The Crusades and the Near East

by Kostick, Conor

  secret grudge [in Shawwal 504/April–May 1111].146

  The Maghribi (Spanish) traveller Ibn Jubayr,147 who visited Egypt and Syria in the days of Saladin, provided his reader with several eyewitness accounts that shed light on the complex realities in the medieval Near East. In Tyre he saw a Frankish wedding. Muslims were among the spectators who watched the bride’s procession crossing the streets from the cathedral to the home of her husband.148 The remarkable (‘ ajiba) scene of Frankish caravans coming to trade in Damascus was another picture that amazed him. In a well-known observation, Ibn Jubayr reported:

  One of the astonishing things that is talked of is that though the fires of discord burn between the two parties, Muslim and Christian, their two armies may meet and dispose themselves in battle array, and yet

  Muslim and Christian travellers will come and go between them without interference.149

  He added that even during the period when Saladin was attacking Frankish strongholds:

  The caravans still passed successively from Egypt to Damascus, going through the land of the Franks without impediment from them [Franks].

  In the same way the Muslims continuously journeyed from Damascus

  to Acre [through the Frankish territory], and likewise not one of the Christian merchants was stopped or hindered [in the Muslim territories].

  The Christians impose a tax on the Muslims [merchants who cross

  their lands] which give them [the Muslims] full security; and likewise the Christian merchants pay a tax on their goods in Muslim lands.

  Agreement ( ittifaq) exists between them, and there is equal treatment ( i‘tidal) in all cases. The soldiers ( ahl al-harb = les gens de guerre) engage themselves in their war, while the civilians are at peace and most [of the goods]150 goes to him who conquers.151

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  We learn more about the complex relations between the Franks and the Muslims in the medieval Near East from data on medical cooperation between indigenous and foreign patients and healers.152 Abu Sulayman Dawud was an Eastern Christian who travelled from Latin Jerusalem to Fatimid Cairo. One of his sons worked for both King Amalric and Saladin.153 The physician Muwaffaq al-Din Ya‘qub worked in both Frankish Jerusalem and Muslim Damascus. While working in Frankish lands he would wear the medical dress of the Franks, and when in Muslim-controlled areas he would replace this attire with more typical Damascene dress.154 Similarly, Theodore of Antioch was a Jacobite Christian who studied medicine in Iraq and practised in the Latin territory.155

  Conclusion

  The Zangids, Ayyubids and later the Mamluks claimed to be the leading commanders of the Muslims, and the jurists who served them were certainly familiar with the regulations on jihad that are stated clearly in the legal manuals. Early

  ‘Abbasid period jurists concluded that Muslims should declare defensive war ( jihad) in case their land is invaded156 and that they should reject truces offered by polytheists.157 The jihad against invaders who have penetrated the Abode of Islam and who threaten the life and property of Muslims is a duty that each individual Muslim ( fard ‘ayn) must carry out.158 Participation in jihad was understood as the privilege of every free and mature Muslim man.159

  The data presented in this chapter, however, paints a picture that is less unequivocal. As we have seen, the Muslim leadership found ways to accommodate their interests with the directives of Islamic canonical law and the realities in the medieval Near East. The jihad against the ‘polytheists’/‘infidels’ Franks was carried out primarily by professional soldiers (some of whom were slaves, or mamluks).160 Participation in the military offensives on the part of civilian volunteers ( mutatawwi‘a) was extremely limited,161 and Muslim peasants hardly resisted their Frankish masters. And while a lasting peace with the enemy who had arrived from lands beyond the sea was inconceivable, temporary truces with the Franks were common.

  At Clermont (1095), Pope Urban sought to mobilize the Franks of Europe.162

  In Cairo, however, the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun (678–89/1280–90) opted to employ political rather than military tactics,163 and the truces he signed with a handful of Frankish strongholds and European trading nations created nearly normal relations between the parties.164 Al-Ashraf Khalil, Qalawun’s heir, was engaged in securing his authority against his courtiers, military commanders and governors, as well as in consolidating his rule over Syria. These internal political challenges drove him to attack Acre in 1291,165 and his victory marked the end of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  The historical narrative presented in this chapter shifted, in accordance with context and circumstance, between these two seemingly contradictory Muslim approaches to the Frankish dominion in the Near East: the ultimate goal of war 44

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  that is explicitly commanded in the Qur’an166 and the pragmatic needs of politics and everyday life, which led Muslim warlords to conclude truces with the infidel Franks.167

  Notes

  1 B.Z. Kedar, ‘The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades’, Crusades 3, 2004, 15–75.

  2 D.P. Little, ‘The Fall of Akka in 690/1291: The Muslim Version’, in Moshe Sharon (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization: In Honour of Professor David Ayalon, Jerusalem: Cana, 1986, pp. 159–81.

