Part One
The Historical Development of the Indigenous Christians of the Holy Land
The focus of this part is on the history of the Christian community in the Holy Land throughout different periods. Particular attention is given to what, and how, the relationship has preserved been between the ruling powers and the Christian community in each period.
The very foundation of the current plight of Christians in the Holy Land resides within its religious and historical education. As custodians of Christianity in the Holy Land, local Christians, as well as all Christians throughout the world, are obligated to understand the complex history of Christianity in the Holy Land and the events that shape the Christian identity and Christian faith of today. Unfortunately, the majority of Holy Land Christians are unaware of the basic religious doctrines and historical facts of their faith. They rely on church leaders, religious scholars and other writers for this knowledge. The lack of educational resources has caused the local Christian community to neglect the study of Christian theology and has also led to the lack of awareness of the international Christian community about the problems facing the local Christians in the Holy Land. This ignorance creates negative attitudes and outcomes for local Christians as they attempt to preserve their identity and presence in the Holy Land.
The complex history of Christianity in the Holy Land can be divided into two themes: the historical development of the Christian church in the Holy Land, and the historical development of the community of local Christians as a continuous, living entity. This chapter focuses on the historical development of the local Christian communities from New Testament times up to the present day. It examines how the historical context influences the current problems faced by the local Christians in the Holy Land as well as their Christian presence and identity.
Understanding the history of the local Christian community enables Christians to distinguish themselves within the larger Muslim and Jewish populations. Not surprisingly, the Muslim and Jewish communities have a direct influence on religious, economic, political, and social, interactions of local Christians. Fortunately, the Muslim and Jewish communities have not dismantled entirely the relationships that exist between them and the local Christians.
The Origin and Development of the Christian Community (30- 622 AD). The first members of the Christian community included the remaining 11 apostles, certain women followers of Jesus (including Mary the mother of Jesus), and His brothers. This community originated as a small sect within the religion of Judaism. According to Christian tradition, the Christian community in the Holy Land began in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. It was there, in the upper room, that the apostles received the Spirit of God promised by Jesus. Moved by the Holy Spirit, they went down into the public areas and announced the good news of salvation. All present heard the apostles speak to them in their own, native languages, and understood the message. Unlike the chaos that took place among the people at the Tower of Babel, the events of Pentecost brought about new understanding and unity.
After this, people from all over the country and further afield, who gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, heard the celebrated sermon of Peter about Christ and around 3,000 people joined the new community on that day. All this happened on a hill located to the southwest of Jerusalem, known today as Mount Zion. The next sermon delivered by Peter and John in the Temple brought the new community 5,000 more members.
The early life of the Christian community concentrated itself around the Temple in Jerusalem. It was here that the apostles came to pray and preach the teachings of Christ every day. The followers of Jesus held everything in common and those who were rich supported the poor. The breaking and sharing of bread in homes is an allusion to the Last Supper where Jesus broke bread and shared it with His apostles. The Christian communities spread very rapidly from Jerusalem to the three Roman provinces of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. It was in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee where Jesus taught and performed many of His miracles.
The retelling of stories by the local people about Jesus’ visits and what he did must have remained very strong. The early believers in Jesus were mostly of Jewish origin and traditional Jews referred to the Judeo-Christians as “minim,” meaning “sectarians.” Several members of the community were of Greek and Roman origin and were living in Caesarea, Jaffa, and other Coastal Plain cities.
The Christian community started to grow in different cities such as Jaffa and Lod when Peter performed a miracle that brought back to life a Christian woman named Tabitha. This miracle accelerated the number of converts and increased the community in the city. Those converted included pagans from Caesarea Maritime, the capital of Palestine, a Roman officer, Cornelius and the deacon Philip who in 58 AD, gave hospitality to the apostle Paul on his way to Jerusalem where he was arrested. As for Samaria, Chapter Eight of the Acts of the Apostles relates the foundation of the Christian community at Sebasta and mentioned the evangelization of numerous villages in the region. Sebasta is located in the Nablus district of the West Bank, where the ruins of an ancient Christian village still exist.
The Christian community also existed in Galilee. The followers of Christ often lived near, or around, places connected with the Jesus’ life. They turned these places into home-churches (i.e. Domos Ecclesia) that became known as holy sites. Hence, the early followers of Jesus unknowingly ensured that these holy sites would not become lost over time. Nazareth is the village where Jesus, “the word became flesh,” lived for several years of his life. It also was known as a holy place because Jesus’ family carefully preserved their memories of him being there as well as the family genealogies. His relatives lived in the village until the 3rd century. Since the village was very small, everyone knew one another and that made it easy to track what happened there from one generation to another.
