During 73–63 BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War, conquering Judea in 63 BCE, and splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts.
During 259–272, the region fell under the rule of Odaenathus as King of the Palmyrene Empire. Following the victory of Christian emperor Constantine in the Civil Wars of the Tetrarchy (306–324), the Christianization of the Roman Empire began, and in 326, Constantine's mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem and began the construction of churches and shrines. Palestine became a center of Christianity, attracting numerous monks and religious scholars. The Samaritan Revolts during this period caused their near extinction.
The revolt against Heraclius was a Jewish insurrection against the Byzantine Empire across the Levant, coming to the aid of the Sasanian Persia during theByzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628. The revolt began with the Battle of Antioch (613) and culminated with the conquest of Jerusalem in 614 by Persian and Jewish forces and the establishment of Jewish autonomy. The revolt ended with the departure of the Persian troops and an eventual surrender of Jewish rebels to the Byzantines in the year 625 (or 628).
In 613, the Jewish revolt against the Byzantine Heraclius culminated with the conquest of Jerusalem in 614 by Persian and Jewish forces and establishment of Jewish autonomy. The revolt ended with the departure of the Persians and an eventual massacre of the Jews in 629 by the Byzantines ending 15 years of Jewish autonomy.
By 635 AD, Palestine, Jordan and Southern Syria, with the exception of Jerusalem and Caesarea, were in Muslim hands. On the orders of Caliph Umar, Yazid next besieged Caesarea, which was lifted but resumed after the Battle of Yarmouk until the port fell in 640.
636 CE ; Palestine was conquered by the Islamic Empire following the 636 CE Battle of Yarmouk during the Muslim conquest of Syria.
637 ; The Siege of Jerusalem was part of a military conflict which took place in the year 637 between the Byzantine Empire and the Rashidun Caliphate. It began when the Rashidun army, under the command of Abu Ubaidah, besieged Jerusalem in November 636. After six months, the Patriarch Sophronius agreed to surrender, on condition that he submit only to the Rashidun caliph. In April 637, Caliph Umar traveled to Jerusalem in person to receive the submission of the city. When caliph Umar reached jerusalem, he was holding the camel with his servant travelling on its back. The Patriarch was impressed of generosity and kind nature of caliph, thus,submitted to him. The religious freedom of worship was allowed for christians and Jews in Jerusalem.link
Following the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, Jews were once again allowed to live and practice their religion with more freedom in Jerusalem, 8 years after their massacre by the Byzantines and nearly 500 years after their expulsion from Judea by the Roman Empire although the ensuing Pact of Umar, traditionally attributed to then Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, implemented a series of restrictive measures on residents living under the occupation of the Rashidun Caliphate, greatly limitingNon-Muslim autonomy.
969 CE ; The Fatimids conquered the region in 969.
1073 ; Palestine was captured by the Great Seljuq Empire, only to be recaptured by the Fatimids in 1098, who then lost the region to the Crusaders in 1099.
1187 ; Their control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine lasted almost a century until defeat by Saladin's forces in 1187, after which most of Palestine was controlled by the Ayyubids.
1258 : In 1258, the Mongols under the leader Hulagu, on their quest to further expand the Mongol Empire, successfully captured the center of power in the Islamic world, the city of Baghdad, effectively destroying the Abbasid dynasty. After Baghdad, the Mongol forces, including some Christians from the previously conquered or submitted territories of Georgia, Cilician Armenia, and Antioch, then went on to conquer Syria, domain of the Ayyubid dynasty. They took the city of Aleppo, and on March 1, 1260, conquered Damascus,[2][3][4][5] destroying the Ayyubid Dynasty as well.
1260 : The Mongol Empire reached Palestine for the first time
1516 : Ottomans captured Palestine.
1517 : Ottoman conquest Egypt.
1744 ; The Emirate of Diriyah was the first Saudi state.[1] It was established in the year 1744 (1157 A.H.) when imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and PrinceMuhammad bin Saud formed an alliance to establish a religious and political sovereignty determined to purge the Arabian Peninsula of heretical practices and deviations from orthodox Islam as they understood it.
1765 ; Saud died in 1765, leaving the leadership to his son, Abdul Aziz Bin Muhammad. Saud's forces went so far as to gain command of the Shi'a holy city of Karbala in 1801. Here they destroyed grave markers of saints and monuments, which the ultra-conservative Salafi brand of Islam considers to be acts of polytheism. Eleven years after the death of Muhammed bin Abd Al Wahhab the son of Abdul Aziz Bin Muhammad, Saud bin Abdul-Aziz bin Muhammad bin Saud, set out forces to bring the region of Hejaz under his rule.[4] Taif was the first city to be captured, and later the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This was seen as a major challenge to the authority of the Ottoman Empire, which had exercised its rule over the holy cities since 1517.
