"The earliest known human society that we see in process of developing an economy based first on the systematic gathering of wild cereals and then on their artificial production was to be found in Palestine, Transjordan, and Lebanon between about 10,000 and 8000 B.C. Dubbed by prehistorians 'Natufian' after the type site just north of Jerusalem, this culture was the product of a human type of slight build with long heads (dolichocephalic) that can confidently be classified as Homo sapiens."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times p. 6, Princeton University Press, 1992

"For the period about 8,000 to 6,000 B.C., the so-called Prepottery Neolithic, the culture of Palestine and Syria shows a progressive development of farming techniques, including the domestication of animals, and sedentarization in permanent towns."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times p. 11, Princeton University Press, 1992

"The three principal Pottery Neolithic cultures known to us in the Holy Land-Yarmukian, Coastal and Jerichoan-were contemporary to some degree. The Yarmukian culture, in particular, settled down in the central Jordan Valley, the Coastal in the coastal plain and the Jezreel Valley, and the Jerichoan in the lower Jordan Valley and other southern parts. All three were well-advanced in the making of pottery on their first arrival, some time in the sixth millennium."
Emmanuel Anati, "The Prehistory of the Holy Land (until 3200 B.C.," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, p. 32, The Continuum Publishing Group, 2001

"Towards the end of the fifth millennium, new regions in the south and the mountain areas were peopled...Some hamlets grew into real villages, and material culture in is several aspects -- pottery, flint implements, bone tools, art and so on -- underwent gradual changes. The transition from Neolithic to Chalcolithic is not abrupt; the division was made by archaeologists on the basis of differences in material culture.

"It was the destiny of the Holy Land, situated at the south-west end of the Fertile Crescent, to be a bridge between the two cradles of civilization, Mesopotamia (Babylonia-Assyria) and Egypt, at is extremities. It lay astride the principal land routes between the great powers of antiquity, with all the advantages and disadvantages that this involved. It was to be expected that it would be coveted by both."
Hanoch Reviv, "The Canaanite and Israelite Periods (3200-332 B.C.)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, p. 36, The Continuum Publishing Group, 2001

EGYPTIAN  DOMINANCE
3000 - 1850 B.C.
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"Evidence of Egyptian involvement in the affairs of Palestine and Syria during the 1st and 2nd Dynasties [3080 - 2687 B.C.] is unmistakable. In the surviving fragments of annals from the reigns of the immediate successors of Menes [1st ruler of unified Egypt], one often encounters an entry such as 'smiting the Asiatics,' or 'first occasion of smiting the east,' as an identifying event by which to designate a year."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"The Egyptians could, and frequently did, resort to naked force in gaining their ends in Palestine...The few surviving texts from the Old Kingdom [3rd -6th Dynasties 2688 - 2191 B.C.] that deal with the subject do not equivocate. The most common verb used is 'to smite,' referring to mortal combat. The enemy are 'slaughtered,' 'put to flight,' or 'cowed,' and the survivors brought off to Egypt as prisoners."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"In place of the semi-industrialized society of Early Bronze III [2688 - 2191 B.C.], which could indulge in international trade, nought is left but rustic pastoralism in which stockbreeding looms large at the expense of agriculture...The increase of nonurban, transhumant economy in post-Early Bronze III Palestine could be put down in large measure to the depredations of the Egyptian armed forces."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"Following the impoverished Middle Bronze I [2200 - 1950 B.C.], with its sparse population of elusive transhumants, there comes the birth of a new cultural phase, which is not descended from Middle Bronze I. Middle Bronze IIA [1950 - 1750 B.C.] represents the introduction into the Levant of a culture with contacts with the north [Amorite states].
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"By the mid-nineteenth century Amorite communities were in the ascendancy...Hazor dominated southern Syria and northern Palestine from its optimum position in the Upper Jordan Valley...