Sepphoris, known as Diocaesarea at the time of Herod, was the capital of Galilee. It may very well be that this Judeo-Christian community organized itself around the paternal house of the Holy Virgin since it is a very old tradition for early Christian communities to grow around such places. In places like Sepphoris, there were many well-known discussions between the “minim” and rabbinic Jews during the first three centuries. There were also Judeo-Christians in Kaubab, a village located several kilometres northwest of Sepphoris. Jules, the African, a 3rd century writer, affirms that around the year 250 A.D., relatives of Jesus were still living there, Today there is a mosque built on the ruins of a religious building that dates back to the 1st century.
Jesus established centres of his apostolic activities in Tiberias, and villages related to His ministry. One such community was in the village of Capernaum where Jesus stayed at the home of Peter’s mother-in-law. The “House of Peter” became one of the first home-churches used by the early Christians for worship in the village.
During the 1st century, the residents of the country lived under different Roman Procurators. Rome ruled the areas of Judea, Samaria, and the Coastal Plain, the Dead Sea area, and Idumea. Agrippa II ruled the Galilee area and a Roman Governor of Syria ruled the Decapolis (an area made up of 10 mostly Greek cities).
The Holy Land under Roman and Byzantine Emperors (70-622 AD). In 66 AD, the Jewish community in the Holy Land revolted against the Romans. This led to the destruction of villages in Galilee, Judea and the complete destruction of Jerusalem, including the Temple, in 70 AD. The disaster of the Jewish War may be one cause of the estrangement between the Jews and the Judeo-Christians. Jerusalem’s Christian community left the Holy City on the eve of the siege, taking refuge at Pella, Jordan. Some of them who fled to Pella later returned to Jerusalem, while others stayed behind. The communities founded by the apostles in the Coastal Plain survived, as did some of the Judeo-Christian communities in Capernaum and other cities. The Romans later cruelly suppressed a last, desperate revolt by the Jews under the leadership of Shimon Bar Kokhba, a Jewish leader who led the second Jewish revolt in year 132-135AD. As a result, the Romans built a city called Aelia Capitolina was on the ruins of Jerusalem, erected a temple to Jupiter in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City, and forbade Jews and Christians of Jewish origin to enter the city. During this brief rebellion, the highest religious Jewish authority i.e., (the Sanhedrin) supported Bar Kokhba and saw his government as the sole legal power in the land: Those who opposed Bar Kokhba, or did not recognize him as their “Messiah,” such as the Christians of Jewish extraction, were persecuted by the rebel authorities.
The missionary work of Paul and other apostles and disciples of Jesus gradually attracted a growing number of Gentiles to the Christian faith, amidst whom the Judeo-Christians in the Holy Land were gradually absorbed. Furthermore, the destruction of Jerusalem, the exile of the Jews and the Judeo-Christians after the Bar Kokhba revolt and the transfer of the Jerusalem bishopric to Gentile Christian control intensified the breach between Jews and the Christians. By this time, most Christians were of Gentile origin and Christianity began to expand outside the Holy Land. The local Christians were left in peace, and treated better by the Roman authorities, especially under the rule of Emperor Antonius Pius.
In 306 AD, Constantine, now Emperor of the Roman Empire, converted to Christianity. He issued the edict of Milan in 313 AD, whereby Christianity became the official religion of his empire. The result of this edict involved major changes in the Holy Land and spread among the Christian community. Constantine sent his mother, Queen Helena, to the Holy Land to oversee the building of churches in places related to Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension. Jerusalem became the spiritual centre, not just for local Christians, but also for Christians throughout the world. The Holy Land became a place for pilgrimage and flourished during this period. The Christian community founded many local churches and others became national churches. Today, there are more than 200 ruins of churches and 47 bishoprics exist dating back to the Byzantine era.
The Armenians were the first people converted to Christianity as a nation, even before Constantine became Christian. They sent delegations to the Holy Land to learn to build churches in their country and to maintain relationships with the holy sites. They built churches in a dramatic form all over Armenia and the population of the region reached its peak during the 4th century.
