THERE are few cities like it anywhere. The very name conjures up so much in the minds of so many people. Standing battle scarred from thousands of years of conflict and as a sacred symbol of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Jerusalem invokes reactions from all who live there or visit it.
Perhaps because of how contentious its existence has been, and the divisions among those who have claimed it as their own, many visitors who have encountered this walled city of domes, minarets, dazzling light and stone have sometimes viewed it less than favourably.
In his study Jerusalem – City of Mirrors, the Israeli historian Amos Elon, tells of how the great American writer Mark Twain in his famous travel book, The Innocents Abroad, published in 1867, once described the city as “the abode of ignorant, depraved, superstitious, dirty, lousy, thieving vagabonds”.