Course Details

What makes a city sacred? How and why have Jews, Christians, and Muslims come to regard Jerusalem as a holy place? In this Honors course, we will explore the evolution of Jerusalem over a period of more than two millennia: from King David to Saladin. Using a variety of textual, documentary, and archaeological sources, we will investigate not only Jerusalem’s pivotal position in the Western religious tradition, but also the cultural and political history of the surrounding Holy Land under Israelite, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Islamic control. While our readings concentrate on the ancient and medieval eras, we will periodically extend our inquiry to the present, and participants will have the opportunity to explore aspects of Jerusalem’s modern history through papers and presentations.