[156] The name of Solyma was formed from that of Hierosolyma.
[157] The Mussulmans call Jerusalem El Cods ’the holy), Beit-ul-Mocaddès ’the holy house), and sometimes El Cherif ’the noble). A description of Jerusalem may be seen in the extracts from the Arabian history of Jerusalem and Hebron, translated into French and inserted in the German Journal, entitled “The Mines of the East.”
[158] Tasso here makes Tancred contend with Clorinda. The personages of Clorinda and Herminia are the invention of the poet.
[159] This fact, which Tasso has mixed with some fictions, is related by Raoul de Caen, Gesta Tancredi, cap. 112. The same historian adds that Tancred met upon the Mount of Olives a hermit who was born in Normandy, and who had been the enemy of Robert Guiscard and his family. This hermit welcomed the Italian hero with respect, and showed him the places around Jerusalem the most venerated by pilgrims.
[160] See, for this arrival of the Christians, William of Tyre, lib. vii. cap. 25.
[161] In comparing the description of the siege of Jerusalem by the Crusaders with that of the siege which the Romans carried on under Vespasian, we find that the quarters of Godfrey were in the same place as those of Titus, when he directed his first attacks against the city. See the History of Josephus.
[162] An admirable picture is to be found in Tasso of this drought, which is also described by Robert the Monk, Baldric, Raymond d’Agiles, Albert d’Aix, William of Tyre, and by Gilles or Gilou, in his Latin poem upon the first crusade.
[163] Maimbourg does not seem to credit the existence of this forest, and says that it is an invention of Tasso’s. He might have read in William of Tyre this sentence, which is not at all equivocal:—Casu affuit quidam fidelis indigena natione Syrus, qui in valles quasdam secretiores, sex aut septem ab urbe distantes milliaribus, quosdam de principibus direxit, ubi arbores, etsi non ad conceptum opus aptas penitus, tamen ad aliquem modum proceras invenerunt plures. Raoul de Caen is much more positive and explicit than William of Tyre; this is the way in which he expresses himself:—Lucus erat in montibus et montes ad Hyerusalem remoti ei; quæ modo Neapolis, olim Sebasta, ante Sychar dictus est, propriores, adhuc ignota nostratibus via, nunc celebris et ferme peregrenantium unica.—Rad. Cad. cap. 121.
[164] A sufficiently remarkable circumstance is, that the shrub which grows most freely in the territory of Jerusalem, and which the Crusaders must have used, was the rhamnus, a thorny shrub, of which, if we give faith to the opinion of Pierre Belon, was formed the crown of thorns of Christ. Christopher Hasselquoit, it is true, is not of this opinion, and pretends that the crown of thorns was of the shrub nakba.
[165] Quemdam egregium et magnificum virum, dominum videlicet Gastonem de Bearn, operi prefecerunt.—Will. Tyren. lib. viii. cap. 10. Raymond d’Agiles and Abbot Guibert speak also of Gaston de Béarn.