Download PDF | Adrian J. Boas - Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades_ Society, Landscape and Art in the Holy City under Frankish Rule-Routledge (2001).
289 Pages
INTRODUCTION
The period of Frankish rule in Jerusalem is not a long one when compared to some other periods in the history of the city. It embraces two distinct phases, the first and principal one extending from the conquest of the city on 15 July 1099, at the end of the First Crusade, until the Ayyubid occupation on 2 October 1187 following the Battle of Hattin and a brief siege lasting twelve days. The second, short-lived phase began with the reoccupation of Jerusalem by the Franks under the terms of the Treaty of Jaffa and Tell Ajul, ratified on 18 February 1229. When the treaty expired ten years later in 1239, Jerusalem was briefly occupied by al-Nasir al-Da’Gd of Kerak. After destroying the Tower of David, he departed and the city was reoccupied by the Franks in 1241. This final phase of Crusader occupation ended with the Khwarizmian conquest of the city in 1244.
These two periods of Frankish rule together amount to little more than a hundred years. In terms of the physical changes that took place in this short span of time, we can place Crusader Jerusalem among the important periods in the history of the city. Within the contours of Roman/Byzantine Jerusalem the Franks carried out an internal transformation which was in some measure as great as any made to Jerusalem since the time of Hadrian in the second century AD.
The evolution of Jerusalem into a Crusader city was a protracted undertaking extending over several decades, the dual aim of which was the physical restoration of the spiritual capital of Christendom and the transformation of a provincial Muslim city into the capital of a Western Christian kingdom. The rebuilding of Jerusalem was also aimed at overcoming the demographic crisis which the Franks themselves had created. When they occupied Jerusalem, a slaughter of the local population was carried out between 15 and 18 July 1099.! It left the new capital purged of ‘infidels’ but also almost a ghost town, as few Crusaders remained in the city after the conquest.
As a result, alongside the passionate desire to restore Christian holy places to their past glory, there was a more practical need to repopulate the now near-empty city. The lengthy process of restoration and repopulation began shortly after the occupation. However, restoration requires capital, and after the First Crusade financial support from the West was not always forthcoming. Though there were few local resources, some of the abandoned wealth of Fatimid Jerusalem could now be channelled into new projects. This must have been at least partly the means by which a fairly large number of churches was built in the first half of the twelfth century to replace those destroyed by the Egyptian Caliph alHakim at the beginning of the eleventh century.” These included not only the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but the churches of St Anne, St Mary on Mount Zion, the Tomb of the Virgin in Jehoshaphat, St James in the Armenian Quarter, the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives and a large number of lesser churches.
However, the efforts to repopulate the city required much more than churches. The real recovery of Jerusalem and its transformation into a city worthy of its position in Christendom was achieved when both Church and lay leaders realized the tremendous potential of pilgrimage, as a source of cash, commerce and new settlers. Thus one of the prominent features of twelfth-century Jerusalem is its focus on what one is tempted to call the ‘pilgrim industry’, the medieval equivalent of the tourist industry. Christian pilgrimage began to revive immediately after the Frankish conquest, and steadily increased as internal security improved.
The need grew for hospices, hospitals, money exchanges and specialized markets and the Franks began to construct these in the first half of the twelfth century. An early thirteenth-century text which describes these institutions shows the centrality of pilgrimage in the life of the city. La Citez de Jherusalem, an anonymous French pilgrim guide, describes, as do most such guides, the numerous churches and holy sites in and around the city.* However, it also describes, and in greater detail than any other medieval source, the streets, money exchanges, markets, hospices, hospitals and various other institutions established specifically for the use of the crowds of pilgrims. Crusader Jerusalem was a city in which the Christian pilgrim was well looked after.
THE MEDIEVAL CITY
In appearance, the Old City of Jerusalem is still essentially a medieval city. However, within the confines of its walls some fundamental changes have taken place since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The gates are not locked at night and the walls no longer serve as bulwarks against a hostile outer world. The open fields around the inside of the walls, once used as fruit and vegetable gardens and open markets, have largely been overrun by construction works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is now electricity, gas, piped water and a reasonably modern sewage system. Nonetheless, with the exception of the Jewish Quarter, which has been largely rebuilt since 1967, the city is very much as it appeared nine hundred years ago and a visitor from the twelfth century would probably not have too much trouble in finding his way about.
Medieval Jerusalem (see the map on page xv) was the holiest of Christian cities, containing, as it still does, a multitude of pilgrimage sites. Like other cities where tourism and pilgrimage are staple industries, the city’s population can be divided into two distinct groups — permanent residents and visitors. In such cities the ratio between these two groups reflects the degree of success in ministering to the needs of visitors. A higher proportion of visitors to residents will be found in a city which is doing a better job at ‘selling itself to the public. Because of its spiritual attractions Jerusalem has always done this fairly well. The Middle Ages were no exception and, while we have no Statistics, or at least none that are reliable, there can be little doubt that by such standards medieval Jerusalem was quite successful.
