Jerusalem: The Biography

1142–1174

ZANGI: HUBRIS AND NEMESIS

When he was not fighting or reading, Usamah hunted deer, lions, wolves, hyenas with cheetahs, hawks and dogs – and in this, he was no different from Zangi or King Fulk, who hunted as often as they could. When Usamah and the Atabeg of Damascus visited Fulk, they admired a goshawk, so the king gave it to them as a present.

On 10 November 1142, soon after Usamah’s visit to Jerusalem, King Fulk was riding near Acre when he spotted a hare and, spurring his horse, gave chase. His saddle girth suddenly snapped and he was thrown. The saddle flew over his head and fractured his skull. He died three days later. The Jerusalemites marched out to escort Fulk’s cortège to burial in the Sepulchre. On Christmas Day, Melisende had her twelve-year-old son crowned as Baldwin III, but she was the real ruler. In an age dominated by men, she was a ‘woman of great wisdom’ who, writes William of Tyre, ‘had risen so far above the normal status of women that she dared undertake important measures, and ruled the kingdom with as much skill as her ancestors’.^*

At this bittersweet moment, disaster struck. In 1144, Zangi the Bloody captured Edessa, slaughtering Frankish men, enslaving Frankish women (though protecting Armenian Christians), and thereby destroying the first Crusader state and the cradle of the Jerusalem dynasty. The Islamic world was exultant. The Franks were not invincible and surely Jerusalem was next. ‘If Edessa is the high sea,’ wrote Ibn al-Qaysarani, ‘Jerusalem is the shore.’ The Abbasid caliph awarded Zangi the titles Ornament of Islam, Auxiliary of the Commander of the Believers, Divinely Aided King. Yet Zangi’s hard-drinking perversity caught up with him in his own boudoir.

At a siege in Iraq, a humiliated eunuch, perhaps one of those castrated for Zangi’s pleasure, crept into his heavily guarded tent and stabbed the drunken potentate in his bed, leaving him scarcely alive. A courtier found him bleeding, helplessly begging for his life: ‘He thought I was intending to kill him. He gestured to me with his index finger, appealing to me. I halted in awe of him and said, “My Lord, who’s done this to you?”’ There died the Falcon Prince.

His staff pillaged his belongings around the still-warm corpse and his two sons divided his lands: the younger of them, the twenty-eight-year-old Nur al-Din, tugged his father’s signet ring off his finger and seized the Syrian territories. Talented but less ferocious than his father, Nur al-Din intensified the jihad against the Franks. Shocked by the fall of Edessa, Melisende appealed to Pope Eugenius II, who called the Second Crusade.⁵

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE AND KING LOUIS: SCANDAL AND DEFEAT

Louis VII, the saintly young King of France, accompanied by his wife Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and Conrad III, King of Germany, a veteran pilgrim, answered the pope’s call. But their German and French armies were mauled by the Turks as they crossed Anatolia. Louis VII only just made it to Antioch after a disastrous fighting march that must have been terrifying for Queen Eleanor, who lost much of her baggage – and any respect for her sanctimonious, inept husband.

Prince Raymond of Antioch urged Louis to help him to capture Aleppo but Louis was determined to make his pilgrimage to Jerusalem first. The worldly Raymond was Eleanor’s uncle and ‘the handsomest of princes’. After the miserable journey, Eleanor ‘disregarded her marriage vows and was unfaithful to her husband’, according to William of Tyre. Her husband was puppyishly besotted with her, but regarded sex, even in marriage, as indulgent. No wonder Eleanor called him ‘more monk than man’. Yet Eleanor, acutely intelligent, dark-haired, dark-eyed and curvaceous, was the richest heiress in Europe, brought up at the sensual Aquitanian court. Priestly chroniclers claimed that the blood of sin coursed through her veins because her grandfather was William the Troubadour, a promiscuous warrior-poet, while her grandmother on the other side was her grandfather’s mistress, nicknamed La Dangereuse. This came about because the Troubadour had facilitated his access to La Dangereuse by marrying her daughter to his son.

Whether Eleanor and Raymond committed adultery or not, their behaviour was provocative enough to humiliate the husband and launch an international scandal. The King of France solved his marital problem by kidnapping Eleanor and heading off to join the German king who had arrived in Jerusalem. When Louis and Eleanor approached the city, ‘all the clergy and people went out to meet him’ and escort him to the Sepulchre ‘to the accompaniment of hymns and chants’. The French couple stayed along with Conrad in the Temple of Solomon, but Eleanor must have been carefully watched by the French courtiers. She was stranded there for months.

