Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

Politically and administratively a capital city is the city enjoying primary or official status in a country, province or state as a seat of government. The word capital derives from the Latin caput (‘head’), but in Greek-speaking Byzantine Palestine the Greek term for capital cities was metropolis. Some capital cities, such as Jerusalem, were also religious centres. Furthermore, under Islam an arrangement of joint political and administrative capitals existed at the height of the Abbasid Caliphate: Baghdad and al-Raqqa (in modern Syria), under Harun al-Rashid in 796‒809 AD.

The first to make a clear distinction between political/administrative capital city and religious capital in Palestine was the Greek-speaking Idumite King Herod the Great, who developed and expanded Caesarea- Palaestina as his metropolitan political capital, while at the same time continuing to develop Aelia Capitolina as the religious capital of his autonomous kingdom.

Under the Byzantines over time two crucial ecclesiastical developments took place in Palestine:

1. The ecclesiastical autonomy of the three Palestine provinces continued to evolve throughout the 5th and early 6th centuries and the evolution of a distinct Palestinian religio-cultural identity benefited greatly from the international organisation of the churches in the East which was conceived as radically different from that in the West.

2. The All Palestine Church of Jerusalem was headed by both Greekspeaking and Arab bishops (Shahid 2006a: 46‒48, 193‒194, 523) and several Arab bishops of Palestine – including the bishops Elusa, in Palaestina Tertia, Abdelas (Arabic ‘Abdallah; Greek Theodulos, which was a translation of his Arabic name: ‘Servant of God’) and Aretas (al-Harith) – participated in the crucial ecumenical councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon in 431 and 451 respectively (Shahid 2006a: 523; Sharon 2013: 75).

In Palestine and the Near East as a whole the churches began ‘from below’ as a network of independent churches, while the Rome-based (Catholic) Church in the West ultimately evolved into a single, hierarchical structure with sub-churches. In contrast with the Catholic notion that the Bishop (and Church) of Rome was above all bishops, in the East the churches adopted the Greek ideas of autocephaly (αὐτοκεφαλία, ‘selfheaded’)

and ‘first among equals’ (Greek: Πρῶτος μεταξὺ ἴσων). These became the guiding principles of the Orthodox churches whose Palestine Patriarchs (‘Bishop of Bishops’ or Archbishops) did not have to report to any higher-ranking Patriarch, including the Patriarchs of Antioch or Constantinople. These two principles contributed to the consolidation of an independent Palestine Orthodox Church with jurisdiction over the ‘Three Palestines’. They also contributed to the emergence of a distinct religio-cultural identity in Palestine. Ironically, however, this ecclesiasThe tical independence of the Church of Aelia Capitolina contrasted with the rigid formal power structure of the Byzantine Empire, in which provincial political and military powers in the ‘Three Palestines’ were ultimately subordinate to the Emperor of Constantinople.

The All Palestine Church of Aelia Capitolina was granted autocephaly and its head bishop, or Patriarch, did not have to report to any higher-ranking Patriarch in Byzantium. This development began with the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, which was attended by four Arab bishops including the bishops of Elusa in Palaestina Tertia, Gaza and Neila in Provincia Arabia (Shahid 2006a: 523) and which was a turning point in the history and growing independence of the Palestinian church.

This growth in the autonomy and power of Palestine had begun with the increased Christian pilgrimage and growing economy of the country throughout and after the reign of Constantine the Great. The growth in pilgrimage and revenues increased the fortunes of the head bishop of Aelia Capitolina. Already in 325 AD the first ecumenical council of the church, the Council of Nicaea, attributed special honour to the holy city, though without awarding it the ‘metropolitan’ status, then the highest rank in the church, which went to the metropolitan of Caesarea-Palaestina rather than to the bishop of Aelia Capitolina. Until the creation of the idea of the Patriarchate in 325 AD, the position of metropolitan was the highest episcopal rank in the church. However, in 531 the title of ‘Patriarch’ of Aelia Capitolina was created by Byzantine Emperor Justinian (reigned 527–565

AD). Yet, in reality, Aelia Capitolina continued to be viewed as a bishopric until 451, when the Council of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council of the church, granted it independence not only from the metropolitan of Caesarea but also from any other higher-ranking bishop, including that of Antioch, in what became known as autocephaly, a self-governing church over the ‘Three Palestines’. In the Council’s seventh session, the ‘Decree on the Jurisdiction’ of Aelia Capitolina and Antioch contains the following reference to the three provinces of greater Palestine:

The most magnificent and glorious judges said: … The arrangement arrived at through the agreement of the most holy Maximus, the bishop of the city of Antioch, and of the most holy Juvenal, the bishop of Jerusalem [Aelia Capitolina], as the attestation of each of them declares, shall remain firm for ever, through our decree and the sentence of the holy synod; to wit, that the most holy bishop Maximus, or rather the most holy church of Antioch, shall have under its own jurisdiction the two Phoenicias and Arabia; but the most holy Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, or rather the most holy Church which is under him, shall have under his own power the three Palestines all imperial pragmatics and letters and penalties being done away according to the bidding of our most sacred and pious prince.19

Here the Council of Chalcedon makes a clear geo-political distinction between the ‘Three’ provinces of Palaestina, the ‘Two provinces of Phoenicias’ (i.e. the two provinces of Syria) and the province of Arabia.

