335: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection or Church of the Anastasis by Orthodox Christians, is a church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The church contains the two holiest sites in Christianity, the Aedicule and Golgotha – and was built starting in 325/326, consecrated on 13 September 335.
548-565: Saint Catherine’s Monastery, officially “Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai”, lies on the Sinai Peninsula – built by order of Emperor Justinian I, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush (also known as “Saint Helen’s Chapel”) ordered to be built by Empress Consort Helena, mother of Constantine the Great
NOTE: The site contains the world’s oldest continually operating library, possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus. The monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library. A mosque was created by converting an existing chapel during the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171). The Ashtiname of Muhammad, also known as the Covenant or Testament (Testamentum) of Muhammad (the Islamic Prophet), is a document which is a charter or writ ratified by the Islamic prophet Muhammad granting protection and other privileges to the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, given to the Christian monks of Saint Catherine’s Monastery. It is sealed with an imprint representing Muhammad’s hand.
691: The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was initially completed in 691 CE at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik during the Second Fitna – original dome collapsed in 1015 and was rebuilt in 1022–23. Between 1922 and 1924, the Dome of the Rock was restored by the Islamic Higher Council. The site’s great significance for Muslims derives from traditions connecting it to the creation of the world and to the belief that the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey to heaven started from the rock at the center of the structure.
705: Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam and is located in the Old City of Jerusalem. The covered mosque building was originally a small prayer house erected by Umar, the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, but was rebuilt and expanded by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik and finished by his son al-Walid in 705 CE. The mosque was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 746 and rebuilt by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur in 754. It was rebuilt again in 780. Another earthquake destroyed most of al-Aqsa in 1033, but two years later the Fatmid caliph Ali az-Zahir built another mosque whose outline is preserved in the current structure.
700: The Karaite Synagogue in Jerusalem is the oldest of Jerusalem’s active synagogues, having been built in the 8th century. It was destroyed by the Crusaders in 1099 and Jews were not allowed to live in the city for 50 years. In 1187 Saladin restored the site to the Karaite Jews, who promptly rebuilt the synagogue. It has been active continuously since its foundation, except during the Crusades and Jordanian occupation of the city (1948-1967). In 1967, the Israeli government returned the synagogue to the Karaite community, who finished renovating it in 1982.
1099: The siege of Jerusalem was waged by European forces of the First Crusade, resulting in the capture of the Holy City of Jerusalem from the Muslim Fatimid Caliphate, and laying the foundation for the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted almost two centuries. The capture of Jerusalem was the final major battle of the first of the Crusades to occupy the Holy Land begun in 1095. A number of eyewitness accounts of the siege were recorded, the most quoted being that from the anonymous Gesta Francorum. Upon the declaration of the secular state, Godfrey of Bouillon, prominent among the leaders of the crusades, was elected ruler, eschewing the title “king.” The siege led to the mass slaughter of thousands of Muslims and Jews and to the conversion of Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount into Christian shrines.
1267: Moses ben Nahman, commonly known as Nachmanides, and also referred to by the acronym Ramban and by the contemporary nickname Bonastruc ça Porta, was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Sephardic rabbi, philospher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator. He was raised, studied, and lived for most of his life in Girona, Catalonia. He is also considered to be an important figure in the re-establishment of the Jewish community in Jerusalem following its destruction by the Crusaders in 1099. In seeking refuge in Muslim lands from Christian persecution, he made aliyah to Jerusalem. There he established a synagogue in the Old City that exists until present day, known as the Ramban Synagogue.
1267: The Ramban Synagogue, is the second oldest active synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was founded by the scholar and rabbi Nachmanides (also known as Ramban) in 1267, to serve the local Jewish community, which expanded because of the synagogue’s presence.
(Ottoman Empire: 1299-1923, 16-17th century map)
1516: The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was the second major conflict between the Egypt-based Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of the Levant, Egypt and the Hejaz as provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margins of the Islamic world, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge empire encompassing much of the traditional lands of Islam, including the cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo.
NOTE: The Ottoman Empire replaces the Mamluks in Palestine after Sultan Selim I defeats the last Mamluk Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri at the Battle of Marj Dabiq (Aleppo) and the Battle of Yaunis Khan (Gaza).