The Christian community in the Holy Land did not enjoy the flourishing freedom of religion for too long due to the Persian invasion of 614 AD. The Christian communities suffered during this time as the Jews allied themselves with the Persians. The Jews took revenge against the Byzantines who had mistreated them and denied them entrance into the Holy City. The Persians destroyed most of the churches and monasteries, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and they massacred many Christians. The brutal invasion left 33,977 dead. Of the Christians who survived the massacre, one of two things happened to them. The victors sold some Christians as slaves to the Jews at low prices who then killed those who wished to remain Christian. The Persians imprisoned the rest of the Christians and later herded them into a huge pool of water near the old city of Jerusalem, where they subsequently drowned.
In Syria and Trans-Jordan, the Christians, often monotheists and hostile to Byzantine intolerance, gave themselves up to the Persians without any resistance. During the 11-year presence of the Persians in the Holy Land, Christians could not participate in any religious practices and were forbidden from visiting any ruins related to their Christian religion.
In 610 AD, Heraclius, now the Emperor in Constantinople, knowing that the Persian forces were scattered, led an army to the heart of Persia. In 628 AD, Chosroes was assassinated by his son and left the whole Persian Empire in a state of anarchy. After his victory, Heraclius marched into the Holy Land, bearing the wood of the cross and started to restore the damage incurred by the invasion with help of the local Christians and some monks of the country.
The Rise of Islam (622-1099 AD). In 622 AD, the Prophet Muhammad founded the Muslim religion and the first Muslim community began in Medina, Saudi Arabia. The weakness of the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires at that time created a “window of opportunity” for Muhammad to conquer a vast area in the region. The Muslim armies invaded the Holy Land during this period, and captured Jerusalem in 638. The Muslim invasion was bloody and the long-established Christian countryside was devastated. This was the start of 1,300 years of Muslim presence in what the Arabs called Filastin, an Arabic version of the name Palestina, given by the Romans during the 2nd century. After the Byzantine army lost the battle of “Yarmuk” to the Muslims, the Holy Land “Palestine” came under Muslim control and Jerusalem soon fell to the Muslims after that.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, was the highest religious authority on all affairs related to the Holy Sites, Christian communities, monasteries, and convents. He surrendered to the Muslims without any resistance to avoid bloodshed in the city. Because of this, Caliph Omar Ibin Khatab, one of main adviser to the Prophet Muhammad, who became the second Caliph after the death of Muhammad, issued a proclamation (firman), which granted certain rights to the Christians of the Holy Land and to the Patriarchate. Adjunct to Omar’s proclamation, a “shurut” obligation was imposed on Christians that was utterly humiliating to the local Christians. The obligation or “shurut” in the Arabic language was as follows:
“We shall not build in our towns and their surroundings any more convents, churches, monks’ communities (qallaya) or hermitages. We shall not restore, neither by day or night, those of such buildings that should fall into disrepair, or which are situated in the Muslim districts. We shall open wide our doors to passers-by and travellers. We shall offer hospitality to all the Muslims who come to us and shelter them for three days. We shall not give protection, neither in our churches nor in our dwellings, to any spy. We shall hide nothing from the Muslims that could be to their prejudice. We shall not teach the Koran to our children. We shall not make public show of our worship and shall not preach it. We shall not prevent any of our relatives from embracing Islam if such is their wish. We shall be full of respect towards the Muslims. We shall rise from our seat if they wish to sit. We shall in no way seek to resemble them, by their clothing, by the qalanswa (hat), their turban or their shoes, or by the manner of wearing their hair. We shall not use their ways of speaking; we shall not take their kunyas (way of talking). We shall not ride in the saddle. We shall not wear a sword. We shall not keep any kind of armament or carry such on our persons. We shall not have our seals engraved in Arabic characters. We shall not sell any fermented drink. We shall shave our faces. We shall always dress in the same manner wherever we might be; we shall bind the tattle with the zunnar (belt). We shall never show our Crosses or our books on the paths frequented by the Muslims and in their markets. We shall beat the naqus (bells) in our churches but very softly. We shall not make public processions on Palm Sunday or at Easter. We shall not raise our voices when accompanying our dead. We shall not pray aloud on the paths frequented by Muslims and in their markets. We shall never bury our dead in the neighbourhood of Muslims. We shall not use slaves that have been allocated to Muslims. We shall not overlook the dwellings of Muslims.”