"Around 1650 an Asiatic military leader and his group seized power at Avaris [Egypt]. This may have been the result of a peaceful infiltration that ended in a coup d'etat, or the result of a takeover by a newly arrived military group. This is the beginning of the Hyksos rule first over the [Egyptian] Delta and then extending south, making also Thebes a vassal to the ruler at Avaris."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"Unfortunately no cache of texts has been unearthed to date that could shed light on the Political history and demographic shifts of the second half of the sixteenth century, and one has the sinking feeling in approaching this period that a most significant page is missing in the record... The gap in our written sources is doubly maddening in view of the upheaval attested in the archaeological record. Nearly every major town in Palestine and southern Syria is found, upon excavation, to have undergone a violent destruction sometime after the close of Middle Bronze IIC [1600 - 1550 B.C.] -- that is, the cultural phase roughly contemporary with the last stage in the Hyksos occupation of Egypt."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"Egypt's chief rival in the struggle for hegemony over Syria at this time was the country of the Mittanni, in north-west Mesopotamia. The contest between the two powers was only decided in 1490 B.C. when Thutmose III (1504 - 1452 B.C.) defeated a confederation of kings of 'Huru' (Canaan and Syria), allies of Mitanni, at Megiddo. The victory set the stage for Egypt's subjugation of the entire Fertile Crescent."
Hanoch Reviv, "The Canaanite and Israelite Periods (3200-332 B.C.)," The History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"In the sixty-year period, from about 1320 to 1260 B.C., the Shasu are chronicled as continuing to foment trouble in their native habitat of the steppe, and as pressing westward through the Negeb toward major towns along the Via Maris. It is not, in my opinion, an unrelated phenomenon that a generation later under Merneptah [1237-1226] an entity called 'Israel' with all the character of a Shasu enclave makes its appearance probably in the Ephraimitic highlands."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"No one can prove (or disprove, for that matter) that the tribal federation 'Israel' originated on Palestinian soil. No one can prove that the major components of that federation had always existed on Palestinian soil. All that is known for certain is that, some time during the fourth quarter of the thirteenth century B.C., Egypt knew of a group, or political entity, called 'Israel' and occupying part of the land of the land of Canaan; but whether the group had recently arrived or taken shape is not stated in our sources. That the Hebrew language is closely related to the West Semitic dialect (s) that we subsume under the catchall 'Canaanite' is a fact; but then, it is equally closely related to the dialects of Transjordan as well."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"After 1200 B.C. when the Sea Peoples overwhelmed the coast, and 'Israel' is firmly attested, the Canaanites as a political force were dead. And so, effectually, was the Egyptian empire of the New Kingdom."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"After the Sea Peoples stormed the Levant around 1200 B.C. a catastrophe which is still not clear in many of its details, all traditions were extinguished for a long time. For Palestine we are thrown back almost exclusively on the historical books of the Old Testament, which provide only incomplete information on the newly immigrated Israelite tribes and their more cultured opponents in the land."
Wolfram von Soden, The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East, 1994

"The Philistine menace put Israelite survival into constant jeopardy at the time of the judges. The Philistines were one of the 'Peoples of the Sea' which had invaded the Fertile Crescent from the north, along the coast of Anatolia, and descended through Syria and Canaan all the way to Egypt...In addition to them, a people called the Tjeker or Tjekel, but belonging to the same 'Peoples of the Sea', settled along the coast of Dor in the northern Sharon."
Hanoch Reviv, "The Canaanite and Israelite Periods (3200-332 B.C.)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"Along the southern coast, from Gaza to Mount Carmel, enclaves of the Philistines and Teukrians (now partly Semitized) maintained a firm hold of the broad coastal plains and, as the Egyptians had done before them, exercised a tentative but preemptive influence over the inland mountains. In response to the Philistine presence, Israel and Judah in the uplands were moving toward the creation of a state."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"A judicious reading of both the archaeological and the textual record militates in favor of the eleventh to the tenth centuries for the settlement and the early monarchic period…Extensive occupation of the region is not attested before the close of the second millennium or the early monarchic period."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"The real founder of the monarchy was David (c. 1004 - 960 B.C.)... David inaugurated a series of campaigns which lifted the Philistine yoke from Hebrew necks, brought Edom, Moab and Ammon under his rule and what is more amazing, netted him Aramaean Hollow Syria [Aram]... His conquest of Edom brought under his control the great trade route between Syria and Arabia."
Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria, 1951

In 999 B.C., Jerusalem, a mountain stronghold of the Jebusites is conquered and David relocates his capital there -- possibly to avoid internecine tribal squabbles based on city-state politics in the more established Judean cities, and because Jerusalem is more ideally situated geographically to rule over an extended kingdom.
Meir Ben-Dov, Historical Atlas of Jerusalem, 2000

