Jerusalem before the first crusade

Jerusalem today, with the Old City in the foreground. • ISTOCKPHOTO

At the end of the X ^th century, what the Muslims had called al-Quds ("the Holy") fell into the hands of the Fatimids of Egypt, who established a Shiite caliphate there.

Caliph al-Hakim came to power in 996 and exercised it with fanaticism and cruelty, leading a policy of eliminating Christians from 1009 that led not only to the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher, but also to the desecration of the synagogue in Jerusalem. Later, he proclaimed his own divinity and suppressed Muslims who refused to worship him.

A new Christian quarter

When he died in 1021, the respite was short-lived:Bedouin revolts rocked the region, and a powerful earthquake in 1033 damaged the al-Aqsa Mosque. Emperor Constantine IX Monomakh then concluded an agreement with the Fatimid Caliph, who had undertaken to restore the city walls:he would contribute to the reconstruction of the Holy Sepulchre, provided that his district was populated only by Christians. Another Christian quarter was born, around a church built on the hill of Zion and bought by Christians from Armenia.

In 1071, the Shiite Egyptians lost control of the Holy Land to the Sunni Turks, the Seljuks, who took Jerusalem in 1073. guards, the Fatimids rose up in 1098 and regained control of the city after besieging it for a year and a half and plunging it into a bloodbath. Ten months later, the Crusaders presented themselves at the gates of the city.