Histories of the crusades and of the city of Jerusalem have always been shaped by political and academic agendas and feuds as well as the concerns and preoccupations of teachers and students. As a medievalist teaching at a military institution, John Hosler is uniquely positioned to offer political, military, and cultural analysis of the factors at play behind the many control transitions that Jerusalem has faced over the centuries, and he does so in a panoramic survey of pivotal moments in the history of Jerusalem and its surrounding environs and cultures.

As Hosler carefully explains, his new book is not an exhaustive study of Jerusalem's history, but rather utilizes moments when control of the city passed from one religious confession to another as exceptions which prove the 'rule' which prevailed during the remainder of the metropolis' existence: the possibility of 'rough tolerance', even 'concord and resolution' (3).

Precisely because Jerusalem has long served as a political and/or religious node for various groups, dramatic shifts in its control have become loci for communal memory and identity: Christian and Jewish communities imposed radically different interpretations on Titus's and Vespasian's sack of the city and destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE, while the 'discovery' of the relic of the True Cross by Constantine's mother, Helena, was but the opening salvo for a much-mythologized struggle between Byzantium and Sassanian Persia for control of the city and its relics (4). Regional politics and cultures were transformed by the advents of Muslim Arabs, the Fatimids, and the Seljuk Turks, the armies of the First and following crusades, the rise of Nur ad-Din and Saladin, negotiations between Frederick II and al-Malik al-Kamil and finally, the traumatic sack of Jerusalem in 1244 by Khwarizmians displaced by Mongol expansion.

And yet, as Hosler emphasizes, between and during these and other moments of tumultuous change were many instances of often-elided 'rapprochement and detente', of decrees of religious concession, of pragmatic tolerance, and massacres avoided (7-8). Whenever multiple religious majorities 'put up' with other minorities, the existence of a flourishing pluralistic society in the holy city was ensured. However, these relatively peaceful moments have become palimpsests in modern discussions of Jerusalem's past, which, informed by present conflicts or political partisanship, almost always present the past (and present) as an inevitable and insoluble 'clash of civilizations' (8-9).

In contrast, this elegantly written monograph carefully evaluates a wide variety of surviving written and archaeological evidence to identify the factors that led to violence and/or peace in Jerusalem. Using Islamic and eastern Christian, Latin and Jewish sources, Hosler weighs multiple perspectives of any given transition in control (often some communities benefited while others might have not). Separate chapters investigate the Persian and Arab sieges of 614 and 638 (11-54), internal divisions within Islam that bred religious toleration in both the 970s and 1070s (55-96), the double fall of Jerusalem to first Fatimid and then crusade forces in 1098-1099 (97-136), the many reputations of Saladin (137-75), and Christian-Muslim conflict and alliance during the lifetime of Frederick II (176-213).

Although word limits preclude detailed summaries of each chapter's findings, some important contributions include the following conclusions. The Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614 laid bare existing tensions between Christian and Jewish communities and the factions of the Greens and Blues; bluntly put, larger massacres seem to have occurred when conflict within an embattled city cross-fertilized with the violence exerted by a besieging force (16-26). Heraclius' campaigns against the Persians were no proto-crusade, although the recapture of the relic of the True Cross later became central to the imperial image and the identity of Christians around the world (30-35). Emerging apocalypticism and the undermining of the city's walls set the stage for the negotiated surrender of Jerusalem to 'Umar ibn al-Khattab in 638 CE. Despite the resulting construction of the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem remained a pluralistic society marked by Muslim-Christian and Muslim-Jewish toleration reaffirmed by Ottoman rulers (in 1458 and 1757) and the Status Quo Agreement (52-58).

Ironically, division within Islam generated a greater emphasis on conversion on the one hand and tolerance on the other, while intolerance and friction between communities in Jerusalem often created as much or more violence than invasion from without or a formal change in government (69, 73). The destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulchre by al-Hakim (who self-identified with the Mahdi who would destroy the Antichrist in the End Times and restricted the religious freedoms of Christians, Jews, and Sunnis), was reinterpreted by western Latin writers as evidence of an apocalyptic Jewish-Muslim anti-Christian conspiracy, resulting in anti-Jewish propaganda, legal restrictions, and violence (74-78). Forgotten among the apocalyptic fervor is the fact that al-Hakim's mother paid for repairs to the damaged church (78), while the Fatimids and Seljuk Turks who succeeded al-Hakim as rulers of Jerusalem proved to be largely tolerant of other faiths and pilgrims visiting and dwelling in Jerusalem, including various Jewish communities (unless of course a particular group conspired against a ruler) (78-91, 95-96).

