The Templars

by Michael Haag

  In the East the Byzantines were scoring victories in the Eastern Mediterranean already in the tenth century, recapturing Crete from the Muslims in 961 and Cyprus four years later. The Byzantines also recovered great swathes of territory in the Middle East. In 969 they captured Antioch, and shortly afterwards they took Aleppo and Latakia along with a coastal strip extending clear down through Syria nearly to Tripoli in northern Lebanon. The Muslim inhabitants were left undisturbed and the local Muslim leaders were made vassals of the Byzantine Empire, but now they were made to pay taxes from which the Christians were exempted, while destroyed churches were rebuilt and the freedom to convert from Islam to Christianity or vice versa was guaranteed.

  In 975, under the Emperor John Tzimiskes, the Byzantines launched a crusade with the intention of recovering Jerusalem, which was still an overwhelmingly Christian city. Marching out with his army from Antioch, Tzimiskes took Damascus, then advanced into Palestine where Nazareth and Caesarea opened their gates to him and the Muslim authorities at Jerusalem pleaded for terms. But first the Emperor turned towards the Mediterranean to clear the enemy from coastal castles–only to die suddenly in 976 before he could return his attention to Jerusalem. For the next century the Byzantines remained in control of northern Syria but got no closer to the Holy Land.

  Arab Divisions and Decline

  Until the middle of the eighth century Damascus, the seat of the Umayyad dynasty, had been the capital of a vast and complex empire which stretched from the Atlantic to Central Asia. It was an empire largely administered by Syrians, Christians as well as Muslims. The Arabs were the ruling class, but in turn the Umayyads were deeply influenced by the Graeco-Aramaic civilisation they found in Syria with its many links, intellectual, cultural and mercantile, to the Mediterranean world. The replacement of the Umayyad by the Abbasid caliphs and the shift from Damascus to Baghdad marked a rejection of these influences.

  The advance of Christian forces against the Muslim empire from both the West and the East came as evidence of the decay and division in the Arab world. The empire had become a rapacious tax-gathering machine run by provincial governors who paid kickbacks to Baghdad but otherwise offered the caliph no more than the barest homage and granted their subjects even less than that. With the triumph of an authoritarian and incurious religious dogma, with the failure to develop resources or technological advances, and with civil administrations replaced by local military autocrats, the empire of the Arabs fell into intellectual, political and economic decline.

  There were uprisings against the Arabs throughout their empire. In Egypt, where the population had been three million at the time of the Arab conquest, the mismanagement of the country’s resources was so appalling that there were not many more than one and a half million Egyptians by AD 1000. Muslim discrimination and oppressive taxation stoked up resentment among the Copts, that is the native Egyptians. Their national pride was already wounded by the coming of the Arabs and the continuing infiltration of Egypt by nomadic tribes and led to repeated Coptic revolts, which were only suppressed with much bloodshed. Many Copts converted to Islam after the ferocious repression of 832; being unable to meet taxation demands, partly because the irrigation system was falling into further disrepair, they migrated into the towns, leaving large areas of land uncultivated. Even so, not until the eleventh century, four hundred years after the Arab occupation, did the majority of Egyptians finally adopt Islam.

  Similarly the prosperity of Syria declined along with its population. Marginalised and oppressed by their new rulers in Baghdad the Syrians more than once rose up in revolt. Yet under the Abbasids the Arabic language became virtually universal in Syria, and Islam became the religion of the majority of its inhabitants–partly because of fresh immigration from Arabia, and partly from persecutions, pressures and inducements. Many Christians moved to the safety of the Lebanese mountains, among them the Maronites, who established themselves there in the ninth century.

  Apart from the tensions between the Arab elite and their eventually Arabised subjects, Islam itself was split between the orthodox Sunni, who controlled the Baghdad caliphate, and the Shia, that is the partisans of Ali, so that religious dissensions added to the original cultural, ethnic and political differences. The Fatimids, who were Arabs originally from Syria but had settled in North Africa, returned eastwards to Egypt where they established a Shiite caliphate in 969, and by the end of the century they had extended their empire over Palestine and southern Syria.

