The First Temple period
Jebusite Jerusalem withstood the Israelite invasion under Joshua (around 1200 BC), and remained independent for the next two hundred years. Around 1000 BC, it was taken by the forces of the Israelite King David , who made it his capital; David's City, on Mount Ophel, was south of today's Old City. Solomon , his son, extended its limits and built the First Temple , to its north on Mount Moriah, between 960 and 957 BC. He also consolidated its position as capital of a mini-empire that - in the absence of opposition from Egypt or Mesopotamia (Iraq), both in decline at the time - extended from Syria in the north to Eilat in the south, and far to the east of the Jordan river. On Solomon's death, the union of the twelve Israelite tribes split and Jerusalem became capital of the smaller, southern kingdom of Judah . The larger, northern kingdom of Israel (or Samaria) fell in 722 BC to the Assyrians who, in 701 BC, under their emperor Sennacherib, laid siege to Jerusalem. For a time all seemed lost, but King Hezekiah wisely had a tunnel constructed from Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam to supply the city with water, and Jerusalem was able to hold out until an uprising by the Babylonians against Assyrian rule in Mesopotamia forced Sennacherib to withdraw. By Hezekiah's time, the city had expanded north and west, taking in Mount Zion, plus what became the richest part of town, the Upper City, in the area today covered by the Armenian and Jewish Quarters.

The Babylonians eventually triumphed over Assyria and took over its empire in 612 BC. Judah's king Joash made an alliance with Egypt against them, but was beaten by Babylonian forces under Nebuchadnezzar , who installed a puppet king, Zedekiah , on the throne of Judah in 597 BC. When Judah again joined forces with Egypt against Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, the Babylonians invaded and captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and drove the population into exile in Babylon. The city was all but abandoned for the next fifty years.

The Second Temple period
In 539 BC, Babylon's empire fell to the forces of Persia under Cyrus the Great . An unusually enlightened ruler for his time, Cyrus reversed the Babylonian policy of forced exile and allowed the Judeans, or Jews as they were now known, to return. The 50,000 or so Jews who did so, led by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah , rebuilt Jerusalem on the site of David's original city, and in 515 BC constructed a smaller and more austere Second Temple on the site of Solomon's original. The following century, under Judea's Persian-appointed Jewish governor, Nehemiah , Jerusalem saw a further influx of Jews from Babylon under their community's leader, Ezra , revitalizing Jewish life in the city.

But Persian rule was to last less than a century more. In 322 BC, Jerusalem surrendered to Greek forces under Alexander the Great . On Alexander's death nine years later, his empire split. Jerusalem at first came under his general, Ptolemy , who ruled from Egypt, but in 198 BC Ptolemy's dynasty lost the city to their rivals, the Seleucids (descendants of another of Alexander's generals), under whom the Temple was Hellenized and dedicated to Zeus. Many young Jews eagerly adopted Greek culture, but Jewish fundamentalists bitterly opposed it. Under the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes , an anti-Hellenist revolt broke out in Modin, west of Jerusalem, led by a group of brothers known as the Maccabees , who took the city in 164 BC and rededicated the temple, an event still celebrated by the Jewish winter festival of lights, Hanukkah.

The Hasmoneans , descendants of Simon the Maccabee, ruled Jerusalem for the next century, but fell prey in their later years to internecine strife. When the Hasmonean king Aristobulus II took the throne in 67 BC, his brother Hyrcanus tried to wrest it from him. Hyrcanus was supported by Antipater , the pretender to the throne of Idumea, a kingdom to the south of Judea that had been subdued by the Hasmoneans. Hyrcanus also solicited support from the Romans , whose general Pompey took Jerusalem in 63 BC, installing Hyrcanus as his puppet. But 26 years later, when the next Hasmonean ruler, Antigonus , tried to ally with Rome's enemy Parthia, the Romans deposed him and installed as ruler Antipater's son, Herod the Great.

