Holy Land

Few regions have accumulated as much spiritual meaning as the territory known as the Holy Land. Roughly the size of New Jersey, it lies in the ancient Near East between the Mediterranean coast and the desert, at a crossroads historically connecting major powers and cultures.[7] Its location made it a route for armies, merchants, and pilgrims across millennia and exposed it to the religious and cultural currents of surrounding regions.

For Jews, the land is simultaneously Eretz Yisrael, the Promised Land, Canaan, Zion, and simply ha-aretz—“the land.”[4] For Christians, it is the terrain associated with Jesus’s birth, preaching, death, and, according to Christian belief, resurrection.[7][8] For Muslims, Jerusalem is the place from which the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven.[8] An Israeli government document describes the Holy Land as shared by two peoples and three religions while also recognizing important sites for the Druze and Bahá’í faiths.[9]

The land has often been understood as an abstract geographical space with vague boundaries and without a single, coherent political or administrative unit.[10] That vagueness is not solely modern: the territory has been known in different eras as Canaan, Judea, Syria-Palestina, Filastin, Palestine, and the Holy Land, with each name carrying distinct religious, historical, and political meanings.[7] Across these usages, the region remains a focus of religious, national, and civilizational significance for the communities that regard it as their own.

The phrase “Holy Land” has a spare scriptural pedigree. It appears only once in the Hebrew Bible, in Zechariah 2:16, where the Hebrew is admat haqodesh, the Greek he ge he hagia, and the Latin terra sancta.[6] The expression was subsequently adopted frequently in Christian usage.

In rabbinic literature, the usual designation is Eretz Yisrael, “the Land of Israel.” The term Eretz ha-Kedoshah, “the Holy Land,” also appears but is characterized as primarily poetic.[11] Other Hebrew names used in different periods and contexts include Canaan—named after its early inhabitants—Zion, and the simple ha-aretz.[4][7]

Under Greek and Roman rule, the territory was known as the province of Judea. After the Bar-Kokhba revolt ended in 135 CE, Hadrian renamed the province Syria-Palestina, reviving the name of ancient Philistia. Under early Islamic rule, the military district of Filastin formed part of Greater Syria, or Bilad al-Sham.[7] The League of Nations confirmed the Palestine Mandate in 1922, formally employing Palestine as the territory’s administrative name.[12]

A nineteenth-century geographical account placed ancient Canaan between the Mediterranean coast and the western bank of the Jordan River, while using Palestine for a broader Ottoman-era area extending eastward to the Syrian Desert beyond the Jordan and the Dead Sea.[2] This layering of ancient and modern frameworks helps explain why definitions of the Holy Land’s extent continue to diverge.

Religious practice in the Holy Land encompasses pilgrimage, prayer, commemoration, and the administration of numerous sacred sites. Jerusalem is its principal sacred center: a nineteenth-century account associated the city with the Temple, Mount Zion, Mount Moriah, Calvary, the Holy Sepulchre, the Mosque of Omar, Siloam, and other Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sites.[2]

For Judaism, the Western Wall is the holiest regular Jewish prayer site and the place of Jewish worship nearest to the Temple Mount. It is a surviving retaining wall of the Herodian Temple platform.[13][14] Israeli government regulations recognize 16 officially designated Jewish holy places, while other governmental and budgetary authorities recognize an additional 160.[14] The Temple Mount—Har HaBayit in Jewish tradition, where the First and Second Temples stood—is regarded as Judaism’s holiest site. Other Jewish sacred places include the Tomb of David on Mount Zion and the patriarchal burial caves in Hebron.[9][14]

For Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City is a major pilgrimage destination, traditionally identified with the Crucifixion and Resurrection and used for the Orthodox Easter Holy Fire observance.[9][14] Other major sites include the Via Dolorosa, the Room of the Last Supper, the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, locations around the Sea of Galilee, and the traditional Nativity site in Bethlehem.[9] The Mount of Olives is revered in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.[9]

For Islam, the Haram al-Sharif on the Temple Mount—encompassing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque—ranks among the faith’s holiest sites. The El-Jazzar Mosque in Acre is another significant Islamic site in the land.[9] The Jordanian Waqf administers the Haram al-Sharif, while Israeli police exercise security responsibility, an arrangement associated with continuing disputes over access and authority.[14]

The Holy Land’s significance differs across the three Abrahamic religions, but its oldest and most elaborately developed association is with Jewish religious thought.[8][9] According to the biblical account, Abraham migrated to Canaan and received a divine promise that the land would belong to his descendants as an eternal possession.[4] The Israelite tribes, in the same narrative, crossed the Jordan into Canaan in the thirteenth century BCE, after which the territory was designated Eretz Israel.[15] Jews then remained concentrated there under independent governments for approximately seven and a half centuries.

