Jerusalem: The Biography

When the strikers were dismissed, this farcical parade headed triumphantly through the Old City, led, in Foley’s words, by ‘a troop of Turkish lancers, then the Mayor and Commandant, some holy men, then Duff, Parker, me, Wilson, Macasadar and Turkish gendarmes in the rear.’ Suddenly Duff’s mule bolted through the bazaars with the captain hanging on until he was thrown into a shop and buried in peanuts, much to the hilarity of his friends. ‘An old Jew’, said Foley, ‘thought it was the end of the world and started to wail in Yiddish.’

This display – or more likely ‘liberal baksheesh’ – worked for now. Parker meticulously sent secret reports to the syndicate, covertly named FJMPW after some of its members, and accounts for the bribes, which on his first visit cost £1,900. He spent £3,400 in the first year, and when he had to return in 1910 his accounts reveal ‘Payments to Jerusalem officials: £5,667’. The mayor, Hussein Husseini, received £100 a month. These lavish bribes must have been a blessing for the Jerusalem grandees, but Parker realized that the Young Turk government was in flux and that Jerusalem was a sensitive place: ‘The utmost caution must be used for the smallest mistake may involve serious difficulties!’ he reported. Yet even he did not really understand that he was playing on a volcano. When he resumed digging in the spring of 1911, Parker paid out even more but he was now desperate: he decided to dig on the Temple Mount, bribing Sheikh Khalil al-Ansari, hereditary Custodian of the Haram, and his brother.

Parker and his gang, disguised in pantomime Arab garb, crept on to the Temple Mount and, in the precinct of the Dome itself, they broke open the pavement to dig into the secret tunnels beneath. However, on the night of 17 April, a Muslim nightwatchman, unable to sleep in his crowded home, decided to camp out on the Haram, where he surprised the English and ran into the streets, shouting that disguised Christians were digging up the Dome of the Rock.

The mufti turned back the entire Nabi Musa procession and denounced this wicked Ottoman and British conspiracy. A mob, reinforced by the pilgrims of Nabi Musa raced to defend the Noble Sanctuary. Captain Parker and his friends galloped for their lives to Jaffa. The crowd, which for the one and only time combined Muslims and Jews, both equally outraged, tried to lynch Sheikh Khalil and Macasadar whose lives were saved only when the Ottoman garrison intervened and arrested them. They and Parker’s police guards were all imprisoned in Beirut. In Jaffa, Monty Parker just made it on board the Water Lily. But the police there were alerted that he might have the Ark of the Covenant about his person. They searched him and his baggage, but found no Ark. Parker knew he had to escape – so, bamboozling the Ottoman gendarmes by playing the English gentleman, he illuminated the

Water Lily and announced that he was going ‘to hold a reception on board for the Jaffa officials’. He then sailed away as they were about to board.

Back in Jerusalem, the crowds threatened to kill the governor and slaughter anyone British as rumours spread that Parker had stolen the Crown of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant and the Sword of Muhammad. The governor was in hiding for fear of his life. By the morning of 19 April, the London Times

reported, ‘there was a tremendous row throughout the city. Shops closed, peasants bolting out of the place and rumours spreading’. The Christians were terrified that ‘Mahomedan pilgrims from Nabi Musa’ were coming ‘to assassinate all Christians’. Simultaneously the Muslims were petrified that ‘8,000 Russian pilgrims were armed to massacre the Mahomedans’. All sides believed that ‘the Solomonic regalia’ had been ‘transferred to Captain Parker’s yacht’.

Europeans stayed indoors and locked their gates. ‘The wrath of the people of Jerusalem was so great’, remembered Bertha Spafford, ‘that patrols were posted on every street.’ Then on the last day of the Nabi Musa, with 10,000 Jerusalemites on the Temple Mount, the mob ‘stampeded. A fearful panic ensued, peasant women and pilgrims pouring out of the walls and running toward the city gates crying “Massacre!” Every family armed itself and barricaded its home. The “Parker fiasco”,’ wrote Spafford, ‘came nearer to causing anti-Christian massacre than anything that happened during our long residence in Jerusalem.’ The New York Times informed the world: ‘Gone with Treasure that was Solomon’s. English Party Vanishes on Yacht After Digging under Mosque of Omar: SAID TO HAVE FOUND KING’S CROWN. Turkish Government Sends High Officials to Jerusalem to Investigate!’