God's Battalions by Rodney Stark, David Drummond Page A

assume that on average each of these could accommodate twenty guests, that would have been a daily capacity of six thousand, which is suggestive of very heavy travel, given that the resident population of the city at that time was only about ten thousand. 13
    The upward trend in pilgrim traffic continued through the sixth century, with an increasing number coming from the West by sea. Among them was Antoninus Martyr, who sailed from Italy to Cyprus and then to the coast of Palestine in about 570. In his narrative, he remarks at length on the beauty of Jewish women, and he is the first to report that there were three churches on Mount Tabor in lower Galilee—a claim now supported by surviving ruins. 14 His visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre occurred more than two centuries after its original construction, and, according to his descriptions, it had been constantly decorated by pious visitors: “[T]he stone by which the tomb was closed…is adorned with gold and precious stones…its ornaments are innumerable. From iron rods hang armlets, bracelets, chains, necklaces, coronets, waistbands, sword belts, and crowns of emperors made of gold and precious stones, and a great number of ornaments given by empresses. The whole tomb…is covered with silver.” 15
    Byzantine embellishments of Jerusalem continued under the celebrated emperor Justinian (483–565), who also greatly expanded Byzantium by “recovering” North Africa, Italy, Sicily, and a portion of southern Spain from various “barbarian” invaders. Justinian built and restored so many buildings in every part of his empire that the ancient historian Procopius (c. 500–565), who was a member of Justinian’s court, wrote an entire book about his constructions. 16 The most monumental of all his buildings was the New Church of Saint Mary, usually referred to as the Nea (new) Church, built in Jerusalem, probably to rival memories of Solomon’s Temple. It was built of enormous blocks of stone, and according to Procopius no other church “can be compared.” 17 Several modern Holy Land archaeologists suspect that the Nea Church served primarily to house the Temple treasures stolen by the Romans in 70 and said to have been recovered by Byzantium at this time. 18 In any event, the enormous complex included a hospice for pilgrims and was a major attraction.
    But then it ended.
    MUSLIM JERUSALEM
     
    In 636 a Muslim army entered Palestine, and in 638 Jerusalem surrendered. Soon after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the caliph ‘Umar wrote a letter of assurance to the city’s population:
    This is the covenant given by God’s slave ‘Umar, commander of the believers, to the people of Jerusalem: He grants them security, to each person and his property: to their churches, their crosses, their sick and the healthy, to all people of their creed. We shall not station Muslim soldiers in their churches. We shall not destroy the churches nor impair any of their property or their crosses or anything which belongs to them. We shall not compel the people of Jerusalem to renounce their beliefs and we shall do them no harm. 19
     
    Sounds humane and reasonable. However, the next sentence in this letter reads: “No Jew shall live among them in Jerusalem.”
    This seems a very odd prohibition, since Arab sources claim that local Jews had welcomed and often aided the Muslim forces in Palestine. 20 Some suppose that the prohibition was merely an extension of the Byzantine policy precluding Jews from Jerusalem; Saint Jerome revealed that the Jews “are forbidden to come to Jerusalem.” 21 Remarkably, the Byzantines had merely extended the prohibition that Hadrian had first imposed against Jews occupying Jerusalem after he crushed their revolt in 135. 22 As for the Muslims continuing the ban, this was consistent with the prohibition against Jews living anywhere in Arabia and with Muhammad’s persecutions of the Jews in Medina. 23 In any event, a few years later the Muslim