God's Battalions (11 page)

Eventually, Jerusalem became a city of great religious significance to Muslims, but it did not start out that way. There is no mention of Jerusalem in the Qur’an, although initially Muhammad taught that Muslims should face Jerusalem when they prayed; he later shifted this to Mecca when the Jews disappointed him by failing to embrace him as the Prophet. But what eventually caused Muslims to regard Jerusalem as a holy city is its centrality to Muhammad’s famous “Night Journey.”

Muslims believe that in 620, about ten years before his death, Muhammad was sleeping in the home of his cousin in Mecca when he was awakened by the Angel Gabriel, who led him by the hand to a winged horse, whereupon the two were quickly transported to Jerusalem. There he was introduced to Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, after which he and Gabriel flew up to heaven, where Muhammad was taken through each of the seven heavens and then beyond, where he was allowed to see Allah, who appeared as a divine light. On his way back down through the seven heavens, Muhammad had a series of interactions with Moses concerning the number of times Muslims would be required to pray each day, the number gradually being reduced from fifty to five. By morning, Muhammad awoke safely in his bed in Mecca.
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The Dome of the Rock was built from 685 to 691 on the site of the long-destroyed Jewish Temple to symbolize that Islam had succeeded Judaism and Christianity.
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Subsequently, those concerned with promoting Muslim pilgrimages to Jerusalem identified the Dome of the Rock as having been built on the very spot where Muslims believe Muhammad and Gabriel rose into the heavens. The combination of a splendid structure and its embodiment of this sacred tradition soon made Jerusalem holy to Muslims, although not nearly as significant to Islam as it is to Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem’s being holy to all three faiths has led to conflicts ever since, nicely illustrated by the fact that on the side of the Dome of the Rock, facing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it is written in Arabic: “God has no son.” But there also have been bitter conflicts among Christians in Jerusalem ever since the split took place between the Roman and Greek Churches.

Before the Muslim invasion, Jerusalem had been controlled by the Byzantine Orthodox Church, and Roman (Latin) Catholics were merely tolerated. Orthodox dominance continued under the Muslims until about 800, when Caliph Haroun al-Rashid agreed to allow Charlemagne to endow and maintain facilities, including hostels, for pilgrims from the West, and these were placed under the control of Roman Catholics. Of course, this was deeply resented by the Orthodox,
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and after the death of Charlemagne they soon reasserted their authority, leaving only one church in Latin hands, “and the Latin nuns serving in the Holy Sepulchre.”
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(Even today fistfights break out between Roman Catholic and Orthodox monks involved with the Sepulchre.)
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In 1056 Pope Victor II complained that not only did Byzantine officials impose a head tax on Western pilgrims passing through their territory, but Orthodox monks also charged westerners a fee at the Holy Sepulchre.
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As noted, local Muslim authorities had hoped that by stressing the religious significance of Jerusalem they could attract a flow of Muslim pilgrims, their motive being the same as that of every promoter of tourism: attracting spenders from out of town. But few Muslim pilgrims ever arrived. For a time after Jerusalem came under Muslim rule, there also seem to have been few Christian pilgrims. But their numbers soon began to increase, and by the eighth century they were coming in substantial numbers, some of them from as far away as England and Scandinavia. There was a short interruption in the ninth century due to conflicts over control of Sicily and southern Italy, but this soon passed with the defeat of Muslim naval forces in the western Mediterranean, and soon many pilgrims journeyed by boat from Venice or Bari.
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The pilgrims were welcomed in the Holy Land because they “brought money into the country and could be taxed.”
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So by the tenth century the stream of Christian pilgrims had turned into a flood.

