Hoping for an Apocalypse
The Crusades and the Jews of Jerusalem
Between 1099 and 1291, Christian Crusader armies tried to wrest control of Jerusalem from its Muslim rulers. Many history books discuss the Crusades in great detail, yet almost without exception they say nothing at all about the small Jewish community of the city or how they reacted to the battles being fought around them.
Like their Muslim neighbours the Jews of Jerusalem suffered greatly at the hands of the Crusaders. Yet in the Jewish communities of medieval Israel, and even further afield, the Crusades were viewed with anticipation. Not because Jews favoured one army over the other, even though life under Muslim rule was generally more tolerable than under than under the Christians. Rather, the reason they were excited by the conflict was that they believed it to be an apocalyptic event, an Armageddon that would result in arrival of the Messiah, who would restore Jerusalem to the Jews.
Before the Crusades, the Jews of the land of Israel lived relatively peacefully under Muslim rule. They dressed as the Muslims did, spoke and wrote in Arabic and traded freely with the other inhabitants of the land. As with all non-Muslims, they were classed as dhimmis, second class citizens who did not have the same civil rights as the majority population, but nevertheless they were generally left alone to manage their own affairs. Although few in number they had their own governing institution, the yeshivat eretz yisrael, referred to in modern history books as the Palestinian Academy. The head of the Academy, or gaon, was effectively the leader of the Jewish population. He sat as the principal judge in the rabbinic court and was recognised by the Muslim authorities as the community’s official representative. The Academy was based in Jerusalem, but the gaon lived in Ramle, the Muslim capital, so that he could be on hand to deal with official matters.
Sometime in the 11th century, shortly before the arrival of the Crusader armies, the Jerusalem community was rocked by a political crisis. The much larger Jewish community in Baghdad (the Jews still called it Babylon) was under the authority of the exilarch, a title that translates as Head of the Exile. Babylon’s exilarchs had ruled the Jewish communities of the Near East for centuries and although the head of the Academy in Israel was politically independent of him, the exilarch was universally recognised as the senior of the two, because he traced his descent back to King David. And so, when a member of the exilarch’s family decided to launch a coup against the head of the Academy, claiming authority over the Jews of Israel as well as Babylon, a rift broke out in the Jerusalem community. The Jews of Egypt joined in, and the quarrel lasted for an entire generation. It only came to an end when the Seljuk Empire invaded Israel from the south, terrorising the population and putting local political squabbles out of mind.
Thirty years or so after the Seljuk invasion, the armies of the First Crusade arrived at the gates of Jerusalem. Rumours of their approach had reached the scattered Jewish villages in Israel before the Crusaders arrived, causing those living in the invaders’ path to flee. The Jews of Jerusalem however, stayed put, joining in the defence of the city, only to be slaughtered or taken into slavery along with their Muslim neighbours, as the enemy swarmed over the walls.
The Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 and for the next 88 years the city was empty of Jews. This was not the first time; Jews had been banned from Jerusalem by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, and the ban had remained in force until the Muslim conquest 500 years later. By 638 CE there were Jews once again in the city, remaining there until the Crusader invasion.
The Crusaders retained control of Jerusalem until 1187, when they were defeated by the Muslim general Salah ad-Din at the battle of Hattin. In Jewish eyes this was a moment of profound cosmic significance, evidence that dominance in battle would swing back and forth, until the world’s two great powers were both destroyed, and the messianic age would dawn.
In their euphoria, the families of those who had survived the 1099 Crusade returned to Jerusalem. Funds were raised in diaspora communities to rebuild the destroyed synagogues, ritual baths and study houses. And, most unusually, a considerable number of immigrants started to make their way to Israel from France. Driven by the belief that Messiah was at hand, they were making preparations for the End of Days. The early 16th century chronicler, Solomon Ibn Vergas described their arrival:
In the year 4971 (i.e. 1211 CE), the Almighty stirred the rabbis of France and the rabbis of Angleterre to go to Jerusalem and they were more than three hundred. The king honoured them greatly; they built prayer houses for themselves and study houses.
It seems from this, admittedly late, account that the wave of immigration from France and Angleterre (probably the English territories on the French mainland) was no ordinary event. It was the first recorded example of mass immigration to Israel from Europe and was followed over the next few decades by a continual flow of new arrivals.
The 300 immigrants may not have all been rabbis as Ibn Vergas claimed, but some of the names of the immigrants have survived and they do include several prominent scholarly figures. Historians however are always sceptical about claims made in ancient documents and for a long time the assumption was that Ibn Vergas was exaggerating; that he was using large numbers for dramatic emphasis, and that the true number of Jewish immigrants who arrived from France during the Crusades was relatively small. Until a letter was found in the Cairo Genizah, the great repository of medieval Hebrew texts uncovered at the end of the 19th century. Written in 1213, by a synagogue cantor in Alexandria and sent to a friend or relative in Cairo, it begins with personal matters, remarks that could have been written at any time: “Your mother is fine, the money you sent arrived, your brother Sa’id quarrelled with his wife and left her, nobody knows where he is.” Then the writer turned to an event that was happening at that very moment:
During the night, seven rabbis reached us, great scholars, and they are accompanied by a hundred souls, men, women and children, looking for bread. As if we didn’t have enough beggars of our own (we have about 40)!
The writer was describing a group of immigrants who had disembarked in Alexandria, hoping to make their way to Jerusalem. The identity of this particular group is not known, and they did not necessarily settle in Jerusalem itself. For the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem after 1187 did not stay long. Their community didn’t even survive one generation. They probably had economic difficulties but the main reason for their demise seems to be an order given by Jerusalem’s Muslim governor to demolish the city walls. He did it to prevent the Crusaders from besieging the city, but it was a strategic error. Terrified of what might happen should the Crusaders return, when the walls came down the Muslim population evacuated the city and so too, probably, did the Jews. Leaving Jerusalem impoverished and empty.
The Crusaders never reconquered Jerusalem, but they remained in the region, ruling over a territory that became known as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Remarkably, despite the many restrictions placed upon the Jews of Christian Europe, and the massacres inflicted on the Jews of Germany by the First Crusaders as they rampaged their way to the Holy Land, Jews living in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem were relatively free. They practised their religion openly, were allowed to travel where they wished and were not obliged to wear the humiliating Jewish badge as was the case across Europe. Despite the regular anti-Jewish persecutions in Europe, there is no record of anti-Jewish violence anywhere in the Crusader Kingdom.
The capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was the northern port of Acre. With Jerusalem bereft of inhabitants, many of the new arrivals still coming from Europe settled there instead. Having come from Christian lands they felt more at home in the Latin Kingdom than in Muslim cities. In time, Acre became one of the largest and most prestigious centres of Jewish scholarship and trade in the Middle East, ushering in a renaissance in local Jewish life. Famous scholars and wealthy merchants arrived, the population grew and, instead of speaking Arabic as they had done previously, they returned to the ancient Hebrew language.
The Crusades did not result in the arrival of the Messiah, but they did boost the self-image of the small Jewish community, laying the foundations for a revival of Jewish culture and scholarship in the ancient land. No longer a backwater in the global dispersion, Israel once again became a magnet for the many Jews suffering expulsion and persecution in Christian Europe. Jews remained a minority in the land, but they now had their own scholars and leaders, people whose presence allowed them to take a new pride in themselves and their heritage. This is a period in Jewish history that has not left many documentary traces. But the little that is known suggests that it was a very significant time.