The Franks Seize Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem)

استيلاء الفرنج على بيت المقدس

c. 1099 CE · 492 AH

In 492 the Franks came — Nicaea first of their takings — pressing to Kafr Tab and ravaging the country, their first appearance in Syria, borne over Constantinople's sea in a great host; kings and people were shaken, and it is said Egypt's lord, watching Seljuk power swallow Syria, wrote the Franks inviting them. The same year they took Jerusalem after a siege of a month and a half, killing over seventy thousand including scholars, devotees and ascetics, razed the shrines, gathered the Jews in the synagogue and burnt it upon them. The refugees reached Baghdad with talk that made eyes weep; the sultans were divided, and the Franks took root in Syria ¹. Ibn al-Imad fixes it: Friday morning, seven days short of Sha'ban's end, after a month and a half; Ibn al-Jawzi's Shudhur lists the plunder — forty-four silver candelabra of 3,600 dirhams each, a forty-ratl silver oven, and twenty-odd golden candelabra taken from the Rock ².