Seder Olam Revisited: C41- Crusade
- Albert Benhamou
- Oct 9
- 14 min read
Updated: Oct 11
CHRONOLOGY OF JEWISH HISTORY
Generation 41: Hebrew years 4800-4920 (1040-1160 CE)
Previous page < Navigation > Next page
To return to the list of chronological generations from Seder Olam Revisited, click here.
Introduction
The new millennium (CE) brought a lot of disappointment in Christendom. Many scholars had predicted the return of Jesus Christ in year 1000, assuming one millennium after his birth. As nothing happened in 1000 CE, the next expectation was around 1030-1035 CE, as a return from the date of his crucifixion. But nothing happened either. All the predictions proved wrong. Then the Pope expressed the opinion that the Messiah failed to return because Jerusalem was at the hands of the Muslims... Even worse, the Holy Sepulcher had been destroyed for the first time in 1009, on orders of the Fatimid Caliph Abu el-Hakim. And, to make things worse, a great schism took place between Catholics and Orthodoxes.
Hebrew Year | CE | Event | Source |
4809 | 1049 | ibn Gabirol: The Fountain of Life | |
4814 | 1054 | The Great Schism | |
4826 | 1066 | The Norman conquest of England | |
4827 | 1066 | Massacre of Granada | |
4828 | 1068 | The Jews of Fes | Al-Bakri |
4830 | 1070 | Rashi of Troyes | |
4833 | 1073 | The Saljuks conquer Jerusalem | |
4856 | 1096 | Massacres of the First Crusade | |
4859 | 1099 | The Crusaders conquer Jerusalem | |
4860 | 1100 | The Kinnot | |
4870 | 1110 | Petrus Alphonsi | |
4882 | 1122 | Abraham bar Hiyya: the Sefer ha-Hibbur | |
4904 | 1144 | William of Norwich | |
4910 | 1150 | Aaron of Lincoln | |
Year 4808 – 1048 CE – The Byzantines rebuild the Holy Sepulcher
The Fatimid el-Hakim who had destroyed the Holy Sepulcher in 1009 (see document C40, year 1000) was assassinated in 1021. Assassination is only an assumption. The fact is that he "disappeared". Some Muslims believed he was the Mahdi, the caliph who will bring the Shia truth to the world and assumed he went into hiding to reappear in the end of days. This belief gave root to a new Shia Muslim sect called the Druzes. They were persecuted as Muslim heretics and fled to what is now Lebanon, and later in what is now the Carmel and Northern Galilee in Israel.
el-Hakim's son was eager to seek peace with the Christians after this religious destruction. He authorized the eastern emperor in Constantinople, Constantine Monomachos, to rebuild the Holy Sepulcher on condition he would also rebuild the walls of the city. The project started in 1042 and was completed in 1048.
Year 4809 – 1049 CE – Solomon ibn Gabirol writes The Fountain of Life
At the age of 28, Solomon ibn Gabirol (to read about him, see document C40, year 1040) wrote his most famous book, Mekor Chayim (Origin of Life). The book was originally written in Arabic, the language of Al-Andalus, but was translated in Latin as Fons Vitae (Fountain of Life) about 100 years later (to read some extracts in English from The Fountain of Life, click here). Because of this translation in Latin, the book became popular even among the non-Jewish world because of its philosophical content. But the author was known as Avicebron, so the readers didn't know that it was Ibn Gabirol, a Jewish writer. The identification of Avicebron as Ibn Gabirol only dates from 1846.
The book used the model of the school of Socrates, as a dialogue between a master and his disciple, to discuss the origins of life. The dialogue model was used by authors in books such The Kuzari (see document C39, year 800). Solomon ibn Gabirol was killed in Valencia about 1058 by a Muslim poet who was jealous of his skills. He was only about 37 years old.
Year 4814 – 1054 CE – The Great Schism
The relations between Rome and Constantinople had been embittered by the dispute about which church would be more important than the other. There were also differences in religious practices over a long time, already from the Byzantine era. In 1054, the leaders of both churches excommunicated each other, and the two churches decided to split. The schism resulted is what became the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Year 4826 – 1066 CE – The Normans conquer England
Following a succession crisis in England, William the Duke of Normandy crossed the Channel and conquered England after defeating his adversary Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Then the Normans ruled over England for about 48 years but left a lasting influence on the English monarchy for centuries that followed.
Sometime after his conquest, William asked Jews to come to England, and this represented the first arrival of Jews to the British Isles.
