The Barons' Crusade (1239–1241)

The Tower of Jericho Is Built (c. 8,000 BCE) One of the oldest monumental buildings in the world, Jericho, c. 8000 BCE

1,500,000 BCE – 1,151 BCE

Prehistory & Canaan

From the first humans to the cities of Canaan.

Early humans passed through the southern Levant on their way out of Africa, and the caves of Mount Carmel, Qafzeh and Misliya hold some of the oldest Homo sapiens remains outside Africa. The Natufians built some of the first permanent villages, and Jericho one of the first walled towns. In the Bronze Age the Canaanite city-states, such as Hazor and Megiddo, rose and fell, and for almost four centuries Egypt ruled Canaan through its pharaohs and vassal kings.

Out of Africa

Early humans camped at Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley about 1.5 million years ago, on one of the first routes out of Africa.

First Villages

The Natufians built some of the world's first permanent villages, harvested wild cereals and brewed beer.

Canaanite Cities

Hazor, the largest city of Bronze Age Canaan, led a league of walled city-states.

Egyptian Rule

Thutmose III's victory at Megiddo began almost four centuries of Egyptian rule over Canaan.

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c. 1,500,000 BCE Early Humans Reach Ubeidiya Around 1.5 million years ago, early humans camped on the shores of an ancient lake at Ubeidiya, about 3 km south of the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Rift Valley.
c. 12,500 BCE Rise of the Natufian Culture From about 12,500 BCE, the Natufian culture spread across the southern Levant, with its core in what is today Israel and the Palestinian territories.
c. 2,300 BCE Collapse of Early Bronze Age Cities Between about 2350 and 2000 BCE, in the period known as Early Bronze IV or the Intermediate Bronze Age, the cities of the southern Levant declined and many were abandoned.
c. 1,350 BCE The Amarna Letters from Canaan In the mid-14th century BCE, the rulers of Canaanite cities wrote to the pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten in cuneiform Akkadian, reporting on local affairs.
c. 1,150 BCE End of Egyptian Rule in Canaan Around the middle of the 12th century BCE, Egypt lost control of Canaan.

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Assyrian Siege of Lachish (701 BCE) Sennacherib's army storms Judah's second city, 701 BCE

1,150 BCE – 588 BCE

Israel & Judah

Two kingdoms between the great empires.

Israel first appears on the Merneptah Stele around 1208 BCE, and small highland villages spread across Canaan as Egyptian rule ended. The Hebrew Bible tells of the judges and of the united kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon, whose extent is debated. After about 931 BCE two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, lived beside each other until Assyria destroyed Israel in 722 BCE. Judah survived as a vassal, reformed its worship under Hezekiah and Josiah, and was caught between Egypt and Babylon.

Early Israel

Hundreds of small villages appeared in the central highlands as Egyptian rule over Canaan ended.

David's Jerusalem

According to the Bible, David made Jerusalem his capital; the extent of his kingdom is debated.

Two Kingdoms

After Solomon the kingdom split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

The Fall of Samaria

Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom in 722/720 BCE and deported much of its population.

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c. 1,150 BCE Highland Villages of Early Israel During the 12th and 11th centuries BCE, in the period archaeologists call Iron Age I, hundreds of small, unwalled villages were founded in the central hill country of Canaan, especially in the region between Jerusalem and Shechem.
c. 931 BCE Division of the Kingdom According to 1 Kings 12, after Solomon's death the northern tribes assembled at Shechem to accept his son Rehoboam as king, asking him to lighten the burdens his father had imposed.
835 BCE Tel Dan Stele and the 'House of David' In the second half of the 9th century BCE an Aramean king, most probably Hazael of Damascus, set up a victory stele at Dan in northern Israel.
705 BCE Hezekiah's Tunnel and the Siloam Inscription In preparation for an expected Assyrian siege, King Hezekiah of Judah is traditionally credited with cutting a tunnel beneath the City of David to carry the waters of the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam.
c. 588 BCE The Lachish Letters Around 588 BCE, as the army of Nebuchadnezzar II advanced into Judah to crush the revolt of King Zedekiah, a Judahite officer named Hoshaiah wrote a series of letters in ink on potsherds to Yaush, probably the commanding officer at Lachish.

