As the struggle approached its climax, the level of antipathy between the Christians and the Muslims intensified. An Egyptian spy was captured and then catapulted back toward his coreligionists; the defenders responded by spitting and urinating on crosses. The crusaders decided to fortify themselves spiritually as well. One man had a vision of the dead papal legate, Adhémar of Le Puy, who advised the holy warriors to stage a special penitential procession to the Mount of Olives, the place where Christ ascended into heaven. Afraid to ignore the direction of such a respected figure, the leadership decided to follow this instruction. Barefoot and bearing crosses and relics, the clergy headed a snake of crusaders down the Valley of Jehoshaphat and then up to the sacred place, praying, chanting, and invoking God’s favor.53
By now, with food and water in short supply and the prospect of Egyptian reinforcements imminent, religious devotion became colored with the growing need for a quick breakthrough. Raymond’s tower exerted pressure to the southwest and kept large numbers of defenders occupied. On the other hand, the siege tower to the northwest of the city seemed to be achieving very little. Muslim resistance was strong and the defenders had prudently gathered where the crusaders posed their greatest threat. On the night of July 13, however, Godfrey showed his military genius; he had seen another area of the wall that was weaker, less well defended, and offered a flatter approach for the siege tower. The duke ordered his siege machine to be broken up into its constituent parts and then, under cover of darkness, laboriously moved over a mile to the east and reassembled.
A little detective work can reconcile eyewitness descriptions with the present-day topography to identify a short stretch (sixty meters) of fortifications, between the second tower east of Herod’s Gate and the next larger salient beyond it. Today, opposite the Rockefeller Museum, it is possible to stand among the overgrown thorn bushes in the ditch and to look up at the walls above. Notwithstanding the grind of modern traffic passing close by it is a deeply sobering experience to pause in the shadows at the foot of these fortifications and to imagine the brutal, desperate struggle that took place on the very same spot on July 14 and 15, 1099.
Godfrey’s decision to change the focus of the attack was an inspired one as well as a remarkable physical feat. At dawn, the crusaders launched their onslaught, desperate to capitalize on their advantage. First of all, they brought a huge battering ram to bear on the outer wall in order to create a breach for the tower. An eyewitness described the intensity of the fighting around it: “The hellish din of battle broke loose; from all parts stones . . . flew through the air, and arrows pelted like rain. But God’s servants, resolute in their faith, regardless of the outcome of death or immediate vengeance on the pagans, endured this patiently. . . . Defenders rained down upon the Christians stones, arrows, flaming wood and straw, and threw mallets of wood wrapped with ignited pitch, wax, sulphur, tow and rags on the machines. The deeds performed in the day-long battle were so marvellous that we doubt that history recorded any greater.”54 After hours of fighting, the crusaders’ muscle power thrust the metal-tipped monster through the stonework to make the first breach. As the day ended they were now poised for the final assault; the battle for Jerusalem was at a pivotal juncture; as one contemporary wrote: “With the coming of night, fear settled on the two groups . . . alertness, labour and sleepless anxiety prevailed in both camps, and on our side confident hope, on theirs, gnawing dismay.”55
At daybreak, the struggle began again. Godfrey himself commanded the battle from inside the great siege tower and the unwieldy device was heaved through a lethal storm of rocks and flames to within a few feet of the curtain wall. One stone decapitated a man who stood next to the duke, but Godfrey fought on undaunted. The tower was about six feet above the defenses and this differential proved crucial because the men on the top story could pin down the defenders. The Muslims even deployed a form of Greek fire—a naphtha-based substance that could not be extinguished by water. Fortunately local Christians had warned the crusaders about this and a store of vinegar was on hand to quell the flames. Nonetheless, the Muslims’ stubborn resistance started to sap both the morale and the energy of the Christians; many of their siege weapons had been shattered and they had taken heavy casualties. Around midday, however, a crusader archer began to shoot blazing arrows into the Saracens opposite the siege tower. The fire raged with particular intensity—perhaps it had ignited some of the Muslims’ own flammable weapons—and the defenders had to flee from the walls. Here was the crusaders’ opportunity: hurriedly, Godfrey ordered the siege tower’s drawbridge to be lowered and it swung onto the walls. Two brothers, Ludolf and Englebert of Tournai, are named as the first men to leap onto the ramparts. With this breach made, ladders were laid against the walls and Godfrey’s men poured into the north of the city.56 Raymond had made little headway to the southwest but as news of the breakthrough spread, Muslim resistance quickly collapsed.
