Jerusalem: The Biography

Daimbert took control of the city, but Godfrey’s knights refused to surrender the Citadel, and instead summoned the late advocate’s brother, Baldwin. The Count of Edessa was fighting to defend northern Syria, however, and received no message until late August. On 2 October Baldwin set out with 200 knights and 700 troops, and found that he had to fight all the way to Jerusalem, facing repeated Islamic ambushes. On 9 November, with less than half his original force, he at last entered the Holy City.

THE RISE OF OUTREMER

1100–1131

BALDWIN THE BIG: THE F IRST KING

Two days later, Baldwin was acclaimed king and Daimbert was forced to recognize his accession. Almost at once Baldwin set off to raid Egypt. On his return, he was crowned ‘King of the Latins in Jerusalem’ in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem by Patriarch Daimbert.

The first King of Jerusalem was not as saintly as his brother but he was far more able. Baldwin had an aquiline nose, light skin, dark beard and hair, a prominent upper lip and a slightly receding chin. He had studied for holy orders as a boy and never lost the contemplative air of a clergyman, always wearing a clerical cloak around his shoulders. He married out of political necessity, risking bigamy for the sake of expediency, left no children and may not have consummated any of his marriages. However, he ‘struggled in vain against the lustful sins of the flesh yet so circumspectly did he conduct himself in the indulgence of these vices’ that he offended no one. Some have claimed he was gay, but the nature of his peccadilloes remains mysterious.

Relentless war was his urgent duty and true passion. His chaplain called him ‘the arm of his people, the terror of his enemies’. This wily warrior of almost superhuman energy devoted himself to securing and expanding the kingdom, repeatedly fighting the Egyptians outside Ramallah. Once they defeated him, but he escaped on his horse, Gazala, to the coast and, hitching a lift with a passing English pirate, sailed to Jaffa where he landed, mustered his knights and vanquished the Egyptians again. His forces were so small, probably no more than 1,000 knights and 5,000 infantry, that he recruited local auxiliaries (some possibly Muslim) who were known as Turcopoles. A flexible diplomat, he played on the rivalries of the Muslim chieftains, and allied himself with Genoese, Venetian and English fleets to conquer the Palestinian coast from Caesarea to Acre and Beirut.

In Jerusalem, Baldwin managed to depose the overmighty Daimbert as patriarch, defeating the main challenge to his authority. The Crusaders had destroyed the people of Jerusalem but mercifully they commandeered the sacred places of al-Quds rather than razing them – probably because they believed they were the biblical originals. Baldwin fortified the Citadel, long known to Christians as the Tower of David, which became palace, treasury, prison, and garrison: its Crusader arches are still visible. When in 1110 and again in 1113 Egyptian raids threatened the city, the trumpets blared from the Tower of David to call the citizens to arms. In 1104, Baldwin made al-Aqsa Mosque into the royal palace.

Many Crusaders believed that the Dome and al-Aqsa really had been built by King Solomon or at least by Constantine the Great, though some knew perfectly well that they were Islamic. A cross was placed atop the Dome of the Rock which was now known as Templum Domini, the Temple of the Lord. Like every conqueror of Jerusalem, the Franks used the spolia of other builders to create their own monuments: Baldwin stripped the lead roof of his Aqsa palace to refit the Holy Sepulchre.

In 1110, Sigurd, the teenage King of Norway, who had fought his way around the Mediterranean massacring infidels, landed at Acre with his 60-ship fleet. Baldwin escorted Sigurd, the first king to visit, into what the Norsemen called Jorsalaborg on roads covered with carpets and palms. Baldwin offered Sigurd a splinter of the True Cross if he would help him storm Sidon with his fleet. Sidon fell – and the Norwegians spent the winter in Jerusalem.

Baldwin repelled invasions by the atabegs of Damascus and Mosul: it was a life of unending warfare and wheeler-dealing for which this king was well suited. Early in the Crusade, he had married Arda, daughter of an Armenian potentate, an alliance that had helped him seize Edessa as his own county. But Arda was excess to requirements in Jerusalem. He confined her to St Anne’s monastery just north of the Temple Mount, unchivalrously claiming that she had seduced (or been raped by) Arab pirates on the way to Antioch. She decamped to Constantinople, where her subsequent pleasures suggest it was the former rather than the latter that was the true account.