Abstract
Boyadjian offers a comparative study of medieval Jerusalem by challenging antagonistic approaches to the crusades and using the Mediterranean as a larger framework for analysis. The chapter draws attention to three texts from the early crusading period—the history of Ibn al-Athı̄r, the chronicle of Fulcher de Chartres, and the lament over Jerusalem composed by the Armenian High Patriarch Grigor Tghay—critically arguing that these ethno-religious traditions shape their representations of Jerusalem through the city’s sacred character, its contested status, and the mapping of a geotopographical space which produces a Jerusalem respective to each individual tradition.
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- 1.
Bahā’ al-Dīn, al-nawādir al-sultāniyya wa’l-mahāsin al-yūsufiyya (Sultanly Anecdotes and Josephly Virtues) RHC, Or, III, (Paris, 1884); trans. D. S. Richards, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 238.
- 2.
In his three volume, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in World Civilizations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), Marshall Hodgson provides an eloquent assessment of the ways in which the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds have been divided including analyses of terms such as Levant, oikumene, and modern (esp. Vol I: 48–63). See also Palmira Brummett, “Visions of the Mediterranean: A Classification,” in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 1 (2007): 9–55.
- 3.
There are numerous examples of the ways in which European scholars and sources have viewed and framed “eastern” material of the period as inferior to those produced in Western Europe. These opinions can be found in introductions to crusading histories, appendixes, as well as in large volumes devoted to providing “translations” and excerpts from “eastern” material of the period. Some examples include: a compilation of histories translated from Arabic to Italian by Francesco Gabrieli and Italian to English by E.J. Constella, entitled Arab Historians of the Crusades (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); the multivolume Recueil des Historiens des Croisades (RHC) published through Gallica, and Runicman’s three volume A History of the Crusades where he claims that “Arab sources…give us very little assistance over the first [crusade],” (I:333). Runciman’s statement has been riposted through the work of Carole Hillenbrand in “The First Crusade: the Muslim perspective” in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. Jonathan Phillips (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 130–141; and Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2000).
- 4.
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: The Study of Mediterranean History (Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2000).
- 5.
Ibn al-Athīr, al-kāmil fī’l-ta’rikh, 13 vols. (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1965–7). Trans. D.S. Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period, 3 vols. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), I. Ibn al-Athīr was a Kurd born in 1160 at Jazīrat Ibn ‘Umar (modern day Cizre). His father Muḥammad and his eldest brother served in the administration of the Zangid dynasty, a successor state of the Seljuk sultanate. He records that he was a companion of one of the viziers, Jamāl al-Dīn, and during his visit to Jerusalem he spent some time with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s army. He is believed to have completed his history in 628/1231, having worked on multiple segments for many years.
- 6.
“Glory to (Allah) Who took His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest [al-aqṣā] Mosque, whose precincts We did bless in order that We might show him some of Our signs: for He is the One Who hears and sees (all things)”; Ed. ‘Abdullah Yūsuf ‘Ali, The Holy Qur’ān: Text, Translation and Commentary (New York: Tahrike Tarsil Qur’an, Inc, 2007). All subsequent references to the Qur’ān are taken from this translation.
- 7.
Ed. C.P. Melville and M.C. Lyons, “Saladin’s Ḥaṭṭīn’s Letter,” in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B.Z. Kedar (London: Variorum, 1992), 208–212.
- 8.
For a discussion on the various interpretations of this verse see: Josef van Ess, Anfänge muslimischer Theologie (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 1977), Trans. Jane Marie Todd, The Flowering of Muslim Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Izhak Hasson, “The Muslim view of Jerusalem in the Qur’ān and the Ḥadīth,” in ed. Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben Shammai, The History of Jerusalem: the Early Muslim Period (New York: NYU Press, 1996), 353–359; Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam” in Jerusalem, ed. M. Osterreicher and A. Sinai (New York, 1974), 216–218; S.D. Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), 135–148; among others. See also: Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, ta’rīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk (History of the Prophets and Kings), ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1879–1901), 1158–1159; M. Montgomery Watt and Michael V. McDonald, trans., The History of al-Ṭabarī (Albany: State University of New York, 1985–1999).