The combined tensions of the three-year march, the terrible suffering at the siege of Antioch, and the fierce fight outside Jerusalem, compounded by their uncompromising religious fervor, contributed to the crusaders unleashing savagery and slaughter on an appalling scale. They had liberated the holy city, now they sought to purge it of unbelievers. “Some of the pagans were mercifully beheaded, others pierced by arrows plunged from towers, and yet others, tortured for a long time, were burned to death in searing flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet lay in the houses and streets, and indeed there was a running to and fro of men and knights over the corpses.”57 A group of Muslims on the roof of the Temple of Solomon surrendered, only to be killed soon afterward. Women and children were not spared in this brutal orgy of destruction. The crusaders “seized infants by the soles of their feet from their mothers’ laps or their cradles and dashed them against walls or broke their necks; they were slaughtering some with weapons [others] with stones; they were sparing absolutely no gentile of any place or kind.”58 The horror of these events has left an indelible stain on Muslim–Christian relations down the centuries.
The crusaders also seized huge amounts of booty: gold, silver, precious stones, and horses. Men took property for themselves; if a crusader entered and stayed in a house, he was entitled to keep it. Some even slit open the stomachs of Muslims they suspected had swallowed valuables in an attempt to conceal them from the crusaders. “No one has ever seen or heard of such a slaughter of the pagans, for they were burned on pyres like pyramids,” an eyewitness reported.59 Yet, amid this almost incomprehensible violence, the crusaders’ thoughts turned to devotion. One later writer vividly evoked this combination of religious zeal and extreme brutality, a blend that does not sit well with our own sensibilities:
It was impossible to look on the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay the fragments of human bodies. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot. . . . Then, clad in fresh garments with clean hands and bare feet, in humility they began to make the rounds of the venerable places which the Saviour had deigned to sanctify and make glorious with His bodily presence . . . with particular veneration they approached the church of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord. . . . It was a sour ce of spiritual joy to witness the pious devotion . . . with which the pilgrims drew near to the holy places, the exultation of heart and happiness of spirit with which they kissed the memorials of the Lord’s sojourn on earth.60
Three weeks later, at the Battle of Ascalon, the crusaders defeated a large Egyptian army to seal the campaign’s success; the Holy Land was in Christian hands. The conquest of Jerusalem was an astonishing achievement: “The Lord has certainly renewed His miracles of old” was one analysis.61 The crusaders seized the spoils of war—they had, after all, incurred huge expenses in the course of their journey, and many needed money to return home. For those who had driven themselves on to Jerusalem, there is little doubt that religious motives were at the heart of their experience: “The children of the Apostles freed the city
for God and the Fathers,” as one contemporary stated.62 Their growing military cohesion and the divisions within the Muslim world both contributed to their victory, but piety was their ultimate motive. It is one of history’s ironies, however, that Pope Urban did not live to learn of the crusade’s success: he died in July 1099.
Godfrey’s actions during the siege, along with Raymond’s abrasive personality, led to the former being elected to rule this new land. Such was Godfrey’s piety, however, that he declined a crown, not wishing to be a king in the land of the Lord; instead he took the more modest title Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre.63 In the autumn of 1099 many crusaders prepared to leave for the West, exhausted but exultant. These men returned as heroes, celebrated in verse and chronicles and feted for their achievements: models for future generations to emulate.64 Perhaps only three hundred knights remained in the nascent Christian state of Jerusalem—a figure that entirely demolishes the old charge that most crusaders were simply in search of new lands; for the majority at least, their dearest wish was a safe voyage back to their families and loved ones. In the Muslim world there was, in some quarters at least, shock and outrage at these events. Yet neither the caliph, nor the Seljuk sultan, dispatched an army to take on the new arrivals. Such neglect was vital to the Frankish settlers because it allowed them a breathing space to consolidate their conquest and to establish Catholic rule in the Holy Land and a presence that would endure for almost two hundred years.
