The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099

by Conor Kostick

  e problem was that despite their swift advance from ‘Arqā

  to Jerusalem, Ift ikhār, the general commanding the defence of Jerusalem, had acted more swift ly still. For a distance of up to six miles from the city, the wells and many cisterns around the city were broken and their precious contents allowed to drain away, with fi lth and refuse thrown in to make them unusable.

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  e less powerful springs that could be closed off or hidden were smothered under piles of rocks. Roman aqueducts bringing water to the city were broken at source. In the winter there was a creek at the bottom of the Kidron valley, but that was stone dry now and Ift ikhār must have been satisfi ed that he had done all he could to exacerbate the diffi

  culties of the besieging army.2 Th

  e Muslim

  civilians of the region aff ected by Ift ikhār’s measures had to abandon their fi elds and vineyards, but at least they could obtain fresh water from the cisterns of Jerusalem. Th

  ey entered the city as refugees in advance of the crusader army.

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  e local Christian population had to fend for themselves as well as they could and they tended to gravitate towards Bethlehem and its ample water supply (see Figure 5).

  Once they had set up their camps outside the walls of the city, the Christian predicament grew with each day of bright sunshine and soaring temperatures.

  July is the hottest month of the year for Jerusalem, with average high daytime temperatures of 31 degrees centigrade. In 1099, the suff ering experienced by crusaders lacking shade and water was made worse by strong winds. Th e whirl-ing dust from the rocky land around the city was choking. Th

  ere was one source

  of hope, however, and that was En-Gihon, a spring that fl owed from the southeast spur of the city. It lay below the ridge that held the very fi rst human settle-ments in the area, known in ancient times as Zion, a very long bowshot from the current southern walls of the city. Th

  is spring, Gihon, was the reason why

  the area had become inhabited in the fi rst place. Gihon was a powerful spring and during the wettest months of the year over a million litres a day fl owed from it.

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  e problem with Gihon though, was that it was a siphon-type karst spring, that is, a spring that provides water which, having collected underground from sinkholes and sinking streams is siphoned to the surface each time a critical point is reached and the subterranean spaces fi lled. Th

  e rocks beneath and

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  around Jerusalem are porous limestone. When it rains, a great deal of the water disappears underground into fi ssures in the rock, and, over the centuries, this fl ow has formed subsurface channels and caves. Th

  e conduits carrying water

  from each point where water sinks are joined together beneath the hills of Jerusalem to form a complex and erratic fl ow, which eventually pours forth at Gihon. Oft en the quality of the water coming from a karst spring is very poor, bringing with it a high level of sediment and minerals, and this is true for Gihon, especially in the summer months when the overall fl ow drops considerably. In a typical month the spring gushes for about 40 minutes, then ceases for six to eight hours. But both the frequency and volume of the Gihon’s fl ow is irregular and considerably aff ected by the season. In the summer of 1099 it poured out its life-giving water only once every three days.3

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  e ancient city of Jerusalem was considerably larger than the medieval city that the crusaders arrived at in 1099, in particular, the southern walls of the First Temple period reached all the way to the sides of the Kidron valley. At the end of the eighth century BC, desiring to bring the water from the Gihon spring to a pool inside the walls, the Judean king Hezekiah took advantage of the natural fractures in the limestone to organize an impressive feat of Iron Age engineering. Pickaxe-wielding workers dug a tunnel over 500 metres long that brought the fl ow of the Gihon to the west and the Siloam Pool. By 1099, however, the wall of the city had retreated, to where the pool was nearly out of bowshot range. Th

  e crusaders could access the fl ow of the Gihon spring as

  it emerged in the Siloam Pool without too much danger. During the siege of Jerusalem, the scenes around this pool were nevertheless pitiful (see Figures 5 and 6).

  No sooner did the water come gushing out from the rocks, turning an expanse of fi lthy paving into a deep pool, than a massive and chaotic ruck formed. Driven by their desperate thirst, the crusading army lost all discipline.

