The Introduction examines the conditions in the city before the arrival of the Crusaders, and provides a bird’s eye view of the city in the twelfth century. It also examines the examines the scholarly approaches to the history of the city of Jerusalem, with an emphasis on the historiography of Frankish Jerusalem. This examination underscores the tendency to focus mainly on the city’s monumental transformation, at the expense of more mundane aspects of life in a city that was constantly burdened by the weight of its symbolic importance as the earthly manifestation of heavenly Jerusalem.