During the 8th century, the Holy Land Christians, in particular, those who were living in Jerusalem, suffered a great deal of persecution from the political and religious changes imposed on them during the rule of the Muslim Caliphates. The Caliphates blamed, and subsequently punished, the Christian community every time there was a war between the Muslim and the Byzantine armies. Omar II (705-735), was one of the radical Muslim leaders who ruled Palestine. He was one of the people that persecuted the Christians and forced them to convert to Islam; failure to do so resulted in the martyrdom of many Christians.
The situation of the Christians became worse after Omar II, during the rule of Abdallah Ibn Ali which began in year 760 CE. In addition to the persecutions, he humiliated and differentiated the Christian community from the other religious communities by having special signs placed on their hands, destroying sacred items used in Christian worship, and pulling down all the crosses from the tops of their churches. The Christian clergy and religious were treated very harshly and obstructed in their worship services. Finally, Abdallah Ibn Ali imposed heavy taxation on Christians that forced many of those living in Jerusalem to leave.
Towards the end of the 8th century, the situation of the Christians became more tranquil due to political changes and the influence of the West, in particular the Franks. Charlemagne (754-814 CE) was a key figure who influenced the reverse of the harsh conditions placed on the Christians by the Muslims. Because of his efforts in converting many pagan tribes to Christianity, Pope Leo III crowned him the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE. He took advantage of the bad economic situation of the Muslim rulers, their need for financial assistance and their need to look to the West for help. This provided him with an opportunity to support Christianity both financially and through the renovation of the churches in the Holy Land which had been destroyed during previous wars. The support Charlemagne gave officially became effective by the signing of a friendship agreement with the Abbasid Caliph Harun al Rashid of Baghdad (787-809 CE).
Under Caliph Ma’moun (815-833 CE), the Christians found themselves so persecuted that many went to Cyprus and lands ruled by the Byzantine Empire. Christians in the Holy Land suffered more under Caliph Ma’moun’s dictate than under other rulers. Fortunately, 878 CE was a better year for them because the more liberal, lbn Tulon of Egypt replaced Caliph Ma’moun, after the Caliph Ma’moun’s assassination by his son. Unfortunately, when Muhammad Ibn Tughli came to power, his harassment of the Christians in Egypt and Jerusalem led to the conversion of several annexes in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to mosques. He also destroyed churches in Ramleh, Ascalon, and Caesarea in 909 CE. On Palm Sunday, 938 CE, the Moslems attacked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, burnt its gates and plundered the Anastasia. Several attacks were carried out on the Holy Sepulchre Church, in particular the attack in 966 CE by Moslems who subsequently burned it and killed the Patriarch.
The Caliph Hakem (996-1020 CE) hated the Christians so much that he ordered the churches destroyed and by 1009 CE, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lay in ruins. Its destruction was a way to remove any identifiers of the Tomb of Jesus and other Christian symbols. He took treasures and gold that belonged to the church.
Several Muslim rulers took the same approach as their predecessors by endorsing harsh laws upon the Christians; others forced them to become Moslems. Fortunately, other Muslim rulers revoked the order forcing Christians to convert to Islam out of fear that Christian rulers would force Muslims living in other countries to convert to Christianity. Some Muslim rulers went so far as to rebuild the churches at government expense. Emperor Monomachus (1042-1055 CE) gained power over the Holy Land and this resulted in the rebuilding of churches and religious shrines previously destroyed by the Muslims.
The Seljuk of Persia (1071-1098 CE) were a nomadic Turkish group of warriors who established themselves in the Middle East during the 11th century, their origin are from central Asia. They became custodians of the declining Abbasid caliphate. After 1055, they founded the great Seljuk Sultanate, made Baghdad the centre of their empire and included Iran, and Syria in their empire. The Seljuk helped to stop the Shiite Islamic ideology expansion in the region who was imposed by the Fatimids of Egypt.
In the 12th century, the Suljuk were able to defeat the Christian troops at the battle of Manzikert (1071) on the Syrian Coast which give the opportunity to the Turk to open the way for its occupation of Anatolia. They controlled Mesopotamia, (today it would consist of a section of Syria, a small part of Iraq, and Iran) and they reached the Holy Land. Like other conquerors before them, their policies toward Christianity were very harsh and discriminatory. They imposed heavy taxes on the Christian community and an entrance tax to visit Holy Christian sites. The local Christians in the Holy Land, especially in Jerusalem and Christian Holy sites were no longer safe. In desperation, the Christians wrote letters describing the atrocities they were subject to via pilgrims returning to the west. Their demands for help and assistance left a deeply inspiring impression on Western Europe.
