Jerusalem: The Biography

On his return to Jerusalem, Hugh was sitting playing dice in a tavern on Furriers Street one day when a Breton knight stabbed him. Somehow he survived, but Jerusalem was ‘shaken at the outrage; a great crowd assembled’ and the rumour spread that Fulk had ordered his rival’s murder. Now it was the king who needed to prove his innocence: the Breton was tried and sentenced to be dismembered and have his tongue cut out. But Fulk ordered that his tongue remain intact to show he was not being silenced. Even when the Breton had been totally dismembered with only head, torso (and tongue) left, he still asserted Fulk’s innocence.

It is not surprising that the evident sleaziness of Outremer politics became notorious in Europe. Ruling Jerusalem was a challenge: the kings were really first among equals, contending with Crusader princelings, ambitious magnates, thuggish adventurers, ignorant new arrivals from Europe, independent military-religious orders of knights and intriguing churchmen, before they were even able to face their Islamic enemies.

The royal marriage became extremely frosty, but if Melisende had lost her love, she had regained her power. To thaw the queen, Fulk gave her a special present – the sumptuous Psalter that bears her name.^* But as the kingdom enjoyed its golden age, Islam was mobilizing.

ZANGI THE BLOODY: THE FALCON PRINCE

In 1137, Zangi, Atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo (in today’s Iraq and Syria), attacked first the Crusader city of Antioch and then Muslim Damascus: the fall of either of these cities would be a blow for Jerusalem. For nearly four decades, the loss of Jerusalem had made surprisingly little impression on the divided and distracted Islamic world. As so often in Jerusalem’s history, religious fervour was inspired by political necessity. Zangi now started to harness a rising fury, religious and political, at Jerusalem’s loss, calling himself ‘Fighter of Jihad, tamer of atheists, destroyer of heretics’.

The caliph awarded this Turkish atabeg the title ‘King of Amirs’ for restoring Islamic pride. For the Arabs he called himself the Pillar of the Faith; for fellow-Turks, the Falcon Prince. Poets, vital ornaments for every ruler in that poetry-loving society, flocked to his court to sing of his glories, but the feral Zangi was a harsh master. He skinned and scalped important enemies, hanged minor ones, and crucified any of his troops who trampled on crops. He castrated his boy lovers to preserve their beauty. When he exiled his generals, he reminded them of his power by castrating their sons. Demented with drink, he divorced one of his wives and then had her gang-raped by his grooms in the stables – while he watched. If one of his soldiers deserted, remembered one of his officers, Usamah bin Munqidh, Zangi would order the two neighbouring men to be cut in half. His cruelties are recorded by Muslim sources. As for the Crusaders, they (in a pun worthy of a tabloid-newspaper headline) nicknamed him Zangi the Sanguine.

Fulk hurried to confront him but Zangi defeated the Jerusalemites, trapping the king in a nearby fortress. William, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, led the army to his rescue, brandishing the True Cross. Zangi, realizing that relief was on its way, offered to free Fulk in return for the fortress. After this close escape, Fulk and Melisende were reconciled, but Zangi, now in his early sixties, kept up the pressure, threatening not only the Crusader cities of Antioch and Edessa but renewing his attack on Damascus, which was so alarmed that its ruler, Unur, allied himself with infidel Jerusalem.⁴

In 1140, Unur, the Atabeg of Damascus, set off for Jerusalem accompanied by his worldly adviser, a Syrian aristocrat and the century’s finest Muslim writer.

USAMAH BIN MUNQIDH: GREAT EVENTS AND CALAMITIES

Usamah bin Munqidh was one of those ubiquitous players who know everyone who matters at a certain time or place in history and always find themselves at the centre of events. During his long career, this Zeligesque courtier, warrior and writer managed to serve all the great Islamic leaders of his century, from Zangi and the Fatimid caliphs to Saladin, and to know at least two of the kings of Jerusalem.