Шығыс Иерусалемдегі Зейтүн Тауы

Mountain in East Jerusalem

The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet (הַר הַזֵּיתִים; جبل الزيتون; both lit. 'Mount of Olives'; in Arabic also الطور, Aṭ Ṭūr, 'the Mountain') is a mountain ridge in East Jerusalem, east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. The southern part of the mount was the Silwan necropolis, attributed to the elite of the ancient Kingdom of Judah. Atop the hill lies the Palestinian neighbourhood of At Tur, a former village that is now part of East Jerusalem. Several key events in the life of Jesus, as related in the Gospels, took place on the Mount of Olives, and in the Acts of the Apostles it is described as the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven. Because of its association with both Jesus and Mary, the mount has been a site of Christian worship since ancient times and is today a major site of pilgrimage for Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants.

The Mount of Olives is one of three peaks of a mountain ridge which runs for just east of the Old City across the Kidron Valley, in this area called the Valley of Josaphat. The peak to its north is Mount Scopus, at , while the peak to its south is the Mount of Corruption, at The highest point on the Mount of Olives is At Tur, at The ridge acts as a watershed, and its eastern side is the beginning of the Judean Desert. The ridge is formed of oceanic sedimentary rock from the Late Cretaceous and contains a soft chalk and a hard flint. While the chalk is easily quarried, it is not a suitable strength for construction and features many man made burial caves.

From Biblical times until the present, Jews have been buried on the Mount of Olives. The necropolis on the southern ridge, the location of the modern village of Silwan, was the burial place of Jerusalem's most important citizens in the period of the Biblical kings. The religious ceremony marking the start of a new month was held on the Mount of Olives during the Second Temple period. During the time of the Roman procurator Antonius Felix (52–60 CE), a Jewish prophetic figure known as "the Egyptian" gathered his followers atop the Mount of Olives in preparation for an invasion of the city or in the belief that he would cause the walls of Jerusalem to fall, allowing them to enter (depending on the version). This group was crushed by the Romans. While "the Egyptian" managed to flee, many of his followers were killed or taken captive, and the remainder escaped. Roman soldiers from the 10th Legion camped on the mount during the Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews celebrated the festival of Sukkot on the Mount of Olives. They made pilgrimages to the Mount of Olives because it was 80 meters higher than the Temple Mount and offered a panoramic view of the Temple site. It became a traditional place for lamenting the Temple's destruction, especially on Tisha B'Av. In 1189, in the wake of the 1187 Battle of Hattin and reconquest of the land by Saladin, the sultan gave the Mount to two of his commanders. In the mid 1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves on the mount. Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin asked to be buried on the Mount of Olives near the graves of Etzel members Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani, rather than Mount Herzl national cemetery.

The armistice agreement signed by Israel and Jordan following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War called for the establishment of a Special Committee to negotiate developments including "free access to the holy sites and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives". However, during the 19 years the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank lasted, the committee was not formed. Non Israeli Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the mount, but Jews of all countries and most non Jewish Israeli citizens were barred from entering Jordan and therefore were unable to travel to the area. By the end of 1949, and throughout the Jordanian rule of the site, some Arab residents uprooted tombstones and plowed the land in the cemeteries, and an estimated 38,000 tombstones were damaged in total. During this period, a road was paved through the cemetery, in the process destroying graves including those of famous persons. In 1964, the Intercontinental Hotel was built at the summit of the mount. Graves were also demolished for parking lots and a filling station and were used in latrines at a Jordanian Army barracks. The United Nations did not condemn the Jordanian government for these actions.

Following the 1967 Six Day War restoration work was done and the cemetery was reopened for burials. Israel's 1980 unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem was condemned as a violation of international law and ruled null and void by the UN Security Council in UNSC Resolution 478. Tombs in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery have been prone to vandalism, among them the tombs of the Gerrer Rebbe and Menachem Begin. On 6 November 2010, an international watch committee was set up by Diaspora Jews with the aim of reversing the desecration of the Jewish cemetery. According to one of the founders, the initiative was triggered by witnessing tombstones that were wrecked with "the kind of maliciousness that defies the imagination." Israeli geologists Wachs and Levitte identified the remnant of a large landslide on the Mount of Olives directly adjacent to this area. Based on geographic and linguistic evidence, Charles Simon Clermont Ganneau, a 19th century linguist and archeologist in Palestine, theorized that the valley directly adjacent to this landslide is Azal. This evidence accords with the LXX reading of Zechariah 14:5, which states that the valley will be blocked up as far as Azal. The valley he identified (which is now known as Wady Yasul in Arabic, and Nahal Etzel in Hebrew) lies south of both Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Many Jews have wanted to be buried on the Mount of Olives since antiquity, based on the Jewish tradition (from the Biblical verse Zechariah 14:4) that when the Messiah comes, the resurrection of the dead will begin there. Unreliable source: date=May 2015 There are an estimated 150,000 graves on the Mount. Notable rabbis buried on the mount include Chaim ibn Attar and others from the 15th century to the present day. Tradition wrongly identifies Roman period tombs at the foot of the mount as those of Zechariah and Absalom, and a burial complex of the same period on the upper slope as the Tomb of the Prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

The Mount of Olives is frequently mentioned in the New Testament as part of the route from Jerusalem to Bethany and the place where Jesus stood when he wept over Jerusalem (an event known as Flevit super illam in Latin). Jesus is said to have spent time on the mount, teaching and prophesying to his disciples (Matthew 24–25), including the Olivet discourse, returning after each day to rest (Luke 21:37, and John 8:1 in the additional section of John's Gospel known as the Pericope Adulterae), and also coming there on the night of his betrayal. At the foot of the Mount of Olives lies the Garden of Gethsemane. The New Testament tells how Jesus and his disciples sang together – "When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives" Gospel of Matthew 26:30. Jesus ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives according to Acts 1:9–12.

Again, the story of Jesus with his disciples on the Mount of Olives can be found in the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia, dated around the 3rd to 4th century CE.

Landmarks at the top of the Mount of Olives include the Augusta Victoria Hospital with the Lutheran Church of the Ascension and its massive bell tower, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Ascension with its tall and slender bell tower, the Mosque or Chapel of the Ascension, the Church of the Pater Noster, and the Seven Arches Hotel. On the western slope are the historic Jewish cemetery, the Tomb of the Prophets, the Catholic Church of Dominus Flevit, and the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. At the foot of the mount, where it meets the Kidron Valley, there is the Garden of Gethsemane with the Church of All Nations. Within the Kidron Valley itself are the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, the Grotto of Gethsemane, and the nearby tomb of the medieval historian Mujir ed Din, and further south are the tombs of Absalom (Hebrew name: Yad Avshalom), the Hezir priestly family and of Zechariah. At the northern margin of Mount Olivet stand the Mormon University with the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden and the Jewish settlement of Beit Orot, bordering on the Tzurim Valley and the Mitzpe Hamasu'ot ('Beacons Lookout') site, where the Temple Mount Sifting Project facilities are located. What lays north of here belongs to Mount Scopus. On the south eastern slope of the Mount of Olives lies the Palestinian Arab village of al Eizariya, identified with the ancient village of Bethany mentioned in the New Testament; a short distance from the village centre, towards the top of the mount, is the traditional site of Bethphage, marked by a Franciscan church.