800 - 1100 CE

Muslim Abbassid Rule from Baghdad (750-973)
Muslim Fatimid Rule from Cairo (973-1099)

Tower of David Museum, Photo by Ardon Bar-Hama

Horvat Susiya Synagogue in the Galilee:
"Peace on Israel," 800 CE

The mosaic reads:
“Remembered be for the good, the sanctity of my master and rabbi. Isai the priest, the honorable, the venerable, who made this mosaic and plastered its walls with lime, which he donated at a feast. Rabbi Yohanan the priest, the venerable scribe, his son. Peace on Israel! Amen!”

Israel Antiquities Authority

Jewish Pilgrim Amitai ben Shefatya, 873 CE

Amitai ben Shefatya was a Jewish Pilgrim from Italy, who after visiting Jerusalem, wrote of Jewish yearnings for the city:

I shall pray to God and remind him
Having seen every city standing on its foundations
While the City of God lay humble unto the nether depths.

Rothenberg, Beno. The Story of Jerusalem, 1967.

Israelites and Christians in Jerusalem, 985 CE

Arab astronomer, Shams ad Din Abu Abd Allah Mohammed, who is known as Mukaddasi – ‘He who comes from the Holy Land’ wrote of Israelites and Christians of Jerusalem:

“Still, Jerusalem has some disadvantages… learned men are few, and the Christians numerous... Everywhere the Christians and the Jews have the upper hand; and the mosque is void of either congregation or assembly of learned men.”

Teddy Kollek and Moshe Pearlman, Pilgrims to the Holy Land: The story of Pilgrimage Through the Ages

Israel Museum
Photo by Ardon Bar-Hama, Courtesy of George Blumenthal

The Aleppo Codex, 925 CE

The Aleppo Codex is the oldest known manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The Codex was written by Aharon ben Asher in Tiberias in the Galilee in 925 CE. In 1190, Maimonides worked from this Bible to compile his Mishnah Torah.

Israelite Prayers at The Temple Mount, 1000-1100 CE

An eleventh-century document found in the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo describes the circuit followed by Israelite pilgrims and the Israelite prayers they recited at each of the gates of the Temple Mount.

Dan Bahat, "Identification of the Gates of the Temple Mount and the 'Cave' in the Early Muslim Period," Catedra, 106 (2002).

Muslim Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim Destroys Israelite Synagogues in Jerusalem, 1009 CE

Museum of Islamic Arts, Cairo

Letter from an Israelite in Jerusalem to His Son-in-Law in Fustat (Cairo), c. 1055 CE

Letter from Eliyyahu ha-Kohen b. Shelomo Gaon, Jerusalem, to Efrayim b. Shemarya, his son-in-law, Fustat, Egypt in which the sender requests that Efrayim returns home to “eat onions in Jerusalem, rather than chicken in Egypt.”

Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York
Photograph by Ardon Bar Hama