not much is known for certain about Roger's beloved queen: Norwich, Kingdom in the Sun, quotes the chronicler Alexander of Telese as having said that she was renowned for her piety and generosity to the poor (36). This, as Norwich comments, is just a customary tribute and says absolutely nothing about her.
Alfonso inspecting the city's fortifications for weaknesses: Historian Levi-Provencal called Alfonso's confinement a "prison dore" (a golden prison). A legend holds that Alfonso may have abused the hospitality of his host to examine the city's defenses and find out how he might one day capture it. Julian Montemayor, "Alphonse VI et Bernard d'Agen ou la consecration frus-tree," in Louis Cardaillac, ed., Tolede: XIF—XIIF: Musulmans, chretiens etjuifs: Le savoir et la tolerance (Paris: Autrement, 1991), 69.
the greatest agronomes of the age: Ibn Bassal and Ibn Wafid. See Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 89.
humiliated on returning from Toledo by a vassal of the murdered Sancho: See Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Our best recent source for the life of El Cid, the author comes squarely down on the side of this story being an invention of later myth-makers (118-19).
The Cid, like Robert Guiscard, was an opportunist: David Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings: Politics and Society in Islamic Spain, 1002—1086 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985): "[The Cid] acted less as a Christian attempting to wear down the Muslims than as a warrior exploiting all the methods of winning success current in his times" (262).
"How many rivals did I kill . . .": Quoted in Fletcher, El Cid, 35.
a protection racket: The characterization is not mine. See "Protection Rackets and Crusaders, c. 1000-1212" in Angus McKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000—1S00 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), chap. 1.
the endowment of monasteries as far afield as Cluny: Wasserstein, Party-Kings, notes that Alfonso gave Cluny an amazing 240 ounces of gold per annum (272).
Alfonso permitted the mosque to be transformed into a cathedral: The changeover was done while he was away from the city. Annoyed, he accepted the fait accompli. See McKay, Spain in the Middle Ages, 21.
the Muslim king of Granada: Abu Muhammad Abd Allah al-Ghassal.
"sent a great tremor through all al-Andalus": Quoted in Wasserstein, Party-Kings, 279.
these desert fanatics: H. T. Norris and P. Chalmeta, in "Al-Murabitun," Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 7:583—91, quote an assessment of the Almoravids by the great English historian Stanley Lane-Poole (The Moors in Spain [London, 1887]): "The reign of the Puritans had come, and without a Milton to soften its austerity" (181).
"I would rather be a camel-driver in Morocco . . .": Quoted in Fletcher, Moorish Spain, III.
Out of their union was born Elvira of Castile: Although all historians agree that Alfonso VI was her father, some are less sure who her mother was. Houben, Roger II, states explicitly that it was Zaida (35). Another recent biographer, Pierre Aube, in Roger IIde Sicile: Un Normand en Mediterranee (Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2001), gives only her paternity (112). Some maintain, based on the chronicles from Alfonso's reign, that Zaida and Alfonso fell in love. See Bernhard Whishaw and Ellen M. Whishaw, Arabic Spain: Sidelights on Her History and Art (London: John Murray, 1912), 256.
Aristotle mattered most: See Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages (New York: Harcourt, 2003), 78—84.
Gerard of Cremona: A recent work on the translators of Toledo, particularly useful for its biographical sketches of more than a dozen of them, is Clara Foz, Le Traducteur, L'Eglise et le Roi (Ottawa: Universite d'Ottawa, 1998). Foz maintains that there were two main periods: the twelfth-century sponsored by the Church, and the thirteenth, by King Alfonso X the Wise. Also useful: Danielle Jacquart, "L'ecole des traducteurs," in Cardillac, Tolede, 177-91.
later chroniclers set down its gist: Only one, Fulcher of Chartres, actually heard the speech.
"The defenders fled along the walls . . .": The anonymous chronicle of the First Crusade known as Gesta Francorum (Deeds of the Franks) is quoted in August C. Krey, The First Crusade:
The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958), 256.
