41 France, Western Warfare, pp. 158–61, 235–41.
42 Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, William Stubbs (ed.), 2, Rolls Series 38, London: Longman, 1864, I.247: ‘Et quando forte vehementius procul effugantur, equis avolant rapidissimis, quibus in mundo non sunt agiliores, volatibus hirundinum cursu comparandi velocissimo. Turcorum etiam moris est, ut quando persenserint se fugantes a persequendo cessare, tunc et ipsi fugere cessabunt, more muscae fastidiosae, quam si abegeris avolabit, cum cessaveris redibit, quamdiu fugaveris fugiet, cum desieris praesto est.’ Translation from The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, Helen Nicholson (tr.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997, p. 234.
43 Smail, Crusading Warfare, pp. 156–65.
44 WT 730: ‘Erat autem hostris indictum publice ut defunctorum corpora camelis et aliis animalibus ad sarcinas deputatis imponerent, ne nostrorum considerata strage redderentur fortiores inimici, debiles quoque et saucios iumentis imponi mandatur, ne omnino nostrorum aliquis aut mortuus aut debilis crederetur. His etiam datum erat in 25
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mandatis, ut gladios educentes saltem speciem validorum exprimerent. Mirabantur itaque que hostium prudentiores quod de tanta immissione sagittarum, de crebris conflictibus, de tanta sitis, pulveris, estus inmoderati molestia nullus unquam mortuus aut deficiens inveniretur, populum iudicant ferreum qui tot tamque continua possint tam perseveranter sustinere dispendia.’ Translation from William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey (trs), 2, New York: Columbia University Press, 1943, II.153–4.
45 WT 937–8: ‘Et prenimia multitudine territi ceperunt se solito artius comprimere, ita ut pre turbe densitate vix possent incedere. Illi statim in nostros irruentes temptabant si unquam possent eos abinvicem separare, sed nostri, proicia divinitate, solidius inter se conglobati et hostium sustinebant impetus et iter maturatis gressibus conficiebant.
Tandem ventum est ad locum destinatum ibique defixis tentoriis stetit exercitus universus.’ Translation from William of Tyre, II.373–4.
46 Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, D.S. Richards (tr.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002, p. 170.
47 Baha al-Din, History of Saladin, p. 175.
48 Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c.1050–1310, London: Macmillan, 1967; A.J. Forey, The Military Orders: From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992; Helen Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights: Images of the Military Orders, 1128–1291, London: Leicester University Press, 1993.
49 Rule of the Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar, H. de Curzon (ed.), J.M. Upton-Ward (tr.), Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992.
50 Imad ad-Din, Lightning of Syria, F. Gabrieli (tr.), Arab Historians of the Crusades, New York: Dorset, 1957, pp. 138–9.
51 William Urban, The Teutonic Knights: A Military History, London: Greenhill, 2003.
52 Silvia Schein, ‘The Templars: The Regular Army of the Holy Land and Spearhead of the Army of its Reconquest’, in Giovanni Minucci and Franca Sardi (eds), I Templari: Mito e Storia, Siena: A.G. Viti-Riccucci, 1989, pp. 15–25.
53 Al-Sulami’s Kitab al-Jihad can be found with a French translation in Emmanuel Sivan,
‘Un traité Damasquin du début du XIIe siècle’ , Journal Asiatique 254, 1966, 206–22.
Niall Christie is in the process of making an English translation, and see his study,
‘Religious Campaign or War of Conquest? Muslim Views of the Motives of the First Crusade’, in Christie and Yazigi (eds), Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities, pp. 57–74.
54 WT 606: ‘Aliter enim et remissius solet inter consortes eiusdem legis et fidei pugna committi, aliter inter discolos et contradictorias habentes traditiones: hic enim sufficit ad materiam iugis scandali et perpetuorum iurgiorum quod in eisdem fidei articulis non communicant, et si nulla alia sit odiorum materia.’ Translation from William of Tyre, II.24–5.
