The Crusader States

by Malcolm Barber

  The pressures experienced by the crusaders in northern Syria could all too easily be repeated elsewhere. Raymond of Aguilers is one of several writers to describe how starvation gripped the crusaders’ camp during the winter of 1097–8, a situation exacerbated on the kalends of January (1 January 1098), when there was a frightening earth tremor.33 The twelfth century was a particularly active period for earthquakes in this region, culminating in May 1202, when, according to Philip of Plessis, master of the Temple, ‘we suffered the sort of earthquakes not seen since the creation of the world’.34 In the twenty years between 1097 and 1117, Fulcher of Chartres recorded six separate earthquakes, including the most serious in 1114, which, although the epicentre appears to have been at Marash, which was destroyed, was strong enough to damage buildings in Antioch, 60 miles to the south.35 Equal in severity to that of 1202 was the Syrian earthquake of 29 June 1170, which brought down the cathedral of St Peter in Antioch, as well as the walls of the city, and ruined many of the great castles of the military orders in the county of Tripoli. Muslim cities were similarly struck, especially Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Baalbek. Tremors were felt as far south as Jerusalem and as far north and east as the Jacobite monastery of Mar Hanania, near Mardin, over 100 miles east of Edessa. Aftershocks continued for three to four months.36

  The earthquakes of August and November 1114 had been preceded in the spring by locusts, which, says Walter, the chancellor of Antioch between c.1114 and c.1122, ‘stole nearly all the things necessary to feed the farmers of Syria. Then they were dispersed partly by crawling along the ground, partly through the air, and they afflicted almost the whole region of the eastern Christians to the same devastating effect.’37 It was not only crops that were vulnerable. Ambroise, the Norman poet who took part in the Third Crusade, describes the afflictions of King Richard's army in August 1191. Encamped south of Haifa, they were disturbed during the night by an ‘attack from stinging worms and tarantulas which harassed them greatly, stinging the pilgrims who would at once swell up’.38

  While earthquakes were prevalent in the north, crossing the desert lands south of the kingdom of Jerusalem presented its own hazards. In 1167, Shirkuh, one of the most important generals of Nur al-Din, ruler of Aleppo and Damascus, was caught in a terrible sandstorm while trying to lead an army into Egypt. William of Tyre witnessed such phenomena for himself.

  Particles of sand raised aloft swirled through the air like clouds or dense fog. The men dared not open their mouths to speak to one another, nor could they keep their eyes open. Dismounting from their horses, they lay prostrate clinging to the ground, their hands pressed into the sand as far as possible, lest they be swept aloft by the violence of the whirlwind and again dashed to the ground. For in that desert waves of sand like those of the sea are wont to rise and fall as in a tempest, a fact that renders the crossing of these perilous reaches not less dangerous than sailing over the sea.39

  The crusaders were well aware that they could do nothing to change the basic facts of topography and climate, and usually attributed natural disasters to God's will, a scourging inflicted as punishment for riotous living and plundering, as Raymond of Aguilers put it.40 However, human geography presented both different problems and new opportunities, for this was a populous and diverse land, dominated by ancient cities and ports, inhabited by many races, and deeply marked by the impact of three great religions and their offshoots. A web of communications followed the coast, crossed the mountain passes and the inland valleys, and spread out across the plains and the desert.41

  The remains of the past confronted them at every turn.42 Latakia was an important port, but it had seen better days. Ralph of Caen, describing Tancred's siege of 1101–2, was very impressed.

  It could be seen from the ruins that this city had once been noble, having churches, a large population, riches, towers, palaces, theatres and all of the other things which make a place great. Aside from Antioch, no other city had within its circuit such great signs of ancient nobility. The multiple series of columns, aqueducts which ran over rough terrain, towers built toward the heavens, statues lying around in fitting places, all of which were well constructed from precious materials. All of these noteworthy works, still present after so much time and so many ravages, provide evidence of its past from its present, its former state from its destroyed remains, and its large population from its current state of abandonment.43

  In 1121, pursuing the Muslims across the Jordan, King Baldwin II destroyed a fortress built the previous year by Tughtigin, atabeg of Damascus, within the ruins of the second-century Roman city of Jerash (see plate 4). Fulcher of Chartres describes it as ‘marvellously and gloriously founded upon a strong site in ancient times’.44 Similar sights could be found at Sidon and Gibelet or Jubail (the Greek Byblos), and even in the thirteenth century the past continued to impinge. When the Templars began to dig the foundations of their great new castle at ‘Atlit, on a promontory south of Haifa, in 1217 and 1218, they uncovered ancient walls and found coinage of a type quite unknown to contemporaries.45 There were equally impressive remains in the south. When, in 1149–50, Baldwin III sought to rebuild Gaza, on the coast below Ascalon, he encountered a site too large for him to fortify in its entirety. It had been, says William of Tyre, one of the five cities of the Philistines. ‘It was celebrated for its buildings, and many handsome churches and spacious houses of marble and huge stones, though now in ruins, still gave splendid evidence of its ancient glory. Many reservoirs and wells of living water also still remained.’46

