The fall of Jerusalem 3

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]possible to overstate in its horror. The Crusaders went through the city like a fire. Men, women, and children were cut down in the streets. Survivors fled to the Temple Mount, the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, Islam's third holiest site.

[00:00:15]They were followed there and slaughtered. The chronicler Raymond of Aguilers, who was there, wrote in language that should freeze the blood.

[00:00:23]He described men wading through blood up to their ankles. Other accounts speak of blood up to the knees of the horses.

[00:00:29]These are almost certainly exaggerations, rhetorical flourishes of medieval writing, but they tell you something about the scale and the ferocity of what witnesses believed they were seeing. The Jewish community of Jerusalem had gathered in their main synagogue. They were burned alive inside it.

[00:00:45]Iftikhar ad-Daulah himself survived. He had retreated to the Tower of David and negotiated a surrender with Raymond of Toulouse, who kept his word and allowed the governor safe passage to Ascalon.

[00:00:57]But for almost everyone else inside the walls, there was no mercy. Contemporary Muslim sources