Jerusalem: The Biography (5 page)

Thanks to my agent Georgina Capel and my international rights agents Abi Gilbert and Romily Must; to my British publishers Alan Samson, Ion Trewin and Susan Lamb, my brilliant editor Bea Hemming at Weidenfeld; and to Peter James, the master of copy-editors; to my most longstanding publishers: Sonny Mehta at Knopf; in Brazil to Luiz Schwarz and Ana Paula Hisayama at Companhía das Letras; in France, Mireille Paoloni at Calmann Lévy; in Germany, Peter Sillem at Fischer; in Israel, Ziv Lewis at Kinneret; in Holland, Henk van ter Borg, at Nieuw Amsterdam; in Norway, Ida Bernsten and Gerd Johnsen at Cappelens; in Poland, Jolanta Woloszanska at Magnum; in Portugal, Alexandra Louro at Alêtheia Editores; in Spain, Carmen Esteban at Crítica; in Estonia, Krista Kaer of Varrak; and in Sweden, Per Faustino and Stefan Hilding at Norstedts.

My parents Dr Stephen and April Sebag-Montefiore have been superb editors of all my books. Above all I want to thank my wife Santa, who has been the patient, encouraging and loving sultana of this long process. Santa and my children Lily and Sasha have, like me, undoubtedly suffered the full effects of the Jerusalem Syndrome. They may never recover, but they probably know more about the Rock, the Wall and the Sepulchre than many a priest, rabbi or mullah.

NOTES ON NAMES,
TRANSLITERATIONS AND TITLES

This book inevitably contains a challenging diversity of names, languages and questions of transliteration. It is for general readers, so my policy is to use the most accessible and familiar names. I apologize to purists who are offended by these decisions.

In the Judaean period, I generally use the Greek not the Latin or Hebrew names for the Hasmonean kings – Aristobulos, for example. With minor characters such as Herod’s brother-in-law I use his Hebrew name Jonathan instead of his Greek one, Aristobulos, to avoid confusion with the many other Aristobuloses. With household names, I use the familiar – Herod (not Herodes), Pompey, Mark Antony, Tamurlane, Saladin. For Persian names, if well known such as Cyrus, I use that version. The Maccabean family reigned as the Hasmonean dynasty, but I call them Maccabean throughout for the sake of clarity.

In the Arab period, the challenges are greater. I do not pretend to be consistent. I generally use familiar English forms – such as Damascus rather than Dimashq. I have dropped the Arabic article ‘al-’ before persons, groups and towns but kept it on the whole within compound names and for the first mention of names in the text and the notes and not thereafter. I do not use diacritical marks. Most of the Abbasid and Fatamid caliphs and Ayyubid sultans adopted a regnant name, a laqab, such as al-Mansur. Purely to ease reading, I drop in all cases the definite article. I use ‘ibn’ instead of ‘bin’ except in well-known names. In names such as Abu Sufyan, I do not use the Arabic genitive (which would give, for example, Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan), again for facility. I generally call the Ayyubids the ‘house of Saladin’.

There is no consistency in the Western historical use of Arab names – for example, the Abbasids are known by their ruling names apart from Harun al-Rashid because he is famous thanks to the Arabian Nights stories. All historians use the name Saladin for the twelfth-century sultan yet call his brother al-Adil. Saladin’s birth name was Yusuf ibn Ayyub; his brother was Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub. Both men adopted honorific names Salah al-Din and Saif al-Din; and both later used regnant names al-Nasir (the Victor) for Saladin and al-Adil (the Just) for his brother. For ease, I use Saladin and Safedin respectively, partly to avoid confusion of Ayyubid names such as al-Adil, al-Aziz, al-Afdal, and partly to highlight the connection with Saladin.

During the Mamluk period, historians usually use the name Baibars, rather than using his regnant name al-Zahir, but then employ regnant names for most of the others – except for al-Nasir Muhammad where they use both. I follow this inconsistent tradition.

During the Ottoman period, in less well-known names, I try to use Turkish, not Arabic, spellings. I have simply chosen the most recognizable version: Jemal Pasha is Çemal in Turkish and often transliterated as Djemal. I use Mehmet Ali instead of Muhammad Ali.

In modern times, I call Hussein ibn Ali the Sherif of Mecca or King Hussein of the Hejaz; I call his sons Prince or Amir (until they too become kings) Faisal and Abdullah instead of Faisal and Abdullah ibn Hussein. I call them Sherifians in the early period and Hashemites later. I call the first king of Saudi Arabia Abdul Aziz al-Saud but more often use the Westernized version, Ibn Saud. Bertha Spafford married Frederick Vester: for consistency I call her Spafford throughout.