55 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, p. 100: ‘Monseigneur Érard de Siverey fut frappé d’un coup d’épée au visage, tellement, que le nez lui tombait sur la lèvre. Et alors il me souvint de monseigneur saint Jacques: “Beau sire saint Jacques, que j’ai invoqué, aidez-moi et me secourez dans ce besoin”.’ Translation from Joinville, Life of St Louis, p. 221.
56 Otto and Acerbus Morena, De Rebus Laudensibus, MGH SS XVIII.627.
57 France, ‘Siege Conventions in Western Europe and the Latin East’, pp. 159–72.
58 Yvonne Friedman, ‘Captivity and Ransom: The Experience of Women’, in S.B.
Edgington and S. Lambert (eds), Gendering the Crusades, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001, pp. 121–39, and, Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Leiden: Brill, 2002.
59 France, Western Warfare, p. 229.
26
2
M U S L I M R E S P O N S E S T O T H E
F R A N K I S H D O M I N I O N I N
T H E N E A R E A S T, 1 0 9 8 – 1 2 9 1
Yehoshua Frenkel
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem has been the subject of innumerable studies over the years, resulting in a vast body of scholarship that covers a wide variety of subjects, including pilgrimage, military clashes, sieges, economics, political relations and contracts. For this reason, new contributions to the scholarship are only warranted if, instead of being concerned with details, names and episodes, they provide us with new insight. This chapter, therefore, neither narrates the history of events or fighting nor engages in the historical reconstruction of the diplomacy, commerce or ideology of the period. Instead, it explores several aspects of the Muslims’ complex reaction to the Frankish dominion in the Near East as it evolved over time, between the conquest of Jerusalem in 10991 and the fall of Acre in 1291,2 in an effort to shed new light on the subject.
In recent years, jihadist discourse has succeeded in planting a simplified popular visualization of the crusades within the mass media, as well as in some scientific quarters. According to this discourse, the crusades were simply a conflict between European intruders and Muslim freedom fighters: nothing more and nothing less.
Medieval Arab sources do not support this depiction of an assault on Islamic territory or an indigenous population fighting energetically to rebuff the Westerners.3
Modern authors often consult these writings in their research, selectively choosing from already selective data and thereby painting an imagined picture of the past: one of complete unrest and total jihad against the crusaders.4 Medieval Muslims, however, were not familiar with this concept. In fact, the relationship between the Franks and the Muslims of the Near East was far more complicated.
A careful reading of the medieval sources reveals that contemporary Muslims competed with Frankish challenges through both war and ceasefire. The history of these turbulent years is not a story of a comprehensive total conflict between two colliding religions, but rather one of changing, multifaceted circumstances and a shift from cooperation and détente to hostilities and killing. It is a saga of war and peace, fighting and commerce, and antagonism and cohabitation that lasted for two centuries. Moreover, local rulers employed jihad not as a slogan of 27
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total war but as a political instrument vis-à-vis rivals and enemies whom they accommodated.
I do not argue that Muslim rulers and governors refrained from declaring jihad or cynically pretended to participate in military efforts. Rather, my thesis is that these local rulers understood the extreme complexity of the conditions in the Near East and adopted an ad hoc reaction to evolving circumstances. Fighting was viewed as the arena of professional soldiers and as such it did not constitute a total war. This helps us understand how military encounters could be temporarily halted for agreed per
iods of armistice. During such periods, commerce was not conceived of as an obstacle to inevitable Islamic victory, just as merchants’
caravans were not regarded as an obstruction to knights’ sorties.
If we were to draw a map of the political realities of Western Asia in 1098, it would certainly require more than two colours. The lands of the Caliphate were disputed by the Sunni caliphs of Baghdad and the Fatimids of Egypt. Ethnicity separated Turks from Arabs. In Syria, local warlords seized towns and districts that were officially controlled by the Saljuq sultans. Moreover, long and complex religious polemics divided the Eastern Christian communities into a mosaic of denominations. These socio-political realities help us better understand not only the Latin conquests, but the slow local reaction and the complex relations that resulted between the Western Christians, the indigenous population and the Muslim commanding officers.
