The Crusades and the Near East

by Kostick, Conor

  Then the herald proclaimed to each cohort and to the public in general that the fighting was at an end; a legal edict was also issued forbidding further molestation of the Alexandrians. As soon as peace was

  concluded, the people worn down by the hardship of the long-continued siege issued forth rejoicing . . . There was now abundant food, and

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  the resumption of trade was granted . . . The Christians, for their part, were no less eager to enter the city so long the object of their desires.

  Wandering freely about the streets . . . they collected material from which, on their return home, they might often weave stories for their friends and refresh the minds of their listeners with agreeable converse.116

  The joyous reaction to the proclamation of peace was an important gesture in the West and part of the ceremony.117 In this case Saladin was ‘heralded by the blare of trumpets, the sounds of drums and of every kind of musical instruments, he advanced by bands of singing men . . . and crowds of shouting men at arms’. Noise and music were elements of warfare, as is revealed in both verbal descriptions and illustrations, but they were also part and parcel of the peace. The publicity was apparently supposed to show popular joy at victory and for the achievement of peace. It was indeed a performance, a staged arrangement of power.118

  Thus, we have traced here the concepts of peace, the balance of power between the sides and how this influenced peacemaking, and the rich gestures and ceremony that accompanied Christian–Muslim negotiations for peace in the Latin East. Ultimately, despite the changes in practical peacemaking during the two centuries in the Latin East from oral agreements to more formal written ones, and mutual acculturation regarding the formal terms and the nonverbal gestures accompanying their implementation, peacemaking remained something that had to be explained and for which apology was necessary. In the Latin East the Christian side neither sought nor achieved its eschatological ideal of peace. From the Muslim perspective, its victory at the end of two centuries of struggle meant that peace had been attained.

  Notes

  1 Al-Tabari’s Book of Jihad, Y.S. Ibrahim (tr.), Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2007, p. 79.

  2 Averroes, Bida

  ¯yat al-Mudjtahid, in Rudolph Peters (tr.), Jihad in Medieval and Modern Islam, Religious Texts in Translation Series NISABA 5, Leiden: Brill, 1977, pp. 9–25, at 21. The compulsory nature of the jihad is founded on Koran 2:216. Jihad can be carried out by a limited number of individuals and cancelled for the remaining Muslims (Koran 9:112, 4:95).

  3 Peters (tr.), Jihad in Medieval and Modern Islam, p. 13: ‘It is only allowed to slay the enemy on the condition that aman has not been granted. There is no dissension about this among Muslims. There is controversy, however, concerning the question who is entitled to grant aman. The majority of scholars are of the opinion that free Muslim males are also entitled to grant it, but Ibn Madjishun maintains that in this case, it is subject to authorization of the Imam.’ See also Majid Khadduri (tr.), The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.

  4 See Yvonne Friedman, Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Leiden: Brill, 2002, ch. 2.

  5 For an example, see al-Tabari, Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk, Joel Kraemer (tr.),

  [Volume 34 of The History of Al-Tabari], Albany: SUNY, 1989, pp. 168–9. For the Byzantine side, see John Haldon, ‘“Blood and Ink”: Some Observations on Byzantine Attitudes towards Warfare and Diplomacy’, in Jonathan Shepard and Simon Franklin 250

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  (eds), Byzantine Diplomacy, Aldershot: Variorum, 1992, pp. 281–94. For the later period, see P.M. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260–1290), Leiden: Brill, 1995, pp. 3–15.

  6 M.D. Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 137.

  7 For ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami’s Kitab al-Jihad, see Niall Christie, ‘Jerusalem in the Kitab Al-Jihad of ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami’, Medieval Encounters 13, 2007, 209–21.

  8 W.B. Bishai, ‘Negotiations and Peace Agreements between Muslims and Non-Muslims in Islamic History’, in S.A. Hanna (ed.), Medieval and Middle Eastern Studies in Honor of Aziz Suryal Atiya, Leiden: Brill, 1972, pp. 50–63, esp. p. 51.

  9 Allaudin Samarrai, ‘Arabs and Latins in the Middle Ages: Enemies, Partners and Scholars’, in D.R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto (eds), Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999, pp. 137–45.

