Jerusalem, Israel

Lat/Long: 31.7667, 35.2333

The city of Jerusalem is located on two hills and is thirty-five miles east of the Mediterranean Sea and thirteen miles west of the Dead Sea. The city may have originated about the fourth millennium B.C., with early written mentions dating to the fourteenth century B.C. Over the course of the city’s long history, it has been governed by numerous different peoples and empires. In Abraham Lincoln’s lifetime, Jerusalem was a part of the Ottoman Empire. Jerusalem is regarded as a holy city in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Christianity, heaven or paradise is referred to as a new Jerusalem, and the phrase is also used as symbolic of the perfect society.

Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 553; Courtlandt Canby, The Encyclopedia of Historic Places (New York: Facts on File, 1984), 1:442-43; Adrian Room, rev., Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (London: Cassell, 1999; repr. London: Cassell, 2002), 632-33, 817-18.