1818 : Abdullah bin Saud (Arabic: عبد الله بن سعود) (died 1818) ruled the First Saudi State from 1814 to 1818. He was the last ruler of the First Saudi State and was executed by the Ottomans. Although the Ottomans maintained several garrisons in Najd thereafter, they were unable to prevent the rise of the Second Saudi State from another branch of the House of Saud under Turki bin Abdallah bin Muhammad bin Saud.
1830 ; The Egyptian occupation of Palestine. link
1840 ; The Ottomans wrested back control of Palestine from the Egyptians in 1840-41.
In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria-Hungary, published Der Judenstaat ("The Jews' State" or "The State of the Jews" – sometimes erroneously translated as "The Jewish State" although Herzl did not mean it as such. He meant a state for the Jews; not a Jewish state), in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing antisemitism, was through the establishment of a state for the Jews. Political Zionism had just been born.[4] A year later, Herzl founded theZionist Organization (ZO), which at its first congress, "called for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law". Serviceable means to attain that goal included the promotion of Jewish settlement there, the organisation of Jews in the diaspora, the strengthening of Jewish feeling and consciousness, and preparatory steps to attain those necessary governmental grants.[5] Herzl passed away in 1904 without the political standing that was required to carry out his agenda of a Jewish home in Palestine.
1899 ; The Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, also known as the British Zionist Federation or simply the Zionist Federation (ZF), was established in 1899 to campaign for a permanent homeland for theJewish people. The Zionist Federation is an umbrella organisation for the Zionist movement in the United Kingdom, representing more than 120 organisations, and over 50,000 affiliated members.
1902 ; Beginning with the reconquest of his family's ancestral home city of Riyadh in 1902, he consolidated his control over the Najd in 1922, then conquered the Hijaz in 1925. Having conquered almost all of central Arabia, he united his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. As King, he presided over the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and the beginning of large-scale oil production after World War II. He fathered many children, with 45 sons,[4] including all of the subsequent kings of Saudi Arabia.
1914 : World War I
War broke out in Europe between the Triple Entente (Britain, France and the Russian Empire) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and later that year, the Ottoman Empire). link
1914 : Two months after Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November.
1914, Zionist British cabinet member Herbert Samuel circulated a memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine to his cabinet colleagues. The memorandum stated that "I am assured that the solution of the problem of Palestine which would be much the most welcome to the leaders and supporters of the Zionist movement throughout the world would be the annexation of the country to the British Empire".
1915 : Henry McMahon had exchanged letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca in 1915, in which he had promised Hussein control of Arab lands with the exception of "portions ofSyria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo". Palestine lay to the southwest of the Vilayet of Damascus and wasn't explicitly mentioned. That modern-day Lebanese region of the Mediterranean coast was set aside as part of a future French Mandate. After the war the extent of the coastal exclusion was hotly disputed. Hussein had protested that the Arabs of Beirut would greatly oppose isolation from the Arab state or states, but did not bring up the matter of Jerusalem or Palestine. Dr. Chaim Weizmann wrote in his autobiography Trial and Error that Palestine had been excluded from the areas that should have been Arab and independent. This interpretation was supported explicitly by the British government in the 1922 White Paper.
16 May 1916. This agreement divided many Arab territories into British- and French-administered areas and allowed for the internationalisation of Palestine.[8] Hussein learned of the agreement when it was leaked by the new Russian government in December 1917, but was satisfied by two disingenuous telegrams from Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner of Egypt, assuring him that the British government's commitments to the Arabs were still valid and that the Sykes-Picot Agreement was not a formal treaty. link
In May 1916 the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Russia signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which defined their proposed spheres of influence and control in Western Asia should the Triple Ententesucceed in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The agreement effectively divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire outside the Arabian peninsula into areas of future British and French control or influence.
The agreement proposed that an "international administration" would be established in an area shaded brown on the agreement's map, which was later to become Palestine, and that the form of the administration would be "decided upon after consultation with Russia, and subsequently in consultation with the other allies, and the representatives of the Sherif of Mecca". Zionists believed their aspirations had been passed over.William Reginald Hall, British Director of Naval Intelligence criticised the agreement on the basis that "the Jews have a strong material, and a very strong political, interest in the future of the country" and that "in the Brown area the question of Zionism, and also of British control of all Palestine railways, in the interest of Egypt, have to be considered".
1917 Balfour Declaration, The Balfour Declaration (dated 2 November 1917) was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
03 March 1924; abolishment of the Ottoman Caliphate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, throughout the country from Makkah to Aleppo and from Sarejevo to Dhaka, the Ottoman Caliph's name was replaced in the Friday liturgy by that ofHussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the hereditary guardian of the holy cities of the Hedjaz, who briefly assumed the title of caliph.
1924, when the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished, he (Hussein bin Ali) further proclaimed himself Caliph of all Muslims. He ruled Hejaz until 1924, when, defeated byAbdul Aziz al Saud, he abdicated the kingdom and other secular titles to his eldest son Ali.
29 November 1947 : the United Nations General Assembly recommended the adoption and implementation of the partition plan of Mandatory Palestine. (link)
14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization[9] and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel," a state independent upon the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine, 15 May 1948.
