Jerusalem: The Biography

On Holy Saturday, Jerusalemites gathered at the Church for the Holy Fire. A Russian pilgrim watched ‘the crowd rush in, jostling and elbowing’, weeping, wailing and shouting, ‘Will my sins prevent the Holy Fire from descending?’ The king walked from the Temple Mount but, when he arrived, the crowd was so tightly packed, overflowing even the courtyard, that his soldiers had to clear a path for him. Once inside, the king, shedding ‘torrents of tears’, took his place on a rostrum before the Tomb, surrounded by his weeping courtiers, waiting for the Holy Fire. As the priest chanted vespers, the ecstasy intensified in the darkening church, until suddenly ‘the Holy Light illumined the Sepulchre, stunningly bright and splendid’. The patriarch emerged brandishing the fire, with which he kindled the royal lamp. The fire spread across the crowd, lantern to lantern – and was then borne across town like an Olympic flame across the Great Bridge to the Temple of the Lord.

Melisende embellished Jerusalem as both Temple shrine and political capital, creating much that we see today. The Crusaders had developed their own style, a synthesis of Romanesque, Byzantine and Levantine with round-headed arches, massive capitals, all carved with delicate, often floral motifs. The queen built the monumental St Anne’s Church, north of the Temple Mount, on the site of the Bethesda Pool – it stands today as the simplest and starkest example of Crusader architecture. Already used as a repository for discarded royal wives and more recently the home of Melisende’s sister Princess Yvette, its convent became the most richly endowed in Jerusalem. A few of the shops in the marketplaces are still marked ‘ANNA’ to show where their profits went; other shops, perhaps Templar-owned, are marked ‘T’ for the Temple.

A small chapel, St Giles, was built on the Great Bridge into the Temple Mount. Outside the walls, Melisende added to the Church of Our Lady of Jehoshaphat, the Virgin Mary’s tomb where she was later buried (her grave survives today), and built the Bethany Monastery, appointing Princess Yvette as abbess. In the Temple of the Lord, she added an ornate metal grille to protect the Rock (now mostly in the Haram Museum though a small section, still in situ, may have held a portion of Jesus’ foreskin,^* and later enclosed hair from Muhammad’s beard).

On their state visit to see Fulk and Melisende, Usamah bin Munqidh and his master, the Atabeg of Damascus, were allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, where they encountered both the insularity and cosmopolitanism of their Frankish hosts.

USAMAH BIN MUNQIDH AND JUDAH HALEVI: MUSLIMS, JEWS AND FRANKS

Usamah had become friends with some of the Templars whom he had met in war and peace. Now they escorted him and Atabeg Unur on to the sacred esplanade, the thoroughly Christianized headquarters of the Templars.

Some Crusaders now spoke Arabic and built houses with courtyards and fountains like Muslim potentates; some even ate Arabic food. Usamah met Franks who did not eat pork and ‘presented a very fine table, extremely clean and delicious’. Most Franks disapproved of anyone going too native: ‘God has transformed the Occident into the Orient’, wrote Fulcher. ‘He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian.’ Similarly, there were limits to Usamah’s friendship with the Templars and to their open-mindedness. When one Templar was returning home, he cheerfully invited Usamah to send his son to be educated in Europe so that ‘when he returns he will be a truly rational man’. Usamah could scarcely contain his disdain.

As they prayed in the Dome of the Rock, one of the Franks approached the atabeg to ask: ‘Would you like to see God when he was young?’

‘Why yes,’ said Unur, at which the Frank led him and Usamah to an icon of Mary and the boy Jesus.

‘This is God when he was young,’ said the Frank, much to Usamah’s amused contempt.

Usamah then walked over to pray in the Temple of Solomon, formerly al-Aqsa, welcomed by his Templar friends, even though he was openly reciting ‘Allahu Akhbar – God is Greatest’. But then there was an unsettling incident when ‘a Frank rushed up to me and grabbed me and turned my face towards the east, “Pray like this!”’ The ‘Templars hurried towards him and took him away from me. “This man is a stranger,” the Templars explained, apologetically, “and has just arrived from the Frankish lands.”’ Usamah realized that ‘anyone recently arrived’ is ‘rougher in character than those who have become acclimatized and frequented the company of Muslims’. These new arrivals remained ‘an accursed race that will not become accustomed to anyone not of their own race’.