"Palestine was not a country that encouraged the creation of larger political unites... David's kingdom represents an exception, a parenthesis in the history of the ancient Near East. The achievements of David were possible because there was a power vacuum at this time. The Hittite kingdom went out of existence around 1200 B.C. Egypt's rule over Palestine ended sometime in the mid-twelfth century B.C. and was itself split into two kingdoms... Their 'successors' in Palestine, the Philistines, had filled the power gap for a short time, until David put an end to their political and economic hegemony... David's kingdom, was, however, short-lived. It dissolved naturally when Solomon died."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"Upon Solomon's death at about 923 B.C., the united monarchy split into a northern kingdom, Israel, based on ten tribes and having Shechem (near the modern village of al-Balatah) as its capitol [and later Samaria c. 880], and a southern one, Judah, based on the remaining two tribes and using Jerusalem as capital."
Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History, 1961

"The year 745 B.C. marks one of those major turning points in history the significance of which is often lost on layman and scholar alike…For it was in 745 that a civil war in Assyria unseated the royal family and catapulted a general named 'Pul' known to history as Tiglath-pileser III, to the throne of the empire. This usurper proved to be an organizational genius and a master strategist, worthy of comparison with Hannibal or Scipio. By relentless campaigning and indiscriminate use of mass deportation, he encompassed the destruction of Damascus and Israel and by 732 B.C."
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992

"The goal of the Assyrian campaign to Syria-Palestine in 734 B.C. should be seen in the light of Assyria's intentions to control the commerce of the Mediterranean ports...With the reduction of the territory of Israel and the destruction of the Damascus kingdom in 733-732, Tiglath-pileser reached his goal of commercial control of Syria-Palestine."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"The political situation was stable for almost a decade after 732 B.C., and Tiglath-pileser never had to return to this area. However, when he died in 727 and was followed by Shalmaneser V, some vassals rebelled as usual, and it is possible that Hosea of Israel did the same…This brought about the subjugation of the country. Most of the cities were 'probably overrun and destroyed quickly' during the early part of Shalmaneser's campaign (724 B.C.), and the king, Hosea, was taken prisoner. After a three year siege the capital of Samaria was finally taken (722 B.C.)… The nation Israel ceased to exist…"
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"Sargon II deported 27,290 Israelites, setting Babylonians, Aramaens, Cutheans and others in Samaria around 720 B.C. In 716 he also settled some Arabs there. Other settlers were moved in by Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. Nevertheless, the majority of the people of Samerina were still Israelites; the whole population had not been deported."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"The end of the seventh century B.C. saw the rapid fading away of the Assyrian power structure and the attempts of the Egyptians to fill the vacuum."
Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History, 1961

"In 609 B.C. Pharaoh Necho tried to march through Palestine, to help the survivors of the Assyrian empire to defend themselves, in their last stronghold on the Euphrates, against the newly rising empire of Babylon under Nabopolassar. Necho hoped to prevent the emergence of a Babylonian power in Mesopotamia and at the same time to achieve suzerainty over Syria and Palestine... All that lay west of the Euphrates was now ruled by Egypt."
Hanoch Reviv, "The Canaanite and Israelite Periods (3200-332 B.C.)" The History of Ancient Palestine, 2001

"The picture quickly changed, however...Nebuchadrezzar, was given command over the Babylonian forces in the west. Necho and his forces were completely defeated at Carchemish, and those who managed to escape were pursued and killed in the territory of Hamath...

"Nebrchadrezzar terminated the Egyptian supremacy over Palestine after the battle at Carchemish in 605 B.C.... In the following year Nebuchadrezzar, who in September of 605 had succeeded his father on the throne, marched with his army through Syria-Palestine (Hatti) down to the Philistine coast without any military opposition. It is easy to imagine the fear and shattered illusions of the petty rulers of Syria-Palestine in the aftermath of the battle at Carchemish. With the Egyptian army destroyed, they had no other choice than to accept Babylon's rule."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"Jehoiakim [King of Judah] was no match for Nebuchadnezzar, whose army entered Jerusalem in 597 and bound the rebel king with chains to carry him to Babylon. But he either died or was murdered and his body was cast off beyond the gates of Jerusalem... The son and successor Jehoiachin was no wiser than the father. He occupied the throne three months in 597, when Nebuchadnezzar appeared in person at the gates of his capital [Jerusalem]. After a brief siege the city surrendered... Jehoiachin's uncle Zedekiah was appointed king by Nebuchadnezzar.

