"Jerusalem Syndrome" a Jerusalem Travel Page by traveloturc

Ten Measures of beauty descended into the world,Jerusalem got nine,and the rest of the world got the remaining one...There is no beauty like the beauty of Jerusalem...(the Bavli Talmud Kidushin tractate)
Jerusalem is the largest city in Israel and the capital of Israel . It is a place where you can have fun, but it is more spiritual than spirited. Of course, sometimes the spirit moves people a little too far. In fact, psychologists have identified something they call the "Jerusalem syndrome" to describe people who become so intoxicated with the city they act irrationally, sometimes to the point of believing themselves to be the messiah.I personally believe that " there is something in the air"....

Around the year 1010 B.C.E., King David defeated the Jebusites in Jerusalem and decided to make the city his administrative capital. King David wanted to build a great Temple for God as a permanent resting place for the Ark of the Covenant. David was not permitted to build the Temple because he had been a warrior. The task was to fall to a man of peace, David's son, Solomon. After Solomon died in 931 B.C.E., a civil war led to a split in the Israelite nation. Jerusalem became part of the southern kingdom of Judah, while ten of the northern tribes formed the new kingdom of Israel. That kingdom lasted until 722 B.C.E., when it was conquered by the Assyrians.
Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, led his army into Jerusalem and captured the city in 597 B.C.E.Thousands of Jews was deported to Babylon in 586 B.C.E.In 560 B.C.E. a new empire emerged, the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great. Cyrus conquered Palestine told the Jews they could return to their homeland. The Second Temple was completed in 516 B.C.
In 332 B.C.E. a new power .This time it was Alexander the Great who became Palestine's ruler and introduced Greek culture and ideals -- Hellenism. the extreme measures adopted over the years helped unite the people. Responding to Greek reprisals, the Jews rose up in 167 B.C.E. Three years later, Jerusalem was recaptured from the Greeks by the Maccabees and the Temple purified, an event that gave birth to the holiday of Chanukah.Romans would not have permitted the Jews to keep their kingdom much longer anyway. After three years of fighting, Herod's Roman-backed army wrested control of Jerusalem and the rest of Judea from the Jews in 63 B.C.E.
The most significant of Herod's projects was the rebuilding of the Second Temple .The original Temple of King Solomon was a relatively small building on top of Mount Moriah. Herod doubled the area of the Temple Mount and surrounded it with four massive retaining walls. The western wall is the longest, about 1600 feet (485 meters), and includes the Jewish area of prayer known as the Kotel or Western Wall.
In 66 A.D.the Zealots started a revolt. Romans laid siege to the city and in the year 70 A.D. overwhelmed the remaining defenders and destroyed the Second Temple. Some of the Zealots escaped and made their last stand at Masada.

The Islamic conquest of Palestine, which began in 633, was the beginning of a 1,300-year span during which more than ten different empires, In 638, the Muslims permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and to guard the Temple Mount.In 1095, Pope Urban II called for Crusades to regain Palestine from the infidels. They succeeded in 1099 and celebrated by herding all the Jews into a synagogue and burning them alive. Non-Christians were subsequently barred from the city.Salahaddin succeeded in expelling the Crusaders and recaptured Jerusalem for the Muslims in 1187.
The next phase in the history was the conquest of the Ottoman Turks at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
It wasn't until the nascent Zionist movement in Eastern Europe motivated Jews to return to Palestine that the first modern Jewish settlement was established -- in Petah Tikvah in 1878.
Palestine was captured by the British, who subsequently were awarded a mandate from the League of Nations to rule the country.

A useful video about Jerusalem