The 10th and 11th centuries were very difficult for the Christians in the Holy Land, especially for those who lived in Jerusalem. The harassment and persecution of Christians imposed by the Muslim rulers led to the demise of the Christian presence in the Holy Land. They were forced to become Muslims or die, many official leaders of the clergy were killed and churches and Christian entities and convents destroyed. A particularly devastating blow was the total destruction of the most holy place in Christianity, the Church of the Resurrection. During this era, when Muslims became the majority in the Holy Land, Muslim pilgrims came from other Arab countries and settled in the country.
The Crusader Period (1099-1187 AD). Pope Urban II, was among the most passionate leaders of the First Crusade. His speech at Clermont, in l085, ushered in the beginning of the Crusades. The Crusaders came to conquer the Holy Land from Muslim control, help local Christians and pilgrims and protect and venerate Holy Christian places. They arrived in l099 and stayed until 1291. During this time, they undertook eight campaigns.
In general, there were three primary reasons that European leaders gave for supporting the Crusades. First, the Crusaders came to retrieve the Land of where Christianity started, and stop the Moslem influence of its invasion and ideology; second, to reduce the gap between Roman and Orthodox rite following the Schism of 1054 AD; and third, to provide a focus on the continuously fighting mediaeval lords and knights into the one cause of “penitential warfare.” The Pope offered forgiveness of sins if they joined a Crusade to the Holy Land.
Through the eight campaigns in the Holy Land, the Christian community underwent dramatic changes. First, and foremost, the Crusaders were fierce warriors, who inflicted all the suffering that war could bring. Moreover, the campaigns were, if not religious wars, at least wars between people of different religions, and this difference was an additional cause for suffering among the local population. In some cases, the armies did not distinguish between local Christians and Muslims and Jews. In fact, William of Tyre mentions that some of the Crusaders severely persecuted the Christians of the Holy Land because they sent back unfavourable messages complaining of their treatment to the Pope and the secular rulers in Europe.
However, many men who joined the Crusades were not warriors fighting for religious reasons. They were farmers, merchants, and knights who all joined the campaign for their own reasons. For example, some were looking for power, others were looking for new trade opportunities and some joined because they heard how rich the Middle East was. Farmers were eager to join for the benefits available from the new, fertile places described to them. Knights and warlords were looking for new places to control, particularly the “rich” land in the Middle East, and some joined for the idea of pilgrimage because they had been taught about the Holy Land from the Bible.
Thus, the Holy Land was very attractive to the Crusaders, not only for religious reasons, but also because of its beauty. They heard that the country was different from Europe in climate and providentially fertile. There were three harvests per year and people could grow not only corn, grapes and apples but also other fruits unknown in Europe such as oranges, lemons, many varieties of vegetables and sugarcane and forests that produced wood for building. The original inhabitants were more or less dispossessed, and the income gained from the fertile land passed to the new owners.
Different cities in the Holy Land suffered massacres; others were destroyed and their inhabitants expelled. The Crusaders gained much from their victories; often a single man could own an entire village. As Crusaders, they had more opportunity to exercise their trade and further their own interests in the country they had captured.
This situation changed when the Holy Land fell to Saladin’s army in 1187. Local Christians could no longer attend church services to pray because their churches were closed and no one was permitted to officiate in them. In 1217, the pilgrim, Titimar, noted that some churches still remained closed. Churches were without worship and without honour, and doors opened only to those pilgrims who paid well.
Saladin, the Muslim general and Richard the Lionheart, the King of England, signed a peace agreement in 1192. Part of the agreement was to give a permission to the Latin Bishop Hubert Walter to return two priests and two deacons, and have them “closed-in” at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the Basilica of Bethlehem, and at Nazareth. This “benevolent concession” on the part of the Sultan did not allow this toleration very long, the terms of the agreement being equal to practical captivity. It appears that an exceptional situation continued in the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, because the majority of native population of Bethlehem was mostly Christian. In spite of the situation of the government in charge regarding the managing of the entrance to the Basilica, the Latin- and Eastern-rite clergy and their bishops did not have any difficulties interfering in the Sanctuary.