Although in the later eleventh century the Seljuk Turks swept across Asia Minor, conquering important cities and the coastline, leading to Byzantine and Armenian appeals for western assistance, eastern sources described a peaceful Jerusalem despite the lurid atrocities supposedly ascribed to the Turks by Urban II and the resulting allure of 'rescuing' Jerusalem (the locus around which other complicated crusader motivations coalesced) (85-95, 101-5). Fatimid-crusader negotiations appear to have motivated and enabled the crusaders' assault of precisely the portion of Jerusalem's wall pre-weakened by a recent Fatimid siege (110-12, 116-17, 121).

While not denying the horror of the crusaders' massacre of many Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem, Hosler also notes that the modern-day focus on inter-religious rather than intra-religious strife has meant that historians have hyper-focused on crusader atrocities. These atrocities, Hosler argues, were an 'exceptional anachronism' more akin to the pre-Islamic period marked by conquest and pogroms rather than the Islamic era marked by pluralism (132, 134-36). Crusader attempts to 'cleanse' the holy city of other faiths through killing, expulsion, and appropriation of holy sites was restricted to Jerusalem, only partially implemented, and doomed to failure; eastern Christians, Muslims, and Jews continued to worship in the holy city. Similarly, although Saladin has been celebrated as a chivalric statesman by multiple sources, the ideology of jihad peaked during his reign and he was fully capable of ruthless elimination of rivals and prisoners as well as acts of mercy. Acknowledgement that mass rape and enslavement took place should counterbalance the conclusion of the Third Crusade by a treaty which permitted safe passage for pilgrims of all confessions visiting Jerusalem (137-75). By contrast, peaceful Ayyubid control of a Jerusalem marked by flourishing Jewish communities (182-83), Frederick II's and al-Malik al-Kamil's treaty that provided for the access of all faiths to their holy sites in Jerusalem (roundly decried by contemporaries) (194-200), and Ayyubid and Latin alliances against the incursions of the Khwarizmians (who savagely sacked the city in 1244) provide further medieval models for potential modern detente.

However, as Hosler rightly notes, the bulk of studies on the modern Arab-Israeli conflict continue to focus on the last two centuries and partisan claims to Jerusalem predicated on duration of possession and demonstrated 'tolerance'. By either omitting the medieval period of the region entirely or cherry-picking spectacular episodes of violence, modern historians and policy-makers forget, either deliberately or inadvertently, that at some point every major monotheistic religion possessed at least parts of Jerusalem and exercised both intolerance and tolerance. Any coexistence of diverse cultures and religions was the product of conscious choices made on a regular basis by Jerusalem's inhabitants, leaders, and visitors. While some of the city's 'falls' were traumatic, as groups and individuals chose destruction of lives, property and buildings to 'make a point', other transitions occurred as negotiated surrenders which did not transform the city into the exclusive domain of any given religion (214-18, 222). In fact, 'Umar's assurance that all three faiths could worship on the Temple Mount was confirmed by Ottoman rulers and early Israeli law (218-19). Both Muslim access to the Temple Mount and Jewish prayer at the Western wall were repeatedly affirmed in the medieval and early modern periods and at the close of the Six Day War (223-26).

Just as modern-day ecumenism and advocates of religious toleration have looked to the meeting of Saint Francis and al-Malik al-Kamil as a successful medieval paradigm for peaceful mutual religious influence (in contrast to the militarism of the Fifth Crusade), so too, the pluralistic communities of medieval Jerusalem, Acre, Tyre, Cairo, and Damascus, with careful further study, may provide paradigms for the peaceful coexistence of communities with diverse identities, cultures, and faiths (227).

Jessalynn Bird