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Destruction of the First Temple (c. 587 BCE) Nebuchadnezzar's army burns Jerusalem, 587/586 BCE

587 BCE – 64 BCE

Exile & the Second Temple

Exile, return and independence.

Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple in 587/586 BCE and deported the Judean elite to Babylon. Cyrus the Great allowed the exiles to return, and the Second Temple was dedicated around 516 BCE in the Persian province of Yehud. After Alexander the Great, Judea passed to the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, until Antiochus IV's ban on Judaism sparked the Maccabean revolt. The Hasmonean dynasty then ruled an independent Judea for about eighty years.

By the Rivers of Babylon

The exiles in Babylon kept their identity, and much of the Hebrew Bible took shape in these years.

The Second Temple

Under Persian rule the returning exiles rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem.

The Maccabees

Antiochus IV's ban on Judaism set off the revolt that founded the Hasmonean state.

Qumran

A community by the Dead Sea copied the scrolls found in its caves two thousand years later.

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c. 587 BCE Destruction of the First Temple In the summer of 587 or 586 BCE the army of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, broke into Jerusalem after a siege that had begun in January 589 BCE. The Babylonians burned the city and destroyed Solomon's Temple, the First Temple.
c. 450 BCE Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim By the middle of the fifth century BCE a temple had been built on the summit of Mount Gerizim, above Shechem in the province of Samaria.
217 BCE Battle of Raphia On 22 June 217 BCE the Ptolemaic king Ptolemy IV Philopator defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III near Raphia (modern Rafah), south of Gaza, in the decisive battle of the Fourth Syrian War.
141 BCE Simon Thassi Wins Independence Simon Thassi, the second son of Mattathias, took command after Jonathan's capture in 143 BCE. In 142 BCE the Seleucid king Demetrius II granted Judea exemption from tribute, recognising its autonomy, and in 141 BCE Simon captured the Acra, the last Seleucid stronghold in Jerusalem.
63 BCE Pompey Captures Jerusalem In 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey the Great captured Jerusalem after a three-month siege of the Temple Mount, where supporters of Aristobulus II had barricaded themselves.

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Destruction of the Second Temple (70) Titus captures Jerusalem, 70 CE

63 BCE – 323

Roman Judaea

Herod, Jesus and the wars with Rome.

Pompey took Jerusalem in 63 BCE, and Herod the Great ruled as Rome's client king, rebuilding the Temple and founding Caesarea. Judaea became a Roman province in 6 CE; Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The Great Revolt ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the fall of Masada, and the Bar Kokhba revolt with the renaming of the province as Syria Palaestina. Jewish life moved to Galilee, where the rabbis completed the Mishnah.

Herod the Builder

Herod built Caesarea, Masada and Herodium and rebuilt the Temple on a vast new platform.

Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem under the prefect Pontius Pilate around 30–33 CE.

Masada

The last rebel fortress of the Great Revolt fell to Rome in 73 or 74 CE.

The Mishnah

In Galilee, Judah ha-Nasi edited the Mishnah, the first great work of rabbinic law.

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47 BCE Julius Caesar Rewards Antipater In 47 BCE Julius Caesar, fresh from his victory over Pompey, rewarded the Judaean leaders who had helped him during his war in Egypt.
6 Judaea Becomes a Roman Province In 6 CE Emperor Augustus deposed Herod Archelaus after complaints from his own subjects and placed Judea, Samaria and Idumaea under direct Roman rule as the province of Judaea.
67 Fall of Gamla In autumn 67 CE Vespasian besieged Gamla, a fortified Jewish town built on a steep ridge in the southern Golan, about 10 kilometres from the Sea of Galilee.
135 Fall of Betar In 135 CE the Romans captured Betar, a fortified town in the Judaean Mountains south-west of Jerusalem where Simon bar Kokhba had made his last stand.
303 Diocletian's Reforms and the Great Persecution Under Emperor Diocletian (284–305), Syria Palaestina was reorganised.

