Jericho, Israel

Jericho (Arabic: أريحا‎ ʾArīḥā; Hebrew: יְרִיחוֹ Yeriḥo) is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank. It is the administrative seat of the Jericho Governorate. In 2007, it had a population of 18,346. The city was occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, and has been held under Israeli occupation since 1967; administrative control was handed over to the Palestinian Authority in 1994. It is believed to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world.

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years (9000 BC), almost to the very beginning of the Holocene epoch of the Earth’s history.
Jericho is described in the Old Testament as the “City of Palm Trees”. Copious springs in and around the city attracted human habitation for thousands of years to the Holy Land. It is known in Judeo-Christian tradition as the place of the Israelites’ return from bondage in Egypt, led by Joshua, the successor to Moses.

Tourism

Situated to the north of the Courlande historical region in Latvia, the Open-Air Art Museum at Pedvale is a private institution, founded in 1992 at the instigation of the sculptor Feldbergs. Placed at the heart of the Abava Valley, a nationally protected area that combines pine and oak forest and that forms a rural landscape still bearing the traces of collective agriculture and of architectural heritage of national importance, this “museum”, or living landscape, plays an active social role. The protection of the natural environment, together with the promotion of national traditions and of the arts, has a special meaning in this country which has only recently won its independence.

Recommended for Christian tours.

Etymology

Jericho’s name in Hebrew, Yeriẖo, is thought to derive from Canaanite word Reaẖ (“fragrant”), though an alternative theory holds that it is derived from the word meaning “moon” (Yareaẖ) in Canaanite, since the city was an early centre of worship for lunar deities.
Jericho’s Arabic name, ʼArīḥā, means “fragrant” and derives from same Canaanite word Reaẖ, of the same meaning as in Hebrew.

History

The city may be the oldest continuously occupied city in the world.

Classical antiquity
From the Old Testament:

1. Meanwhile, Jericho was fortified inside and out because of the Israelis. Nobody could leave or enter.
2. The LORD told Joshua, “Look! I have given Jericho over to your control, along with its kings and valiant soldiers.
3. March around the city, all the soldiers circling the city once. Do this for six days,
4. with seven priests carrying in front of the ark seven trumpets made from rams’ horns.

On the seventh day march around the city seven times while the priests blow their trumpets. 5When they sound a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then the entire army is to cry out loud, the city wall will collapse, and then all of the soldiers are to charge straight ahead.”
The Destruction of Jericho
6. So Nun’s son Joshua called for the priests. “Pick up the Ark of the Covenant,” he told them, “and have seven priests carry seven trumpets made from rams’ horns in front of the ark of the LORD.”
7. He told the army, “Go out and encircle the city. Have the armed men march out in front of the ark of the LORD.”
8. And so, just as Joshua had commanded, seven of the priests went forward, carrying the seven trumpets made of rams’ horns in the LORD’s presence, blowing the trumpets while the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD followed them.
9. Armed men preceded the priests who were blowing the trumpets, and a rear guard followed the ark, while the trumpets continued to blow.
10. Joshua issued orders to the army: “You are not to shout or even let your voice be heard. Don’t utter a word until I tell you to shout. Then shout!”
11. So the ark of the LORD was taken once around the city, then they went back to camp and spent the night there.
12. Joshua got up early the next morning, and the priests picked up the ark of the LORD. 13. The seven priests who carried the seven trumpets made from rams’ horns preceded the ark of the LORD, blowing their trumpets constantly. The armed men preceded them, and the rear guard followed the ark of the LORD, while the trumpets continued to blow.
14. On the second day they marched around the city once and then went back to camp. They did this for six days.
15. They rose early at dawn on the seventh day and marched around the city seven times, just as they had before, except that on that day only they marched around the city seven times.
16. As they completed the seventh time, after the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua told the army, “Shout, because the LORD has given you the city!
17. The city—along with everything in it—is to be turned over to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and everyone who is with her in her house may live, because she hid the scouts we sent.
18. Now as for you, everything has been turned over for destruction. Don’t covet or take any of these things. Otherwise, you’ll make the camp of Israel itself an object worthy of destruction, and bring trouble on it.
19. But everything made of silver and gold, and vessels made of bronze and iron are set apart to the LORD. They are to go into the treasury of the LORD.”
20. So the army shouted and the trumpets were blown again. As soon as the army heard the sound of the trumpets, they shouted loudly and the wall collapsed. The army charged straight ahead into the city and captured it.
21. They turned over everyone in the city for destruction and executed them, including both men and women, young and old, and oxen, sheep, and donkeys.
22. Joshua told the two men who had scouted the land, “Go into the prostitute’s home and bring her out of it, along with everyone who is with her, just as you promised her.”
23. So the young men who had been scouts went in and brought Rahab out, along with her father, her mother, her brothers, and everyone else who was with her. They brought her entire family out and set them outside the camp of Israel.
24. Then the army set fire to the city and to everything in it, except that they reserved the silver, gold, and vessels of bronze and iron for the treasury of the LORD.
25. But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, along with her family and everyone who was with her. Her family has lived in Israel ever since, because she hid the scouts whom Joshua sent to observe Jericho.
Joshua Curses the Rebuilding of Jericho
26. Then Joshua made everyone take the following oath at that time. He said:
“Cursed in the presence of the LORD is the man
who restores and rebuilds this city of Jericho!
He will lay its foundation at the cost of his firstborn,
and at the cost of his youngest he will set up its gates.”
27. So the LORD was with Joshua, and as a result, Joshua’s reputation spread throughout the land