During the twelve years between 1098 and 1110, the Franks advanced
southward, seizing the Syrian coast and Palestine. There is no indication, however, that during these formative years local Muslim rulers and subjects developed a comprehensive ideology of religious war ( jihad). Rather, the institutionalization of jihad against the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the organization of Muslim society to combat the Christian enemy was a slow process. The construction of a political and social discourse expressing a vision of total war against the Franks as the enemy and the ultimate other proceeded hand in hand with the development of territorial and social concepts. Organized propaganda enhanced the concept of Palestine as an Islamic ‘Holy Land’ ( al-ard al-muqaddasa) – a land that should be reacquired from the hands of the infidels through a military onslaught on a par with the early Islamic conquests. The reconquered lands would then be purified and its Muslim inhabitants would adhere to the ‘true and unspoiled’ religion disseminated by the Prophet.
This message was shaped by a long list of authors who, supported politically and financially by the leading military commanders, composed poems, chronicles, biographies, stories and literary works in other genres highlighting the virtues of geographical locations and individual rulers. This literary production served as a powerful tool in depicting an idealistic and unreliable representation of the past and the fighting against the Franks. As we possess no contemporary Arabic language chronicles, the historical reconstruction of the initial Islamic reaction to the First Crusade is based upon later sources.5 These sources focus primarily on a narration of the fighting, the victories and the defeats, and create the impression 28
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that war was the major story of the day. Some authors, including some who wrote under the patronage of sultans who regarded themselves as commanders of jihad, however, offer a more realistic picture. Their writings shed light on the actuality on the ground, which was one of fighting side by side with commerce and negotiations. In this way, these sources establish that the crusaders operated in a divided arena and were met by multiple reactions.
While the Franks advanced southward from Constantinople to the Holy Land, local Muslim rulers continued to quarrrel among themselves, perhaps indicating underestimation of the danger of the Frankish assault. In fact, it is evident that the confusion shocked the local population.6 Although it is difficult to reconstruct Islamic public opinion during this period, it is abundantly clear that a declaration of religious war against the intruders was not the immediate reaction of the Muslims. Some local warlords even negotiated deals with the advancing Franks (in 491/1098). For example, ‘Umar, the governor of ‘Azaz, handed his son,
[Mahumeth], over to Godfrey of Bouillon as a hostage.7
Nonetheless, it is plain that the Franks’ southward advance and the defeats ( nakba) they inflicted on the Muslims soon instigated panic among civilians in northern Syria. As a result, a delegation from Aleppo was sent out to Baghdad to call for an Islamic response to the Frankish threat.8 However, the alarm of the civil population failed to convince their lord, Ridwan b. Tutush, to take effective action and the Muslim relief mission frightened him even more than the advancing crusaders did. As a result, he ordered that the gates of Aleppo be closed, thus preventing the fighters dispatched by the Saljuq sultan from entering the city.9
Fatimid rulers of Egypt not only refrained from any rapprochement with the Turkish officers that governed the cities and towns of Syria but launched an attack on Jerusalem at the same time as the Frankish assault on Antioch. Moreover, having long before established commercial relations with southern Europe, they did not hesitate to dispatch diplomatic emissaries to the Frankish camp.10 Indeed, commercial relations between Italian towns and Cairo began approximately one century before the First Crusade,11 and political accord between the Franks and the Fatimids of Egypt should therefore not be ruled out.
In his work on the vast area between the Atlantic and the Euphrates, the Arab-Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir depicted a coordinated Christian onslaught on the Abode of Islam. Contemplating the relations between Western Europe and the lands of Islam, the well-known historian argued that the Christians endeavoured to uproot Islam by advancing in two prongs simultaneously: one in Spain and one in Sicily.12 Roger the Frank, who had conquered the island, prevented them from attacking Tunisia and advised Baldwin, their ruler, to conquer Jerusalem. Ibn al-Athir offered an additional explanation for the Frankish conquests: one of regional conspiracy and betrayal. He claimed that the Fatimid rulers of Egypt were terrified by the advancing Saljuqs and in response invited the Franks to conquer Syria.13
While it is possible to some degree to attribute this interpretation to anti-Shi’ite misinformation, it should also be emphasized that the Franks were no strangers to the Fatimids. Moreover, until the very final years of the Latin Kingdom, as 29
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I will discuss in more detail later in this chapter, fighting and military expeditions went hand in hand with communication, agreements and trade.14
Muslim chroniclers have suggested still other explanations for the First Crusade.