How can we judge the degree of success of a city which, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist eight hundred years ago? One way to do this is to look at its surviving monuments. A large number of medieval public buildings can still be found in the city. In less than ninety years the Franks not only replaced all the churches destroyed under Muslim rule but built a large number of new ones, re-identifying and on occasion inventing holy sites to go with them. They also strengthened the fortifications and built a new palace, constructed monasteries, hospices, hospitals, covered market streets, bathhouses and various other institutions. The extent of Frankish efforts in the construction of these works has no parallel in the history of the city since the Byzantine period and by such standards Crusader Jerusalem seems to have been a great success as a pilgrimage city.
THE PHYSICAL SETTING
Jerusalem is situated on the watershed of the Judaean mountains, about 750 to Jizo m above sea level (Figure 1.1). It is 58 km inland from the Mediterranean coast and 25 km west of the northern tip of the Dead Sea. Since it is positioned on what could hardly be considered an important commercial route south from Damascus via Nablus and a number of lesser roads, to Hebron in the south, Jericho and Amman in the east and Ramleh and Jaffa to the west, commerce has never really been a significant factor in its history. While it holds a certain role as a regional centre, Jerusalem has always owed its importance to religion and politics.
The present-day Old City, enclosed within its sixteenth-century walls, covers the same area, give or take a few square metres, as Crusader Jerusalem. It is located between two valleys, the Kidron to the east and the Hinnom to the west, which converge in the south at the site of the city’s principal natural water source, the Siloam Spring. Within this physical frame, the secondary Tyropoeon Valley, running through the city from north to south, divides it into two hills; Mount Zion to the west and Mount Moriah (the Temple Mount) to the east. The Siloam Spring is the only natural water source, a factor which would have limited the development of the city but was resolved by artificial solutions such as the construction of aqueducts, open reservoirs and cisterns.!
Jerusalem is located in an area of limestone and chalk and these serve as its principal building materials. They include the soft, pinkish post-tertiary limestone, of poor quality for building, locally known as Nari and the harder Hippurite limestone termed Mizzi2 A white limestone known as Meleke (‘royal’) is also popular in building, as it is very easy to cut when freshly quarried but hardens when exposed. Crusader masons favoured two types of stone, the Mizzi for marginally drafted ashlars or roughly shaped fieldstones used in wall construction, and the softer Meleke for the finer, carefully drafted building stones with the distinctive Frankish diagonal tooling used for door and window frames and other architectural features.°
In the Crusader period the hills immediately around the city were devoid of trees suitable for timber. Sieges, droughts and the types of soil and rock in the region were not favourable to the establishment of natural forests. The Roman siege of the first century AD had depleted the forests and, long before the twelfth century, Arculfus (c. 670) had noted the need to transport firewood to Jerusalem from a small pine forest located slightly north of Hebron.‘ It is unlikely that there was any improvement in this condition between the seventh century and the time when the Crusaders appeared on the scene. Indeed, by that time the situation must have worsened.
If the forest near Hebron had survived that long, it may well have been denuded in 1098 during the Fatimid siege of Seljuk Jerusalem and perhaps again prior to the arrival of the Crusaders, when the Fatimids probably cut down any remaining trees in the region to provide themselves with wood in preparation for the approaching siege.° The Franks would have depleted any remaining resources in their search for wood to construct their siege machinery.” Throughout the Crusade period and later the lack of wood for firewood or construction remained a problem. Thus Theoderich (c. 1169) writes: ‘Wood suitable for building or for fires is dear there, because the Mount Lebanus — the only mountain which abounds in cedar, cypress, and pine-wood — is a long way off from them, and they cannot approach it for fear of the attacks of the infidels.’* Later, in the fifteenth century, the pilgrim Felix Fabri refers to the difficulty of obtaining firewood for use in private kitchens.?
The vicinity of Crusader Jerusalem was an area of fairly intensive rural settlemen In addition to the larger towns and villages, like Bethlehem to the south and al-Bira (Magna Mahumeria) to the north, there were a number of smaller villages, farms and rural estate centres such as ar-Ram and al-Jib, al-Kuraim and Montjoie (Nabi Samawil) to the north, al-Qubaiba (Parva Mahumeria), Motza (Colonia), Khirbet Mizza, Lifta (Clepsta), Khirbet Lowza and Aqua Bella to the west, and Bethpage and Bethany to the east. Monasteries were located at Ain Karem (St John in the Wood), Abu Ghosh (Emmaus/Fontenoid), Bethany and Nabi Samawil (Montjoie). Many of these rural properties were possessions of property owners resident in the city. Occasionally these were private individuals, but more often they were the king, the churches and military orders. Most of the settlements supplied the city with farm produce, livestock, poultry, cereals, fruit and vegetables and processed products such as cheese, wine and oil.!! Some no doubt provided the city with pottery and other manufactured items.
BACKGROUND TO THE CRUSADER PERIOD
A noted earlier, the Frankish conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, with the ensuing slaughter and the banishment of the surviving population, left the city almost devoid of inhabitants. However, within a few decades the city was repopulated and for most of the twelfth century it thrived as the administrative capital and as the focus of a massive pilgrimage movement. Under the Franks Jerusalem became more cosmopolitan in character than it had been under Muslim rule. Buildings in the Romanesque style rose among the local Eastern architecture. Pilgrims from every Christian country visited the city, mixing in the streets with the Eastern Christian residents. Having recovered its position as capital after many centuries, Jerusalem also regained some of the establishments that had long been absent from the city. It was once again a royal city and had a royal palace which, after various locations, was finally constructed on the site of the Herodian palace to the south of the citadel. Jerusalem had a mint, a royal treasury and other institutions of government. This was a far cry from the position it had held under Muslim rule, when, after initial eminence under the Umayyads, the city had taken on a role subordinate to the new provincial capital of Ramleh.
