The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

Beha-ed-Dîn tells a remarkable story connected with this episode.[560] Saladin, in Jerusalem, was in deep anxiety as to the future of his empire, when this faithful friend advised him to, visit the Aḳṣa Mosque, and to pray humbly for aid, which he did “in a low voice, his tears rolling down on the prayer-carpet.” “In the evening of the same day (a Friday), we were on duty with him as usual, when behold, he received a despatch from Jurdîk, who was then commanding the advanced guard. It was in the following words: ‘The whole of the enemy’s force came out on horseback, and took up their position on the top of a tell, after which they returned to their camp. We have sent spies to see what is going on.’ On Saturday morning another despatch came, which ran thus: ‘Our spy has returned, and brings news that discord is rife among the enemy. One party is anxious to push on to the Holy City; the others wish to return to their own territory. The French insist on advancing on Jerusalem.’” This was the great debate already mentioned, and “on the following day ... they broke up their camp.” It was thus not the Christians only who believed that Providence was on their side. King Richard was ill and discouraged, and in his absence at Acre Saladin captured Jaffa, but was soon driven back on return of the great champion of Christendom. At length the two leaders agreed to a truce, to last for three years and eight months from September 2, 1192. The plains were to remain in undisturbed possession of the Christians—that is, of the two Orders, and of the Italian republics, which had their quarters in each seaside town—and two Latin priests, with two deacons, were to be allowed to remain in Jerusalem, with a like number in Bethlehem. All those of the Christian army who desired were allowed to visit the Holy City as pilgrims before returning home, that in this manner their vows might be fulfilled.

Thus King Richard left Palestine for ever, but his name is even now not forgotten in villages along the line of his great flank march from Acre to Jaffa. His words, as he gazed on the half-reconquered land from his ship, are said to have been, “O Holy Land, I commend thy people to God. May He permit me to visit thee again, and to aid thee.” But only once again was any Christian king to be crowned in Jerusalem, and only one other interesting historic episode remains to be described. Saladin died, worn out, at the age of fifty-six, on February 21, 1193, and Richard, after two years of captivity in Austria, died before the fortress of Chalus in Normandy in 1199 A. D. The next champion of Christendom was of a very different stamp, and the heroic age had now passed away. Saladin’s dying advice to his son gives us the secret of his success, which had enduring results. “I commend you,” he said, “to the Most High, the giver of all good. Do thou His will, for that is the way of peace. Beware of blood: trust not in that, for spilt blood never sleeps; and seek the hearts of thy people, and care for them.... I have become great because I won men’s hearts by gentleness and kindness. Nourish no hatred of any, for death spares none. Deal prudently with men, for God will not pardon if they do not forgive. Yet, as between Him and thee, He will pardon if thou dost repent, for He is most gracious.”

FREDERICK II.

Jerusalem plays no part in the history of the Frankish occupation of the Palestine plains during the thirteenth century, except in the time of the emperor Frederick II. Saladin had repaired the walls of the city in 1192, but his nephew Melek el Mu’aẓẓam, ruling in Damascus, feared that the Franks fighting in Egypt would succeed in capturing the Holy City, and would hold it as a fortress in future. In 1219 he ordered all the walls and towers to be demolished, except those of the Ḥaram and of the citadel.[561] Jerusalem thus remained defenceless for ten years, till the arrival of Frederick II. This brilliant emperor was a type of the most advanced culture of his age—a culture which Europe owed to nearly a century and a half of contact with the ancient civilisation of Byzantium and Syria. On November 9, 1225, he married Yolande, daughter of John of Brienne, who, as husband of Mary the rightful heiress, claimed to be king of Jerusalem. Yolande died within three years, but Frederick II. disputed with John the right to the kingdom. The emperor was a good Arabic scholar, and was in communication with Melek el Kâmil (Saladin’s nephew), the sultan of Egypt, on questions of science and philosophy. The successors of Saladin were at strife, and the rulers of Cairo and Damascus were equally anxious to secure alliance with the Christians. As early as 1226 we find the emperor encouraging the Teutonic Order in Germany.[562] They had acquired a large property in Upper Galilee six years before, and were now given “free use of waters, grazing, and wood,” throughout the empire. In spite of papal excommunications, constantly renewed, Frederick II. reached Acre on September 7, 1228; and on February 18 next year he made a treaty, near Jaffa, with his friend Melek el Kâmil, which was to last till 1240 A. D. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were given up to the Christians, with all the lands of the three Orders, in the plains and in Galilee; but it was stipulated that the walls of Jerusalem should not be rebuilt, and that the mosque should remain in Moslem possession.[563] On March 17, 1229, Frederick entered Jerusalem, and crowned himself king of the Latin kingdom, thus peacefully regained, on the following day. In April of the same year he sealed a deed, at Acre, which gave to the Teutonic Order “the house, in the city of Jerusalem, that is in the quarter of the Armenians, near the Church of St. Thomas [of the Germans], which was formerly the garden of King Baldwin; six acres of land and a house, which the brothers of the Order possessed in the said city before the loss of the Holy Land.” This clearly applies to the German Hospice already described in the preceding chapter.

