Jerusalem. The Biography

courtiers wrote biographies: Imad ad-Din, his secretary, wrote
The Lightning of Syria
and then
Ciceronian Eloquence on the Conquest of the HolyCity
, characterized by purple passages. In 1188, Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad, an Islamic scholar from Iraq, visited Jerusalem and was appointed by Saladin first as qadi (judge) of the army and then as overseer of Jerusalem. On Saladin’s death he served as chief qadi for two of his sons. His biography,
Sultanly Anecdotes and JosephlyVirtues
(a reference to his first name Yusuf, Joseph), is a rounded portrait of a warlord under pressure.

* Saladin held court sometimes in the Hospital and sometimes in the Patriarch’s Palace, where there was a wooden hut on the roof where he liked to sit up late at night with his entourage. His brother Safadin resided in the Cenacle complex on Mount Zion. Saladin decided to give the Patriarch’s Palace to his own Salahiyya Sufi convent, or
khanqah
. Today it remains the Salahiyya
khanqah
(as its inscription declares) and the bedroom with its fine Crusader capitals where Saladin (and the patriarchs) slept is today the bedroom of Sheikh al-Alami, a member of one of Jerusalem’s prominent families. The patriarchs had special entrances from their Palace to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Saladin blocked these though they can still be seen behind the tills of today’s shops. He also took over St Mary’s Latina for his Salahiyya Hospital and commandeered St Anne’s as his Salahiyya madrassa, religious school. Now it is a church again but it is still inscribed to Saladin as ‘Reviver of the Empire of the Commander of the Believers’.

* These Tartars were finally defeated by Saladin’s descendants in 1246. Drunk in battle, Barka Khan was beheaded, his head displayed in Aleppo. But his daughter married the Mamluk strongman Baibars, future sultan; his sons became powerful amirs who between 1260 and 1285 built the fine tomb,
turba
, that still stands on the Street of the Chain. There they buried their father: ‘This is the tomb of the servant needful of God’s mercy Barka Khan.’ His sons were later buried with him. But when archaeologists inspected the tomb, there was no Barka inside. Perhaps his body never arrived from Aleppo. In 1846–7, the wealthy Khalidi family bought this building and indeed the entire street. Barka’s tomb is now the reading room of the Khalidi library, founded in 1900. It is still the home of Mrs Haifa al-Khalidi and has a fine view of the Western Wall. As a quaint reminder of Jerusalem’s span of history, the extended house also contains a red British postbox from the Mandate.

† The Mamluks built in a distinctive style that can be seen all over the Muslim Quarter: stalactite corbelling called
muqarna
and the alternating of dark and light stones known as
ablaq
. Perhaps the finest example of the Mamluk style is Tankiz’s Tankiziyya palace-madrassa built over the Gate of the Chain: altogether there are twenty-seven madrassas, all marked with the blazons of the Mamluk amirs – Tankiz as Cupbearer marks his buildings with a cup. The typical Mamluk amir in Jerusalem would endow a charitable trust, a
waqf
, partly to maintain his madrassa, partly to provide a home and job for his descendants in case his power and wealth were lost in the frequent power struggles. Each tomb or
turba
was usually downstairs in a room with green-latticed windows so that passers-by could hear the prayers being recited – and they too can be seen. These buildings were much later assigned to Jerusalem’s Arab families who endowed them as trusts so that today many are still family homes.

* A legend grewup that Suleiman considered levelling Jerusalem until he dreamed that lions would eat him if he did so, hence he built the Lions’ Gate. This is based on a misunderstanding: he did build the Lions’ Gate but its lions are actually the panthers of Sultan Baibars from 300 years earlier, borrowed from his Sufi
khanqah
that once stood north-west of the city. Suleiman used the spolia of Jerusalem: his Gate of the Chain fountain is topped with a Crusader rosette and the trough is a Crusader sarcophagus. The new walls did not enclose Mount Zion. It was said that Suleiman was so furious when he looked into a magic cup and sawthat David’s Tomb was outside the city that he executed the architects. Tour guides point out their graves close to the Jaffa Gate – but this too is a myth: the graves belong to two scholars from Safed.

* They had