Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong, a renowned historian of religion, examines the city’s complex history and central place in the hearts of the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in her book Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. These are the common religions practiced all over the world. Jerusalem represents the thousand-year history of how each religion has influenced, conquered, and spiritualized the city symbolizing the complex interrelations between the religions.

The Sacred City

As Armstrong sets up the backdrop to her book Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, she gives the reader context as to why Jerusalem has been such an important spiritual place since the start. For Christians, it is the city of the Lord’s redemptive activity and the epic of biblical holy history since the Jewish exile. For them, Jerusalem is a place of crucifixion, which the resurrected Christ has made into a religious shrine. To Jews, it is the place of the Ancient Temple while for Christians it is the area of the pool of Bethesda, the site of healing. The landmark for Muslims is the Al-Aqsa Mosque—the third holiest Muslim site where the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) is believed to have been taken during his night journey.

The city, however, has nearly a constant state of warfare and strife as Armstrong underlines, which stems from the fact that it represents the three major monotheistic faiths. The book starts by narrating how as early as its infancy, Orthodox religion played a big role in the city’s history and precluded centuries of fighting for dominance by various groups, most of them practicing this faith.

Part I: The Ancient World

Armstrong starts her story in the ancient era in which she seeks to paint the historical background of Jerusalem as evidenced. It was inhabited since the Canaanite Period around 3000 BC According to Armstrong, King David founded the city circa 1000 BC and made it the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. Solomon, son of David, would later establish the First Temple, thus making Jerusalem the Jewish center for religious and political activities.

Nevertheless, the main historical event in Jewish history that is connected with the First Temple’s destruction is the Babylonian’s “capture and the consequent exile” of the Jews in 586 BCE which initiated the diaspora. This loss, according to Armstrong, gave the Jewish people a longing for Jerusalem—a longing that would remain even after they had been expelled and dominated for many ages.

She also describes how the Persian, Greek, and Roman domination affected the religious development of Jerusalem. Armstrong provides detailed information about the construction of the Second Temple during Persian rule and its destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE as the significant events that continuously prearranged the Jewish religious and cultural life, as well as defining the later appearances of the Christian and Islamic leaders’ claims to the city.

Part II: Christianity’s Claim 

Armstrong then changes direction and starts to discuss the growth of Christianity and its effects on Jerusalem. Since the first believers considered themselves Jewish, the new religious movement was extensively elaborated on only after Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Jerusalem appeared to be a religious place where Christians focused on the site of Jesus’s death and resurrection. 

It was only in the 4th century CE with the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine that the possibility opened up for it. What Armstrong tells her readers about the city is that Constantine’s mother, Helena, traveled there and is believed to have found the “True Cross,” which only served to enhance the religious significance of Jerusalem for Christians. Jerusalem was made into a Christian city when Constantine was in power; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to make Christianity a stronghold where Christ was buried and crucified. 

Armstrong looks at the theological and political controversies that characterized Christianity as it surged forward. Yet the Christians made Jerusalem into their own city and the Jews were deprived of their control and the freedoms of access to it. This period of Christian dominance witnessed the emergence of theological controversies that fell on the matter of immigration of Jesus, the Trinity, and the church hierarchy that impacted the religious and political activities of the city.

Part III: Conquest and Transformation 

Jerusalem’s history continues with its conquest by Muslim forces in the mid-7th century. Armstrong goes on with her account of how after the death of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), in 632CE, Muslim armies began to rapidly expand to the Middle East and captured Jerusalem in 638CE. Caliph Umar, who conquered Jerusalem, allowed Jews into the city. It was the first time since Persian Christians recaptured the city that this policy was changed from the Christian approach of banning Jews from their holy places of worship. 

This chapter includes the significance of Jerusalem in Islamic history; much of it is linked to the history of the Prophet Muhammad‘s (PBUH) night journey and ascendancy to the heavens. To Armstrong, the above-mentioned event facilitated the construction of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, making the city the third holiest city in Islam after Mecca and Medina. These buildings, constructed on the Temple Mount, became symbols of Muslim power and virtue. 

