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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2020 and 6 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mukherjeesiddhant2000.
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The info box states that 11,000 of the 13,500 crusaders were casualties. I know that that is way too high. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.168.53.81 (talk) 00:56, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
The article states that all inhabitants of J were killed - but that's quite meaningless unless one quantifies how many inhabitants remained in the city?
No way! If all inhabitants are killed (more than 40.000) then this is a genocide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.75.194.86 (talk) 13:05, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Additionally, the writer claims that subsequent to all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem "massacred with indiscriminate violence", the "True Cross" was recovered by questioning these selfsame inhabitants. Unlikely.
Does anyone know what the population of Jerusalem was at the time? Its smaller then Cairo 500 000 - 1 000 000, and smaller then Paris ~ 100 000, many European cities of the time were in the realm of tens of thousands, but cities in the Middle East were larger. Some reliable information on this would give context even if the number of victims cant be certain. Ottawakismet (talk) 19:46, 15 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ottawakismet (talk • contribs) 19:40, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
I have to say, they make the article look like kids stuff. It's a bumer when you spend a lot of time working on the text to be of best quality possible and you have a "battlebox" taking up half the page with questionably useful information on old conflicts which we dont really have solid figures for anyway. You dont find battleboxes in academic literature, but you do find them in glossy picture-laden 8x11 format military history books in bookstore bargin bins. Stbalbach 15:59, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
The article first describes how difficult the siege was, and then, suddenly, the crusaders just enter the city with the help of siege engines. This raises some questions: Why did they start with a siege at all? If the assault turned out to be so easy, why did wait so long? Or did they need the time to build the siege engines? Was there really so few fighting inside the city that the massacre started right away? It all sounds to me as if the defenders were few in number and relied on the strength of their fortification which then turned out to be not so good. Maybe somebody could clarify. Simon A. 09:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, according to the info box, the siege was only six weeks before the attack, which is actually very short peroid for a siege (pre-cannon). And yes, a mere 1000 troops (also per info box) is way too few to properly man fortifications. Jon 13:47, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
The info is missing from both this page and the main First Crusade article. Both mention the massacre of the Muslims in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but the burning of the synagogue was the other major atrocity performed. If you look for it on the internet, most accounts will say that the Jews were rounded up by the crusaders or had already gathered there for the Sabbath and where locked in. Then the building was set on fire. I’ve even read on account how Duke Godfrey of Bouillon sang a song of praise to Jesus ("Christ, we adore thee") [3] while he circled the flaming complex.
However, I just recently watched an episode of the television show “Uncommon Knowledge” (which originally aired April 22, 2002) and it held a forum discussing the Crusades. The moderator Thomas Madden welcomed two guests:
In the middle of the discussion, Thomas Madden shed his own educated view on what he thinks the circumstances were that led to the Jews being burnt alive in their synagogue. The following transcript section of the show's discussion was taken from the Hoover Institute website:
I thought this to be very interesting. Never have I heard it from this point of view.
I’ve written Prof. Madden on whether he thinks these Jews fled from the “Northern” or “Southern” wall defensives, but he has yet to write me back. The reason I wrote him was because I was unsure which one they left. It seems more plausible that they left from the northern wall shortly before it was taken by the Frankish armies led by Duke Godfrey. On the contrary, the southern wall was FAR MORE successful in combating the Provencal armies of Raymond of Toulouse. So I doubt they would have fled from there. The southern defensive did not falter until news of the northern breach spread like wild fire around the city.
Do you think that some of the quoted transcript should be added to this and the main article? If so, I'll leave it to someone more qualified than myself. You've already got the info right here. No research required!
