History
The quarter has had a rich history, with a nearly continual Jewish presence since the 8th century BCE. When, in CE 135, the Roman Emperor Hadrian built the city of Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of ancient Jerusalem, the Tenth Legion had their camp on the land that is now the Jewish Quarter. At the start of the 20th century, the Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000. At no time was its population purely and homogenously Jewish - such a rule being neither desired by the Jewish inhabitants nor enforced by the Ottoman or British rulers; in fact, there had always been a considerable non-Jewish population living among its Jews. Almost all the properties in the Quarter were rented by their occupants from Muslim endowments (Waqfs), which owned them. This is one of the reasons for the growth of buildings West of the city in the last years of the Ottoman Empire since land outside the city was freehold (mulk) and easier to acquire.
| Old Yishuv |
| Jewish life in the Land of Israel before Modern Zionism |
| Key figures |
|---|
| Joseph Nasi • Levi ben Jacob • Haim Abulafia • Yehuda he-Hasid Haim Farhi • Menachem Mendel • Jacob Saphir |
| Economy |
| Kollel • Halukka • Etrog |
| Communities |
| Musta'arabim • Sephardim • Perushim • Hasidim Read more about this topic: Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem) Famous quotes containing the word history:“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.” “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?” “It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.” |