Merciless when he needed to be, patient and tolerant when he could afford to be, Saladin created an empire embracing Syria and Egypt, annihilated the army of Jerusalem and then took the city. (illustration credit ill.36)

Emperor Frederick II, known as Stupor Mund—the Wonder of the World to some, the Anti-Christ to others—is seen here entering the Holy City. He negotiated a peace deal that divided Jerusalem between Christians and Muslims. (illustration credit ill.37)

Above left Saladin and his family re-Islamized Jerusalem, often using Crusader spolia. Muslims regard the Dome of the Ascension, built in 1200 on the Temple Mount, as the site of Muhammad’s Miraj, yet it started life as the Crusader Templar baptistery. But it was the Mamluks who really created today’s Muslim Quarter. Sultan Nasir Muhammad built the Cotton-Sellers Market in the distinctive Mamluk style (above centre); Sultan Qaitbay commissioned this fountain on the Temple Mount (above right). (illustration credit ill.38)

Suleiman the Magnificent: a Sultan to the Arabs, a Caesar to the Christians. He never visited Jerusalem but, regarding himself as the second Solomon, he rebuilt most of the walls and gates that we see today. (illustration credit ill.39)

Suleiman used a Crusader sarcophagus and decoration to build the fountain of the Gate of the Chain and asserted Ottoman splendour and legitimacy by adding mosaics to the Dome of the Rock. (illustration credit ill.40)

Charismatic, schizophrenic, Sabbatai Zevi was rejected in Jerusalem but the self-declared Jewish Messiah excited Jewish hopes—until the Ottoman Sultan forced his conversion to Islam. (illustration credit ill.41)