Abstract
This chapter explores the development of religious materiality in Jerusalem as both a crucial factor of urban development at large and as an explanatory mechanism to its highly contested geographies of encounters. This chapter theorizes the city’s particularity and yet promotes the notion that its uniqueness notwithstanding the city and its religious landscapes of encounters may well serve us toward a much sought-after global urban theory. Against legions of scholarly works that delineate the city’s history and present religious conflicts as its main problem this chapter adopts a longue durée approach to suggest that these unique circumstance and urban history, as well as the spatializations of encounters that ensued, are the generators of the city’s uniqueness and the fundamental reason why it has become not only a case of exceptionalism but rather a paradigmatic example for comparative urbanism and urban theories.
No other town has caused such continuous waves of killing, rape and unholy misery over the centuries as this holy city.
—(Arthur Koestler)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Indeed, the use of the term “profane” here should be understood as turning Eliade’s concept of the “nature of the sacred” on its head.
- 2.
However, it is noteworthy to acknowledge different interpretations, such as Rubin, R. (2008b). “Muhammad’s night journey (Isra’) to al-Masjid al-Aqsa. Aspects of the earliest origins of the Islamic sanctity of Jerusalem.” (Al-Qantara, 29(1), pp. 147–164)).
- 3.
It would be futile to address the numerous studies exploring these issues in Jerusalem. As part of its standing as an Aleph, the city has received ample scholarly attention.
References
Agamben, G. (2009). The Signature of all Things: On Methods. Zone Books.
Al-Muqaddasi, M. (1906). The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions. Brill. [Arabic].
Armstrong, K. (1998). The Holiness of Jerusalem: Asset or burden? Journal of Palestine Studies, 27(3), 5–19.
Ashkenazy, J. (2009). The Mother of all Churches: The Church of Jerusalem from Its Onset to the Muslim Conquest. YadIzhak Ben-Zvi Publications. [Hebrew].
Azoury, N. (1905). Le reveil de la nation Arabe dans l’Asie Turque. Plon-nourrit et cie.
Barkan, E., & Barkey, K. (Eds.). (2015). Choreographies of Shared Sacred Sites. Religion, Politics, and Conflict Resolution. Columbia University Press.
Barkey, K., & Gavrilis, G. (2016). The Ottoman Millet System: Non-Territorial Autonomy and Its Contemporary Legacy. Ethnopolitics, 15(1), 24–42.
Ben Ami, S. (2006). Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. Oxford University Press.
Berkovitz, S. (2000). The Battle for the Holy Places: The Struggle over Jerusalem and the Holy Sites in Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza District. Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and HedArzi. [Hebrew].
Bitton-Ashkelony, A. (2005). Encountering the Sacred. The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity. University of California Press.
Boano, C. (2016). Jerusalem as a Paradigm. City, 20(3), 455–471.
Bowman, G. (Ed.). (2012). Sharing the Sacra. The Politics and Paradigmatics of Intercommunal Relations Around Holy Places. Berghahn Books.
Chidester, D., & Linenthal, E. T. (1995). American Sacred Space. Indiana University Press.
Chivallon, C. (2001). Religion as Space for the Expression of Caribbean Identity in the United Kingdom. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 19(4), 461–483.
Cohen, A. (1996). The Ottoman Approach to Christians and Christianity in Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 7(2), 205–212.
Cohen, H. (2015). Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929. Brandeis University Press.
Cohen, M. (2013). Islamic Policy Toward Jews from the Prophet Muhammad to the Pact of ‘Umar’. In A. Medded & B. Stora (Eds.), A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day (pp. 58–77). Princeton University Press.
Cohen-Hattab, K., & Bar, D. (2018). From Wailing to Rebirth: The Development of the Western Wall as a National Israeli Symbol after the Six-Day War. Contemporary Jewry, 38(2), 281–300.
Creswell, K. A. C. (1969). Early Islamic Architecture. Clarendon Press.
