Jerusalem. The Biography

they began to bury their dead ready for Judgement Day. But they had come to revere the Christian shrine of David’s Tomb (which had nothing to do with the real David but dated from the Crusades), part of the Cenacle, controlled by the Franciscans. The Christians tried to restrict their access, so the Jews complained to Cairo – with unfortunate consequences for both. The sultan of the day, Barsbay, outraged to discover that the Christians held such a site, travelled up to Jerusalem, destroyed the Franciscan chapel and instead built a mosque inside David’s Tomb. A few years later, one of his successors, Sultan Jaqmaq, seized the wholeof Mount Zion for Islam. And it got worse: old restrictions were enforced, new ones devised. The size of Christian and Jewish turbans was limited; in the baths men had to wear metal neck-rings like cattle; Jewish and Christian women were banned from the baths altogether; Jaqmaq forbade Jewish doctors to treat Muslims. * After the collapse of the Ramban Synagogue in a storm, the qadi banned its rebuilding, claiming it belonged to the neighbouring mosque. When Jewish bribes overturned the decision, the local
ulema
demolished it.
    On 10 July 1452, the Jerusalemites launched an anti-Christian pogrom, digging up the bones of Christian monks and tearing down a new balustrade in the Sepulchre which was borne in triumph to al-Aqsa. Christians were sometimes insanely provocative. In 1391, four Franciscan monks shouted in al-Aqsa that ‘Muhammad was a libertine, murderer, glutton’ who believed ‘in whoring’! The qadi offered them the chance to recant. When they refused, they were tortured and beaten almost to death. A bonfire was built in the courtyard of the Church where, ‘almost drunk with rage’, the mob hacked them into pieces ‘so that not even a human shape remained’, and then kebabbed them. 6
    However, deliverance was at hand and, when a more tolerant sultan came to power, it was a dish of French cuisine that would change the destiny of Christian Jerusalem.
    THE SULTAN AND THE CHRISTIAN OMELETTES
     
    Qaitbay, a Circassian slaveboy who became a Mamluk general, had spent years of exile in Jerusalem. Since he was banned from entering a Muslim household, he befriended the Franciscans who introduced him to a French dish: it seems he remained nostalgic about their vegetable omelettes when he ascended the Mamluk throne in 1486, for he welcomed the friars to Cairo and allowed them to build in the Church – and gave them back Mount Zion. They wanted vengeance on the Jews, whom Qaitbay therefore banned from ever approaching the Church or the convent on Mount Zion: Jews were routinely lynched and often killed even for absentmindedly passing the Church, a situation that lasted until 1917. But the sultan also allowed the Jews to rebuild their Ramban Synagogue. And he did not neglect the Temple Mount either: when he visited in 1475, he commissioned his Ashrafiyya madrassa that was sobeautiful it was described as ‘the third jewel of Jerusalem’ while his fountain there, a bellshaped dome resplendent in red and cream
ablaq
, remains the most gorgeous in the whole city.
    But for all Qaitbay’s interest, the Mamluks were losing their grip. When the qadi of the city, Mujir al-Din, watched the daily sunset parade at the Tower of David, ‘it was completely neglected and disorganized’. In 1480, Bedouin attacked Jerusalem, almost capturing the governor who had to gallop across the Temple Mount and out through the Jaffa Gate to escape. ‘Jerusalem is mostly desolate’, observed Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro, just after the Bedouin attack. From the distance, ‘I saw a ruined city’, agreed one of his disciples, with jackals and lions loping across the hills. Yet Jerusalem was still breathtaking. When Obadiah’s follower viewed it from the Olivet, ‘my spirit overflowed, my heart mourned and I sat down and wept and rent my garments’. Mujir al-Din, who loved his city, thought it was ‘filled with brilliance and beauty – one of the famous wonders.’ *
    In 1453, the Ottomans finally conquered Constantinople, inheriting the splendour and ideology of the universal Roman empire. For generation after generation, the Ottomans were bedevilled by wars of succession and the challenge of a resurgent Persia. In 1481, Qaitbay welcomed the fugitive Ottoman prince, Jem Sultan. Hoping that a dissident Ottoman kingdom would divide the dynasty, Qaitbay offered Jem the kingdom of Jerusalem. The gambit