  3 On this myth, see S.R. Humphreys, ‘Ayyubid, Mamluks and the Latin East’, Mamluk Studies Review 2, 1998, 1–17.

  4 P.E. Chevedden, ‘The Islamic View and the Christian View of the Crusades: A New Synthesis’, History, The Journal of the Historical Association 93, 2008, 181–200 and his article mentioned in note 58, below.

  5 Carole Hillenbrand, ‘The First Crusade: The Muslim Perspective’, in Jonathan Phillips (ed.), The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997, pp. 130–41.

  6 Niall Christie, ‘Religious Campaign or War of Conquest? Muslim Views of the Motives of the First Crusade’, in Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi (eds), Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities: Warfare in the Middle Ages, Leiden: Brill, 2006, History of Warfare 37, pp.

  57–72.

  7 Ibn al-‘Adim, in Suhayl Zakkar (ed.), al-Mawsu‘a al-shamiyya fi ta’rikh al-hurub al-salibiyya, Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1995, XVI.7117; AA 348; Mahumet presumably being a spoonerism of the Arabic Muhammad.

  8 On a similar delegation from Damascus, see Abu al-Mahasin Jamal al-Din Yusuf Ibn Taghri Birdi (813–74/1411–70), al-Nujum al-Zahirah fi Muluk Misr wa-al-Qahirah, 12, Cairo: al-Mu’assasah al-Misriyah al-‘Ammah, 1963–72, V.150 (AH 488/summer 1099).

  9 Ibn al-‘Adim, Bughya, A. Sevim (ed.), Ankara: TKK, 1976, VII.xx (the biography of Ridwan b. Tutush).

  10 Hadia Dajani-Shakeel, ‘Diplomatic relations between Muslim and Frankish rulers (1097-1153)’, in M. Shatzmiller (ed.), Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, Leiden: Brill, 1993, pp. 193–6.

  11 Claude Cahen, ‘Un texte peu connu relatif au commerce oriental d’Amalfi au Xe siècle’, Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 34, Napoli: Società Romana di Storia Patria, 1953–4, pp. 3–8 [reprinted in his Turcobyzantina et Orioens Christianus, London: Variorum reprints, 1974, article A]; Claude Cahen, ‘Le commerce d’Amalfi dans le Proche-Orient musulman avant et après la Croisade’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 121, 1977, 291–301; Samuel Miklos Stern, ‘An Original Document from the Fatimid Chancery Concerning Italian Merchants’, in G.L.D. Vida (ed.), Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida, 2, Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956, II.529–38; A.O. Citarella, ‘The Relations of Amalfi with the Arab World before the Crusades’, Speculum 42, 1967, 299–312

  and ‘Patterns in Medieval Trade: The Commerce of Amalfi before the Crusades’, The Journal of Economic History 28, 1968, 531–55.

  12 ‘The increasing strength and importance of the Franks was first reflected in their invasion of the Lands of Islam and their conquest
of part of this region in the year 478

  (1085–6)’, ‘Izz al-Din ‘Ali b. Abi al-Karm Muhammad Ibn al-Athir al-Jaziri (555–630/1160–1233), al-Kamil fi al-ta’rikh, ‘Umar al-Tadmuri (ed.), Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1422/2001, VIII.415–16 (AH 491) [D.S. Richards (tr.), The 45

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  Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, 3, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, I.13]. Ibn al-Athir may have been echoing earlier voices.

  See also al-Sulami ff.174a–b in Emmanuel Sivan, ‘La Genese de la contre-Croisade: un traite damasquin du debut du XIIe siecle’, Journal Asiatique 254, 1966, 197–224

  at 207; Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-‘Azimi (483/1090), Azimi tarihi Selçuklular dönemiyle ilgili bölümler, H. 430–538, Ali Sevim (ed.), Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988, p. 20.

  13 Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, VIII.416 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, I.13–14].

  14 Claude Cahen, Orient et Occident au temps des Croisades, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1983, p. 109.