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  e strongest among them got to drink clean water; the weaker, the dirty water escaping along the swampy course; and the weakest had to beg pitifully for whatever they could get. Sprawled on the ground they lift ed outstretched arms, pleading to be allowed a mouthful of water. Th

  irsty pack animals and cattle also

  pressed towards the water on the days that the Gihon fl owed. Th

  e crush was so

  strong that some of these animals died and their corpses added to the barrier through which the struggling crowds strove to pass. And if the fl ow came during the daylight hours, archers on the city walls would amuse themselves by launching long, speculative, shots towards the crowd.

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  ose unable to force their way through the mob to the clean fl ow of water were so desperate that they drank the fi lthy liquid that remained aft er the

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  crowds around the pool had dispersed. Resorting to such sludge was dangerous.

  Muddy water consumed by the desperate could perhaps prevent their death by thirst, but at the cost of a new danger: suff ocation. Th

  ere were leeches in the

  dirty water, leeches whose suction allowed them to fasten hard to the throat. As the irritated fl esh swelled, the throat closed and, gasping, the victim expired as though choked by a powerful and implacable hand.4

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  e nearest Christian prince to these scenes was Count Raymond of

  Toulouse. His authority was not great enough to impose any kind of order or systematic attempt to ration the fresh water when it came gushing forth. No one, especially those half way to death by thirst, could contain themselves when the fresh water gurgled into the pool. Th

  ey elbowed their way through,

  fi ghting as much as their weakened bodies allowed, to slake their thirst and fi ll their water skins. Not that the Christian army was well equipped to store and distribute the water even if there had been greater discipline among them.

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  e skins of dead oxen were sewn into crude bags to store and carry water, but these festered and the warm water from them was so rancid as to be nearly undrinkable.5

  One curious result of mob rule over the waters of the Gihon was the appearance of a market for water. Suffi

  cient water for a day for one person cost fi ve or

  six nummi, bronze pennies. A mouthful of water was one penny. For an endeavour that emphasized charity and fellowship among the Christians, the crusade was surprisingly ruthless. If you couldn’t aff ord the money, or weren’t strong enough to fend for yourself, or in an association that protected its members, you died. Dozens of animals too, whose owners could not aff ord the cost of the water they needed, became so weak that they could not take another step and expired where they stood. As these creatures shrivelled and decomposed in the searing heat, the sickening – yet slightly sweet – odour of death spread over the crusader camps. It was the mules, oxen and sheep of the army that died in this way. Horses were too important to the army to allow them to suff er and the Christian knights could ride them to more distant sources of water, but it was camels that came into their own at the siege. Ever since their victory over Qilij Arslān near Dorylaeum on 1 July 1097, exactly two years earlier, the Christians had brought captured camels along with them. Despite their inexperience with such naturally uncomplaisant creatures, the value of
having done so was now shown, as the camel’s tolerance of the near desert conditions made it the most important pack animal of the siege. 6

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  e princes of the Christian army, wealthy with tribute that they had extracted from Muslim cities on the march, had no great diffi

  culty purchasing

  water from locals willing to supply them. Indeed, if you had the money, there

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  were deliciously fresh fruits and fi ne wines to be enjoyed. Moreover, early in the siege an unexpected delight came to the princes. Th

  e exiled Greek Patriarch of

  Jerusalem was living in Cyprus at this time. When the news reached him that a Christian army was besieging Jerusalem, he eagerly sent a ship with a great quantity of grapes and wine to the Christian princes, who shared the refreshing gift s between them. More gift s – of pomegranates, fat bacons and other costly foodstuff s – arrived from Cyprus before the sea route was closed by the activities of the Fatimid fl eet. Not that the crusading princes had any intention of restoring Simeon II to his offi

  ce; the new Patriarch of Jerusalem would, of

  course, be one of their own: a Latin cleric. Still, the goods were very welcome and were enjoyed by the princes and knights, while the foot soldiers and poor of the Christian army looked on with envious eyes.7