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  Islam Divided: Shia versus Sunni

  In 656 after insurgent Arab troops murdered Uthman, the third caliph, who was a member of the powerful Umayyad family of Mecca, Ali put himself forward as the natural inheritor of the caliphate, basing his claim on his marriage to Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, as well as on his considerable religious learning. But Ali was opposed by Aisha, who had been Mohammed’s favourite wife, along with her Umayyad family and many of Mohammed’s surviving companions. He took to arms and won his first battle, but later saw his authority dissolve when rebels advanced on his army with copies of the Koran fixed to the points of their spears and his troops refused to fight.

  Ali was assassinated and the Umayyads were installed once again in the caliphate. But the real wound to Islam occurred when Hussein, Ali’s son by Fatima, and therefore of Mohammed’s blood, led a revolt against the Umayyads and after a fanatical struggle was killed with all his men. In a sense the Prophet’s own blood had been shed, so that for the partisans, or Shia, of Ali, Hussein’s death was a martyrdom and also a stain on the Sunni, that is on orthodox Muslims who then as now constituted the greater part of Islam.

  From then on the Shia refused to accept as caliph any but Ali’s descendants, while the Sunni barred the caliphate to the Prophet’s descendants for all time. Shiism took hold in Persia and in much of Iraq, but also, almost three centuries after the death of Ali, his followers in the form of the Fatimids would invade Egypt with the intention of using it as a base from where to oppose the Sunni Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad and to impose Shia dominance throughout the entire Islamic world.

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  Perilous Pilgrimages

  Initially the Muslim presence in Syria and Palestine interfered little with pilgrimage to Christian holy sites, nor did it affect the security of monasteries and Christian communities there. The Muslims were no strangers to the concept of pilgrimage, for they themselves had made the pilgrimage to Mecca one of the pillars of their faith; moreover the Christian pilgrims were a considerable source of revenue to Muslims at Jerusalem and other holy sites. For Christians, the Holy Land was unique in providing a tangible link with the life and death of Jesus, and throughout the Muslim occupation the numbers of pilgrims continued to grow.

  To reach the river Jordan was a special aim of pilgrims, for there they could re-enact the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:16–17). The afflicted were particularly attracted, for they recalled that one of Jesus’ grievances against the Temple priests in Jerusalem was their rejection of the lame, blind, deformed and sick as imperfect and unworthy, for the belief was that outer illness signified a corruption of the soul. Reacting against the Temple priests, Jesus performed baptisms at which everyone was welcome, for the core of his preaching was that salvation was for all. Pilgrims to the Holy Land sought baptism in the waters of the Jordan in order to undergo a spiritual cleansing, and among them were many afflicted people for whom the purification of their souls might also bring about a physical cure.

  But the most popular object of pilgrimage was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built on the traditional sites of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels place the hill of Calvary, or Golgotha, and the tomb offered for the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea, outside the walls of Jerusalem, yet the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands within the very heart of the city. In fact the city was enlarged and rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian, and in 135 he had a temple of Venus built upon the spot where the to
mb was said to be.

  Still, the old tradition remained strong enough to justify the Emperor Constantine in pulling down the temple in 326 in order to search for the tomb reputed to be beneath it. A rock-cut tomb was duly found and pronounced to be that of Jesus, and the outcrop of Golgotha was identified nearby. Constantine immediately ordered the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in fact a vast complex consisting of two elements, the Basilica or Martyrium at the site of Golgotha, which was dedicated in 335, and the Church of the Anastasis, meaning ‘resurrection’, built in the form of a rotunda and surmounted by a great dome over the tomb of Jesus and dedicated in 340. Circulating within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which enclosed the most sacred sites in Christendom, pilgrims vividly relived the drama of that first Easter when Jesus died upon the Cross and rose again on the third day.

