After nearly a century in exile, the Jews built a second Holy Temple, awakening the sacred flames in Jerusalem once again. This Temple was made even more resplendent than the first by Herod, the dark-tempered and tormented king. The Second Temple Period saw some of the most dramatic changes to Jerusalem, from the onslaught of Greek Hellenism to the iron grip of Rome. In between, the triumphant story of Chanukah cast its light on the Holy City, only to give way centuries later to an apocalyptic war that would leave all of Jerusalem in ruins, and its identity as a Jewish city destroyed.

A dream—and especially an emperor’s dream—can change the world. Nowhere is that truth more apparent than in the fateful dream of Constantine, which was to change the intertwined destinies of Christianity and Jerusalem forever. From a downtrodden minor religion, Christianity rose to become the future of civilization. And from a conquered, disdained city, Jerusalem transformed into the Christian Holy City, where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was to engender controversies of theology and power for eons to come.

In the thousands of years of its existence, Jerusalem endured many wars. But not all of these wars were pivotal. The war that destroyed Jerusalem’s Second Temple and transformed the city into Aelia Capitolina was one such war. Another was the war in 638 A.D., in which Christian Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Muslim conqueror Caliph Umar. Now Jerusalem was to become a center of Islam, and the Temple Mount a home to Muslim holy sites, as it remains even until this day.

 

After centuries of Islamic rule, it seemed as if Christian Jerusalem was a mere dream. Though various sects of Christianity still worshiped within the walls of the city, and the Christian holy sites still stood, Jerusalem was now unquestionably Al-Quds, site of the Remote Mosque. But in 1095, Pope Urban II called upon the Christians of Europe to do battle with Islam and conquer the Holy Land, and his oratory spread like wildfire amid nobles and peasants alike. Now all eyes—and all weapons—were trained toward the east. Amid a storm of blood, the Crusaders marched on Palestine, and above all, on the holy city of Jerusalem.

 

Riddled with political intrigue and precarious leadership, the Crusaders’ Jerusalem proved all too vulnerable to attack. Though nearly a century had passed since the Crusades had cut a bloody swath through the Muslim world, the gulf between Christianity and Islam had been irreparably widened. Conquering Jerusalem from the Crusaders became a popular theme in Islam, but it took a truly inspiring leader to make the attack succeed. That leader was Saladin.