  Having a certain amount of wealth, the princes and their immediate followers had a much more luxurious lifestyle than the poor crusader. For the crusading elite there was no danger of death by thirst. But even they were not living in the manner that they would have been accustomed to on their own lands. Quite apart from having to share with the entire army the diffi

  culties of heat and dust,

  aft er the grain from Ramla had been used up, none of the crusaders, prince or pauper, could obtain bread, apart from gluey and dissatisfying corn bread.

  Eventually that too ran short and for ten days the army began to experience hunger again with the possibility that, as at Ma’arra and Antioch, the poorest might once more die from starvation. For those dying of thirst, the pangs of famine actually gave some relief, which says a great deal about the agony of water deprivation.

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  e hardships experienced by the poor, who all the while were just a few hundred yards from the Holy Places they had walked over 2,000 miles to reach, proved to be too much for some. Desperate to earn heavenly reward and despairing of life a new pattern of martyrdom appeared in the Christian army.

  Many a semi-delirious crusader would expend their last energy in a dash to the walls of Jerusalem, where, unable to cry due to their dry tear ducts, he or she would spend their last moments kissing the stone before falling rocks smashed the life out of them. Th

  e garrison and townspeople of Jerusalem were quite

  encouraged by such signs of demoralization among the Christians and there was no need to waste arrows on such targets when a good heavy rock did the trick. One distasteful feature of this suicidal behaviour by the Christians though, was that the smell of death from the corpses, especially frequent along the south wall of the city, was making guarding the walls an unpleasant experience.8

  Others crusaders showed their desperation in less suicidal a manner. Th ey

  tried digging through the sandy soil, down to where the earth was damp, and

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  they would put the dirt in their mouths, hoping to extract some of the water before spitting out the gritty earth. Even a lick of moisture was worth struggling for. Clusters of poor Christians formed wherever there were large lumps of smooth rock, such as marble. Although the atmosphere was generally dry, dawn brought a hint of dew; enough to encourage the crusaders lick the stones they were guarding, searching with their dry tongues for the slightest sensation of dampness. 9

  By contrast, the inhabitants of Jerusalem met all their needs from the deep cisterns that supplied the city with its water whenever – as was the case in 1099 –

  the supply from Roman aqueduct systems was interrupted. Th

  e largest of

  the open cisterns, Hezekiah’s Pool, just to the west of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was 240 feet long, 140 feet wide. It had once been fed by aqueduct and could hold up to 18 million litres of water. Another great cistern – the Pool of Israel – was that immediately to the north of the Haram complex. It had an arched roof and marble pillars. Every time it rained, gutters from the roofs of many buildings directed the fl ow to this cistern. In addition to the major pools, hundreds of smaller cisterns were located in the city under houses and court-yards, fed by a system of pipes and channels from fl at roofs and paved streets.

  Further away, between the Haram complex and the north wall, were two great cisterns that Ift ikhār had ordered to be fi lled to the brim by the water brought in from outside the city. One of the pools was known as the Sheep Pool, because it was once used for washing the animals destined for sacrifi ce.

  Tens of millions of litres of water gathered in the rainy season, from November to March, gave the population of Jerusalem confi dence that they could last out the summer. Th

  e citizens prayed that the sky would remain clear and that the

  daytime temperatures continue to soar. Th

  ey took hope, also, from the desper-

  ate scenes at the Pool of Siloam; perhaps thirst might defeat the Christian army.

