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Book Review: Jerusalem: The Biography

This is the first in a series of reviews of new books on Middle Eastern affairs. We asked Dr. Gail Weigl, an APN volunteer and a professor of art history, to review Simon Sebag Montefiore's new book Jerusalem: The Biography. Following is her review.

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography (New York: Knopff, 2011) 650 pp. $35.00

A tour de force of names, dates, dynasties, battles, massacres, archaeology and urban minutiae, Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem: The Biography is aptly titled, for the book is a sweeping survey of individuals and their impact on the holy city from antiquity to the present. Readers thus should be forewarned:  if you are looking for a coherent, contextualized study of the history of Jerusalem, this is not the book for you.  If, however, you would enjoy a gossipy narrative of every actor, even tangentially involved with the city -- from the Maccabees to the Ottomans, from American Evangelicals to British anti-Semites -- this irreverent "biography" will not disappoint. 

Montefiore has never met a man or woman he didn't like, and his is indeed the biographer's fascination with the oddities that both humanize and debunk the heroic myth. We learn most often of sexual proclivities, but are not deprived of graphic accounts of torture, self-aggrandizement, deception, betrayal, sexual passion, murder, jealousy, mutual distrust, and the like. It all makes for a rollicking, if confusing pageant, for each historical moment is given equal emphasis. Hence, aside from the avowed focus on Jerusalem itself, the parade of personalities, their motives and peccadilloes, results in an unfocused narrative, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the impressive scope and depth of research.

Nowhere is the proclivity to demonstrate exhaustive research and an unwillingness to edit out any tidbit more evident than in Montefiore's use of the asterisk.  Thus, to take but one random and characteristic example, as we learn of Richard Lionheart's stalemate with Saladin in the chapter "Crusade", we are told in an asterisk that Richard, realizing that  Guy of Lusignan was a "busted flush" and king of Jerusalem only by marriage, instead recognized Conrad of Montferrat, husband of Queen Isabella, as Jerusalem's ruler, but after Conrad's assassination, Henry, Count of Champagne, "a nephew of both Richard of England and Philip of France, married Queen Isabella of Jerusalem, still aged only twenty-one, pregnant with Conrad's child and already on her third husband. He became king of Jerusalem." Here, then, in the midst of the epic struggle between two of the greatest warriors of the crusader period, Montefiore is compelled to demonstrate mastery of every factoid, including how many times Isabella was married, and the pedigree of her third husband. 

While these asides flesh out the story in often fascinating and informative ways, they also interrupt the flow of so comprehensive a study, and surely would be more appropriate in a more narrowly focused investigation of one particular period of Jerusalem's history. 

This raises what is, to my mind, one of the chief problems of the book, what I characterize as Montefiore's schizophrenic approach: while writing a sweeping survey of the personalities who shaped Jerusalem, he is compelled to include the details that would legitimate a doctoral dissertation. Hence, because he cannot interrupt the narrative with a plethora of footnotes, he is forced to demonstrate his scholarship by using the asterisk instead. Presumably for the same reason, he does not footnote direct quotes from secondary and primary sources, though the text is liberally sprinkled with these throughout.  This can be distracting, especially because the book is filled with the kind of incidental detail--what people wore, what they said to one another -- characteristic of historical biography, and often imagined by the author.  This kind of intermixture results in some confusion as to what is fact, and what is well-informed, albeit fanciful historical recreation. Similarly, and as is only to be expected in a book of such broad range, no matter how careful Montefiore's attention to detail, readers familiar with the history of one or another of the periods under discussion may be surprised at curious omissions and misstatements. 

Thus, in the same "rusade" chapter, Montefiore carefully informs us that Richard was Eleanor of Aquitaine's favorite son, that he was not homosexual, always wore scarlet (always?) and brandished a sword he claimed was Excaliber, but neglects the fact that Eleanor traveled to Sicily in order to accompany Richard's wife-to-be, Berengaria, whom Richard married in Sicily, though we later learn that Richard, "his wife and sister" celebrated Christmas.

