Jerusalem. The Biography

emerged at the top wielding a crossbow as the armies traded salvoes of arrows and bolts, and the mangonels rained missiles on the walls.
    As the sun rose, the princes used flashing mirrors on the Mount of Olives to co-ordinate their moves. Simultaneously Raymond attacked to the south and the Normans in the north. At dawn on Friday the 15th, they renewed their attacks. Godfrey rode the rickety wooden tower, shooting bolts over the walls while the defenders unleashed their Greek Fire – but not enough to stop the Franks.
    At midday, Godfrey’s engine finally closed on the walls. The Franks threw planks across and two brothers climbed into the city, with Godfrey following them. They claimed to have seen the late Bishop Adhemar fighting among them: ‘Many testified he was the first to scale the wall!’ The dead bishop ordered them to open the Gate of the Column (Damascus Gate). Tancred and his Normans burst into the narrow streets. To the south, on Mount Zion, the Count of Toulouse heard the cheering. ‘Why do you loiter,’ Raymond scolded his men. ‘Lo, the Franks are even now within the city!’ Raymond’s men broke into Jerusalem and pursued the governor and garrison to the Citadel. The governor agreed to surrender to Raymond in return for the lives of his garrison. Citizens and soldiers fled to the Temple Mount, pursued by Tancred and his men. In the fray, the Jerusalemites slammed shut the gates of the Temple Mount and fought back, but Tancred’s warriors smashed their way on to the sacred esplanade, crowded with desperate people.
    The fighting raged there for hours; the Franks went berserk, and killed anyone they encountered in the streets and alleyways. They cut off not only heads but hands and feet, glorying in the spurting fountains of cleansing infidel blood. Although carrying out a massacre in a stormedcity was not unprecedented, the sanctimonious pride with which the perpetrators recorded it possibly was. ‘Wonderful sights were to be seen,’ enthused one eyewitness, Raymond of Aguilers, the Count of Toulouse’s chaplain: ‘Our men cut off the heads of their enemies, others shot them with arrows so that they fell from the towers, others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen on the streets. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses.’
    Babies were seized from their mothers, their heads dashed against the walls. As the barbarity escalated, ‘Saracens, Arabs and Ethiopians’ – meaning the black Sudanese troops of the Fatimid army – took refuge on the roofs of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa. But, as they fought their way towards the Dome, the knights hacked a path across the crowded esplanade, killing and dicing through human flesh until ‘in the Temple [of Solomon, as the Crusaders called al-Aqsa], they rode in blood up to their bridles. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers.’
    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