Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

Preface

TO THE NEW EDITION. The preparation of a new edition of this book is like the opening of a chapter in one's life that had been long closed. It was written in the years 1870 and 1871, now nineteen years ago. At that time, as it now seems to me, the days must have been a great deal longer, so that one could do much more work ; also, one had much less work to do, and there was time for talk and play. But the compilation of this history was to both its authors a true labour of love. Professor Palmer, as yet little known outside Cambridge, was fresh from his journey across the Desert of the Wanderings, and full of enthusiasm for the subject. I myself, as yet feeling my way in other lines, was then one of those whom the vexed questions of the Holy City and its topography still held enchained. They are questions which are always being taken up by one enthusiast after another; they seem continually to be on the point of solution, and yet they never are solved ; so that there are some who believe that they are destined never to be solved.

Still, the attempt to prove where were the Tombs of the Kings, where was Constantine's Holy Sepulchre, where may be found the true site of the Holy Sepulchre

PREFACE.

TO THE NEW EDITION. where was the site of the Temple, and what was believed concerning these sites by Christian and by Moslem, has led to the study of a great mass of literature which might otherwise have been neglected, but which throws an immense light upon manners and customs ancient and mediæval. It was out of this kind of reading, miscellaneous rather than methodical, that this book came into existence. Palmer contributed, for his share, and from his reading in Arabic and Persian historians and geographers, the chapters which deal with the Mohammedan views of the City's history. These views, when this book was first issued, had never before been presented in English form. He also wrote, from his own observation and notes, a chapter descriptive of ' Modern Jerusalem,' which I have suppressed, because so many changes have happened in the City since the year 1870 that his account can be considered no longer faithful.

Many things have been discovered, besides, since we first wrote this book. Thanks to the labours of Conder, Ganneau, Schick and others, we now know, with as much certainty as can be expected, the exact site of the Pool of Bethesda : we have found a portion of the Second Wall — but, alas ! the rest of it eludes our search : it has been proved that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre covers very ancient tombs : the name of Sion has been discovered in the Wady Sahyun, on the west side of the city : the true Hill of Golgotha has been discovered : the rock-levels, first laid down by Sir

PREFACE.

TO THE NEW EDITION. IX Charles Wilson, have been greatly increased in number: the south course of the First Wall has been traced : the famous inscription of the Pool of Siloam has estab lished the antiquity of the well-known tunnel. Many other things have been found, all of which, to my mind, tend to prove the soundness of the views which we put forward in the Appendix to the First Edition — views which are also, in the main, held by Warren and Conder. Briefly they are : That the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands upon the site chosen for Con stantine by people who then knew no more on the subject than we know at the present day : That the real site of the Sepulchre is near that of the Place of Stoning, north of the city : That the Temple of Herod stood within the present Haram Wall, which then contained no other building : That the Dome of the Rock was as certainly and as truly built by Abdel Melek as St. Paul's by Christopher Wren.

It would be a great joy to some could it be proved that the Second Wall runs outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because the discovery would absolutely necessitate the downfall of a mass of superstition the like of which the world has never seen. But the years pass, and the course of the Second Wall still refuses to be found. I have only to add that I have not ventured to make any alteration in Palmer's work, and that I have made very little alteration in my own. I do not think there are many historical errors. There are one or two com-

PREFACE.

TO THE NEW EDITION. X paratively unimportant contradictions, but on the whole the Mohammedan and the Christian authorities agree together wonderfully well. The testimonies of the former as to the building of the Dome of the Rock have, since the writing of this book, been collected and translated by Mr. Guy le Strange, and published in the Journal of the Palestine Exploration Fund. This chain of evidence will also form part of a larger work on which that admirable scholar is at present engaged. It would have been a great happiness to my lamented friend, had he been living, to have assisted in the pre paration of this new edition of a work into which he threw so much of his learning and so much of his time. W. B. United University Club, September, 1888.

PREFACE.

TO THE FIRST EDITION. Very few words are needed to introduce this volume. It is intended to give a history of the City of Jerusalem from about the year 30 to the present time. This period includes the siege and capture by Titus, the last revolts of the Jews, the Christian occupation of three hundred years, the Mohammedan conquest, the build ing by the Mohammedans of the Dome of the Rock, the Crusades, the Christian kingdom, the reconquest of the city, and a long period of Mohammedan occupation, during which no event has happened except the yearly flocking of pilgrims to the Church of the Sepulchre, and an occasional quarrel among the monks. There are here, surely, sufficient materials for the historian, if only he knows how to use them. For the modern period, that of the Christian kingdom, two sources of information exist — one, the con temporary and later chronicles of the Crusaders, written either in Latin or Langue d'Oil ; and the other the Arabic historians themselves.

