Jerusalem: The Biography

The coenobite fighting was only one aspect of the violent theatre of Jerusalem. The tensions between the new visitors – Anglo-American evangelicals and Russian Jews and Orthodox peasants on one hand, and the older world of the Ottomans, Arab Families, Sephardic Jews and Bedouin and fellahin on the other – led to a series of murders. One of James Finn’s evangelical ladies, Mathilda Creasy, was found with her head smashed in; and a Jew was found stabbed down a well. The poisoning of a richrabbi, David Herschell, led to a sensational court case but the suspects, who were his own grandsons, were acquitted for lack of evidence. The British consul James Finn was the most powerful official in Jerusalem at a time when the Ottomans were so indebted to Britain, hence he took it upon himself to intervene wherever he saw fit. Considering himself to be the Sherlock Holmes of the Holy City, he set about investigating each of these crimes, but despite his powers of detection (and the aid of six African necromancers), no killers were ever found.

Finn was the courageous champion and proselytizing irritant for the Jews who still needed his protection. Their plight was, if anything, getting worse. Most of the Jews lived in the ‘stinking ruins of the Jewish Quarter, venerable in filth’, wrote Thackeray, and their ‘wailings and lamentations of the lost glory of their city’ haunted Jerusalem on Friday nights. ‘None equals the misery and suffering of the Jews at Jerusalem,’ Karl Marx wrote in the New York Daily Tribune in April 1854, ‘inhabiting the most filthy quarter, constant object of Musulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins.’ A Jew who walked past the gate leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was, as Finn reported, ‘beaten by a mob of pilgrims’ because it was still illegal for a Jew to pass it. Another was stabbed by an Ottoman soldier. A Jewish funeral was attacked by Arabs. In each case, Finn swooped on the Ottoman governor and forced him to intervene and see British justice done.

The pasha himself was more interested in controlling the Palestinian Arabs whose rebellions and clan wars, partly a response to the centralizing reforms of the Ottoman empire, were often fought out with the gallop of camels, the swish of spears and the whistle of bullets around the walls of Jerusalem. These thrilling scenes played into the European view of Palestine as a biblical theatre crossed with a Wild West stage set, and they gathered on the walls to spectate the skirmishes which to them must have resembled surreal sporting events – with the added spice of the occasional fatality.

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At their Talbieh evangelical farm for converting Jews, the Finns frequently found themselves caught in the crossfire. As bullets flew, Mrs Finn was often amazed to identify women amongst the warriors. She did her best to negotiate peace between the sheikhs. But the Bedouin were only part of the problem: the sheikhs of Hebron and Abu Ghosh fielded private armies of 500 warriors and fought full-scale wars against the Ottomans. When one of these sheikhs was captured and brought to Jerusalem in chains, the dashing warrior managed to escape and gallop away to fight again, like an Arab Robin Hood. Finally Hafiz Pasha, the aged governor of Jerusalem, had to lead an expedition with 550 troops and two brass field-guns to suppress the warlord of Hebron.

Yet despite such melodrama, on summer evenings, Jerusalemites of all creeds – Muslim and Christian Arabs along with the Sephardic Jews – picnicked on the Damascus road. The American explorer, Lieutenant William Lynch, observed a ‘picturesque scene – hundreds of Jews enjoying the fresh air, seated outside the walls under enormous olive trees, the woman all in white shrouds, the men in broad-brimmed black hats’. James Finn and the other consuls, preceded by Ottoman soldiers and kavasses with silver-mounted batons, promenaded with their wives. ‘As the sun set, everyone hurried inside the walls that were still locked every night.’