Reply #39: And what was there in '47?

[ieoeja]

In 1947 the Palestinian Mandate was a British construct last ruled independantly by the people living there some time before the Romans conquered it.


Following the destruction of Israel by the Romans around the start of the common era, the area was part of a principality of the Roman/Byzantine Empire.

The Caliphate founded by Mohammad then conquered the land.

When Ali became Imam and Caliph, the first of the second generation Muslims to asend to this position, the Caliphate split into at least two parts. The area you are talking about likely switched hands several times. Early in the 2nd millenia the area was ruled from Cairo. Then Damascus took it away from Cairo. While a part of the Cairo Caliphate, Jews and Christians in the region were treated decently enough for second class citizens. Damascus, however, began persecuting the Jews and Christians. In addition, having secured their southern border, Damascus felt free to increase their attempts at conquering Byzantia. These two factors -- plus somebody's evil, but successful, idea that getting the English and French knights out of Europe was the only way to bring an end to the Hundred Years War -- prompted western Europe to come to the defense of Byzantia and the aid of the Christians in the Holy Lands.

Cairo recaptured the area taken by the Christians from Damascus. Somewhere along the line Turkish mercenaries in Cairo launched a coup against Cairo then went on to conquer the Middle East, even taking Constantinople; something never accomplished by their former Arab employers. The area remained under Turkish rule until the British captured it during World War I.

Britain drew some lines on a map creating the Mandate of Palestine. In the face of Jewish and Arabic uprisings, they drew a new line through the Mandate calling one half Palestine and the other Transjordan. And this how things stood in 1947 as the British began to tire of the continual uprisings by the Jewish people "living there at the time".