Canaan, Judah, Judaea, Israel, Palaestina, Bilad al-Shams, Palestine, Greater Syria, Coele Syria, the Holy Land, are just some of the names used to describe the country, with varying borders. There are said to be seventy names for Jerusalem (some are listed in the Appendix). Within the city, the House of God, the Holy House, the Temple, all refer to the Jewish Temple. The Dome, the Qubbet al-Sakhra, Temple of the Lord, Templum Domini refer to the Dome of the Rock; the Aqsa is the Temple of Solomon. Har HaBayit is the Hebrew and Haram al-Sharif is the Arabic for the Temple Mount, which I also call the sacred esplanade. The Sanctuary refers either to the Holy of Holies or later to the Temple Mount, which Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary (Haram); for Muslims, the Two Sanctuaries refer to Jerusalem and Hebron, another Herodian building: the tomb of Abraham and the patriarchs. The Anastasis, the Church, the Sepulchre and Deir Sultan refer to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Rock is Sakhra in Arabic; the Foundation Stone is Even HaShtiyah in Hebrew; the Holy of Holies is Kodesh haKodeshim. The Wall, the Kotel, the Western and Wailing Wall and al-Buraq wall refer to the Jewish holy site. The Citadel and the Tower of David refer to the Herodian stronghold close to the Jaffa Gate. The Virgin’s Tomb and St Mary of Jehoshaphat are the same place. The Valley of Jehoshaphat is the Kidron Valley. David’s Tomb, Nabi Daoud, the Cenacle and Coenaculum describe the shrine on Mount Zion. Each of the gates has so many names which change so frequently that to list them would be worthless. Every street has at least three names: the Old City’s main street is El Wad in Arabic; Ha-Gai in Hebrew and the Valley in English.

Constantinople and Byzantium refer to Eastern Rome and its empire; after 1453, I refer to the city as Istanbul. Catholics and Latins are used interchangeably; Orthodox and Greeks also. Iran and Persia are used interchangeably. I use Iraq instead of Mesopotamia for accessibility.

On titles: the Roman emperors were the
princeps
in Latin and later
imperator
; Byzantine emperors later became
basileos
in Greek. In early Islam, Muhammad’s successors were variously Commanders of the Faithful and caliph. Sultan, padishah and caliph are all titles of the Ottoman rulers; in Germany, Kaiser and emperor and in Russia, tsar and emperor are used interchangeably.

PROLOGUE

On 8th of the Jewish month of Ab, in late July
AD
70, Titus, the Roman Emperor Vespasian’s son who was in command of the four-month siege of Jerusalem, ordered his entire army to prepare to storm the Temple at dawn. The next day happened to be the very day on which Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem over 500 years before. Now, Titus commanded an army of four legions – a total of 60,000 Roman legionaries and local auxiliaries who were eager to deliver the final blow to the defiant but broken city. Within the walls, perhaps half a million starving Jews survived in diabolical conditions: some were fanatical religious zealots, some were freebooting bandits, but most were innocent families with no escape from this magnificent death-trap. There were many Jews living outside Judaea – they were to be found throughout the Mediterranean and Near East – and this final desperate struggle would decide not only the fate of the city and her inhabitants, but also the future of Judaism and the small Jewish cult of Christianity – and even, looking forward across six centuries, the shape of Islam.

The Romans had built ramps up against the walls of the Temple. But their assaults had failed. Earlier that day, Titus told his generals that his efforts to preserve this ‘foreign temple’ were costing him too many soldiers and he ordered the Temple gates set alight. The silver of the gates melted and spread the fire to the wooden doorways and windows, thence to the wooden fittings in the passageways of the Temple itself. Titus ordered the fire to be quenched. The Romans, he declared, should ‘not avenge themselves on inanimate objects instead of men’. Then he retired for the night into his headquarters in the half-ruined Tower of Antonia overlooking the resplendent Temple complex.

Around the walls, there were gruesome scenes that must have resembled hell on earth. Thousands of bodies putrefied in the sun. The stench was unbearable. Packs of dogs and jackals feasted on human flesh. In the preceding months, Titus had ordered all prisoners or defectors to be crucified. Five hundred Jews were crucified each day. The Mount of Olives and the craggy hills around the city were so crowded with crucifixes that there was scarcely room for any more, nor trees to make them.
¹
Titus’ soldiers amused themselves by nailing their victims splayed and spread-eagled in absurd positions. So desperate were many Jerusalemites to escape the city that, as they left, they swallowed their coins, to conceal their treasure, which they hoped to retrieve when they were safely clear of the Romans. They emerged ‘puffed up with famine and swelled like men with dropsy’, but if they ate they ‘burst asunder’. As their bellies exploded, the soldiers discovered their reeking intestinal treasure troves, so they started to gut all prisoners, eviscerating them and searching their intestines while they were still alive. But Titus was appalled and tried to ban these anatomical plunderings. To no avail: Titus’ Syrian auxiliaries, who hated and were hated by the Jews with all the malice of neighbours, relished these macabre games.
²
The cruelties inflicted by the Romans and the rebels within the walls compare with some of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.