  At Tyre, Archbishop William set down this historical context. At the beginning of book 13 of his chronicle, he describes what he considers to be the most important characteristics of the place he designates ‘the metropolis of all Phoenicia’. According to Justinian's great law code, the Digest, published in 533, Tyre held a special legal position within the Roman empire, having been granted ‘Italian rights’ as a reward for its loyalty. Its origins, however, were much earlier. Drawing on his knowledge of Solinus and Ovid, William claims that it had belonged to King Agenor and his children, Europa, Cadmus and Phoenix, from the last of whom, ‘as the Phoenicians claim, that the whole region derives its name’. Initially it had had two names: Sor, which was Hebrew; and Tyre, Greek in origin, from its foundation by Tyrus, the seventh son of Japhet, the son of Noah. It was already famous ‘in early times’, as can be seen from Old Testament references in Ezekiel and Isaiah, the stories told of the relations between Hiram, king of Tyre, and Solomon in the Antiquities of Josephus, the first-century AD Jewish historian, and the account of the great faith of the Canaanite woman from the city given in chapter 15 of Matthew and prophesied in Psalm 45. As presented by the archbishop, therefore, Tyre can be seen as a model of the renowned cities of the region: founded in legend, integrated into biblical history, and an established political and economic entity in the Hebrew, Greek and Roman worlds.47

  William calls this region ‘Syria’. It is, he says, a name used ‘sometimes in a broad sense as applying to the whole province, and again in a more limited way to designate only a part of the same’. Greater Syria extended from the Tigris to Egypt and from Cilicia to the Red Sea. It was divided into twelve provinces: Mesopotamia, lying between the Tigris and the Euphrates; Coelesyria, which includes Antioch; the two Cilicias; Phoenicia, now divided between Phoenicia Maritima, the metropolis of which is Tyre, and Phoenicia Libania, the capital of which is Damascus; the two Arabias, centred on Bostrum and Petra respectively; the three Palestines, Jerusalem, capital of Judea, maritime Caesarea and Scythopolis, also called Bethsan (Baisan); and, finally, the last province, Idumea, extending towards Egypt.

  While there was nobody on the First Crusade with William's education and access to books, nevertheless the participants had answered Urban's call because at one level or another they understood the meaning of what the pope had described as ‘our lands’, that is, they adhered to the distinctly Latin Christian interpretation of the region's history. They knew, too, however, that they were no
t entering a land of neat administrative divisions, but one soaked in the blood of past conflicts to an extent unparalleled in the known world. The geopolitics of the Middle East had determined that Syria was a frontier region across which powers whose epicentres were far to the west or the east fought out their many wars. In the late tenth century, al-Muqaddasi praised Syria as a place of glorious renown, but nevertheless presented its inhabitants as victims of outsiders, corrupted by the circumstances that trapped them. ‘But the people live ever in terror of the Byzantines, almost as though they were in a land of exile, for their frontiers are continuously ravaged, and their fortresses again and again destroyed. Nor are the Syrians the equals of the Persians in either science, religion or intelligence; some have become apostates, while others pay tribute to the infidels, thus setting obedience to created man before obedience to the Lord of Heaven. The populace, too, is ignorant and seditious, and the Syrian people show neither zeal for the Holy War, nor honour to those who fight against the infidel.’48

  These conflicts had deep roots. Persian expansion into Asia Minor in the fifth century BC led to clashes with the Greeks; the ultimate response was the invasion of Alexander of Macedon who, in 337 BC, eliminated the Archaemenid rulers of Persia. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his empire was carved up by his generals. One of them, Seleucus, established Seleucia Pieria in Cilicia and founded, among other cities, Antioch, Apamea and Latakia. Antioch became a key centre both because of its strategic and commercial position and because it was consciously created as a Hellenistic centre within an oriental setting. With Roman expansion into the region in the first century BC, it developed into a prosperous city, particularly favoured by Augustus (27 BC–AD 14).49 Persia, however, remained a threat, and Armenia, Syria and Palestine were integrated into a Roman defensive system that lasted in various forms until the Muslim conquests of the seventh century.

  Muhammad's revelations transformed this world. Until the early seventh century, the framework of the ancient order had survived. The Byzantines, secure in their great capital of Constantinople on the Bosphorus, maintained that they were the true heirs of the Romans, despite the collapse of the empire in the West in the fourth and fifth centuries. They continued to see other mighty powers as their main rivals, most obviously the Persians, based at Ctesiphon on the Tigris. When these two giants clashed they took little account of the other peoples of the Middle East. But Muhammad had appeared at an opportune moment. Worn down by the coruscating wars of the first three decades of the seventh century, neither the Byzantines nor the Persians were ready to face a new and unforeseen challenge. During the 620s, Muhammad overcame political and military opponents in the Arabian peninsula and convinced a large proportion of the population that he was, as he had claimed, the prophet chosen by God as the vehicle for the final revelation. After his death in 632, his successors, driven by what had become a dynamic new religion, committed themselves to an unprecedented territorial expansion. Antioch, which Emperor Heraclius had won back from the Persians in 628 and thereafter used as his eastern base, succumbed soon after the main Byzantine army was defeated at Yarmuk in 636. Heraclius retreated to Constantinople, never to return.

