140 DESTINY DISRUPTED
and wishing the Crusaders every success! Egypt had long been locked in a
struggle with both the Seljuks and the Abbasids, and al-Afdal really
thought the newcomers would merely help his cause. It didn't seem to
dawn on him until too late that he himself might be in the line of pillage.
After the Franj conquered Antioch, the Fatimid vizier wrote to them to ask
if there was anything he could do to help. When the Franj moved against
Tripoli, Afdal took advantage of the distraction to assert control of
Jerusalem in the name of the Fatimid khalifa. He posted his own governor
there and assured the Franj they were now welcome to visit Jerusalem any-
time as honored pilgrims: they would have his protection. But the Franj
wrote back to say they were not interested in protection but in Jerusalem,
and they were coming "with lances raised."^3
The Franj marched through largely empty country, for their reputation
had preceded them. Rural folks had fled at their approach, and small towns
had emptied into larger cities with higher walls for protection. Jerusalem had
some of the highest walls around, but after a forty-day siege, the Crusaders
tried the same gambit they had run successfully at Ma'ara-open the gates,
no one will be harmed, they told the citizens-and it worked here too.
Upon securing this city, the Franj indulged in an orgy of bloodletting
so drastic it made all the previous carnage seem mild. One crusader, writ-
ing about the triumph, described piling up heads, hands, and feet in the
streets. {He called it a "wonderful sight.") He spoke of crusaders riding
through heathen blood up to their knees and bridle reins.^4 Edward Gib-
bon, the British historian who chronicled the fall of the Roman Empire,
said the Crusaders killed seventy thousand people here over the course of
two days. Of the city's Muslims, virtually none survived.
The city's Jewish denizens took refuge in their gigantic central synagogue,
but while they were in there praying for deliverance, the Crusaders block-
aded all the doors and windows and set fire to the building, burning up
pretty much the entire Jewish community of Jerusalem in one fell swoop.
The city's native Christians did not fare so well either. None of them
belonged to the Church of Rome but to various Eastern churches such as
the Greek, Armenian, Coptic, or Nestorian. The crusading Franj looked
upon them as schismatics bordering on heresy, and since heretics were al-
most worse than heathens, they confiscated the property of these eastern
Christians and sent them into exile.