"In 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in the course of a series of wars of conquest, captured Jerusalem, destroyed the kingdom of Judah and the Jewish Temple, and, in accordance with the custom of the time, sent the conquered people into captivity in Babylonia."
Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, 1995

"The greater Palestinian area during the period of 582-539 B.C. is poorly documented. Babylonian inscriptions do not provide much insight. The Palestinian material is either fragmentary, such as that provided by archaeological remains, or it presents a religio-politically tendentious picture, such as that contained in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah and 2 Chron. 36.17-23...The history of this country in the period after Nebuchadrezzar's campaigns and until the Persian takeover comprises a dark age."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"The end of that rule [Babylonian] came in 538 B.C., when a new people farther east, the Persians, rose under Cyrus and attacked their neighbor Babylon...The blow fell on Babylon in 539 B.C. but the citadel and royal palace held out until March 538. Thereupon the whole Babylonian empire, including Syria-Palestine, acknowledged the new Persian rule."
Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria, 1951

"When Cyrus had taken Babylon he declared himself its new king. He proclaimed himself the protector of the peoples of the kingdom and announced freedom for the prisoners. After this he gave an order that the gods that had been taken to Babylon as prisoner or those Babylonian gods that Nabuna'id had taken there should be returned to their home cities. Their temples should be restored. Together with the gods, their people were also allowed to return to their countries."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"The leader of the restored Jews was Zerubbabel, a descendant of King Jehoiachin. Zerubbabel brought back the Temple treasures looted by Nebuchadnezzar and became for a time the recognized governor of the restored community. After many difficulties the rebuilding of the Temple was completed about 515 B.C. under [Persian King] Darius."
Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria, 1951

"There is really no firm piece of information about conditions in Jerusalem and the life of the returnees after c. 515 B.C… This period is virtually unknown, not only in Jerusalem but also in Palestine in general."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"Increased Arab presence, especially in the southern parts of the country, can be discerned in Palestine in the later Persian period. It should be remembered that Arabs in Palestine were nothing new... Nevertheless, the great influx of Arabs into Transjordan and southern Palestine belongs rather to the so-called Hellenistic period. When the Persian Empire collapsed, the Nabateans of Transjordan and other Arab tribes had the opportunity to expand, and the Nabateans did so, replacing the Edomites."
Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine, 1993

"The remaining years of the Persian Empire were marked by a series of court intrigues and the murders of two puppet kings followed by that of the murderer, leaving Darius III on the throne in 336, the same year that his eventual conqueror, Alexander, came to the throne of Macedonia."
Andrew Duncan, War in the Holy Land, 1998

"In the spring of 334 B.C. a twenty-one-year-old Macedonian, at the head of some 30,000 foot and 5000 horse...routed the Persian satrap near the mouth of the Granicus River...setting off a chain reaction destined to change the course of Near Eastern history. Western Asia and Egypt were ushered into the European sphere of political and cultural influence -- Macedonian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine -- and there remained until the rise of Islam a thousand years later."
Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History 1961

"After Alexander's death, his generals divided -- and subsequently fought over -- his empire. In 301 B.C., Ptolemy I took direct control of the Jewish homeland but made no serious efforts to intervene in its religious affairs. Ptolemy's successors were in turn supplanted by the Seleucids [c.200 B.C.], and in 175 B.C. Antiochus IV seized power. He launched a campaign to crush Judaism, and in 167 B.C. he sacked the [Jewish] Temple. The violation of the Second Temple, which had been built about 520-515 B.C., provoked a successful Jewish rebellion under the generalship of Judas (Judah) Maccabaeus."
Country Studies Handbook, Israel, Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Helen Chapin Metz, Editor, 1988

"In Judas of the priestly Hasmonaean family, the Jews found a hero-rebel who, with his brothers, succeeded in capturing Jerusalem and cleansing the temple. Judas was surnamed Maccabeus, which probably means 'the hammerer,' in allusion to the telling blows he inflicted on the Syrian army. In 164 the Jewish community attained religious freedom and in 140 political independence. Under the Maccabean dynasty of priest-kings, the realm expanded and lasted until the advent of the Romans about eighty years later."
Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History, 1961

