There is nothing that befalls travellers of which I did not have my share except begging and grievous sin. At times I’ve been pious, at times I’ve eaten impure foods. I’ve been close to drowning, my caravans have been waylaid on the highroad. I’ve spoken to kings and ministers, accompanied the licentious, been accused of being a spy, thrown into jail, I’ve eaten porridge with mystics, broth with monks and pudding with sailors. I’ve seen war in battleships against the Romans [Byzantines] and the ringing of church bells at night. I’ve worn the robes of honour of kings and many times I’ve been destitute. I’ve owned slaves and carried baskets on my head. What glory and honour I’ve been granted. Yet my death was plotted more than once.
Wherever he was, nothing dimmed his pride in Jerusalem:
One day, I sat in the council of the judge in Basra [in Iraq]. Egypt [Cairo] was mentioned. I was asked: which city is nobler? I said: ‘Our city.’ They said: Which one is sweeter? ‘Ours.’ They said: Which is better? ‘Ours.’ They said: Which is more bountiful? ‘Ours.’ The council were surprised at this. They said, ‘You are a man of conceit. You have claimed that which we cannot accept from you. You are like the owner of the camel during the Haj.
Yet he was honest about Jerusalem’s faults: he admitted that ‘the meek are molested and the rich are envied. You won’t anywhere find baths more filthy than those in the Holy City, nor heavier fees for their use.’ But Jerusalem produced the best raisins, bananas and pinenuts; she was the city of many muezzins calling the faithful to prayer – and no brothels. ‘There’s no place in Jerusalem where you cannot get water or hear the call to prayer.’
Muqaddasi described the holy places on the Temple Mount dedicated to Mary, Jacob and the mystical saint, Khidr.* Al-Aqsa was ‘even more beautiful’ than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but the Dome was peerless: ‘At the dawn when the light of the sun first strikes the Dome and the drum catches the rays, then is this edifice a marvellous sight and one such that in all of Islam I have not seen the equal, neither in pagan times.’ Muqaddasi was only too aware that he lived in two Jerusalems – the real and the celestial – and this was the place of the Apocalypse: ‘Is she not the one that unites the advantages of This World with those of the Next? Is this not to be the sahira – the plain – of marshalling on the Day of Judgement where the Gathering Together and the Appointment will take place? Truly Mecca and Medina have their superiority but on the Day of Judgement, they will both come to Jerusalem and the excellence of them all will be united here.’
Yet Muqaddasi still complained about the lack of Sunnis and the noisy confidence of Jews and Christians: ‘scholars are few and Christians numerous and rude in public places.’ The Fatimids after all were sectarians and local Muslims even joined in with Christians’ festivals. But things were about to take a terrifying turn: by the time Muqaddasi died at the age of fifty in 1000, a child had succeeded to the throne of the Living Imam who would seek to destroy Christian and Jewish Jerusalem.16
HAKIM: THE ARAB CALIGULA
When the Caliph Aziz lay dying, he kissed his son and then sent him away to play. Soon afterwards he died, and no one could find the eleven-year-old Living Imam. After frantic searching, he was discovered inauspiciously at the top of a sycamore tree. ‘Come down, my boy,’ a courtier begged the child. ‘May God protect you and us all.’
The gorgeously clad courtiers gathered at the bottom of the tree. ‘I descended,’ recalled the new caliph, Hakim, and the courtier ‘placed on my head the turban adorned with jewels, kissed the ground before me, and said: “Hail to the Commander of the Believers, with the mercy of God and his blessing.” He then led me out in that attire and showed me to all the people, who kissed the ground before me and saluted me with the title of Caliph.’
Son of a Christian mother whose brothers were both patriarchs, Hakim grew into a broad-shouldered youth, his blue eyes speckled with gold. At first, advised by ministers, he pursued his family’s Ismaili mission, tolerating Jews and Christians. He adored poetry and founded his own House of Wisdom in Cairo for the study of astronomy and philosophy. He prided himself on his asceticism, eschewing the diamond turban for a plain scarf, and he even traded jokes with poor Cairenes in the streets. But when he started to rule in his own right, there were soon signs that this mystical autocrat was unbalanced. He ordered the killing of all the dogs in Egypt, followed by all the cats. He forbade the eating of grapes, watercress and fish without scales. He slept by day and worked at night, ordering all Cairenes to follow his strange hours.
In 1004, he started arresting and executing Christians, closing churches in Jerusalem and converting them into mosques. He banned Easter and the drinking of wine, a measure aimed at Christians and Jews. He ordered Jews to wear a wooden cow necklace to remind them of the Golden Calf, and bells to alert Muslims of their approach. Christians had to wear iron crosses. Jews were forced to choose between conversion or leaving the country. Synagogues were destroyed in Egypt and in Jerusalem. But it was the growing popularity of a Christian ritual that drew Hakim’s attention to Jerusalem. Every Easter Christian pilgrims from the West and East poured into Jerusalem to celebrate the city’s own Easter miracle: the Descent of the Holy Fire.17
On Holy Saturday, the day after Good Friday, thousands of Christians spent the night in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the Tomb was sealed and all lamps extinguished until, amid emotional scenes, the patriarch entered the Tomb in the darkness. After a long interval of spine-tingling anticipation, a spark seemed to descend from above, a flame flickered, brightness flared and the patriarch emerged with a mysteriously lit lamp. This sacred flame was distributed from candle to candle through the crowd to screams of joy and acts of wild abandon. The Christians regarded this relatively new ritual, first mentioned by a pilgrim in 870, as divine confirmation of Jesus’ Resurrection. The Muslims believed this was a spectacle of fairground hucksterism achieved by trickery – the smearing of the wire holding the lamp with resinous oil. ‘These abominations’, wrote a Muslim Jerusalemite, ‘make one shudder with horror.’18
When Hakim heard about this and observed the sheer wealth of the Christian caravan setting out for Jerusalem, he burned the Jewish Quarter of Cairo – and ordered the total destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In September 1009, his henchmen obliterated the Church ‘stone by stone’, ‘razed it completely except those parts impossible to destroy’, and started to demolish the city’s synagogues and churches. Jews and Christians pretended to convert to Islam.
The caliph’s antics convinced some Ismailis that ‘Hakim had the personified God within him’. In the frenzy of his own holy revelations Hakim did not discourage this new religion, and started to persecute Muslims; he banned Ramadan and terrorized Shiites as well as Sunnis. He became so hated by Muslims that he needed the support of the Christians and Jews in Cairo, whom he allowed to rebuild their synagogues* and churches.
By this time, the psychopathic caliph was wandering in trances through the streets of Cairo, often heavily medicated by doctors. Hakim purged his court, ordering the killing of his own tutors, judges, poets, cooks and cousins, and the cutting off of the hands of female slaves, often himself playing the butcher.
HAKIM: THE VANISHING
Finally, in the middle of one night in February 1021, the demented caliph, still only thirty-six years old, rode out of Cairo into the hills and vanished so mysteriously that his devotees were convinced ’Hakim was not born of woman and did not die’. Since his donkey and some bloodied rags were discovered, he had probably been murdered by his sister who arranged the succession of his little son, Zahir. Hakim’s devotees were slaughtered by the Fatimid troops, but a few escaped to found a new sect which survives to this day as the Druze of Lebanon.19