  10 Augustine, De civitate Dei contra paganos, lib. 19, cap. 11–12.

  11 Many historians have written about the connection between the Peace of God movement and the First Crusade. For a recent synthesis, see Tomaz Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

  12 Mastnak, Crusading Peace, pp. 10–21. See also Jean Flori, ‘De la paix de Dieu à la croisade? Un réexamen’, Crusades 2, 2003, 1–23, who emphasizes the economic reasons the Church had for promoting a peace that would guard its interests.

  13 Mastnak, Crusading Peace, p. 89 .

  14 Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an Act of Love’, History 65, 1980, 177–92.

  15 Penny Cole, ‘“O, God, the heathen have come into your inheritance” (Ps. 78.1): The Theme of Religious Pollution in Crusade Documents, 1095–1188’, in Maya Shatzmiller (ed.), Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, Leiden: Brill, 1993, pp. 84–111.

  16 FC 411–12: ‘Eia Christi milites, confortamini, nihil metuentes . . . qoud si hic interieritis, beati nimirum eritis. Iamiamque aperta est vobis ianua regni caelestis. Si vivi victores remanseritis, inter omnes Christianos gloriosi fulgebitis, si autem fugere volueritis, Francia equidem longe est a vobis.’ Pope Gregory VIII put it simply, PL

  202, Col. 1542: ‘Sive autem supervixerint, sive mortui fuerint.’

  17 For example, the descriptions of the slaughter at Ma’arat al-Numan ( GF 79–80) and Jerusalem ( GF 91–2). See B.Z. Kedar, ‘The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades’, Crusades 3, 2004, 15–75.

  18 Gerd Althoff, ‘Satisfaction: Peculiarities of the Amicable Settlement of Conflicts in the Middle Ages’, in Bernhard Jussen (ed.), Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, pp. 270–84. Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992, p. 15, noted, however: ‘If rituals like supplication and peacemaking formed a common language throughout northern France, then different regions spoke different dialects.’

  19 R.I. Burns and P.E. Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures: Bilingual Surrender Treaties in Muslim–Crusader Spain under James the Conqueror, Leiden: Brill, 1999.

  20 Taeko Nakamura, ‘Territorial Disputes between Syrian Cities and the Early Crusades: The Struggle for Economic and Political Dominance’, in Beyond the Border: A New Framework for Understanding the Dynamism of Muslim Societies, Proceedings of an International Symposium, Kyoto, 8–10 October 1999, pp. 126–41.

  21 Shmuel Nussbaum, ‘Peace Processes between Crusaders and Muslims in the Latin East’, unpublished MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2002 (in Hebrew).

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  22 T.S. Asbridge, The Creation of the Principality of Antioch, 1098–1130, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000, pp. 48–9.

  23 Asbridge, The Creation of the Principality of Antioch, pp. 49–50.

  24 With respect to the remaining 39 per cent, it was impossible to determine which side initiated the agreement. Nakamura’s statistics substantiate this finding. He counted 58

  agreements: 29 Muslim initiatives (50 per cent), 15 crusader initiatives, and 11 so-called mutual ones. Nakamura, ‘Territorial Disputes between Syrian Cities and the Early Crusades’.


  25 Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, pp. 103–17; see also Emmanuel Sivan, L’Islam et la croisade, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1968, p. 44.

  26 WT 1008: ‘humilibus satis quantum ad nos conditionibus inducie, quodque nunquam antea dicitur contigisse, paribus legibus fedus initum est, nichil precipui nostris sibi in ea pactione reservantibus’. Translation by E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey (trs), A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, New York: Columbia University Press, 1943, p. 447.

  This shows the shift not only in balance of power, but in outlook. Saladin was after jihad and was not making truces from a position of weakness; he had an economic motivation for agreeing to a truce.

  27 Frankish-initiated requests rose from 15 to 41 per cent. A total of thirty-four agreements are attested for this period.

  28 See, among others, Baha al-Din Ibn Shadad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, D.S. Richards (tr.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, pp. 28–32; Fath, passim.

  29 For example, the treaties of 1192, 1198, 1204 and 1229.

  30 Of the sixteen peace-agreement-initiating requests, 38 per cent were Muslim-initiated and 31 per cent Frankish-initiated.

  31 Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, pp. 43, 59–62, 70.

