Many Names, One Holy City

The city of Jerusalem has been inhabited by different nations from different cultures and backgrounds throughout history. Every time Jerusalem was invaded, destroyed, and rebuilt, it was given a different name by the new residents. Oftentimes, the names given to this city were religious or holy in nature.

The first name Jerusalem was given was its Canaanite name Ursalim.^[1] In the Akkadian language, city names often include the prefix Ur which means city or place. Salim could refer either to the Canaanite god Shalim ^[2] or the akkadian word for “peace.” The city was also called Jebus after Jebusites who first settled in the city in 3000 BC.^[3] The name Jubus is mentioned in Torah and in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics which refer to the name with the words Yapthi or Yabti.^[4]

The city was also referred to by the Romans as Aelia Capitolina, or the capital “sun center” of the Roman Emperor Elia Eileus Hadrian who destroyed the city and built it again.,^[5]

The Arabs and Christians referred to Jerusalem as Ilya’, a variation on the Roman name, previous to the Islamic conquest.^[6]

In Greek, the city was referred to as Hierosolma.,^[7]

Following the Islamic conquest, the Muslims renamed the city Bt Al-Maqdis or the abode of holiness, after the name by which Prophet Mohammed referred to it during his life.Arabs now refer to the city as Al-Quds, the pure and immaculate land that has no defects or shortcomings.^[8]

The hebrew name for the city is Yerushalayim, and it is a variation on the original Jebusite name. The name refers either to the “city of peace” or “rain of peace,”^[9] but as with the Jebusite name for the city, , historians believed that the name probably refers to a city founded by the god Salem.^[10]

Historical Records of the City

The first mention of Jerusalem historians have come across is in the Egyptian Execration texts.^[11] The texts are two sets of Egyptian Hieratic inscriptions on bowls and clay figurines that belong to the 19th and 18th centuries BC.^[12] The inscriptions list the names of distant cities, nomadic clans and their chiefs who were considered enemies to the pharaoh at the time..^[13] The statuettes on which these inscriptions were carved were meant to be broken and shredded in an attempt to strip the power of the mentioned enemies.^[14] In the texts, Jerusalem is referred to as “Urushamem”.

The city is also referred to in the Amarna tablets or “Tel el-Amarna Letters,”^[15] which are clay tablets containing the correspondence between two pharaohs and the vassal prince of the Egyptian Empire. found 1891-2 in Amarna southern Egypt along with many other royal archives.^[16] Jerusalem appears in written Egyptian records in the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep and his son Ikhnaton (1397-1362 BC).. Eight of those letters are written by the king or local ruler of Jerusalem, Abdu-Heba in which he asks for military aid^[17] against the Habiru, a tribe that frequently attacked Jerusalem..^[18]

It is not until six centuries later in the late 8th century BC, that Jerusalem mention comes up in the historical record again, this time in the writings^[19] of the Assyrian king Tiglath Pileser iii (744-727 BC).^[20]

In the 5th century BC, Herodotus (484-425 BC) refers to the city as Qadishta or “Arab Holy City” in Aramaic.^[21]

Scriptural Mentions of the Holy City

Jerusalem is mentioned in the Torah over 680 times by different names. Among these names are Shalim, the City of God; the city of Quds; the city of peace; the city of Justice; Jebus’ the city of Jebusites; and by its Hebrew name Yerushalayim.^[22]

The first mention of the city in the Christian Bible s in Genesis 14:18, when it is referred to as “Salem.” The chapter speaks about the meeting between Abraham and the King of Salem “Melchizedek,” and that Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.”^[23]

The name Jerusalem first appeared in the Bible in the book of Joshua 10:1 when the city’s king “Adonai-Tzedek fights against Joshua but gets defeated in the Valley of Ayalon.^[24] The chapter states “… Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had taken Ai and totally destroyed[a] it…”^[25]

While the Quran does not mention Jerusalem by name,it does refer to it as the holy land, the land that God blessed and upon which is built the the Al-Aqsa mosque. The ahadith or traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, on the other hand, do refer to it by the name Bayt al-Maqdis.