Jerusalem: The Biography

Melisende offered him the rich ports of Tyre and Acre, but kept Jerusalem for herself. The ‘still smouldering fire was rekindled’ when Baldwin raised his own forces to seize the kingdom. Melisende sped from Nablus to Jerusalem with Baldwin in pursuit. Jerusalem opened its gates to the king. Melisende retreated into the Tower of David where Baldwin besieged her. He ‘set up his engines for assault’, firing bolts and ballista stones at her for several days. Finally the queen resigned power – and Jerusalem.

Baldwin had scarcely seized his birthright when Antioch was again attacked by Nur al-Din. While the king was once more in the north, the Ortuq family that had ruled Jerusalem from 1086 to 1098 marched from their Iraq fiefdom to seize the Holy City, massing on the Mount of Olives, but the Jerusalemites sortied out and massacred them on the Jericho road. Morale boosted, Baldwin led his army and the True Cross to Ashkelon, which fell after a long siege. But in the north, Damascus finally succumbed to Nur al-Din, who became the master of Syria and eastern Iraq.

Nur al-Din, ‘a tall swarthy man with a beard, no moustache, a fine forehead and pleasant appearance enhanced by melting eyes’, could be as cruel as Zangi, but he was more measured, more subtle. Even the Crusaders called him ‘valiant and wise’. He was beloved by his courtiers who now included that political weathervane Usamah bin Munqidh. Nur al-Din so enjoyed polo that he played at night by the light of candles. But it was he who channelled the Islamic fury at the Frankish conquest into a Sunni resurgence and a new military confidence. A fresh stream of fadail works extolling Jerusalem promoted Nur al-Din’s jihad to ‘purify Jerusalem from the pollution of the Cross’ – ironically since the Crusaders had once called the Muslims ‘polluters of the Holy Sepulchre’. He commissioned an elaborately carved minbar

or pulpit to stand in al-Aqsa when he conquered the city.

Baldwin was locked in stalemate with Nur al-Din. They agreed a temporary truce while the king sought Byzantine help: he married the emperor Manuel’s niece, Theodora. At the marriage and crowning in the Church, ‘the bridal outfit of the maiden in gold and gems, garments and pearls’ brought the exotic splendour of Constantinople to Jerusalem. The marriage was still childless when Baldwin fell ill in Beirut and died on 10 May 1162, probably of dysentery.

The funeral cortège travelled from Beirut to Jerusalem amid unprecedented scenes of ‘deep and poignant sorrow’. The kings of Jerusalem, like the other veteran Crusader families, had become Levantine grandees so that now, observed William of Tyre, ‘there came down from the mountains a multitude of infidels who followed the cortège with wailing’. Even Nur al-Din said that the ‘Franks have lost such a prince that the world has not known his like’.⁷

AMAURY AND AGNES: ‘NO QUEEN FOR A CITY AS HOLY AS JERUSALEM’

The disreputable reputation of a woman now almost derailed the succession of Jerusalem. Baldwin’s brother Amaury, Count of Jaffa and Ashkelon, was the heir, but the patriarch refused to crown him unless he annulled his marriage to Agnes, claiming that they were too closely related – even though they already had a son together. The real problem was that ‘she was no queen for a city as holy as Jerusalem’, noted one prissy chronicler. Agnes had a bad reputation for promiscuity, but it is impossible to know if she deserved it since the historians were all so prejudiced against her. Nonetheless, she was clearly a much-desired trophy and, at various times, her lovers were said to include the seneschal, the patriarch and four husbands.

Amaury dutifully divorced her and was crowned at the age of twenty-seven. Already awkward in manner – he stammered and had a gurgling laugh – he soon became ‘excessively fat with breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist’. Jerusalemites mocked him in the streets, which he ignored ‘as if he had not heard the things said’. Despite the man-breasts, he was both an intellectual and a warrior who now faced the most daunting strategic challenge since the founding of the kingdom. Syria was lost to Nur al-Din, but Baldwin III’s conquest of Ashkelon had opened the gateway to Egypt. Amaury would need all his energy and manpower to fight Nur al-Din for that supreme prize.