At the same time, during all the turbulence in the region between the Christians and Muslims, an important meeting took place between St. Francis of Assisi and the Sultan Malek- El- Kamel in Egypt which positively affects the current situation of the Holy shrine in the Holy Land. After the formation of the Francian friars in the Holy Land by St. Francis of Assisi in 1209 and the foundation of the Franciscan province in the Holy Land at the General Chapter of the Franciscan Order in 1217. St. Francis made visits to Egypt, Syria and Palestine where he stayed several months during 1219-1220. At this time there was war between the Crusaders and Muslims and St. Francis wanted to meet the Sultan and dialogue with him. The Sultan considered the visit an act of respect from someone from a different culture and religion. He was pleased with the visit and opened the door to the Franciscan to be present in the Holy Land and access to several sites that were related to the life of Jesus, such as the room of the Last Supper on Mt. Zion and the right to officiate at the Holy Sepulchre. Since that time there has been a Franciscan presence in the Holy Land and they have gained control of many of the holy sites and today are called Custodians of the Holy Land.
In 1240, the Kawarismian Turks “fell like an avalanche” upon the Holy Land and Syria and plundered Jerusalem, destroying the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Turks slaughtered approximately 7,000 Christians, and the women who survived, were carried off into captivity. The Christian officials in several countries and official protested against the massacre and Sultan Ajub had to apologize to Pope Innocent IV, while the Turks denied their knowledge of this massacre. He also informed the Pope that he had handed the keys of the Basilica to two Moslem families who were to open its doors to the pilgrims who arrived at the site. These families did open the church on certain days of the week but only after these pilgrim pay money. Pilgrims payed a heavy taxation in order to see and pray at the church. These pilgrims will be entered the church in a designated area. Having liturgy were possible is subject to a designated altar where they could celebrate their liturgy. This was the time when various groups of people from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Armenia, Ethiopia, Syria, Greece and Georgia established themselves around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For example, Queen Tamara of Georgia secured an agreement with the Sultan of Egypt that allowed the Georgian community to be exempt from paying taxes and live within the grounds of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The local community and pilgrims who came to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre passed gifts and food through holes bored into the door of the Basilica. The people viewed their future with a spirit of hope, but lived in a reality marked by emptiness and hopeless delusion. Unfortunately, the liberation of the holy places became impossible. The Khwarismian forces destroyed and burned villages until they reached Jerusalem. A month later, they broke into the city, including the killing of local Christians also they killed monks and nuns and took over convents such as the St. James Armenian Convent. The Christians felt fearful, especially after the Khwarismaian forces killed the Frankish governor. This action led 6,000 Christians to leave Jerusalem.
At the Council of Lyons (June 24, 1245), Pope Innocent IV called for another Crusade; unfortunately, only a few European leaders responded. In 1248, King Louis IX departed from Paris with a large army and they landed in Limassol in Cyprus, then they departed from Cyprus towards the Holy Land, but instead of sailing for the Holy Land, the navy turned toward Damietta in Egypt.
The Mamluk Period (1260-1517 AD). Mamluk in the Arabic language means “possessed,” “slave,” or “serf.” The Mamluks were soldier slaves captured from Asia by the Egyptians who trained them from childhood to serve in their personal armies. They converted to Islam and became the selected cavalry force in the Muslim army.
Between 1258 and 1259, the Mongols captured Baghdad in Iraq and Aleppo and Damascus in Syria in 1260. Kitbuqa, was a Mongol Christian general was assigned to conquer the Middle East. He was responsible for further Mongol raids southwards towards Egypt and was killed at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. He established his headquarters in Damascus. In September 1260, he led his army into Galilee. They captured and then beheaded him under orders from the Mamluk leader, Sultan Qutuz. However, the following month, Baybars ended the influence of Sultan Qutuz by ending his life. As a result, the Mongols retreated to Baghdad.
Sultan Al-Zahir Baybars I (1260-1276), is the founder of the Mamluk Dynasty. The Mamluks were a mixture of Eurasian tribes, mostly of Turkish origin from the Steppes of Central Asia. An Egyptian Sultan had bought them as slaves and they rose to power in his service. During the reign of Al-Zahir Baybars the Christians in the Holy Land hoped for the end of the hardship imposed on them. They were encouraged that Pope Urban IV, (1261-1264) would initiate yet another Crusade. He knew about their situation but unfortunately, the Crusade was not forthcoming because of several reasons; on September 1 1269, James I the King of Aragon, departed for the Holy land with a large fleet but turned back because of a great storm. Later, he decided to return to the Holy Land with another army, while it was diverted to Tunis by his brother Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily.
