ABSTRACT

The walls of Jerusalem are about four kilometres long and enclose an area ofapproximately 86 hectares. They were rebuilt during the Fatimid period, and two major projects of fortification are known to have taken place in the eleventh century. The first involved the realignment of the southern wall to more or less its present position, excluding Mount Zion for the first time since the Byzantine period. This fortification work was carried out by Caliph al-Zâhir shortly before the severe earthquake of 1033.20 In this work some of the churches outside the city walls were dismantled to provide building stone for the project (the same occurred a century and a half later under Saladin). According to the tenth-century historian Yahya ibn Sa‘id, the Muslims were about to dismantle the great basilica of St Mary of Mount Zion when the earthquake occurred.21 This probably did not save the church, and it was in ruins when the Franks arrived sixty-six years later. The second phase was the construction of a new wall and towers in the north-western part of the city, which was carried out by the Christian community in 1063. This was part of the refortification of the entire city carried out by the various communities of Jerusalem as required by an edict of the Fatimid Caliph Mustansir (1035-94), which called for the rebuilding of fortifications throughout the region. This edict placed the Christian community of the city in a difficult position, as they lacked the financial means to carry out the work of fortification around their quarter. In the words of William of Tyre,

a fourth part of this construction work was assigned to the wretched Christians who were living in Jerusalem. These faithful people, however, were already so ground down by corvées and extra corvées, by tributes and taxes, and by the rendering of various ignominious services that the wealth of the entire community was scarcely sufficient to enable them to restore even one or two of these towers.22