On 24 June 1148, Melisende and her son Baldwin III called a council at Acre that approved the target of the Crusade: Damascus. The city had recently been Jerusalem’s ally, but it was still a sensible target because it would only be a matter of time before it fell to Nur al-Din. On 23 July, the kings of Jerusalem, France and Germany fought their way into the orchards on the west side of Damascus but two days later mysteriously moved camp to the east. Four days after that, the Crusade fell apart and the three kings ignominiously retreated.

Unur, Atabeg of Damascus, may have bribed the Jerusalemite barons, convincing them that the Western Crusaders wanted the prize for themselves. Such duplicitous venality was all too credible but, more likely, the Crusaders simply learned that Nur al-Din, Zangi’s son, was advancing with a relief army. Now Jerusalem wilted under the strain of this disaster. Conrad sailed home; Louis, bathing in ascetic penitence, stayed to celebrate Easter in the Holy City. They could not leave fast enough for Eleanor: the marriage was annulled on their return.^*6

When they had gone, Queen Melisende celebrated her greatest triumph and suffered her greatest humiliation. On 15 July 1149, she and her son reconsecrated their new Church of the Holy Sepulchre, then – and now – the masterpiece and dazzling holy stage-set of Crusader Jerusalem. The architects, finding a cluttered labyrinth of chapels and shrines in the complex built in 1048 and restored in 1119, solved this challenge with astonishing boldness. They roofed over the compound with a soaring rotunda and united all its sites in one magnificent Romanesque building, expanding into the old Holy Garden in the east. They opened up the eastern wall of the Rotunda to add chapels and a huge ambulatory. On the site of Constantine’s Basilica, they placed a large cloister. They kept the 1048 southern entrance, creating a Romanesque façade with two portals (one is now bricked up) topped with sculpted lintels (now in the Rockefeller Museum). The peerless carvings of the staircase leading up to the Chapel of the Hill of Calvary are perhaps the most exquisite of all Crusader art.

Melisende’s son resented her and demanded his full powers. Now twenty years old and acclaimed for his brains and flaxen-haired brawn, Baldwin III was said to be the perfect Frankish king – with a few vices. He was also known as a gambler and seducer of married women. But a northern crisis showed that Jerusalem needed an active warrior-king in the saddle: Zangi’s son, Nur al-Din, defeated the Antiochenes and killed Eleanor’s uncle Raymond.

Baldwin raced northwards in time to save Antioch but when he returned his mother Melisende, now forty-seven, resisted his demand that he be crowned at Easter. The king decided to fight.

MOTHER VERSUS SON: MELISENDE VERSUS BALDWIN III

Melisende offered him the rich ports of Tyre and Acre, but kept Jerusalem for herself. The ‘still smouldering fire was rekindled’ when Baldwin raised his own forces to seize the kingdom. Melisende sped from Nablus to Jerusalem with Baldwin in pursuit. Jerusalem opened its gates to the king. Melisende retreated into the Tower of David where Baldwin besieged her. He ‘set up his engines for assault’, firing bolts and ballista stones at her for several days. Finally the queen resigned power – and Jerusalem.

Baldwin had scarcely seized his birthright when Antioch was again attacked by Nur al-Din. While the king was once more in the north, the Ortuq family that had ruled Jerusalem from 1086 to 1098 marched from their Iraq fiefdom to seize the Holy City, massing on the Mount of Olives, but the Jerusalemites sortied out and massacred them on the Jericho road. Morale boosted, Baldwin led his army and the True Cross to Ashkelon, which fell after a long siege. But in the north, Damascus finally succumbed to Nur al-Din, who became the master of Syria and eastern Iraq.

Nur al-Din, ‘a tall swarthy man with a beard, no moustache, a fine forehead and pleasant appearance enhanced by melting eyes’, could be as cruel as Zangi, but he was more measured, more subtle. Even the Crusaders called him ‘valiant and wise’. He was beloved by his courtiers who now included that political weathervane Usamah bin Munqidh. Nur al-Din so enjoyed polo that he played at night by the light of candles. But it was he who channelled the Islamic fury at the Frankish conquest into a Sunni resurgence and a new military confidence. A fresh stream of fadail works extolling Jerusalem promoted Nur al-Din’s jihad to ‘purify Jerusalem from the pollution of the Cross’ – ironically since the Crusaders had once called the Muslims ‘polluters of the Holy Sepulchre’. He commissioned an elaborately carved minbar or pulpit to stand in al-Aqsa when he conquered the city.

