Sherif of Mecca, King of Hejaz, Hussein (right) meets the early Palestinian nationalist leader Musa Kazem al-Husseini (left) in Jerusalem. (illustration credit ill.61)

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. (illustration credit ill.62)

David Ben-Gurion, working on new Jewish housing in 1924 (left), emerged as the tough Zionist leader just as Mufti Amin al-Husseini (right) emerged as Arab nationalist leader: here he leads the annual Nabi Musa, Jerusalem’s main Islamic festival, on horseback in 1937. (illustration credit ill.63)

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. (illustration credit ill.64)

The prayers at the Western Wall in 1944 to commemorate the dead of the Holocaust show the tiny, constrained area permitted for Jewish worship. (illustration credit ill.65)