Baybars I became the Sultan of Egypt in 1261. He was the most brutal Sultan against the Christians. His anti-Christian actions resulted in the destruction of the Basilica of Nazareth (1263). He mistreated the Christian clergy, killed monks and forced the Christian inhabitants to wear blue clothes. He demolished a great part of the Crusader construction that strengthened the Basilica of Nazareth. He removed columns and beautiful marble slabs that covered the walls and floors of the Basilica for use in his palace and at the Mosque of Cairo. It seems that at that time there were no obstacles to such actions, although it is not clear what the motivation might have been.
From the end of 1269, when Baybars changed his attitude and policy towards the Crusade of Louis IX, he started to reduce his harassment of the Christians of the Levant. However, when he learned of King Louis IX’s death, he went to Tripoli, Lebanon where he behaved as a tyrant. Little help arrived from Europe to aid England’s Prince Edward, who embarked for Acre with a thousand soldiers. Taking into account the desperate situation there, Prince Edward, made the most of his advantage and pressed for the very survival of the Christians of Acre. He obtained a truce with Baybars (May 1272) that lasted for nearly 11 years. Afterwards, he returned to England. The Archbishop remained in Acre, where he became Pope of Rome, changed his name to Gregory X. The new Pope was very energetic to convince the princes of Europe to take on a universal Crusade. At the Council of Lyons in 1274, he insisted that one of the principal discussions concentrated towards the idea of rescuer the holy places. However, the result of the Council was unsatisfactory without none of the European prince took the initials to go for the Holy Land.
The early post-crusader period began in the 14th century. During that time, the Sultan of Egypt demonstrated a tolerant approach towards the Christians and the holy shrines in the Holy Land. He hoped to establish mutually beneficial political and trade agreements with the governments of the West. As an act of good will, Christians gained their freedom of worship, prisoners were released, some churches returned, others restored and safe passage for pilgrims was secured. All this was due in part to the diplomacy that ensued between the Sultan and a delegation representing the King of Georgia that arrived in Jerusalem in July 1305. Due to the fact that the delegation included representatives of Andronicus II Palaeologus, the Emperor of Constantinople, the Georgian monks gained rights to control some of the churches (e.g., Church and Convent of the Holy Cross), regained possession of Calvary, and received permission for two monks to stay inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Likewise, the Armenians and Copts also gained specific privileges that allowed the preservation and the expansion of their sanctuaries, monasteries, and other possessions (after payment of regular taxes and bribes). The last Mamluk Sultan was al-Ashraf Aqnouk al-Ghuri (1513-1516), his defeat by Sultan Selim I of the Ottoman Dynasty at an important battle outside Cairo effectively ended 250 years of Mamluk rule in 1515 AD.
The Ottoman Period (1517-1917). The Holy Land remained under the occupation of the Ottoman Turks for four centuries. Military might was the ruling system and the Turks taxed the inhabitants heavily. The Turkish administration neglected both the safety of the people and any infrastructure that encouraged commerce and industry, although Christians and their churches enjoyed an era of some prosperity during the reigns of Sultan Salim I and Sultan Suleiman I.
After the death of Suleiman I in 1566, safety became an important issue for the Christians in the Holy Land due to the instability that existed within the Turkish government. The government in the Ottoman Empire is also called the “Ottoman Porte”, which means in Arabic, “high door”. It controlled the Empire based on personal interests and imposed heavy taxation on the local inhabitants to generate money, inflicted brutal actions against them, and inflamed the radical religious Muslim community against the Christians. Because the government was so weak, it did little to provide safe passage for people travelling through the desert among the Bedouin. They had a reputation of being robbers and thieves and attacked Christian pilgrim caravans.
During the second half of the l6th century until the l9th century, there were some changes in Christian power and authority. In general, the Greek Orthodox Church secured power, at the expense of the Latin Rite Church. Since the Ottoman Empire seemed constantly engaged in war with the Latin Rite Church, the Greeks and Armenians were favoured over the “Franks.” During these centuries, whoever control led the holy places remained under the international politics, with the support of the European Latin powers, in particular France were very supported of the Latin interests, and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople championed the Orthodox Churches. The Armenians relied upon their own resources, in particular, their patriarchate and influential secular magnates in the capital were motivated to protect its subject communities from Latin violations in the holy places, but the Catholics secure their position by pay fees and bribes. The strongest and almost continuous challenge to the Armenian Christians and their holdings in the Holy Land came from the Greek community.