Jerusalem on the eve of the Crusades
Just over four and a half centuries had passed since Jerusalem had come under Muslim rule. In AD 614, after a twenty-day siege, Byzantine Jerusalem had been conquered by the Persians. Although the city was recaptured fourteen years later by Emperor Heraclius, the Persian victory of 614 heralded the approaching end of Christian Jerusalem. Two decades later, between AD 636 and 638 the Holy City fell to the Muslim army of Caliph ‘Umar.! For the next four and a half centuries Jerusalem was held by a succession of Muslim military governors representing foreign rule: the Umayyads ruling from Damascus until 750, the Abbasids from Baghdad until 878, the Egyptian Tulunid caliphate from 868 to 905 and Fatimid caliphate from 969 until 1073. In June of that year the Turkish Seljuks took the city and in 1098, one year before the arrival of the army of the First Crusade, Jerusalem reverted to Fatimid rule.
In general, under the Muslims the physical layout of Jerusalem differed little from that of the Byzantine city. The only major change was the eleventh-century reconstruction of the city wall in the south, which left the City of David and Mount Zion outside the walls, and the realignment of the north-west wall somewhat further to the west. However, major alterations were made to the urban infrastructure by the construction of many new and remarkable public buildings. The most important of these were the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Umayyad palaces south of the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif).
The population of Jerusalem in the Fatimid period approached twenty thousand.” It was a diverse amalgamation of Jews, various communities of Eastern Christians and Muslims.’ Several hundred years after the Islamic conquest, the Muslims may still not have been the majority and do not appear to have been entirely in control of the city.* Christian and Jewish pilgrimage continued, in spite of the difficulties and dangers involved.°
Nasir-i Khosraw described Jerusalem as a great city with strong walls, iron gates, high, well-built bazaars and paved streets.° The Seljuk occupation of the city from 1073 until 1098 has left no evidence for any major construction in that period. However, there is evidence for a religious-intellectual revival in the city after a certain spiritual drought under the Fatimids.’ In August 1098, the Fatimids under the command of the vizier, al-Afdal ibn Badr al-Jamali, reoccupied Jerusalem. In preparation for the anticipated arrival of the Crusader armies, which by that time were approaching Antioch, the Fatimid governor Iftikhar al-Dawla stationed in the city a large, welltrained army augmented by a special Egyptian corps of 400 élite cavalry. The Muslims prepared for the arrival of the Crusaders by strengthening the city walls, particularly in the north, where they built or strengthened an existing barbican and ditch, and on Mount Zion, where they cut another ditch and possibly reconstructed the forewall.® Residents of surrounding villages moved inside the walls, and the greater part of the Christian population was expelled from the city to the outlying villages. The latter was a precaution against possible treachery on the part of the Christians, who were understandably suspected of harbouring aspirations of a return to Christian rule.’
Conquest and occupation in the twelfth century
On 27 November 1095, in the town of Clermont in central France, Pope Urban II called on Western Christianity to organize an army to free the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidel. In the following year a great crusade was organized and set out for the East.'° On the morning of 7 June 1099 the army of the First Crusade arrived at a hill subsequently known as Montjoie, from where they could see Jerusalem in the distance. This was probably Nabi Samawil, one of the highest hills in the Judaean Mountains and traditional site of the burial place of the prophet Samuel, located 7.5 km north-west of Jerusalem. By dusk they were camped outside the city walls. The sixweek siege of Jerusalem, the culmination of the three years of the First Crusade, began.
According to the Frankish chronicler, William, archbishop of Tyre, on the Frankish side there were some 1,500 knights, 20,000 foot-soldiers and 18,500 followers. On the Muslim side there were an estimated 40,000 well-equipped soldiers."! Iftikhar al-Dawla set up his headquarters in the citadel (the Tower of David) located beside the western gate, and the citizens, mostly Muslims and Jews, were stationed along the entire length of the walls. Accounts vary as to the initial deployment of the Crusading army on 7 June. According to William of Tyre, it was concentrated in the north-west of the city, ‘from the gate known today as St Stephen, which faces north, to the gate which lies below the Tower of David on the west side of the city’.!? Count Raymond of Toulouse initially took up a position opposite the wall, between the citadel and the northwestern corner.
The Italian Norman, Tancred, faced Qasr al-Jaliid (sometimes known as the Quadrangular Tower and later as Tancred’s Tower) at the north-west corner of the city, and further to the east along the northern wall were Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and, at the centre of the northern wall near Damascus Gate, Godfrey of Bouillon.'? The description by Albert of Aachen (Aix), however, places Godfrey opposite the Tower of David to the west, with Tancred to his left, Raymond of Toulouse to his right, Robert of Flanders and Hugh of St Pol behind and Robert of Normandy with Conan of Brittany at Damascus Gate."