Year 4827 – 1066 CE – The massacre of Granada
Joseph, the son of Samuel ibn Naghrillah (or Naghrela, see document C40, year 1038), succeeded his father as head of the Jewish community of Granada and vizier to the Berber king in 1056. Although Joseph had been educated by his righteous father, and was himself a learned person, he had been raised in the luxury of the royal palace and was later accused of spying on the king and his court and of other acts. Most of the accusations were rumors, but the position of vizier was already a difficult one for a Jew to hold in Muslim dominions. The situation drew the anger of the Muslim mob who decided to get rid of him. They stormed the palace and crucified him. They then fell upon the Jewish population and killed between 1500 and 4000 of them (according to various sources) in a single day, on 30 December 1066 (3 Tevet 4827).
Year 4828 – 1068 CE – The Jews of Fes
Al-Bakri, a Muslim geographer from Al-Andalus, wrote an important book in 1068 about the people living in North Africa which was frequently quoted by subsequent writers and historians. One of the cities he described was the city of Fes, in Morocco. Al-Bakri mentioned that there was a saying in his times: Fas bled bla nas, which means Fes is a place with no [Muslim] man. Indeed, Fes was in these times entirely Jewish and, as described by Al-Bakri, composed of two communities of Jewish refugees: Jews from Kairouan and Jews from Al-Andalus. He stated that both communities settled there around 800 CE (Al-Bakri, Description de l'Afrique septentrionale, de Slane, 1913, section "description de la ville de Fes", p.226)
Year 4830 – 1070 CE – Rashi of Troyes
Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac) was born in Troyes in Champagne, France, in 1040. He came from a family of scholars from Worms in Germany, and this circumstance saved him from the massacre of these communities a few years later at the time of the Crusade (see below). He opened a yeshiva in Troyes in 1070 and started to attract numerous students. Rashi is known for his famous commentaries of the Talmud and of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible). His commentaries have been included in every printed edition of these works since the first publications. Rashi died in Troyes in 1105 at the age of 65. He had three daughters who married scholars. They themselves gave birth to famous scholars who became the Tosafist (meaning those who "add") such as Rashbam (1085-1158), Rivam (1090-1130), and Rabbeinu Tam (1100-1171) author of the Sefer Ha-Yashar.
Year 4833 – 1073 CE – The Seljuks conquer Jerusalem
The Seljuks were Muslim Turks who rebelled against the Abbasid rule. They were Mongols of origin and had been slaves to Muslim conquerors in the past centuries. They were enrolled by one of the Abbasid rulers in his army and later rebelled against his heir. Also, a series of natural catastrophes (draughts, floods, earthquakes) gave the start to rebellious movements across the entire Abbasid empire: Fatimid (Berber Shia) invaded Egypt, and Seljuk Turks took parts of the Abbasid dominion over the years.
In 1071, the Seljuk army also gave a severe blow to the Byzantine empire and conquered Anatolia (Asia Minor). They then conquered the Holy Land from the hands of the Fatimids and established a regional capital in Jerusalem. All previous Muslim rulers used the Muslim city of Ramle as their capital, but this city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1068.
By fear that his own empire would soon be attacked by the Seljuks, the easter emperor in Constantinople finally overcame his differences with Rome (especially since the great schism) and took the historical decision to call for help from the Pope and the rest of Christendom. This came very timely for the Pope who saw an opportunity to get access to Jerusalem, which normally fell under the eastern empire's dominion, and free the Christian holy sites for Christian pilgrims. This opened the era of the Crusades...
But, a few months before this major turmoil, the Seljuks lost control of Jerusalem in 1098 to the Fatimids who had lost the Land of Israel to the Seljuks previously.
Year 4856 – 1096 CE – The massacres of the First Crusade
After rumors that Christian pilgrims were no longer allowed to visit the religious places in the Holy Land, although this was no longer thru after the reconstruction of the Holy Sepulcher in 1048, Pope Urban II called in November 1095 for a Crusade to reconquer Jerusalem from Muslim control. The main reason for this military campaign was more to do with the fact that the Eastern Empire was under the threat of Muslim Seljuks attack.
Following this call, tens of thousands of people, from all classes of society, marched throughout Europe in the direction of Constantinople to board ships for this conquest. On their way, the masses often attacked Jews, especially in France and Germany. In 1096, Jewish communities were entirely destroyed in the Rhine Valley, such as in Cologne, Mainz and Worms.