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Completion of the Dome of the Rock (691) Abd al-Malik's shrine on the Temple Mount, 691/692

324 – 1098

Byzantium & the Caliphs

A Holy Land for three faiths.

Under Constantine Palestine became the Christian Holy Land, with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at its centre, and the Jerusalem Talmud was completed in Galilee. Persia held Jerusalem from 614 to 628, and after the Battle of the Yarmuk in 636 the Arab caliphs took the land. The Umayyads built the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque and founded Ramla; Abbasids, Tulunids, Ikhshidids, Fatimids and Seljuk Turks followed one another as rulers.

The Christian Holy Land

Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and pilgrims and monks came from across the empire.

The Persian Conquest

The armies of Khosrow II took Jerusalem in 614 and carried off the True Cross.

The Arab Conquest

After the Yarmuk, Jerusalem surrendered to the caliph Umar.

The Masoretes

Scholars in Tiberias fixed the text of the Hebrew Bible in the Aleppo Codex.

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32

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35

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324 Constantine Takes the East On 18 September 324 Constantine the Great defeated his co-emperor Licinius at the Battle of Chrysopolis on the Bosphorus.
451 Council of Chalcedon Elevates Jerusalem The Council of Chalcedon, convoked by Emperor Marcian, met near Constantinople from 8 October to 1 November 451 with more than 500 bishops.
c. 641 Jews Permitted to Return to Jerusalem Not long after the Muslim capture of Jerusalem, possibly in 641, Caliph Umar allowed a limited number of Jews to live in the city again after negotiations with its Christian leaders.
878 Ahmad ibn Tulun Takes Palestine Ahmad ibn Tulun, an Arabised Turkic slave-soldier sent to Egypt as Abbasid governor in 868, had made himself a virtually independent ruler there.
1098 Fatimids Recapture Jerusalem In August 1098 the Fatimid vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah retook Jerusalem from its Artuqid Turkish governors, the brothers Sökmen and Ilghazi.

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Battle of Hattin (1187) Saladin destroys the army of Jerusalem, 4 July 1187

1099 – 1515

Crusaders & Mamluks

Crusaders, sultans and the Mongols.

The First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099 and founded the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin destroyed its army at Hattin in 1187 and retook the city, and the kingdom survived for another century at Acre. The Mamluk sultans of Egypt stopped the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260 and took Acre in 1291, ending the Crusader states, and then governed Palestine for over two centuries as a frontier province of Cairo.

The First Crusade

The Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 and massacred many of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants.

The Military Orders

The Knights Templar were founded in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims.

Saladin

Three months after Hattin, Saladin took Jerusalem back.

Ain Jalut

The Mamluks defeated the Mongols in the Jezreel Valley in 1260.

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1099 Crusaders Capture Jerusalem The armies of the First Crusade, launched by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095, reached Jerusalem on 7 June 1099 and besieged the Fatimid-held city.
1174 Baldwin IV, the Leper King, Crowned On 15 July 1174 the thirteen-year-old Baldwin IV was crowned king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by Patriarch Amalric of Nesle.
1219 Jerusalem's Walls Dismantled In 1219, while the armies of the Fifth Crusade were besieging Damietta in Egypt, the Ayyubid ruler of Damascus, al-Mu'azzam Isa, began dismantling the fortifications of Mount Tabor and other strongholds, as well as those of Jerusalem itself, so that they could not protect the Crusaders if they took them.
1265 Baybars Takes Caesarea and Arsuf In early 1265 the Mamluk sultan Baybars, declining to renew the truce with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, attacked the Crusader coastal fortresses of Caesarea and Arsuf.
1482 Qaitbay's Madrasa al-Ashrafiyya Between 1480 and 1482 the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Qaitbay built the Madrasa al-Ashrafiyya on the western side of the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem, replacing an earlier madrasa begun by Sultan Khushqadam in 1465.