1535: Joseph ben Ephraim Karo was author of the last great codification of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, which is still authoritative for all Jews pertaining to their respective communities. After the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, he made his way to the holy city of Safed, in the land of Israel. There he founded a house of learning, a yeshiva, which is still commemorated to this day.
1561: Joseph Nasi is best known to history for his attempt to resettle the towns of Tiberias and Safed. He was the first person to attempt to settle Jews in the cities of what was then Southern Syria by practical means, as opposed to waiting for the Messiah.
mid-1650s: the resettlement of the Jews in England was an informal arrangement during the Commonwealth of England, which allowed Jews to practise their faith openly. It forms a prominent part of the history of the Jews in England. It happened directly after two events. Firstly a prominent rabbi Menasseh ben Israel came to the country from the Netherlands to make the case for Jewish resettlement, and secondly a Spanish New Christian (a supposedly converted Jew, who secretly practised his religion) merchant Antonio Robles requested that he be classified as a Jew rather than Spaniard during the war between the England and Spain.
1757: a firman (decree) of Ottoman Sultan Osman III that preserved the division of ownership and responsibilities of various sites important to Christians, Muslims, and Jews to their then-current holders or owners, and represented agreements among the various religions that nothing could be changed from the way it was without upsetting the balance of order in maintaining the religious sites for visits by pilgrims. A further firman issued in 1852 and another one from 1853 reaffirmed the provisions of the 1757 decree.
NOTE: The status quo of the Holy Land sites is an understanding among religious communities with respect to nine shared religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Other Holy Places in Israel and Palestine were not deemed subject to the Status Quo because the authorities of one religion or of one community within a religion are in recognized or effective possession. The actual provisions of the status quo were never formally established in a single document, but the 1929 summary prepared by L. G. A. Cust, a civil servant of the British Mandate, The Status Quo in the Holy Places, became the standard text on the subject.
April 20, 1799: Napoleon Bonaparte issued a letter offering Palestine as a homeland to the Jews under French protection. During Napoleon’s siege of Acre in 1799, Le Moniteur Universel, the main French newspaper during the French Revolution, published on 3 Prairial, Year vii (French Republican Calendar, equivalent to 22 May 1799) a short statement that: “Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem. He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo.”
NOTE: From the days of the Reformation to the ascent of Napoleon III in France and the digging of the Suez Canal, there were no Jewish leaders in the Zionism movement, despite repeated British and French attempts to recruit them. The non-Jewish origin of Zionism is further illustrated by the simple fact that the ideas of Restoration developed first in England (with no Jewish population) instead of Germany, Poland, or Russia (where the bulk of European Jewry lived). It took about one hundred years after Oliver Cromwell for the number of Jews to reach 12,000 in England and another hundred years to reach 25,000, while the census of 1897 showed 5,189,401 Jews (4.13% of total population) in the Russian Empire.
1805: The Palestine Association, formerly the Syrian Society, was formed in 1805 by William Richard Hamilton to promote the study of the geography, natural history, antiquities and anthropology of Palestine and surrounding areas, “with a view to the illustration of the Holy Writings. Scholarly work in the region began in earnest around the time of the Oriental Crisis of 1840, with the travels of Edward Robinson, the appointment of the first British consul to Jerusalem and the establishment of the Anglican-German Bishopric in Jerusalem. In 1834, the Palestine Association was formally disbanded and incorporated into the Royal Geographical Society. The Palestine Association was the forerunner of the Palestine Exploration Fund, established 60 years later, in 1865.
NOTE: British Zionists formed the Palestine Association in London, this was a serious and organized effort to re-write (and often distort) the historical geography of Palestine from an exclusively Protestant Zionist point of view. Major publications of such Protestant-subsidized research and information about Palestine began with Lord Lindsay’s from Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land, the first in a flood of Holy-Land travel books that averaged 40 books a year for 40 years.
March 1838: Britain appointed a vice-consul to Jerusalem, who soon reported back to the consul general at Alexandria a census of 9,690 Jews in Palestine. Great Britain was the first European power to establish a consulate in Jerusalem, soon to be followed by other nations. When the consulate was forced to close late in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, the consular records were burnt to avoid their falling into the hands of the Turkish authorities.
NOTE: Secretary of State Lord Palmerston worked closely with Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG, Lord Shaftesbury (President of the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews) on British Zionist policies at a time when there was no Jewish movement willing or prepared to “return” to Palestine.