- 9.
Maurice Borrmans, “Jerusalem dans la tradition Religieuse musulmane,” Islamochristiana, 7 (1981): 1–18; Emmanuel Sivan, “La caractère sacré de Jérusalem dans l’Islam aux XIIe-XIIIe siècles,” Studia Islamica, no. 27 (1967): 149–182.
- 10.
Ibn Kathīr, al-bidāya wa-ʾl-nihāya fiʾl-taʾrīkh, XI, 226 (Cairo, 1932); al-Muqaddasī, aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1866) III, 166–168; al-Ṭabarī, taʾrīkh, II, 1139. See also: Chase Robinson, ‘Abd al-Malik (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 76–80; Oleg Grabar: “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem,” Ars Orientalis 3 (1959): 33–62; Dome of the Rock (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); The Shape of the Holy: early Islamic Jerusalem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Amikam Elad, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 159–160.
- 11.
Ibn al-Athīr, al-kāmil, X, 187–190. Trans. D.S. Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period: Part I (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).
- 12.
Carole Hillenbrand argues that it is highly plausible that the Byzantines had warned the Fāṭimids about the arrival of the western army and that the Fāṭimids saw the Seljuks as a greater threat than the crusaders, which might have enabled the capture of Jerusalem in 491/1097–1098 by the Fāṭimid vizier al-Afḍal ibn Badr al-Jamālī (Islamic Perspectives, 44–45). Ibn al-Athīr’s chronicle maintains the perspective that the success of the Fāṭimid capture of Jerusalem was also based on the disunity of the Seljuk Turks, their lack of cohesion, and the weakening of their power as a result of the battle of Antioch (282–283).
- 13.
Primary sources: al-Maqrīzī, ittiʼāẓ al-ḥunafā’, ed. J. Al-Shayyal (Cairo, 1948); Ibn al-Dawādārī, Die Chronik des Ibn al-Dawādārī, 6, ed. S. Munaggid (Cairo: Sami al-Khandji, 1961); Ibn Taghrībirdī, nujūm al-ẓāhira fī mulūk miṣr wa’l-qāhira, 5 (Cairo: Maṭba‛at dār al-kutub, 1939); trans. William Popper (New York: AMS Press, 1976); Al-‘Azimi, “La chronique abrégée d’al-‘Azimi, ed. C. Cahen, Journal Asiatique, 230 (1938), 353–448. Secondary Material: Carole Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2000), 31–88; Ed. Gerhard Endress, Islam: A Historical Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 110–121; Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (New York: Routledge, 2016), 307–345; S. Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen & Co, 1901), 160–170; Hans L. Gottschalk, al-malik al-kāmil von Egypten und seine Zeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1958).
- 14.
Ibn al-Athīr, al-kāmil, X, 283–284. Trans. D.H. Richards, 21–22.
- 15.
Also in ‘Abd al-Bāsit al-Anisī, ed., dīwān al-abīwardī abī al-muẓaffar muḥammad ibn aḥmad ibn isḥaq al-matūfī (Dimashq: Majmaʻ al-Lughah al-ʻArabīyah bi-Dimashq, 1975) II, 106–107. Sixteen verses of this lament have been loosely translated by Francesco Gabrieli in Arab Historians of the Crusades (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 12.
- 16.
Oleg Grabar, Jerusalem, II (2005), 196.
- 17.
The accounts of Pope Urbans’ speech(es) at Clermont are recorded by the following authors: Fulcher of Chartres, Gestis Francorum Iherusalem Peregrinantum; Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolymitana; Baldric of Dol, Historia Jherosolimitana; Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos; and William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum. Apart from these five accounts, there are a number of letters and references to Urban’s presence at Clermont, as well as fragmentary reports of other sermons he preached in France. Due to the detailed nature of his account, some historians such as H. Hagenmeyer (Historia hierosolmitana (1095–1127) Mit Erläuterungen und einem Anhange herausgegeben, 90) and Molinier (Le Sources de l’Histoire de France, no. 2123) argue that Fulcher might have been present at Clermont. Robert the Monk, Raymond of Aguilers, and William of Malmesbury have relied on Fulcher’s descriptions in their accounts of Clermont. These aforementioned accounts can be found in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 5 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1844–95).
