Jerusalem: The Biography

There ended the dynasty of Saladin in Egypt, a downfall that condemned Jerusalem, now half-deserted, half-ruined, to ten chaotic years tossed between different warlords and princelings as they fought for power^* while a fearsome shadow fell across the Middle East. In 1258, the Mongols, the shamanist hordes from the Far East who had already conquered the largest empire the world had ever known, sacked Baghdad, massacring 80,000 people and killing the caliph. They took Damascus and galloped as far as Gaza, raiding Jerusalem on the way. Islam would need a ferocious champion to defeat them. The man who rose to the challenge was Baibars.²⁴

PART SIX

MAMLUK

Before the end of the world, all prophecies have to be fulfilled – and the Holy City has to be given back to the Christian Church.

Christopher Columbus, Letter to King Ferdinand and

Queen Isabella of Spain

And she [the Wife of Bath] had thrice been to Jerusalem.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

In Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls truly sacred.

Ibn Taymiyya, In Support of Pious Visits to Jerusalem

The practice [of the Holy Fire] is still going on. There occur under the eyes of Muslims a number of hateful things.

Mujir al-Din, History of Jerusalem and Hebron

The Greeks [are] our worst and atrocious enemies, the Georgians are the worst heretics, like the Greeks and equal in malice; the Armenians are very beautiful, rich and generous, [and] the deadly enemies of the Greeks and Georgians.

Francesco Suriano, Treatise on the Holy Land

We beheld the famous city of our delight and we rent our garments. Jerusalem is mostly desolate and in ruins and without walls. As for the Jews, the poorest have remained [living] in heaps of rubbish, for the law is that a Jew may not rebuild his ruined house.

Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro, Letters

SLAVE TO SULTAN

1250–1339

BAIBARS: THE PANTHER

Baibars was a fair-haired and blue-eyed Turk from Central Asia sold as a child to a Syrian prince. But, despite his towering barrel-chested physique, he had an unsettling defect: a white cataract on the iris of one of his eyes which led his owner to sell him on to the sultan in Cairo. Salih Ayyub, Saladin’s great-nephew, bought Turkish slaves ‘in batches like sandgrouse’ to form his mamluk regiments. He could not trust his own family but thought ‘one slave is more loyal than 300 sons’. Baibars, like all these pagan slaveboys, was converted to Islam and trained as a slave-soldier, a mamluk. He excelled with the arbalest steel crossbow, winning the nickname the Arbalestier and joined the Bahriyya regiment, the crack soldiers who defeated the Crusaders and became known as the Turkish Lions and the Islamic Templars.

When Baibars had won the trust of his master, he was manumitted – released from slavery – and climbed the ranks. The mamluks were loyal to their masters and even more loyal to each other – but ultimately each of these orphan-warriors owed nothing to anyone except himself and Allah. After his role in the killing of the sultan, Baibars lost out in the power struggle and fled to Syria where he offered his crossbow to the highest bidder in the civil wars raging between the local princelings. At one point, he seized and plundered Jerusalem. But the power was in Egypt and Baibars was finally recalled there by the latest general to seize the crown, Qutuz.

When the Mongols raided Syria in force, Baibars commanded the vanguard that hurried north to stop them. On 3 September 1260, Baibars defeated the Mongol army at Goliath’s Spring (Ain Jalut) near Nazareth. The Mongols would return and even reach Jerusalem again, but they had been halted for the first time. Much of Syria fell under Cairo’s rule and Baibars was hailed as the Father of Victory and the Lion of Egypt. He expected a reward – the governorship of Aleppo – but Sultan Qutuz refused. One day, while the sultan was hunting, Baibars (literally) stabbed him in the back. The junta of mamluk amirs granted him the crown as the man who had killed the monarch.

As soon as he took power, Baibars set about the destruction of the rump Crusader kingdom surviving on the Palestinian coast. In 1263, on his way to war, he arrived in Jerusalem. The Mamluks revered the city and Baibars began the Mamluk mission to resanctify and embellish the Temple Mount and the area around it, today’s Muslim Quarter. He ordered the Dome and al-Aqsa to be renovated and in order to compete with Christian Easter, he promoted a new festival, possibly started under Saladin, by building a dome over the tomb of the Prophet Moses near Jericho. For the next eight centuries, Jerusalemites celebrated Nabi Musa with a procession from the Dome of the Rock to Baibars’ shrine where they would gather for prayers, picnics and parties.