Blood, Ankles and Calculations: The Temple Mount at Jerusalem January 18, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
One of the memories of the Crusader victory at Jerusalem in 1099 is the blood of Jewish and Muslim inhabitants spilled when the city was overrun. Contemporary Christian accounts described blood up to the ankles, up to the knees and, finally, up to the bridles of horses at the Temple Mount where most of the killing went on… Was it, however, true? Well, surely the only sensible question about the taking of the city is how many were killed: and whether the crusaders went beyond their own rules in taking the lives of the garrison and the civilian population of the city? Well, perhaps, but the whole blood question has taken on a life of its own in popular culture. The best and most bizarre discussion of it has to be in Thomas Madden. For those who have had not had the pleasure TM is perhaps the greatest crusader scholar writing in English today. Madden has always, to his credit tried to take the crusaders at their own value, which is rather higher than most other scholars have been ready to do. It is quite understandable then that he has tried to put the sack of Jerusalem in context: what is difficult to believe is how he has done it, namely with recourse to mathematics. Madden – the full essay in well worth reading – first of all establishes that the references to walking, wading and riding in blood came from the mosque on the mount. Then he gets out his calculator.
During the period of the Latin Kingdom, the mosque served as the headquarters for the Knights Templar, who expanded it. However, the central portion of the present al-Aqsa mosque corresponds to the structure in 1099, with seven aisles and probably no side doors. This portion is 83 m. by 56 m., and thus 4648 sq. m. In order to fill this space to a consistent level of 10 cm. (4 inches or 1 m [sic 0.1m]*) would require 464.8 cubic meters of liquid (in this case, blood), which corresponds to 464,800 liters. Although the sight of blood can be traumatic, it remains that the average adult has 5 liters of blood in his or her body. Therefore, in order to fill al-Aqsa Mosque’s square meters to ankle level would require the blood of 92,960 people. Since the population of Jerusalem in 1099 was less than half of that figure, it does not seem reasonable.
Let’s play along. One important point is that blood does not, after the initial rush spurt out. For example, one French guillotiner used to describe two wine glasses of blood pouring out of his charges once the blade came down. The rest would only drain out if hung up… TM, in any case, has some problematising of his own.
Upon a closer inspection of the eyewitness accounts, however, I realized that I had left an important component out of these calculations: bodies. It is clear from all descriptions that the slaughter in al-Aqsa was messy and that bodies were strewn everywhere. We are told that they had to be removed by Muslims or even poor Christians who did the dirty job for wages. The calculations above work only if we assume that each person was killed, drained of his or her blood, and then removed from the building. If, instead, we assume that the bodies remained where they fell they would naturally displace blood, thus increasing its overall level. The previous calculations also failed to take into account the pedestals and columns in the mosque… With these factors in mind, we can test al-Arabi’s report of 3,000 killed against the Gesta’s and others’ testimony of ankle-deep blood in the temple. Do they, as Kedar seems to suggest, go together? An average adult human body at this time would likely be in the range of 5.5 feet tall (1.67 m.) and 1.3 feet wide (0.4 meters). If we assume that most of the dead fell separately and were not stacked one upon the other, then the average fallen body would take up 668 square meters [sic .668]* of the al-Aqsa Mosque’s floor space. Three thousand bodies would therefore fill up roughly 2004 square meters. In addition, the columns and other structures in the mosque filled approximately another 900 square meters. This would reduce the total open floor space in the building to 1744 square meters. To fill this space to 10 centimeters would require 174,400 liters of blood, which would corresponds to 34,880 people.
TM concludes that the dead were likely between 3,000 and 10,000 and that these numbers simply do not give us blood that would come up to the ankles. To his very great credit, TM finishes by pointing out that for Christian warriors walking through the temple space the quantity of blood might have seemed greater than it actually was: one has the sense that TM perhaps altered his own opinion while writing? But he is emphatic that the blood was not high enough to wade in. For an outsider the sensation of splashing through blood would have been particularly impressive, particularly in pools of blood, in low lying areas of the mosque or in small reservoirs formed of dead bodies? If a man walks in a snowstorm between two villages and at one point steps up to a drift in the snow: he will for ever after remember the night that he walked up to his knees in snow. The accounts of blood coming up to a horse’s reign may have been an exaggeration (and a Biblically inspired image), but the accounts of crusaders in blood up to their ankles seems a reasonable one.
Other thoughts: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
AL writes, 19 Jan 2017: ‘I know to my cost that walking through large amounts of blood while remaining upright is actually quite difficult. There is nothing, in my experience, more slippery than half-congealed blood, and this fact alone makes me sceptical about stories such as this one. The crusaders would have been flat on their backsides in no time.’
KMH, 19 Jan 2017: I believe you have either left out some decimal points, or the article did. 1.67 times .4 meters equals .668 square meters, not 668 square meters. Likewise, the 10 centimeters should be .1 meter, not 1 meter. The “blood up to the horse’s bridles” is a quotation from Revelation 14:20. The progression in blood from the ankles to the knees, etc. is reminiscent of Ezekiel 47:3-5 in describing water issuing and descending down from the new temple yet to be built. So it looks like there is likely an element of exaggeration or simply wishful thinking in the these Christian accounts.
Beach answers: just doublechecked and I did copy these correctly. Ken’s corrections stand then. These look like typos though as the calculations work out with Ken’s corrections.
