The Cession of Jerusalem by Treaty

In 1229, during the curious and almost bloodless Crusade led by the excommunicate emperor Frederick II, the city of Jerusalem changed hands not by battle but by a treaty, the Treaty of Jaffa, between Frederick and the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, al-Kamil (rahimahu Allah), the nephew of Salah al-Din. Al-Kamil, embroiled in dangerous rivalries with his brothers and kinsmen who divided the Ayyubid lands among them, and anxious to be free of the threat of Frederick's army and to gain the emperor as an ally, agreed to surrender Jerusalem and a corridor of territory to the Franks. By the terms, however, the sacred esplanade of the Haram al-Sharif, the noble sanctuary with the Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the first qibla and the third holiest place of Islam, was kept in Muslim hands and Muslim worship, with the Muslim officials and the call to prayer preserved there, while the rest of the city passed under Frankish control. The arrangement was condemned across the Muslim world: that the holy city, recovered with such struggle and sacrifice by Salah al-Din only forty years before, should be handed back to the unbelievers without a sword drawn, was felt as a grief and a disgrace, and the preachers and scholars of Damascus and elsewhere lamented it bitterly. Frederick's own position was scarcely better, condemned by the Pope and unloved by the Latins of the East. The cession proved short-lived: Jerusalem returned to Muslim rule within fifteen years, in 1244, when it was taken by the Khwarazmian troops allied to the Ayyubids of Egypt, and it would remain in Muslim hands thereafter for centuries. This scene depicts Jerusalem at the time of its cession by treaty, the Haram and the city. In keeping with the project's ethics any figure is anonymous and at a distance.