638 – The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Promise Caliph Omar Would Not Keep

JEWISH MOMENTS IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

638
The Muslim Conquest of Jerusalem
and the Promise Caliph Omar Would Not Keep

In 638 CE, upon conquering Jerusalem, Caliph Omar granted Byzantine residents a covenant of peace and protection that controversially included a provision barring Jews from the city. This exclusion reflected Christian demands to maintain a status quo that had existed for five centuries since Emperor Hadrian’s expulsion. However, Omar ultimately did not honor this promise, allowing Jews to return to their ancestral city in the Land of Israel for the first time in nearly half a millennium.

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The second Rashidun Caliph, Omar ibn al-Khattab, who ruled from 634 to 644 CE, is one of Islam’s most transformative leaders. He expanded Muslim dominion across Egypt, the Levant, Syria, and Mesopotamia. His conquest of Jerusalem in 637-638 represents a particularly significant chapter in the complex religious and political history of the Land of Israel.

After Muslim armies laid siege to Jerusalem, then known by its Roman name Aelia Capitolina, they waited patiently for the Byzantine defenders to surrender in order to achieve its conquest without bloodshed. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch Sophronius, who served as both religious leader and Byzantine governmental authority, eventually agreed to surrender but insisted that Caliph Omar himself come to Jerusalem to accept the surrender personally. Caliph Omar did so, and his journey from Medina to Jerusalem became legendary for the humility he displayed. Rather than arriving with imperial pomp, he traveled simply with a single servant, sharing turns riding their camel – a gesture that astonished even Jerusalem’s residents.

The encounter of Caliph Omar with Patriarch Sophronius would eventually result in an agreement to establish the rights of the local Christian population. This agreement, which came to be known as the ‘Assurances of Omar’, granted the Christian residents of Jerusalem assurances of protection for their lives, property, and religious institutions, as well as the absence of coercion in religious matters, provided they paid their due ‘Jizia’ tax, the head tax on free non-Muslims living under Muslim rule. These were not unusual protections granted by the conquering Islamic armies.

The most unusual and contentious aspect of these ‘assurances’ was the provision stating that “no Jews should reside with them [the Christians] in Illia [Jerusalem]”. The scholarly consensus indicates that while various versions of the text exist, with some later versions appearing fabricated or embellished, the core document represents authentic Islamic policy. The exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem, however, was unprecedented in Islamic conquests and not a reflection of Islamic policies. Instead, it was a concession to the Byzantine Christian authorities of Jerusalem. For their surrender of Jerusalem, they demanded the preservation of the status quo of the previous five centuries, during which Jews were excluded from the city.

The exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem can be traced back to Emperor Hadrian’s brutal suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. Following this rebellion, Hadrian not only rebuilt Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina but also implemented harsh anti-Jewish decrees pertaining to the city. Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and its surrounding territories. Jews were forbidden to enter the city. There was an annual exception on Tisha B’Av when Jews were permitted to enter and mourn the Temple’s destruction, a permission granted not out of compassion but as a Christian proof and reminder that Judaism had been superseded.

Remarkably, the promise of Jewish exclusion from Jerusalem was a promise that Caliph Omar would ultimately not fulfill. Historical sources confirm that Jews were permitted to return to Jerusalem shortly after the conquest. Contemporary Jewish sources describe that when Caliph Omar was making his way to Jerusalem, Jewish representatives approached him and requested permission for two hundred Jewish families to settle in the city. This request, however, was vehemently opposed by the Christian authorities in the town.

Caliph Omar, having initially agreed to the exclusion of Jews, eventually decided, as a form of compromise, to permit a limited number of Jewish families to settle in Jerusalem. Indeed, seventy Jewish families from Tiberias were able to use this opportunity to move to Jerusalem. They were given an area to reside in, separated from the Christian residents, in what is now the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. There, they were allowed to build a synagogue and other religious institutions. They were allowed to pray in the vicinity of the Temple Mount and eventually even allowed to ascend, work, and pray in the Temple Mount itself.

Several reasons have been evoked for the decision of Caliph Omar to break this specific promise. They cannot, however, be divorced from the Jewish presence in his staff and his entourage and the widespread support both locally and throughout the Jewish world for the Islamic expansion, which was regarded as liberation from Byzantine, Babylonian, Roman, or Persian oppression. In any case, in Jewish tradition, Caliph Omar is viewed as a tolerant and benevolent ruler, referred to in some Jewish writings of the time as a “friend of Israel.”

The return of Jews to Jerusalem after five centuries of exclusion marked a pivotal moment in Jewish history. Jerusalem never regained its former significance as the primary center of Jewish learning, an honor that remained with Babylon. The restoration of a Jewish presence, however, represented both a practical return to ancestral lands and a symbolic vindication of Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.