"After a very great and cruel slaughter of Saracens . . .": Albert of Aachen, Historia Hi-erosolymitana, quoted in Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), 317. As its subtitle indicates, this work incorporates much of the recent scholarship about this crusade. It is now believed, for example, that not all of the population of Jerusalem met their deaths on that horrible day, as was previously thought.
thousands who had been butchered were carted outside the fortifications: Asbridge, First Crusade, 320.
massacring Jews they encountered en route: According to Asbridge, the notion that the perpetrators were uncontrolled peasant mobs, as historians have long insisted, is no longer sustainable. Several noblemen led these pogroms, nost notably Emicho, count of Leiningen, and Count Hartmann of Dillingen. But why this violence? Asbridge, First Crusade, again: "Characterising Muslims, the expedition's projected enemies, as a sub-human species, the pope harnessed society's inclination to define itself in contrast to an alien 'other.' But tapping into this innate well-pool of discrimination and prejudice was akin to opening Pandora's Box. A potentially uncontrollable torrent of racial and religious intolerance was unleashed" (85). Further, Urban and the popular preachers framed the whole enterprise as a war to punish Islam for imagined crimes against Christendom. This warping of the reality—avenging slights where none existed—was easily transferred onto the "crimes" supposedly committed by Judaism toward Christianity, such as deicide. In 1096, then, the malevolent genie got out of the bottle.
exalted peasants and monks: To be fair, although the great mass of the People's Crusade was not unlike a mob, there were knights and foot soldiers among them, led by one Walter Sansavoir. Still, in comparison to the second wave of crusaders, they were little more than a rabble. They caused chaos as they marched through Hungary and the Balkans since, in their disorganization, the only way to provision themselves was by looting.
the toughened knights from northern France: The concept of knighthood at this time was rudimentary. The ethic of chivalry and the elaborate knightly ceremonial arose much later. "Warrior who could afford armor, horse, and grooms" might be a more accurate way of describing these "knights." Still, the leaders of this crusade were indisputably grandees: Raymond of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse; Duke Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of Boulogne (Godfrey's brother), Bohemond of Taranto, Tancred of Hauteville (Bohemond's nephew), Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders, Stephen of Blois.
he had barely managed to turn back Robert Guiscard: Comnenus, it will be remembered, had to fight Robert Guiscard in the Balkans in the early 1080s. When Guiscard was called back to Italy to quell revolts, it was Bohemond of Taranto and Sichelgaita who prosecuted the war against the Byzantines. Now this same Bohemond was in Constantinople, pledging his allegiance to the basileus.
Baldwin of Boulogne: He seems to have been a nasty piece of work, joining the crusade at the very last minute, then striking off on his own the moment he saw a chance at carving out a kingdom for himself. He took no part in the siege of Antioch or the campaign into Palestine, which after all was the whole point of the exercise. He later became king of Jerusalem, the same king who shabbily discarded Roger II's mother, Adelaide.
the principals stripped to the waist in a public embrace: Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 1, The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jersualem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 205.
the lance that had pierced the side of Jesus' body: The so-called Holy Lance was discovered in a church of Antioch. Asbridge, First Crusade, is commendably clear on the taking of Antioch (153-240).
the Frank
ish count of Edessa allied with the emir of Mosul: See Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, trans. Jon Rothschild (London: Al Saqi, 1984), 72. Maalouf nicely underlines the strangeness of these alliances, which were formed only a decade or so after the atrocities of the First Crusade.
according to both Christian and Muslim chroniclers: The event is well documented. See Asbridge, First Crusade: "Some, desperate to find money wherever they could, 'ripped up the bodies of the [Muslim] dead, because they used to find coins hidden in their entrails.' Others took more savage steps: 'Here our men suffered from excessive hunger. I shudder to say that many of our men, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead. These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted.' Another account that is perhaps more disturbing asserted that, 'food shortage became so acute that the Christians ate with gusto many rotten Saracen bodies which they had pitched into the swamps three weeks before. This spectacle disgusted as many crusaders as it did strangers' " (274).