- 18.
An exception is the account of Albert of Aix, or Aachen, produced between 1125 and 1130, which attributes the preaching of the crusade to Peter the Hermit.
- 19.
Gestis Francorum Iherusalem Peregrinantum: Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, III (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1866), 322–324; 355–359. Trans. Frances Rita Ryan, Fulcher de Chartres: A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095–1127 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969), 61–69; 116–125.
- 20.
Some scholars such as the notable Karl Erdmann, Janus Moller Jensen, and others have relied on this point to support their argument that Jerusalem was not the main intention of the crusading movement, since Fulcher, the most significant source, does not mention it by name: Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1955); Jensen, “War, Penance and the First Crusade: Dealing with a Tyrannical Construct” in Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology, ed. Tuomas M.S. Lehtonen and Kurt Villads Jensen (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 2005).
- 21.
“Item exhortatio ipsius de itinere Iherosolymitano.” Ryan, 65; RHC, Occ, III, 323. I suspect that this rubric is a later edition and I am currently in the process of examining the manuscript tradition surrounding this account to see which manuscripts, from where and at which date, include this particular rubric.
- 22.
Ryan, 71–74; RHC, Occ, III, 327–329.
- 23.
Another example appears in the first recession of Fulcher’s chronicle which includes a letter written by the illustrious leaders of the victory of Antioch dated September 11, 1098 (H. Hagenmeyer, Epistulae et Chartae, no. XVI, 161–5).
- 24.
Ryan, 116–117; RHC, Occ, III, 355–357.
- 25.
For a detailed topographical study of the city during the Crusader period see: Adrian J. Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades: Society, Landscape, and Art in the Holy City under Frankish Rule (London: Routledge, 2001).
- 26.
The construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher under the Constantine’s proclamation of a New Jerusalem, or ὀμφαλός, was a conscious effort to separate the Jerusalem of the pagan past from the Christian present. Constantine’s plan included an erection on an area where all the soil for the past two centuries was to be removed and a new foundation was to be placed on the location declared to be the site of Christ’s crucifixion, Golgatha, as attested by the Emperor’s mother Helena. The Emperor’s project became viewed as a newly built Jerusalem, which was divinely inspired—an opinion conveyed by Eusebius in his De vita Constantini: Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.P. Migne, 20, col. 1094 (Paris: Apud Garnier Fratres et J.-P. Migne Successores, 1857–1905). Trans. J.H. Bernard, Palestine Pilgrims’ Texts Society, I (London: London Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1896), 6–7. The literature on the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is quite extensive. One notable work is that of Paul Ciholas, Omphalos and the Cross: Pagans and Christians in Search of a Divine Center (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003). The Fāṭtimid Caliph, Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tāriqu l-Ḥākim, had the Holy Sepulcher destroyed in 1099. After negotiations between the Fāṭimids and the Byzantines his son agree to rebuild and redecorate the church in 1027–1028.
- 27.
Ryan, 117; RHC, Occ, III, 355.
- 28.
Ryan, 117; RHC, Occ, III, 356.
- 29.
RHC, Occ, III, 357–359. See also: Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades” in The Crusades (Vol. 3), ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan Riley-Smith (London: Routledge, 2004), 15–76.
- 30.
Itinerarium Egeriae, ed. and trans. J. Wilkinson (London: Liverpool University Press, 1971), 73–74; 131–133.
- 31.
RHC, Occ, IV, 708–709.
- 32.
Clemens Kopp, The Holy Places of the Gospel, trans. R. Walls (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), fig. 6; A. Schönfelder, “Die Prozessionen der Lateiner in Jerusalem zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge,” Historisches Jahrbuch 32 (1911): 584–586; Molly Linder, “Topography and Iconography in 12th century Jerusalem” in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B.Z. Kedar, 87–91.