Baldwin was locked in stalemate with Nur al-Din. They agreed a temporary truce while the king sought Byzantine help: he married the emperor Manuel’s niece, Theodora. At the marriage and crowning in the Church, ‘the bridal outfit of the maiden in gold and gems, garments and pearls’ brought the exotic splendour of Constantinople to Jerusalem. The marriage was still childless when Baldwin fell ill in Beirut and died on 10 May 1162, probably of dysentery.

The funeral cortège travelled from Beirut to Jerusalem amid unprecedented scenes of ‘deep and poignant sorrow’. The kings of Jerusalem, like the other veteran Crusader families, had become Levantine grandees so that now, observed William of Tyre, ‘there came down from the mountains a multitude of infidels who followed the cortège with wailing’. Even Nur al-Din said that the ‘Franks have lost such a prince that the world has not known his like’.⁷

AMAURY AND AGNES: ‘NO QUEEN FOR A CITY AS HOLY AS JERUSALEM’

The disreputable reputation of a woman now almost derailed the succession of Jerusalem. Baldwin’s brother Amaury, Count of Jaffa and Ashkelon, was the heir, but the patriarch refused to crown him unless he annulled his marriage to Agnes, claiming that they were too closely related – even though they already had a son together. The real problem was that ‘she was no queen for a city as holy as Jerusalem’, noted one prissy chronicler. Agnes had a bad reputation for promiscuity, but it is impossible to know if she deserved it since the historians were all so prejudiced against her. Nonetheless, she was clearly a much-desired trophy and, at various times, her lovers were said to include the seneschal, the patriarch and four husbands.

Amaury dutifully divorced her and was crowned at the age of twenty-seven. Already awkward in manner – he stammered and had a gurgling laugh – he soon became ‘excessively fat with breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist’. Jerusalemites mocked him in the streets, which he ignored ‘as if he had not heard the things said’. Despite the man-breasts, he was both an intellectual and a warrior who now faced the most daunting strategic challenge since the founding of the kingdom. Syria was lost to Nur al-Din, but Baldwin III’s conquest of Ashkelon had opened the gateway to Egypt. Amaury would need all his energy and manpower to fight Nur al-Din for that supreme prize.

This was one reason why he welcomed to Jerusalem the most notorious rogue of the day, Andronikos Komnenos, a Byzantine prince ‘attended by a large retinue of knights’, useful reinforcements. At first his knights were ‘a source of much comfort’ in Jerusalem. A cousin of the Emperor Manuel, Andronikos had seduced the emperor’s niece, was almost murdered by her furious brothers and spent twelve years in jail before being forgiven and appointed Governor of Cilicia. He was then sacked for incompetence and disloyalty, and fled to Antioch where he seduced Philippa, the daughter of the ruling prince, and had to flee again – to Jerusalem. ‘But like a snake in the bosom or a mouse in the wardrobe,’ recalled Amaury’s courtier, William of Tyre, ‘he proved the truth of the saying, “I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts.”’

Amaury gave him Beirut as his lordship, but Andronikos, now almost sixty, dumped Princess Philippa and seduced Baldwin III’s lissom widow, Theodora, the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem, who was only twenty-three. Jerusalem was outraged: Andronikos had to escape yet again. Abducting Theodora, he defected with her to Nur al-Din in Damascus.^* No one was sorry to see this ‘snake’ go, least of all Amaury’s favourite clergyman, William of Tyre, who had been born in Jerusalem. After studying in Paris, Orleans and Bologna, William returned to become Amaury’s most trusted adviser. Over twenty years, as Archbishop of Tyre and later Chancellor, William was the intimate witness of the unbearable royal tragedy that now coincided with Jerusalem’s most grievous crisis.⁸

WILLIAM OF TYRE: THE BATTLE FOR EGYPT

King Amaury commissioned William to write the histories of the Crusader and the Islamic kingdoms, quite a project. William had no problem writing the history of Outremer but, though he knew some Arabic, how was he to write about Islam?