1838: A quote from the Quarterly Review reveals one of the first major British Zionist plans to settle Jews in Palestine “for the maintenance” of the British Empire. The growing interest manifested for these regions, the larger investment of British capital, and the confluence of British travellers and strangers from all parts of the world, have recently induced the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to station there a representative of our Sovereign, in the person of a Vice-Consul. This gentleman set sail for Alexandria at the end of last September—his residence will be fixed at Jerusalem, but his jurisdiction will extend to the whole country within the ancient limits of the Holy Land; he is thus accredited, as it were, to the former kingdom of David and the Twelve Tribes. The soil and climate of Palestine are singularly adapted to the growth of produce required for the exigencies of Great Britain; the finest cotton may be obtained in almost unlimited abundance; silk and madder are the staple of the country, and oil-olive is now, as it ever was, the very fatness of the land. Capital and skill are alone required: the presence of a British officer, and the increased security of property which his presence will confer, may invite them [the Jews] from these islands to the cultivation of Palestine; and the Jews, who will betake themselves to agriculture in no other land, having found, in the English Consul, a mediator between their people and the Pasha, will probably return in yet greater numbers, and become once more the husbandmen of Judæa and Galilee.
NOTE: Napoleon knew well the value of an Hebrew alliance; and endeavoured to reproduce, in the capital of France, the spectacle of the ancient Sanhedrim, which, basking in the might of imperial favour, might give laws to the whole body of the Jews throughout the habitable world, and aid him, no doubt, in his audacious plans against Poland and the East. That which Napoleon designed in his violence and ambition, thinking “to destroy nations not a few,” we may wisely and legitimately undertake for the maintenance of our Empire.
August 1838: Britain instructed its Ambassador to Turkey to encourage the Sultan to allow the Jews of Europe to “return” to Palestine.
December 1838: The idea that was to become the British Mandate appeared first in the article in Lord Shaftesbury’s review of Lord Lindsay’s book for the Quarterly Review. The article explains that Zionism will create for Britain a “body of well-wishers in every people under heaven” (especially among millions of Jews in Russia). It attacked the Catholic and Orthodox “archassailants of our Zion” who “disparage the Old Testament by a contemptuously exclusive preference of the New” and “ascribe to the Gospels and Epistles alone the title of the Christian Scriptures!”
NOTE: With the advent of steam navigation (steamships depend on frequent ports of call for recoaling) and the completion of the Suez Canal, Zionism and the interests of world commerce began to link the establishment of depots and settlements along the road to India and China with the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, as is indicated by Thomas Clarke’s treatises, India and Palestine: Or the Restoration of the Jews Viewed in Relation to the Nearest Route to India. Zionists began to argue that the Jewish state would even place the management of British steam communication entirely in friendly hands. This argument became even more persuasive when (baptised Jew) Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli purchased shares in the Suez Canal Company, thanks to financial aid provided by the Rothschilds (a Jewish family banking dynasty in London).
1840: The Oriental Crisis of 1840 was an episode in the Egyptian–Ottoman War in the eastern Mediterranean, triggered by the self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan Muhammad Ali Pasha’s aims to establish a personal empire in the Ottoman province of Egypt.
NOTE: In September 1840, the European powers eventually moved from diplomatic means to military action. When French support for Muhammad Ali failed to materialize, British and Austrian naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean moved against Syria and Alexandria. Alexandria was the port where the defecting Ottoman fleet had withdrawn. After the Royal Navy and the Austrian Navy first blockaded the Nile delta coastline, they moved east to shell Sidon and Beirut on 11 September 1840. British and Austrian forces then attacked Acre. Following the bombardment of the city and the port on 3 November 1840 a small landing party of Austrian, British and Ottoman troops (which were led personally by the Austrian fleet commander, Archduke Friedrich) took the citadel after Muhammad Ali’s Egyptian garrison in Acre had fled. After the surrender of Acre, Muhammad Ali finally accepted the terms of the Convention on 27
November 1840. He renounced his claims over Crete and the Hijaz and agreed to downsize his naval forces and his standing army to 18,000 men, provided that he and his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan — an unheard-of status for an Ottoman viceroy. A firman, subsequently issued by the sultan, indeed confirmed Muhammad Ali’s rule over Egypt and the Sudan. He withdrew from Syria, the Hijaz, the Holy Land, Adana, and Crete, and handed back the Ottoman fleet.