WAVES OF PENITENT PILGRIMS

Pilgrimage
can be defined as “a journey undertaken from religious motives to a sacred place.”
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Among Christians, especially in the West, the “religious motives” increasingly had to do with atonement—with obtaining forgiveness for one’s sins. Some who made the long journey were seeking forgiveness for the accumulated sins of a lifetime, none of them particularly terrible. But by the ninth and tenth centuries, the ranks of pilgrims had become swollen with those who had been told by their confessors that their only hope of atonement lay in one pilgrimage, or even several, to Jerusalem. For example, when Count Thierry of Trier murdered his archbishop in 1059, his confessor demanded that he undertake a pilgrimage, and he went.
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Perhaps the most notorious pilgrim was Fulk III, Count of Anjou (972–1040), who was required to make four pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the first as penance for having his wife burned to death in her wedding dress, allegedly for having had sex with a goatherd. All things considered, four pilgrimages may have been far too few, given that Fulk was a “plunderer, murderer, robber, and swearer of false oaths, a truly terrifying character of fiendish cruelty…Whenever he had the slightest difference with a neighbor he rushed upon his lands, ravaging, pillaging, raping and killing; nothing could stop him.”
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Nevertheless, when confronted by his confessor Fulk “responded with extravagant expressions of devotion.”
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Fulk’s case reveals the most fundamental aspect of medieval Christian pilgrimage. The knights and nobility of Christendom were very violent, very sinful, and very religious! As Sidney Painter (1902–1960) put it: “[T]he ordinary knight was savage, brutal, and lustful. At the same time he was, in his own way, devout.”
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Consequently, the knights and nobles were chronically in need of atonement and quite willing to accept the burdens involved to gain it; there was widespread agreement that for terrible crimes, only a pilgrimage could possibly suffice. Consider these excerpts from the “Laws of Canute,” written about 1020 and attributed to the Viking king of England and Denmark:

And so they came. Toward the end of the tenth century, the huge and energetic monastic movement based at Cluny (in France) built hostels and hotels all along the route east to accommodate the pilgrim traffic. Parties of a thousand were common, and one group from Germany is known to have begun with at least seven thousand male pilgrims (including a number of bishops) and probably grew substantially by picking up small groups along the way.
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This party was attacked both going and coming home by Bedouin robbers, and ultimately only about two thousand of them survived the trip.
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By the tenth century, many Norse pilgrims were coming even though most of their countrymen were still pagans.
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“Most Scandinavian pilgrims liked to make a round tour, coming by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar and returning overland through Russia.”
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Like the Franks, the Norse converts were “very devoted to Christ if not to his commandments.”
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Among them was Thorvald the Far-Traveled, who came all the way from Iceland. Thorvald was a renowned Viking who had converted to Christianity and then “tried to preach the new faith to his countrymen in 981.”
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He undertook a pilgrimage in 990 seeking to atone for having killed two poets who had mocked his faith and another man who had criticized his preaching. Following his pilgrimage he devoted his missionary activities to Russia and died there, presumably without murdering any Russian pagans. Another Norse pilgrim was Lag-man Gudrödsson, the king of the Isle of Man, who sought atonement for having murdered his brother. Swein Godwinsson was also a royal Norse pilgrim. He died in the mountains, having been required to make the trip barefoot in order to atone for murders.

And so it went.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

In 878 a new dynasty was established in Egypt and seized control of the Holy Land from the caliph in Baghdad. Initially, nothing much changed. But in 996 T
riqu al-H
kim became the sixth Fatimid caliph in Egypt, at the age of eleven, and ruled until he disappeared at age thirty-six.

Whether or not H
kim was mad has been debated. The illustrious Marshall Hodgson admitted he was “eccentric” but claimed he was “an effective ruler.”
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It is true that H
kim lived simply. It also is true that sometimes he traveled around the streets and had conversations with ordinary people. On the other hand, he ordered that all the dogs in Cairo be killed, that no grapes be grown or eaten (to prevent the making of wine), that women never leave their homes, and that shoemakers cease making women’s shoes. H
kim also outlawed chess and the eating of watercress or of any fish without scales. He suddenly required that everyone work at night and sleep during the day since these were his preferred hours. He murdered his tutor and nearly all of his viziers, large numbers of other high officials, poets, and physicians, and many of his relatives—often doing the killing himself. He cut off the hands of the female slaves in his palace. To express his opposition to public baths for women, he had the entrance to the most popular one suddenly walled up, entombing alive all who were inside. H
kim also forced all Christians to wear a four-pound cross around their necks and Jews to wear an equally heavy carving of a calf (as shame for having worshipped the Golden Calf). Finally, H
kim had his name substituted for that of Allah in mosque services.
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