By now, Fatimid Egypt was falling apart. There were rich pickings for the sharp opportunist – so naturally Usamah bin Munqidh was in Cairo. There, the power games were lethal but lucrative. Usamah made his fortune and built up a library; inevitably, however, it went wrong and he had to flee for his life. But he sent his family, his gold and his cherished library by ship. When it was shipwrecked off Acre, his treasure was lost and his library confiscated by the King of Jerusalem: ‘The news that my children and our women were safe made it easier to take the news about all the wealth lost. Except the books: 4,000 volumes. A heartache that lasted all my life.’ Usamah’s loss proved to be William’s gain for he inherited Usamah’s books and made good use of them to write his Islamic history.

Meanwhile Amaury plunged into the battle for Egypt, launching no fewer than five invasions. The stakes were high. In the second invasion, Amaury seemed to have conquered Egypt. If he had succeeded in keeping the riches and resources of that country, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem would probably have endured and the entire history of the region would have been different. Instead the deposed Egyptian vizier fled to Nur al-Din, who sent his Kurdish general, the vigorous yet rotund Shirkuh, to conquer Egypt. Amaury defeated Shirkuh, taking Alexandria, but instead of consolidating he accepted tribute and returned to Jerusalem.

Thanks to his Egyptian booty, Amaury’s capital flourished. The elegant Gothic room in the Cenacle on Mount Zion was built at this time and the king raised a new royal palace, porticoed with a gabled roof, a small domed tower and a large circular one, south of the Tower of David.^* But Egypt was far from cowed.

Mired in this expensive conflict, Amaury sought help from the emperor Manuel in Constantinople, marrying his great-niece Maria and despatching his historian William to negotiate military co-operation –but the timing of war and aid never dovetailed. In Egypt, Amaury and his Egyptian allies were about to take Cairo when Nur al-Din’s commander Shirkuh returned. The king retreated on the promise of further payments.

When Amaury sickened in Gaza, he asked his Egyptian allies to send him their best doctor – the king was an admirer of Eastern medicine. The Egyptians offered this job to one of the caliph’s Jewish doctors, who by chance had just returned from Jerusalem.⁹

MOSES MAIMONIDES: THE GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Maimonides refused to treat the Crusader king, probably a shrewd move since he had only recently arrived in Fatimid Egypt, where the alliance with Jerusalem was short-lived. Maimonides was a refugee from Muslim persecution in Spain, where the golden age of Jewish–Muslim civilization was very much over. It was now split between aggressive Christian kingdoms in the north, and the Muslim south, which had been conquered by fanatical Berber tribesmen, the Almohads. They had offered Jews the choice of conversion or death. Young Maimonides pretended to convert but in 1165, he escaped and set off on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On 14 October, during Tishri, the month of the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, a favourite season for pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Maimonides stood on the Mount of Olives with his brother and father. There he first set eyes on the mountain of the Jewish Temple, and ritually rent his garments – he later specified exactly how much tearing (and later restitching) should be practised by the Jewish pilgrim and when it should be done.

Entering the city through the eastern Jehoshaphat Gate, he found a Christian Jerusalem from which Jews were still officially banned – though there were actually four Jewish dyers living near the Tower of David, under royal protection.^* ruins, its sanctity endures’. Then ‘I entered the great and holy temple and prayed.’ It sounds as if he was allowed to pray at the Rock in the Temple^* of the Lord (just as Muslims such as Usamah bin Munqidh had been), though he later forbade any visit to the Temple Mount, a rule still obeyed by some Orthodox Jews.

Afterwards, he settled in Egypt where, known to the Arabs as Musa ibn Maymun, he won fame as a polymathic scholar, producing works on subjects varying from medicine to Jewish law, among them the masterpiece The Guide for the Perplexed, which wove together philosophy, religion and science; he also served as royal doctor. But Egypt was in chaos as Amaury and Nur al-Din fought for supremacy over the beleaguered Fatimid caliphate. Amaury was tireless – but unlucky.

In 1169, the master of Syria, Nur al-Din completed the encirclement of Jerusalem when his amir Shirkuh won the Battle of Egypt. Shirkuh was aided by his young nephew: Saladin. When the obese Shirkuh died in 1171, Saladin took over Egypt for himself, appointing Maimonides as Rais al-Yahud, Chief of the Jews – and his personal physician. Back in Jerusalem, the plight of the royal heir placed medicine centre-stage.¹⁰