  15 al-‘Azimi, Azimi tarihi Selçuklular, p. 23.

  16 This terminology is evident in later writings as well: for example, Ibn Zunbul, Sirat al-Zahir Baybars, Jamal al-Ghitani (ed.), Cairo: al-Hay’a al-misriyya al-‘amma lil-kitab, 1996–7, IV.2090. This Egyptian version of the saga is based on the edition of Hijazi, Cairo, 1341/1923, and Muhammad, Cairo, 1344/1926.

  17 al-‘Azimi, Azimi tarihi Selçuklular, p. 23; Ibn al-‘Adim, al-Mawsu‘a, XI.147. See also al-Sulami f.174b in Sivan, Journal Asiatique 254, 1966, at 207.

  18 H.A.R. Gibb, ‘The Arabic Sources for the Life of Saladin’, Speculum 25, 1950, 58–72.

  19 Baha al-Din Abu al-Mahasin Yusuf b. Rafi‘ Ibn Shaddad (539–632/1145–1239), al-Nawadir alsultaniyya wal-mahasin al-yusufiyya [ Sirat Salah al-Din], Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal (ed.), Cairo: Turathuna, 1964, pp. 169–70 [English translation by D.S.

  Richards, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya wa’l-Mahasin al-Yusufiyya by Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, pp.

  100–1]. M.E. Bertsch, Counter-Crusade, a Study of Twelfth Century Jihad in Syria and Palestine, unpublished Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1950, p. 160.

  20 Hayden White, ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’, Clio 3, 1974, 277.

  21 M.C. Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of Holy War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 342–3; Amin Malouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, New York: Shocken Books, 1984, p. 212.

  22 We should also not rule out marriages between Muslims and Christians. The hajib Ibn Abi Amir al-Mansur (fl. 976–1002) married a Christian princess, the daughter of Sancho Garces II of Pamplona (Navara). The marriage between this young Basque women and the Muslim commander took place when Cordova signed a truce with her father (382/992). Évariste Levi-Provencal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane: la Califat Umaiyade de Cordoue, 3, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1950, II.241–2.

  23 Baha al-Din, al-Nawadir al-sultaniyya, p. 292 [Richards, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, p. 187].

  24 Abu Shama, al-Rawdatayn, in Zakkar (ed.), al-Mawsu‘a, XIX.8822.

  25 Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, X.101 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, II.392].

  26 For an Arabic inscription from Sicily that tells the story of a Christian woman who had been buried in a mosque before her son removed her corpse to a church, see: RCEA 8, 249–50, ##3140.

  27 Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, X.290 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, II.186].

  28 Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, X.349 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, II.232]. See also Emmanuel Sivan, ‘Islam and Crusades: Antagonism, Polemics, Dialogue’, in Bernard Lewis and Freidrich Niewöhner (eds), Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992, pp. 210–11.

  29 Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Peace Never Established: The Case of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 28, 1978, 99–101.

  30 Abu Ya‘la Hamza Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, H.F. Amedroz (ed.), Leiden: Brill, 1908. Partial English translation by H.A.R. Gibb (tr.), The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, London: Luzac, 1932; partial French translation by Roger Le Tourneau (tr.), Damas de 1075 à 1154, Damascus: Institut Francais de Damas, 1952.

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  31 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 164 [Gibb, p. 92; Le Tourneau, p. 88].

  32 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 165 [Gibb, p. 93; Le Tourneau, p. 89].

  33 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 171 [Gibb, p. 106; Le Tourneau, p. 99].

  34 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 174 [Gibb, p. 113; Le Tourneau, p. 105].

  On nomads in the eastern frontier of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, see Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 219–21.

  35 W.B. Stevenson, The Crusaders in the East: A Brief History of the Wars of Islam with the Latins in Syria during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907, pp. 62–3, 94–6.

  36 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 190 [Gibb, p. 147; Le Tourneau, p. 132].

  37 Stevenson, The Crusaders in the East, p. 98.

  38 Ibn al-Furat in Claude Cahen, Orient et Occident au temps des Croisades, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1983, pp. 226–7; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, X.510 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, I.172–3]. Bursuqi’s statement: ‘I rather preferred to be slain on the path of Allah and be a sacrifice for the Muslims’ may be a later addendum by the chronicle.

