Гора Сион в Иерусалиме

Hill in Jerusalem

Mount Zion (, Har Ṣīyyōn; جبل صهيون, Jabal Sahyoun) is a hill in Jerusalem, located just outside the walls of the Old City. The term Mount Zion has been used in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David (, ; , ) and later for the Temple Mount, but its meaning has shifted and it is now used as the name of ancient Jerusalem's Western Hill. In a wider sense, the term Zion is also used for the entire Land of Israel.

The etymology of the word Zion is uncertain. Mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Samuel (2 Samuel 5:7) as the name of the Jebusite fortress conquered by King David, its origin likely predates the Israelites. A valley called Wâdi Sahyûn (wadi being the Arabic for "valley") seemingly preserves the name and is located approximately one and three quarter miles (1.75 mile (3 km)) from the Old City of Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate.

The name Mount Zion referred successively to three locations, as Jerusalemites preserved the time honoured name, but shifted the location they venerated as the focal point of biblical Jerusalem to the site considered most appropriate in their own time.

At first, Mount Zion was the name given to the Jebusite fortified city on the lower part of ancient Jerusalem's Eastern Hill, also known as the City of David. The "Mount Zion" mentioned in the later parts of the Book of Isaiah , in the Book of Psalms, and the First Book of Maccabees (c. 2nd century BCE; ) seems to refer to the top of the hill, generally known as the Temple Mount. In the second half of the First Temple period, the city expanded westward and its defensive walls were extended to include the entire Western Hill behind them. Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the city almost completely around 586 BCE, severing the continuity of historical memory. A long period of rebuilding followed, ending with Jerusalem's second total destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE. Josephus, the first century CE historian who knew the city as it was before this second catastrophic event, identified Mount Zion as being the Western Hill, separated from the lower, Eastern Hill, by what he calls the "Tyropoeon Valley".

At the end of the Roman period, a synagogue was built at the entrance of the structure known as David's Tomb, probably based on the belief that David brought the Ark of the Covenant here from Beit Shemesh and Kiryat Ye'arim before the construction of the Temple. During the 1948 war, Mount Zion was conquered by the Harel Brigade on May 18, 1948, and became the only part of the Old City to stay in Israeli hands until the armistice. At first it was linked to the Jewish neighborhood of Yemin Moshe across the Valley of Hinnom via a narrow tunnel, but eventually an alternative was needed to evacuate the wounded and transport supplies to soldiers on Mount Zion. A cable car capable of carrying a load of 250 kilograms was designed for this purpose. The cable car was only used at night and lowered into the valley during the day to escape detection; it is still in place at what is now the Mount Zion Hotel. The ride from the Israeli position at the St. John Eye Hospital to Mount Zion took two minutes. Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under Jordanian rule, Israelis were forbidden access to the Jewish holy places. Mount Zion was a designated no man's land between Israel and Jordan. Mount Zion was the closest accessible site to the ancient Jewish Temple. Until East Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the Six Day War, Israelis would climb to the rooftop of David's Tomb to pray. The winding road leading up to Mount Zion is known as Pope's Way (Derekh Ha'apifyor). It was paved in honor of the historic visit to Jerusalem of Pope Paul VI in 1964. 2 Samuel 5:7 also reads, "David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David," which identifies Mount Tzion as part of the City of David, and not an area outside today's Old City of Jerusalem. Rashi identifies the location as the source of "joy" mentioned in the Psalm as the Temple Courtyard, the location of atonement offerings in the northern part of the Temple complex. In the New Testament, Mount Zion is used metaphorically to refer to the heavenly Jerusalem, God's holy, eternal city. Christians are said to have “ . come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven” (Hebrews 12:22 23 cf. Revelation 14:1).

Important sites on Mount Zion are Dormition Abbey, the Armenian Monastery of St. Saviour, King David's Tomb and the Room of the Last Supper. Most historians and archeologists today do not regard "David's Tomb" there to be the actual burial place of King David. The Chamber of the Holocaust (Martef HaShoah), the precursor of Yad Vashem, is also located on Mount Zion. Another place of interest is the Catholic cemetery where Oskar Schindler, a Righteous Gentile who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews in the Holocaust, is buried. Notable burials in the Protestant cemetery on Mt. Zion include a number of prominent individuals from the 19th and 20th centuries. These include explorers and archaeologists such as: Flinders Petrie, Charles Frederick Tyrwhitt Drake, James Duncan, Clarence Stanley Fisher, Charles Lambert and James Leslie Starkey; the architect Conrad Schick; and pioneers in the fields of medicine, education, religion, diplomacy and social services such as James Edward Hanauer, Ernest Masterman, John Nicholayson, Paul Palmer, Max Sandreczky, Johann Ludwig Schneller, Horatio G. Spafford, author of the hymn It Is Well With My Soul. Also buried in the cemetery are G. Douglas Young, founder of Jerusalem University College, and his wife Georgina (Snook) Young. The cemetery is also the final resting place for a number of soldiers who fought in the First World War, as well as members of the Palestinian Police who served under the British mandate. Several persons buried here were killed in the bombing of the King David Hotel on the morning of 22 July 1946.

In 1874, an Englishman, Henry Maudsley, discovered a large segment of rock scarp and numerous ancient dressed stones on Mount Zion that were believed to be the base of Josephus's First Wall. Several of these stones were used to construct a retaining wall outside the main gate of the Bishop Gobat school (later known as the American Institute of Holy Land Studies and Jerusalem University College).