Moscow: Reader's Digest Publ., 2003, 442 p., ill.

Here is an amazing book. Jerusalem is probably the only place on earth where history was created, which cannot be separated from the biblical prophecies, from the stories of the evangelists, from the wisdom of the Koran - from everything that makes up the heritage, the spiritual world and the identity of the bearers of the three Abrahamic religions, from everything that is a huge part of world culture.

In our time, Jerusalem has ceased to be a city of dreams, which was not given to everyone to see. To reach the holy sites even at the beginning of the XX century, great patience, readiness for dangers, and considerable funds were required. In the Soviet era, with its ideological prohibitions, only a few of our compatriots could wander through the cobbled streets of the old city. Today's Jerusalem is open to Russian tourists, but traveling to this city requires special knowledge from those who want to understand and feel it. T. V. Nosenko's book presents the history of Jerusalem with a close interweaving of politics and religion in a surprisingly accessible and at the same time scientific form.

The value of the peer-reviewed work lies primarily in the fact that it represents the first attempt in Russian science to comprehensively study the problem of Jerusalem. No less important is the way the author talks about the ancient city. This is the story of a knowledgeable person who has a solid cultural background that allows him not only to present historical facts and arrange them in a certain way, but also to decorate the book with reproductions from wonderful paintings and find accurate epigraphs for each section. One can feel the author's special attitude to the ancient city, the desire to share his admiration, his love for details, which the inattentive gaze of the always hurrying tourist usually glides past. T. V. Nosenko spent several years in Israel, and her personal impressions also formed the basis of her Jerusalem chronicle.

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The book is written in excellent Russian, which in our time, unfortunately, is increasingly being pushed to the sidelines by the media, official Newspeak, and youth slang.

In the Russian and foreign scientific literature, there are many works that somehow affect the problem of Jerusalem and its history. The work of T. V. Nosenko is distinguished by the depth of scientific analysis and at the same time by its undoubted accessibility. It can be read by both a teenager and a serious scientist - everyone will be interested in her book. It is gratifying to realize that the traditions of Russian historians are being revived, who did not offer a dry account of events that could scare anyone away from historical science, but paid attention to legends that sometimes cannot be separated from scientifically verified facts, the culture and life of the peoples described. The history of Jerusalem described by the author can serve as both a guide to the city and a serious help for specialists. At the same time, many of the facts presented in the book were not known to the general reader.

Ancient military leaders, Ottoman rulers, British officials and the motley population of the great city appear before the reader as if alive. Among them was the enlightened Roman Emperor Hadrian (II century), who sincerely believed that "Rome does great good to 'backward' peoples by introducing them to its 'progressive' way of life..." (p.70). The liberal-minded emperor ordered the creation of a new city, Elijah Capitoline, on the ruins of Jerusalem, and at the same time banned the study of the Torah and other manifestations of Jewish spiritual life. Nothing is new in this world, and how not to recall in this regard one of the heroes of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, who called for " introducing education with moderation, avoiding bloodshed as much as possible." Against this background, the cultural activity of the English governor Storrs, who tried, although without such devastating consequences, to "overcome the cultural marginality of Jerusalem", looks parodic. What is the story about the introduction of old Russian nuns to the beauty of the opera "Nuremberg Meistersingers" - the military governor personally rewrote the score and conducted their choir. Of course, the cultural activities of the British in Jerusalem were not limited to such anecdotal things. They made a significant contribution to the restoration of Jerusalem's antiquity.

The book makes you think about many things - about ruinous wars and dubious benefits, about how Jerusalem, which passed from one indifferent hand to another, changed owners and administrative status, became a hostage to the rise and fall of states and empires. It is amazing that, despite the ruin and terrible fate, it remained for believers an eternal place of attraction, a great and holy city. An important element of the story about Jerusalem was the sections devoted to the pilgrimage of representatives of all three religions to the city. The author shows that the pilgrimage was a special page in the history of the city, attracting people from everywhere, overcoming distances and obstacles to worship their shrines. And here, as it seems, T. V. Nosenko fulfilled one of her main tasks-to show how ideas about Jerusalem as a special place chosen by God on earth were formed and developed.