Cust, L. G. A. (1929). The Status Quo in the Holy Places. n.d.
Donner, H. (1992). The Madaba Mosaic: An Introductory Guide. Kok Pharos.
Durkheim, E. (1915). The Elementary Form of Religious Life. Allen & Unwin.
Eade, J., & Sallnow, J.M. (Eds). (1991).Contesting the Sacred. Routledge.
Economic Corporation Foundation. (2000, December 23). The Clinton Parameters. Clinton Proposal on Israeli-Palestinian Peace. https://ecf.org.il/media_items/568
Elad, A. (1995). Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Place, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage. Brill.
Eliav, Y. Z. (2005). God’s Mountain. The Temple Mount in Time, Place and Memory. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Fabri, F. (1897). The Book of the Wanderings of Brother Felix Fabri (A. Stewart Trans.). Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society (Vols. 7–10).
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Pantheon Books.
France, J. (2015). Great Battles. Hattin. Oxford University Press.
Frenkel, Y. (1992). The Establishment of the Waaf Khangah al-Sallahiya by Sallah ad-Din. Cathedra, 65, 21–36. [Hebrew].
Frenkel, Y. (1999). Political and Social Aspects of Islamic Religious Endowments (awqāf): Saladin in Cairo (1169-73) and Jerusalem (1187-93). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62(I), 1–20.
Gil, M. (1981). The Sixty Years War. Shalem, 3, 1–55.
Gil, M. (1987). Political History of Jersualem in the Early Islamic Period. In J. Prawer (Ed.), The History of Jerusalem. The Early Islamic Period (pp. 1–31). Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Publications. [Hebrew].
Gil, M. (1992). A History of Palestine 634-1099. Cambridge University Press.
Guinn, D. E. (2006). Protecting Jerusalem’s Holy Sites. A Strategy for Negotiating a Sacred Peace. Cambridge University Press.
Hamas, (1988). The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement HAMAS. http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/book/islam-9780195174304-chapter-66
Harvey, D. (1985). The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization. John Hopkins University Press.
Hassner, R. (2009). War on Sacred Ground. Cornell University Press.
Ivakhiv, A. (2006). Toward a Geography of ‘Religion’: On the Spatial Dimension of Significance. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(1), 169–175.
Kong, L. (1993a). Ideological Hegemony and the Political Symbolism of Religious Buildings in Singapore. Southern Asian Journal of Social Sciences, 20(1), 18–42.
Kong, L. (1993b). Negotiating Conception of Sacred Space: A Case Study of Religious Building in Singapore. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18, 342–358.
Kong, L. (2001). Mapping ‘New’ Geographies of Religion: Politics and Poetics in Modernity. Progress in Human Geography, 25, 211–233.
Lay, D., & Olds, K. (1988). Landscape as Spectacle: World’s Fairs and the Culture of Heroic Consumption. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 6, 191–212.
Levy-Rubin, M. (2009). Where the Jews Prohibited from Settling in Jerusalem Following the Arab Conquest? The Authenticity of al-Tabari’s Jerusalem Surrender Agreement. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 26, 63–82.
Lustic, I. (2008). Yerushalayim, al-Quds, and the Wizard of Oz: The Problem of ‘Jerusalem’after Camp David II and the Aqsa Intifada. In T. Mayer & S. A. Mourad (Eds.), Jerusalem. Idea and Reality (pp. 283–302). Routledge.
Luz, N. (2004). Al-Haram Al-Sharif in the Arab-Palestinian Public Discourse in Israel: Identity, Collective Memory and Social Construction. Floersheimer Institute for Policy Study, Achva Press. [Hebrew].
Luz, N. (2013). Islam, Culture and the ‘Others’: Landscape of Religious (In)tolerance in Jerusalem 638-1517. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 40, 301–334.
Luz, N. (2014). Reading Mamluk Cities: Culture and the Urban Landscape. Cities and Urbanism of the Pre-Modern Middle East. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge University Press.
