The Walls of Jerusalem
A Brief History of the Walls of Jerusalem
Introduction
The Walls of Jerusalem surround the Old City of Jerusalem. The walls are visible on most old maps of Jerusalem over the last 1,500 years. During different periods, the city walls followed different outlines and had a varying number of gates.
The present-day length of the walls is almost 2.5 miles (4,018 meters), their average height is 39 feet (12 meters) and the average thickness is 8.2 feet (2.5 meters). The walls contain 34 watchtowers and seven main gates open for traffic, with two minor gates reopened by archaeologists.
In 1981, the Jerusalem walls were added, along with the Old City of Jerusalem, to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.
Pre-Israelite City
The city of Jerusalem has been surrounded by defensive walls since ancient times. In the Middle Bronze Age, a period also known in biblical terms as the era of the Patriarchs, a city named Jebus was built on the southeastern hill of Jerusalem, relatively small (50,000 square meters) but well-fortified. Long before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the Jebusites lived securely within the walls of Jerusalem. The city was blessed with natural valleys around it that made it easy to defend, and the city walls and its fortress provided additional protection. Remains of its walls are located above the Siloam Tunnel.
Israelite City (~1000-587/87 B.C.)
Jerusalem remained a Jebusite city until the rise of David, who conquered Jebus, renamed it the City of David and started expanding it (2 Samuel 5:6-10). Outside today's Old City area, his city was still on the low southeastern hill.
After David died, Solomon built the Temple Mount Platform on Mount Moriah upon the threshing floor of Araunah. Then he erected the temple upon it and added walls from the City of David to encompass the Temple Mount and temple. During the First Temple period, the city walls were extended to include the northwest hill, which is where today's Jewish and Armenian quarters are located.
In 701 BC, the Assyrians, headed by Sennacherib invaded Judah, the Southern Kingdom of Israel, because of their disobedience to God. According to an Assyrian stele or stela (an upright stone slab or column typically bearing a commemorative inscription or relief design) found in the ruins of the royal palace of Nineveh, Sennacherib conquered 46 cities in Judea prior to attempting to conquer Jerusalem.
God allowed most of Judah to be conquered but protected Jerusalem because of Hezekiah’s obedience to Him. As Hezekiah began to prepare for what he knew would be a terrible siege by a merciless Assyrian war machine, he had to figure out how to protect his people. This meant building new defenses.
During the time of Hezekiah, Jerusalem’s urban population had grown far outside the old walls of the city and were unprotected. King Hezekiah fortified the existing walls of the city and built a new wall in a rapid manner to protect those living outside the city walls (2 Chronicles 32:5). Hezekiah’s new wall measured about 22 feet wide (7 meters) by 25 feet high (8 meters). It was a massive undertaking and measured around 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in length.
A portion of the wall was discovered in the 1970s by Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad and dated to the reign of King Hezekiah (716–687 BC). It was called “Hezekiah’s Broad Wall” by archaeologists because of its width.
Hezekiah also built a water tunnel to keep the water from the Gihon Spring inside the city walls so the Assyrians couldn’t cut off the water supply (2 Chronicles 32:3-4). The curving tunnel is 583 yards (533 meters) long and has a fall of 12 inches (30 centimeters) between its two ends. It was chiseled from both ends to the middle at the same time. It took the water from the Gihon Spring under the mountain to the Pool of Siloam below the city. Today, this water tunnel is known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel.
Jewish Postexilic City
The entire city was destroyed in 587/86 BC during the siege led by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The walls were destroyed and the gates were burned. After the Babylonian captivity and then the Fall of Babylon, its new ruler Cyrus the Great restored the temple treasures to Jerusalem and allowed building expenses to be paid from the royal treasury (Ezra 1:4-11; 5:13-16; 6:4-5). Cyrus's beneficence helped to restart the temple worship practices that had languished during the 70 years of the Jews' captivity and he allowed the Judahites to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple.
Then, God sovereignly moved in the heart of Artaxerxes I, king of Persia, to allow Ezra and Nehemiah to return and rebuild the city's walls and to govern Judea, which was ruled as Yehud Medinata. Under Nehemiah’s leadership and with a small Jewish population, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt to dimensions similar to Solomon’s day (Nehemiah 1:1-3). The rebuilding and repair of the walls was a miracle and only took 52 days (Nehemiah 6:15-16)!