CHAPTER 6: HATTIN 1187
a behemoth rising 360 meters: The Hospitalers took over Marqab (also Margat) in 1186, one year prior to Hattin. See Hugh Kennedy, Crusader Castles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 163. Tim Mackintosh-Smith, in his witty and acerbic Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah (London: Picador, 2001), says about Marqab: "The Hospitallers' basalt command-centre seems unreasonably massive and fascistical . . . a piece of sheer skinhead effrontery" (179).
a large statue of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad . . . the second homes of the rich and well connected: The area around Latakia and Tartus is the power base of the Assad family, the majority of its inhabitants being Alawis, a split-off movement of shia Islam to which the Assads and many of their Baathist colleagues belong. The beliefs of the Alawis are little understood; their knowledge transmitted through the generations by a select elite known as the "Babs," or Doors.
whence, it was once thought, the name hashishi, or Assassin: The epithet "hash-eater" or "hash-smoker" is now thought to be a sunni insult about the Nizaris, whom they thought to be slightly insane or touched in the head. Perhaps an equivalent would be calling someone a "stoner" or a "space cadet." Bernard Lewis, in The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Basic Books, 1968), traces the outlines of the myth, then debunks the fond stories of hash parties in the Jebel Ansariye (11—12).
Count Raymond of Tripoli met a similar fate at the hands of the Assassins: The Count Raymond in question was the father of Count Raymond III of Tripoli who played a large role in the events at Hattin.
"To shed the blood of a heretic . . .": A Persian text that appeared in a scholarly paper published by the University of Tabriz, quoted in Lewis, Assassins, 48.
The Assassins possessed a dozen or so castles there: The descendants of the Assassins, the Ismailis under the Aga Khan, are now restoring some of these magnificent castles. They may be viewed online at the website of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture: www.akdn.org/agency/ aktc_hcsp.html.
a natural lozenge-shaped hill that stretches fifty-five meters into the air: Ross Burns, Monuments of Syria: An Historical Guide (London: LB. Tauris, 1992), 32.
"In less than an hour": Ibn al-Qalanisi, from his appendix to The History of Damascus (sometimes called The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades), the most valuable Arabic source for the first half of the twelfth century. See Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. E.J. Costello (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 39.
When he sobered up three weeks later: The tale is well known, but in my reading only Amin Maalouf, in his invaluable Crusades Through Arab Eyes, hazards a guess at the duration of the hangover (95).
a valley known as the Horns Gap: To westerners, of course. It is also called Buqeia.
Husn al-Akrad, Fortress of the Kurds: Warwick Bell, Syria: A Historical and Architectural Guide (Essex: Scorpion, 1994), 93. Bell quotes T. E. Lawrence on the Krak: "perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world." In the surrounding valleys there is still a large Christian population.
nine thousand lordships and manors in the west: Terence Wise, The Knights of Christ (Oxford: Osprey, 1984), 6.
that could be redeemed, for a fee, in Outremer: The same system held true for travel within Europe.
he could not resist cuckold stories: Who can? Here is one of Usamah's best: "One day [a] Frank [of Nablus] went home and found a man with his wife in the same bed. He asked him, 'What could have made thee enter into my wife's room?' The man replied, 'I was tired, so I went into rest.' 'But how,' asked he, 'didst thou get into my bed?' The other replied, T found a bed that was spread, so I slept in it.' But said he, 'My wife was sleeping together with thee!' The other replied, 'Well, the bed is hers. How could I therefore have prevented her from using her own bed?' 'By the truth of my religion,' said the husband, 'if thou shouldst do it again, thou and I would have a quarrel.' Such was for the Frank the entire expression of his disapproval and the limit of his jealousy." Usamah ibn Munqidh, An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh, trans. Philip K. Hitti (1929; New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 165.
poulains ("children" or "kids"): The modern French word means "colts" or "foals," which would make the heroes of the First Crusade stallions. For a discussion of the term, see M. R. Morgan, The Chronicle of Ernoul and the Continuations of William of Tyre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 194—95.
