Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [34]
The great Church of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, was filled with relics, most notably the true cross itself, recaptured by the emperor Heraclius from the Persians shortly before the Muslims occupied Palestine. It was by then in fragments, kept in a chest on a golden altar. There, too, were other relics of the passion: the crown of thorns, the sponge, and slabs from the tomb. The emperor Alexis Comnenus was supposed to have written to Robert, count of Flanders, in 1095 of the rich spiritual treasure of the city: “You will find more of it at Constantinople than in the whole world, for the treasures of its basilicas alone would be sufficient to furnish all the Churches of Christendom and all their treasures cannot together amount to those of St Sophia, whose riches have never been equalled even in the Temple of Solomon.”26
All these were touchstones of the true faith, and over the centuries, Constantinople had become one vast reliquary. The Holy Land and the Christian sites were ransacked for sacred memorabilia, and increasingly Constantinople was identified with the “holy city” predicted in the Revelation of St. John the Divine: “And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.’ ”27 Indeed, as a city prepared for this sacred purpose, New Jerusalem was better than Old Jerusalem, which was filled with shadows of Christ’s betrayal and suffering as well as with divine light. The passion of Christ had combined both pain and transcendence, but Jerusalem was not a city fit for the pure risen Christ, as Constantinople could be. The sheer wealth of Constantinople, with its innumerable churches, its daily processions of relics, or the celebration of saints’ days, made it possible to build a city worthy of its purpose. Jerusalem was the past. New Jerusalem was the future.
What prompted Byzantine polemics against Islam was attacks on the city of the Mother of God, Constantinople, New Jerusalem. In the spring of 670, to the surprise and terror of the people of Constantinople, a huge fleet of small vessels crammed with armed Muslims appeared in the Hellespont. The ships sailed down toward the Bosphorus and beached on the northern shore about seven miles from the city, close to the deserted sea palace of the Hebdomon. There they discharged their human cargo, and withdrew back into the Sea of Marmara. The long column of infantry advanced until it extended in a huge arc before the triple land walls built under the emperor Theodosius in the fourth century, which protected the heart of the city against attack from the north. Recovering from their shock, the Byzantine forces were at first successful. They marched from the city and almost wiped out the Arab army. At sea, they attacked the Arab fleet and destroyed many of the vessels. A new weapon, “Greek fire,” which could not be put out with water, proved a devastating weapon against the Arabs, both on land and sea.28 But the Arab losses were quickly made up. A new fleet and a new army arrived from the south. The Byzantines had lost control of the sea around the city and now could not move beyond the walls, for they were both outnumbered and out-fought by the Arabs. The Arabs were prepared to stay for as long as it took to reduce Constantinople.
From their fortified camp close to the city the Arabs mounted a new assault each spring from 671 to 676. The costs in human life