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Suleiman Rebuilds Jerusalem's Walls (1535) The walls of Jerusalem, 1535–1541

1516 – 1917

Ottomans & Zionism

Four centuries of Ottoman rule.

The Ottomans conquered the land in 1516–1517, and Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Safed became a centre of Jewish learning, and in the eighteenth century Daher al-Umar and Jazzar Pasha ruled the north from Acre. After Egyptian rule in the 1830s, the Tanzimat reforms, Christian missions and Jewish immigration changed the country, and from 1882 Zionist settlers founded new colonies. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration promised British support for a Jewish national home.

Safed

Joseph Karo completed the Shulchan Aruch, the standard code of Jewish law, in Safed.

Acre Holds

Jazzar Pasha and the British navy stopped Napoleon at the walls of Acre in 1799.

Zionism

Theodor Herzl's First Zionist Congress called for a Jewish home in Palestine.

The Balfour Declaration

In 1917 Britain promised to support a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

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1516 Battle of Marj Dabiq On 24 August 1516 the Ottoman army of Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri at Marj Dabiq, about 44 kilometres north of Aleppo.
1834 Peasants' Revolt against Egyptian Rule Between May and August 1834 peasants, urban notables and Bedouin tribes in Palestine rebelled against the Egyptian administration of Ibrahim Pasha.
1878 Founding of Petah Tikva On 30 July 1878 a group of religious Jews, most of them Haredi members of the Old Yishuv, completed the purchase of land near the Arab village of Mulabbis, north-east of Jaffa, and founded Petah Tikva.
1909 Founding of Tel Aviv On 11 April 1909 66 Jewish families gathered on a sand dune outside Jaffa to divide land by lottery, using seashells collected from the beach.
1917 Balfour Declaration On 2 November 1917 the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, sent a letter to Lord (Walter) Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, declaring that the government viewed 'with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'.

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Allenby Enters Jerusalem (1917) General Allenby at the Jaffa Gate, 11 December 1917

1917 – 1947

The British Mandate

Thirty years of British rule.

British forces took Jerusalem in December 1917, and the League of Nations gave Britain a mandate over Palestine. Jewish immigration, land purchase and institutions grew, while Arab opposition led to riots in 1920, 1921 and 1929 and the Arab revolt of 1936–1939. Britain proposed partition in 1937 and limited immigration in 1939. After the Second World War and the Holocaust, Jewish underground groups fought the British, and in November 1947 the United Nations voted to partition Palestine.

The Mandate

The San Remo Conference gave Britain the mandate for Palestine in 1920.

The Arab Revolt

Palestinian Arabs rose against British rule and Jewish immigration from 1936 to 1939.

Partition Proposed

The Peel Commission first proposed dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

The UN Vote

On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly voted for partition.

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8

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1917 Allenby Enters Jerusalem On 11 December 1917 General Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, made his formal entry into Jerusalem, walking through the Jaffa Gate on foot rather than riding, as a mark of respect for the holy city.
1923 The Mandate Comes into Force On 29 September 1923 the Council of the League of Nations determined that the mandates for Palestine and for Syria and Lebanon had come into effect.
1937 Peel Commission Proposes Partition On 7 July 1937 the Palestine Royal Commission, headed by Lord Peel and appointed in 1936 after the six-month Arab general strike, published its report.
1946 King David Hotel Bombing On 22 July 1946 the Irgun bombed the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and the headquarters of British forces in Palestine and Transjordan.
1948 Fall of Kfar Etzion On 13 May 1948, the day before the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the kibbutz of Kfar Etzion between Jerusalem and Hebron fell after a two-day battle against the Arab Legion of Transjordan and local Arab irregulars.

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Israeli Declaration of Independence (1948) David Ben-Gurion reads the declaration in Tel Aviv, 14 May 1948

1948 – 1986

Independence & Wars

Independence, immigration and war.

Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948. The war that followed, known in Israel as the War of Independence and to Palestinians as the Nakba, ended with armistice lines and some 700,000 Palestinian refugees. Mass immigration more than doubled the population. In the Six-Day War of 1967 Israel took Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Yom Kippur War of 1973 was followed by peace with Egypt in 1979, and in 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon.