March and August 1840: The Times of London published more details about a Memorandum on the Restoration of the Jews addressed to the Protestant Powers of the North of Europe and the States of North America (Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, King William Frederick III of Prussia, King Frederick William of the Netherlands, King John Charles XIV of Sweden and Norway, King Frederick VI of Denmark, King Ernest Augustus of Hanover, King William of Wurtemberg, the Sovereign Princes and Electors of Germany, the Cantons of the Swiss Federation professing the Reformed Religion, and the States of North America. Unlike Napoleon’s “secular” Proclamation to the Jews as “the Rightful Heirs of Palestine,” the Protestant memorandum (speaking of the Jews in the third (person) cites several Biblical verses from Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Isaiah, and Jeremiah to remind Protestant monarchs that the Jews (“our brethren of the circumcision”) are a “peculiar people,” whom God has “separated and taken into covenant” that “no act of theirs, however iniquitous and rebellious, can repeal or destroy.” By such “unrepealed covenant, God declared unto Abram, concerning the land of Palestine, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river of Euphrates.”
1840: The Anglican-German Bishopric in Jerusalem was an episcopal see founded in Jerusalem by joint agreement of the Anglican Church of England and the united Evangelical Church in Prussia.
June 14, 1841: Colonel Charles Henry Churchill, also known as ‘Churchill Bey’, (first cousin of John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, the grandfather of Winston Churchill). He was a British officer and diplomat and a British consul in Ottoman Syria who created the first political plan for Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel in the region of Ottoman Palestine. The proposal correspondence with Sir Moses Montefiore, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, in which Churchill proposed a strategy for the creating of a Jewish state, pre-dating formal Zionism by approximately half a century.
Churchill wrote to Montefiore (an excerpt from the letter):
“I cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your countrymen endeavor once more to resume their existence as a people. I consider the object to be perfectly attainable. But, two things are indispensably necessary. Firstly, that the Jews will themselves take up the matter universally and unanimously. Secondly, that the European Powers will aid them in their views. It is for the Jews to make a commencement. Let the principal persons of their community place themselves at the head of the movement. Let them meet, concert and petition. In fact the agitation must be simultaneous throughout Europe. There is no Government which can possibly take offence at such public meetings. The result would be that you would conjure up a new element in Eastern diplomacy–an element which under such auspices as those of the wealthy and influential members of the Jewish community could not fail not only of attracting great attention and of exciting extraordinary interest, but also of producing great events. Were the resources which you all possess steadily directed towards the regeneration of Syria and Palestine, there cannot be a doubt but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine. Syria and Palestine, in a word, must be taken under European protection and governed in the sense and according to the spirit of European administration”
1842: The first Anglican bishop entered Jerusalem. The vice-consul of Jerusalem was given jurisdiction over “the whole country within the ancient limits of the Holy Land.” His appointment represented the first step of a carefully planned strategy by Britain to use Jews for imperial domination, after Napoleon failed to achieve the same objective.
1844: the first Russian Orthodox archimandrite arrived in Palestine.
NOTE: Russia’s focus on the area began when Napoleon III took over control of France in an 1851 coup d’état and moved to seize control of properties in the Holy Land held by members of the Greek Orthodox Church (GOC). The court of the Czar had long held itself to be the main patron and protector of Orthodoxy, especially after most of the membership of the Greek Orthodox Church from 1460 until 1821 fell under the control of the Islamic Ottoman Empire (with its oppressive Devshirmeh and jizya laws). Through diplomacy and a show of force Napoleon III forced the Ottoman Empire to recognize France as the “sovereign authority” in the Holy Land. This moved control of many Christian holy sites and buildings out of Orthodox hands and under Catholicism. These events were one of the main triggers for the Crimean War of 1856. Despite defeat in the war by 1856, Russia continued actively pursuing its interests vis-à-vis the position and influence of the Ottoman Empire and its European allies. Czar Alexander II continually worked to make sure Russia would have a presence in Palestine. Towards these ends a consulate was created in 1858.
1845: Lieutenant-Colonel George Gawler wrote a memorandum in which he suggested that Jews be allowed to establish Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine as compensation for their suffering under Turkish rule. In 1849 he toured Palestine with Moses Montefiore. In a further work, Syria and its Near Prospects, (1853) he made four arguments for the proposition that Jewish settlement was already underway. Gawler conveniently claimed that 90% of the land of Palestine lay waste and unprofitable, waiting for the “civilized” settlers to make it productive. He was perhaps the first Zionist to conceptualize and articulate the Zionist myth that “Palestine is a land without a people” waiting for “the Jews, a people without a land”.