  32 As opposed to only 8 per cent of Muslim-initiated requests.

  33 Ronnie Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 149–64.

  34 Ellenblum, Crusader Castles, p. 277.

  35 WT 1061–2.

  36 Note, for example, Qalqashandi’s remark when explaining the procedure of drafting a truce: ‘So the clerk may draw on them for the terms of truces with which he is perhaps unacquainted – God Most High keep us from needing them.’ Subh al-a’sha fi sina’at al insha 14, 71 cited in Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, p. 8. This implies that a truce was a necessary evil even when favourable to the Mamluks.

  37 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, p. 156.

  38 It is a stroke of luck that al-Qalqashandi saved nine treaties in his book Subh al-a‘sha fi sina‘ t al-insha and that other members of the Mamluk chancery kept the texts of other treaties (Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, pp. 1–11). Written treaties are mentioned by earlier chroniclers on both sides, but although some of the writers were part of the royal chancery, such as William of Tyre and Imad al-Din al-Isfahâni, they did not cite the treaties verbatim, apparently finding the text less important than the oaths and other relevant gestures.

  39 For example, the treaty between Godfrey and Omar of Azaz (1098) and between Amalric and Shawar (1167).

  40 The economic incentive, such as dividing crops from conquered areas (1111), was probably prominent in the early period.

  41 Abu Ya‘la Hamza Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, H.F. Amedroz (ed.), Leiden: Brill, 1908, p. 172. Translation from H.A.R. Gibb (tr.), The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, London: Luzac, 1932, pp. 109–10; Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, p. 396. For the economic background to treaties, see, for example, the 252

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  treaties between Baldwin I and Tughtigin of Damascus in 1108–9, 1111 and 1113, sharing the income from territories held as condominiums, in Ibn al-Qalanisi, 92, 113, 147.

  42 WT 919–20, 923–5.

  43 WT 924. Translation from Babcock and Krey, A History of Deeds, II.375–8.

  44 M.A. Köhler, Allianzen und Verträge zwischen fränkischen und islamischen Herrschern im Vorderen Orient: Eine Studie über das zwischenstaatliche Zusammenleben von 12. bis ins 13. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991.

  45 B.Z. Kedar, ‘The Fourth Crusade’s Second Front’, in A.E. Laiou (ed.), Urbs capta: The Fourth Crusade and its Consequences, Paris: Lethielleux, 2005, pp. 89–110.

  46 R.S. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260, Albany: SUNY, 1977, pp. 133–4.

  47 For an extreme view, see Joshua Prawer, Histoire du Royaume Latin de Jérusalem, 2, Paris: Centre Nat. de la Recherche Scient., 1970, I.123. Witness the long debate over who was to blame for the diversion of the crusade in D.E. Queller and S.J. Stratton,

  ‘A Century of Controversy on the Fourth Crusade’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 6, 1969, 233–77. See also D.E. Queller and T.F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, p. x: ‘The overriding concern of the Latins was no longer making their way to the Holy Land, but consolidating and defending their newly born base in the Levant.’

  48 Jamal al-Din Muhammad b. Salim Ibn Wasil (d. 1298), Mufarrij al-kurub fi akhbar bani ayyub, 3, Jamal al-Din al-Shyyal (ed.), Cairo: al-Idarat al-’Ammat li-Thiqafa, 1954

  (Volumes 4 and 5 edited by S.A.F. Ashur and H.M. Rabi, Cairo: al-Idarat al-’Ammat li-Thiqafa, 1972–7); Francesco Gabrieli (tr.), Arab Historians of the Crusades, London: Routledge, 1969, pp. 269–71.

  49 Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, pp. 195–204. Negotiations with Jalal al-Din Khwarizmshah against al-Kamil had begun already under al-Muazzam in 1226, and in 1228 the Khwarizmians threatened Armenia and al-Nasir Daud tried to make an alliance with them. See also David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (3rd edn), London: Pimlico, 2002 [1998], pp. 182–90, who mainly follows Ibn Wasil’s account.

  50 J.H. Pryor, ‘The Crusade of Emperor Frederick II, 1220–29: The Implication of the Maritime Evidence’, The American Neptune 52, 1992, 113–32. I thank John Pryor for sending me his illuminating article.

  51 See note 99 below for the negotiations between Saladin and Richard the Lionheart.

  52 GF 66.

  53 RA 79, 81; AA 4, 44. Albert describes Peter as ‘small in size but great in worth’, but Kerbogha apparently did not appreciate his greatness. See John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 280.