The first major action was an ill-prepared and fundamentally pointless direct attack on the walls that took place on 13 June (Figure 2.1). The attack, which perhaps was dictated by the spiritual mood of the troops rather than by military considerations, was doomed to failure from the start. In medieval warfare a castle or walled city could not be taken without a good supply of timber needed for the construction of ladders and siege machinery. As noted earlier, the Crusader armies had almost none. The Muslims had probably destroyed whatever forests survived around Jerusalem before they arrived.! Fulcher of Chartres wrote that the princes had ordered wooden ladders to be made but complained that there were too few of them, resulting in the abandonment of the attack.!° The anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum wrote that if the scaling ladders of the Franks had been ready the city would have fallen. He does record the use of one ladder, noting that after breaking through the barbican the Franks set it up against the great wall.!”
But scaling ladders alone were clearly not sufficient for a full-scale attack on a strongly fortified city. Although ill-conceived, the motivation for this direct attack is not difficult to understand in light of the difficult terrain, which greatly diminished the likelihood of an effective blockade of the walls, essential to carrying out a siege. It was obvious that the Fatimids would reply in force to the Crusader advance into their territory and to their attack on Jerusalem. It was essential for the Crusaders to occupy the city as soon as possible and to place the walls of Jerusalem between themselves and the Fatimid army.
The predictable failure of the direct attack resulted in the Crusaders taking a more sober approach to the problem. With the weariness and despondency of the army, the heat and lack of supplies and the impending threat from Egypt, a protracted siege was not a real option. As time was of the essence, the Crusader leaders moved in two directions: on the one hand they attempted to improve the morale of the troops by reawakening their dormant religious feelings through sermons, fasts and prayer, and on the other they made an effort to obtain the wood needed to build siege machinery, making do with what they could find. According to Fulcher of Chartres, battering rams and sows (movable roofed structures used during a siege to approach a wall without being exposed to fire) were prepared, and a tower was constructed “from small pieces of wood because large pieces could not be secured in those regions’.!’ Non-combatants were sent to Bethlehem to gather branches and twigs to make coverings for assault machines. The Franks also moved further afield in their search for timber.
On 8 July a barefoot march around the walls was led by priests with crosses and holy relics, ending on the Mount of Olives where a sermon was preached by Arnulf of Choques. The fighting spirit was restored. If the Crusaders had hoped that this march would precipitate a biblical collapse of the walls they were disappointed. However, the search for timber to build siege machinery was at last successful. Wood was found over 50 km distant, near Nablus. Also, according to Albert of Aachen, a local Christian showed the Franks where to find timber four miles towards Arabia (east).!? William of Tyre records that timber was found six or seven miles distant and that it was used to build siege machines: mangonels (or petraries), rams and scrophae (sows).”° Ralph of Caen records that Tancred, who was suffering from dysentery and sought privacy during one of the searches for wood, came upon a cave containing some 400 beams of wood conveniently left there by the Fatimids, perhaps from their siege of the Seljuks.7! Another conveniently timed event was the arrival of Genoese ships at Jaffa on 17 June. Atthe same time a large Fatimid fleet approached Jaffa. Rather than having their ships sunk by the Muslims, the Genoese dismantled them and withdrew to the citadel. They then accompanied their dismantled ships to the outskirts of Jerusalem, where the construction of siege engines commenced.”
According to the Gesta Francorum, when the defenders discerned the construction of the siege weapons, they reacted by strengthening the fortifications and increasing the height of the defences.” The Frankish siege machines included three large siege towers, which were placed on Mount Zion and at two different positions on the northern wall. These were the only parts of the city’s defences where the natural topography allowed the use of siege towers, which could only be used on fairly flat terrain. The Gesta relates that it took the Franks three days and three nights to fill the ditch and bring the towers up to the walls.** Two of the towers were partly destroyed in the fighting but the third, under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon, was brought up against the forewall east of St Stephen’s Gate (Damascus Gate). On Friday 15 July, a battering ram was used to knock down the barbican. According to William of Tyre, the fighters in the siege engines ignited sacks of straw and cotton, spreading black smoke onto the ramparts and causing the defenders to abandon their positions.”> At nine o’clock two Flemish brothers, Lethold and Gilbert of Tournai, mounted the wall, followed by Duke Godfrey, and entered the city. The Franks later raised a cross on the wall at this place to commemorate the event. Godfrey sent a number of knights to open the northern gate and the entire army entered the city.
In the south, on Mount Zion, Raymond of Toulouse’s men scaled the walls with ladders and ropes and entered the city. The Muslim defenders fled to the citadel. After negotiations, the Fatimid commander surrendered the citadel to Raymond; in return the Muslim and Jewish fugitives who had taken refuge there were permitted safe passage to the coastal city of Ascalon.
