The First Crusade Siege of Jerusalem

The First Crusade ended with the siege and capture of al-Quds (Jerusalem) on 22 Sha'ban 492 AH (15 July 1099 CE) by the assembled Frankish armies under Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Tancred, and others. The Sunni historical record (Ibn al-Athir's al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, Ibn al-Qalanisi's Dhayl Tarikh Dimashq, the contemporary Damascene chronicle, Ibn Taghribirdi's al-Nujum al-Zahira) preserves the siege in detail: the Frankish armies, having marched from northern Europe over the previous three years through Constantinople, Anatolia, and the cities of north Syria, arrived before al-Quds in early summer; the Fatimid governor Iftikhar al-Dawla resisted with the city's garrison; siege towers were constructed of timber brought from coastal woodland; the assault began in mid-July with simultaneous attacks on the northern wall (by Godfrey of Bouillon's Lorraine contingent, the principal breach) and the southern wall by Mount Zion (by Raymond of Toulouse's Provençals); on 22 Sha'ban the northern wall was breached and the city fell. The subsequent massacre of the Muslim and Jewish populations of the city, described in detail by the Frankish chronicles (Raymond of Aguilers, Fulcher of Chartres) and the Sunni Arab sources (Ibn al-Athir, Ibn al-Qalanisi) as one of the bloodiest sacks of the medieval period, is the foundational shock event of the medieval Sunni Muslim relation to the Crusader presence in al-Sham. The city had been continuously in Muslim hands since the Caliph 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (radiyallahu 'anhu) received the keys from the Patriarch Sophronius in 17 AH (638 CE), 461 years of unbroken Muslim rule. The recovery of the city would be the central project of the Sunni response over the next eighty-eight years, achieved by Sultan Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (rahimahu Allah) on 27 Rajab 583 AH (2 October 1187 CE), see the related scene saladin_jerusalem_1187, which depicts the contrast: Salah al-Din's (rahimahu Allah) restoration was conducted humanely and without a sack. This scene depicts the moment of the Frankish assault on the northern wall on 22 Sha'ban 492 AH: the siege tower being wheeled forward, the Frankish knights and infantry assembling, the Fatimid garrison defending from the parapet. The architectural reconstruction follows the Fatimid-period fortifications of the city, the Umayyad Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif visible within the walls.