"Alexander Jannaeus (Jonathan)...in the course of his long reign (130-76 B.C.), he realized the almost complete unification of the Holy Land for the first time since King David, an achievement for which he had to battle practically without interruption. In a series of expeditions directed north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east, the Jewish State was extended to encompass the Carmel and its coast, the Jordan Valley up to the sources at Dan and Paneas, and nearly the whole of the Transjordan mountains, excepting Rabbath-ammon. In order to extinguish Nabataean economic competition, Jannaeus occupied the eastern banks of the Dead Sea, making it a domestic -- and very valuable -- lake of Judaea; he took Gaza and the lands as far as the River of Egypt (Wadi el-Arish)."
Michael Avi-Yonah, "The Second Temple (332 B.C. - 70 A.D.)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"After the death of Jannaeus in 76 his widow Alexandra reigned until 67 when her two sons fought each other until the Romans under Pompey intervened."
Andrew Duncan, War in the Holy Land, 1998

"Under the reign of the Hasmoneans the Jewish state was largely composed of Jews. But in 63 B.C. when Pompey came to Jerusalem he began to reverse this process. He allowed the Jews to rule the south and Galilee, but non-Jews ruled the rest of the kingdom...Julius Caesar was Pompey's rival, and when Pompey was killed in 48 B.C. Caesar prepared new territorial arrangements. He left Antipater, an Idumean, as administrator of the Jewish state...But Caesar's new arrangements did not last for long. He was assassinated on the Ides of March 44 B.C...In Rome the Senate proclaimed Herod King of Judea."
John Wilkinson, "Jerusalem Under Rome and Byzantium 63-637 A.D.," Jerusalem in History, 2000

"Herod was confirmed by the Roman Senate as king of Judah in 37 B.C. and reigned until his death in 4 B.C. Nominally independent, Judah was actually in bondage to Rome, and the land was formally annexed in 6 B.C. as part of the province of Syria Palestina. Rome did, however, grant the Jews religious autonomy and some judicial and legislative rights through the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, which traces its origins to a council of elders established under Persian rule (333 B.C. to 165 B.C.) was the highest Jewish legal and religious body under Rome."
Country Studies Handbook, Israel, Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Helen Chapin Metz, Editor, 1988

"In 70 A.D., the Romans captured Jerusalem and destroyed the second Temple, which had been built [515 B.C.] by the exiles returning from Babylon. Even this did not end Jewish resistance. After the revolt of Bar-Kokhba in 135 A.D., the Romans...like the Babylonians before them, sent a large part of the Jewish population into captivity and exile...Even the historic nomenclature of the Jews was to be obliterated. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and a temple to Jupiter built on the site of the destroyed Jewish Temple. The names Judea and Samaria were abolished, and the country renamed Palestine, after the long-forgotten Philistines."
Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, 1995

"The process of urbanization which had begun in the Hellenistic period went on under Herod and the Romans, until, by the end of the second century, practically the whole coastal region, and almost all of the central mountain ridge of the lands east of the Jordan, had been transformed into municipal areas. Only, Upper Galilee, the Golan, Bashan and Hauran, in which there was a preponderance of Jews, proved intractable and resistant to city culture."
Michael Avi-Yonah, "Jews, Romans and Byzantines (70-633)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"The last century of Roman rule in Palestine was marked, as elsewhere in the Roman world, by a political and economic crisis which shook Roman society to its foundations...The crisis in that empire was settled by the energetic measures of Diocletian, a rough soldier who put an end to civil wars and reorganized the administration...Diocletian was the last emperor to see in Christianity an enemy of Rome."
Michael Avi-Yonah, "Jews, Romans and Byzantines (70-633)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"Emperor Constantine (ca. 280-337) shifted his capital from Rome to Constantinople in 330 and made Christianity the official religion. With Constantine's conversion to Christianity, a new era of prosperity came to Palestine, which attracted a flood of pilgrims from all over the empire."
Country Studies Handbook, Israel, Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Helen Chapin Metz, Editor, 1988

