Jerusalem: Already a Jewish Majority in the Year of Herzl

Jerusalem. From Jaffa, a short 70-kilometer drive. Another part of Israel about which countless interesting stories can be told.

The city where much of our Christian and Jewish history was written, and where (political) Islam also believes it has a "claim" as a Holy City, and which the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians also claim as the capital of their "land".

In the year Theodor Herzl published "Der Judenstaat," Jerusalem already had a Jewish majority. Figures from 1896 show a total population of 45,420 people, of whom 28,112 were Jewish, 8,748 Christian, and 8,560 Muslim. The mayor was a Muslim, and the governor of the area was Mehmed Tevlik Bey, an Ottoman.

For the critical reader: these are not figures from a "Zionist ministry," but data from the independent statistical yearbook/almanac "Calendar of Palestine" from that same year.

The entire Palestine region (parts of present-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan) had barely 500,000 inhabitants at the time. Sparsely populated and with many kilometers of uninhabited land, with more sand than greenery, without any significant modern infrastructure or economy. Here and there were a few villages with a mixed population of indigenous Jews (including in Judea and Samaria), Bedouins, Christians, Armenians, and Muslims.

Coincidentally, in that same year, the Lumière brothers shot the very first film footage of daily life and markets in this area, giving us a reasonable impression of the region.

For the TikTokkers of this world:

The then-newly emerged Zionism did not intend to create a new capital. Jerusalem was already a predominantly Jewish city. But it was conquered in 637 by the Arabs who colonized the entire region up to North Africa. The original Jewish population therefore did not have equal citizenship but had to pay extra taxes, submit, and faced social restrictions. They lived in what we would now call an apartheid state.

In some areas (under Caliph al-Mutawakkil), they even had to wear yellow badges, yellow belts, yellow turbans, or cloak trims in the ninth century to distinguish themselves from the Muslims.

Where have we seen that again later?

Zionism was simply a pursuit of self-determination for the Jews in the place they had inhabited and revered for thousands of years, and toward which they faced in prayer worldwide. The capital of their homeland.

It is—even now—the only place on earth that all Jews can consider their home.

The Ottoman (Turkish) colonial-Islamic empire governed the city from afar. No Arab state has ever established its government there—neither before nor after. After all, Islam already had two holy cities: Medina and Mecca, and—what's more—the name Jerusalem does not appear in the Quran.

The name Jerusalem, in contrast, appears in the Bible (and the Tanakh/the Jewish scriptures) about 800 times. The name Jerusalem first appears in the book of Joshua (Joshua 10). Before that, it was called Salem in the time of Abraham and Melchizedek (Genesis 14) and later Jebus, before King David made the city (the fortress of Zion) the capital of his kingdom of Judah around 1000 BC and was later succeeded by his son Solomon. The Jews were expelled again around 586 BC by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II.

When Muhammad died in 632, the Temple Mount was an open, largely deserted plateau with only (Jewish) ruins. The Dome of the Rock was built only decades after his death, between 688 and 691, on the remains of a Roman temple (from the Roman colonizer Hadrian) and the destroyed First and Second Temples of Solomon.

How he could have ascended from this Dome of the Rock after the Night Journey is therefore a mystery to me. But I am open to being enlightened.

The claim that Jerusalem is also a holy city for Muslims only came later.

How did that turn out?

Just turn on the television or read a newspaper.