This decree of elevating the Palestine Church led to the Church of Aelia Capitolina not only becoming an independent Patriarchate, but also to becoming (a) the dominant ecclesiastical and religious capital of the ‘Three Palestines’ and (b) one of the five Patriarchates of Christendom, at the time known as the Pentarchy (Πενταρχία). In this model, which was reflected by the laws of Emperor Justinian I (527–565 AD) and received formal ecclesiastical sanction at the Council in Trullo (692 AD), universal Christendom was governed by the heads of the five major Patriarchs of the empire: Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Aelia Capitolina.

The latter was not among the biggest and most powerful urban centres of the empire; it was included by virtue of its holiness. Although the Pentarchy came about because of the political and ecclesiastical prominence of these five Patriarchs, the idea of their universal and exclusive authority was linked to the increasingly hierarchical administrative structure of the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century, thus moving the churches further away from their democratic roots and their status as an association of independent churches. In reality, however, infighting among the Sees, and the rivalry between Rome and Constantinople, prevented the Pentarchy from functioning effectively. Yet the extraordinary elevation of the Palestine Church made it a top international player far beyond its formal jurisdiction over the ‘Three Palestines’, which were perceived and represented in Church documents as one country. However, the metropolitan (‘mother’)

church of Caesarea-Palaestina remained the political, military, commercial and administrative capital of greater Palestine and its metropolitan bishop remained highly influential both politically and religiously.

Furthermore, in the Orthodox tradition, bishops and archbishops exercised both religious and temporal political power. Autocephaly for the Palestine Church and membership in the Pentarchy (the five major Patriarchs of the empire) meant five things:

• Religious autonomy, self-governing, self-legislation and ecclesiastical independence from the Church of Antioch or Church of Constantinople.

• The extension of the religious jurisdiction and temporal power of the Church of Aelia Capitolina over the ‘Three Palestines’ (Prima, Secunda and Tertia).

• Autocephaly and primacy for the Church of Aelia Capitolina reinforced the distinction between secular and religious capitals in Byzantine Palestine, of Aelia (Jerusalem) versus Caesarea Maritima.

• Autocephaly and independence of the Palestine Church reinforced the unity of greater Palestine. Now the ‘Three Palestines’ were also officially united ecclesiastically. They were already closely linked commercially and militarily and were commanded by the Dux Palaestinae, ‘the military commander of Palestine’, who was based in Caesarea-Palaestina and commanded the garrison of all three provinces of Palaestina in the 5th and 6th centuries. This all meant that by the early 6th century, in both ecclesiastical-religious-temporal and military affairs, greater Palestine was treated as more than three Palestine provinces of the Byzantine Empire; it was longer treated as separate ‘Three Palestines’ but had evolved into a single religio-political entity.

• Membership in the exclusive club of Pentarchy provided the Church of All Palestine with an added international prestige and further clout at home.

Interestingly, a medieval document written in the 9th or 10th century, entitled The Limits of the Five Patriarchates, describes the five Patriarchates of Christendom in the Middle Ages and treats Palestine as a country. The sequence of the text, which was found appended to some manuscripts of the New Testament, is a variation of the Pentarchy established by ecumenical Councils of Chalcedon and Trullo, with the Patriarchates of Jerusalem moving from fifth to first place. The text, which in some sources is entitled Knowledge and Cognition of the Patriarchate Sees (Scrivener 1893: xx), states: ‘The first See and the first patriarchate is of Jerusalem ... contains the whole Palestine a country until Arabia’ (Πρῶτος θρόνος καὶ πρώτη πατριαρχία Ἱεροσολύμων ... περιέχων πᾶσαν τὴν Παλαιστίνων χώραν ἄχρι Ἀραβίας).

Some of these religious and secular administrative features of Palestine were initially maintained and later adapted under Islam. Following the Muslim conquest in the 7th century the Arab rulers endorsed the principle of Autocephaly, recognised the autonomy of the Church of Aelia Capitolina as the seat of Palestinian Orthodox Christianity and recognised the Patriarch as its leader. For many years, the Muslim Arabs continued to call the city Iliya (Aelia Capitolina) and they initially minted Arab Byzantine style coins with the name Iliya Filastin. Palestinian historian al-Maqdisi and some Muslim writers were still using the name Iliya in the 10th century in combination with other Muslim names for the holy city such as Bayt al-Maqdis (al-Maqdisi 2002: 43, 135, 144; Drijvers 2004: 2; Gil, M. 1997: 114).

However, sometime after the Islamic conquest the Arabic term Bayt al-Maqdis came into common use. And later, largely starting from the 11th century onwards, the current name al-Quds became the most common, supplanting all the other names (Gil, M. 1997: 114). Moreover, for several centuries throughout early Islam (as under the Christian Byzantines), the clear distinction between the political and administrative capital of Filastin (al-Ramla) and the religious capital of the country (Iliya, Bayt al-Maqdis)

was maintained.

Throughout early Islam the city of Caesarea continued to thrive as a largely Christian city, led by a Greek-speaking elite. However, the local Christians were predominantly Arab Christians who were connected to the Palestinian Muslim Arabs by language, history and social customs. The powerful metropolitan archbishops of the city kept their autonomy and managed to maintain ecclesiastical ties with the churches of the Byzantine state. However, in the absence of close Byzantine imperial control, the local autonomy of the archbishops of Caesarea (and of Aelia Capitolina)

increased significantly under Arab Muslim rule and the See of Caesarea Maritima became the effective local rulers not only of the city but also of its surrounding countryside.