This was however, not to be a permanent status for Jerusalem because, unlike other Christian cities that encountered the Islamic conquests and faced an immediate, permanent, and unyielding occupation and subjugation, Jerusalem under Muslim rule, for the most part, enjoyed periods of relative peace and religious tolerance, especially under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate. Armstrong’s work proves that Jews, Christians, and Muslims had roughly 200 or so years of relative peace in Jerusalem and indeed used the same religious sites in the city. While the two civilizations seem to coexist in this symbiotic realization the political and religious tensions were always brewing to bring out conflicts that later came into existence fully with the arrival of the Crusaders in the 11th century.

Part IV: Crusades and their Consequences 

The history of Jerusalem contains several devastating events but the period of the Crusades likely remains one of the most painful ones. In the year 1099, Christian crusaders from Europe seized Jerusalem and killed all the Muslims as well as the Jewish communities in the city. Armstrong reveals that from the Crusaders’ perspective, the warfare was sacred, the aim was to liberate Jerusalem and restore it to the Christian world and to establish the Christian kingdom in the Holy Land. 

When the city came under Christian rule, it was captured by Crusaders, and Jerusalem was controlled by them for almost a century. During this period the layout of the city was changed to incorporate the perceptions of Christian power. Temples were erected and “buy and sell” markets constructed, Muslims and Jews were, for the most part, barred from entering the city. But in 1187, the Muslim Leader Saladin again captured Jerusalem, and after that, the harsh policy towards Jews and Christians softened up. 

In Crusades, Armstrong looks at how the pagan societies of the Middle Ages developed a deep bitterness and hatred that still prevails between Christians and Muslims at present. The Crusades also increased the theology and politics of Christianity as the Crusaders battled with other Christian sects to control the holiness of the sites in Jerusalem.

Part V: The Ottoman Empire and the Modern World 

From this chapter, we move to the Ottoman Sultan Selim who captured Jerusalem in 1517, and definitively established Muslim control. During the Ottoman period, mainly the 15th century, the city was not exposed to many conflicts and the inhabitants of the city were Muslims, Jews, and Christians. That being said, the empire’s disintegration in the 19th century, in addition to the advance of European imperialism and nationalism, laid the groundwork for the contemporary battles for Jerusalem. 

When European colonialism stirred the demand for greater control over this region in the Middle East, the religious and political structure in Jerusalem experienced a metamorphosis. Armstrong gives details on how the Zionist movement was established in the late 19th century, as European Jews settled in Palestine intending to create a home for the Jewish culture. This was, however, countered by the Arab people which led to the worsening of the situation and acts of hostility.

Part VI: The Twentieth Century and Beyond

The last chapter of the book concerns political disturbances in Jerusalem during the 20th century including the British mandate, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Armstrong describes the social context of the conflict which eventually led to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the division of Jerusalem between Israel and Jordan. She also narrates the events that surrounded the Six Days War of 1967 when Israel captured the eastern part of the city making Jerusalem officially an Israeli possession. 

Armstrong makes sure to establish multiple layers of conflict in regards to Jerusalem in this period arguing that it was both a national and a religious conflict. On the one hand, Jews regard Jerusalem as their spiritual and historical capital and the manifestation of the return of the people from exile. On the other hand, for Muslim and Christian Palestinians, it is the capital of the state of Palestine and an undoubted part of their identity. 

In the concluding part of the book, the author examines the contemporary state of affairs in Jerusalem which has remained a religious and political pilgrim. In Armstrong’s view, the history of violence and conflicts does not exclude such periods as coexistence and respect for each other. She has proposed a new approach to perceiving Jerusalem not only as an inheritor but as a city of equal importance to each of the three religions in the context of cooperation for reunion and peace.

Conclusion of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths

In “Jerusalem: Convert Today,” Karen Armstrong does an excellent job of detailing the historical, religious, and political narrative of how the competing claims of one city shaped the religious identity of the Western world. Armstrong presents her findings in a comprehensive and rather impartial manner and shows that the history of Jerusalem is much more than the story of the clash of civilizations; it is the history of the co-evolving spirituality of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She effectively transmits readers back to the understanding of the basic cause as to why this ancient city is still generating passion, today.

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