This is a small, and perhaps, given the ambition of the book, even a mean-minded quibble, but the omission, combined with exhaustive detail, leads the reader to wonder what might be missing or misrepresented in sections of the book that deal with unfamiliar history. Omission is legitimate, for again, the author is free to shape his storyline in an historical biography; misrepresentations, as when Montefiore identifies Charles Stuart as the Prince of Wales in 1610 (in that year, it was his elder brother, Prince Henry), are more troubling, as they engender skepticism about the factual accuracy beneath the blanket of biographical particulars.

A similar sense of dislocation is demonstrated by the idiosyncratic leaps that mark Montifiore's style. Again, to take but one example, immediately after recounting the tragedy of Arab nationalists and Jewish Zionists systematically murdering one another in "The Mufti: The Battle of the Wall," describing the city as a "walled in fortress in the desert" in which an 'inhuman atmosphere' gave Arnold Koestler  'Jerusalem sadness," so that he felt "the angry face of Yahweh, brooding over hot rocks,'" Montefiore takes us on a long aside in the next section, "Wauchope's Capital: Hunts, Cafes, Parties and White Stuff," to describe the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city and its louche way of life. 

Well, that's Koestler and not those exiles and adventurers who enjoyed a Jerusalem of endless luncheons, sumptuous parties, and, of course, the sexual favors of charming women, but this type of juxtaposition illustrates the abrupt changes of tone that leave the reader a bit dazed and confused by the author's wayward organization.

These examples of some of the difficulties presented by Jerusalem: The Biography illustrate at the same time a number of its strengths, chief among them Montefiore's unerring ear for the aptly revealing quote, and unerring eye for a visual image. 

In both cases, his is a style of great vividness and immediacy, and it is impossible to read this book without being swept up in the delicious details that enrich Jerusalem's saga. So, for example, in "Napoleon in the Holy Land: 1799-1806" the figure of Ahmet Jazzar ("Butcher") Pasha, warlord of Ottoman Palestine,  is as usual graphically presented by Montefiore's account of the Pasha's passion for mutilating "anyone suspected of the slightest disloyalty." By following a colorful account of people deprived of limbs, noses, ears and eyes with the fact that Jazzar impressed European visitors by his "rather delicate habit of cutting flowers out of paper," Montefiore gives dimension to an obscure historical figure, and leads the reader to wonder if the Pasha exercised similar delicacy in cutting noses and ears. Similarly, after reading of this monster's depravity, when Napoleon describes Jazzar as "an old man whom I don't know" the quote provides a sharp insight into conqueror and conquered. Other positive features include pictures and historical photographs, as well as very useful maps, genealogies, index and bibliography. However, the habit of combining multiple sources in single footnotes, once again undoubtedly due to the need to limit footnotes (while not limiting them) in a popular book of this sort, can be disconcerting for those wishing to follow up on a quote or reference.

For this reviewer, the final section, "Zionism" is the most illuminating and moving chapter of Jerusalem: The Biography. While it too is marked by the difficulties with style and organization noted above, especially the disconcerting lack of documentation which leaves the reader wondering at times what is history and what the biographer's license, it rings with authenticity and even-handedness. The "Epilogue" seems to me entirely credible and very moving, as Montefiore threads through the competing claims and abuses of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian claims to the city and the land it occupies. 

His final chapter, "This Morning," tenderly evokes the loyalty of Jews, Christians and Muslims to this ancient, battered, and always reborn holy place, by focusing on three personalities who illustrate the human experience of sites sacred to each. His ability to humanize Jerusalem in this way, bringing a transcendent and bloodless abstraction into palpable reality, is the ultimate reward of Montefiore's biography of Jerusalem. In the final analysis, this strength outweighs its problematic features. Nevertheless, one would be well-advised to read this book with some critical distance, and as episodically as it has been written.

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Gail Capitol Weigl holds an M.A and B.A. in European art history, and a Ph.D. in East Asian art history.  After retiring from academia, she has devoted her efforts as an independent scholar to the study of 16th-17th C. English portraiture, and to volunteering at Peace Now and Headstart.