The Mishnah is cited as declaring that the Land of Israel is holier than all other lands.[16] A modern explanation connects this sanctity to agricultural commandments—the omer offering, first fruits, and the two loaves of Shavuot—that apply to produce from the Land of Israel. In this interpretation, the performance of these commandments helps sanctify the land rather than merely following from an intrinsic metaphysical superiority.[16] Commandments such as the Sabbatical year similarly connect the social and moral order of Jewish life to a particular geography.[17]

From the sixteenth century onward, the holiness of the land—especially in relation to burial—became concentrated in four cities: Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed.[11] These became pilgrimage destinations, centers of learning, and focal points of Jewish communal life under Ottoman rule. When the Ottoman Empire conquered the land in 1517, approximately 1,000 Jewish families were living mainly in Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza, Safed, and Galilean villages. By the mid-sixteenth century, Safed’s Jewish population had reached approximately 10,000.[18]

The Land of Israel remained central to Jewish religious consciousness during long periods of exile. Daily prayers and grace after meals mentioned the land and Jerusalem; weddings invoked the restoration of joy to the cities of Judah and Jerusalem; and mourners were comforted with references to Zion and Jerusalem.[17] Tisha B’Av commemorated the destruction of the Temple through national mourning and the reading of Lamentations.[17] A Library of Congress exhibition describes Hebrew and the Land of Israel as a single, “insoluble entity,” joined through the Bible’s prophets, lawgivers, kings, and scribes, and presents “If I forget thee O Jerusalem” as a recurring expression of that bond.[5]

In messianic theology, the covenant requires not merely individual piety but a social and national life enacted in a particular place. The Temple symbolizes the divine presence among the people, while the land is associated with the ingathering of exiles and the expected beginning of the resurrection of the dead in Jerusalem.[17] The Babylonian captivity following the conquest of Judah in the early sixth century BCE began the recognized Jewish diaspora, yet the Jerusalem Temple remained the focal institution for Jews both inside and outside the land until its destruction in 70 CE.[15] Cyrus the Great permitted the exiles to return to Judea in 537 BCE and rebuild the Temple, but only a relatively small number returned, leaving a large Babylonian diaspora in place.[15]

The impulse to visit, settle in, and be buried in the Holy Land is ancient in Jewish practice, while surviving pilgrimage accounts illuminate the practical experience of the journey. One of the most detailed was left by Moses Basola, an Italian banker and scholar who sailed for Eretz Yisrael in 1521 at age 41.[19] Basola traveled for two years and recorded his experiences in a guide later known as Shivhe Yerushalayim.

Basola described travel logistics, kosher food preparation, lodging, cities including Safed and Jerusalem, and visits to the graves of biblical and rabbinic figures.[19] His manuscript records both the spiritual motivations of Jewish pilgrimage and its physical difficulties. Basola returned to the land in 1560 at age 80, intending to settle in Safed, where he lived for several months before his death.[19] His story exemplifies the Jewish tradition of aliyah—ascending to the land not only as a visitor but to settle in the Jewish homeland.

During the Crusader period, growing numbers of Jews sought to return to their homeland even as European Christian armies fought to control it.[20] Transportation routes opened during the Crusades also made travel from Europe more navigable for Jewish pilgrims.