I have written my own part of the book from the former; to my colleague is due all that part (the Mohammedan con quest, the chapter on Saladin, etc.) which has been PREFA CE TO THE FIRST EDITION. taken from Arabic writers. Most of this has the great advantage of being entirely new, and now for the first time introduced to English readers. For my own share in the work I claim no other novelty than the presentation of facts as faithfully as I could gather them, at first hand, and from the earliest writers. There is nothing sacred about the actors in this long story we have to tell, and we have not thought it necessary to endeavour to invest them, as is generally done by those who write on Jerusalem, with an appearance of sanctity because they fought for the City of Sacred Memories, or because they bore the Cross upon their shoulders.

We have, on the other hand, endeavoured to show them as they were — men and women actuated by mixed motives, sometimes base, sometimes noble, sometimes interested, sometimes pure and lofty, but always men and women, never saints. The Chris tians in the East were as the Christians in the West, certainly never better, more often worse. If we have succeeded in making a plain tale, divested of its customary pseudo-religious trappings, interesting and useful, our design is accomplished. One word more. There may be found, owing to the double source from which our pages are derived, certain small discrepancies in the narrative. We have not cared to try and reconcile these. Let it be remembered that the one narrative is Christian, the other Mohammedan. W. B. October, 1871. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Introductory

It is our object to write a book which may serve as an historical account, complete so far as it goes, of the principal events with which Jerusalem is concerned, from the time when its history, as connected with the Bible, ceases, till the present ; that is to say, from the year a.d. 33 downwards. But it is difficult to take up the thread of the story at this date, and we are forced either to go as far back as Herod the Great, or to begin our narrative with the events which preceded the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. No date seems to us more ready to our hand than that of the death of Herod Agrippa. Even then we may seem beginning to tell a thrice-told tale. The revolt of the Jews, their defeat of Cestius, the siege of Titus, are surely, it may be objected, too well known to require telling again.

They are not well known, though they have been told again and again. But they are told here again because our central figure is U, JERUSALEM. 2 Jerusalem. We have to show her first, in all her pride, the joy of the Jews, the visible mark of their greatness; and then we have to follow her through two thousand years of varying fortune, always before the eyes of the world — always the object of tender pity and reverence — always the centre of some conflict, the scene of some religious contention. Frequent as were the sieges of the city in the olden days, they have been more frequent since. Titus took Jerusalem, Barcochebas took it, Julius Severus took it, Chosroes, Heraclius, Omar, the Charezmians, Godfrey, Saladin, Frederick, all took it by turns — all after hard fighting, and with much slaughter.

There is not a stone in the city but has been reddened with human blood ; not a spot but where some hand-to-hand conflict has taken place ; not an old wall but has echoed back the shrieks of despairing women. Jew, Pagan, Christian, Mohammedan, each has had his turn of triumph, occupation, and defeat ; and were all those ancient cemeteries outside the city emptied of their bones, it would be hard to tell whether Jew, or Pagan, or Christian, or Mohammedan would prevail. For Jerusalem has been the representative sacred place of the world ; there has been none other like unto it, or equal to it, or shall be, while the world lasts ; so long as men go on believing that one spot in the world is more sacred than another, because things of sacred interest have been done there, so long Jeru salem will continue the Holy City.

That this belief has been one of the misfortunes of the human race, one of the foremost causes of superstition, some of the pages which follow may perhaps help to show. But, in our capacity as narrators only, let us agree to think and talk of the city apart, as much as may be, JUDAS THE GALILÆAN. 3 from its sacred associations, as well as from its ecclesi astical history. The fatal revolt of the Jews, which ended in the fall of their city and the destruction of their Temple, was due, among many other causes, to the teaching of Judas the Galilæan acting on minds inflated with pride in the exaggerated glories of the past, looking to national independence as the one thing needful, and wholly ignorant of the power and resources of the mighty empire which held them in subjection. Judas, himself in spirit a worthy descendant of the Macca bæans, had taught that Jehovah was the only king of the Jews, who were His chosen people ; that submission to a foreign yoke involved not only national degrada tion, but treason to the lawful powers ; that tribute, the badge and sign of slavery, ought to be refused at any cost. ' We have no Lord and master but God,' was the cry of his party.