Iron Age

In the 8th century BC the Assyrians invaded from the north, followed by the Babylonians, and Jericho was depopulated between 586 and 538 BC, the period of the Jewish exile to Babylon. Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, refounded the city one mile southeast of its historic site at the mound of Tell es-Sultan and returned the Jewish exiles after conquering Babylon in 539 BC.

Classical antiquity

Jericho went from being an administrative centre of Yehud Medinata under Persian rule to serving as the private estate of Alexander the Great between 336 and 323 BC after his conquest of the region. In the middle of the 2nd century BCE Jericho was under Hellenistic rule of the Seleucid Empire, when the Syrian General Bacchides built a number of forts to strengthen the defences of the area around Jericho against the revolt by the Macabees. One of these forts, built at the entrance to Wadi Qelt, was later refortified by Herod the Great, who named it Kypros after his mother.
The city came to be ruled by the Hasmoneans, following the success of the Maccabean Revolt, and remained such until the Roman influence over the area brought Herod to claim the Hasmenean throne of Judea.
Herod originally leased Jericho from Cleopatra, after Mark Antony gave it to her as a gift. After their joint suicide in 30 BC, Octavian assumed control of the Roman Empire and granted Herod free rein over Jericho, as part of the new Herodian domain. Herod’s rule oversaw the construction of a hippodrome-theatre (Tel es-Samrat) to entertain his guests and new aqueducts to irrigate the area below the cliffs and reach his winter palace built at the site of Tulul al-Alaiq.
The dramatic murder of Aristobulus III in a swimming pool in Jericho, as told by the Roman Jewish historian Josephus, took place during a banquet organized by Herod’s Hasmonean mother-in-law. After the construction of its palaces the city had functioned not only as an agricultural center and as a crossroad but as a winter resort for Jerusalem’s aristocracy.
Herod was succeeded in Judea by his son, Archelus, who built an adjacent village in his name, Archelais, to house workers for his date plantation (Khirbet al-Beiyudat). First-century Jericho is described in Strabo’s Geography as follows:
Jericho is a plain surrounded by a kind of mountainous country, which in a way, slopes toward it like a theatre. Here is the Phoenicon, which is mixed also with all kinds of cultivated and fruitful trees, though it consists mostly of palm trees. It is 100 stadia in length and is everywhere watered with streams. Here also are the Palace and the Balsam Park.”
The rock-cut tombs of a Herodian and Hasmonean era cemetery lie in the lowest part of the cliffs between Nuseib al-Aweishireh and Jebel Quruntul in Jericho and were used between 100 BC and 68 AD.
The Christian Gospels state that Jesus passed through Jericho where he healed one or two blind beggars and inspired a local chief tax-collector named Zacchaeus to repent of his dishonest practices. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho is the setting for the Parable of the Good Samaritan
After the fall of Jerusalem to Vespasian’s armies in the Great Revolt of Judea in 70 AD, Jericho declined rapidly, and by 100 AD it was but a small Roman garrison town. A fort was built there in 130 and played a role in putting down the Bar Kochba revolt in 133. Accounts of Jericho by a Christian pilgrim are given in 333. Shortly thereafter the built-up area of the town was abandoned and a Byzantine Jericho, Ericha, was built a mile (1.61 km) to the east, around which the modern town is centred. Christianity took hold in the city during the Byzantine era and the area was heavily populated. A number of monasteries and churches were built, including St George of Koziba in 340 AD and a domed church dedicated to Saint Eliseus. At least two synagogues were also built in the 6th century CE. The monasteries were abandoned after the Persian invasion of 614.