I you would like to watch this edition of the show, CLICK HERE! and you will be able to watch it in either Real Player or Windows Media Player. (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 17:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC))
The article already says "over the course of that afternoon, evening and next morning. Muslims, Jews, and even a few of the Christians were all massacred with indiscriminate violence." I don't know why need to list 5 different sources in a lengthy paragraph that "prove" Jews were killed, there is no debate about it, the Crusaders killed everyone - Jews, Muslims and Christians. This is standard history, it can be summarized in one sentence with a link to a reliable scholarly source (do we need links to TV programs?) See History of the Jews and the Crusades which is a more detailed treatment. -- Stbalbach 00:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
This article claims it was Godfrey of Bouillon who said he "refused to wear a crown of gold in the city were Christ wore a crown of thorns" whereas the article "First Crusade" credits Raymond of Toulouse with this phrase. Where lies the truth? Can anyone provide sources? Top.Squark 09:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Shoberl and conveniently found on Google Books; the original is here, "Godefroy refusa de mettre sur sa tête la couronne brillante qu'on lui offrait, 'ne voulant point, dit-il, porter une couronne d'or où Jésus-Christ avait porté une couronne d'épines.'" and Shoberl's translation is "Godfrey refused to put on his head the brilliant crown that was offered him, declaring that 'he would not wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns.'". I suppose citing sources was not held to the same standard in 1811, because Chateaubriand doesn't say what he is quoting, but I assume it must be the Old French William of Tyre, with the order reversed ("il respondi quen cele sainte cite ou Nostre Sires Jhesucriz avoit portee courone despines por lui et por les autres pecheeurs ne porteroit il ja se Dieu plesoit corone dor"). (And this itself is slightly different from the original Latin, "Promotus autem, humilitatis causa, corona aurea, regum more, in sancta civitate noluit insigniri: ea contentus et illi reverentiam exhibens, quam humani generis reparator, in eodem loco usque ad crucis patibulum pro nostra salute spineam deportavit.") Where William got this from, I don't know; I'll have to check the contemporary chronicles of the First Crusade. Also, the question of what Godfrey's actual title was is discussed by Jonathan Riley-Smith ("The Title of Godfrey of Bouillon", Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 52 (1979), 83-86) and Alan Murray ("The Title of Godfrey of Bouillon as Ruler of Jerusalem", Collegium Medievale 3 (1990), 163-78), which I have also not looked at yet, but presumably they will be useful. Adam Bishop 17:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
I have material that states the Jews who died in the siege were of the Karaite order. The source claims that the Rabbincal community traveled to Tyre when their synagogue was moved there in 1077. Both Jewish and Crusader sources mention a Rabbinical synagogue being burnt, but the Jewish sources, which are dated mere weeks after the incident, do not corroborate the story of people actually dying inside the burning complex.
I'm not sure if this is worth noting. I'll leave it up to somebody else. If you would like to add it, contact me and I will give you the passages and accompanying citations. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
"The final assault and massacre" is, astonishingly, pro-Crusader. How are sentences like these relevant?
"Finally, though the crime is heinous, especially by today's standards, it must be remembered that the Christian population of Jerusalem had been forcibly invaded and subjected to treatment which would qualify as genocide under the law of nations.[9] An example of what images must have been coarsing through the minds of the Crusaders as they took the city was this report of the treatment of Christians in Jerusalem:"
"Additionally, though this number seems like a lot, it is less than half the number of Christians that were slaughted [sic] by the joint Persian and Jewish siege and capture of Jerusalem in 614 A.D.[8]"
"While many were killed in this siege, there is no evidence that what occurred was any more extraordinary than what occurred during other battles at the time to cities who resisted. In fact, because the rules of war allowed for the slaughter of all the inhabitants, it is worth noting as an historical matter, that this is one of rare times during this period that such an extermination did not occur."
The sources are incredibly weak. A Christian TV network? A Geocities page? Come on. (It is worth noting that in the course of revising the page, someone added "anti-christian atheist" to Paul Tobin's name.) The Catholic Encyclopedia is a respected encyclopedia and can be used, but when it is it must be noted, as it obviously has a stake in this "debate." aristotle1990 (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the following section:
" While the Christian soldiers engaged in the barefoot procession, they were subjected to the insults and incantations of Muslim sorcerers.[1]"
The expression "Muslim sorcerors" seems incorrect and biased in the extreme. My understanding of the Islamic faith (experts please correct me) is that "sorcerors" are not part of this belief system. Given this expression, I'd suggest the whole sentence needs to be removed and at least considered closely before putting back in (I've done so but included it above if somebody feels strongly it should be re-incorporated) --mgaved (talk) 21:41, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
- ,yup quite true, sorcery is a cardinal sin (kufr) in Islam.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.227.79.183 (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
References
Scythian1, if you read the Kedar article, it talks about the massacre and its likely literary sources, and why the crusaders probably did not literally massacre everyone. This is why I was reverting your changes. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:28, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
I dont like the meaning that jews and muslims defended jerusalem together from crusaders. It is ilogical. The Islam occupied to that time Jerusalem. I doubt that jews fought side by side with their supressors.
