Jerusalem was and remains both a magnet for cultic devotion and an epicenter of religious conflict. This course examines the political, religious, and cultural history of Jerusalem, focusing primarily on Jerusalem as a concrete and conceptual phenomenon in the premodern period. Beginning our story in the bronze age, we will explore a wide range of sources-literary, archaeological, and iconographical-that bear witness to the remarkable transformation of a small, backwater village in the hills of Canaan to a sacred center for millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims today. We will study the political, physical, and conceptual development of this urban space through its multiple destructions and reconstructions, considering the emergence of Jerusalem as a sacred space, an apocalyptic space, and a contested space.
