The Destruction of Jerusalem

And it came to pass in the days of Sultan Murad [IV], King of Turkey, may his majesty be exalted, in the third year of his reign, which is the year 5385 from creation [1625], the upright prince [Çerkes] Mehmed [Ali] Pasha ruled over the holy city Jerusalem (may it be rebuilt and established!), and the city of our God was settled by the members of our people more than had been the case since Israel was exiled from its land. For day by day many Jews would come to dwell in it, apart from the pilgrims who came to worship to Him Who stands behind our wall,¹ to gaze on the pleasantness of the Lord, to take delight in its stones and the clods of its ruins. Nor did they appear before God emptyhanded, for the gold flowed from their purses, each according to his means, to strengthen the settlement of Jerusalem. Word of this spread among the provinces that one could dwell there securely in peace and quiet. Many of them bought houses and fields and rebuilt the ruins. The elder men and women dwelt in the streets of Jerusalem, and the alleys of the city were filled with boys and girls. God shone forth from Zion, the paragon of beauty; wisdom and understanding for instruction and testament. For Torah will proceed from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, illumining for all the inhabitants of the world and dwellers on earth. For there has the Lord instituted the blessing, and its air sharpens the insight of the wise and learned, the valiant warriors in the battle of Torah. It harbored a multitude of study houses, wide open to any man whose heart moved him to approach the work and engage in the heavenly task. Its leaders supported the scholars, providing each one of them with proper sustenance from one Sabbath to the next, as well as distributing assistance to each of the poor in accordance with his needs. Practically every day a divine voice would go forth from the volunteers of the people (bless the Lord!) to contribute to the food pantry for the poor, and the work of charity was done peacefully and quietly, without temptation or mischance, without breach or desertion, so there was no outcry in our streets.

The day came that the wicked Muhammad ibn Farouk rose up. He had a physical defect, being blind in one eye, and he carried out his ambition to purchase from the vizier the office of Ruler of Jerusalem for a specified number of days. He came to Jerusalem accompanied by three hundred swordsmen and soldiers called seymens. He deposed Prince Mehmed from his post and started ruling from the royal palace with unusual cruelty. He laid a heavy yoke on our necks as well as on the Muslims and Christians, more than any of his predecessors. He appointed guards on all the roads to prevent anyone from leaving the city. They would bring people in chains and subject them to extreme tortures and take their money. He set his eye on the wealthy of the land and extorted much silver and gold from them. The land was filled with a great outcry on account of the violence at his hands, until the evil report reached the qadi Sheikh [Emir] Effendi, the judge then presiding in Jerusalem. He said to ibn Farouk, “Please, lighten the yoke that you have laid on this people, and conduct yourself with them in accordance with the law. Speak favorably to them and they will be your obedient servants.” Though he repeated this entreaty to him daily, he took no heed. The qadi got angry and said to the other, “Why don’t you follow the example of the upright princes who observe the king’s rules? Does oppressing the people give you pleasure? Open your eyes, and see that the birds of the heaven will carry the news of your ugly deeds, and when it arrives at the ears of our lord the King, he will be furious at you and angry at me as well on your account, complaining, ‘Why in the days of your tenure as judge did you allow ibn Farouk to oppress the inhabitants of Jerusalem?’”

When the qadi spoke such words to the blind ruler, that wicked man was filled with fury and decided to make an end of him. He thrust his sword at him to smite him, but the bystanders rescued him. The judge commanded that the doors of the mahkama—that is, the Muslim judicial court—be locked, and he closed the door behind him, so that none could leave or enter. Thus the city was without a judiciary for two days, for the judge guessed that in that time the Muslims would rise up against the oppressive ruler and make an end of him, or at least drive him from the land, if he would not agree to behave properly. But the people were not swayed to act in this fashion, for they were afraid and timid. When the sheiks saw that up to that time the ruler had not oppressed them, they sought to make peace between him and the qadi.

At that time, there set out from Constantinople Abdullah Effendi, whom the king had appointed to be judge of Jerusalem. He was proceeding slowly because he was old. He sent an agent to judge the city until he should arrive. No sooner had Sheikh Effendi left the city and returned to his native land, when ibn Farouk redoubled his oppressive regime. He said to Ibrahim Aga, the brother of his wife, his viceroy and a scoundrel, “See, I appoint you today over the land to break and shatter, to destroy and tear down. Now, whatever you have in your power to do, do it; and gather silver and gold for me, as much as you can find.” When he had given his agent permission to destroy, the latter commanded his men that they should make no distinctions between good and bad people but treat them all alike. They grabbed innocent Muslim merchants from the marketplace and put them in jail, extorting from them hundreds and thousands of silver and gold pieces. At that point, many Muslims, who had previously been familiar with ibn Farouk’s villainy, and all the more so now, started to flee the city. When the tyrant saw that the whole city was fleeing, he placed seymens at the gates of Jerusalem, so as not to allow anyone to leave except by his permission.

I will not go on at length in telling of the mayhem suffered by the gentiles. I will, however, write with an iron and lead quill of only a thousandth of the evils and troubles that surrounded us, pursued us, deprived us of rest, and did not allow us to catch our breaths. For two years, we were burdened daily with one curse after another, each greater than the previous. As a wicked ruler ruled over a lowly people, we were left in Zion as a poor, impoverished people, despised and pining, each inhabitant wretched, like sheep led to the slaughter, withering away all day long.

After the pattern of “the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites with rigor,” so too was the city of our God delivered into the hands of these Muslims—he of the impaired eye, and his associate, who entered the city on the holy day the 26th of Tevet 5385. The physician R. Jacob ibn Amram, and the sage R. Isaac Gaon (may God preserve and guard him!), the leaders of the community, brought him the requisite tribute to give him, as is the custom of the country. On the third day from his arrival, he requested 1,300 piastres.² They endeavored to bear this heavy levy, the like of which no previous ruler had ever exacted of the Jerusalemites, for they reasoned that he would not last many days; the rule of this villain would be as a passing shadow over the land, and with God’s help he would be uprooted quickly from our land. Thus the Christians and Muslims thought as well.

But the opposite happened, for God established him as ruler in the land for an extended time. Blessed is He, for his judgment is true.³ The Rock, whose action is perfect, for all His ways are just, a faithful God without iniquity, He is righteous and upright.

When they brought him the first moshhara [monthly tax], it was thirty piastres given every month by the order of the king to the ruler of the city, and to the kahiya [treasurer] and the tzubashi [security chief] who bow to his authority, he said that such a small sum was not sufficient, and he raised it to eighty piastres. He commanded the Jews to dig deeply outside the city wall of Jerusalem. The work was extremely hard. The Jews engaged in the work for thirty days, and on each day he started to ask for expensive garments of wool and silk, for sugar, wax, chickens, eggs, and planks in abundance. Thus from the day of his accession through the whole month of Shevat 5385—a period of thirty-five days—he extracted from the leaders of the congregation more than 3,000 piastres, in addition to the three hundred piastres that he stole from a caravan of foreign Jews, who arrived at that time to settle in Jerusalem, and also not counting the 1,600 piastres that he stole from his honor, R. Immanuel Albahari, after flagellating him with whips and scorpions for a matter of no consequence; upon seeing this, the trustees of the city fled to escape the upheaval, for the fear of that villain had fallen upon them. And those who preferred not to flee, stayed hidden and concealed.