NOTE: Gawler sums up his Zionist colonial plan in these words: Reduced to its practical form the question [of the tranquillization of Syria] becomes one of colonization [of Palestine]. THERE is a fertile country, nine-tenths of which lies desolate. ELSEWHERE, are civilized men, for whom it is desired to make of that almost forsaken country, an established home. For successful colonization three things are, in the highest degree, indispensable. The probability of SAFE SETTLEMENT in the colony—the facility of TRANSIT to it—and the will, or the obligation to embrace these opportunities. … On any other principle, the will of the proposed settler would be wanting. No members of the Jewish persuasion, worth sending to Palestine, would accept the boon so tauntingly proffered. We cannot, if we would, force them into colonization as convicts, under the moving agency of compulsory obligation, and must therefore carefully consult their feelings as well as our own desires. The colony should be formed of three classes of settlers, who would receive protection and land privileges: (1) persons possessing sufficient capital to provide entirely for themselves would receive up to 300 acres, (2) persons with a small amount of capital, providing wholly their own passages and means of transit to the location, would receive up to 50 acres, and (3) persons of very small means, receiving a free conveyance for themselves, their families, and a regulated weight of luggage, would receive up to 10 acres.
1850: According to Alexander Scholch, Palestine had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews. According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.
NOTE: A major source of information about the Yishuv, or Jewish community in Palestine during the 19th century is a sequence of censuses commissioned by Montefiore, in 1839, 1840, 1849, 1855, 1866 and 1875. The censuses attempted to list every Jew individually, together with some biographical and social information (such as their family structure, place of origin, and degree of poverty).
1852: American writer Bayard Taylor traveled across the Jezreel Valley, which he described in his 1854 book The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain as: “one of the richest districts in the world. The soil is a dark-brown loam, and, without manure, produces annually superb crops of wheat and barley”
1854: Judah Touro, a wealthy American Jew, died having bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlement in Palestine. Moses Montefiore was appointed executor of his will, and used the funds for a variety of projects aimed at encouraging the Jews to engage in productive labor. In 1855, he purchased an orchard on the outskirts of Jaffa that offered agricultural training to the Jews.
1854: Ottoman Empire first entered into loan contracts with its European creditors shortly after the beginning of the Crimean War. Some financial commentators have noted that the terms of these loans were exceptionally favorable to the French and British banks which facilitated them; the Empire defaulted on its loan repayments in 1875.
NOTE: a 16 million pound loan to finance the Crimean War was launched through the House of Rothschild.
October 1854 – February 1856: Crimean War pitted France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire against Russia. The war ended, under the Treaty of Paris. In 1853, under military and financial pressure from Napoleon III, Sultan Abdulmecid I accepts a treaty confirming France and the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme authority in the Holy Land with control over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This decision contravened the 1774 treaty with Russia, and led to the Crimean War.
1856: Ottoman Reform Edict was an edict of the Ottoman government and part of the Tanzimat reforms. The decree from Sultan Abdülmecid I promised equality in education, government appointments, and administration of justice to all regardless of creed. The decree is often seen as a result of French and British influence, Congress of Paris (Treaty of Paris), for their help of the plagued Ottoman state against Russians in the Crimean War.
NOTE: Although the goal of the Hatt-ı Hümayun was to bring equality among Ottoman citizens, the process was perceived more as one intended to please Europe. The biggest change was the Ottoman State’s acceptance of the notion of “minorities”.
1857: Rabbi Judah Alkalai published his work, Goral la-Adonai (A Lot for the Lord), in Vienna; a treatise on the restoration of the Jews, and suggests methods for the betterment of conditions in Palestine. Rabbi Alkalai thought it would be possible to buy part or even most of the Holy Land from the Turkish government; dreamed of establishing a world-wide organization along the lines of the various national organizations then prevalent among other nations of Europe. The purpose of these organizations would be to buy and reclaim land, as well as providing loans for new settlers.