"Politically, the country was affected by the trend, which began with Diocletian, towards splitting up the provinces. In his time, the whole southern part of the old Provincia Palaestina was joined to southern Transjordan to form a separate province. In the beginning of the fifth century, the remaining province was split up that there were thenceforth Palaestina Prima, Secunda and Tertia. The fist included Judaea and Samaria, with a part of Transjordan, the second Galilee and the Golan and Bashan regions, while the whole of the Negev, Sinai and Nabataea now became Palestinia Tertia. This civil division, to which, as elsewhere in the Roman empire, the ecclesiastical organization was made to correspond, lasted till the end of Byzantine rule and even beyond. "
Michael Avi-Yonah, "Jews, Romans and Byzantines (70-633)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"The adoption of Christianity as the dominant religion of the empire changed the status of Palestine radically. no longer just a tiny province, it became the Holy Land, on which emperors and believers lavished untold wealth; the former claimants to it, the Jews, were powerless to establish their right and were quickly relegated to second-class citizenship.

"In 610, Heraclius was crowned emperor... Many world-shaking events took place during his reign: the Persian victories, which also led to their temporary conquest of Palestine, changes within the empire, and the Muslim conquests, which deprived Byzantium of much of its Mediterranean lands."
Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine 634-1099, 1992

"Heraclius, who had been defending himself desperately in Constantinople against a simultaneous assault by Avars and Persians, embarded upon a daring strategy of attack. In 622 he left his capital and invaded the Armenian mountains; in 628, after six years of brilliant campaigning, he stood before the gates of Ctesiphon. The incursion, and the quarrels of successor after the death of Chosroes II, forced the Persians to sue for peace. They abandoned all their conquests, including Palestine...On 21 March 629, Heraclius entered the Holy City in triumph...It was the last great day of Byzantine Palestine.

"On a hot day of August 636, the two opposing armies faced each other on the banks of the Yarmuk, a Jordan tributary. The Arabians, 25,000 strong, were commanded by Khalid; the Byzantine army, twice as numerous and composed mosly Armenian and other mercenaries, was led by a brother of Empereor Heraclius. The day was an excessively hot one clouded by wind-blown dust and presumably purposely chosen for the encounter by the Arabian generalship. The Byzantine fighters were cleverly maneuvered into a position where the dust storm struck them in the face. Only a few managed to escape with their lives. The fate of Syria, on the fairest of the Eastern Roman provinces, was decided. 'Farewell, O Syria,' were Heraclius' parting words, 'and what an excellent country this is for the enemy!'"
Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History, 1961

"By the end of the reign of the second caliph, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (634-44), the whole of Arabia, part of the Sasanian Empire, and the Syrian [including Palestine] and Egyptian provinces of the Byzantine Empire had been conquered; the rest of the Sasanian lands were occupied soon afterwards."
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991

"The people of Madina saw power being drawn northwards towards the richer and more populous lands of Syria and Iraq, where governors tried to make their power more independent. Such tensions came to the surface in the reign of the third caliph, 'Uthman ibn 'Affan (644-56)...A movement of unrest in Madina, supported by soldiers from Egypt, led to 'Uthman's murder in 656. This opened the first period of civil war in the community. The claimant to the succession, 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (656-661) was...a cousin of Muhammad and married to his daughter Fatima. 'Ali's alliance grew weaker, and finally he was assassinated in his own city of Kufa. Mu'awiya [the first Umayyad] proclaimed himself caliph and 'Ali's elder son, Hasan, acquiesced in it."
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991

"The coming to power by Mu'awiya (661-80) has always been regarded as marking the end of one phase and the beginning of another. The first four caliphs, from Abu Bakr to 'Ali, are known to the majority of Muslims as the Rashidun or 'Rightly Guided'. Later caliphs were seen in a rather different light. From now on the position was virtually hereditary. Although some idea of choice, or at least formal recognition, by the leaders of the community remained, in fact from this time power was in the hands of a family, known from an ancestor, Umayya, as that of the Umayyads…

"In the 690s there was erected the first great building which clearly asserted that Islam was distinct and would endure. This was the Dome of the Rock, built on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, now turned into a Muslim haram; it was to be an ambulatory for pilgrims around the rock where, according to Rabbinic tradition, God had called upon Abraham to sacrifice Isaac."
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991