You can see my changes in "view history"
First of all the sentence:
"Although the Crusaders killed many of the Muslim and Jewish residents"
This sentence is wrong, when you stage muslimic occupants together with jewish victims and both suffered from the crusade. You ignore the difference of a supressor and a victim. Crusaders never had the intention to slaughter jews but to free jews from the occupation.
My second change:
Jewish defenders. I doubt that a victim will fight together with a supressor side by side. During second world war allied forces invaded germany to free jews and germans from the nationalsozialistic power. I doubt that any one of those fought side by side with the Nazis.
My third change:
"seeking aid for Jews who escaped Jerusalem at the time of the Crusader siege "
This sentence should be erased because together with the rest of the text:
"There is no question that there was a massacre of some Jerusalem Jews, for contemporary letters from the Cairo Geniza seeking aid for Jews who escaped Jerusalem at the time of the Crusader siege refers to such killings"
you start with an imagination that jews and christians were enemies. And this is wrong. The entire logical conclusion in the text about siege of jerusalem is based on islamic writtings. i doubt that in these writtings lies more truth than in simple logic.
my fourth change:
"that there were some Jewish survivors as well" i delete the word "some" because in this context the words "some survivors" let you start thinking that the crusaders intention was based on killing more jews in jerusalem then moslems. and again christians and jews were no enemies. christians and moslems have been. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Santiago84 (talk • contribs) 08:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
You wrote: "Your other argument about World War II is equally invalid. That war was not about freeing the Jews, just as the American Civil War was not about freeing slaves." Are you insane? even the goal of terrorist groups is to free persons who are held in prisons in western socity, by blackmail and terrorist strikes. how can you say that no american soldier, exspecially an american jew, never had the intention of freeing jews during second world war? how can you say that no christian, exspecially jewish christian never had the intention of freeing jews and jerusalem from islamic occupation? the most persons here use quotations of writtings of islam. and the islam practices polygamie, forced marriage, honor trough fear, honorkillings and initial ritual. I guess that these things turn the islam into implausible, what turns the islamic writtings implausible, which turn the entire conclusions based on the writtings (exspecially entire passages of articles) into an implausible value.
i also close this "discussion" down for my part
"Your other argument about World War II is equally invalid. That war was not about freeing the Jews" this sentence i will never forget —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.1.52.167 (talk) 18:18, 15 October 2010 (UTC) Santiago84
Yes of course, let's make this about the Holocaust. Seriously, as shown in the section above, there is altogether too much WWII and "clash of civilization" here and not enough serious medieval historiography.
Yes, the contemporary account alleging that the crusaders sang a merry song while burning the Jews in the synagogue would certainly be worth mentioning. But let's make sure that we cite the actual source, not just "one account", apparently taken from Holocaust literature where it was presumably used to create a backdrop of "long history of Christian atrocities".
--dab (𒁳) 11:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I see this was already addressed above, unfortunately based on historians debating in a TV show rather than in quotable literature, but the upshot seems to be that the Jewish defenders indeed seem to have been burned in the synagogue, not sure about the singing. In any case this isn't an instance of medieval antisemitism (which did exist, of course) but simply a case of killing all the city's defenders. It would be worth discussing this based on actual references (medieval studies), but it is clearly a bad faith anachronism to try and contort this into a part of an antisemitic "legacy of hatred" as the 1990 book apparently did. --dab (𒁳) 11:44, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok, I think I fixed this. There is some material at History of the Jews and the Crusades which could be used. It's partly based on a TV show, but that's still better than nothing. diff.
As for Rausch (1990), the page number is 27, but,
the screaming, flame-tortured humanity? Seriously, what sort of pamphlet is this? Certainly not something we could or should use as encyclopedic reference. He probably added a pulp illustration of a burning Jew to drive home his point.