NOTE: Along with the Ashkenazi Rabbi Zvi Kalischer of Prussia, the Sephardic Alkalai was an early forerunner of Zionism. If Kalischer was a forerunner of practical Zionism and agricultural settlement, Alkalai was perhaps the founder of Political Zionism. Alkalai devoted himself to spreading the idea of Jewish restoration through writing and speeches. Alkalai was not quite a Zionist in the modern sense and should not be understood as a direct father of Zionist ideas. He believed that the coming of the Messiah would be hastened by return of the Jews to the land of Israel and their settlement there.
Zionism is a form of nationalism of Jews and Jewish culture that supports a Jewish nation state in the territory defined as the Land of Israel. Zionism supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity, opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies and has advocated the return of Jews to Israel as a means for Jews to be a majority in their own nation, and to be liberated from antisemitic discrimination, exclusion, and persecution that had historically occurred in the diaspora. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in central and eastern Europe as a national revival movement, and soon after this most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
1858: Ottoman Land Code of 1858 “brought about the appropriation by the influential and rich families of Beirut, Damascus, and to a lesser extent Jerusalem and Jaffa and other sub-district capitals, of vast tracts of land in Syria and Palestine and their registration in the name of these families in the land registers”. Many of the fellahin did not understand the importance of the registers and therefore the wealthy families took advantage of this. Jewish buyers who were looking for large tracts of land found it favorable to purchase from the wealthy owners. As well many small farmers became in debt to rich families which lead to the transfer of land to the new owners and then eventually to the Jewish buyers.
1858: Jews Relief Act 1858, also called the Jewish Disabilities Bill, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which removed previous barrier to Jews entering Parliament. The bill allowed …any Person professing the Jewish Religion, [to] omit the Words “and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian”… in their oaths, but explicitly did not extend to allowing Jews to various high offices, and also stated that …it shall not be lawful for any Person professing the Jewish Religion, directly or indirectly, to advise Her Majesty….
1860: The first Jewish neighborhood, Mishkenot Sha’ananim is built outside the Old City walls, in an area later known as Yemin Moshe, by Sir Moses Montefiore, as part of the process to “leave the walls”
1860: According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews. McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.
1862: Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer; in 1862 he published his book Drishat Tzion. He suggested to Moses Montefiore and to the Rothschild family of bankers, that the land of Palestine should be bought from the present ruler. “Therefore, he viewed the developments of rising nationalism among the Jewish people as one of the first stages in the process of natural redemption, i.e., that process by which man himself would help bring about the beginning of redemption in which at least some Jews would return to Eretz Israel. Kalischer apparently first expressed his Zionist ideas in a letter he wrote in 1836 to the head of the Berlin branch of the Rothschild family. He explained that the beginning of messianic redemption would be brought about by human effort and by the will of the governments to gather the scattered of Israel into the Holy Land.”
1862: Moses Hess publishes Rome and Jerusalem, arguing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine centered on Jerusalem. Moses (Moshe) Hess was a Jewish philosopher and socialist, and one of the founders of Labor Zionism. His book calls for the establishment of a Jewish socialist commonwealth in Palestine, in line with the emerging national movements in Europe and as the only way to respond to antisemitism and assert Jewish identity in the modern world.
1865: Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society often simply known as the PEF; it is still functioning today. Its initial object was to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Ottoman Palestine with a remit that fell somewhere between an expeditionary survey and military intelligence gathering. Consequently, it had a complex relationship with Corps of Royal Engineers, and its members sent back reports on the need to salvage and modernize the region.
1867: Peretz (Peter) Smolenskin, was part of the Haskalah movement, and the founder and editor of a literary Hebrew language journal Ha-Shachar, (The Dawn.) He also wrote several novels and short stories in Hebrew. He helped to strengthen a nationalistic Haskalah movement in partnership with Zionism. Smolenskin was a leader in the revolt of young Jews against medievalism and a strong voice for Jewish nationalism. Shortly before his death he was associated with Laurence Oliphant and became deeply interested in schemes for the colonization of Palestine. Smolenskin was among the first of Jewish nationalists to disassociate Messianic ideals from theological concomitants.
1868: Mahane Israel becomes the second Jewish neighborhood outside the walls. of the Old City. Mahane Israel is a “communal neighborhood” and was built by and for Maghreb (western North Africa) Jews. It was built by the Moroccan leader Rabbi David Ben-Shimon. Although the neighborhood was very small and the houses were poorly built, the residents were spirited and courageous. Men studied in different shifts throughout the night in the central Shul – Tzuf Devash.