With that cry he and his followers assembled to do battle against the world : with that cry on their lips they died. But the cry and its idea did not die ; for from that time a fourth sect was among the Jews, more powerful than all the rest put together, containing the great mass of the people who had no education to give them common sense, and whose ignorance added fuel to the flames of a religious enthusiasm almost without parallel in the history of the world. The Pharisees and the Sadducees still con tinued for a time in the high places : the Essenes still lived and died apart from the world, the Shakers of their time, a small band with no power or influence ; but all around them was rising a tide destined to whelm all beneath the waves of fanaticism. The followers of Judas became the Zealots and the Sicarii of later times : they were those who looked daily for the Messiah; i — JERUSALEM. 4 whom false Christs led astray by thousands ; who thought no act too daring to be attempted in this sacred cause, no life too valuable to be sacrificed : they were those who let their countrymen die of starvation by thousands while they maintained a hopeless struggle with Titus.

When Herod Agrippa died, his son, who was only seventeen years of age, was in Rome ; and, as he was too young to be entrusted with the conduct of the turbulent province of Judæa, Cuspius Fadus was sent there as Governor. He found that Agrippa had allowed the robbers who always infested the country east of Jordan to gain head. He put them down with a strong arm, and turned his attention to things of domestic importance. By the permission of Vitellius, the custody of the sacred robes had been surrendered to the High Priest. Cuspius Fadus ordered that they should be restored to the fortress of Antonia. The Jews appealed to Cæsar, and, by the intercession of young Agrippa, they carried their point, and retained the possession of the robes. Under Fadus, one Theudas, whom Josephus calls a magician, persuaded multitudes of the Jews to go with him to the Jordan, which he pretended would open its waters to let him pass.

Cuspius Fadus sent out a troop of cavalry, who took Theudas alive, cut off his head, and brought it to Jerusalem. Under Cuspius, too, occurred a great famine in Judæa, which was relieved by the generosity of Queen Helena of Adiabene, the proselyte.* When Fadus either died or was recalled, Tiberius Alexander, a renegade Jew, nephew of Philo, succeeded * The story of Queen Helena is told by Josephus, 'Antiq.' xx. 2, 3, 4, and in Milman, ' Hist, of the Jews,'ii., p. 200 ; and see also, for the whole of this period, Williams's 'Holy City,' vol. i., p. 150 et seq. CUM ANUS. 5 him for a short time. It is not stated how long he continued in power. His only recorded act is the crucifixion of two of the sons of Judas the Galilæan. In his turn Tiberius was replaced by Ventidius Cumanus, and the first symptoms of the approaching madness broke out.

The fortress of Antonia commanded the Temple area, and communicated with the Temple itself by means of cloisters. On those days of public festivals when the fanaticism of the people was most likely to break out and cause mischief, a strong guard was always placed in Antonia, in full view of the people, to overawe them into good behaviour. Most unfortunately, on one occasion, immediately after the arrival of Cumanus, one of the soldiers of the guard expressed his contempt for the religious ceremonies by an indecent gesture. The rage of the people knew no bounds ; they declared that Cumanus had himself ordered the affront to be committed. The governor bore their reproaches with patience, only urging them not to disturb their festival by riotous conduct. As, however, they still continued clamouring, he ordered his whole garrison to proceed to Antonia.

Then a panic ensued. The mob, thinking they were about to be attacked by the soldiers, turned and fled, trampling on each other in the narrow passages. Many thousands perished in this way, without a blow being struck. And while they were still mourning over this disaster, another happened to them. Some of the very men who had raised the first tumult, probably countrymen on their way home, fell on and robbed Stephanus, a slave of the Emperor. Cumanus, obliged to punish this, sent soldiers to bring in the chief men of the village. One of the soldiers tore up a book of the Law with abuse and scurrility. The Jews came to Cumanus, and represented that JERUSALEM. they could not possibly endure such an insult to their God. Cumanus appeased them for the time by beheading the soldier who had been guilty of the offence.

The animosities of the Samaritans and the Jews were the cause of the next disturbance. The Galilæans always used the roads which passed through the Sama ritan territory in their journeys to and from the Temple. Faction fights naturally often took place. In one of these, of greater magnitude than the generality, a good many Galilæans were killed : the Jews came to Cumanus and complained of what they were pleased to call murder. Cumanus took the part of the Samaritans, and actually went to their aid, after the Jews called in the assistance of a robber chieftain, and helped them to defeat the Gndilæans. It is difficult to see what else they could do. Both parties appealed to Cæsar. Cumanus was recalled : his military tribune was be headed, decision was given in favour of the Jews : all this, no doubt, was done with a full knowledge of the dangerous and the turbulent nature of the people, and with a view to preserving the peace.

