Jerusalem: The Biography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been helped in this huge project by a wide cast of scholars outstanding in their fields. I am deeply grateful to them for their help, advice and, where stated, reading and correcting of my text.

In the archaeological–biblical period, thank you, above all, to the following for reading and correcting this section: Professor Ronny Reich; Professor Dan Bahat, formerly the Chief Archaeologist of Jerusalem, who also gave me detailed tours of the city; Dr Raphael Greenberg, who likewise treated me to site visits; and Rosemary Eshel. Thanks for help and advice to Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper of Ancient Iraq and magical-medical texts at the British Museum; and to Dr Eleanor Robson, Reader in Ancient Middle Eastern Science, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, for her correction of the sections on Assyria–Babylon–Persia, and Dr Nicola Schreiber for her advice on the pottery implications for the dating of the gateways of Megiddo; to Dr Gideon Avni, Director of Excavations and Surveys Department, IAA; Dr Eli Shukron, for his regular tours of the dig in the City of David; Dr Shimon Gibson; Dr Renee Sivan of the Citadel. And special thanks to Dr Yusuf al-Natsheh, Director of the Department of Islamic Archaeology of the Haram al-Sharif, for his help throughout the project and for arranging access to closed sites on the Haram and tours with Khader al-Shihabi. On the Herodian–Roman–Byzantine period, I am immensely grateful to Professor Martin Goodman of Oxford University and to Dr Adrian Goldsworthy for the reading and correction of my text.

On the early Islamic period, Arabs, Turks and Mamluks, I owe huge thanks for his advice, guidance and detailed correction of my text to Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and also to Dr Nazmi al-Jubeh, Dr Yusuf al-Natsheh and Khader al-Shihabi. On the Mamilla Cemetery, I thank Taufik De’adel.

On the Crusades: thanks to Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge University, and to Professor David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean History, Cambridge University, for reading and correcting the text.

On Jewish history from the Fatimids to the Ottomans: thanks to Professor Abulafia who gave me access to manuscript sections of his Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, to Professor Minna Rozen, Haifa University, and to Sir Martin Gilbert, who let me read the manuscript of In Ishmael’s House.

On the Ottoman period and the Palestinian Jerusalem Families: thanks to Professor Adel Manna, who read and corrected the text of the sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sections.

On the nineteenth-century–imperialist–early-Zionist periods: thanks to Yehoshoa Ben-Arieh; Sir Martin Gilbert; Professor Tudor Parfitt; Caroline Finkel; Dr Abigail Green, who let me read her manuscript Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero; and Bashir Barakat, for his private research on the Jerusalem Families. Kirsten Ellis generously gave me access to unpublished chapters of Star of the Morning. Dr Clare Mouradian gave me much advice and material. Professor Minna Rozen shared her research on Disraeli and other papers. On the Russian connection, thanks to Professor Simon Dixon, and to Galina Babkova in Moscow; and on the Armenians to George Hintlian and Dr Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev.

On the Zionist period, the twentieth century and the Epilogue: I owe the greatest thanks to Dr Nadim Shehadi, Associate Fellow of the Middle East Programme, Chatham House, and to Professor Colin Shindler, SOAS, both of whom read and corrected these entire sections. I am grateful to David and Jackie Landau of the Economist and Haaretz for their corrections. Thanks to Dr Jacques Gautier; to Dr Albert Aghazarian; to Jamal al-Nusseibeh for ideas and contacts; to Huda Imam for her tour of the Security Wall; to Yakov Loupo for his research on the ultra-Orthodox.

I owe much to Dr John Casey of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, who nobly and mercilessly corrected the entire text, as did George Hintlian, historian of the Ottoman period, Secretary of the Armenian Patriarchate 1975–95. Special thanks to Maral Amin Quttieneh for her translation of Arabic materials into English.

Thanks for advice and family history to the following members of the Jerusalem Families interviewed or consulted: Muhammad al-Alami, Nasseredin al-Nashashibi, Jamal al-Nusseibeh, Zaki al-Nusseibeh, Wajeeh al-Nusseibeh, Saida al-Nusseibeh, Mahmoud al-Jarallah, Huda Imam of the Jerusalem Institute, Haifa al-Khalidi, Khader al-Shihabi, Said al-Husseini, Ibrahim al-Husseini, Omar al-Dajani, Aded al-Judeh, Maral Amin Quttieneh, Dr Rajai M. al-Dajani, Ranu al-Dajani, Adeb al-Ansari, Naji Qazaz, Yasser Shuki Toha, owner of my favourite Abu Shukri restaurant; Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University.

Thanks to Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites; to Father Athanasius Macora of the Catholics, Father Samuel Aghoyan, Armenian Superior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Father Afrayem Elorashamily of the Copts, Syriac Bishop Severius, Syriac Father Malke Morat.

