Jerusalem. The Biography

led to ten years of wasteful warfare. Meanwhile both empires were threatened by rising powers – the Mamluks by Portuguese advances in the Indian Ocean, the Ottomans by the new Persian shah, Ismail, who united his country by imposing the Twelver Shiism that is still revered there. This pushed the Ottomans and Mamluks together in a short-lived, pragmatic embrace: it was to prove the kiss of death. 7

OTTOMAN
     
    This noble Jerusalem has been the object of desire of the kings of all nations, especially the Christians who, ever since Jesus was born in the city, have waged all their wars over Jerusalem … Jerusalem was the place of prayer of the tribes of djinn … It contains the shrines of 124,000 prophets.
    Evliya Celebi,
Book of Travels
    Suleiman saw the Prophet in his dream: ‘O Suleiman, you should embellish the Dome of the Rock and rebuild Jerusalem.’
    Evliya Celebi,
Book of Travels
    The great prize contended by several sects is the Holy Sepulchre, a privilege contested with so much fury and animosity that they have sometimes proceeded to blows and wounds, at the door of the Sepulchre mingling their own blood with their ‘sacrifices’.
    Henry Maundrell,
Journey
    So part we sadly in this troublous world
    To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.
    William Shakespeare,
Henry VI, Part Three
    Rather than walk about holy places we can thus pause at our thoughts, examine our heart, and visit the real promised land.
    Martin Luther,
Table Talk
    We shall find that the God of Israel is among us … for we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people upon us.
    John Winthrop,
A Modell of Christian Charity

1517–1550
     
    THE SECOND SOLOMON AND HIS ROXELANA
     
    On 24 August 1516, the Ottoman sultan, Selim the Grim, routed the Mamluk army not far from Aleppo, the battle that decided Jerusalem’s destiny: most of the Middle East would remain Ottoman for the next four centuries. On 20 March 1517, Selim arrived to take possession of Jerusalem. The
ulema
handed him the keys of al-Aqsa and the Dome at which he prostrated himself and exclaimed, ‘I am the possessor of the first
qibla
.’ Selim confirmed the traditional tolerance of the Christians and Jews and prayed on the Temple Mount. Then he rode on to subjugate Egypt. Selim had defeated Persia, conquered the Mamluks and clarified any succession dilemmas by killing his brothers, his nephews and probably some of his own sons. So when he died in September 1520, he was survived by just one son. 1
    Suleiman was ‘only twenty-five years old, tall and slender but tough with a thin and bony face’ and he found himself the master of an empire that stretched from the Balkans to the borders of Persia, from Egypt to the Black Sea. ‘In Baghdad, I am the Shah, in Byzantine realms, the Caesar; and in Egypt, the Sultan,’ he declared and to these titles he added that of caliph. No wonder Ottoman courtiers addressed their monarchs as the Padishah – emperor – who was, one of them wrote, ‘the most honoured and respected sovereign the world over.’ It was said that Suleiman dreamed he was visited by the Prophet who told him that ‘to repulse the Infidels,’ he must embellish the Sanctuary (Temple Mount) and rebuild Jerusalem’, but actually he needed no prompting. He was only too aware of himself as the Islamic emperor and, as his Slavic wife Roxelana would repeatedly hail him, ‘the Solomon of his age.’
    Roxelana shared in Suleiman’s projects – and that included Jerusalem. She was probably a priest’s daughter kidnapped from Poland and sold into the sultanic harem where she caught Suleiman’s eye, bearing him five sons and a daughter. ‘Young but not beautiful, although graceful and petite,’ a contemporary portrait suggests she was large-eyed, rose-lippedand round-faced. Her letters to Suleiman on campaign catch something of her playful yet indomitable spirit: ‘My Sultan, there’s no limit to the burning anguish of separation. Nowspare this miserable one and don’t withhold your noble letters. When your letters are read, your servant and son Mir Mehmed and your slave and daughter Mihrimah weep and wail from missing you. Their weeping has driven me mad.’ Suleiman renamed her Hurrem al-Sultan, the Joy of the Sultan, whom he described in poems attributed to him as ‘my love, my moonlight, my springtime, my woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief’ and officially as ‘the