However, the fate of most of the population of Jerusalem was less fortunate. The First Crusade ended true to form. The slaughter of the Jewish communities in the Rhineland in 1096 and of the Muslims in the town of Magharat an-Nu‘aman near Antioch in January 1099 was not to eclipse the massacre carried out by the Crusaders during their first three days in Jerusalem. There are a number of graphic descriptions of this slaughter. Part of the population sought refuge on the roof of the al-Aqsa Mosque. They were promised the protection of Tancred and the banners of Tancred and Gaston of Béarn were displayed as proof of this, but they were slaughtered nonetheless.” In the words of Raymond of Aguilers: ‘wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men — and this was the more merciful course — cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city.’?” Muslim and Jewish captives who had somehow escaped the slaughter were employed to dispose of the dead, and contemporary accounts paint a horrible picture reminiscent of atrocities in more recent times.
One Frankish source, the Gesta Francorum, notes that the Crusader leaders ‘commanded that all the Saracen corpses should be thrown outside the city because of the fearful stench, for almost the whole city was full of their dead bodies. So the surviving Saracens dragged the dead ones out in front of the gates, and piled them up in mounds as big as houses.’ According to Raymond of Aguilers: ‘It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. . . in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins . . . The city was filled with corpses and blood.’”? The corpses were so numerous that when Fulcher of Chartres visited the city five months later, the foul odour was still overwhelming: ‘Oh, what a stench there was around the walls of the city, both within and without, from the rotting bodies of the Saracens slain by our comrades at the time of the capture of the city, lying wherever they had been hunted down!’*°
These graphic and appalling accounts of the events should however be regarded with reservation as to their accuracy. The Christian sources no doubt exaggerate the magnitude of the slaughter, probably motivated by pride in the extent to which they were carrying out the papal call to destroy the gentiles (infidels). The Muslim sources exaggerate the number of dead in order to gain sympathy and emphasize the barbarity of the Crusaders. The description of Ibn al-Athir illustrates the unreliability of the details. He writes: ‘In the masjid al-Aqsa the Franks slaughtered more than 70,000 people.”>! This number far exceeds even the highest estimate of the entire population of Jerusalem at the time of the siege.** Fulcher gives nearly 10,000 killed in the Temple of Solomon, as does William of Tyre, who adds no less than 10,000 for the rest of the city.°> While it is clear that the massacre was on a large scale, Benjamin Z. Kedar has recently presented a new perspective, suggesting that the various horrendous accounts of the massacre are perhaps more in the nature of religious narratives in the tradition of apocalyptic texts than historically accurate descriptions of the events.** This was the ‘baptism by fire’ from which the new “Kingdom of Heaven’ was to arise.
Revival
The modern phrase, “ethnic cleansing’ is perhaps an appropriate term to describe this slaughter. However it was not immediately followed by a replacement of the nonChristian population by Franks. After the conquest most of the Crusaders left Jerusalem and the city was left practically empty.** The lack of residents left it particularly vulnerable to attack. According to William of Tyre, barely a quarter of the city was occupied, and there were not enough people to man the fortifications and gates.°° In his description of the condition of Jerusalem and the other towns captured at this time, he writes:
Even within the city walls, in the very houses, there was scarcely a place where one could rest in security. For the inhabitants were few and scattered and the ruinous state of the walls left every place exposed to the enemy. Thieves made stealthy inroads by night. They broke into the deserted cities, whose few inhabitants were scattered far apart, and overpowered many in their very own houses. The result was that some stealthily, and many quite openly, abandoned the holdings which they had won and began to return to their own land.*”
The decision to prevent the surviving Muslims and Jews from returning to Jerusalem necessitated various means of resettling the now empty city and attracting a new Christian population. After coming across Eastern Christians in Transjordan in 1115 (or 1116), Baldwin I had them settled in Jerusalem.** This was in the north-eastern quarter which had been the Jewish quarter prior to the conquest and which still retained that name (Juzverie) in the twelfth century.
Another means, not so much of bringing in a new population but of preventing the departure of the existing one, was the passing of legislation aimed at putting an end to absentee landlordship. According to this law (assise de l’an et jour), anyone in possession of real estate in the city who was absent from it for a year and a day would forfeit his ownership of the property in favour of the occupants.*? An additional measure, which made the city somewhat more attractive to merchants, was taken by Baldwin II in 1120. This involved the waiving of tax payments at the citadel for saat goods brought into the city, namely grain, vegetables, beans, lentils and peas.*° Baldwin’s main aim in issuing this edict was to va conditions easier for the citizens by lowering the cost of basic foods in the city.*!
This must have been a very difficult time for the Franks. The Saracens were increasing their pressure by attacking travellers outside the city. In the previous year a group of about 700 pilgrims that had set out from Jerusalem to visit the site of the baptism at the Jordan river was ambushed. Three hundred of them were killed and sixty were captured.” More substantial measures to improve security needed to be taken if Christian rule of the city was to be maintained. In this regard two important developments took place. One of these was the establishment of the first of the military orders, the Templars. They were to play a crucial role in the security of the kingdom and of travel within it. The other action, which was directly related to the establishment of the Templars and of the second military order, the Hospitallers, was the development and expansion of the pilgrimage movement. Pilgrimage revitalized the city, playing a role as important as that of the Italian commercial activity in the Crusader coastal towns. Churches and various other institutions aimed at easing the lot of the pilgrim were set up in the city. The population increased and commerce expanded.