  Given the presence of 400 extra horses and their riders as a supplement for the garrison plus an accretion of the civilian population – as villagers from the lands around Jerusalem sought protection in the city – Ift ikhār decided there was no room for complacency and as a precaution ordered that the water be rationed and guarded. But all the same, those who presented themselves to the troops at the cisterns obtained the water they needed. Th

  ere were no unruly

  scenes inside the walls of the besieged city, all the hardship and corresponding tumult was in the Christian camps. 10

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  e siege of Jerusalem was an untypical medieval siege for many reasons, one of which was the fact that the besiegers were cut off from any military or logistical support. Apart from nearby Ramla and Bethlehem, themselves vulnerable to Muslim raids, the nearest friendly city, Bohemond’s Antioch, was

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  impossibly far away, back through either Seljuk territory around Damascus or Fatimid territory along the coast. Th

  ere was no prospect of supplies coming to

  the Christian army by an overland route. But the sea routes were hardly any more promising. It was true that ships from Cyprus could land at the port of Jaff a – a full day’s march to the west – ever since the Fatimids had evacuated the town at the time of the approach of the Christian army. Th

  e walls and towers of

  Jaff a had been demolished, but the port and citadel still served. Yet to use it was risky. Th

  e large Fatimid navy of Cairo was at sea and seeking to intercept ships coming to aid the Christians and in any case the line of march from Jerusalem to Jaff a was very insecure.

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  e truth was that the spiritual lure of Jerusalem had drawn the Christian army into a very dangerous position, one that no commander looking only at the military factors would have considered viable. Indeed, nearly 100 years later, whilst at Jaff a and considering whether to strike inland to Jerusalem, Richard I of England, despite enormous pressure from the desire of his crusading army to capture the Holy City, decided that to attempt the siege would be disastrous.

  Logically, Jerusalem should only fall aft er several of the coastal cities and aft er a secure line of communication had been established. Al-Afdal, for example, had no diffi

  culty the previous year keeping his army supplied with food and

  water while he spent a month eroding the north wall of the city with stone-throwing equipment because he controlled all the coast to the w
est of his army.

  But in 1099 the dynamics of the Christian army were such that not even Count Raymond of Toulouse, with his large following, was able to restrain the crusaders from rushing on to Jerusalem, despite the fact they had no secure lines of supply. And it was not just the poor and the foot soldiers who refused to coun-tenance a more long-term strategy involving the capture of coastal cities, there was a great impatience among even quite senior fi gures to fulfi l their vows and return to Europe.

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  e crusaders therefore had to conduct the siege of Jerusalem while being limited in supplies and vulnerable to attack, particularly as they dispersed their forces in search of water. Whilst the Gihon spring, in its erratic and mysterious manner, could intermittently keep the crusading army refreshed, it clearly was inadequate for their overall needs. Th

  is meant the Christians, especially knights

  anxious for the survival of their mounts, had to look further afi eld for water sources. Approximately four kilometres northwest of Jerusalem, on the far side of the watershed and therefore fl owing away from the city, was the Mei Neft o’ah (the Waters of Nephtoah) spring. Th

  is was another abundant source of water in

  1099, emitting some half million litres of water daily along a narrow channel,

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  comfortably enough to satisfy the needs of the crusaders and their animals. But those four kilometres were extremely dangerous.

  Knowing the territory well, Muslim soldiers set ambushes at the springs that they had been unable to block and at cisterns outside the six-mile radius of Jerusalem that still contained water. Th

  e garrison of Jerusalem was unable to

  ride out in large numbers undetected, but the fact that the Christian forces only faced approximately half the circuit of the city’s walls meant that it was relatively easy for small numbers of soldiers to slip out and make their way through the rough terrain of the valleys east or west and then escape out to the countryside. Moreover, as word of the siege of Jerusalem spread, not only did al-Afdal’s scouts from Ascalon ride through the region, so too smaller groups of local inhabitants gathered together, more interested in stealing the animals of the Christian army than picking off human beings. Not that they had any hesitation about killing crusaders if the opportunity presented itself. Many a group of crusaders were shocked to fi nd the decapitated bodies of their colleagues at a watering spot and no sign of the animals that had been with them.