  Following the Arab conquest of Jerusalem in 638 the city’s largely Christian population enjoyed a long period of good relations with the Muslims. But by the tenth century the Muslims had become more aggressive, and in 938 they attacked Jerusalem’s Christians during the Palm Sunday procession, set fire to the Martyrium and badly damaged the Anastasis church. In 966 a Muslim mob again attacked the Anastasis and set alight the roof of the Martyrium. The Patriarch who had hidden in a vat of oil was set alight and burnt alive. The Muslims set their seal on these acts by seizing part of the east entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where they constructed a new mosque.

  Worse was to come. Starting in 1004 the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, who ruled over Egypt, North Africa, Palestine and southern Syria, launched a campaign of anti-Christian fanaticism. Christians suffered persecution and had ordinances passed against them; church property was confiscated, crosses were seized and burnt, little mosques were built on church roofs, and finally the churches themselves were set ablaze. By 1014 over thirty thousand churches had been destroyed, and many Christians had been forced to convert to Islam, at least outwardly, to save their lives, while others fled into Byzantine territory. But the critical turning point in Western attitudes towards the Muslim East came in 1009, for in that year al-Hakim ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was carried out with such violence that even the tomb of Jesus, though cut deep into the bedrock, was demolished with pickaxes and all but obliterated.

  After the death of al-Hakim in 1021 his successor permitted the Byzantine emperor, under stringent conditions and at his own expense, to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pilgrimage, too, was again permitted, though sojourns in the Holy Land proved unpredictable and often dangerous. For a while during 1056 the Muslims forbade pilgrims entry to Jerusalem and expelled three hundred from the city. In 1064 a large German pilgrimage led by Gunther, bishop of Bamberg, came under Muslim attack; the party was plundered and hundreds were massacred within sight of Jerusalem. Muslim pirates operated against pilgrims at sea, either attacking them outright or exacting charges, bargains and gifts. Pilgrims were obliged to pay protection money, known as khafara, along the roads. Also the sensibilities and prejudices of the Muslims had to be borne in mind: pilgrims could not enter mosques, they could not enter towns or cities except on foot, they could not dress in certain ways, they should not look at Muslim women, and they should not make merry or laugh lest the Muslims thought the Christians’ behaviour was directed at them.

  Pilgrimage depended on the Muslim authorities maintaining orderly conditions so that the defenceless Christian traveller could move about and worship in safety, but the Middle East was wracked by misgovernment, division, exploitation, fanaticism and aggression, which undermined that guarantee. And now in the last third of the eleventh century a new threat arose–not only to pilgrims but to Byzantium and the Arabs–in the form of a Turkish invasion from the East.

  The Turkish Invasion: Byzantium Appeals to the West

  Migrating tribes of Turks known as Seljuks began arriving from the East in the territories of the Abbasid caliphate in about 970. They were soon converted to Sunni Islam and became invaluable to the Arabs for their martial qualities, especially for their mounted bowmen and the nomadic speed of their cavalry. But the caliphate was no longer a unified entity. Spain, Africa and Egypt had long since led a political life independent of the caliph in Baghdad. Indeed the enfeebled state of Arab rule stood as an open invitation, and in 1055 the Seljuks took Baghdad and established their hegemony over the caliphate. Under the Seljuks there was an immediate resurgence in the fortunes of Sunni Islam in Iran, Iraq and Syria. In 1071 the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia, opening the whole of Asia Minor to conquest by the Turks and threatening Constantinople itself. In that same year the Seljuks also turned south, taking northern Syria from the Byzantines and Jerusalem from the Fatimids.

  With Byzantium suddenly reduced to hardly more than its capital, Constantinople, and the adjacent regions, in 1074 the Byzantine emperor Michael VII appealed to Pope Gregory VII for help, his desperation all the more evident in his willingness to overlook the Great Schism of 1054, which was the culmination of centuries of often violent doctrinal differences between the Latin and Orthodox Churches. Despite the schism, the appeal fell on ready ears, for already in 1063 the Papacy had given its blessing to a crusade against the Muslims in Spain and it might have done the same now. But this was not the moment when Gregory could call upon the secular powers of Europe to head eastwards on a crusade, as he was embroiled in the Investiture Controversy with many of those same secular authorities over whether it was they or the Church who had the right to appoint high church officials and thereby control the great wealth and powers such officials could command.