"Throughout the Umayyad period Palestine played no sinificant political role. Its population was partly composed of Jews and Christians, whose families had always lived there and towards whom the caliphs adopted a tolerant and lenient attitude. It is true that special taxes were imposed upon both Jews and Christians, but they were moderately light at the beginning. The government recognized the religious communities as socio-political entities and the rabbis and priests were responsible to the authorities for the members of their communities."
Moshe Sharon, "The History of Palestine from the Arab Conquest until the Crusades (633-1099)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"Not least amongst the various causes which contributed to the downfall of the Umayyads was the fundamental split within islam, which produced the two dominant sects known as the Sunna (Orthodox) and the Shi'a. The Shiites, who maintained that the Prophet's cousin 'Ali and his descendants were the only legitimate candidates for the caliphate, rose many times in rebellion against Umayyad rule. Although these revolts proved to be abortive in themselves, they did help to undermine the strength of the empire from within."
Moshe Sharon, "The History of Palestine from the Arab Conquest until the Crusades (633-1099)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"During the first decades of the eighth century, Umayyad rulers made a series of attempts to deal with movements of opposition...Then in the 740s their power suddenly collapsed in the face of yet another civil war and a coalition of movements with different aims but united by a common opposition to them... The Umayyads were defeated in a number of battles in 749-750, and the last caliph of the house, Marwan II, was pursued to Egypt and killed. In the meantime, the unnamed leader was proclaimed in Kufa; he was Abu'l-Abbas, a descendant not of 'Ali but of 'Abbas."
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991

"Syria was replaced as center of the Muslim caliphate by Iraq. The power of Abu'l-'Abbas (749-54) and his successors, known from their ancestor as 'Abbasids, lay less in the eastern Mediterranean countries, or in Hijaz which was an extension of them, than in the former Sasanian territories: southern Iraq and the oases and plateaux of Iran, Khurasan and the land stretching beyond it into central Asia."
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991

"With the transfer of the political centre to Iraq they [the Abbasids] succeeded in completing the slower, but major, process of shifting the international trade routes connecting the Middle East and the Far East from Syria to the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Almost overnight Palestine became a marginal land and began to deteriorate."
Moshe Sharon, "The History of Palestine from the Arab Conquest until the Crusades (633-1099)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"The first sign of internal decay in the Abbasid regime was the rise of the Turkish bodyguard under the immediate successors of al-Ma'mun (d. 833)...Except for short intervals thereafter the Abbasid power was steadily on the decline...As it was disintegrating petty dynasties, mostly of Arab origin, were parcelling out its domains in the west...First among those with which Syria [including Palestine] was concerned was the Tulunid dynasty."
Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria, 1951

"In 868 an officer called Ahmad ibn-Tulun, the son of a freed Turkish slave, was sent to Egypt to serve as lieutenant to the governor of the province. A year later he himself became the governor of the province, declared its independence [from the Abbasids] and put a stop to the remittance of annual taxes to the Baghdad treasury. In 877, exploiting the deaths of the governors of Syria and Palestine, he was able, without difficulty, to extend his authority over these provinces as well...

When ibn-Tulun died in 884 his son Khumawayh seized the reins of power. The Abbasid caliph made an attempt to regain control over Syria and Palestine, and despatched a strong expeditionary force from Iraq, which invaded Palestine in 892. Khumawayh, who was an able statesman as well as a very talented general, scored a decisive victory over this army in a battle near Abu Futrus. After this battle the Abbasids abandoned for a time their attempts to take Palestine from the Tulunids. However within a few years of the death of Khumawayh [904] they had managed to regain it with ease."
Moshe Sharon, "The History of Palestine from the Arab Conquest until the Crusades (633-1099)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"For the following thirty years (906-935) Palestine remained under Abbasid rule. We have very little information as to what occurred there during that generation."
Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine 634-1099, 1992

"In the year 935 a new independent dynasty was founded in Egypt by Muhammad ibn-Tughj (935-946 A.D.), a Turk who had been granted the ancient Persian princely title Ikhshid by the Abbasid caliph in 939. The new dynasty took its name from this title. Following in the footsteps of the Tulunids, Muhammad the Ikhshid made himself independent in Egypt and within a short time controlled not only Syria and Palestine but even Mecca and Medina, the two holy cities of Islam."
Moshe Sharon, "The History of Palestine from the Arab Conquest until the Crusades (633-1099)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"A series of preparatory incursions into Egypt, which had gravely deteriorated under the rule of the Ikhshids, paved the way for a decisive attack, led by the Fatimid general Jawhar, in 969. Egypt was conquered easily and the Fatimid forces, sustaining the momentum of the attack, went on to take Syria and Palestine."
Moshe Sharon, "The History of Palestine from the Arab Conquest until the Crusades (633-1099)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land, 2001