The part played by the military orders in the revival of the city and its development in this period went beyond the security they provided and the role they played in attending to the needs of the pilgrims. Remarkably effective at accruing wealth, these establishments brought in badly needed capital. Once established they expanded rapidly, not only in Jerusalem and the Latin East but throughout the West. In the thirteenth century the Hospitallers owned 19,000 rural estates in the West, and one third of the income from their estates reached Jerusalem.**
A number of major building projects were carried out in the first half of the twelfth century. The city walls were repaired and new markets were constructed. The most important building project of the first half of the twelfth century was the rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Many smaller churches were also built to replace those destroyed during the Islamic rule, or to fulfil the needs of the new Christian population. The headquarters of the military orders were constructed or expanded and the great hospital rose to the south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
By the middle of the twelfth century, Jerusalem had probably completely recovered and perhaps expanded beyond its pre-Crusader population. In the second half of the century the city continued to develop. The walls were strengthened, the citadel was considerably expanded, a new royal palace was built and the city’s water system was greatly improved. However, the kingdom was entering a period of political instability. From 1174 the kingdom was ruled by the young king, Baldwin IV, who suffered from leprosy. In 1185, when his disease reached an advanced stage and he could no longer rule effectively, the king handed the rule over to Baldwin V, a child of eight, and the kingdom was managed by the regent Raymond of Tripoli. Baldwin V died a year later and Guy of Lusignan, the husband of Baldwin IV’s sister Sibylla, came to the throne. The rivalry between Guy and Raymond of Tripoli weakened the kingdom at the very time that it faced its greatest threat, a unified Muslim front led by Saladin (Salah al-Din Yuséf ibn Ayytb). When the Franks faced Saladin at Hattin in July 1187, most of the knights in the kingdom were slaughtered or taken into captivity. The outcome was the almost complete collapse of the kingdom within a few months.
The fall of Crusader Jerusalem
After occupying Ascalon on 5 September, Saladin advanced on Jerusalem. By midSeptember he had taken the monasteries and villages in the outskirts of the city, including the Premonstratensian monastery of Montjoie (Nabi Samawil), the monks of which appear to have been unsuccessfully racing against time to complete their fortifications and moat.“ Saladin himself arrived at Jerusalem on Sunday 20 September. By this time the population of the city had swelled considerably. Franks from Ascalon, Darum, Gaza, Ramleh and other towns and villages had fled to the capital.* Goods were brought in from the surrounding countryside to supply the city’s needs in preparation for the expected siege.
After the Frankish defeat at Hattin, Balian of Ibelin, lord of Nablus, received permission to come to Jerusalem in early July to take away his wife, Maria Comnena and his family. Saladin permitted this on condition that he did not remain more than one night or take up arms in defence of the city. On arriving in Jerusalem, Balian was welcomed by church leaders and the populace as the badly needed leader of the city’s defence.*® The commanders of the Templars and the Hospitallers maintained that it was his moral obligation to defend Jerusalem. The greatest pressure on Balian was exerted by Patriarch Eraclius. Balian was in a difficult position because of his oath to Saladin, which he felt bound to uphold. He chose the extraordinary action of applying to Saladin to release him from his oath, and Saladin with even more remarkable magnanimity agreed to do so. Balian immediately set up a provisional government, organizing a makeshift army as there were almost no fighting men in the city. ‘Imad al-Din and Ibn Shaddad describe Jerusalem as being filled with more than 60,000 fighting men, and Ibn al-Athir refers to 70,000 cavalry and infantry.*” However, these numbers are pure propaganda, doubtless aimed at glorifying the achievement of the Ayyubid army. According to the Chronicle of Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer there were only two knights in the city who had escaped from Hattin!** In order to alleviate the situation, Balian knighted all noble youths over the age of fifteen and promoted some forty burgesses to knighthood.” Gold and silver were stripped from the roof of the Holy Sepulchre to be used for minting coins to pay the new knights.°°
The events which followed mirror, to some extent, the siege of Jerusalem by the Frankish armies in 1099 (Figure 2.2). The defenders procured supplies from the surrounding countryside and took up positions around the walls. On 21 September the besieging army advanced on the northern and north-western walls. Attacks on these positions continued for several days, but to no avail. With their backs to the wall, the Franks seem to have regained the tenacity they had lost at Hattin. The realization that they were defending the Holy Sepulchre itself must have strengthened their motivation.
The next move of the Muslims once again echoes the manoeuvres of the Crusaders in 1099. On Friday 26 September they took up position further to the east, on the northern wall, in the area of St Mary Magdalene’s postern and opposite the northern part of the eastern city wall. One major difference between the two sieges was that the Muslim army was well equipped with siege machinery. They set up mangonels and began a bombardment of the walls. A tremendous hail of arrows was fired by at least 10,000 archers at the defenders, preventing them from remaining on the walls.°' These measures allowed the Muslim attackers, defended by another 10,000 mounted men armed with lances and bows, to cross the ditch and set to work at sapping the walls, until a section of the forewall collapsed.** This, in effect, sealed the fate of Jerusalem. The Franks, realizing the hopelessness of their position, asked for terms. Saladin initially refused and, in desperation, Balian of Ibelin warned him in no uncertain terms of the drastic measures that the Franks were prepared to take. According to Ibn alAthir, Balian said that the Franks would kill the women and children and all the Muslim prisoners, between 3,000 and 5,000, destroy their property and, most appalling of all, dismantle the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. This had the desired effect and Saladin agreed to let the Franks ransom themselves. He first demanded 100,000 bezants, a sum which Balian told him was unrealistic. In the end, the terms agreed upon were ten dinars for a man, five for a woman and one for a child.*? The Franks were given forty days to raise the ransom money. These terms were beyond the means of most of the inhabitants; while many were freed without payment, many others were taken into captivity. Ibn al-Athir gives the number of Franks expelled from the town as 60,000.