“MAY GOD’S CURSE BE UPON THEM!”
Relations Between Muslims and Franks in the Levant, 1099–1187
In the decade after the capture of Jerusalem the Franks set up four states in the Levant: the kingdom of Jerusalem; the county of Tripoli (roughly equivalent in area to the modern Lebanon), the principality of Antioch (coastal Syria), and, inland, astride the River Euphrates, the county of Edessa. The religious and ethnic mix of these regions was bewildering: Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Maronites, Jacobites, Nestorians, Sunni Muslims, Shi’a Muslims, splinters within the Shi’a such as the Nizari (known as the Assassins), as well as the Jews and the Zoroastrians. The fact that the Franks imposed their authority on such a polyglot society was one of their most remarkable—and often ignored—achievements. The early years of the Latin East were marked by a series of sieges and battles as the newcomers sought to carve out their territories but, by 1109, with a couple of exceptions on the coast (Tyre did not fall until 1124 and Ascalon in 1153), they had established the full extent of their lands. A detailed narrative of these conquests is the purview of textbooks and, in most cases, gives the Frankish perspective; the writings of three contemporary Muslim writers will give us an alternative viewpoint. They may not provide a complete picture of the period—and they certainly contain comparable levels of bias and prejudice against their opponents—but they can offer a thought-provoking insight into the impact of the Christian invasions and a glimpse of the priorities and concerns of the Muslim population. Our three sources are Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami, an irate Damascene preacher; Usama ibn Munqidh, a melancholy old poet and warrior; and Ibn Jubayr, a perspicacious Spanish Muslim who visited the Levant in the course of a penitential pilgrimage.
THE IMPACT OF THE FIRST CRUSADE AND THE IDEA OF JIHAD
The caliph of Baghdad offered little assistance or direction to the Syrian Muslims at the time of the First Crusade, and this lack of leadership provoked outrage among those directly affected by the Christian invasion and sparked angry protests in verse (the conventional medium for such communication at the time):
The unbelief of the infidels has declared it lawful to inflict harm on Islam, causing prolonged lamentation for the faith.
What is right is null and void and what is forbidden is [now] made licit.
The sword is cutting and blood is spilt.
How many Muslim men have become booty?
And how many Muslim women’s inviolability has been plundered?
How many a mosque have they made into a church!
The cross has been set up in the mihrab [prayer niche].
The blood of the pig is suitable for it.
Korans have been burned under the guise of incense.
Do you not owe an obligation to God and Islam,
Defending thereby young men and old?
Respond to God: woe on you! Respond!1
In time, jihad became the driving force of Islam’s response to the events of 1099. Jihad means “struggle” and, as we shall see, it has numerous parallels with the concept of a crusade; there is, however, a fundamental difference in their origins. The crusade was invented by Pope Urban II in 1095, but the jihad was a part of the Islamic faith from its foundation in the seventh century. The notion of holy war is found in both the Koran and the Hadith, the sayings of Muhammad, and they both stress the virtues and celestial rewards of the jihad.2 One Hadith, for example, states that “The Gates of Paradise are under the shadow of the swords”—a sentiment comparable to the crusading idea of a holy warrior finding a place in heaven.
The jihad itself has two elements, the “greater” and the “lesser” jihad. The former (al-jihad al-akbar) is the struggle against an individual’s lower self; it is a personal fight against immorality and sin. This is of paramount spiritual value, and seen by many as a necessary precursor to the lesser jihad (al-jihad al-asghar). The latter is a perpetual obligation on all Muslims to strive to extend the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) until all mankind accepts the faith or submits to Muslim government. Non-Muslims within the House of Islam must be protected—unless they are polytheists—and should follow formally recognized religions such as Christianity and Judaism; these people must, however, pay a tax. Land outside the House of Islam is the House of War (Dar al-Harb) and there exists a permanent state of hostility between the two houses until the former is triumphant. Truces of up to ten years could be permitted.
