Jerusalem: The Biography

When Paltiel died in 1011, his son brought his body to be buried in Jerusalem but the rich cortège was attacked by Muslim ruffians. Even after Paltiel, the Jews of Cairo despatched caravans with money to fund the Academy and a mystical sect called the Mourners of Zion who prayed for the restoration of Israel, in effect, religious Zionists. But the help was never enough: ‘the city is widowed, orphaned, deserted and impoverished with its few scholars,’ wrote a Jewish Jerusalemite in a fundraising letter. ‘Life here is extremely hard, food scarce. Help us, save us, redeem us.’¹⁵ Now the Jews were ‘a pitiful assembly, constantly harassed’.

Yet the Sunni Muslims were increasingly scandalized by the excesses and liberties of the infidels. ‘Everywhere, the Christians and Jews have the upper hand,’ grumbled Muqaddasi, the travel writer whose very name means ‘Born in Jerusalem’.

MUQADDASI: THE JERUSALEMITE

‘All the year round, never are her streets empty of strangers.’ Around 985, at the height of Fatimid rule, Muhammad ibn Ahmed Shams al-Din al-Muqaddasi had come home to the city he called al-Quds, the Holy.^* Now in his forties, he had been travelling for twenty years, ‘seeking knowledge’ through travel that was so much part of the training of every Islamic savant, combining piety with the scientific observation practised in the House of Wisdom. In his masterpiece The Soundest Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, he reveals his irrepressible curiosity and sense of adventure:

There is nothing that befalls travellers of which I did not have my share except begging and grievous sin. At times I’ve been pious, at times I’ve eaten impure foods. I’ve been close to drowning, my caravans have been waylaid on the highroad. I’ve spoken to kings and ministers, accompanied the licentious, been accused of being a spy, thrown into jail, I’ve eaten porridge with mystics, broth with monks and pudding with sailors. I’ve seen war in battleships against the Romans [Byzantines] and the ringing of church bells at night. I’ve worn the robes of honour of kings and many times I’ve been destitute. I’ve owned slaves and carried baskets on my head. What glory and honour I’ve been granted. Yet my death was plotted more than once.

Wherever he was, nothing dimmed his pride in Jerusalem:

One day, I sat in the council of the judge in Basra [in Iraq]. Egypt [Cairo] was mentioned. I was asked: which city is nobler? I said: ‘Our city.’ They said: Which one is sweeter? ‘Ours.’ They said: Which is better? ‘Ours.’ They said: Which is more bountiful? ‘Ours.’ The council were surprised at this. They said, ‘You are a man of conceit. You have claimed that which we cannot accept from you. You are like the owner of the camel during the Haj.

Yet he was honest about Jerusalem’s faults: he admitted that ‘the meek are molested and the rich are envied. You won’t anywhere find baths more filthy than those in the Holy City, nor heavier fees for their use.’ But Jerusalem produced the best raisins, bananas and pinenuts; she was the city of many muezzins calling the faithful to prayer – and no brothels. ‘There’s no place in Jerusalem where you cannot get water or hear the call to prayer.’

Muqaddasi described the holy places on the Temple Mount dedicated to Mary, Jacob and the mystical saint, Khidr.^* Al-Aqsa was ‘even more beautiful’ than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but the Dome was peerless: ‘At the dawn when the light of the sun first strikes the Dome and the drum catches the rays, then is this edifice a marvellous sight and one such that in all of Islam I have not seen the equal, neither in pagan times.’ Muqaddasi was only too aware that he lived in two Jerusalems – the real and the celestial – and this was the place of the Apocalypse: ‘Is she not the one that unites the advantages of This World with those of the Next? Is this not to be the sahira – the plain – of marshalling on the Day of Judgement where the Gathering Together and the Appointment will take place? Truly Mecca and Medina have their superiority but on the Day of Judgement, they will both come to Jerusalem and the excellence of them all will be united here.’

Yet Muqaddasi still complained about the lack of Sunnis and the noisy confidence of Jews and Christians: ‘scholars are few and Christians numerous and rude in public places.’ The Fatimids after all were sectarians and local Muslims even joined in with Christians’ festivals. But things were about to take a terrifying turn: by the time Muqaddasi died at the age of fifty in 1000, a child had succeeded to the throne of the Living Imam who would seek to destroy Christian and Jewish Jerusalem.¹⁶

HAKIM: THE ARAB CALIGULA