Jerusalem: The Biography

* At least he seems to have loved Theodora longer than the others. When she was captured by the emperor, Andronikos surrendered and was forgiven. Then the emperor died, and the preposterous cad seized power in 1182 and became one of the most despicable emperors in the history of Constantinople. During his reign of terror, he killed most of the imperial family including the women. Aged sixty-five but still boyishly handsome, he married a thirteen-year-old princess. When he was overthrown, the mob tortured him to death in the most horrible way, an arm cut off, an eye gouged, hair and teeth torn out, his face burned with boiling water to ruin his famous looks. Theodora’s fate is unknown.

* This palace appears on the fairly realistic map of Jerusalem created in Cambrai around this time. Theodorich saw the palace in 1169. It was given to the German Crusaders in 1229, but it vanished, probably destroyed by the raiding Khwarizmian Turks in 1244. Archaeologists found parts of its foundations in 1971 and 1988 under the Armenian Garden and the Turkish barracks.

* The Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela visited Jerusalem just after Maimonides. While he was there, workmen refurbishing the Cenacle on Mount Zion discovered a mysterious cavern that was hailed as King David’s Tomb. The Crusaders added a cenotaph which, in the contagious religious atmosphere of Jerusalem, made this Christian site holy for Jews and Muslims too. Benjamin claimed he travelled on to Iraq. Either way, he recorded the drama playing out in Baghdad where a young Jew named David el-Rey (the King) or Alroy declared himself the Messiah, promising to fly the local Jews on wings ‘to conquer Jerusalem.’ The Jews of Baghdad waited on their rooftops but never achieved lift-off, much to the amusement of their neighbours. Alroy was later murdered. When Benjamin Disraeli visited Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, he started to write his novel, Alroy.

* After four centuries as a Jewish synagogue under Islam, the Crusaders sealed up the ‘Cave’ in the tunnels next to the western wall, turning it into a cistern. So it is unlikely Maimonides prayed there.

* Leprosy was common. Indeed Jerusalem had its own Order of St Lazarus for leprous knights. Leprosy is hard to catch: the child must have had months of contact, perhaps with a wetnurse suffering mild symptoms. The disease is caused by bacteria passed through droplets in sweat and touch. Baldwin’s adolescence triggered lepromatous leprosy. In the film Kingdom of Heaven he is shown wearing an iron mask to conceal his utterly ravaged, noseless face, but actually he refused to hide himself as king even as the disease consumed him.

* It was now that William of Tyre ‘wearied by the sad disasters, in utter detestation of the present, resolved to abandon the pen and commit to the silence of the tomb the chronicle of events that can serve only to draw forth lamentations and tears. We lack the courage to continue. It is therefore time to hold our peace.’ His Outremer chronicle survives, his Islamic history is lost. He argued with Patriarch Heraclius, who excommunicated him. William appealed to Rome but died just as he was leaving for Italy. Possibly he was poisoned. In 1184, Heraclius, bearing the keys of Jerusalem, toured England and France in a quest for an heir to the leper-king or at least more funds and knights. He tried to interest Henry II of England. Instead his youngest son John wanted to accept the throne of Jerusalem, but his father refused to let him. It is hard to imagine that John, later known as Softsword and one of England’s most inept kings, would have saved Jerusalem.

* A fictional version of Balian (played by Orlando Bloom) is the hero of the movie Kingdom of Heaven, where he has an affair with Queen Sybilla (Eva Green).

* Saladin was the Crusaders’ shorthand for Salah al-Dunya al-Din (the Goodness of the World and the Faith). Saladin’s brother, known by the Crusaders as Safadin, was born Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub, adopting the honorific Safah al-Din (Sword of the Religion) and later the royal name al-Adil (The Just) by which he is called in most histories. Two of Saladin’s courtiers wrote biographies: Imad ad-Din, his secretary, wrote The Lightning of Syria and then Ciceronian Eloquence on the Conquest of the HolyCity, characterized by purple passages. In 1188, Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad, an Islamic scholar from Iraq, visited Jerusalem and was appointed by Saladin first as qadi (judge) of the army and then as overseer of Jerusalem. On Saladin’s death he served as chief qadi for two of his sons. His biography, Sultanly Anecdotes and JosephlyVirtues (a reference to his first name Yusuf, Joseph), is a rounded portrait of a warlord under pressure.