Jerusalem: The Biography – Simon Sebag Montefiore

Jerusalem: The Biography

Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Publisher: 

Year(s) of Publication: 2011 (1st version), 2020 (Updated version)

Print Length: 784 pages

Genre: Non-Fiction/History

Area: Palestine, Middle East, The Levant

Topic: Palestine, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Zionism, History, History & Origin, Imperialism, Culture & Society, Governance, Independence & Liberation, Politics & Power, Refugees & Forced Migration, Social Movement

The story of Jerusalem is the story of the world.

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilisations. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ‘centre of the world’ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? Drawing on new archives and a lifetime’s study, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women – kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores – who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.

From King David to the twenty-first century, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice: in heaven and on earth.

List of Illustrations

List of Family Trees

List of Maps

Preface

Acknowledgments

Notes on Names, Transliterations and Titles

Prologue

Part One: Judaism

1. The World of David  /  2. The Rise of David  /  3. The Kingdom and the Temple  /  4. The Kings of Judah  /  5. The Whore of Babylon  /   6. The Persians  /  7. The Macedonians  /  8. The Maccabees  /  9. The Romans Arrive  /  10. The Herods  /  11. Jesus Christ  /  12. The Last of the Herods  /  13. Jewish Wars: The Death of Jerusalem

Part Two: Paganism

14. Aelia Capitolina

Part Three: Christianity

15. The Apogee of Byzantium  /  16. The Sunset of the Byzantines: Persian Invasion

Part Four: Islam

17. The Arab Conquest  /  18. The Umayyads: The Temple Restored  /  19. The Abbasids: Distant Masters  /  20. The Fatimids: Tolerance and Lunacy

Part Five: Crusade

21. The Slaughter  /  22. The Rise of Outremer  /  23. The Golden Age of Outremer  /  24. Stalemate  /  25. The Leper-King  /  26. Saladin  /  27. The Third Crusade: Saladin and Richard  /  28. The Saladin Dynasty

Part Six: Mamluk

29. Slave to Sultan  /  30. Decline of the Mamluks

Part Seven: Ottoman

31. The Magnificence of Suleiman  /  32. Mystics and Messiahs  /  33. The Families 

Part Eight: Empire

34. Napoleon in the Holy Land  /  35. The New Romantics: Chateaubriand and Disraeli  /  36. The Albanian Conquest  /  37. The Evangelists  /  38. The New City  /  39. The New Religion  /  40. Arab City, Imperial City  /  41. Russians

Part Nine: Zionism

42. The Kaiser  /  43. The Oud-Player of Jerusalem  /  44. World War  /  45. Arab Revolt, Balfour Declaration  /  46. The Christmas Present  /  47. The Victors and the Spoils  /  48. The British Mandate  /  49. The Arab Revolt  /  50. The Dirty War  /  51. Jewish Independence, Arab Catastrophe  /  52. Divided  /  53. Six Days  /  54. Capital City: The Twenty-First Century

Epilogue

Family Trees

Maps

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a British historian. He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Buckingham. Montefiore regularly lectures around the world on history, Russia and the Middle East, and on subjects such as leadership and revolution.

Source: http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/about/

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