Maeir, A. (2000). Jerusalem Before King David: An Archeological Survey from Protohistoric Times to End of the Iron Age. In S. Achituv & A. Mazar (Eds.), The History of Jerusalem. The Biblical Period (pp. 33–65). Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Publications. [Hebrew].
Massey, D. (1993). Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place. In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, & G. Robertson (Eds.), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (pp. 60–70). Routledge.
Massey, D. (1995). Places and Their Pasts. History Workshop Journal, 39, 182–192.
Naylor, S., & Ryan, J. R. (2002). The Mosque in the Suburb: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in South London. Social and Cultural Geography, 3(1), 39–39.
Of Tyre, W. (1976). A History of Deeds beyond the Sea. Octagon Books.
Peck, J. (2015). Cities Beyond Compare? Regional Studies: The Journal of the Regional Studies Association, 49(1–2), 160–182.
Peters, E. E. (1985). Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chronicles, Visitors, Pilgrims and Prophets from the Day of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times. Princeton University Press.
Prawer, J. (1987). Jerusalem in the Christian Perspective of the Early Middle Ages. In J. Prawer (Ed.), The History of Jerusalem. The Early Islamic Period (638-1099) (pp. 249–282). Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Publications. [Hebrew].
Prawer, J. (1991). Political History of Crusader and Ayyubid Jerusalem. In J. Prawer & H. Ben-Shammai (Eds.), The History of Jerusalem. The Crusaders and Ayyubids (1099-1250) (pp. 1–28). Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Publications. [Hebrew].
Pred, A. (1984). Place as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Geography of Becoming Places. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 74(2), 279–297.
Ramon, A. (2001). Beyond the Western Wall: The Attitude Towards Temple Mount from the State of Israel and Jewish Society. In Y. Reiter (Ed.), Sovereignty of God and Man: Sanctity and Political Centrality on theTemple Mount (pp. 113–142). The Jerusalem Institute for the Study of Israel. [Hebrew].
Reiter, Y. (2017). Contested Holy Places in Israel-Palestine. Sharing and Conflict Resolution. Routledge.
Rubin, U. (2008a). Between Arabia and the Holy Land: A Mecca-Jerusalem Axis of Sanctity. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 34, 345–362.
Rubin, U. (2008b). Muhammad’s Night Journey (isra’) to al-Masjid al-Aqsa: Aspects of the Earliest Origins of the Islamic Sancity of Jerusalem. Al-Qantara, 29(1), 147–165.
Smith, J. Z. (1987). To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. The Chicago University Press.
Strauss, E. (1950). The Social Isolation of ahl al-dhimma. In O. Koml’os (Ed.), Études orientales a la mémoire de Paul Hirschler (pp. 52–74) n.d.
Tsimhony, D. (1984). The Status of the Arab Christians Under the British Mandate in Palestine. Middle Eastern Studies, 20(4), 166–192.
Van der Leeuw, G. (1933/1986). Religious in Essence and Manifestation. Princeton University Press.
Walls, A. G. (1976). Two Minarets Flanking the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Levant, 8(1), 159–161.
Wilken, R. L. (1992). The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought. Yale University Press.
Yiftachel, O. (2016). The Aleph-Jerusalem as Critical Learning. City, 20(3), 483–494.
Zander, W. (1971). On the Settlements of Disputes About the Christian Holy Places. Israel Law Review, 8(3), 331–366.
Zilberman, I. (2001). The Conflict over Mosque/Temple in Jerusalem and Ayhodya. In Y. Reiter (Ed.), Sovereignty of God and Man: Sanctity and Political Centrality on theTemple Mount (pp. 241–268). The Jerusalem Institute for the Study of Israel. [Hebrew].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Luz, N. (2021). Unholy Religious Encounters and the Development of Jerusalem’s Urban Landscape: Between Particularism and Exceptionalism. In: Burchardt, M., Giorda, M.C. (eds) Geographies of Encounter. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82525-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82525-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-82524-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-82525-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)