The Nakba

Some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled during the 1947–1949 war.

Ingathering

Mass immigration from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa doubled the Jewish population by the end of 1951.

The Six-Day War

In June 1967 Israel took Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Peace with Egypt

Begin and Sadat signed the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state in 1979.

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64

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6

Wars & battles

15

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1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence On 14 May 1948, at the Tel Aviv Museum, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, read out the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.
1953 The Qibya Massacre On the night of 14–15 October 1953 Israeli troops, including Unit 101 under Ariel Sharon, attacked the village of Qibya in the Jordanian-ruled West Bank in a reprisal raid codenamed Operation Shoshana.
1967 The Six-Day War The Six-Day War was fought from 5 to 10 June 1967 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, chiefly Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
1977 The 1977 Upheaval In the Knesset election of 17 May 1977 the right-wing Likud, led by Menachem Begin, won the largest number of seats for the first time, ending almost 30 years of government by the Alignment and its predecessor Mapai.
1986 The Vanunu Affair On 30 September 1986 Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, was persuaded to fly from London to Rome by a Mossad agent posing as an American tourist called 'Cindy'.

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Oslo I Accord Signed (1993) Rabin and Arafat shake hands at the White House, 13 September 1993

1987 – present

From Oslo to Today

Peace process, intifadas and war.

The First Intifada began in 1987, and the Oslo Accords of 1993 created the Palestinian Authority; peace with Jordan followed in 1994, but Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. The Second Intifada, the West Bank barrier and the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 were followed by wars with Hezbollah and Hamas, the Abraham Accords and deep political division. The Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 began a war in Gaza and conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran that continued into 2026.

The First Intifada

The Palestinian uprising of 1987 changed the conflict and saw the rise of Hamas.

Rabin's Assassination

A Jewish extremist murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally in 1995.

The Abraham Accords

Israel normalised relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020.

October 7

The Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 began the longest war in Israel's history.

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85

Rulers & leaders

5

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27

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1987 First Intifada and the Rise of Hamas On 9 December 1987 protests broke out in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, a day after an Israeli truck collided with vehicles carrying Palestinian labourers at the Erez checkpoint, killing four.
2001 Ariel Sharon Elected Prime Minister On 6 February 2001 Likud leader Ariel Sharon defeated the incumbent prime minister, Ehud Barak, in a special election for prime minister, winning 62.4 per cent of the vote to Barak's 37.6 per cent.
2011 Gilad Shalit Prisoner Exchange On 18 October 2011 Hamas transferred the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to Egypt, and Israel released 477 Palestinian prisoners in the first phase of an exchange agreed in Cairo on 11 October.
2024 ICJ Orders Provisional Measures On 26 January 2024 the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued provisional measures in the case brought by South Africa on 29 December 2023 under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
2026 Gaza Under a Fragile Ceasefire By the summer of 2026 the October 2025 ceasefire in Gaza was still formally in force but under strain.

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Ruler at the Time

Explore the History of Israel

Key facts of the era

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History at Glance

Prehistory & Canaan

Out of Africa

First Villages

Canaanite Cities

Egyptian Rule

Israel & Judah

Early Israel

David's Jerusalem

Two Kingdoms

The Fall of Samaria

Exile & the Second Temple

By the Rivers of Babylon

The Second Temple

The Maccabees

Qumran

Roman Judaea

Herod the Builder

Jesus of Nazareth

Masada

The Mishnah

Byzantium & the Caliphs

The Christian Holy Land

The Persian Conquest

The Arab Conquest

The Masoretes

Crusaders & Mamluks

The First Crusade

The Military Orders

Saladin

Ain Jalut

Ottomans & Zionism

Safed

Acre Holds

Zionism

The Balfour Declaration

The British Mandate

The Mandate

The Arab Revolt

Partition Proposed

The UN Vote

Independence & Wars

The Nakba

Ingathering

The Six-Day War

Peace with Egypt

From Oslo to Today

The First Intifada

Rabin's Assassination

The Abraham Accords

October 7

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