Ten thousand people, including many Muslim clergy and Sufi ascetics, were killed on the Temple Mount, including 3,000 packed into al-Aqsa. ‘Our gladiators’, wrote the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres, started shooting down the Muslims on the roof of al-Aqsa with their bows. ‘What more shall I relate? None were left alive, neither women nor children were spared.’ But Tancred sent his banner to the remaining three hundred people on the roof of al-Aqsa, signifying protection. He halted the killing, took some valuable prisoners and was shown the treasures of the Temple Mount. He then plundered the huge golden lanterns that hung in the shrines there. The Jews sought refuge in their synagogues, but the Crusaders set them on fire. The Jews were burned alive, almost a climactic burnt offering in Christ’s name. Godfrey of Bouillon took off his sword and with a small entourage circled the city and prayed, before making his way to the Holy Sepulchre.
Next morning, to Tancred’s fury, Raymond’s men nervously climbed onto the roof of al-Aqsa, surprised the huddled Muslims and beheaded the men and women in another spasm of killing. Some of the Muslims leaped to their deaths. A respected female scholar from Shiraz in Persia took refuge with a crowd of women in the Dome of the Chain – they too were slaughtered. A ghoulish delight was taken in the dismemberment of the victims, which was treated almost as a sacrament. ‘Everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, headless bodies and mutilated limbs, strewn in all directions.’ There was something even more dreadful in the wild-eyed, gore-spattered Crusaders themselves, ‘dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight that brought terror to all who met them’. They searched the streets of the bazaars, dragging out more victims to be ‘slain like sheep’.
Each Crusader had been promised possession of any house marked by his ‘shield and arms’: ‘consequently the pilgrims searched the city most carefully and boldly killed the citizens’, culling ‘wives, children, whole households,’ many of them ‘dashed headlong to the ground’ from high windows.*
On the 17th, the pilgrims (as these slaughterers called themselves) were finally sated with butchery and ‘refreshed themselves with the rest and food they greatly needed’. The princes and priests made their way to the Holy Sepulchre where they sang in praise of Christ, clapping joyously and bathing the altar in tears of joy, before parading through the streets to the Temple of the Lord (the Dome of the Rock) and the Temple of Solomon. Those streets were strewn with body parts, decaying in the summer heat. The princes forced the surviving Jews and Muslims to clear the remains away and burn them in pyres, after which they were themselves butchered and presumably joined their brethren on the fires. The Crusaders who died were buried in the Cemetery of the Lion at Mamilla or in the sacred earth just outside the Golden Gate, already a Muslim cemetery, ready to arise at the Last Day.
Jerusalem was so full of treasures, ‘gems, raiments, gold and silver’ and valuable prisoners that the Franks held slave-auctions for two days. Some respected Muslims had been saved for ransom: a thousand dinars was demanded for the Shafii scholar Sheikh Abd al-Salam al-Ansari, but when no one paid he was killed. Surviving Jews and 300 Hebrew books (including the Aleppo Codex, one of the earliest Hebrew Bibles that partially survives today) were ransomed to Egyptian Jews. The ransoming of prisoners was to be one of the most lucrative industries of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But not all the human giblets could be collected, and Jerusalem literally stank for long afterwards – even six months later, when Fulcher of Chartres returned: ‘Oh what a stench there was around the walls, within and without, from the rotting bodies of the Saracens, lying wherever they had been hunted down.’ Jerusalem was not yet secure: the Egyptian army was approaching. The Crusaders urgently needed a commander-in-chief – the first King of Jerusalem.
GODFREY: ADVOCATE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
The higher nobles and clergy made inquiries into the morals of the candidates for the crown. They felt they had to offer the throne to the senior prince, the unpopular Raymond, but did so grudgingly. Raymond obligingly turned it down, insisting he could not be a king in Jesus’ city. They then offered it to their real choice, the chaste and worthy Duke Godfrey, who accepted a newly coined title: Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre.
This outraged Raymond who, realizing he had been tricked, refused to give up the Tower of David until the bishops mediated. Triumphant as their arms were, these warrior-pilgrims did not find it easy to enforce the morality expected in a city ruled by Jesus himself. They elected the Norman chaplain, Arnulf, as patriarch but he soon had to defend himself for adultery and fathering a child by an Arab woman.
Arnulf placed bells in the churches (the ringing of church bells had always been banned by the Muslims). This was to be a Latin, Catholic Jerusalem. Now he demonstrated how vicious the schism was: he placed the Latin priests in charge of the Holy Sepulchre, banishing the Greek patriarch and clergy. He thereby started the unseemly conflict among Christian sects that continues to scandalize and amuse visitors to this day. Yet Arnulf could not find the main section of the True Cross and the Orthodox priests refused to reveal its hiding-place. The patriarch tortured them; a Christian torturing Christians to procure the Life-Giving Tree of the Lamb of God. They finally conceded.
On 12 August, leaving Jerusalem almost undefended, Advocate Godfrey led the entire Crusader army out towards Ashkelon where he defeated the Egyptians. When Ashkelon offered to surrender to Raymond, Godfrey refused to accept unless it was ceded to him: Ashkelon was lost – only the first of many self-inflicted wounds caused by the feuding of Jerusalem’s leaders. But Jerusalem was secure – if empty.
The Dukes of Normandy and Flanders and many of the Crusaders now returned home, leaving Godfrey with a putrid, devastated city peopled by just 300 knights and 2,000 infantry, and scarcely enough citizens to fill a quarter. Raymond of Toulouse recovered from his sulk and set about reducing the Lebanese coast, finally founding his own dynasty as Count of Tripoli. There were four Crusader states – the Principality of Antioch, the Counties of Edessa and Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This idiosyncratic patchwork of interrelated fiefdoms became known as the land of Outremer, ‘Across the Sea’.
Yet the reaction of the Islamic world – divided between the weakened caliphs of Sunni Baghdad and Shiite Cairo – was surprisingly muted. Only a few preachers called for jihad to liberate Jerusalem, and there was little reaction among the all-powerful Turkish amirs, who remained preoccupied with their personal feuds.
On 21 December, Baldwin, Godfrey’s brother, who was Count of Edessa, and the flaxen-haired Prince Bohemond of Antioch arrived to spend Christmas in Jerusalem. But Godfrey struggled to defend himself against the Church. The pope’s representative, an overweening Pisan named Daimbert, was now appointed patriarch (to replace the sinful Arnulf). Determined to establish a theocracy to be ruled by himself, he forced Godfrey to cede the city and Jaffa to the Church. In June 1100, Godfrey collapsed in Jaffa, probably with typhoid. Borne home to Jerusalem, he died on 18 July and was buried five days later, like all his successors, at the foot of Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.1
Daimbert took control of the city, but Godfrey’s knights refused to surrender the Citadel, and instead summoned the late advocate’s brother, Baldwin. The Count of Edessa was fighting to defend northern Syria, however, and received no message until late August. On 2 October Baldwin set out with 200 knights and 700 troops, and found that he had to fight all the way to Jerusalem, facing repeated Islamic ambushes. On 9 November, with less than half his original force, he at last entered the Holy City.