The History of the City of Jerusalem

15 hrs. 0 min.

Language Russian

Author Mikhail Shterenshis

Narrator Atlas Alex

Description

In the proposed book, the history of the city is described in detail in every aspect. The city became a part of the history of the Jews, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, Turks, Western Europeans, Russians, Ethiopians, and even Australians. The latter fought in Palestine in the First World War. Errors from old books are taken into account.

For example, in addition to Christian and Jewish pilgrimages to the city, a Muslim one is also described. In the introductions, the book explains in an accessible form what archaeology, historiography, and photography have given—and can still give—for studying the early and late history of Jerusalem.

This book is not a dry presentation of the city’s development chronology. The history of the city is not simply a sequence of changes of religions, conquerors, and rulers. The book weaves together the “official” history of the city, the history of written sources and architectural monuments—with the living people’s history that remained in the legends of its residents.

All periods of Jerusalem’s history are described equally thoroughly and without noticeable one-sided emphasis. This makes the book equally interesting for Israeli readers and, generally, for Russian-speaking readers. The city’s history is presented as the history of a conglomerate of different nations living under different beliefs and having found a formula for coexistence in one place.

Specifically for readers in Russia, the information about the development of the Russian church mission in the city will be interesting, as well as unusual fresh data about pilgrimages to Jerusalem by Christians, Jews, and Muslims of the Russian Empire.

A book about Jerusalem is unthinkable without special religious and geographical terminology, and this terminology exists in Hebrew, Arabic, and partly in Turkish. Beyond terminology, the issue of proper names is important: many of them exist not only in their true Hebrew or Arabic forms, but also in canonical Russian variants. This book was written in such Russian language as would be understandable to a reader, wherever they live—in Israel or beyond its borders…