In the reign of Heraclius, a countless host of Persians—fire-worshippers—under the leadership of Sarbar, poured like a torrent upon Palestine, and carried their ravages to the gates of Jerusalem, of which they took possession. Nearly a hundred thousand Christians perished on this occasion: the great eastern inundations of hordes of barbarous conquerors, being always effected by numbers, necessarily produce an amount of carnage in the vanquished which is sometimes staggering to our belief. But the loss most felt by the Christians, was that of the holy cross, which the conqueror carried away with him, in a case sealed with the seal of Zacchariah, then Patriarch of Jerusalem. The Holy Sepulchre and the churches were given up to the flames.
NINTH SIEGE, A.D. 635.
The Roman emperor soon regained possession of the city; but scarcely was it beginning to recover the shock sustained from the fire-worshippers, when it became the prey of a much more powerful race of fanatics. In 635, the Saracens, under the command of Khaled, the most redoubtable general of Arabia, laid siege to it. The first attack lasted ten days, and the Christians defended themselves with heroic courage. During four months, every day brought its sanguinary conflict; but at length, the unfortunate citizens, being without hope of succour, yielded to the perseverance of the Mussulmans, and by the means of the Patriarch Sophronius, capitulated with the Caliph Omar in person. The following are the conditions of this treaty, which afterwards served as a model to the Mahometans: “In the name of the All-Merciful God, Omar Ebn-Alkhetlab, to the inhabitants of Ælia (the name given to it by its restorer, Ælius Adrianus). They shall be protected; they shall preserve their lives and their property. Their churches shall not be destroyed, but they shall erect no new ones, either in the city or its territories: they alone shall enjoy the use of them. They shall not prevent Mussulmans from entering them, by day or night; the doors of them shall be open to passers-by and to travellers. If any Mussulman, who may be travelling, should pass through their city, he shall be entertained gratis during three days. They shall not teach the Koran to their children, they shall not speak publicly of their own religion, and shall make no efforts to induce others to embrace it. They shall not prevent their kindred from becoming Mussulmans, if they should be so disposed; they shall show respect to Mussulmans, and shall rise up when they wish to be seated. They shall not be clothed like Mussulmans; they shall not wear the same caps, shoes, or turbans. They shall not part their hair as the Mussulmans do; they shall not speak the same language, or be called by the same names. On horseback, they shall use no saddles; they shall carry no sort of arms, and shall not employ the Arabian language in the inscriptions upon their seals. They shall not sell wine; they shall be distinguished by the same description of clothes, wherever they go, and shall always wear girdles. They shall erect no crosses upon their churches, and they shall not exhibit their crosses or their books publicly in the streets of the Mussulmans. They shall not ring their bells, but shall content themselves with tolling them. They shall never take a domestic who has served a Mussulman.” They were obliged to ratify this act of servitude, and to open the gates to the Saracens, who took possession of their conquest.
TENTH SIEGE, A.D. 1099.
We now come to one of the most remarkable sieges of this extraordinary city. In the eleventh century, after a lapse of four hundred years, during which it had passed from the hands of the Saracens to those of the Seldjouc Turks, Jerusalem, a Mahometan city, was beleaguered by the great band of Christian adventurers who had left Europe for the express purpose of delivering it. This is not the place to dilate upon the subject of the Crusades; it is our business to describe some of the sieges to which they gave rise.
Most readers are acquainted with the calamities of various kinds which the Christians had to endure before they could set an army down beneath the walls of this great object of their enterprise. We shall take our account of this awful struggle from the pages of a highly-accredited historian, satisfied that no effort of our own could make it more interesting or instructive.
With the earliest dawn, on the 10th of June, 1099, the Crusaders ascended the heights of Emmaus. All at once the Holy City lay before them. We can compare the cry of the Crusaders, at this sight, to nothing but that of “Land! land!” uttered by the companions of Columbus when they completed their great discovery. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” was shouted from every lip, but was soon repeated with bated breath and bended knee, when all that belonged to that city recurred to the minds of the brave adventurers. The rear ranks rushed through those that preceded them, to behold the long-desired object, and their war-cry, “God wills it! God wills it!” re-echoed from the Hill of Sion to the Mount of Olives. The horsemen alighted humbly from their steeds, and walked barefoot. Some cast themselves upon their knees, whilst others kissed the earth rendered sacred by the presence of the Saviour. In their transports they passed from joy to sorrow, from sorrow to joy. At one moment they congratulated each other at approaching the great end of their labours; in the next they wept over their sins, over the death of Christ, and over his profaned tomb; but all united in repeating the oath they had so many times made, of delivering the city from the sacrilegious yoke of the Mussulmans.
At the time of the Crusades, Jerusalem formed, as it does now, a square, rather longer than broad, of a league in circumference. It extended over four hills: on the east the Moriah, upon which the mosque of Omar had been built, in the place of the Temple of Solomon; on the south and west, the Acra, which occupied the whole width of the city; on the north, the Bezetha, or the new city; and on the north-west, the Golgotha, or Calvary, which the Greeks considered the centre of the world, and upon which the Church of the Resurrection was built. In the state in which Jerusalem then was, it had lost much of its strength and extent. Mount Sion no longer rose within its precincts, and dominated over the walls between the south and the west. The three valleys which surrounded its ramparts had been in many places filled up by Adrian, and access to the place was much more difficult, particularly from the north. Jerusalem, however, had had to sustain several sieges whilst under the domination of the Saracens, and its fortifications had not been neglected.
Whilst the Crusaders had been so slowly advancing towards the city, the caliph’s lieutenant, Istekhar-Eddaulah, ravaged the neighbouring plains, burnt the villages, filled up or poisoned the cisterns, and made a desert of the spot upon which the Christians were doomed to be given up to all sorts of miseries. He brought in provisions for a long siege, and called upon all Mussulmans to repair to the defence of Jerusalem. Numberless workmen were employed, day and night, in constructing machines of war, raising the fallen walls, and repairing the towers. The garrison of the city amounted to forty thousand men, and twenty thousand inhabitants took up arms.
On the approach of the Christians, some detachments left the city, to observe the march and plans of the enemy. They were repulsed by Baldwin du Bourg and Tancred, the latter hastening from Bethlehem, of which he had just taken possession. After pursuing the fugitives to the gates of the Holy City, he left his companions, and strayed alone to the Mount of Olives, whence he contemplated at leisure the city promised to the arms and devotion of the pilgrims. He was disturbed in his pious contemplations by five Mussulmans, who left the city for the purpose of attacking him. Tancred did not seek to avoid the combat; three Saracens fell beneath his powerful arm, and the other two fled back to Jerusalem. Without hastening or retarding his steps, Tancred rejoined the army, which, in its enthusiasm, was advancing without order, and descended the heights of Emmaus, singing the words of Isaiah—“Jerusalem, lift up thine eyes, and behold the liberator who cometh to break thy chains!”