Please. This is about a war in 1099. People died, including civilians. This is why it is called a "massacre". Stick to medieval historians and try to keep out the people trying to dramatize this in terms of "screaming, flame-tortured humanity" in the service of some modern-day agenda. --dab (𒁳) 11:59, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I have tried an "emergency fix" for this, as I saw the naive figure ("seventy thousand were butchered") was spilling over to other articles. I have not done an in-depth research on the literature, and obviously the article is still in dire need of quality references. What I think can be said for certain is,
--dab (𒁳) 12:23, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
In line with some of the above comments, I’ve added a brief line on the norms of Medieval siege warfare to situate the massacre in a contemporaneous context to help the uninformed reader stay from judging by modern standards alone. I’ve also further elaborated upon groups of Jews being ransomed as revealed by the Cairo Geniza papers, including a link to the wiki page on the Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.202.76 (talk) 00:23, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
There are a number of paragraphs in the article that do not contain any footnotes. Specifically, in the following sections:
Please do not remove the maintenance tag until this has been addressed. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 17:57, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
As time goes on, you'll find less and less of any references or sources regarding Christian success. Mainly due to Muslim and Jewish intellectuals wiping them from the "history books" (for lack of a better term, as there were no history books back then, and history was mostly passed through scripture and oral tradition). Unfortunately, if you want to know anything about Christian expansion from the year 0 AD to 2018 AD, you'll have to use your imagination. (You might realize that even so much as the naming of the years has changed to exclude Christianity, that should tell you enough to know you will not find your "sources" and "internet articles" to support something such as the First Siege of Jerusalem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:200:5671:E50A:9A6:5881:81B3 (talk) 19:12, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians! Firstly, I think we should change the second sentence under the title of the article as I believe the word "seize" is slightly redundant considering we just said how it was a "successful siege" a couple words ago. Furthermore, I believe that the first sentence under the "Massacre" section of the article is a bit too broad to be stated without any reference. Instead, we could possibly find a source that reaffirms the position that massacres were just part of medieval warfare, and we could attach the link within the article and have an extra citation to gain extra credibility. Jacobwirtzer (talk) 19:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
As time goes on, you'll find less and less of any references or sources regarding Christian success. Mainly due to Muslim and Jewish intellectuals wiping them from the "history books" (for lack of a better term, as there were no history books back then, and history was mostly passed through scripture and oral tradition). Unfortunately, if you want to know anything about Christian expansion from the year 0 AD to 2018 AD, you'll have to use your imagination. (You might realize that even so much as the naming of the years has changed to exclude Christianity, that should tell you enough to know you will not find your "sources" and "internet articles" to support something such as the First Siege of Jerusalem.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:200:5671:E50A:9A6:5881:81B3 (talk) 19:15, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
For this edit, I added two sentences to the second to last paragraph(starting with "additonally") of the section, and also added the reference for my source. Jacobwirtzer (talk) 00:34, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
From the article: "The eyewitness Gesta Francorum states that some people were spared. Its anonymous author wrote, 'When the pagans had been overcome, our men seized great numbers, both men and women, either killing them or keeping them captive, as they wished.'" It is unlikely me that so many people would voluntarily have had themselves killed rather than become captive. To me, it sounds like the Saracens were offered conversion, and those ready to become Christian weren't killed. Does the Gesta say anything about that? Steinbach (talk) 11:23, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
The article contains a reference to "Tyerman 2006, pp. 153–157." but no work by a Tyerman is given. Presumably something by Christopher Tyerman. DuncanHill (talk) 03:17, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Short description changed to none per WP:SDNONE. Editor2020 (talk) 18:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
In regard to my recent edit, I deleted the comment not because I didn't like it, but because it is irrelevant and, in my opinion, a poorly thought out redirect. First, why should a reader care if another article redirects to this section? And why should they care if there are other massacres? That's what categories are for and this article references relevant massacres.
Second, it is not appropriate for the "Massacre of Jerusalem" to redirect here. There are many instances of massacres in the city that come to mind, including the 1244 massacre by the Khwarezmians. The redirect does not meet the criteria for singling out the one in 1099. I assume you created the redirect and it should be removed. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 03:26, 7 March 2022 (UTC)