Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world and is considered a holy city to the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital city; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, while Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim is widely recognised internationally.
At present, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, Jerusalem was to be "established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime" administered by the United Nations. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, an armistice agreements were reached in 1949 resulting in the division of Jerusalem into Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem and Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem. This agreement remained until 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem from Jordan following the Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into the city's municipality, together with additional surrounding territory. One of Israel's Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the country's undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset (Israel's parliament), the residences of the prime minister and president, and the Supreme Court.
Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE) Jerusalem was named as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 10th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 9th century BCE the city had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538 the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today those walls define the Old City, which since the 19th century has been divided into four quarters—the Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Since 1860 Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2024 Jerusalem had a population of 1,050,153. In 2022 60% were Jews and almost 40% were Palestinians. In 2020 the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%) and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%).
According to the Hebrew Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel, and his son King Solomon commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Israelites branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centred on El/Yahweh. These foundational events assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city (Hebrew: עיר הקודש, romanised: 'Ir ha-Qodesh) was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians adopted as the Old Testament, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection there. In Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. The city was the first standard direction for Muslim prayers, and in Islamic tradition, Muhammad made his Night Journey there in 621, ascending to heaven where he spoke to God, per the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 km2 (3⁄8 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound on the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and Qibli (al-Aqsa) Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The name Jerusalem is variously etymologised to mean 'foundation of the god Shalem', from the Semitic root yry which can mean 'to found, to lay a cornerstone' and is used that way at least twice in the Hebrew Bible, in Job and Genesis. The god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city.
Shalim or Shalem was the name of the god of dusk in the Canaanite religion, whose name is based on the same root S-L-M from which the Hebrew word for "peace" is derived (Shalom in Hebrew, cognate with Arabic Salam). The name thus offered itself to etymologisations such as "The City of Peace", "Abode of Peace", "Dwelling of Peace" ("founded in safety"), or "Vision of Peace" in some Christian authors.
The ending -ayim indicates the dual, thus leading to the suggestion that the name Yerushalayim refers to the fact that the city initially sat on two hills.
The Execration Texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called rwšꜣlmm or ꜣwšꜣmm, variously transcribed as Rušalimum, or Urušalimum, may indicate Jerusalem. Alternatively, the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba (1330s BCE), which reference an Úrušalim, may be the earliest mention of the city.
Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources
The form Yerushalem (Hebrew: ירושלם) or Yerushalayim (Hebrew: ירושלים) first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua. Jerusalem is mentioned 669 times in the Hebrew Bible, while the term Zion appears 154 times as either a symbolic mention of Jerusalem or as a reference to the entire Land of Israel.
According to a Midrash, the name is a combination of two names united by God, Yireh ("the abiding place", the name given by Abraham to the place where he planned to sacrifice his son) and Shalem ("Place of Peace", the name given by high priest Shem). 2 Chronicles ascribes Mount Moriah, the traditional location of the Binding of Isaac, as the site where King Solomon built the First Temple.
Oldest written mention of Jerusalem
One of the earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states: "I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem", or as other scholars suggest: "Yahweh is the God of the whole earth. The mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem". An earlier example of the name appears in a papyrus from the 7th century BCE.
A papyrus fragment from the Judean Desert that has been interpreted as reading "from the king’s maidservant, from Naharata, jars of wine, to Jerusalem" was dated approximately to the seventh century BCE using a combination of palaeographic analysis of the script and radiocarbon dating.
In extra-biblical inscriptions, the earliest known example of the -ayim ending was discovered on a column about 3 km west of ancient Jerusalem, dated to the first century BCE.
An ancient settlement of Jerusalem, founded as early as the Bronze Age on the hill above the Gihon Spring, was, according to the Bible, named Jebus. Called the "Fortress of Zion" (metsudat Zion), it was renamed as the "City of David", and was known by this name in antiquity. Another name, "Zion", initially referred to a distinct part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole, and afterwards to represent the whole biblical Land of Israel.
Greek, Roman and Byzantine names
In Greek and Latin the city's name was transliterated Hierosolyma/Hierosoluma (Greek: Ἱεροσόλυμα; in Greek hieròs, ἱερός, means holy), and was the term used by Matthew and Mark in their gospels instead of the Hebrew term.