The Old City and Jerusalem Today c. 2000

Since Medieval times Jerusalem’s Old City, within modern Jerusalem, was divided into four religious quarters: Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish. The city’s walls, which include the Jaffa gate (rebuilt in 1898), were constructed in the 1600s by the Ottoman emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent. By c. 2000, the two largest quarters were Muslim and Christian, with the Armenian quarter diminishing and the Jewish quarter growing, although still small. The Jewish population were evicted from Old Jerusalem after the Jordanian invasion in the Arab-Israeli war (1948). The Jews returned: in 2006, there were 3,965 Jews and 31,405 ‘Arabs and others’ in Old Jerusalem. The Temple Mount, within the Old City, is one of the most revered sites in the world and is venerated by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Beyond the Old City lies modern Jerusalem where, in 2006, the majority population was Jewish, followed by Muslim. The Jewish parliament, the Knesset, is in the city centre.