  Meanwhile the Seljuks tightened their grip on Syria and Palestine. In 1076 they took Damascus from the Fatimids, and when the Fatimids briefly regained Jerusalem that year, the Seljuks recaptured the city after a siege of several months and massacred the entire Muslim population, about three thousand, as well as a large number of Jews who had supported the Fatimids, though the Christians were spared.

  Throughout these convulsive events the pilgrim traffic had never entirely ceased, but the journey was now far more difficult than it had been before. Not only was there fighting between Turks and Egyptians in Palestine and Syria, but Asia Minor, which had offered secure passage when it was in the hands of the Byzantine Empire, could no longer be traversed without an armed escort owing to marauding Turkish tribesmen, and even then it was not safe. Everywhere throughout Anatolia and the Middle East there were brigands on the roads, and at every small town along the way the local petty headman tried to extort money from passers-by. The pilgrims who succeeded in overcoming all these harassments and dangers returned impoverished and weary to the West with tales to tell of the appalling conditions in the East.

  The Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus began the fightback against the Seljuks, reclaiming territory along the Black Sea and round the shores of the Sea of Marmara during the 1080s. But in order to press harder against the Turks he sought mercenaries from the West, and in March 1095 he sent an appeal to Pope Urban II. In response Alexius got something wholly unexpected and astonishing. Alexius’ daughter, the historian Anna Comnena, described how a multitude from the West approached Constantinople in 1096 on their way to the East: ‘They assembled from all parts, one after another, with arms and horses and all the other equipment for war. Full of enthusiasm and ardour they thronged every highway, and with these warriors came a host of civilians, outnumbering the sand of the seashore or the stars of heaven, carrying palms and bearing crosses on their shoulders. There were women and children, too, who had left their own countries. Like tributaries joining a river from all directions they streamed towards us in full force.’

  Pope Urban’s Call

  The Council of Clermont in central France was convened by Pope Urban II during the second half of November 1095. It was largely concerned with the Truce of God, the device by which the Church had for half a century been trying to limit feudal warfare, which
was having a devastating effect upon the land. Population growth, shortage of land and petty civil wars had contributed to a feeling of insecurity and desperation at all levels of society. There had been floods and plague in 1094, followed by drought and famine in 1095. A shower of meteorites in April 1095 presaged a great movement of peoples, it was said, and lent an apocalyptic note to the social and economic problems.

  Meanwhile Pope Urban had been formulating a policy in response to the appeal from the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Urban’s aim was to provide the Byzantine Empire with the reinforcements it needed in order to drive the Seljuk Turks from Asia Minor, for he hoped that in return the Orthodox Church would acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and that the unity of Christendom would be restored. He was also concerned to give the aggressive nobility, especially that of his native France, an alternative outlet for their martial energies. The Papacy had gained strength through the Investiture Controversy, and not only had it established its authority over Church appointments, but in marshalling public opinion it had also intensified popular piety, so it seemed a propitious moment to inaugurate a new era of religious energy in the West and also to win the prize of Jerusalem. Urban let it be known that in response to the appeal from Eastern Christendom for help, he would make a speech on the penultimate day of the council, Tuesday 27 November. He expected that in addition to churchmen his audience would comprise members of the French nobility, for he envisioned the expedition to the East as an armed pilgrimage of knights.

  Three hundred clerics had been attending the council within the cathedral at Clermont, but the crowds, both clerical and lay, that assembled on that Tuesday were huge, and so the Papal throne was set up on a platform in an open field outside the eastern gate of the city, and there, when the multitudes were gathered, Urban rose to address them. The reports of four contemporary chroniclers survive, but all were written years later, were coloured by subsequent events, and differ greatly from one another, so that we can have only a very approximate idea of what Urban actually said.