A lot has been said and written about the Crusades and the general assumption is that the massacres of Jews were nothing else than mobs attacking them randomly on their way to a holy mission. But the passion of the mob had been fueled by powers, political and religious, who had keen interest in getting rid of their Jews because of greed and money debts. The leader of the First Crusade himself, Godfrey of Bouillon, swore :
...to go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name 'Jew,' thus assuaging his own burning wrath. (Geary, Patrick J., Readings in Medieval History, Broadview Press, Toronto, 2003)
But he welcomed the bribe paid by the Jews of Mainz and Cologne to spare their communities. He received the money, but the massacre happened, nonetheless. The head of some Jewish communities, such as Kalonymus ben Meshullam, the rabbi of Mainz, even wrote to Emperor Henry IV about his worries of the passing of the crusaders in their town. The emperor issued a prohibition against attacking the Jews, but this had no effect whatsoever. On 27 May 1096, Kalonymus with the rest of his community put themselves to death rather than falling to the crusaders' hands. This Kalonymus was the actual composer of the liturgical prayer called Unetanneh Tokef, principally read during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services among Ashkenazi Jewry. The song had been inspired by the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mainz who had refused to convert to Christianity and died as a martyr because of the reprisal of the Bishop of Mainz (see document C40, year 1020).
The killing of the Jews, as non-believers to the Christian faith, was really not discouraged by the Church in general, even if official orders to prevent them existed on paper. In the field, it was different, and how could it not be so when illustrations as the one below clearly depicted the execution of Jews, easily identifiable on the right with their pointed hat:
It is from the time of the Crusades that Jews from the Rhine Valley (Eastern France and Western Germany) started to flee the persecutions and moved East, for example to Moravia and Silesia and then to Poland which was welcoming them from the reign of Casimir I and his immediate successors as they needed help to restore their country with a status of kingdom.
Year 4859 – 1099 CE – The Crusaders conquer Jerusalem
The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 (Shabbat 17 Tammuz) and massacred almost all its inhabitants, Muslims and Jews alike. Luckily for the Christians, they were expelled from the city before the start of the siege.
A play written by Torquado Tasso in 1581 is an echo to the river of blood that the Crusaders turned the city into:
The conquerors at once now entered all,
The walls were won, the gates were opened wide,
Now bruised, broken down, destroyed fall
The ports and towers that battery durst abide;
Rageth the sword, death murdereth great and small,
And proud 'twixt woe and horror sad doth ride.
Here runs the blood, in ponds there stands the gore,
And drowns the knights in whom it lived before.
(Tasso, Torquada, Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), Book 18, stanza CV)
The English translation of the last two sentences mentions the death of knights in the ponds of blood. Maybe suggesting that many Crusaders (the knights) had died in the assault. But this is not what the original text says. Instead, the text stresses the number of dead, more alluding to the result of the Crusader assault:
Ristagna il sangue in gorghi, e corre in rivi,
Pieni di corpi estinti e di mal vivi.
Which means:
The blood stands in pools, and runs in streams
Filled with the dead and with the dying.
The victors established the "Kingdom of Jerusalem" and a new monastic and military order, the Templars, with the task of protecting pilgrims on their way to the holy sites. The Templars were named as such because they established their headquarters in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, facing the Dome of the Rock which they thought was the Temple of Solomon. Therefore, they called themselves the Templars.
This conquest meant that, for the first time in 461 years (since year 638), Jerusalem passed once more under Christian control.
Year 4860 – 1100 CE – The Kinnot
The Kinnot are liturgic poems that are recited by Jewish communities on the day of Tisha B'Av (the 9th of month Av), which is the commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples and other catastrophes that fell on the Jews throughout the ages (Talmud, Taanit, chapter IV, Mishna, 26a-26b). The first of these texts is the Book of Lamentations, written by Jeremiah after the destruction of the First Temple, a text which is part of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). But the First Crusade caused such a shock to the Jewish communities in Catholic Europe that many new Kinnot were written in the years that followed and were added to the religious service. And more recently, Kinnot were added to commemorate the Holocaust.
The following Kina 31 was written in the times of the First Crusade. It was composed with 23 stanzas, 22 to echo all the letters of the alphabet, which is equivalent to call upon witness all the Creation, and an additional use of the first letter aleph, which is equivalent to call upon God to be witness. This is echoed by the actual text of the first stanza:
1. A fire burns within me as I recall, when I left Egypt.
I will invoke lamentations so that I will remember, when I left Jerusalem.
Each stanza of Kina 31 contrasts the joy of the Exodus in the first sentence with the tragedy caused by the situation of Exile in the next sentence. The first sentence praises the previous bonds that existed between God and His people, while the next sentence laments the separation between the two:
8. Festivals and Sabbaths and signs and wonders, when I left Egypt.
Fast days and mourning and vain pursuits, when I left Jerusalem.
[...]