I am grateful to Shimon Peres, the President of the State of Israel, and Lord Weidenfeld, both of whom shared memories and ideas; to Princess Firyal of Jordan for her memories of Jordanian Jerusalem; and to Prince and Princess Talal bin Muhammad of Jordan.

Thanks to HRH the Duke of Edinburgh for his advice and for checking the text on his mother Princess Andrew of Greece and his aunt Grand Duchess Ella; and to HRH the Prince of Wales. I am especially grateful for access to their private family archives to the Earl of Morley and to the Hon. and Mrs Nigel Parker for their charming hospitality.

Yitzhak Yaacovy was the man who introduced me to Jerusalem: survivor of Auschwitz, fighter in the 1948 War of Independence, man of letters, young aide in Ben-Gurion’s office, he was the long-serving Chairman of the East Jerusalem Development Company under Mayor Teddy Kollek.

The envoys of both the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority were immensely generous in time, ideas, information and conversation: thanks to Ron Prosor, the Israeli Ambassador to London, Rani Gidor, Sharon Hannoy and Ronit Ben Dor at the Israeli Embassy; Professor Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Authority Ambassador in London.

William Dalrymple and Charles Glass were both extremely generous throughout this project with ideas, materials and reading-lists. The Jerusalem Foundation was incredibly helpful: thanks to Ruth Chesin, Nurit Gordon, Alan Freeman and Uri Dromi, Director of Mishkenot Shaanim. No one helped as much with academic and other contacts as John Levy of the Friends of Israel Educational Foundation and of the Academic Study Group, and Ray Bruce, veteran television producer.

Thanks to Peter Sebag-Montefiore and his daughter Louise Aspinall for sharing Geoffrey Sebag-Montefiore’s papers; to Kate Sebag-Montefiore for research into William Sebag-Montefiore’s adventures.

Thanks for help, advice, encouragement to: Amos and Nily Oz, Munther Fahmi at the American Colony Bookshop, Philip Windsor-Aubrey, David Hare, David Kroyanker, Hannah Kedar, Fred Iseman, Lea Carpenter Brokaw, Danna Harman, Dorothy and David Harman, Caroline Finkel, Lorenza Smith, Professor Benjamin Kedar, Yaov Farhi, Diala Khlat, Ziyad Clot, Youssef Khlat, Rania Joubran, Rebecca Abram, Sir Rocco and Lady Forte, Kenneth Rose, Dorrit Moussaeff and her father Shlomo Moussaeff, Sir Ronald and Lady Cohen, David Khalili, Richard Foreman, Ryan Prince, Tom Holland, Tarek Abu Zayyad, Professor Israel Finkelstein, Professor Avigdor Shinan, Professor Yair Zakovitch, Jonathan Foreman, Musa Klebnikoff, Arlene Lascona, Ceri Aston, Rev. Robin Griffith-Jones, the Master of the Temple, Hani Abu Diab, Miriam Ovits, Joana Schliemann, Sarah Helm, Professor Simon Goldhill, Dr Dorothy King, Dr Philip Mansel, Sam Kiley, John Micklethwait, editor of the Economist, Gideon Lichfield, Rabbi Mark Winer, Maurice Bitton, the Curator of Bevis Marks Synagogue, Rabbi Abraham Levy, Professor Harry Zeitlin, Professor F. M. al-Eloischari, Melanie Fall, Rabbi David Goldberg, Melanie Gibson, Annabelle Weidenfeld, Adam, Gill, David and Rachel Montefiore, Dr Gabriel Barkey, Marek Tamm, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times, Henry Hemming, William Sieghart. Thanks to Tom Morgan for help with the research.

Thanks to my agent Georgina Capel and my international rights agents Abi Gilbert and Romily Must; to my British publishers Alan Samson, Ion Trewin and Susan Lamb, my brilliant editor Bea Hemming at Weidenfeld; and to Peter James, the master of copy-editors; to my most longstanding publishers: Sonny Mehta at Knopf; in Brazil to Luiz Schwarz and Ana Paula Hisayama at Companhía das Letras; in France, Mireille Paoloni at Calmann Lévy; in Germany, Peter Sillem at Fischer; in Israel, Ziv Lewis at Kinneret; in Holland, Henk van ter Borg, at Nieuw Amsterdam; in Norway, Ida Bernsten and Gerd Johnsen at Cappelens; in Poland, Jolanta Woloszanska at Magnum; in Portugal, Alexandra Louro at Alêtheia Editores; in Spain, Carmen Esteban at Crítica; in Estonia, Krista Kaer of Varrak; and in Sweden, Per Faustino and Stefan Hilding at Norstedts.

My parents Dr Stephen and April Sebag-Montefiore have been superb editors of all my books. Above all I want to thank my wife Santa, who has been the patient, encouraging and loving sultana of this long process. Santa and my children Lily and Sasha have, like me, undoubtedly suffered the full effects of the Jerusalem Syndrome. They may never recover, but they probably know more about the Rock, the Wall and the Sepulchre than many a priest, rabbi or mullah.