Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Capture of the city by the Crusaders; Jews burned in the synagogue
1099·Jérusalem
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
The Crusaders took Jerusalem after a five-week siege. The massacre that followed made no distinction between Muslims and Jews, who had taken part in the defense of the ramparts alongside the Fatimid garrison.
Accounts agree on one point: the community had gathered in its synagogue, which the assailants set on fire. The letters found in the Cairo Genizah show what followed — captives sold, Torah scrolls ransomed one by one, fundraising appeals sent as far as Egypt by the community of Ascalon to redeem the prisoners and the books.
The Latin kingdom then forbade Jews from residing in Jerusalem; it was not until Saladin that they returned. The traveler Benjamin de Tudèle, seventy years later, found only a handful of families there, dyers at the foot of the Tower of David.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Land of Israel
- Country :
- Terre d'Israël
Ibn al-Qalānisī, *Histoire de Damas* ; lettres de la Genizah du Caire ; Guillaume de Tyr, *Chronique*.