"At the beginning of summer of 970, the Fatimid army under Ja'far ibn al-Fallah, turned towards Palestine... Theoreticaly, this was the outset of about a century of Fatimid rule in Palestine. In fact, the Fatimids were compelled to join battle with not a few of the enemies who stood in their way: the Arabs, led by the Banu Tayy', who in turn were headed by the Banu'l-Jarrah family; the Qarmatis; a Turkish army under the command of Alptakin, who was based in Damascus; Arab tribes in Syria with the Banu Hamdan at their head; and in the background, the Byzantines were lurking, and about to continue their attempts to spearhead southward to Jerusalem. This war was waged in several stages and the enemies changed, but all in all, it was an almost unceasing war which destroyed Palestine."
Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine 634-1099, 1992

"The year 1030 was the first year of peace in the country... Comparative calm and political and military stability existed in Palestine under Fatimid rule for only some forty years. The invasion of the Turkish tribes put an end to this near-stability at one blow."
Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine 634-1099, 1992

"By 1079, the Seljuks wrested Syria and Palestine from local rulers and from the declining Fatimids."
Bernard Lewis, The Middle East 1995

"After the death of the third Great Sultan [of the Seljuk Empire] Malikshah, in 1092, civil war broke out between his sons, and the process of political fragmentation, which had been interrupted by the Seljuk conquest, was resumed... It was during this period of weakness and dissension that, in 1096, the Crusaders arrived in the Levant."
Bernard Lewis, The Middle East 1995

"In a speech delivered at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II gave a grim description of the plight of the Christians of the East under the Seljuk yoke. He called on the nobility of Europe to wrest the Holy Land, the Holy City and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, cradle of Christianity and its rightful and eternal heritage, from beleaguerment by usurping infidels who sullied them by their very presence, if not by their deeds. Those who answered the call would be fighting a bellum sacrum, a holy war."
Emmanuel Sivan, "Palestine During the Crusades (1099-1291)," A History of Israel and the Holy Land 2001

"For the first thirty years, the disunity of the Muslim world made things easy for the invaders, who advanced speedily down the coast of Syria into Palestine, and established a chain of Latin feudal principalities, based on Antioch [1098-1268], Edessa [1098-1146], Tripoli [1102-1146] and Jerusalem [1099-1187]. But even in this first period of success the Crusaders were limited in the main to the coastal plains and slopes, facing the Mediterranean and the Western world.

"In Egypt, the Fatimids continued to rule until 1171, but were then replaced by Salah al-Din (Saladin) a military leader of Kurdish origin. The change of rulers brought with it a change of religious alliance. The Fatimids had belonged to the Isma'ili branch of the Shi'is, but Salah al-Din was a Sunni, and he was able to mobilize the strength and religious fervor of Egyptian and Strian Muslims in order to defeat the European Crusaders who had established Christian states in Palestine and on the Syrian coast at the end of the eleventh century. The dynasty founded by Salah al-Din, that of the Ayyubids, ruled Egypt from 1169 to 1252, Syria to 1260, and part of western Arabia to 1229."
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991

"In the middle of the thirteenth century the power of the Turkish Mamluks in Cairo was supreme and a new regime emerged, the Mamluk Sultanate, which ruled Egypt and Syria until 1517. In 1260, after a period of confusion following the death of the last Ayyubid, a Qipchaq Turk called Baybars became Sultan. His career in many ways forms an interesting parallel with that of Saladin. He united Muslim Syria/Palestine and Egypt into a single state, this time more permanently. He defeated the external enemies of that state, repulsing Mongol invaders from the east and crushing all but the last remnants of the Crusaders in Syria."
Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, 1993

"In the 15th century, instability plagued Mamluk rule: internal corruption, the continued Mongol threat, Bedouin incusions, and bad economic policies all combined to deliver a blow to the Mamluk economy and military, from which they were not able to recover."
Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, 1993