Roman Jerusalem
Herod the Great , a Roman puppet but also a man with some influence in Rome, embarked on a massive programme of works, crowned by his restoration and enlargement of the Temple. He expanded the city northward to include much of what are now the Muslim and Christian Quarters, with a fort, the Antonia, at the northwestern corner of Temple Mount and a palace incorporating the Hasmonean citadel along the west side of what is today the Armenian Quarter. Because he levied heavy taxes and impressed labour for his construction work, Herod was widely hated, but he refurbished Jerusalem probably more than any other ruler before or since. Before his death in 4 BC, he divided his kingdom among his sons. The largest part, Judea, with its capital at Jerusalem, went to his oldest son Archelaus , but was put under direct Roman rule in 6 AD.

The ill feeling towards Herod and the Romans led to numerous uprisings against them, but lack of unity prevented these from succeeding. The Jewish population was split into two main political factions: the Sadducees , a conservative, priestly and privileged class who held onto their position by obedience to Rome; and the Pharisees , who believed in strict adherence to the Jewish law, and in the coming of a Davidic heir, or "messiah", who would rescue them from Roman rule. In addition to these, the Essenes cut themselves off and set up isolated communities in the desert, while the Zealots refused to accept Roman rule and began a guerrilla war against it.

This was the time of Jesus , who is traditionally held to have lived from 1 BC to 30 AD, though his birth has also been dated at 6 BC (it would have to be before 4 BC to be within the reign of Herod the Great), and 6 AD (when the census of Quirinius, mentioned in Luke 2:1, probably took place - the Herod of the New Testament would then have to be Archelaus , or Herod Antipas of Galilee ). Of Jesus as a historical personage, little is known other than what is written in the Gospels. These appear to pit him against the Pharisaic party, but his teachings seem very much in line with theirs, and he may also have been a claimant to the throne, since he was apparently descended from David and Solomon (Matthew 1:6-16). He must have entered the city on the first Palm Sunday around 30 AD, to be crucified here a week later.

Meanwhile, the Jews fought two bloody but unsuccessful revolts against the Romans. The First Revolt , or Jewish War, in 66 AD, culminated in the destruction of Herod's Temple in 70 AD by Titus , son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian. It was followed by a Second Revolt (132-135 AD), led by Simon Bar Kokhba (or Simeon ben Kosiba). Little is known about the Second Revolt, but the rebels seem to have briefly taken Jerusalem before their final defeat. This time Jerusalem was completely razed by Hadrian who built a Roman city, Aelia Capitolina , over its ruins and banned Jews from living in or even entering the city. Hadrian's remodelled city established roughly the shape of the Old City as we know it today. A new main thoroughfare, the Cardo, extended from a gate in the north (now the Damascus Gate) to what are now the central souqs, and the streets of today's Old City still broadly follow the pattern laid down by the Romans.

In 312 AD, the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, beginning a 300-year period of almost uninterrupted Christian hegemony. Constantine's mother, St Helena , embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to identify the major Christian sites, notably that of Calvary, over which Constantine commissioned the building of the first Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 330 AD, Constantine moved the capital of his empire to Byzantium, and the Byzantine period began. Under the Byzantines, the city expanded southward, covering again the ancient City of David, as well as Mount Zion. The Cardo was also extended southward, with the construction of the excavated section that can be seen today.

Islamic rule
Byzantine rule came to an end in 638 with the bloodless takeover by the Arabs , and Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab came to accept the city's surrender in person. Muslims already considered Jerusalem to be their third holiest city, and...
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The twentieth century
In World War I , the Ottoman Empire found itself allied with Germany against Britain. On December 11, 1917, victorious British troops, under the command of General Allenby , dismounted and marched in through the Jaffa Gate on foot...
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AM, AD or AH?
Muslim and Jewish years are numbered differently from Gregorian ones. Jewish years ( AM , or Anno Mundi) start from the creation of the world - 3761 BC according to calculations made from the text of the Old Testament - so, if you subtract 3761 from a year AM, you'll discover which year AD (usually in September) it began. Muslim years ( AH , or Anno Hegirae) date from the Hegira, Mohammed's flight to Medina in 622 AD; to find the equivalent AD year, add 622 and then subtract the original AH year divided by three hundredths to compensate for the eleven-day gap. Many writers, especially Jewish ones, prefer to substitute for the Christian-derived terms BC and AD the more interdenominational BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (in the Common Era) respectively, and you will often see those terms used for historical dates here.