MOUNT ZION

David's Tomb, Mount Zion, courtesy, BibleWalks.com

Mount Zion is a hill in Jerusalem, located just outside the walls of the Old City. The term “Mount Zion” appears nine times in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David (2 Samuel 5:7, 1 Chronicles 11:5; 1 Kings 8:1, 2 Chronicles 5:2) and later for the Temple Mount, and now used as the name of ancient Jerusalem's Western Hill. In a wider sense, the term is also used for the entire Land of Israel.

During the time of Joshua, Mount Zion and the surrounding area was allotted to the tribe of Benjamin. According to the Book of Samuel, the mount was the site of the Jebusite fortress called the "stronghold of Zion" that was conquered by King David, then renamed and partially rebuilt by him as the "City of David", “Jerusalem”, where he erected his palace. The Tanakh reference to Har Tzion (Mount Zion) that identifies its location is derived from Psalm 48 composed by the sons of Korah the Levite as "the northern side of the city of the great king…from the City of David, which is Zion (1 Kings 8:1-2; 2 Chron. 5:2)". 2 Samuel 5:7 also reads, "David took the stronghold of Zion: the same is the city of David," which identifies Mount Zion as part of the City of David. Upon King David’s death, he was buried on the mount’s hilltop.  

In the second half of the First Temple period, the city expanded westward and its defensive walls were extended to include the entire Mount Zion area. In the first century CE, a small church was built on the southern end of the hill, identified as the Coenaculum, the "Room of the Last Supper". In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem including the buildings on and around Mount Zion. Josephus, the first-century historian who knew the city as it was before, identified Mount Zion as being the Western Hill, separated from the lower, Eastern Hill (Temple Mount), by what he calls the "Tyropoeon Valley". It must however be said that Josephus never used the name "Mount Zion" in any of his writings, but described the "Citadel" of King David as being situated on the higher and longer hill, thus pointing at the Western Hill as what the Bible calls Mount Zion.

In the year 333, toward the end of the Roman period, the well-known but anonymous Traveler from Bordeaux described a synagogue built at the entrance of David's Tomb. It was the only one spared by the Romans out of seven synagogues that had stood in the area since ancient times. It remained active throughout the period and was even repaired during the reign of Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (361-3). However, the site was later abandoned and the exact location of David’s Tomb was lost.

In 636, the Arab conquerors allowed the Jews to resettle Jerusalem. Initially settling near Temple Mount, they later chose Mount Zion as their place of residence, and a Jewish neighborhood began to develop. In the late 8^th/early 9^th centuries, a neighborhood of Karaite Jews developed on the eastern slope of the mount, on the western side of the Kidron Valley. In the 10^th century, the site of David’s Tomb was rediscovered and it became a place of Jewish pilgrimage ever since. In 1033 a strong earthquake shook Jerusalem resulting in the Jewish and Karaite communities leaving and migrating north, settling in what is now, the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. After the Crusader conquest in 1099, Jews were banned from Jerusalem but could briefly visit the Western Wall and the Temple Mount with special permission. Mount Zion was off limits but with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 by Saladin and the rise of Muslim Ayyubid dynasty, the Jews returned and settled in Jerusalem and Mount Zion in particular. But only a few individuals actually did return. In 1236, an Egyptian Jewish merchant had negotiated with the governor of the city to renew the Jewish settlement there. The negotiations were positive for the Jews resulting in the settlement of a man who went by the name of Baruch the Good and Beneficent. As a stable Jewish community developed, it was said that the Ramban would sometimes pray in the local synagogue. The community was later described by both Jewish and Christian travelers in the early 14^th century. In 1335, the Franciscan fathers purchased property on the mount including the supposed “Room of the Last Supper”, and began to harass the Jews in the area. Jews also held property there, namely David’s Tomb. Eventually, the Mameluke authorities intervened and confiscated the Franciscan property. This caused a reaction from the Franciscans who accused the Jews of having dispossessed them of their share of the tomb, and in 1428 the pope issued an order forbidding the fleets of Italian towns to transport Jews to Israel. The dispute over the ownership of the Tomb of David continued for an extended period and resulted in great difficulties in Jewish immigration by sea and the renewal of the prohibition against transporting Jews in Christian ships (c. 1468).

From 1516, Israel now came under Ottoman Turkish rule. In 1524, the local Arabs turned the ancient Mount Zion synagogue into a mosque. Nevertheless, a Jewish presence was maintained there and the area became a place of Jewish burials as well as a place of pilgrimage.  

During the 1948 war, Mount Zion was conquered by the Harel Brigade and became the only part of the Old City to stay in Israeli hands until the armistice. At first it was linked to the Jewish neighborhood of Yemin Moshe across the Valley of Hinnom via a narrow tunnel, but eventually an alternative was needed to evacuate the wounded and transport supplies to soldiers on Mt. Zion. A cable car capable of carrying a load of 250 kilograms was designed for this purpose. The cable car was only used at night and lowered into the valley during the day to escape detection; it is still in place at what is now the Mount Zion Hotel.

At the end of the war, the mount remained in Jewish hands, overlooking the Arab occupied part of Jerusalem. David’s Tomb was turned back into a synagogue. Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under occupation and Israelis were forbidden access to the Jewish holy places, Mount Zion became the closest accessible site to the ancient Jewish Temple. Until eastern Jerusalem was liberated by Israel in the Six-Day War, Israelis would climb to the rooftop of David's Tomb to pray. 

Important sites on Mount Zion that are of interest to Jews, aside from the Tomb of David are: the Chamber of the Holocaust (Martef HaShoah), the precursor of Yad Vashem; the Catholic cemetery where Oskar Schindler, a Righteous Gentile who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews in the Holocaust, is buried; the Protestant cemetery where a number of prominent individuals from the 19th and 20th centuries are buried including the architect Conrad Schick who, among his many works, helped build Mea Shearim, and the diplomat and social worker James Edward Hanauer who was of mixed Jewish and Swiss ancestry; Pope’s Way, the winding road leading up to Mount Zion, so named in honor of the historic visit to Jerusalem of Pope Paul VI in 1964.