The Holy Land in Previous Centuries.
Contents:
1. Ancient Israel.
2. The Arrival of Islam.
3. Napoleon.
4. Muhammed Ali, the Albanian Ruler of Egypt.
5. The Damascus Affair, 1840.
6. Colonel Charles Henry Churchill.
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The Land of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates had been promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Joseph the son of Jacob (also known as "Yisroel", i.e. Israel) was taken down to Egypt where he became the virtual ruler of the country. He induced his father, Jacob, and his 11 brothers to join him. In Egypt they increased and multiplied. The Egyptians oppressed them but Moses from the Tribe of Levi led them out into the Wilderness where they received the Torah.
After wandering for 40 years they entered the Land of Canaan, conquered it, and divided it up among the 12 Tribes.
A Period of "Judges" was followed by monarchs. The first king was from the Tribe of Benjamin.
After him came David from the Tribe of Judah. He made Jerusalem the capital. Solomon the son of David built the Temple in Jerusalem.
In the time of Rehoboam the son of Solomon the Tribes divided into two sections, "Judah" in the South and "Israel" in the north.
The Assyrians conquered the Land and exiled 10 of the 12 Tribes. There were actually 13 Tribes but Scripture "juggles" the listings so that only 12 are mentioned at any one time. After the Assyrian Exile came the Babylonians who exiled the 2 (or 3 when Levi is included) of the Tribes that were left. These became the foundational element of the Jewish People. They were carried away to Babylon but after 70 years returned and were ruled over by the Persians. The Persians were replaced by the Macedonian Greeks of Alexander the Great whose conquests were divided among his generals.Two of these gave rise to the Seleucids in Syria and the Ptolemies in Egypt. They fought over possession of Judah. Eventually the Seleucids prevailed. The Seleucid Greeks attempted with the aid of assimilated Hellenised Jews to force the other Jews to accept pagan practices.
The Jews under the Hasmonean (Maccabee) Priests rebelled. They established their own kingdom which was later taken over by the Herod and the Romans. The Romans eventually destroyed the Temple and expelled the Jews who were scattered all over the world. The Romans later became Christians and divided their Empire into two. The eastern portion was known as Byzantium.
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The Persians lost control of Jerusalem to the pagan Persians who were conquered by Muslim Arabs. The Arabs ruled through the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates. They in turn were replaced by the Muslim Seljuk Turks in the 1070s. In the 1200s the Mongols invaded the land but were driven out by the Mamluks. The Mamluks in Egypt were descendants of slaves of Circassian and Turkish Russian steppe origin who overthrew their Arab masters. They ruled over Egypt and Israel until the 1500s when they came under the rule of Ottoman Turkey. The Ottoman Turks themsleves were originally a group Turkish-speaking peoples who had become Muslims. They conquered the area of Anatolia and converted its inhabitants to Islam by force. They also imposed their language and much of their culture on the peoples they conquered. Henceforth this area with the adjoining former region of Byzantium became known as Turkey and all its inhabitants as "Turks". Eventually the "Turks" ruled over much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 1300s to early 1900s. They also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe, between the early 1500s and early 1700s.
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3. Napoleon.
In Egypt the Mamluks though nominally subject to the Ottomon Turks had remained as the de facto rulers of Egypt.
The French under Napoleon conquered Egypt from the Mamluks in 1798. At that time, the British were at war with Napoleon so they sank his fleet at Alexandria. The Ottoman Turks sent armies agaisnt him that were defeated.
In his campaigns agaisnt the Ottoamsn Napoleon conquered Jaffo in Israel and laid siege to Acre. Haim Farhi advisor to the Muslim ruler of Acra and defender of the city on behalf of Ottoman Turkey, as well as being the Governor of Galilee, was a local Jew.
At Acre Napoleon declared his support for an independent Jewish Principality in the Holy Land.
During Napoleon's siege of Acre in 1799, Gazette Nationale, the main French newspaper during the French Revolution, published (22 May 1799) a short statement that:
"Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem. He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo."
It is believed that this proclomation was perhaps initiated by Thomas Corbet (1773-1804), an Anglo-Irish Protestant emigree serving with Napoleon. Prior to the siege of Acre In February 1799, Corbet had authored a letter to the French Directory, then under the leadership of Napoleon's patron Paul Barras. In the letter he stated "I recommend you, Napoleon, to call on the Jewish people to join your conquest in the East, to your mission to conquer the land of Israel" saying, "Their riches do not console them for their hardships. They await with impatience the epoch of their re-establishment as a nation."
In 1940, historian Franz Kobler claimed to have found a detailed version of the proclamation from a German translation. The Kobler version suggests that Napoleon was inviting Jews across the Mideast and North Africa to create a Jewish homeland. It includes phrases such as "Rightful heirs of Palestine!" and "your political existence as a nation among the nations."
Rabbi Aharon Ben-Levi of Jerusalem also added his voice to the proclamation, calling on the Jews to enlist in Napoleon's army "to return to Zion as in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah" and rebuild the Temple.
Napoleon also granted the Jews civil liberties throughout his Empire though encouraging their assimilation to Gentiles ways.
In Austria, Chancellor Klemens von Metternich wrote, "I fear that the Jews will believe (Napoleon) to be their promised Messiah".
See:
Napoleon and the Jews.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_and_the_Jews
Napoleon was unable to subdue Acre and so retreated to Egypt. After this Napolean returned to France leaving his army behind him and this was subsequently defeated by British Forces.
How serious Napoleon really was about creating an independent Jewish State in the Holy Land is not certain.
Nevertheless his action aroused interested in the concept.
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4. Muhammed Ali, the Albanian Ruler of Egypt.
After Napoleon came Muhammed Alli (1769 - 1849) who was the Ottoman Albanian viceroy and governor of Egypt and became its de facto ruler from 1805 to 1848. He is widely considered the founder of modern Egypt.
At the height of his rule, he controlled Egypt, Sudan, Hejaz, the Levant (Lebanon, Palestine, and much of Syria), Crete and parts of Greece.
The Ottoman Empire had sent him to Egypt (from Albania) following the withdrawal of Napoleon.
He rebelled agaisnt the Ottoman Empire.
In 1831, Ali waged war against the sultan, capturing Syria, crossing into Anatolia and directly threatening Constantinople, but the European powers forced him to retreat. After a failed Ottoman invasion of Syria in 1839, he launched another invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1840; he defeated the Ottomans again and opened the way towards a capture of Constantinople. Faced with another European intervention, he accepted a brokered peace in 1842 and withdrew from the Levant; in return, he and his descendants were granted hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan. His dynasty would rule Egypt for over a century, until the revolution of 1952 when King Farouk was overthrown by the Free Officers Movement led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, establishing the Republic of Egypt.
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5. The Damascus Affair, 1840.
Under the rule of Mohamed Ali the Damascus Affair took place in 1840. The Ottoman authorities had began to relax restrictions against both Christians and Jews. Christian merchants resented Jewish competition.
The local Christians accused the Jews of murdering an Italian monk, Father Thomas and his muslim servant, and to have extracted their blood in order to bake matsot for Passover.
A large number of Jews were apprehended and tortured until they "confessed." Some of them died while being tortured. More atrocities occurred later as authorities seized sixty-three Jewish children as hostages to hold until their mothers revealed the location of the blood.
The Christians were supported in their accusation by the French consul at Damascus. Muslims and Christians in the region began to attack Jewish people.
Sir Moses Montefiore of Great Britain and Adolphe Cremieux of France intervened. So did the USA. Muhammad Ali of Egypt released the remaining prisoners, but refused to acquit them. It was not until November 1840, after the withdrawal of Egyptian forces loyal to Mohamad Ali and the restoration of Ottoman Syria, that the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I decreed all charges should be lifted. Some of the 1840 accusations re-emerged in a 1983 book "The Damascus Blood Libel" (1840) by the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tlass.
The blood libel still exists today. It was featured in a scene in the Syrian TV series Ash-Shatat in 2003, while in 2013 the Israeli website Arutz Sheva reported cases of Israeli Arabs asking "where Jews find the Christian blood they need to bake matza".
A separate article giving more details concenring the Damascus Blood Libel is in preparation.
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6. Colonel Charles Henry Churchill.
As a result of the Damascus affair there was increased interest in Britain to establish a presence in the Middle East in order amongst other matters to protect the Jews and further the goal of an independent Jewish polity.
Colonel Charles Henry Churchill (1807 - 1869) was a British Army officer, diplomat and writer who served as a British consul in Ottoman Syria. Churchill was one of the first individuals to draw up political plans for the creation of a Zionist state in the region of Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
On 14 June 1841, Churchill wrote to Montefiore:... (Extracts):
I cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your countrymen endeavour once more to resume their existence as a people.
I consider the object to be perfectly attainable. But, two things are indispensably necessary. Firstly, that the Jews will themselves take up the matter universally and unanimously. Secondly, that the European Powers will aid them in their views. It is for the Jews to make a commencement. ....
Were the resources which you all possess steadily directed towards the regeneration of Syria and Palestine, there cannot be a doubt but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine.
Syria and Palestine, in a word, must be taken under European protection and governed in the sense and according to the spirit of European administration.
It must ultimately come to this. What a great advantage it would be, nay, how indispensably necessary, when at length the Eastern Question comes to be argued and debated with this new ray of light thrown around it, for the Jews to be ready and prepared to say: "Behold us here all waiting, burning to return to that land which you seek to remould and regenerate. Already we feel ourselves a people. The sentiment has gone forth amongst us and has been agitated and has become to us a second nature; that Palestine demands back again her sons. We only ask a summons from these Powers on whose counsels the fate of the East depends to enter upon the glorious task of rescuing our beloved country from the withering influence of centuries of desolation and of crowning her plains and valleys and mountain-tops once more, with all the beauty and freshness and abundance of her pristine greatness."