Everyone who is a fresh emigrant from the Frankish lands: Ibn Munqidh, An Arab-Syrian Gentleman, 163—64.
eight upper-case Crusades: They are, with the major incidents: First (1095—99), in which crusaders capture Jerusalem; Second (1146-48), in which crusaders fail before Damascus; Third (1187—93), in which Richard Lionheart fails to recapture Jerusalem, and Frederick Barbarossa drowns en route to the Levant; Fourth (1202—04), in which crusaders sack Constantinople; Fifth (1217-21), in which crusaders are defeated before Damietta, Egypt; Sixth (1223-29), in which a temporary cession of Jerusalem to Frederick II is negotiated; Seventh (1245-50), in which Louis IX is defeated at Mansurah, Egypt, taken captive, then ransomed; and Eighth (1263-70), in which Edward of England negotiates a truce for the Latins of Outremer, and Louis IX dies off Tunis.
"This dreadful new military order": Quoted in Desmond Seward, The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders (London: Penguin, 1995), 36.
a brother would read aloud from the Books of Joshua: Seward, Monks of War, 38-40.
"It is useless indeed for us to attack exterior enemies . . .": Quoted in Piers Paul Read, The Templars (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 105.
The Quran has thirty-five verses: Jean Flori, Guerre sainte, jihad, croisade: Violence et religion dans le christianisme et I'islam (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 72. Flori counts only those with the root jhd. His discussion of the origins and elaboration of the doctrine of jihad is throughgoing and dispassionate (71-113). In my reading I have been more than once surprised by the willingness on the part of otherwise scrupulous western historians to settle for profoundly partisan generalizations about jihad. For the context of jihad in eleventh-century Outremer, I have relied on Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1999), 89-170; Robert Irwin, "Islam and the Crusades; 1096—1699," in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 223—33.
a short-lived shia dynasty of Aleppo: The Hamdanids, whose most famous ruler was Sayf al-Dawla (ruled 944—67).
mujahadeen or ghaii: The former is a volunteer for jihad—it has been transliterated in any number of ways and, recently, has been used to refer to almost any armed Muslim with a cause to defend. For our purposes, it means a volunteer for an officially sanctioned jihad. A ghazi is a "raider," generally understood as one at the borders of the dar al-Islam who launches religious sorties in
to the lands of the infidel. The Byzantine border warriors on the other side, often with a similar religious gloss, were known as akritai. Ghazi often grouped themselves in a ribat, the type of monastic fortress outpost from which the Almoravids drew their name. It is not too much of a stretch to consider the Krak des Chevaliers as the Christian equivalent of a ribat.
two revivalists—one each from Damascus and Aleppo: The Damascene qadi was Abu Saad al-Harawi, who arrived in Baghdad in August 1099, just weeks after the crusader sack of Jerusalem. His mission is nicely dramatized in the prologue to Maalouf's Crusade Through Arab Eyes. Al-Harawi became a prominent sunni qadi in Iraq and was thus a target of the Assasssins. They got to him in 1124 in Hamadan, in what is now Iran. (Hamadan is also the burial place of Avicenna.) The Aleppan Abdu Fadl Ibn al-Khashab caused a pro-jihad riot in Baghdad in IIII. On the death of Ridwan, the leader of Aleppo, in n 13, al-Khashab purged the city of his Assassin allies, killing more than two hundred of them, thereby earning the undying enmity of the survivors. Al-Khashab was also instrumental in bringing in the Turcoman il-Ghazi to rule the city and was present, exhorting the troops to jihad, at the Field of Blood. He was finally murdered by the Assassins in 1123.
at the town of Tikrit on the Tigris: Tikrit is latterly famous as the hometown of Saddam Hussein, who fully exploited his coincidental link with Saladin for propaganda purposes.
"The villages and towns are deserted . . .": From "Letter 257" of St. Bernard in Patrologie Latine, t. 182, col. 447, cited by Andre Vauchez, "Saint Bernard, un predicateur irresistible," in Robert Delort, ed., Les croisades (Paris: Seuil, 1988), 46-47.
Dorylaeum: Thought to be present-day Eskisehir, Turkey, in what was the province of Phrygia. The site of Second Crusade's devastating defeat was, ironically, the same battlefield on which the First Crusaders had routed the Rum Seljuks. Mention of the battle of Dorylaeum usually refers to the earlier encounter.
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