Jerusalem. The Biography

triumphant Persians, they now faced a dynamic young Byzantine emperor who seemed to merit the name of Hercules. 7
    HERACLIUS: THE FIRST CRUSADER
     
    Blond and tall, he looked the part of imperial saviour. The son of the governor of Africa and of Armenian descent, Heraclius had seized power in 610 when much of the east was already in Persian hands and it seemed that things could scarcely get worse – but they did. When Heraclius counterattacked, he was defeated by the Royal Boar who then conquered Syria and Egypt before attacking Constantinople itself. Heraclius sued for a humiliating peace that gave him time to rebuild Byzantine strength and plan his vengeance.
    OnEasterMonday622,Heracliussailedwithanarmy, not(as expected) through the Black Sea to the Caucasus, but around the Ionian coast of the Mediterranean to the Bay of Issus whence he marched inland and defeatedthe Royal Boar. Even as the Persians threatened Constantinople, Heraclius was taking the war into their homeland. The next year, he repeated the trick, marching through Armenia and Azerbaijan towards Khusrau’s palace at Ganzak. The shah retreated. Heraclius wintered in Armenia and then in 625, in a Herculean display of military virtuosity, prevented three Persian armies uniting, before defeating each in turn.
    In this war of wild gambles and global ambition, the shah turned the tables once again, despatching one general to seize Iraq and the Boar to link up with the Avars, a marauding, nomadic tribe, and take Constantinople. The shah, calling himself ‘Noblest of the Gods, King and Master of the Whole Earth’, wrote to Heraclius: ‘You say you trust in God; why then has He not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria? Could I not also destroy Constantinople? Have I not destroyed you Greeks?’ Heraclius despatched one army to fight in Iraq, another to defend the capital, while he himself hired 40,000 nomadic Turkic horsemen, the Khazars, to form a third.
    Constantinople was besieged by the Persians and Avars on either side of the Bosphorus, but the shah was jealous of the Royal Boar. The over-weening arrogance and creative cruelties of the Master of the Whole Earth were already alienating his own noblemen. The shah sent a letter to the Royal Boar’s deputy ordering him to kill the general and take command. Heraclius intercepted it. Inviting the Boar to a meeting, he showed him the letter; they made a secret alliance. Constantinople was saved.
    The Royal Boar withdrew to Alexandria to rule Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Heraclius sailed his army to the Caucasus via the Black Sea, and with his Khazar horsemen invaded Persia. He outmanoeuvred the Persian forces, challenged and killed three Persian champions in duels, then defeated their main army, stopping just outside the shah’s capital. Khusrau’s deluded intransigence destroyed him. He was arrested and placed in the dungeon, the House of Darkness, where his favourite son was butchered in front of him before he was himself tortured to death. The Persians agreed to restore the
status quo ante bellum
. The Royal Boar agreed to marry Heraclius’ niece and revealed the hiding-place of the True Cross. After tortuous intrigues, the Royal Boar seized the Persian throne – but was soon assassinated.
    In 629, Heraclius set out from Constantinople with his wife (also his niece) to return the True Cross to Jerusalem. He pardoned the Jews of Tiberias, where he stayed in the mansion of a rich Jew, Benjamin, who accompanied him to Jerusalem, converting to Christianity on the way. The Jews were promised that there would be no vengeance and that they could reside in Jerusalem.
    On 21 March 630, Heraclius, now sixty, exhausted and grey, rode up to the Golden Gate, which he had built for this special occasion. This exquisite gate became, for all three Abrahamic religions, Jerusalem’s most potently mystical gateway for the arrival of the Messiah on the Day of Judgement. * There the emperor dismounted to carry the True Cross into Jerusalem. It was said that when Heraclius tried to enter in his Byzantine robes the gate became a solid wall, but when he humbled himself it opened for his imperial procession. Carpets and aromatic herbs were spread as Heraclius delivered the True Cross to the Holy Sepulchre, now cleaned up by the patriarch Modestos. The catastrophe that had befallen the empire and the emperor’s return played into a new variant of the ever malleable vision of the Apocalypse in which a