Jerusalem: The Biography (151 page)

Mandate: conqueror of Jerusalem, General ‘the Bull’ Allenby (right), and military governor Ronald Storrs celebrate the Fourth of July with Bertha Spafford (left) at the American Colony in 1918.

Lawrence of Arabia and Amir Abdullah follow Winston Churchill through the gardens of Augusta Victoria in 1921: the British Colonial Secretary created the new realm of Transjordan for the Hashemite Abdullah.

The glories of Imperial Jerusalem: Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, son of Queen Victoria, hands out awards in Barracks Square, though he grumbled when some recipients wore Ottoman and German medals.

High Commissioner of Palestine Herbert Samuel (seated, centre) and Jerusalem governor Storrs (standing, fourth from the right) host the religious hierarchs of the city after a service to celebrate British liberation in 1924.

Sherif of Mecca, King of Hejaz, Hussein meets the early Palestinian nationalist leader Musa Kazem Husseini (left) in Jerusalem.

The sherif never forgave his ambitious sons, Faisal (left), king first of Syria then Iraq, and Abdullah (right), later king of Jordan (seen here in Jerusalem in 1931) for seizing kingdoms of their own.

David Ben-Gurion, working on new Jewish housing in 1924, emerged as the tough Zionist leader just as the Mufti, Amin al-Husseini, emerged as Arab nationalist leader: here he leads the annual Nabi Musa, Jerusalem’s main Islamic festival, on horseback in 1937.

The annual Easter ritual of the Holy Fire (seen from the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre) was crowded, passionate and often fatal.

The prayers at the Western Wall in 1944 to commemorate the dead of the Holocaust show the tiny, constrained area permitted for Jewish worship.

Asmahan: Arab singer, Druze princess, Egyptian film star, spy and temptress of the wartime King David Hotel.