70. Burnt-offerings and peace-offerings and flagrant fiery sacrifices, when I left Egypt.
Stabbed by the sword were the precious sons of Zion, when I left Jerusalem.
This Kina and other poetry echo the profound distress in which the Jewish communities were in the times of the Crusades.
Year 4870 – 1110 CE – Petrus Alphonsi
Moses Sephardi, a learned Jew from Al-Andalus, converted to Christianity in 1106 and changed his name to Petrus Alphonsi in honor of Saint Peter (Petrus) and King Alphonso of Spain. Similarly to other Jews who converted to Christianity in these times, he wanted to prove his new allegiance by condemning his former brethren. To do so, he published a book, Dialogi contra Iudaes (Dialogue against the Jews), in which he tried to demonstrate that Judaism was wrong and that Christian faith was right. This work played a key role despite the logics that disproving Judaism, from which Christianity originated, somehow invalidated Christian faith as well. The main issue is that Christianity had not defined itself as a separate religion, as Islam did, but sought restlessly over many centuries to prove Judaism wrong. But such attempt was flawed because Jews had no reason to believe that the commandments that God Himself gave to their forefathers had suddenly become void just because people like Paul the Apostle and others had declared this to be the case. In his Dialogue, which took the popular form of debate between two argumentations, Petrus argues fictitiously with his former self, Moses, about faith and the obvious result of his Dialogue is that Peter wins !
Year 4882 – 1122 CE – Abraham bar Hiyya and the Sefer ha-Hibbur
Abraham bar Hiyya was born in Barcelona but later moved to Narbonne, a city of modern-day southern France which attracted many Jews who escaped the persecutions in Christian Spain. He was a scholar focused on mathematical calculations who wrote Hibbur ha-meshihah ve-ha-tishboret ("Treatise on measurement and on calculation"): this work contains a comprehensive resolution of the generic quadratic equations of the form x2 - ax + b = 0. This helped subsequent mathematicians.
On the Jewish calendar, he wrote the Sefer ha-Hibbur ("Book of Intercalation") which extensively explains the Hebrew calendar. For example, he divided the Hebrew cycle of 19 solar years in 6939 days and 18 hours, equivalent to 235 lunar cycles (lunations). The book was published in 1122 and helped later scholar Maimonides (born in 1135 in Cordoba) to give further calculations on the Hebrew calendar.
His books were written in Hebrew, unlike Jewish scholars from Al-Andalus who wrote in Arabic. He died in Narbonne in 1145.
Year 4904 – 1144 CE – William of Norwich
The first accusation of blood libel against Jews in Europe was apparently done in Norwich after a boy called William was found dead with stab wounds on 22 March 1144, one week before the Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover). The reason for this accusation to have started in England may be rooted in the conquest by the Normands in 1066. The local population, which was anglo-saxon, resented against these new masters who had allowed Jews to come and settle in the English cities (see above, year 1066).
The first Jewish community who settled in Norwich only came about 9 years before the accusation of blood libel. They had suffered violent death following this accusation as shown from a recent discovery of skeletons in 2004 which proved that 17 Jews have been killed and thrown headfirst into a well in that period of the time (to read on this discovery, click here).
Instead of being kept local, the murder of William of Norwich was turned into a cult, and the boy was even made "Saint William". This helped fueled the hatred of the English population against Jews, and other instances of this accusation occurred in several cities across England in the years that followed, especially in Norfolk (King's Lynn, Bury St Edmunds, etc.).
The accusation of blood libel also spread to the continent with a first such instance in Blois in 1171. Jews were finally expelled from England in 1290 and would not return until the time of Cromwell in 1655. Despite these troubles, the Jewish communities of England continued to prosper until their expulsion, even in Norwich where one Jew became rich and a lender to the English king.
Year 4910 – 1150 CE – Aaron of Lincoln
In 1150, the city of Lincoln was one of the wealthiest in England. Jews came to the city soon after the Normands decided to rebuild it after their conquest of 1066. Less that 100 years later, in 1150, one of the wealthiest men of England was a Jewish banker of Lincoln called Aaron. In 1166, his name appeared in official documents as creditor to Henry II Plantagenet. The Norman kings had big plans for constructions throughout the country, and Aaron found the money for their plans. His specialty? The financing of the building of churches, abbeys, and monasteries! Of course, his money built the cathedral of his own hometown, Lincoln, even though one stain glass represented a Jew, recognizable with his pointed hat, advising Theophilus to sell his soul to the Devil.
Previous page < Navigation > Next page
To return to the list of chronological generations from Seder Olam Revisited, click here.
Albert Benhamou
Private Tour Guide in Israel
Tishri 5786 - October 2025
