As naive as evidently it is hope so, perhaps the past, pace Faulkner, were best laid to rest.
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