- 33.
The foundations of Christian thought clearly identified the earthly Jerusalem as a Jewish city. Christian exegesis attempted to disassociate itself from the centrality of the Temple in Jerusalem by focusing on the heavenly or new Israel (Revelation 14:1), as evident in the two synoptic Gospels of Luke (19:42–44) and Matthew (24:1–2). As such, the heavenly Jerusalem represents the Christian realization of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 65:17–18) of the new heaven and the new earth, God’s dwelling place (Revelation 21:1; 22:3–4), and the locus for the future Jerusalem (Baruch 32:2–6; Zechariah 8:3; Revelation 21:9–21). This position towards the earthly Jerusalem held an internal contradiction, since Christianity attempted to both inherit the Old Testament and the essential position of Jerusalem, and reject it at the same time. For a summary of Christian attitudes towards the city of Jerusalem see: Joshua Prawer, “Christian Attitudes Towards Jerusalem in the Early Middle Ages,” in The History of Jerusalem: the Early Muslim Period, ed. Prawer and Shammai, 311–348, esp. 312–314; See also: Sylvia Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 1–8; R. Konrad, “Das himmlische und das irdische Jerusalem in mittelalterichen Denken,” Speculum historiale, Festschrift J. Spörl, ed. C. Bauer (Munich, 1965), 523–540; A. Bredero, “Jerusalem in the West,” Christendom and Christianity in the Middle Ages: The Relations between religion, church, and society, trans. Reinder Bruinsma (Michigan: Eedermans Publishing Co, 1994), 259–271.
- 34.
This attitude is not reflective of the historiographic works produced in Western Europe during the period of the Kings’ Crusade. Such works maintain the belief that the earthly city is a means to the heavenly, but one that does not necessarily need to be in Christian hands. In the anonymous English chronicle Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (and its source text, Ambroise’s Anglo Norman verse chronicle Estoire de la Guerre Sainte), for example, on a number of occasions Richard disassociates himself from the physical Jerusalem and delays his entrance into the city. Rather than presenting Richard as a possessor of the earthly Jerusalem, this narrative reflects his position as the exemplary pilgrim who will lead his soldiers to salvation (more than victory). See: Tamar M. Boyadjian, Bridging East and West: A Study of Crusader Jerusalem in the Literature and Chronicles of the Early Crusades (UCLA, Ph.D. Diss., 2010), Ch. IV.
- 35.
A. Sh. Mnats‛akanyan, ed., Grigor Tghay: Banasteghtsut‘yunner ev poemner (Grigor Tghay: Shorter and Longer Poems) (Yerevan: Haykakan SSH GA Hratarakchʻutʻyun, 1972), 244–333; notes, 431–434. An abbreviated form of the poem (lines 1–2395) accompanied with a French translation: E. Dulaurier, “Élégie sur la prise de Jérusalem,” Recueil des historiens des Croisades, Documents Arméniens (RHC, Doc Arm hereafter), vol. I (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1869), 269–307. All translations are my own and all subsequent references to the poem are noted in the body of the text through line numbers.
- 36.
Yerevan, Matenadaran MS 1206, ff.167v–174v; Venice, Mkhitarist Monastery at St. Lazarus: MS 297, f.173r; Vienna, Mkhitarist Monastery: MS 610, f.11. The Armenian translation by Nersēs of Lambron of the series of letters between Levon, Grigor Tghay, and Pope Clement III is printed in Gh. Alishan, Sisuan hamagrut‛iwn haykakan Kilikioy ew Levon Metsagorts (Venice: S. Ghazar, 1885), 463–476. My extensive search for the original letters of Pope Clement III has been so far unsuccessful, which brings me to believe that perhaps the Armenian translations might be the only surviving copies.
- 37.
According to the colophon (lines 2793–2796) the poem was composed in the year 668 of the Armenian calendar, which corresponds with the year 1189 in the Gregorian calendar.