For Christianity, the Holy Land is the landscape of the Gospels—the terrain where Jesus was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, preached around the Sea of Galilee, entered Jerusalem, was crucified, and, according to Christian belief, rose from the dead. The first Christian communities in the Holy Land existed in the first century CE, making the region the cradle of the faith.[3]

Christian pilgrimage became organized and institutionally supported after Constantine recognized Christianity in the fourth century. Constantine and his mother Helena were associated with identifying and monumentalizing sites connected with Jesus; Helena traveled through the region seeking locations associated with his life and death and identified traditional sites in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.[21] The Church of the Holy Sepulchre—built over the traditionally identified sites of the Crucifixion and burial—and the Church of the Nativity trace their origins to this period.[13] From the fourth century onward, pilgrims increasingly visited a network of sites throughout the region.

Christian political control ended after the Arab conquest of Jerusalem in 638 CE, although Christian pilgrimage continued.[3][13] Pope Urban II’s appeal to recover the Holy Land launched the First Crusade, whose forces captured Jerusalem in July 1099 after a five-week siege. Most of the city’s non-Christian inhabitants were massacred, and Jews defending their quarter were burned to death or sold into slavery.[20] Crusader states persisted for almost 200 years: Saladin captured Jerusalem in 1187, and Mamluk forces ended the remaining Crusader authority in 1291.[20]

Transportation routes opened during the Crusades contributed to the later popularity of Christian pilgrimages.[20] A nineteenth-century account described pilgrimage as motivated by devotion, penitence, curiosity, and the belief that enduring hardship in the service of religion carried spiritual merit.[2] Jaffa served as a principal maritime entry point, with pilgrims traveling inland through the Plain of Sharon, Ramla, the Judean hills, and the Vale of Jeremiah to Jerusalem.[2] In Victorian England, Protestant uses of “Promised Land,” “Chosen People,” and “Jerusalem” generated competing visions of national identity, while metaphorical uses of “Holy Land” sometimes influenced cultural imagination more than direct engagement with the physical region.[22]

Islam regards Jerusalem as sacred in connection with the Prophet Muhammad and the Quranic account of the Isra and Miraj. Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to heaven from Jerusalem, investing the city with exceptional sanctity.[8] Muslims call the Temple Mount compound the Haram al-Sharif, one of Islam’s holiest sites; it is administered by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf.[23] Within it stand the Dome of the Rock, built over the rock from which Muhammad is traditionally believed to have ascended, and al-Aqsa Mosque.[21]

Nineteenth-century accounts record Muslims calling Jerusalem “the Blessed City” and identifying the Temple Mount as one of the sacred enclosures known as El Haram.[2] Jerusalem came under Muslim rule following the Arab conquest in 638 CE, while the military district of Filastin formed part of Greater Syria. Crusader rule interrupted Muslim governance from 1099 until Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem in 1187.[7][20]

The Holy Land’s position at the junction of major regions made it a recurring objective of imperial powers. A compressed chronology lists Roman rule from 63 BCE to 313 CE; Byzantine rule from 313 to 636; Arab rule from 636 to 1099; Crusader domination from 1099 to 1291; Mamluk rule from 1291 to 1516; Ottoman rule from 1517 to 1917; British Mandatory rule from 1918 to 1948; and the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, at the end of the British Mandate.[24]

Jewish sources describe Eretz Yisrael as the ancestral homeland and birthplace of Jewish national and religious identity. The Jewish Virtual Library states that a Jewish presence continued in the land throughout the past 3,000 years, while Jewish prayer and ritual preserved a sustained orientation toward Jerusalem and the land during exile.[4][5]

The Ottoman period lasted four centuries, during which the land was divided into four administrative districts attached to the province of Damascus.[18] Jewish life continued, concentrated especially in the holy cities and supported by religious devotion, halakhic obligation, and diaspora communities. British forces under General Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem in December 1917, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule.[18] The League of Nations confirmed the Palestine Mandate in 1922 and charged Britain with facilitating a Jewish national home; Article 25 allowed Britain to withhold relevant Mandate provisions from territory east of the Jordan River.[12]

The 1947 United Nations Partition Resolution recommended dividing Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under a special international regime. It called for guarantees concerning holy places, religious buildings, religious rights, and minority rights.[12] Israel declared independence in 1948 following the end of the British Mandate. The Nation-State Law enacted decades later describes the Land of Israel as “the historical homeland of the Jewish people” and the State of Israel as the place where the Jewish people exercise national self-determination.[14]

One consequential chapter in the Holy Land’s modern history concerns access to sacred sites. An Israeli government document states that from 1949 to 1967, when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and the Old City, Israelis were forbidden from entering and Jewish holy sites and cemeteries in the eastern part of the city were desecrated.[9] This exclusion disrupted Israeli Jewish access to sacred places in Jerusalem.

