Jerusalem: The Biography

Simon Sebag Montefiore
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2011
xxxiii + 638 pages

Biography: a written account of another person’s life. This book begins with a confusing, and I dare say pretentious, title. Jerusalem: A History or even Jerusalem: A Biography makes more sense. Maybe it was the publishers who insisted on “The” Biography. Montefiore cut his teeth writing Russian and Soviet history. His two books on Stalin are excellent starting points for anyone interested in early Soviet history. This makes Jerusalem all the more intriguing. Why go so far beyond one’s area of expertise? Simple. There is a great story here to tell, and, for Montefiore, it is a personal story, “I feel I have been preparing to write this book all my life. Since childhood, I have been wandering around Jerusalem. Because of a family connection, related in this book, ‘Jerusalem’ is my family motto.” (p. xxv) Montefiore had a lot of help with this labour of love. Although he is well versed in the secondary sources, he admits that “Each section has been read and checked by an academic specialist.”

This is a popular work about the city but also the wider political world of empires, crusaders and colonists. I think this is what Montefiore enjoys writing about the most, and Jerusalem is at its best when he focuses on the political and military. When he discusses religion, especially in the early chapters, I think Montefiore fails in his goal to write an history for general readers “whether they are atheists or believers, Christians, Muslims or Jews.” (p. xxii) After all, can a practicing Christian or Jew accept that King Josiah “set his scholars to retell the ancient history of the Judaeans, linking the mythical Patriarch, the sacred kings David and Solomon and the story of Jerusalem into a single past, to illuminate the present. This was another step towards creation of the Bible.” (p. 40) It is only possible for the believers who do not believe too much. This is not the only passage where the religious will raise their eyebrows. The Emperor Constantine chose Christianity on a whim and could have just as well gone with Manichaeanism or Mithraism. Had he done so, “Europe today might be Mithraistic or Manichean.” (p. 144) Nothing Divine here. Move along people. The reader can guess what Montefiore thinks about Christ’s divinity as described in the New Testament.

Once he gets beyond the chiefly religious the book finds its narrative legs. Montefiore also frees us from the prison presentism has put us in. In my lifetime, Jerusalem has been nothing if not a battleground, often literally, between Jews, Christians and Muslims. It is easy to suppose it has always been thus. It has not. Even during the early Muslim conquest, “The Muslim conquerors were initially happy to share shrines with Christians…it seems that the early Muslims first prayed beside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before arrangements could be made on the Temple Mount.” (p. 176) Montefiore also does a fine job pulling the modern reader out of purely secular thinking, “the modern idea, promoted in Hollywood movies and in the backlash after the disaster of the 2003 Iraq war, that crusading was just an opportunity for enrichment with sadistic dividends is wrong…A spirit was abroad that is hard for modern people to grasp: Christians were being offered the opportunity to earn the forgiveness of all sins.” (p. 209)

Given the nature of historical sources, it is no surprise that most of this book examines the early modern era and beyond. The 1800s is particularly interesting with literary celebrities, insane millenarians and debauched nobles all flocking to the city. I had read that Gogol went mad and destroyed several manuscripts; however, I did not know that he was an early sufferer of ‘Jerusalem Syndrome.’ He found the Holy Sepulchre “filthy and vulgar” and the holy sites gaudy. (p. 341) Hoping for religious rejuvenation, the visit put him into a funk he never escaped from. Like many nineteenth century tourists, the city surprised him for being a small, poor, dirty backwater. If not for the holy sites, there would have been nothing to recommend the place.

Being mainly political history, we rarely get a sense about real life in the city. We do get to know Benjamin Disraeli’s and Mark Twain’s impressions, but they saw the city with a shallow traveller’s eye. It is only in the late 1800s that we are treated to a “ground level” view of Jerusalem. In some ways, “Arab City, Imperial City” is the most interesting chapter of the book. We get to see the Christians, Muslims, Jews, Arabs, Ottomans and Europeans who lived there:

this was a city of music and dancing. The locals met in the coffee houses and cellar bars to smoke narghileh water pipes, play backgammon, watch wrestling matches and belly dancing. At weddings and festivals, there was circle-dancing (dabkah), while singers performed such love songs as ‘My lover, your beauty hurt me.’ [sic] Arab love songs alternated with Andalusian Ladino songs of the Sephardis. Dervishes danced their zikr wildly to the mazhar drums and cymbals. In private houses, music was played by mixed Jewish and Arab musicians. (p. 360)

For Montefiore, Jerusalem is also a personal history. His direct descendent, Moses Montefiore, was a philanthropist who made seven visits to Jerusalem to help the Jews there. Some have even called him, maybe uncharitably, a proto-Zionist. One might expect Montefiore’s family history to trap him in a myopic, pro-Israel box when writing about post-WWII events. Not so. I think his treatment of post-1945 Jerusalem is about as balanced as it can be. There are heroes and villains on all sides. Jews massacre Muslims; Muslims massacre Jews. He wisely describes events as they happened rather than smuggling in moral judgements. Equally wise, if not abruptly, he ends his biography after the Six Day War. I have complained before that the historian can get into trouble when he stops being a historian and becomes a commentator, or worse, a prognosticator. I cannot fault Montefiore for stopping in 1967 to avoid this trap (although he does indulge himself for a few pages in the Epilogue).

There is no new significant history in this book. Montefiore says there are new discoveries to be had, but I do not recall anything Earth shattering. This is really a survey using secondary sources. There is nothing wrong with this in a popular work. If Montefiore had gone to the archives, he would still be in them. It is how this book is organised, around one city, which makes it so novel, entertaining and edifying. This is a great place to start for any reader interested in the Near East.