  54 WT 905–6: ‘Magnus princeps es, nobilis et apud tuos clarissimus, nec est de vestris principibus quispiam, si libera michi daretur optio, cui magis hoc meum communicare secretum cupiam et verbi huius participem constituere . . . Homo nobilis es, ut dixi, regi carus, sermone potens et opere: esto inter nos pacis mediator.’ Translation from Babcock and Krey (trs), A History of Deeds, II.339–40.

  55 WT 907: ‘novissimam manum et finem placitum apposuit’ .

  56 Richard of Devizes, The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, J.T. Appleby (ed. and tr.), London: Nelson’s Medieval Texts, 1963, p. 78:

  ‘Vel pacem perpetuam cum fratre meo uobis adquiram, uel ad minus indutias bonas et diuturnas.’ Translation by Appleby.

  57 Richard of Devizes, pp. 82–3.

  58 Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, William Stubbs (ed.), Rolls Series 38, 2, London: Longman, 253

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  1864–5, I.429: ‘Harum formam induciarum in scripturam redactam, sibi recitatam, rex Ricardus annuit observandam.’ Translation from H.J. Nicholson (tr.), Chronicle of the Third Crusade, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997, pp. 371–2.

  59 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, pp. 230–2.

  60 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, p. 193.

  61 Pierre Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages, London: Continuum, 2003, p. 69.

  62 Chaplais, English Democratic Practice, p. 74.

  63 See, for example, the famous marginal illustration in the Lutrell Psalter showing them fighting face-to-face; and Debra Higgs, Saracens, Demons and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Arts, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 167.

  64 J.C. Schmitt, ‘The Language of Gestures in the West: Third to Thirteenth Centuries’, in J.N. Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (eds), A Cultural History of Gesture, Ithaca: Polity Press, 1991, pp. 59–70, esp. p. 60.

  65 Volker Kapp (ed.), Die Sprache der Zeichen und Bilder: Rhetoric und nonverbale kommunikation in der frühen Neuzeit, Marburg: Hitzeroth, 199
0, pp. 7–11.

  66 GF 71.

  67 AA 150–8.

  68 Richard of Devizes, pp. 46–7; Otto of St Blasien, Chronicon, A. Hofmeister (ed.), MGH Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum 46, Hanover: Hahn, 1912, p. 54. For the political consequences of hurling Leopold of Austria’s banner into the ditch, see J.P.

  Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, p. 138.

  69 WT 675: ‘occupant violenter, civibus qui ibi reperti sunt non parcentes, nisi forte qui ex eis verbo vel habitu vel quovis signo christiane professionis se esse sectatorem designaret’.

  70 Surrender of Acre to Philip Augustus and Richard the Lionheart, king of England (BnF, FR 2813), fol. 238v. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/

  91/Philippe_Auguste_et_Richard_Acre.jpg.

  71 Al-Yunini, Dhayl mir’at al-zaman, 4, Hyderabad: Dar al-Maaref Osmania, 1955, II.669–70; Holt (tr.), Early Mamluk Diplomacy, p. 48.

  72 In her forthcoming book, Milka Rubin argues that the same happened during the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, when the capitulating Byzantine generals formulated the treaties of aman: that is, they knew how to formulate the treaties and presented the conquerors with ready-made documents. I thank Dr Rubin for sharing her thoughts with me before publication.

  73 WT 784: ‘repositis armis et iunctis alternatim ad latus manibus signum exhibens reverentie’. See Yvonne Friedman, ‘Gestures of Conciliation: Peacemaking Endeavors in the Latin East’, in Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum and Jonathan Riley-Smith (eds), In laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies for B.Z. Kedar, Crusades-Subsidia 1, 2008, 31–48.

  74 GF 96: ‘iactabant se in terram, non audentes erigere se contra nos. Nostri igitur illos detruncabant, sicut aliquis detruncat animalia ad macellum’. Translation by Rosalind Hill.

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

  76 AA 130: ‘Hac crudelitate atrocissime necis stupefacte et pauide tenere puelle et nobilissime, uestibus ornari festinabant, Turcis se offerebant, ut saltem amore honestarum formarum accensi et placati, discant captiuis misereri.’ Translation by S.B. Edgington.