Part II: The people with a special history
The etymologically, the word “Israelites” ( Ban i Israel) was the name of the followers of “Israel” which was another name of Jacob (Hazrat Yaqub). Though Jews were Israelites, as yet, all the Israelites were not Jews. There were Judaen or Judaists also dating back from the return from Babylon when the tribe of Judah became their head representative. They follow Judaism. Jerusalem was traditionally capital of both Israelites and Judaists.
After almost one thousand years from the time of the Moses, the Tiglath-Pilesar ( Tukulti in Arabic), the General of Assyrian Empire who founded neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed the cities of Israelites in 722 BC and took many of their tribes as captive. Assyria (Assura) comprised of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Armenia and Turkey.
But, it was the greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II (reign, 562-605 BC), of the neo-Babylonian Empire, who in 587 BC besieged the temple of Judaen Israelites in Jerusalem, deprived them of their royal power and destroyed their temple and Jerusalem, burnt Torah and killed them. To note, under Hebrew and Biblical traditions, Jews were foretold by their contemporary Prophet Jeremiah ( Umriya in Arabic) in 550 BC about siege and destruction of Jerusalem for their acts of idolatry and immorality, for which he was persecuted by the Jews.
Nebuchadnezzar ( Bakht Nasur in Arabic) is praised in the Bible as just ruler against whom the Judaen Israelites or Jews were in rebellion. Gibbon writes that “the ungrateful race” had “perpetually relapsed into rebellion against the visible majesty of their Divine King(s)”, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon, “placed the idols of the nations in the sanctuary of Jehovah (Hebrew God), and imitated every fantastic ceremony that was practised in the tents of the (polytheist) Arabs or in the cities of Phoenicia (ancient name of port city of Sidon/Sidonia/ Saida in Labenon)”.
With the victory of Nebuchadnezzar, the kingdom of Israel came to an end in history and Nebuchadnezzar deported the ten tribes of Israelites or Jews to the Euphrates, River Al-Farat in Babylon (Al-Hilah city of modern day Iraq) and Isfahan (Iranian city). (Ibni Khaldun) They were transported to Babylon itself (Iraq) (Toynbee). In the same passage, Toynbee uses the term “the Lost Ten Tribes” of conquered population were deported in 727 BC by the neo-Assyrian war-lord Sargon-I ( Sarjon Awal in Arabic) who is stated to have been son of Tiglath-Pilesar.
He does not mention of Isfahan. He adds that deportation was not limited to conquered population (of Jews) alone. It was then normal course with the victorious monarchs to inflict the punishment of deportation even on their own people in rebellion. Toynbee cites several examples in this regard. Even bigger deportations before and after Assyrians’ deportation of ten Northern tribes of Israelites took place. The two Southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin were not exiled.
Cyrus the great, or the king Zulqar-Nayan in Quran (according to several Muslim historians), was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia ( Shahanshahi Hakhamanshi). He defeated the neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC and made Zerubbabel the governor of Yahud small province and in 522 BC, with permission of Cyrus the great, Zerubbabel brought back all the ten deported Israelite-tribes from Babylon and Ishfan and settled them in the Palestine after seventy years of their deportation. He made Palestine as his capital.
Their temple was rebuilt and religion restored by the Persian patriarch of Achaemenid Empire but the royal authority belonged to the Achaemenid Empire. (Ibn Khalidun ) Cyrus “appeared as a heaven-sent deliverer” for the Jews. (Toynbee). “Cyrus permitted the exiled nation of Israel to return into the Promised Land”. (Gibbon). From the accounts of the most Eminent Historians of the ancient world like Ibn Khaldun, Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee and others, the deportation of Israelites by Assyrian kings was redressed by Cyrus the great in 539 BCE by bringing them back to their homeland.
The Greek Macedonian kingdom was under subjugation of the Persian Achaemenid Empire from sixth century BCE and the Achaemenid Empire was defeated by the Alexander the great ( Sikandar e Azam) of the Macedonia in fourth century BCE and the Israelites or Jews, thus, came under the domination of the Greek Power. Hosmonean priests of Jews were given royal power over Judea of Levant. (Levant and Near East, to note, were ancient names which included the today’s Middle East. Under old geography, the world was broadly divided into Near East and Far East). The Greeks were finally defeated in the battle of Alexandria in first century BCE by the Romans. They captured Jerusalem by force in an orgy, murder and destruction.
The Romans exiled the Jews to Rome and the regions beyond. The Israel came under the dominion of the Roman Empire and in early century of CE in the reign of Hadrian, Emperor of Rome, they again revolted. (Ibn Khaldun) The “senile Seleucids”, the Jews, rose “against the mighty power of Rome in its heyday”. (Toynbee). The royal power of Hosmonean Jews was taken away by their Jewish Herodian king of Judea, Herod( Hero’dus) and he was ruler of Palestine only by the grace of mighty Roman Power.
Babe Jesus was “saved from Herod’s murderous design by being taken away privily to Egypt as Moses” was “saved from Pharaoh’s murderous design by being hidden in the bulrushes” (Toynbee). The tyrant Jewish monarch incited Julius Caesar Augusts, the first Emperor of the Roman Empire in first century BC to intervene and order the killing of Jesus Christ. The Jewish persecution of Christ and his followers is also well known. Jesus Christ (PBUH) modified their laws and they “envied him and declared him a liar”. (Ibn Khaldun) The Jews split into two groups fighting each other. The Romans put the temple of Jerusalem which was built by Herod in ruins.
The attitude of Roman Emperors towards Christianity also varied and finally it was Constantine, the Roman Emperor, who in fourth century CE adopted Christianity as State religion of Roman Empire that marked the beginning of growth of Christianity in Europe and beyond.