Claudius Felix was sent in place of Cumanus, a freedman, brother of Pallas the favourite of the Emperor — magnificent, prodigal, luxurious, and un scrupulous. He found the country in the worst state possible, full of robbers and impostors. These sprung up every day, and were every day caught and destroyed ; no doubt most of them men whose wits were utterly gone in looking for the Messiah, until they ended in believing themselves to be the Messiah. These poor creatures, followed by a rabble more ignorant and more mad than themselves, went up and down the distracted country, raising hopes which were doomed CLA UDIUS FELIX. 7 to disappointment, and leading out the wild country men to meet death and torture when they looked for glory and victory. One of the impostors, an Egyptian, probably an Egyptian Jew, brought a multitude up to the Mount of Olives, promising that at his word the walls of the city should fall down, and they themselves march in triumphant.

He came ; but instead of see ing the walls fall down, he met the troops of Felix, who dispersed his people, slaying four hundred of them. To Felix belongs the crime of introducing the Sicarii into the city of Jerusalem. Wearied with the impor tunities of the high priest, Jonathan, who exhorted him continually to govern better, or at all events to govern differently, and reproached him with the fact that it was through his own influence that Felix obtained his office, he resolved to rid himself of a frienc" so troublesome by the speediest and surest method, that of assassination. The Sicarii were not, like the hired bravoes of the Middle Ages, men who would commit any murder for which they were paid. It appears, on the contrary, that they held it a cardinal point of faith to murder those, and only those, who seemed to stand in the way of their cause.

Now their cause was that of the sect which had grown out of Judas's teaching, the zealots. These Sicarii, mingling with the crowd of those who went up to worship, and carrying daggers concealed under their garments, fell upon Jonathan the high priest, and murdered him.* This done, they went on slaying all those who were obnoxious to them, even in the Temple itself. ' And this,' says the historian, ' seems to me the reason why * Milman says that it was in the Temple itself, which does not appear from the account of Josephus, who expressly says that, after this, they had the boldness to murder men in the Temple itself. JERUSALEM. God, out of His hatred to the wickedness of these men, rejected our city: and as for the Temple, He no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for Him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it ; and brought upon us, our wives and children, slavery — as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities.' And now the voice of discord was heard even among the priests themselves, who had hitherto preserved a certain sobriety.

Between the chief priests and ' the principal men of the multitude of Jerusalem,' a feud broke out. Each side had its followers : they cast, we are told, not only reproachful words, but also stones at each other. And the chief priests, robbing the threshing-floors and appropriating all the tithes to themselves, caused many of the poorer priests to die of want. Then occurred the first outbreak in Cæsarea. This town was about equally divided between the Syrians and the Jews ; the former claimed the pre-eminence on the ground that Herod, the founder, though himself a Jew, had built the splendid temples and statues by which the city was evidently intended to be a Grecian city, upon the site of Strato's Tower ; while the Jews argued that as the founder was a Jew, the city was evidently Jewish, and ought not to be ruled except by Jews.

The dispute, as was always the case, came to the arbitrament of arms, in which the Jews got the best of it. Then Felix came himself, with a strong force, and brought them to their senses. But as the dispute still went on, he sent representatives on both sides to Nero the Emperor, who ruled in favour of the Greeks or Syrians. Here, the decision of the Emperor appears to have been just. Herod, the founder of Cæsarea, had clearly not intended to found a city for OUTBREAK AT CÆSAREA. 9 the further propagation of a sect to which he indeed belonged, regarding it, nevertheless, with the toleration of a cultivated Roman, as only one sect out of many. The Jews accepted the decision in their usual way : they only became more turbulent. Agrippa's own dispute with his own countrymen was decided, how ever, in their favour, no doubt from politic considera tions.

He had built an upper room in his palace, where, lying on his couch, he could look over into the Temple and watch the sacrifices. Some of the priests, discovering this, made out that it was an intrusion into the necessary privacy of their religious ceremonies, and hastily ran up a wall to prevent being overlooked. Festus, who had now succeeded Felix, ordered it to be pulled down ; but, most probably at the instigation of Agrippa, whose popularity might be at stake, he gave permission to appeal to Nero. Ismael, the high priest, went, accompanied by the keeper of the Treasury. They carried their point : the wall was allowed to stand, but Ismael was detained in Rome, and Agrippa appointed and deprived three high priests in succession — Joseph, Annas, and Jesus son of Damai. The firm, strong hand of Festus was meantime employed in putting down robbers, and regulating the disturbances of the country.

