In 1535, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered the ruined city walls to be rebuilt.

In the Middle Bronze Age, a period also known in biblical terms as the era of the Patriarchs, a city named Jebus was built on the southeastern hill of Jerusalem, relatively small (50,000 square meters) but well fortified.

Supporting his case, every non-biblical mention of Jerusalem found in the ancient Near East refers to the city as 'Jerusalem'.

During the First Temple period, the city walls were extended to include the northwest hill, which is where today's Jewish and Armenian quarters are located.

After the Babylonian captivity and then the Fall of Babylon, its new ruler Cyrus the Great allowed the Judahites to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple.

[6] Then, Artaxerxes I or possibly Darius II allowed Ezra and Nehemiah to return and rebuild the city's walls and to govern Judea, which was ruled as Yehud Medinata.

Herod the Great added what Josephus called the Second Wall somewhere between today's Jaffa Gate and Temple Mount.

The pagan Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, which was built after 130 by Emperor Hadrian, was at first left without protective walls.

[8] For the next three centuries, the city remained without protective walls, al-Aqsa and the Tower of David then being the only well-fortified areas.

[9]At the northwest corner of the Ottoman wall, archaeologists have discovered the meager remains of a large tower, c. 35x35 metres, probably first built in the 11th century during the Fatimid period, that fell to the Franks at the end of the First Crusade in 1099 and was expanded by the Ayyubids after Saladin's reconquest of the city in the Battle of Hattin in 1187.