Jerusalem. The Biography

Islamic world. Now aged around seventy, Ibn Khaldun had served the monarchs of Morocco, then (after a spell in prison) Granada, Tunisia and finally (after another spell in prison) the Mamluk sultan. In between spells in power and in prison, he wrote his masterpiece, the
Muqaddimah
, a world history that still sparkles today. The sultan therefore appointed him tutor to his son, Faraj, who succeeded to the throne as a child.
    Now, as the peppery historian showed Jerusalem to the ten-year-old sultan, Tamurlane besieged Mamluk Damascus. Timur the Lame – known as Tamurlane – had risen to power in 1170 as a local warlord in Central Asia. In thirty-five years of incessant warfare, this harsh genius, of Turkic descent, had conquered much of the Near East, which he ruled from the saddle, promoting himself as the heir to Genghis Khan. In Delhi, he slaughtered 100,000; at Isfahan, he killed 70,000, building twenty-eight towers of 1,500 heads each, and he had never been defeated.
    Yet Tamurlane was not just a warrior. His palaces and gardens in Samarkand displayed his sophisticated taste; he was an ace chessplayer and a history-buff who enjoyed debates with philosophers. Not surprisingly, he had always wanted to meet Ibn Khaldun.
    Yet the Mamluks were in a state of panic: if Damascus fell, so would Palestine and perhaps Cairo too. The old pedagogue and the boy-sultan hurried back to Cairo but the Mamluks decided to send the pair into Syria to negotiate with Tamurlane – and save the empire. At the same time, the Jerusalemites were debating what to do: how to save the Holy City from the invincible predator known as the Scourge of God?
    In January 1401, Tamurlane, encamped around Damascus, heard that Sultan Faraj and Ibn Khaldun awaited his pleasure. He had no interest in the boy but he was fascinated by Ibn Khaldun whom he immediately summoned. As a politician, Ibn Khaldun represented the sultan, but asa historian, he naturally longed to meet the supreme man of the era – even if he was not sure if he would emerge dead or alive. The two were almost the same age: the grizzled conqueror received the venerable historian in his palatial tent.
    Ibn Khaldun was awed by this ‘greatest and mightiest of kings’ whom he found ‘highly intelligent and perspicacious, addicted to debate and argumentation about what he knows and also what he does not know’. Ibn Khaldun persuaded Tamurlane to release some Mamluk prisoners, but the Scourge of God would not negotiate: Damascus was stormed and sacked in what Ibn Khaldun called ‘an absolutely dastardly and abominable deed’. The road to Jerusalem was now open. The city’s
ulema
decided to surrender the city to Tamurlane and despatched a delegation with the keys of the Dome of the Rock. But when the Jerusalemites arrived in Damascus, the conqueror had instead ridden north to rout the rising power in Anatolia, the Ottoman Turks. Then, in February 1405, en route to conquer China, Tamurlane died and Jerusalem remained Mamluk. Ibn Khaldun, who had made it home to Cairo from his meeting with Tamurlane, died in his bed a year later. His pupil Sultan Faraj never forgot his eventful cultural tour: he frequently returned to Jerusalem, holding court on the Temple Mount, beneath the royal parasol, amid the yellow banners of the sultanate, handing out gold to the poor.
    There were only 6,000 Jerusalemites, with just 200 Jewish and 100 Christian families, in a small city with outsized passions. The city was dangerous and unstable: in 1405 Jerusalemites rioted against exorbitant taxes and chased the Mamluk governor out of town. The archives of the Haram give us a feel for Jerusalem’s dynasties of religious judges and Sufi sheikhs, exiled Mamluk amirs, and wealthy merchants in a world of Koran study, book-collecting, trade in olive oil and soap, and crossbow and sword practice. But now that Crusades were no longer a threat, Christian pilgrims were milked as the chief source of income. However, they were scarcely welcomed: they were frequently arrested on trumped-up charges until they paid arbitrary fines. ‘You will have either have to pay,’ one interpreter explained to his imprisoned Christian charges, ‘or be beaten to death.’ 5
    It was hard to say who was the more dangerous – the venal Mamluks, the disreputable pilgrims, the feuding Christians or the greedy Jerusalemites. Many pilgrims were so villainous that the locals and travellers were warned, ‘Protect yourself from anyone