JERUSALEM (Greek Hierousalem• Old Hebrew pronunciation, Yurushalem. Tel-el Amarna tablets, Uru-sa-lins "city of peace"; As syrian monuments, Ur-sa-li-im-mu. The Greek and Latin Hierosolyma is a corruption, from the erroneous supposition that the first syllable is Greek hieros, sacred. Hadrian renamed it Capitolino, and its official name was long even Arabicized into Iliya; the Greeks called it Ka/'itolias. Arabic name, Befit el Makdis, or simply el-Mukaddas, modern ver nacular el-Kuds, "the sanctuary," or el-Kuds esh-sherif).
The "Holy City" is 33 miles from its port of Jaffa on the Mediterranean, 15 from the Dead Sea, 18 from the Jordan, 19 from David's first capital, Hebron, and 34 or 35 from the old kingdom of Samaria : the pregnant Hebrew his tory was transacted in the space of a county. It is 126 miles from Damascus. The position of the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is lat. 31° 46' 45" N., long. 35° 13' 25" E. The city lies in the midst of an infertile, ill-watered district, once (under good government) made prosperous by irrigation, later blighted by Turk ish possession. The rainfall is about 23 inches. The climate is hot and irregular — rising to 112° and not sinking .below 25°, with an annual mean of 62° — but not malarious; the city is insani tary and plague-stricken, but from dirt, lack of sewerage, bad water, and the unhygienic habits of the people. The only natural water-supply (the drainage sinking in the soft limestone) is from the Virgin's Spring (Gihon), an inter mittent natural siphon on a dolomite floor, in a rocky cave 12 feet deep in the face of the eastern ridge; this was carried by a rock and masonry conduit to the rock and masonry Pool of Siloam, 52 x 18, and thence to another, the Old Pool; a shaft within the walls led down to a rock channel communicating with the spring. At present the water-supply is from rain-tanks or "pools," in and out of the walls. The re maining one of three old aqueducts, which carries water when in repair, was built by Pilate. There is little trade except that of local shops for supplying tourists; and the manufac ture is chiefly of souvenirs, as olive-wood and mother-of-pearl articles. Indeed, as a commer cial location it never possessed any merits, and its greatness was due to original reli political status. It is connected with Jaffa (west), Bethlehem and Hebron (south), and Jericho (north) by carriage-roads; and in 1892 a narrow-gauge railroad to Jaffa, with a circuitous course of 54 miles, was opened by a French company.
Jerusalem was built on several hills. "This group of hills, now represented by a nearly level plateau, as the inner valleys have been filled up, with the accumulations of ages, forms an outly ing spur of the mountains of Judea, and has a general direction of north and south. On the
north side the ground is comparatively level; two valleys, on the west, south and east, en circle the site, and gradually getting deeper, unite near the Pool of Siloam, forming one valley which runs down to the Dead Sea.* The modern city, much less extensive than the old in its best estate, is a rough quad rangle surrounded by a very irregular wall, built in the 16th century by Solyman I, on the lines of the Crusaders' fortifications. It has nomi pally eight gates, two on each side; the Jaffa and Abd-ul-Hamid on the west (the latter very recent), the Zion and Dung on the south, the Golden (closed up) and Saint Stephen's on the east, and the Damascus and Herod's on the north. The cityis unevenly divided, by the main street running from the Damascus gate south to near the Zion gate, and that running east from the Jaffa gate to the Haram-esh sherif, into four °quarters* in which the great religious divisions are segregated : the Moham medan, much the largest, on the northeast, ad joining the original holy places; the Christian next, on the northwest, where is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the Armenian on the southwest; the Jewish on the southeast. The streets are crooked, narrow, ill-made, and dirty, and the city has few except historical attrac tions ; the stream of tourists, however, has de veloped civilized conveniences such as hotels, banks, mercantile establishments, etc. Several Jewish colonies have been settled in the envi rons ; and since 1858 a quarter has grown up outside the walls on the northwest, approached by the Jaffa Gate, and containing consulates, Christian churches, schools, charitable institu tions, etc., but not more sanitary than the old. The city prior to British occupation in 1917 was the capital of an independent sanjak, subject to the government at Constantinople. It has an executive and a town council with representation of the great religious divisions. It is the seat of Roman Catholic, Greek Catho lic and Armenian patriarchs ; the smaller east ern churches have resident bishops; and till 1887 a joint Protestant bishopric was supported by England and Prussia, with alternate bishops, but on the death of the then incumbent Prussia withdrew from the arrangement, and England continued it alone. Pop. in 1911 about 68,000, made up of 8,000 Mohammedans, 10,000 Chris tians and 50,000 Jews. In addition, there is a floating population of pilgrims to the sacred sites.