In order to bring the reader to this conclusion, the author describes in detail the role of Jerusalem in the Biblical, evangelical and Muslim spiritual traditions. The book is based on the historical principle. It covers the period of ancient Judea, Roman rule, Christian and Muslim periods. Almost the entire history of mankind has concentrated on a small piece of land, leaving behind monuments, temples, tombs. In each section, T. V. Nosenko introduces new information, supported by recent discoveries. Thus, the section devoted to the biblical history of Jerusalem tells about the interpretation by modern experts of some mysterious Old Testament episodes related to the Holy City, about the finds made over the past century and a half by archaeologists, which often confirm the information contained in the sacred texts. The book tells in detail about the history of the creation of the first temple memorial complex on the site of the crucifixion and burial of the Savior, about the construction of the cathedral that has survived to this day, called the Orthodox Church of the Resurrection. A large section is dedicated to the shrines on Via Dolorosa-the Sorrowful Way, which describes in detail how this most important sacred route for Christians was formed over the centuries, including the Orthodox shrines included in it. Much space is devoted to the story of the legends and ceremonies associated with the greatest shrine of Christianity-the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in particular the story of the Easter descent of the Holy Fire.

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As you know, for centuries, Russia has played a special role as the patron saint of the Orthodox and the Orthodox Church in the East. There are a lot of signs of the Russian spiritual presence in Jerusalem - the Russian Metochion complex, churches and monasteries, and decorations donated to churches. The book rightly notes that since the mid-19th century, Russia has significantly expanded its presence in Palestine. Russian aid and the tutelage of Orthodoxy provided the Eastern Church with a firm foundation in its relations with the Western Church, especially with Rome. The educational activities of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society were an important factor in shaping the worldview of the Arab population, some of whom, as is well known, profess the Orthodox faith. It is all the more insulting to realize that most of the buildings of the metochion were once sold for a song by Soviet leaders. The atheist government did not need them, but no government - and the history of Jerusalem shows this - can ignore the past with impunity. In this case, in the struggle for the Romanov inheritance, "few people think of the thousands of Russian peasants whose blood pennies collected from remote Russian parishes formed a significant part of the contribution that went to the construction of buildings that still adorn Jerusalem" (p.292).

Remaining true to the scientific approach and analysis, the author rightly says that politics and ideology often became no less motivating motives for the construction of certain religious buildings than religious feelings. Jerusalem's temples and shrines were created by people who operated in a specific historical context. The book describes the historical circumstances under which temples, churches, and mosques were built in Jerusalem, how their fate developed over the centuries, and how these purely religious symbols were used at different stages of history in the political struggle for Jerusalem, for all of Palestine. Unfortunately, the rulers did not always have enough tolerance and just common sense. Restrictive measures against undesirable groups of the population were carried out with much greater enthusiasm than measures aimed at preserving the city, which was ruined and brought to complete decline by the beginning of the XX century.

T. V. Nosenko managed to combine a historical and cultural excursion with a political analysis of the current state of the problem. On the one hand, this combination makes the work original and different from other publications on this topic, on the other hand, the author's chosen path makes his research more vulnerable to criticism. Even the title of the last chapter ("Whose Jerusalem is It?") provokes discussion. As a rule, the number of specialists who understand ancient history and the Middle Ages is not so large. The average person is unlikely to argue about whether the kingdom of Solomon existed or not, and how much the Bible texts can be trusted. In any case, such a dispute is rarely brought to a wide audience. Another thing is the assessment of the events of the twentieth century( and one cannot do without them), when Jewish immigration to Palestine gradually began to increase within the framework of the Zionist project, when the Jewish community (Yishuv) was formed, when Arab-Jewish contradictions became more acute. The problems that emerged after 1967, when all of Jerusalem came under Israeli control, are even more acute.

The book covers in detail the activities of Israeli governments to change the ethno-demographic situation in and around the city, the place of Jerusalem in the context of peace talks with the Palestinians (the Oslo process), the reasons for the failure of the Camp David talks, and the Al-Aqsa intifada. There are many more experts on these subjects, and most importantly, significantly more emotions when evaluating the author's approach. I would like to note that the analysis presented is balanced and balanced, but I think it will still leave many dissatisfied and dissatisfied. For perfectly natural reasons, the issue of Jerusalem is so politicized that any honest attempt to trace how it became a bone of contention and why control of the Holy City has a direct bearing on the identity of Arabs and Jews is likely to irritate both.

T. V. Nosenko, of course, does not answer the question of whose Jerusalem is, and does not set it as his goal. It has another super-task-to draw attention to the fact that followers of three religions have lived and co-existed on this piece of land for centuries. They did not always exist in a "godly" and fraternal way, but nevertheless they found a common language. They have nowhere to go, and they will have to continue to live together, despite the excessive pride of their individual representatives, who are ready to speak and judge in the name of a common God.

The book has no serious shortcomings that deserve to be mentioned in the review (with the exception of the lack of a subject-name index). Unfortunately, there is little material devoted to the religious component of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

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city division plans. However, if we consider these problems in detail, then we need to prepare a completely different study.

A well-published book by T. V. Nosenko should definitely be read, and you can envy those who have yet to do it.

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