AL-SULAMI’S CALL TO ARMS: A REVIVAL OF JIHAD?
Within this basic framework, however, some flexibility is possible. First, safe conducts enable trade and diplomacy to take place between Muslim and non-Muslim regions. Secondly, in the centuries before the crusades, political reality caused theorists to evolve an intermediate area between the House of War and the House of Islam: the House of Peace (Dar al-Sulh). This reflected a period of stability across Islamic lands that, at that time, stretched from Spain to central Asia. This is not to say that the concept of jihad disappeared entirely; in the mid-tenth century there was a period of holy war against the Byzantines in Asia Minor and numerous holy warriors (ghazis) flocked to join the fighting. By the time of the crusades, however, there is little evidence of the sermons and propaganda intended to incite Muslims to perform their religious duty: faction and disunity were rife, perfect conditions for the ideologically driven westerners to force their way to Jerusalem.
With no direction from their spiritual head in Baghdad the secular leaders of the Near East showed little enthusiasm for jihad. The crusaders, of course, represented a fusion of secular and spiritual interests and therein lay one of their great strengths. But in the Islamic world it took decades for this combination to form a shared agenda that would inspire Muslims to cohere in sufficient numbers to expel the Christians. It would be wrong to say that no one invoked the idea of jihad against the Franks immediately after the First Crusade, and among those who tried to stir his people was the Damascene legist al-Sulami, who preached around 1105–6. Parts of his treatise Kitab al-Jihad (The Book of Holy War) survive to give a razor-sharp image of the religious classes’ perception of recent events; the text is no less interesting for its similarities with crusader writings.3
Al-Sulami often spoke from the elaborately carved pulpit (minbar) in the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, a magnificent building that remains one of the splendors of medieval Islam. He used Hadith to remind people that the holy war was the duty of all Muslims; he then offered an acute overview of the problems of the Islamic world. To him, the failure to prosecute the jihad was one cause of the present situation; it was
a disgrace that such a state of affairs had been allowed to develop and now God punished such laziness and dereliction of duty through the breakup of the Muslim world. Al-Sulami also showed an awareness of the wider world when he (correctly) reminded his audience that the Christians had already captured Sicily and parts of Spain. Now, al-Sulami argued, the Christians perceived the divisions among the Levantine Muslims and set out eastward with Jerusalem as “their dearest wish”: an accurate appraisal of the crusaders’ primary target. He was also perceptive enough to describe the westerners as fighting a jihad themselves; in other words, he understood that religion was the crusaders’ dominant motive.
His speech was directed at the ruling military classes, the sultans: those men with a responsibility to protect and defend the people. He lambasted them for their inactivity: “drive away insignificant things and sluggishness and go to fight the jihad with your wealth and yourselves.” He regarded their present moral laxity as the cause of the crusader invasion: “the Franks acted as they did because of the Muslims’ blame of God. . . . He warned you with a punishment the like of which He did not warn you with before. . . . If only you would desist from sin! Otherwise He will make you fall into the hands of your enemy. . . . May God hasten your waking up from the sleep of neglect.”4
His appeal for action was couched in remarkably similar terms to contemporary calls for the crusade; in fact, it may be only a slight exaggeration to suggest that the removal of the word jihad and the modification of names would allow this to pass off as a crusade sermon. Al-Sulami’s emphasis on the duty to act, the defensive nature of the warfare, the need to protect one’s coreligionists, the divine opportunity granted by God, the prospect of heavenly rewards, and the terrible consequences of lax behavior were all concepts used by Christian preachers. There was, however, no question of one set of ideas feeding the other; the texts simply display the shared principles of a monotheistic faith working through the concept of a holy war to arrive at many of the same interpretations and justifications for such actions. Al-Sulami wrote:
Holy Warriors Page 5
