Jerusalem: The Biography

* Both Jews and Christians were infected by apocalyptic expectations. In 1523, a dwarfish young Jew, David Reuveni, caused a stir in Jerusalem by declaring himself an Arabian prince leading the Ten Tribes back to Zion, but the Islamic qadi spared him as a lunatic and he then sailed to Rome, where the pope received him, but ultimately Christendom proved less tolerant than Islam and he died in the early 1530s in a Spanish dungeon. In 1534 a radical Protestant sect of Anabaptists seized the German town of Munster which they declared to be the New Jerusalem. Their leader John of Leiden, an illegitimate tailor’s apprentice, pronounced himself King of Jerusalem, heir to King David. After eighteen months, this new Zion was recaptured and the Anabaptist leaders executed.