MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Israel
ONE LAND · 8 ATLASES
Israel, on the map of history
What was Israel before it was Israel? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Judaea (mod. Israel) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476
Judaea: client kingdom under Herod, province from AD 6, and the empire’s most determined resister. The revolt of 66–73 ended with the Temple destroyed (the ◆ marker at Jerusalem); Bar Kokhba’s rising in 132–135 ended with Judaea depopulated and renamed. Two world religions carry this province’s Roman history in their bones.
| 264 BC | Hellenistic kingdoms — the opening position |
| 62 BC | Roman clients & allies |
| AD 14 | Roman territory |
| AD 271 | Breakaway Roman empires (260–274) |
| AD 285 | Roman territory |
The Latin Kingdom’s heart (mod. Israel/Palestine) · The Crusades, 1095–1291
The heart of the Kingdom of Jerusalem — Jerusalem, Acre, Ascalon, Jaffa. Taken in the massacre of 1099, lost after Hattin in 1187, briefly regained by Frederick II’s treaty in 1229, and gone for good by 1244. Throughout, a Frankish minority ruled over a mixed population of Muslims, Jews, Samaritans and Eastern Christians who remember that century very differently from one another.
| 1095 | The Islamic powers — Seljuk, Zengid, Ayyubid, Mamluk — the opening position |
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Palestine & the Crusader coast (mod. Israel) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294
| 1206 | The Islamic powers — the opening position |
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Israel · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848
| JUL 1789 | Neutral / uncommitted — the opening position |
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Palestine (Ottoman Empire) · The Great War, 1914–1918
| NOV 1914 | The Central Powers — the opening position |
| NOV 1914 | The Central Powers |
| OCT 1918 | Entente-aligned & imperial territories |
| NOV 1914 | The Central Powers |
| NOV 1918 | Entente-aligned & imperial territories |
Israel · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945
| MAR 1936 | Western Allies — the opening position |
Israel · The Cold War, 1945–1991
Founded 1948 in the shadow of the Holocaust and immediately a Cold War variable: armed first by Czech-brokered deals and France, later by America. Its 1967 victory redrew the region; 1973 nearly redrew it back and put both superpowers on nuclear alert (Ch. 8). The US–Israel alignment the era forged outlived the era.
| AUG 1945 | NATO & core Western allies — the opening position |
| OCT 1949 | US-aligned states |
| MAY 1949 | US-aligned states |
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Israel · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994
| 1945 | Independent before 1945 — the opening position |
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