- 38.
Grigor’s poem of lamentation assumes a system of commonplaces already associated with the representation of fallen cities as they appear in the Hebrew Bible, and posits the loss of Jerusalem to Saladin into this model. For an extensive study of city-laments in the Armenian tradition see: P.M. Khach‛atryan, Hay mijnadaryan patmakan oghber (Medieval Armenian Historical Laments) (Yerevan: Haykakan SSH Gitutʻyunneri Akademiayi Hratarakutʻyun, 1969). For a study of comparative city-lamentations in the crusader period see: Tamar M. Boyadjian, The City Lament: Jerusalem in Crusading Narrative (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).
- 39.
Kevork Hintlian, History of Armenians in the Holy Land (Jerusalem: St. James Press, 1976); Victor Azarya, The Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem: Urban Life Behind Monastery Walls (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 57–73; A.K. Sanjian, The Armenian Communities in Syria under Ottoman Dominion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 4–8; Amnon Linder, “Christian Communities in Jerusalem,” in The History of Jerusalem: the Early Muslim Period 638–1099, ed. Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-Shammai (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 157–159; Joshua Prawer, “The Armenians in Jerusalem under the Crusaders” in Armenian and Biblical Studies, ed. Michael Stone (Jerusalem: St. James Press, 1976), 228–229.
- 40.
Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades, 39. According to the Arab historian Mujīr al-Dīn, in 1191 Saladin carried out plans to repair the city. This included the rebuilding of a new wall in the south to include Mount Zion within the fortifications of the city and the Armenian quarter, a measure which was carried out by Saladin’s brother al-Malik al-‘Adīl.
- 41.
Ewsebios Kesarets‛i, Patmut‘iwn ekeghets‛woy (Church History), ed. Abraham Charian (Venice: Armenian Press of St. Lazarus, 1877), II, 1; Sanjian, Armenian Communities, 95–101; Azarya, Armenian Quarter, 59, 109.
- 42.
Sources for the letter: Abu Shama, RHC, Doc. Or, 4:435–436; Bahā’ al-Dīn, RHC, Doc. Or, 3:164–166; Trans. and discussion in Assadour Antreassian, Jerusalem and the Armenians, 46–48.
- 43.
The schematic for the cartographic representation of the world through the T-O structure was first introduced by Cosmas Indicopleustes, or Cosmas, at the beginning of the Christian era in his Topographia Kristianikē. Moving away from the science of cartography to the teachings of the scriptures, Cosmas replaced the spherical structure of the earth with a disk shaped one divided into continents and replaced by oceans. His model was further developed by the seventh century scholar Isidore of Seville, who became the influential figure of the T-O map structure through the Middle Ages. Isidore’s description produces a map where the three landmasses—Asia, Europe, Africa—are in the form of a “T,” the edges of which are surrounded by an “O,” which corresponds to three bodies of water, typically the Black, Red, and Mediterranean seas.
- 44.
Ed. Robert H. Hewsen, The Geography of Ananias of Širak: Ašxarhacʻoycʻ, the Long and the Short Recessions (Weisbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1992), 45a. See also: Robert H. Hewsen, Armenia: A Historical Atlas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 127; and “The Geography of Armenia,” in The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 1, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 1–17. According to Robert Hewsen’s study of Shirak’s Ashkharats‛uyts‛, the allusion to the land of Armenia through a reference to the geographic area of the Pontus and the Caspian Sea is the result of the influence of the Byzantine cartographic tradition. This map at the onset of Grigor’s lament is therefore utilizing both the Isidorian and Ptolemic structures in its representation of the world.
- 45.
Hewsen, Armenia: A Historical Atlas, 64–74; maps: 57, 59.
- 46.
Robert W. Thomson, ed. and trans., Agat‘angełos: History of the Armenians (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976).
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Boyadjian, T.M. (2018). Mapping Jerusalem: Re-reading the City in the Context of the Medieval Mediterranean. In: Babayan, K., Pifer, M. (eds) An Armenian Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72865-0_6
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