The city had surrendered on Friday 2 October 1187, and the departure of the Franks was completed by 10 November. The Muslims celebrated their recovery of the city with special prayers in the restored mosques. According to “Imad al-Din, Saladin wished to purify the city ‘of the filth of the hellish Franks’.** He did this by turning mosques that had been converted by the Franks into churches back into mosques, by removing the church furnishings and erasing the structural changes made to these buildings, and by converting other structures built by the Franks into mosques and madrasas. He tore down the gilded cross from the Dome of the Rock and dismantled many of the Christian structures on the Temple Mount, including the monastery of the Augustinian canons which was located to the north of the Templum Domini (Dome of the Rock). The latter was cleansed and most of the changes made to the building by the Franks were removed, including the marble plates placed over the rock to preserve it from being damaged by the pilgrims, frescoes, Latin inscriptions and the altar. However, the Romanesque iron grille around the rock and the iron lampstands were left in place. Churches in the city and outside the walls were damaged or dismantled. Wood, iron, doors and marble flooring were stripped from them.** The Holy Sepulchre however, was spared. Some of the emirs had wished to destroy it in order to put an end to Christian pilgrimage, but there was apparently fairly strong opposition to this by those who pointed out that Caliph ‘Umar had not done so when he took the city in the seventh century. It was also noted that it was not the building that the Christians worshipped, but the place of the Cross and the tomb. Rather than destroying the church, they closed it to the general public and a fee of ten bezants was demanded of visitors. On 27 October 1189 Saladin converted the Patriarch’s Palace into a hospice for Sufis known as al-Khankah al-Salahiyya.*’ A few years later, on 26 July 1192, he converted the church and convent of St Anne into a school of law, the alMadrasa al-Salahiyya.** The spire was torn down from the church of the Hospital, which was turned into a college for Shafi‘ites.*”
In 1191 Saladin carried out repairs to the city walls. He realized that it was imperative to strengthen the walls and prepare the city for the expected attack by Richard I and his army. In this period Saladin resided in the ‘house of the priests by the Sepulchre’ (possibly the patriarch’s palace or the quarters of the Augustinian canons), while he personally supervised the work.® The Arab historian, Mujir al-Din (1456-1522) records that for this purpose he brought 2000 Frankish prisoners to the city, and a group of fifty masons were sent from Mosul to dig a ditch around the walls.°! He restored or rebuilt towers on the wall between St Stephen’s Gate and David’s Gate. Stone was quarried from the moat for the rebuilding and, to supplement this source, buildings outside the walls, including the church of St Mary of Mount Zion, the upper church of the Sepulchre of the Virgin Mary in Jehoshaphat, and perhaps the church of St Lazarus, were dismantled. From these measures we can conclude that in the east and south of the city, the destruction of the city walls during the siege in 1187 had been extensive. Damage to the fortifications in the south, although not referred to in the descriptions of the siege, would explain the rebuilding of the walls at this time to include Mount Zion within the fortifications once again.” This measure was carried out by Saladin’s brother, al-Malik al-‘Adil.®
Under Ayyubid rule Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the city, but they were subject to heavy restrictions. They were limited in their movement within the city and were probably forced to pay for entrance to most of the holy sites. However, a truce concluded between Saladin and Richard the Lion Heart in 1192 put an end to the ten bezant fee required on entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.“ In order to control and limit pilgrim traffic into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the eastern portal of the main gate was blocked, as was the entrance to Calvary via the external Chapel of the Franks. It may have been during this period that the western entrance from the Street of the Patriarch into the Rotunda was also blocked. According to La Citez, pilgrims were forced to use a northern entrance via the canons’ quarters and their passage through the city was restricted to a single route from the St Lazarus postern on the northern wall directly to the church.® Despite these restrictions, pilgrimage continued and Christians visited the city between 1187 and 1229, though undoubtedly in smaller numbers than under the Franks. There are indications that under Ayyubid rule the economic base of the city was considerably weakened, no doubt a direct result of the decline in the number of Western pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. This economic decline compelled the leadership to supplement the city’s revenues with a third of those of Nablus, whose administrator offered to shoulder all the expenses of Jerusalem and of the troops in the city.® In these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising to find that there is even some evidence for a partial change of heart on the part of the Muslim leadership regarding Christian pilgrimage and a selective promotion of pilgrimage, probably among only the more affluent pilgrims. The True Cross, holiest of Christian relics, which had been taken by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin, was apparently brought back to Jerusalem, where it was occasionally shown to visiting pilgrims.”