Al-‘Azimi (483–532/1090–1138), who was a child at the time, held that the Franks attacked out of revenge. He did not portray them as anti-Muslim but rather as pilgrims who had been prevented by Muslims from travelling to the Holy Land and who had reacted by launching a religious war ( ghaziya i.e. razzia).15 Moreover, al-‘Azimi did not hesitate to employ objective technical terms to denote the Christians, referring to the Pope as ‘the caliph of the Christians’; to the crusades as jihad;16 and to the Christian warriors who conquered the Holy Land as hujjaj (pilgrims).17
Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad (539–632/1145–1239) was an eyewitness reporter who served Saladin. Keen to portray his master as a great statesman and commander, he composed a panegyric biography of the Sultan.18 Yet his eulogy narrated not only the military and political achievements of the ‘great religious reformer’ (Salah al-Din) but daily affairs, including joint Frankish–Muslim games and the exchange of marriage proposals between the populations. These accounts undermine an imagined picture of unbridled hostility and incessant religious strife.
With regard to the fighting around Acre (Sha‘ban 585/September 1189), Ibn Shaddad recounted the following examples that demonstrate a certain amount of fraternization between the rival armies:
The evening of that day a major battle took place between the enemy
and our people in the city, in which a great number were killed on both sides. Similar conflicts went on for a long time and not a day passed without wounding, killing, capturing and plundering. They got to know one another, in that both sides would converse and leave off fighting. At times some people would sing and others dance, so familiar had they
become over time, and then after a while they would revert to fighting.
During these encounters, he noted the following interesting occurrence: One day the men on both sides were tired of fighting and said: How much longer will the older men go on fighting, while the
young have no share?
We want two young men to contend, one of ours and one of yours. Two
youth were brought out of the city [Acre] to meet two from the Franks.
They fought fiercely together and one of the Muslim youths leapt on one of the infidel youths, clasped him in his arms and threw him on the ground and took him prisoner, tying him fast to take him away. A Frankish man ransomed him for two dinars. They said he really is your prisoner, so took the two dinars and released him. This is a strange incident of war.19
During the Third Crusade, Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad served Saladin and his brother al-‘Adil. Recounting the skirmishes between the Third Crusade and 30
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Saladin’s army, the Sultan’s loyal secretary and his semi-official biographer begins with popular curses against the Latin enemy. This did not, however, prevent Ibn Shaddad from incorporating into his story what seems upon first reading to be a work of literary fiction.20 After conveying to his reader how the bitter foes negotiated a ceasefire in the midst of military operations in central Palestine (1191),21 Ibn Shaddad offers a tale combining romance and deep animosity: a medieval soap opera.22 The cornerstone of the agreement ( qa‘ida) was Richard, Coeur de Lion’s proposal that Saladin’s brother al-‘Adil marry his widowed sister Joanna, whom the English King had brought from Sicily to the Holy Land. The seat of their joint realm would be in Noble Jerusalem.23 Several later Muslim authors repeated this story.24 For example, Ibn al-Athir recounted that: Saladin moved his position to Latrun on Ramadan 587 (4 October
1191) and made camp there. The king of England sent to him, seeking
peace. A series of envoys came to al-Adil Abu Bakr the son of Ayyub, Saladin’s brother, and it was settled that the [English] king should marry his sister to al-Adil, that Jerusalem and the coastal land that the Muslims held should be al-Adil’s and Acre and what was in Frankish hands should be for the king’s sister, in addition to a kingdom she already had over the sea, which she had inherited from her husband, and that the Templars would accept whatever was agreed upon. Al-Adil submitted it to Saladin who agreed to it. When this became public knowledge, the priests,
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