Jerusalem. The Biography

the feral Zangi was a harsh master. He skinned and scalped important enemies, hanged minor ones, and crucified any of his troops who trampled on crops. He castrated his boy lovers to preserve their beauty. When he exiled his generals, he reminded them of his power by castrating their sons. Demented with drink, he divorced one of his wives and then had her gang-raped by his grooms in the stables – while he watched. If one of his soldiers deserted, remembered one of his officers, Usamah bin Munqidh, Zangi would order the two neighbouring men to be cut in half. His cruelties are recorded by Muslim sources. As for the Crusaders, they (in a pun worthy of a tabloid-newspaper headline) nicknamed him Zangi the Sanguine.
    Fulk hurried to confront him but Zangi defeated the Jerusalemites, trapping the king in a nearby fortress. William, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, led the army to his rescue, brandishing the True Cross. Zangi,realizing that relief was on its way, offered to free Fulk in return for the fortress. After this close escape, Fulk and Melisende were reconciled, but Zangi, now in his early sixties, kept up the pressure, threatening not only the Crusader cities of Antioch and Edessa but renewing his attack on Damascus, which was so alarmed that its ruler, Unur, allied himself with infidel Jerusalem. 4
    In 1140, Unur, the Atabeg of Damascus, set off for Jerusalem accompanied by his worldly adviser, a Syrian aristocrat and the century’s finest Muslim writer.
    USAMAH BIN MUNQIDH: GREAT EVENTS AND CALAMITIES
     
    Usamah bin Munqidh was one of those ubiquitous players who know everyone who matters at a certain time or place in history and always find themselves at the centre of events. During his long career, this Zeligesque courtier, warrior and writer managed to serve all the great Islamic leaders of his century, from Zangi and the Fatimid caliphs to Saladin, and to know at least two of the kings of Jerusalem.
    A member of the dynasty that ruled the Syrian fortress of Shaizar, Usamah lost the succession, and his family was then wiped out in an earthquake. After these blows, he became a cavalier – a
faris –
ready to serve whichever ruler offered him the best opportunities, and, now aged forty-five, he was serving Unur of Damascus. Usamah lived for fighting, hunting and literature. His accident-prone pursuit of power, wealth and glory was both bloody and farcical: the phrase ‘yet another disaster’ appears frequently in his memoirs, which are entitled
Great Events and Calamities
. But he was also a natural chronicler: one senses that, even as his schemes collapsed, this aesthetic Arab Quixote knew the stories would make great material for his witty, sharp, melancholic writings. Usamah was a master
adib –
the refined Arab belle-lettrist par excellence – writing books and poems on the delights of women, male manners (
The Kernels of Refinement
), eroticism and warfare. In his hands, a history of walking sticks was really an essay on ageing.
    Atabeg Unur now arrived in Jerusalem with his exuberant courtier, Usamah: ‘I used to travel frequently to visit the King of the Franks during the truce,’ wrote Usamah, whose relations with Fulk were surprisingly courteous. * King and cavalier bantered about the nature of knighthood.‘They told me you were a great knight,’ said Fulk, ‘but I hadn’t really believed it.’ ‘My lord, I am a knight of my race and people,’ answered Usamah. We do not know anything about Usamah’s appearance, but it seems that the Franks were impressed with his physique.
    During his trips to Jerusalem, Usamah enjoyed studying the inferiority of the Crusaders, whom he regarded as ‘mere beasts, possessing no other virtues but courage and fighting’ – even though his works reveal that many Muslim traditions were just as savage and primitive. Like every good reporter, he recorded opposites – good and bad things about both sides. When he looked back as an old man at the court of Saladin, he must have reflected that he saw Jerusalem at the height of the Crusader kingdom’s glory.
    MELISENDE’S JERUSALEM: HIGH LIFE AND LOW LIFE
     
    Melisende’s Jerusalem was regarded by many Christians as the true centre of the world, very different from the empty, stinking Frankish conquest of forty years before. Indeed, in the maps of the city from this time, Jerusalem is shown as a circle with the two main streets serving as the arms of the cross with its centre on the Church of the Holy