1868: Benjamin Disraeli becomes prime minister of Great Britain, the first prime minister of Jewish descent in Europe. He was a devout Anglican since his baptism at age 12, though also Britain’s only prime minister of Jewish birth.
1869: Nahalat Shiv’a becomes the third Jewish neighborhood outside the walls, built as a cooperative effort. It was founded as a cooperative effort by seven Jerusalem families who pooled their funds to purchase the land and build homes. Lots were cast and Yosef Rivlin won the right to build the first house in the neighborhood. In 1873, milk cows were imported from Amsterdam and a dairy was opened in Nahalat Shiv’a. A carriage service to Jaffa Gate was inaugurated that summer.
1869: Ottoman Nationality Law, creating a common Ottoman citizenship irrespective of religious or ethnic divisions. As part of the Charter of 1856, European powers demanded a much stronger sovereignty for ethnic communities within the empire, differing from the Ottomans who envisioned equality meaning identical treatment under the law for all citizens. This served to strengthen the Christian middle class, increasing their economic and political power.
1873: Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar was the King of Iran from September 17, 1848 to May 1, 1896 when he was assassinated. In 1873, Shah of Persia Naser al-Din Shah Qajar met with British Jewish leaders, including Sir Moses Montefiore, during his journey to Europe. At that time, the Persian king suggested that the Jews buy land and establish a state for the Jewish people.
NOTE: He was the third longest reigning monarch king in Iranian history after Shapur II of the Sassanid Dynasty and Tahmasp I of the Safavid Dynasty. He had sovereign power for close to 50 years and was also the first Persian monarch to ever write and publish his diaries. Shortly before his death he is reported to have said “I will rule you differently if I survive!” His assassin, Mirza Reza Kermani, is reported to have said “I had a chance to kill him (the Shah) before, but I didn’t because the Jews were celebrating their picnic after the 8th day of Passover. I did not want the Jews to be accused of killing the Shah.”
1873: Ottomon Land Emancipation Act was a secular land reform/civil rights law, which was popularly confused with a religious law and it was held as a “humiliation to Islam that Jews should own a part of the Muslim Ummah”. The confusion between religious and secular law made the laws (ended in 1873) against Jewish ownership of land ‘religious laws’.
1873–1875: Mea Shearim is built, the fifth Jewish neighborhood outside the walls. It is populated mainly by Haredi Jews and was built by the original settlers of the Yishuv haYashan, by a building society of 100 shareholders. Pooling their resources, the society members purchased a tract of land outside the Old City, which was severely overcrowded and plagued by poor sanitation, and built a new neighborhood with the goal of improving their standards of living.
1874: The Moses Montefiore Testimonial Fund is founded in London following Monteiore’s 90th birthday; aim is to aid settlement in Palestine. They established, Mazkeret Moshe, the neighborhood was intended for Ashkenazi Jews, while the adjacent neighborhood Ohel Moshe, also funded by Montefiore’s foundation, was intended for Sephardi Jews.
1876: Daniel Deronda is a novel. The work’s mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with its sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist and Kabbalistic ideas. On its publication, Daniel Deronda was immediately translated into German and Dutch and was given an enthusiastic extended review by the Austrian Zionist rabbi and scholar David Kaufmann. Further translations soon followed into French (1882), Italian (1883), Hebrew (1893), Yiddish (1900s) and Russian (1902). Written during a time when Restorationism (similar to 20th century Christian Zionism) had a strong following, Eliot’s novel had a positive influence on later Jewish Zionism. It has been cited by Henrietta Szold, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and Emma Lazarus as having been influential in their decision to become Zionists. Daniel Deronda emphasized the notion that the Jews are descendants of Biblical Israelites and that “a whole Christian is threefourths a Jew.” It also stressed the idea of “the necessity of requiting a moral debt
owed to the Jews”. Some even consider that Deronda created a Jewish nationalist spirit for Zionism and a role model that inspired Theodor Herzl.
1877: Michael Yehiel Pines was a writer, an early exponent of religious Zionism, and yishuv leader. Pines was asked by the Moses Montefiore Testimonial Fund in London to serve as its representative in Ereẓ Israel.
1878: a group of Orthodox Jews, also known as the Old Yishuv, from Jerusalem purchased a tract of land in the Sharon Valley, six miles from Jaffa. The 26 families built mud huts to live in and called the farming community, Petah Tikvah. It became a permanent settlement in 1883 with the financial help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild.