The religious and social condition of the Christian populace — predominantly members of the Eastern Church, who were permitted to remain in the city — was not particularly different from that experienced prior to 1099. The Eastern clergy were restored to the dominant position that they had previously held. The Byzantine Emperor Isaac II (1185-95) negotiated with Saladin to restore the Greek Orthodox clergy in place of the Latins; he received a limited response though it did include some authority in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and in other churches. At some stage (it is not certain exactly when) a Greek patriarch was reinstated in the city.
In the early thirteenth century the fortifications were strengthened by Saladin’s nephew, al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa, but in 1219 he took the rather extraordinary measure of destroying the walls and, it would seem, many of the buildings of Jerusalem. AlMu’azzam ‘Isa feared that Jerusalem would probably fall to the army of the Fifth Crusade which was at the time making advances in Egypt. He chose to destroy the city’s fortifications so that if it fell the Franks would have difficulty in holding it. In the words of one source, the Rothelin Continuation of William of Tyre, describing Jerusalem a decade later: ‘... the city was completely open and unprotected. The Saracens had demolished all the fortifications except for the Tower of David.’®* The destruction of the walls resulted in a panic during which many of the citizens apparently fled to Egypt, Kerak and Damascus.”
How extensive was the destruction of the city on this occasion? It appears to have been considerable, including not only the fortifications but also many of the city’s buildings. Al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa’s brother, al-Malik al-Kamil, justified his agreement with Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen in 1229, which gave the Franks the entire city except for the Temple Mount, by claiming that he was only handing over ‘some churches and some ruined houses’.’”° The covered markets and the royal palace survived but we can perhaps associate with this event the beginning of the destruction of the hospital, although it remained in good enough condition to serve as residence for Frederick II during his short stay in 1229. Moreover, this destruction may be the reason for the very noticeable lack of remains of domestic architecture dating from the twelfth century in Jerusalem.
The thirteenth-century episode
Upon his marriage to Isabel, daughter of John of Brienne in 1225, Emperor Frederick II assumed the title of king of Jerusalem, and committed himself to taking the cross. His delay in doing so, and consequent falling out with the Pope, resulted in excommunication two years later. But in the meantime Frederick received a promise from the Egyptian Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil (1218-38) that if the emperor aided him in his dispute with his brother, al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa (the governor of Damascus) al-Malik al-Kamil would give Frederick the Holy City. Finally, in 1228, Frederick arrived in Acre. By this time al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa was dead, but al-Malik al-Kamil could not renege on his promise and the agreement was ratified at Jaffa on 18 February 1229.
The Treaty of Jaffa gave the Franks possession of the entire city except for the Temple Mount.”! The treaty was valid for a period of ten years. During this period Jerusalem was only partially inhabited, principally around the citadel and near St Stephen’s Gate and Zion Gate. The fortifications, other than the citadel, were largely in ruins. According to the terms of the treaty, the Franks could not hold anything outside the walls.”? Shortly after the treaty was instigated, Muslims from Hebron and Nablus invaded the defenceless city and the residents fled to the Tower of David. However, help arrived from Acre and the Muslims were expelled.
The emperor himself visited Jerusalem on Saturday 17 March, received the keys to the city at David’s Gate and took up residence in the Hospital. On the following day he crowned himself King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He then began efforts to refortify the city, beginning in the area of St Stephen’s Gate. However, the Church leaders and Military Orders refused to support his efforts, and he left the city in disgust on 19 March. Jerusalem thus lost a valuable opportunity of refortification.”?
The tenuous hold of the Franks on the city did not permit very much development in this brief period. Nonetheless, it is possible that some important new buildings were constructed. These perhaps included the Cotton Market, the barbican of St Stephen’s Gate and the covered bazaar on the Cardo, south of David Street.”
The treaty expired in 1239, and al-Nasir al-Da’fid of Kerak attacked the city. It fell, after a siege of 27 days, on 7 December.”° Al-Nasir al-Da’tid destroyed the recently repaired and improved St Stephen’s Gate with its bastion. He destroyed a section of the curtain and towers and the citadel, dismantling the keep (the Tower of David). According to the Rothelin Continuation:
Once the Saracens got possession of the Tower of David they immediately put their miners into it and had the whole fortress taken down and razed to the ground. The size of the enormous stones astonished everyone. The masonry was so strongly mortared with lime, sand and cement, and the stones so firmly bound with the lead and huge bands of cramp-iron which fastened the sections together, that tearing it down was very difficult and needed great force.”
Subsequently, with the approach of the forces under Thibaut IV, king of Navarre and count of Champagne, al-Nasir al-Da’iid departed. However, the Franks regained Jerusalem only in 1241. Frankish control extended to the Temple Mount in 1243, but within a year the city was taken by the Khawarizmians (Turks who had been pushed out of Khawarizm by the Mongols and moved south into the Holy Land in the 1240s), who killed 2,000 of the defenders below the walls. Many were killed in an attempt to reach the coast and others were killed by bandits. Only about 300 made their way safely to Jaffa.”” For the remaining forty-seven years of deteriorating Frankish rule in the East, Jerusalem was under Muslim control and Acre continued to play the role of administrative capital which it had originally taken up in 1187, and which it had probably not entirely relinquished in 1229.
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