Jerusalem: The Endless Crusade

Jerusalem's stony ground yields neither water nor fruitfulness and its geography offers neither secure fortification nor breathless grandeur. Yet for three millennia this ancient and sacred city has been the focal point of an endless quest, drawing upon the passion and destructiveness of the three great religions that treasure it as their own holy city. To the geographers and sages of the Middle Ages, Jerusalem was the center of the known world. Christians claimed it as the site where Jesus Christ redeemed mankind on the Roman cross. The followers of Muhammad cherished it as the sacred city where the Prophet left his footprint on earth when he ascended to the Seventh Heaven. The Jews held it as the foundation of the Temple built to hold the Ark of the Covenant, Abraham's dream realized in stone, secured by David, and built upon by Solomon. These colliding claims by the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa elicited an outpouring of blood and treasure that would be the pattern for religious conflict throughout the rise and fall of Rome and Byzantium. Even after the formal crusades, the idea of Jerusalem was the focus of the energies of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. We may no longer see the axis of the earth running through Jerusalem, but the axis of history often seems to impale this ancient and holy city. The fervor it has excited and the bloodshed it has incited range from the stuff of ancient texts to today's satellite-relayed news reports.