The Jews gained their independence from the Seleucid Empire in 164 BC, led by the Maccabees and Hasmoneans. During the Hasmonean period (164-63 BC), the city walls were expanded and renovated, constituting what Josephus calls the First Wall. The wall dimensions were similar to King Hezekiah’s time.
In 19 BC, the master-builder, King Herod the Great, began his life's most ambitious building project. He undertook the rebuilding of the temple and the Temple Mount on a massive scale. He took the expansion of the Hasmonean Temple Mount and extended it on three sides, to the north, west, and south. This expansion also included some additional wall construction on the north side of the city walls. Herod the Great added what Josephus called the Second Wall somewhere between today's Jaffa Gate and Temple Mount. The archaeology of the Temple Mount today confirms this enlargement. It would be this city layout that would exist during the time of Christ.
According to the Jewish historian Josephus, King Agrippa I (41–44 AD) began the construction of a third city wall of Jerusalem to protect a new quarter that grew north beyond the first and second city walls. Agrippa stopped work on the wall after only laying the foundation out of fear that Roman emperor Claudius would suspect he was planning a revolt. Jewish rebels later completed this wall in haste leading up to the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 AD). This would be the largest area the city walls would encompass. Some remains of this wall are located today near the Mandelbaum Gate gas station.
Aelia Capitolina and Byzantine Jerusalem
In 70 AD, as a result of the Roman siege during the First Jewish–Roman War, the walls were almost completely destroyed. Jerusalem would remain in ruins for some six decades and without protective walls for over two centuries.
The pagan Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, which was built after 130 by Emperor Hadrian, was at first left without protective walls. After some two centuries without walls, a new set was erected around the city, probably during the reign of Emperor Diocletian, sometime between 289 and the turn of the century. The walls were extensively renewed by the Empress Aelia Eudocia during her banishment to Jerusalem (443–460).
Middle Ages
Most of the walls constructed by Eudocia were destroyed in the 1033 Jordan Rift Valley earthquake. They had to be rebuilt by the Fatimid Caliphate, who left out the southernmost parts that had been previously included: Mount Zion with its churches, and the southeastern hill (the City of David) with the Jewish neighborhoods which stood south of the Temple Mount. In preparation for the expected Crusader siege of 1099, the walls were strengthened yet again, but to little avail. The conquest brought some destruction, followed by reconstruction, as did the reconquest by Saladin in 1187. From 1202–12, Saladin's nephew, al-Mu'azzam Isa, ordered the reconstruction of the city walls, but later on, in 1219, he reconsidered the situation after most of the watchtowers had been built and had the walls torn down, mainly because he feared that the Crusaders would benefit from the fortifications if they managed to reconquer the city. For the next three centuries, the city remained without protective walls, al-Aqsa and the Tower of David then being the only well-fortified areas.
Ottoman Period to Present
In the 16th century, during the reign of the Ottoman Empire in the region, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent decided to rebuild the city walls fully, partly on the remains of the ancient walls. On the frontage of northwestern wall in Jerusalem, an Arabic inscription from the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent states:
"Has decreed the construction of the wall he who has protected the home of Islam with his might and main and wiped out the tyranny of idols with his power and strength, he whom alone God has enabled to enslave the necks of kings in countries (far and wide) and deservedly acquire the throne of the Caliphate, the Sultan son of the Sultan son of the Sultan son of the Sultan, Suleyman."
Much of the southern part of the city walls were omitted in the new construction. Being built in circa 1537–1541, they are the walls that exist today.
Tancred’s Tower (Qasr Jalud)
At the northwest corner of the Ottoman wall, archaeologists have discovered the meager remains of a large tower, 114.8x114.8 feet (35x35 meters). This tower was probably first built in the 11th century during the Fatimid period, that fell to the Franks at the end of the First Crusade in 1099 and was expanded by the Ayyubids after Saladin's reconquest of the city in the Battle of Hattin in 1187. The tower is known in Arabic as Qasr al-Jalud "Goliath's Tower," and to the Kingdom of Jerusalem as Tancred's Tower after Tancred of Hauteville, the commander whose troops breached the Fatimid defenses at this specific point during the 1099 siege. The tower, as well as the entire city wall, were long destroyed by the time the Ottoman Turks built theirs, possibly since 1219 when Ayyubid ruler Al-Mu'azzam Isa razed most of the city fortifications.
