Markov jump linear systems find application in many areas including economics, fault-tolerant control, and networked control. Despite significant attention paid to Markov jump linear systems in the literature, few authors have investigated Markov jump linear systems with time-inhomogeneous Markov chains (Markov chains with time-varying transition probabilities), and even fewer authors have considered time-inhomogeneous Markov chains with a priori unknown transition probabilities. This dissertation provides a formal stability and disturbance attenuation analysis for a Markov jump linear system where the underlying Markov chain is characterized by an a priori unknown sequence of transition probability matrices that assumes one of finitely-many values at each time instant. Necessary and sufficient conditions for uniform stochastic stability and uniform stochastic disturbance attenuation are reported. In both cases, conditions are expressed as a set of finite-dimensional linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) that can be solved efficiently. These finite-dimensional LMI analysis results lead to nonconservative LMI formulations for optimal controller synthesis with respect to disturbance attenuation. As a special case, the analysis also applies to a Markov jump linear system with known transition probabilities that vary in a finite set. / Ph. D.