Arab Caliphate era

Jericho, by then named “Ariha” in Arabic variation, became part Jund Filastin (“Military District of Palestine”), part of the larger province of Bilad al-Sham. The Arab Muslim historian Musa b. ‘Uqba (d. 758) recorded that caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab exiled the Jews and Christians of Khaybar to Jericho (and Tayma).
By 659 that district had come under the control of Mu’awiya, founder of the Umayyad dynasty. That year, an earthquake struck Jericho and destroyed the city. A decade later the pilgrim Arculf visited Jericho and found it in ruins, all its “miserable Canaanite” inhabitants now dispersed in shantytowns around the Dead Sea shore.
The tenth Umayyad caliph, Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, built a palatial complex known as Khirbet al-Mafjar about one mile north of Tell as-Sultan in 743, and two mosques, a courtyard, mosaics, and other items from it can still be seen in situ today, despite its having been partially destroyed in an earthquake in 747.
Umayyad rule ended in 750 and was followed by the Arab caliphates of the Abbasid and Fatimid dynasties. Irrigated agriculture was developed under Islamic rule, reaffirming Jericho’s reputation as a fertile “City of the Palms”. Al-Maqdisi, the Arab geographer, wrote in 985 that, “the water of Jericho is held to be the highest and best in all Islam. Bananas are plentiful, also dates and flowers of fragrant odor.” Jericho is also referred to by him as one of the principal cities of Jund Filastin.
The city flourished until 1071 with the invasion of the Seljuk Turks, followed by the upheavals of the Crusades.

Crusader rule

In 1179, the Crusaders rebuilt the Monastery of St. George of Koziba, at its original site six miles from the center of town. They also built another two churches and a monastery dedicated to John the Baptist, and are credited with introducing sugarcane production to the city. In 1187, the Crusaders were evicted by the Ayyubid forces of Saladin after their victory in the Battle of Hattin, and the town slowly went into decline.

Mamluk rule

In 1226, Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi said of Jericho, “it has many palm trees, also sugarcane in quantities, and bananas. The best of all the sugar in the Ghaur land is made here.” In the 14th century, Abu al-Fida writes there are sulfur mines in Jericho, “the only ones in Palestine.”

Ottoman era

In the late years of Ottoman rule, Jericho formed part of the waqf and imerat of Jerusalem. The villagers processed indigo as one source of revenue, using a cauldron specifically for this purpose that was loaned to them by the Ottoman authorities in Jerusalem. For most of the Ottoman period, Jericho was a small village of farmers susceptible to attacks by Bedouins. The French traveller Laurent d’Arvieux described the city in 1659 as “now desolate, and consists only of about fifty poor houses, in bad condition… The plain around is extremely fertile; the soil is middling fat; but it is watered by several rivulets, which flow into the Jordan. Notwithstanding these advantages. only the gardens adjacent to the town are cultivated.” In the 19th century, European scholars, archaeologists and missionaries visited often. The first excavation at Tell as-Sultan was carried out in 1867, and the monasteries of St. George of Koziba and John the Baptist were refounded and completed in 1901 and 1904, respectively.