Walls of Jerusalem
The Walls of Jerusalem (Hebrew: חומות ירושלים, Arabic: أسوار القدس) surround the Old City of Jerusalem (approx. 1 km2). In 1535, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered the ruined city walls to be rebuilt. The work took some four years, between 1537 and 1541.[1][2] The walls are visible on most old maps of Jerusalem over the last 1,500 years.
For the national park in Tasmania, see Walls of Jerusalem National Park.UNESCO World Heritage Site
The length of the walls is 4,018 meters (2.497 miles), their average height is 12 meters (39 feet) and the average thickness is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet). The walls contain 34 watchtowers and seven main gates open for traffic, with two minor gates reopened by archaeologists.
In 1981, the Jerusalem walls were added, along with the Old City of Jerusalem, to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.[3]
Pre-Israelite city[edit]
The city of Jerusalem has been surrounded by defensive walls since ancient times. In the Middle Bronze Age, a period also known in biblical terms as the era of the Patriarchs, a city named Jebus was built on the southeastern hill of Jerusalem, relatively small (50,000 square meters) but well fortified. Remains of its walls are located above the Siloam Tunnel. The identification of Jebus with Jerusalem has been disputed, principally by Niels Peter Lemche. Supporting his case, every non-biblical mention of Jerusalem found in the ancient Near East refers to the city as 'Jerusalem'. An example of these records are the Amarna letters which are dated to the 14th century BCE, several of which were written by the chieftain of Jerusalem Abdi-Heba and call Jerusalem either Urusalim (URU ú-ru-sa-lim) or Urušalim (URU ú-ru-ša10-lim) (1330s BCE).[4] Also in the Amarna letters, it is called Beth-Shalem, the house of Shalem.[5]
Jewish postexilic city[edit]
After the Babylonian captivity and then the Fall of Babylon, its new ruler Cyrus the Great allowed the Judahites to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple. The construction was finished in 516 BCE or 444 BCE.[6] Then, Artaxerxes I or possibly Darius II allowed Ezra and Nehemiah to return and rebuild the city's walls and to govern Judea, which was ruled as Yehud Medinata. During the Second Temple period, especially during the Hasmonean period, the city walls were expanded and renovated, constituting what Josephus calls the First Wall. Herod the Great added what Josephus called the Second Wall somewhere between today's Jaffa Gate and Temple Mount. Herod Agrippa (r. 41–44 CE) later began the construction of the Third Wall, which was completed just at the beginning of the First Jewish–Roman War.[7] Some remains of this wall are located today near the Mandelbaum Gate gas station.