Unhappily for the Jews, while he was so engaged, he was seized with some illness and died. Albinus succeeded him. As for Albinus, Josephus tells us that there was no sort of wickedness named but he had a hand in it. ' Not only did he steal and plunder everyone's substance, not only did he burden the whole nation with taxes, but he permitted the relations of such as were in prison for robbery to redeem them for money ; and nobody remained in the prisons as a malefactor but he who gave him nothing The JERUSALEM. 10 principal men among the seditious purchased leave of Albinus to go on with their practices : and everyone of these wretches was encompassed with his own band of robbers. Those who lost their goods were forced to hold their peace, when they had reason to show great indignation at what they had suffered ; those who had escaped were forced to flatter him, that deserved to be punished, out of the fear they were in of suffering equally with the others.' This, however, is a vague accusation, and is found in the ' Wars of the Jews,' where Josephus is anxious to represent the revolt of the people as caused by the bad government of the Romans.

From the 'Antiquities' we learn that it was Albinus's wish to keep the country in peace, with which object he destroyed many of the Sicarii. Unfortunately for himself, he formed a great friendship with Ananias the high priest ; and when Eleazar, son of Ananias, fell into the hands of the Sicarii, he consented to release ten of his own prisoners for his ransom. This was a fatal measure, because henceforth the Sicarii, if one of their number fell into trouble, and got taken by the Romans, caught a Jew and effected an exchange. Thus the prisons were emptied. At this time the Temple was finished, and eighteen thousand workmen found themselves suddenly out of employment. Terrified at the prospect of this starving mob being added to their difficulties (for the streets of Jerusalem were already filled with bands of armed men, partisans of deposed high priests), the citizens asked Agrippa to rebuild the Eastern Cloisters, the splendid piece of work which had been built originally by Solomon along that east wall which still stands over looking the valley of the Kedron.

But Agrippa, whose GESSIUS FLORUS. 11 interest in the turbulent city was very small, already meditated departure to some safer quarter, and was spending all the money he had to spare at Beyrout, where he built a theatre, and collected a gallery of sculptures. But he conceded something to his petitioners, and allowed them to pave the city with stone. Albinus disappears from the history, and Gessius Florus, who exchanged a scourging with whips for a scourging with scorpions, ruled in his place. Cestius Gallus, a man of equal rapacity with himself, ruled in Syria. One cannot read Josephus without, in the first place, suspecting that he wilfully exaggerates the wickedness of the Roman rulers ; that he does so in the case of Albinus is clear, as we have shown from comparing the account given in the ' Antiquities ' with that given in the ' Wars.' But even if he only exaggerates, and making allowance for this, were men of special in humanity and rapacity chosen for those very qualities to rule the country ?

And if not, if Gessius Florus and Albinus be fair specimens of the officers by whom Rome ruled her provinces and colonies, by what mysterious power was this vast empire kept from universal revolt ? ' Upon what meat had this their Cæsar fed, That he was grown so great ?' The Jews, however, were not the people to brook ill treatment ; and when they took arms against the Romans it was not as if their case seemed to themselves hopeless. They had, it is true, the western world against them ; but they had the eastern world behind them, a possible place of refuge. And though they armed against the whole Roman Empire, it must be remembered that the forces at the command of the JERUSALEM. 12 Emperor were not overwhelming ; that they were spread over Africa, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Greece, and Italy ; that only a certain number could be spared ; and that the number of the Jews in Syria amounted probably to several millions.

When Cestius Gallus was in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover he ordered the lambs which were sacrificed to be counted. They came to two hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred. It was reckoned that this represented a total of three millions present in Jerusalem and camped round about it, assisting at the festival. Probably not more than half, perhaps not more than a quarter, of the whole number of the people came up. However this may be, it is certain that Palestine was very densely populated ; that there were great numbers of Jews in Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Italy ; that at any signal success those would have flocked to the standard of revolt ; and that had the nation been unanimous and obedient to one general, instead of being divided into sects, parties, and factions, the armies of Vespasian and Titus would have been wholly unable to cope with the rebellion, and the independence of the Jews would have been prevented only by putting forth all the power of the Roman Empire.

This was shown later on in the revolt of Barcochebas, a far more serious revolt than this of the zealots, though not so well known, because it was attended with no such signal result as the destruction of the Temple, and because there was no Josephus in the camp of the enemy taking notes of what went on. The object of Florus, we are told, was to drive the people to revolt. This we do not believe. It could not have been the policy of Florus to drive into revolt a dangerous and stubborn people, whose character was FLORUS. 13 well known at Rome, whom the Emperor had always been anxious to conciliate. His object may have been, undoubtedly was, to enrich himself as speedily as possible, knowing that revolt was impending and in evitable, and anxious to secure for himself a provision in case of his own recall or banishment.