By 1841 a plurality of Jerusalem's population were Jews (7 120 out of 16 410)-Map 20.ĭr John Kitto in his 1847 book 'Modern Jerusalem' wrote 'Although we are much in the habit of referring to Jerusalem as a Muslim city, the Muslims do not actually constitute one third of the entire population.įollowing his visit to Jerusalem Karl Marx wrote in the 'New York Daily Tribune', 15 April 1854, that 'Nothing equals the misery and suffering of the Jews of Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, in the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated -the constant object of Musulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only on the scanty lams transmitted by their European brethren".īy 1868 Jews constituted a clear majority in Jerusalem, more than half of Jerusalem's population. Map 12 shows the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from 1200 to 1841. Hence in 1586 the Ottoman Kadi (ruler) deprived the community of the use of one of it's synagogues and in 1786, local Muslims seized another synagogue and burned the scrolls of the law. Map 10 shows the Jewish search for a secure haven and how "throughout 600 years of European persecution, small numbers of Jews always sought to settle in Jerusalem, despite the great distances involved, the hardships of the journey and the uncertainty of a friendly welcome by the ruling power".īy 1700 there were an estimated 300 Jewish families in Jerusalem totalling about 1200 people, but no century was free from persecution. Gilbert includes maps showing Byzantine ruled Jerusalem from 324 to 629 CE, the conquests by Islam and the Crusader march to Jerusalem. Maps detailing the dispersion of the Jews from Israel follow,and the Jewish revolt in the Jerusalem area (66-73 CE) follow. Gilbert follows with a timeline to the 70 CE destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the and the expulsion of Jews from the city. Gilbert describes how Jerusalem was conquered by King David in 1000 BCE, and became the religious and political capital of the Jews.
The first map is of Jerusalem from ancient times to the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Through a series of 66 maps, prolific historian Martin Gilbert traces the history of Jerusalem from ancient through to modern times.
He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.” Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. The official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”īorn in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours.