Jerusalem: The Biography

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Phoenicians, who lived in independent city states along the Lebanese coast, were the most sophisticated artisans and seafaring traders of the Mediterranean, famed for their Tyrian purple from which they derived their name (phoinix, meaning purple) and for creating the alphabet.

Tacitus, though writing thirty years later, expressed the conventional view that the Jews were “sinister and revolting” bigots, with bizarre superstitions including monotheism and circumcision, who despised Roman gods, “rejected patriotism” and “have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness.”

Hadrian wiped Judaea off the map, deliberately renaming it Palaestina, after the Jews’ ancient enemies, the Philistines.

Muawiya personified hilm, the wisdom and patience of the Arab sheikh: “I apply not my sword when my lash suffices nor my lash when my tongue suffices. And even if but one hair is binding me to my fellow men, I don’t let it break. When they pull, I loosen, if they loosen I pull.” This is almost a definition of statesmanship and Muawiya, the creator of Arab monarchy and the first of the Umayyad dynasty, is a much-neglected paragon of how absolute power does not have to corrupt absolutely.

“Fair enough,” laughed Muawiya. “If you start something, you have to take the consequences.”