Field Marshall Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem. December 11, 1917.

On this date in 1917, Edmund Allenby, the victorious British commander of the recent campaign to take Jerusalem, entered it.

Allenby, who was a cavalryman by branch, approached the city on horseback in an era when all professional officers not only knew how to ride, their occupations required that they in fact ride in the service.   But, cognizant of the slight given the city by the Kaiser's mounted entry into it in 1898, he and his party dismounted and walked into the city.

Allenby and his staff enter through the Jaffa Gate on foot.

As Allenby recounted it:

...I entered the city officially at noon, 11 December, with a few of my staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, the heads of the political missions, and the Military Attaches of France, Italy, and America... The procession was all afoot, and at Jaffa gate I was received by the guards representing England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, India, France and Italy. The population received me well...

The population of the city did in fact appreciate the dismounted entry.

 Allenby and his staff receive the city notables, note the camera photographing the event.

Allenby, who was quite religious himself, was careful to respect the religions in the city, sending Muslim troops under his command to guard Islamic holy sites.  He is even reputed to have even stated "only now have the crusades ended."  Use of the word "crusade" or "crusader" was in fact banned in his command in order to not associate the English and Allied cause with a religious one in the Middle East.

Reflecting the diverse nature of the city, a Franciscan Monk reads the Allied decree on the city in French and Italian.  The city hosted Arab, Jewish, Greek and other populations and had religious cites that were maintained by Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox bodies.

Of course, as pointed out the other day, the initial local goodwill would not be infinite and the League of Nations Mandate giving the British a protectorate status over Mandatory Palestine would become sufficiently unpopular by the 1930s to lead to an Arab revolt in Palestine, followed of course by the troubles that followed World War Two as the British struggled to resolve the national aspirations of the Arab and Jewish populations.