Despite its name, there is no connection between the Tower of David and the famous Biblical king. The root of the confusion lies in the Byzantine period (4th-6th centuries CE). A mistaken reading of the ancient historian Josephus Flavius led the early Church fathers to identify the ''Western Hill'' (where the citadel now stands) as the site of Biblical Jerusalem, and to associate the Tower of Phasael with King David.
The Muslims who conquered Jerusalem in the 7th century CE accepted that association, and dubbed Phasael ''the mihrab of the Prophet David''.
	Westerners who visited Jerusalem in the 19th century in search of physical evidence of the Scriptural record mistakenly identified the 17th-century minaret as the ''Tower of David'', thus ''transferring'' the earlier error from Phasael to a Turkish mosque. With time, the real City of David was positively identified at the foot of Mount Moriah, to the east.
Happy New Year, 19th century.

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