Jerusalem: The Biography

A member of the dynasty that ruled the Syrian fortress of Shaizar, Usamah lost the succession, and his family was then wiped out in an earthquake. After these blows, he became a cavalier – a faris – ready to serve whichever ruler offered him the best opportunities, and, now aged forty-five, he was serving Unur of Damascus. Usamah lived for fighting, hunting and literature. His accident-prone pursuit of power, wealth and glory was both bloody and farcical: the phrase ‘yet another disaster’ appears frequently in his memoirs, which are entitled Great Events and Calamities

. But he was also a natural chronicler: one senses that, even as his schemes collapsed, this aesthetic Arab Quixote knew the stories would make great material for his witty, sharp, melancholic writings. Usamah was a master adib – the refined Arab belle-lettrist par excellence – writing books and poems on the delights of women, male manners (The Kernels of Refinement

), eroticism and warfare. In his hands, a history of walking sticks was really an essay on ageing.

Atabeg Unur now arrived in Jerusalem with his exuberant courtier, Usamah: ‘I used to travel frequently to visit the King of the Franks during the truce,’ wrote Usamah, whose relations with Fulk were surprisingly courteous.^* King and cavalier bantered about the nature of knighthood. ‘They told me you were a great knight,’ said Fulk, ‘but I hadn’t really believed it.’ ‘My lord, I am a knight of my race and people,’ answered Usamah. We do not know anything about Usamah’s appearance, but it seems that the Franks were impressed with his physique.

During his trips to Jerusalem, Usamah enjoyed studying the inferiority of the Crusaders, whom he regarded as ‘mere beasts, possessing no other virtues but courage and fighting’ – even though his works reveal that many Muslim traditions were just as savage and primitive. Like every good reporter, he recorded opposites – good and bad things about both sides. When he looked back as an old man at the court of Saladin, he must have reflected that he saw Jerusalem at the height of the Crusader kingdom’s glory.

MELISENDE’S JERUSALEM: HIGH LIFE AND LOW LIFE

Melisende’s Jerusalem was regarded by many Christians as the true centre of the world, very different from the empty, stinking Frankish conquest of forty years before. Indeed, in the maps of the city from this time, Jerusalem is shown as a circle with the two main streets serving as the arms of the cross with its centre on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, emphasizing the Holy City as the navel of the world.

The king and queen held court in the Tower of David and its neighbouring palace, while the Patriarch’s Palace was the centre of Church affairs. Life for ordinary barons in Outremer Jerusalem was probably better than for kings in Europe, where even potentates wore unlaundered wool and lived in bare-stone draughty keeps with rough furniture. If few Crusader barons could live as grandly as John of Ibelin, later in the century, his palace in Beirut reveals the style: mosaic floors, marble walls, painted ceilings, fountains and gardens. Even bourgeois townhouses boasted rich carpets, damask wall-hangings, delicate faience, carved, inlaid tables and porcelain dishes.

Jerusalem combined the rough edges of the frontier town with the luxurious vanities of a royal capital. Even in Jerusalem the less reputable women, such as the patriarch’s mistress, flaunted their jewels and silks to the disapproval of the more respectable. With her 30,000 inhabitants and streams of pilgrims, she was Holy City, Christian melting-pot and a military headquarters – dominated by war and God. The Franks, men and women, now bathed regularly – there were public baths on Furriers Street; the Roman sewerage was still working and it is likely most houses had lavatories. Even the most Islamophobic of Crusaders had to adapt to the east. At war, the knights wore linen robes and Arab keffiyeh over their armour to prevent the steel heating up in the sun. At home, the knights dressed like the locals, in silk burnous and even turbans. Jerusalemite ladies wore long underrobes with a short tunic or long robe-coats embroidered with gold thread; their faces were heavily painted; and they were usually veiled in public. Both sexes wore furs in winter, though this luxury was specifically banned for the austere Templars, who personified this capital of Christian holy war. The Knights of the Orders set the tone: the Templars in their belted and hooded red-crossed mantles, Hospitallers in their black mantles with white crosses on the breast. Every day, the 300 Templars clattered out of the Stables of Solomon to train outside the city. In the Valley of Kidron, the infantry practised their archery.