Religion 253 - Jerusalem

A religious, cultural, and political history of one of the Western world's most enduringly important cities. Topics include the centrality of Jerusalem in the holy texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; representations of Jerusalem through the ages in maps, art, poetry, travelogues, and memoir; conquest, urban development, and transformation of Jerusalem under successive empires and rulers (ancient Israelite, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman, British, Jordanian, and Israeli); the symbolic value of the city as sacred space in the contemporary conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.