Jerusalem. The Biography

Solomon’s Temple.
    In 543, Justinian and Theodora started to build a basilica, the Nea (New) Church of St Mary Mother of God, * almost 400 feet long and 187 feet high, with walls 16 feet thick, facing away from the Temple Mount and designed to overpower Solomon’s site. When Justinian’s general Belisarius conquered the Vandal capital of Carthage, he found there the candelabra, pillaged from the Temple by Titus. After being paraded through Constantinople in Belisarius’ Triumph, it was sent to Jerusalem, probably to embellish Justinian’s Nea Church.
    The Holy City was ruled by the rituals of Orthodox Christianity. * Pilgrims entered through Hadrian’s gateway in the north and walked down the Cardo, a paved and colonnaded street, 40 feet wide, enough for two wagons to pass, lined with covered shops, extending down to the Nea Church. The well-to-do lived south and south-west of the Temple Mount in two-storeyed mansions set around courtyards. ‘Happy are those who live in this house’ was written in one of them. The houses, churches, even the shops, were decorated gloriously with mosaics: the Armenian kings probably commissioned the incandescent mosaic of herons, doves and eagles (dedicated ‘For the memory and salvation of all the Armenians whose names only God knows’). More mysterious is the vivid semi-Christian mosaic of a puckish Orpheus playing his lyre found at the turn of the century north of the Damascus Gate. Rich Byzantine women wore long Greek robes bordered in gold, red and green, red shoes, strings of pearls, necklaces and earrings. A gold ring has been unearthed in Jerusalem decorated with a gold model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
    The city was set up to host thousands of pilgrims: the grandees stayed with the patriarch; poor pilgrims in the dormitories of Justinian’s hospices which had beds for 3,000; and ascetics, in caves, often old Jewish tombs, in the surrounding hills. When the rich died, they were buried in sarcophagi; the sides of which were decorated with frescoes and equipped with bells for the dead to ward off demons. The cadavers of the poor were pushed into the anonymous mass tomb of the Field of Blood. The temptations that had outraged Jerome were always available: there was chariot-racing in the hippodrome, supported by the rumbustious Blue and Green factions of supporters. ‘Fortune of the Blues wins!’ cries an inscription found in Jerusalem. ‘Live long!’
    Theodora died of cancer soon after the Nea was finished, but Justinian lived on into his eighties until 565, having ruled for almost fifty years. He had expanded the empire more than anyone except Augustus and Trajan, but by the end of the century it was overstretched and vulnerable. In 602, a general seized the throne and tried to hold on to it by unleashing the Blue chariot-racing faction against his enemies, who were supported by the Greens, and ordering the forcible conversion of the Jews. TheBlues and Greens, always a dangerous combination of sporting fans and political bullyboys, fought for Jerusalem: ‘evil, malicious men filled the city with crime and murder.’ The Greens won, but Byzantine troops retook the city and crushed their rebellion.
    This turbulence was irresistibly tempting to Khusrau II, the Persian shah. As a boy he had been helped back on to his throne by the Byzantine emperor Maurice, but when the latter was murdered, Khusrau had his pretext to invade the East, hoping to destroy Constantinople once and for all. Jerusalem was about to suffer a rollercoaster epoch that would see her ruled by four different religions in twenty-five years: Christian, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Muslim. 6
    THE SHAH AND THE ROYAL BOAR: THE FURY OF MAD DOGS
     
    The Persians, spearheaded by the mailed first of their heavy cavalry, conquered Roman Iraq and then swooped into Syria. The Jews of Antioch, so long persecuted by the Byzantines, rebelled and, as the brilliant Persian commander, who gloried in the name Shahrbaraz – the Royal Boar – marched south, 20,000 Jews from Antioch and Tiberias joined him to besiege Jerusalem. Inside, the patriarch Zacharias tried to negotiate, but the chariot-racing bullyboys ruled the streets and refused. Somehow the Persians and Jews broke into the city.
    Jerusalem, and virtually the entire Roman East, now belonged to the young Persian King of Kings, the Shah-in-Shah Khusrau II, whose new empire extended from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. This shah was the grandson of the