The same document states that after Israel gained control of all Jerusalem in 1967, access was opened to people of all faiths. Israeli law provides a right to visit holy places and establishes criminal penalties for violations of freedom of access.[9] In 2023, Israel continued to permit controlled access to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, while non-Islamic prayer remained prohibited under the stated policy.[14] The Jordanian Waqf facilitated approved non-Muslim visits but restricted non-Muslim entry into the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.[14]

An Islamic Waqf official recorded 48,223 Jewish visitors to the compound in 2023, while Israeli nongovernmental data counted 50,098 non-Muslim visitors.[14] The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Jerusalem’s broader Christian sacred landscape also remained active pilgrimage destinations, although Christian leaders raised concerns about harassment, vandalism, property disputes, and restrictions affecting worship and access to church properties.[14]

The legal framework criminalizes interference with access to holy sites, but access remains controlled and contested in practice. Security restrictions, the prohibition of non-Islamic prayer at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, and disagreements over Waqf and police authority continue to shape how the legal guarantee operates.[9][14]

Beyond religious tradition, the Holy Land has influenced Western culture, literature, and political imagination as both a physical destination and a metaphor. A study of English cultural history traces this influence from Napoleon’s failed Mediterranean campaign of 1799 through General Allenby’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1917, a period in which the Holy Land served as a recurring reference point for English national and religious self-understanding.[22]

Protestant uses of biblical vocabulary—including “Promised Land,” “Chosen People,” and “Jerusalem”—generated competing visions of England and Englishness that were sometimes detached from the geographical reality of the Middle East.[22] The study argues that these metaphorical deployments of “Holy Land” frequently influenced Victorian cultural imagination more strongly than direct engagement with the land and its inhabitants.[22]

Allenby’s 1917 conquest of Jerusalem marks the endpoint of the study’s period, connecting centuries of biblical and imperial imagery with the beginning of British rule. The episode illustrates the continuing intersection of strategic interest, religious vocabulary, and national imagination in Western approaches to the Holy Land.[22]

The Holy Land is among the most contested geographical concepts in the modern world. Its boundaries have never been authoritatively settled: definitions range from a corridor between the Mediterranean and Jordan River to broader formulations encompassing Jordan, the West Bank—known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria—the Palestinian territories, and locations in Egypt and Asia Minor.[1][3] Israeli and Christian authorities have proposed different perimeters, and no definition commands universal acceptance.

The names Holy Land, Land of Israel, Palestine, Canaan, and Eretz Yisrael carry distinct religious, historical, national, and political meanings, and terminology can signal a political or ideological commitment.[1] Israel’s Nation-State Law and Palestinian officials have used ethnoreligious language to frame territorial and sovereign claims, leaving even descriptive terminology contested in public and legal discourse.[14]

Within Jewish tradition, the religious meaning of the land’s sanctity has also been debated. A religious analysis published after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination argued that biblical promises concerning the Land of Israel were conditional on Torah observance and challenged the claim that scripture or halakhah requires Jews to refuse to relinquish any portion of the land. It distinguished Joshua’s first sanctification—described as temporary—from Ezra’s later sanctification after the return from Babylonia, described as permanent but geographically limited.[25]

The status of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount remains an acute religious and political dispute. Muslims regard it as one of Islam’s holiest sites and generally oppose Jewish prayer there; Jews regard the Temple Mount as Judaism’s holiest site and identify it as the location of the ancient Temples. The Jordanian Waqf administers the compound while Israeli police retain security authority, and disputes over prayer, access, and control have repeatedly produced tension and violence.[14][23] Palestinian Media Watch’s analysis of Hamas’s 2017 policy document notes that it describes Palestine as “the Holy Land, which Allah has blessed for humanity” and as “an Arab Islamic land,” while not referring to Jewish historical or religious ties to Jerusalem.[26]