By the second half of the 16th century, local Christians felt more secure because the Turkish government demonstrated good will towards western Christian countries by granting them some rights to local holy places and the right to protect their Christian citizens in the Holy Land. Missionaries, teachers, scientists, and tourists came to the Holy Land along with traders from the west.
European powers began taking advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s weakness through military and political penetration that included Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1789 and part of Palestine. Likewise, the local people led several revolutions in 1825 and 1834 in protest against their miserable economic situation. The weakness of the Ottoman rulers and their policies affected the holy shrines in the Holy Land and this became the subject of political change and dispute between foreign countries and control of the holy sites. The Ottomans wrote edicts that established and regulated the rights and privileges of all religions in the holy places. These documents pronounced that these rights and privileges could be neither amended nor modified. The main beneficiary of these edicts was the Greek Orthodox Church.
Several events led to Britain and France declaring war on Russia on March 28, 1854. Napoleon III succeeded to in forcing the Ottoman Empire to recognize France as “sovereign authority” in the Holy Land, in which his Napoleonic ambassador to the Ottoman Empire played a major role in convincing the Ottoman Empire with this recognition. Quickly, the Russians opposed to this change in “authority” in the Holy Land. Referring to the two signed treaties, one signed in 1757 and the other in 1774, the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, by renouncing the French treaty and insisting that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon III, unhappy with this decision, made a show of force, shared with destructive diplomacy and money that encouraged Sultan Abdel Hamid I to accept a new treaty. This treaty confirmed that the Roman Catholic Church is the supreme authority in the Holy Land with the support of France. Now, the Roman Catholic Church, not the Greek Orthodox Church, controlled the Christian holy places and held the keys to the Church of the Nativity. The Holy Land and the Christian holy places became the subject of political dispute among the European nations. It became a causal factor that ushered in the Crimean War (1853–1856) fought between Imperial Russia on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Likewise, by the end of the 18th century, the Russians claimed defensive rights over the Greek Orthodox community. Jerusalem was neglected after the death of Sultan Suleiman in 1566, in particular during the role of his weaker successor sultans. They assigned minor functionaries to govern the city and eventually it was governed by local Arab families. The Greek Orthodox patriarchs in Istanbul exerted influence in the royal court by offering bribes to the sultans and high-level functionaries. The sultans encouraged corruption, craft and intrigue as a means of keeping adversaries off-balance. The ownership of the holy places changed hands according to who gave the most bribes.
By the middle of the 19th century, total chaos prevailed. There were daily confrontations among Christian denominations for the control and maintenance of the holy places. Competition was so fierce and ruthless between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Latin Rite Church it compelled European and Russian governments to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire. The bitter feuding led to a full-scale war between the European powers.
In 1847, a very serious dispute occurred between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Latin Rite Church. It led to bloodshed amid accusations over the disappearance of a silver star owned by the Latin Rite Church. The star had been in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. This dispute led to a diplomatic clash between France and Russia, which is so-called “protectors” of the two churches. It gave Britain and France a reason to start the Crimean War. In 1854, the Turkish Sultan Abdul Majid stand with the of his allies against Russia, and defeated the Russians.
In February 1852, Sultan Abdul Majid issued his famous ferman (edict), Status Quo, on the status of the holy places. It established and regulated the rights and privileges of all religions in the holy places. The document stated that these rights and privileges could not be amended or modified. The main beneficiary of this edict was the Greek Orthodox Church. Following the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I, the Paris Convention (1856), the Berlin Treaty (1878), Peace Treaty of Versailles (1919), and the British Mandate on Palestine confirmed and recognized the Status Quo in 1922, and followed this by adding a statement, “It is understood that no alterations can be made in the Status Quo of the Holy Places.” This situation continued throughout the British Mandate and during Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967. Following the 1967 war and the control of Israeli over the city of Jerusalem, the Israeli government continued with the Status Que rules and regulations to the Christian sites, preserving their right to those holy places they consider historically and traditionally belonging to the Jewish people.
The Ottoman Empire power became weak in the 18th century. By the 19th century, European powers began taking advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s weakness through both militarily and politically. As a result, the Napoleon III’s invasion of Egypt, following British interventions, and French occupation of Lebanon.