NOTE: The name of this city, located east of Tel Aviv means “Gateway to Hope.” Three entrepreneurial families initially established the settlement, one of which was Rabbi Moshe Yoel Salomon’s family, from Jerusalem. Additional families joined them in 1880. The settlers’ intention was to establish a new settlement in the Achor Valley – near Jericho. They purchased some land there, but the Turkish Sultan cancelled the purchase and forbade them from settling there. Located in what was a swamp area near the source of the Yarkon River – the land was purchased from the village of Mulabbis. For a time, the settlers had to move to a nearby location (site of modern day Savyon), until the swamps were dried, with the help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Like Degania Alef, which was known as the “Mother of the Kevutzot,” Petah Tikvah was known as the “Mother of the Moshavot” – or small cooperative villages. It was really the first modern agricultural settlement in Israel.
October 29, 1880: Convention of Constantinople was a treaty signed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. In the 1880s Britain had recently acquired physical control over the Suez Canal and Egypt. France, which had dominated the Canal and still controlled the majority of shares of Suez Canal Company, hoped to weaken British control and attempted to sway European opinion in favor of internationalizing the Canal. The two powers compromised by neutralizing the canal by this treaty. Article I, guaranteeing passage to all ships during war and peace was in tension with Article X, which allowed the Khedive to take measures for “the defense of Egypt and the maintenance of public order.” The latter clause was used to defend their actions by the British in the Second World War and by Egypt against Israeli shipping after 1948.
NOTE: On August 5, 1914 at the beginning of the First World War, Egypt declared that the canal would be open to ships of all nations, but Britain converted its occupation into a British Protectorate, and barred Canal access to enemy ships. Citing the security of the Canal, Britain attempted to maintain its prerogatives in unilateral declarations. The signatories comprised all the great European powers at the time, and the treaty was interpreted as a guaranteed right of passage of all ships through the Suez Canal during war and peace.
1881: Chief Rabbi of Paris, Izakel Antwerp, influenced the Baron Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild to begin supporting the Hibbat-Zion movement and the initial organization of groups who tried establishing new colonies in Palestine.
NOTE: Hovevei Zion (Those who are Lovers of Zion), also known as Hibbat Zion, refers to a variety of organizations which began in 1881 in response to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and were officially constituted as a group at a conference led by Leon Pinsker in 1884. The organizations are now considered the forerunners and foundation-builders of modern Zionism. Many of the first groups were established in Eastern European countries in the early 1880s with the aim to promote Jewish immigration to Palestine, and advance Jewish settlement there, particularly agricultural.
1881: American Colony was a colony established in Jerusalem in 1881 by members of a Christian utopian society led by Anna and Horatio Spafford. Now a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, it is still known by that name today.
1881: Ottoman Empire decreed that Jews could settle anywhere except in Palestine and from 1882 until their defeat in 1918, the Ottomans continuously restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine.
1881–1882: a group of Jews arrived from Yemen as a result of messianic fervor. After living in the Old City for several years, they moved to the hills facing the City of David, where they lived in caves; in 1884, the community, numbering 200, moved to new stone houses built for them by a Jewish charity.
December 1881: Decree of Muharram which turned over a large proportion of the Ottoman Empire’s revenue to the Public Debt Administration for the repayment of foreign creditors, practically bankrupting the Ottomans. The Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt was in the hands of French, British, Italian, German and Austria-Hungarian banks. This made the European creditors bondholders, and assigned rights to collect various tax and customs revenues of the Empire to the Administration.
1882: The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society was founded, a scholarly organization for the study of the Middle East. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the society was renamed the Russian Palestine Society and attached to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Its original name was restored by the society on 22 May 1992.
1882: Leon Pinsker was a physician, a Zionist pioneer and activist, and the founder and leader of the Hovevei Zion, also known as Hibbat Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. His visit to Western Europe led to his famous pamphlet Auto-Emancipation, subtitled Mahnruf an seine Stammgenossen, von einem russischen Juden (Warning to His Fellow People, from a Russian Jew), which he published anonymously in German on 1 January 1882, and in which he urged the Jewish people to strive for independence and national consciousness. His analysis of the roots of this ancient hatred led him to call for the establishment of a Jewish National Homeland, either in Palestine or elsewhere.
- https://michaelruark.blog/2013/08/12/capital-is-the-first-settler-palestine-israel-powe
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