Frederick II. was obliged to hurry home to Europe on May 1, having been in Palestine less than eight months; for John of Brienne resented this usurpation of his throne, and as the vassal of the Pope invaded the emperor’s possessions in Apulia. The emperor did nothing for the Templars nor the Hospitallers, because they had obeyed Pope Gregory IX., and had refused to help him. Thus the ancient Templars’ Hospice remained a mosque in Jerusalem, and a text dating 1236 A. D. speaks of the restoration of part of the Aḳṣa by Melek el Mu’aẓẓam ’Aisa of Damascus, during the ten years of Christian occupation of the Holy City.

THE KHAREZMIANS

In the last year of the peace thus established, the Templars began to arrange for alliance with Damascus against Egypt, thus reversing the policy of Frederick II. Hermann, the grand master, explained[564] to the lord of Cæsarea that, the Saracen princes being engaged in civil war, one of them was ready even to become a Christian; and he broke the treaty, which he regarded as having expired with the death of Melek el Kâmil the year before, in favour of the new alliance. The Christians began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, but Dâûd Emîr of Kerak fell upon them,[565] and a massacre followed; all that had been erected was overthrown, and the Tower of David was dismantled. In 1240 Count Thibaud of Champagne came to the rescue of the Orders, though forbidden to go by both Pope and emperor. He was entirely defeated at Gaza, but Hermann succeeded in making his treaty with Ṣâleḥ ’Imâd-ed-Dîn of Damascus.[566] The Egyptians then called to their aid the wild Kharezmian Turks, who were being pressed west by the Mongols, and thus wrought a terrible vengeance on their Syrian kinsmen. In 1244 these hordes advanced through Syria pillaging and slaying. Templars, Hospitallers, and all other Christians fled before them from Jerusalem, leaving only the poor and the sick. The city had been given up to them without conditions under the new treaty, and the walls appear to have been hastily rebuilt; but they were easily stormed, and not only were all the remaining Christians murdered, but it is said that, by ringing the bells, the Kharezmians lured back others, who, seeing banners with crosses displayed on the walls, supposed that some unexpected rescue had come, but who, thus deceived, were also massacred.[567] The tombs of the Latin kings were desecrated, probably in search of treasure; but they were not—as is often stated—destroyed, for they were still visible in the sixteenth century, and were only removed after the great fire of 1808.

The Kharezmians joined their Egyptian allies at Gaza, where a great battle was fought against the Christians and the Syrian Moslems, who met with a crushing defeat. The victors proceeded to take Damascus, but here the Turks and Egyptians fell out, and after two pitched battles the Kharezmians fled north, and dispersed in Asia Minor. Jerusalem was not restored to the Christians, but was occupied by Melek es Ṣâleḥ Nejm ed Dîn, the sulṭân of Egypt. Frederick II. was indignant with the Templars, and laid all the blame on them for not having accepted the treaty which Richard, Count of Cornwall (who afterwards became titular emperor in 1257), had made with Melek es Ṣâleḥ of Egypt in 1241,[568] instead of that which Hermann the grand master contracted in 1244 with Melek es Ṣâleḥ Ism’aîl of Damascus. Frederick had already protested against the conduct of the Order because “they took away from the dominion of the Emperor the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, intending to build in it a fortress contrary to the emperor’s honour”; for he considered himself still bound by his agreement not to fortify the Holy City, and he therefore commanded the Templars to desist from the work. After the Gaza defeat they never had any further opportunity of disobeying his orders; and, in 1146, Melek es Ṣâleḥ of Egypt wrote to Pope Innocent IV. to say “that he was sorry the Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed, and promised to punish the malefactors, and would give the keys of the said sepulchre to his faithful ones, who would never open it except to pilgrims, and that he desired to contribute to its restoration and adornment.”[569]

THE FALL OF ACRE

Jerusalem was never again in the hands of the Christians, and is little noticed in the latter half of the thirteenth century. St. Louis never even attempted its conquest, during the four years that he spent in the East from 1250 A. D. Ten years later Bibars usurped the throne of Saladin’s family, and proceeded victoriously to drive the Franks out of Syria. He was arrested in his designs by Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I. of England,[570] with whom he made a truce for ten years and ten months, which secured what remained of their possessions in Palestine to the Christians; but it did not include the recession of Jerusalem. Bibars was succeeded in Egypt by Ḳalâ’un, who had been a slave, but who became sulṭân about 1279 A. D. With him other truces were made, but the lands held by Templars and Hospitallers dwindled gradually, and the county of Tripoli met the same fate that had overtaken Antioch in the reign of Bibars. On the death of Ḳalâ’un the various agreements lapsed; and a massacre of Moslems, in March 1291, led to the siege of Acre by his son Melek el Ashraf, and to the fall of this last city held by the Franks on May 18 in the same year.