CHAPTER 70
The Land across the Water JERUSALEM
Before the second millennium was a century old, Jerusalem was wrested from Infidel hands. Until we appreciate this achievement we cannot appreciate why the crusaders’ children consider themselves a chosen people. Consider the Radinate as a whole, enveloping the Middle Sea in a great crescent, from the harbour of Alexandria to the redoubt of Byzant.29
True, it was beset by rivalry, but what empire is not? The scepticism of cosmopolitan Ebionites can be well imagined when the strange soldiers of a strange sect came rudely claiming Jerusalem as their birthright. This amusement turned to horror when they saw the Crusaders fight. The Curia had schooled the crusaders in Water Style,30 an art the Ebionites had no means, initially, of combating.31
The Crusaders promptly founded a kingdom, stretching initially from Jaffa to Bayrut, called Oltremare.32 Its official capital was Jerusalem, but Akka, with its magnificent harbour, was its true heart. The military invasion was followed by one of civilians: Ariminumese merchants travelled from Akka33 into Ebionite territory and beyond to the bejewelled cities of Asia, trading wool and saffron34 for silks and precious stones.35 Trade and the drudge of administrating their patchwork kingdom doused Crusader fanaticism, but the sectarian spark soon found other fuel – the people they had enslaved.