Fatimid caliph orders Holy Sepulchre destroyed

October 18, 1009

The unstable caliph al-Hakim, whose reign produced an encyclopedia of bizarre decrees, ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem leveled. Workmen pried up its marble floors. The shock rippled west and would be cited decades later as a grievance that justified the First Crusade. Byzantine emperor Constantine IX eventually negotiated permission to rebuild the church in 1048, though on a much reduced scale.