INTRODUCTION

These two periods of Frankish rule together amount to little more than a hundred years. In terms of the physical changes that took place in this short span of time, we can place Crusader Jerusalem among the important periods in the history of the city. Within the contours of Roman/Byzantine Jerusalem the Franks carried out an internal transformation which was in some measure as great as any made to Jerusalem since the time of Hadrian in the second century AD. The evolution of Jerusalem into a Crusader city was a protracted undertaking extending over several decades, the dual aim of which was the physical restoration of the spiritual capital of Christendom and the transformation of a provincial Muslim city into the capital of a Western Christian kingdom. The rebuilding of Jerusalem was also aimed at overcoming the demographic crisis which the Franks themselves had created. When they occupied Jerusalem, a slaughter of the local population was carried out between 15 and 18 July 1099.1 It left the new capital purged of ‘infidels’ but also almost a ghost town, as few Crusaders remained in the city after the conquest. As a result, alongside the passionate desire to restore Christian holy places to their past glory, there was a more practical need to repopulate the now near-empty city. The lengthy process of restoration and repopulation began shortly after the occupation. However, restoration requires capital, and after the First Crusade financial support from the West was not always forthcoming. Though there were few local resources, some of the abandoned wealth of Fatimid Jerusalem could now be channelled into new projects. This must have been at least partly the means by which a fairly large number of churches was built in the

first half of the twelfth century to replace those destroyed by the Egyptian Caliph alHâkim at the beginning of the eleventh century.2 These included not only the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but the churches of St Anne, St Mary on Mount Zion, the Tomb of the Virgin in Jehoshaphat, St James in the Armenian Quarter, the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives and a large number of lesser churches.