  39 Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, X.543 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, I.196]; Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 199 [Gibb, pp. 158–9; Le Tourneau, pp. 147–8]

  opens his description of this year by voicing critical remarks about ‘the neglect of Islam to make raids upon the Franks and to prosecute the Holy War ( jihad)’. His annals continue with an account of Tughtekin’s call to the Turkeman tribes to wage war against the enemies of Islam and to root out the misbelievers.

  40 The city was surrounded by the Franks in 1129. Stevenson, The Crusaders in the East, pp. 132, 133; K.M. Setton (ed.), A History of the Crusades, 6, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955–89, I.430, 433.

  41 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 236 [Gibb, p. 216] claims that such actions were taken to avenge the mistreatment of Damascene merchants by the Frankish Lord of Beirut. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, X.684 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, I.299] alleges that the Franks decided to break their truce ( hudna) with Shams al-Muluk because they considered him to be weak.

  42 One case in point is the armistice agreement between Damascus and the Franks signed in 528/August 1134. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, pp. 242–3 [Gibb, pp.

  226–7; Le Tourneau pp. 213–14] refers to it as peace ( sulh); while Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, XI.12 [Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, I.305] calls it truce ( hudna).

  43 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 272 [Gibb, p. 259; Le Tourneau, p. 256].

  44 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, p. 304 [Gibb, p. 290; Le Tourneau, p. 304].

  45 On conflicting opinion concerning the duty to emigrate from/remain in lands conquered by Christians, see Devin Stewart, ‘The Identity of the Mufti of Oran, Abu L-’Abbas Ahmad b. Abu Jum’ah al-Maghrawi al-Wahrani (d. 917/1511)’, al-Qantara 27, 2006, 265–8; A.E. Arsuaga, ‘Los mudejares de los reinos de Castilla y Portugal’, in Manuel Ruzafa (coordinator), Los mudejares valencianos y peninsulares, Revista d’Historia Medieval 12, Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 2001–2, pp. 40–1; K.A.

  Miller, ‘Muslim Minorities and the Obligation to Emigrate to Islamic Territory’, Islamic Law and Society 7, 2000, 256–88; Khaled Abou El Fadl, ‘Islamic Law and Muslim Minorities: The Juristic Discourse on Muslim Minorities’, Islamic Law and Society 1, 199
4, 160–3; Muhamed Mufaku al-Arnaut, ‘Islam and Muslims in Bosnia 1878–1918: Two Hijras and Two Fatwas’, Journal of Islamic Studies 5, 1994, 242–53 at 248.

  46 Hadia Dajani-Shakeel, ‘Displacement of the Palestinians during the Crusades’, The Muslim World 68, 1978, 157–75.

  47 Setton (ed.), A History of the Crusades, V.62.

  48 Emmanuel Sivan, ‘Refugies Syro-Palestiniens au temps des Croisades’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques 35, 1967, 133–48; Daniella Talmon-Heller, ‘The Shaykh and the 47

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  Community: Popular Hanbalite Islam in Twelfth–Thirteenth Centuries Jabal Nablus and Jabal Qasyun’, Studia Islamica 79, 1994, 103–20 at 105; Toru Miura, ‘The Salihiyya Quarter in the Suburbs of Damascus: Its Formation, Structure, and Transformation in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods’, Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 47, 1995, 129–81; Daniella Talmon-Heller and B.Z. Kedar, ‘Did Muslim Survivors of the 1099 Massacre of Jerusalem Settle in Damascus? The True Origins of the al-Salihiyya Suburb’, Al-Masaq 17, 2005, 165–9.

  49 B.Z. Kedar, ‘The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant’, in J.M. Powell (ed.), Muslims under Latin Rule 1100–1300, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 149, 151. For a Muslim traveller’s account of the return of Muslims to Tyre, see Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Jubayr (1145–1217), al-Rihla, Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1384/1964, pp. 279–81.

  50 Emmanuel Sivan, ‘Islam and Crusades: Antagonism, Polemics, Dialogue’, in Lewis and Niewöhner (eds), Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, p. 207 argues that, at first, there was very little religious animosity towards the Franks and that the initial reaction lacked an Islamic dimension.

  51 H.A. Elsberg and Rhuvon Guest, ‘The Veil of Saint Anne’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 68.396, 1936, 140–7 at 145; RCEA, VIII.36 (## 2864, veil Eglise Saint Anne d’Apt 490/1097; originally a tiraz from Damietta).