The war had begun when the ineptitude and greed of the Roman governors had driven even the Judaean aristocracy, Rome’s own Jewish allies, to make common cause with a popular religious revolt. The rebels were a mixture of religious Jews and opportunistic brigands who had exploited the downfall of the emperor, Nero, and the chaos that followed his suicide, to expel the Romans and re-establish an independent Jewish state, based around the Temple. But the Jewish revolution immediately started to consume itself in bloody purges and gang-warfare.

Three Roman emperors followed Nero in rapid and chaotic succession. By the time Vespasian emerged as emperor and despatched Titus to take Jerusalem, the city was divided between three warlords at war with each other. The Jewish warlords had first fought pitched battles in the Temple courts, which ran with blood, and then plundered the city. Their fighters worked their way through the richer neighbourhoods, ransacking the houses, killing the men and abusing the women – ‘it was sport to them’. Crazed by their power and the thrill of the hunt, probably intoxicated with looted wine, they ‘indulged themselves in feminine wantonness, decked their hair and put on women’s garments and be-smeared themselves with ointments and had paints under their eyes’. These provincial cut-throats, swaggering in ‘finely dyed cloaks’, killed anyone in their path. In their ingenious depravity, they ‘invented unlawful pleasures’. Jerusalem, given over to ‘intolerable uncleanness’, became ‘a brothel’ and torture-chamber – and yet remained a shrine.
³

Somehow the Temple continued to function. Back in April, pilgrims had arrived for Passover just before the Romans closed in on the city. The population was usually in the high tens of thousands, but the Romans had now trapped the pilgrims and many refugees from the war, so there were hundreds of thousands of people in the city. Only as Titus encircled the walls did the rebel chieftains halt their in-fighting to unite their 21,000 warriors and face the Romans together.

The city that Titus saw for the first time from Mount Scopus, named after the Greek
skopeo
meaning ‘look at’, was, in Pliny’s words, ‘by far the most celebrated city of the East’, an opulent, thriving metropolis built around one of the greatest temples of the ancient world, itself an exquisite work of art on an immense scale. Jerusalem had already existed for thousands of years but this many-walled and towered city, astride two mountains amid the barren crags of Judaea, had never been as populous or as awesome as it was in the first century AD: indeed Jerusalem would not be so great again until the twentieth century. This was the achievement of Herod the Great, the brilliant, psychotic Judaean king whose palaces and fortresses were built on so monumental a scale and were so luxurious in their decoration that the Jewish historian Josephus says that they ‘exceed all my ability to describe them’.

The Temple itself overshadowed all else in its numinous glory. ‘At the first rising of the sun’, its gleaming courts and gilded gates ‘reflected back a very fiery splendour and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away’. When strangers – such as Titus and his legionaries – saw this Temple for the first time, it appeared ‘like a mountain covered with snow’. Pious Jews knew that at the centre of the courts of this city-within-a-city atop Mount Moriah was a tiny room of superlative holiness that contained virtually nothing at all. This space was the focus of Jewish sanctity: the Holy of Holies, the dwelling-place of God Himself.

Herod’s Temple was a shrine but it was also a near-impregnable fortress within the walled city. The Jews, encouraged by Roman weakness in the Year of the Four Emperors and aided by Jerusalem’s precipitous heights, her fortifications and the labyrinthine Temple itself, had confronted Titus with overweening confidence. After all, they had defied Rome for almost five years. However, Titus possessed the authority, the ambition, the resources and the talent necessary for the task. He set about reducing Jerusalem with systematic efficiency and overwhelming force. Ballistae stones, probably fired by Titus, have been found in the tunnels beside the Temple’s western wall, testament to the intensity of Roman bombardment. The Jews fought for every inch with almost suicidal abandon. Yet Titus, commanding the full arsenal of siege engines, catapults and the ingenuity of Roman engineering, overcame the first wall within fifteen days. He led a thousand legionaries into the maze of Jerusalem’s markets and stormed the second wall. But the Jews sortied out and retook it. The wall had to be stormed all over again. Titus next tried to overawe the city with a parade of his army – cuirasses, helmets, blades flashing, flags fluttering, eagles glinting, ‘horses richly caparisoned’. Thousands of Jerusalemites gathered on the battlements to gawp at this show, admiring ‘the beauty of their armour and admirable order of the men’. The Jews remained defiant, or too afraid of their warlords to disobey their orders: no surrender.