Palestine

by C. R. Conder

The rise of the Fatemites in Egypt altered materially the status of the Christians in Syria. We have no known Christian account of Palestine between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hakem, the mad Khalif of Egypt, destroyed the Christian churches in Jerusalem in 1010 A.D., and the country seems to have been then closed to pilgrims.

During this period, however, we have at least two important works, namely, that of El Mukaddasi (about 985 A.D.), and the journey of Nasir i Khusrau in 1047 A.D.[10] El Mukaddasi (“the man of Jerusalem”) was so named from his native town, his real name being Shems ed Dîn. He describes the whole of Syria, its towns and holy places (or Moslem sanctuaries), its climate, religion, commerce, manners and customs, and local marvellous sights. The legends are no less wonderful than those of his monkish predecessors, but his notes are often of great historical interest, and he is the earliest writer as yet known who plainly ascribes the building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to its real author, the Khalif ’Abd el Melek. It is remarkable that he speaks of the Syrian Moslems as living in constant terror of the Greek pirates, who descended on the coasts and made slaves of the inhabitants, whom they carried off to Constantinople. The Christians were still, he says, numerous in Jerusalem, and “unmannerly in public places.” The power of the Khalifs was indeed at this time greatly shaken by the schisms of Islam, and the Greek galleys invaded the ports, which had to be closed by iron chains. The Samaritans appear to have flourished at this time as well as the Jews, and the Samaritan Chronicle, which commences in the twelfth century, speaks of this sect as very widely spread even earlier, in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.

Abu Muin Nâsir, son of Khusrau, was born near Balkh, and journeyed through Media and Armenia by Palestine to Cairo, thence to Mecca and Basrah, and back through Persia to Merv and Balkh, the whole time spent being seven years. He gives good general accounts of Jerusalem, Hebron, and other places, though his description does not materially add to our information.

The rise of the Seljuks boded little good to Syria. Melek Shah in 1073 A.D. conquered Damascus, and by the end of the century Jerusalem groaned under the Turkish tyranny. It was at this time—just before the conquest of the Holy City, which had been wrested from the Turks by the Egyptians—that Foucher of Chartres began his chronicle of the first Crusade, which contains useful topographical notes. The great history of the Latin Kingdom by William of Tyre is full of interesting information as to the condition of the country under its Norman rulers (1182-85 A.D.), and to this we must add the Chronicles of Raymond d’Agiles and Albert of Aix, which belong to the time of the first Crusade.[11]

Two other early works of the Crusading period are of special value. Sæwulf[12] visited the Holy Land in 1102 A.D., before the building of most of the Norman castles and cathedrals; and the Russian Abbot Daniel, whose account has only recently been translated into English,[13] is believed to have arrived as early as 1106 A.D. From Ephesus he went to Patmos and Cyprus, and thence to Jerusalem and all over Western Palestine. His account is one of the fullest that we possess for the earliest Crusading period. In the middle of the twelfth century we have the topographical account by Fetellus,[14] which refers to places not generally described; and rather later we have the valuable descriptions by Theodoricus and John of Wirzburg,[15] while only two years before Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, John Phocas[16] wrote a shorter account in Greek upon silk, which is interesting as the work of a Greek ecclesiastic at a time when the Latins were the dominant sect. The names of monasteries in the Jordan Valley, otherwise unnoticed, are recoverable in his account.

Much interesting topographical information of this period is to be found in the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre,[17] which gives striking evidence of the rapidly increasing possessions of the Latin Church, due to the gifts and legacies of kings and barons. The cartularies of the great orders and the laws contained in the Assizes of Jerusalem are equally important to an understanding of Palestine under the rule of its feudal monarchs. It is possible to reconstruct the map of the country at this period in a very complete manner from such material.[18]

The Jews were not encouraged in Syria by the Normans. Benjamin of Tudela, however, made his famous journey from Saragossa in 1160, and returned in 1173 after visiting Palestine, Persia, Sinai, and Egypt; he was interested in the “lost tribes,” whom the mediæval Jews recognised in the Jewish kingdom of the Khozars in the Caucasus, and his account of Palestine is a valuable set-off to those of the Christian visitors.[19] We have pilgrimages by Rabbis in later centuries, viz., Rabbi Bar Simson in 1210 A.D., Rabbi Isaac Chelo of Aragon in 1334, and others of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.[20] These refer chiefly to the holy cities of the Jews, especially to Tiberias and Safed in Galilee, and record visits to the tombs of celebrated Rabbis, many of which are still preserved, and some yet visited by the Jews of Palestine. Several important points regarding early Christian and Talmudic topography are cleared up by these works.

One of the favourite accounts of the Holy City and of Palestine at the time of its conquest by Saladin was written by an unknown author, and was reproduced in the thirteenth century in the Chronicle of Ernoul.[21] There are many manuscripts of this, as of earlier works, which were preserved in the monasteries of Europe, and recopied by students who seem to have had little idea of the importance of preserving the original purity of their text. Some of the versions are mere abstracts, some are supplemented by paraphrases from Scripture. The original work known as the Citez de Jherusalem was evidently penned by one who had long lived in the Holy City, and knew every street, church, and monastery. He gives us the Frankish names for the streets, and the topography is easily traced in the modern city. There are perhaps few towns which are better known than Jerusalem in the latter part of the twelfth century A.D., and the varying manuscripts throw an interesting light on the way in which errors and variations crept into a popular work before the invention of printing.

The vivid and spirited chronicle of the campaigns of Richard Lion-Heart by Geoffrey de Vinsauf (1189-1192 A.D.) informs us of the condition of the maritime region, and describes a part of Palestine which few have visited, between Haifa and Jaffa, as well as the region east of Ascalon and as far south as the border of Egypt. The topography of this chronicle I studied on the ground with great care in 1873-75. The charming pages of Joinville, though of great interest as describing the unfortunate Crusade of St. Louis in 1256 A.D., contain much less of geographical value than the preceding.[22]