Certainly, regaining Jerusalem was an important as a matter of pride; and of course, like any other major city in the eastern Mediterranean, it had commercial benefits for Christian traders. The Sepulchre, though, mattered most. Yet for the Templars there was another very significant site: the al-Aqsa Mosque, which they called the Temple of Solomon, where their order had been created, and where it had been housed between 1119 and 1187. The Temple was their home, from which they had been exiled. Its return was a matter of profound and defining importance to their dignity as an order, but that
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