  Within a century, the Muslims had encompassed Syria, Palestine and Egypt, the entire southern shore of the Mediterranean, and most of the Iberian peninsula. Significantly, these new conquests included the city of Jerusalem, taken in 637, and seen as the third great religious centre of the Islamic world after Mecca and Medina. The Byzantine empire was deeply wounded and later twice had to fight off determined attempts to take Constantinople itself, but at least it survived; for the old Persian empire, the rise of Islam was fatal. Westward expansion was matched by eastern conquests, initiated by the defeat of the Persians at al-Qadisiyah in 637. When the last shah was killed by his own men in 651, the way was open to central Asia. Historians have long been divided about the nature of the impact of Islam upon the medieval West, sometimes arriving at diametrically opposite conclusions about the economic and political effects of the division of the great inland sea the Romans had seen as their own. It is, though, indisputable that the creation and expansion of this new religious force were both a threat and a challenge to a world that, since the late fourth century, had been dominated by Christianity, and the long-term effects were as profound as the replacement of Greece by Rome and Rome by the Germans.

  The crusaders, therefore, represented yet another outside invader of a region long fought over by Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs, all of whom had left their cultural imprint. They were not there, however, to admire the remnants of Antioch's agora or its great colonnaded street; they had come, in the pope's mind at least, to rescue their co-believers from Turkish oppression and to liberate the holy places from the control of the infidel. For them, the most important feature of Antioch's history was its formative role in the establishment of Christianity as a distinct religion after the martyrdom of Stephen in Jerusalem in AD 34 or 36. As the author of the Gesta saw it, Antioch was the city of ‘the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles’.50 For the crusaders, Peter's presence there in the middle of the first century meant that he was the first bishop of the Church, a view reinforced by contemporary papal thinking which, basing itself on the Gospel of Matthew (16: 18), believed to have been written there, stressed the importance of the see of St Peter as the rock upon which the Church was founded.51 William of Tyre saw it as fundamental to the adoption of Christianity. ‘In this city the first gathering of the faithful was held and here also the name of Christians was adopted. Before this time, those who followed the teachings of Christ were called Nazarenes. Afterwards, by authority of that synod, all the faithful were known as Christians, a name derived from that of Christ. This city voluntarily and eagerly received the preaching of the apostle and was converted as one body to the Christian faith. She was the first to embrace and to teach the Name which, like a precious anointment, diffuses its fragrance far and wide.’52

  While both religious feeling and strategic necessity made it inconceivable that the crusaders would ignore Antioch, their ultimate goal was Jerusalem, ‘the Holy City beloved of God’, as William of Tyre described it. In William's history, the most salient points were its foundation by David (which took place in c.1000 BC), its prophesied destruction by the Romans (in AD 70), and its rebuilding on top of the hill by Hadrian (in AD 135 as Aelia Capitolina), when its new walls encompassed the sites of the Passion and the Resurrection.53 As William's emphasis shows, it was its association with the events of the Crucifixion and as the place from which the Apostles began their mission that mattered most to the crusaders.54 Like the other cities of the region, it had been subject to a whole succession of invaders, including the Babylonians in the sixth century BC and the Greeks and the successors of Alexander. Although the Maccabean revolt of 168 BC inspired a Jewish revival, in 63 BC Jerusalem was conquered by Pompey and thereafter ruled by Rome, albeit sometimes through client kings such as Herod the Great (37–34 BC). It only became important in the Christian Church as a whole after the penetration of Christianity into imperial circles under Constantine, particularly after Helena, Constantine's mother, visited the city in AD 326. Even then it did not become one of the great patriarchates of the Church until 451.55 It is not surprising that, during the twelfth century, the ecclesiastical rivalry between Antioch and Jerusalem remained acute.

  All the major accounts of Urban II's speech at Clermont stress the pope's call to help their persecuted eastern brethren, accompanied by more or less lurid descriptions of what the Turks were doing to them. Baldric, prior and then abbot of Saint-Pierre-de-Bourgueil (west of Tours in the Loire region), before his promotion to the archbishopric of Dol in 1107, who was present at Clermont, wrote in c.1108 that the pope had spoken of the ‘dreadful tribulations’ of the Christians, who are ‘scourged, oppressed and injured in Jerusalem and Antioch and other cities along the eastern coastline’.56 However, while these brethren may indeed all have been ‘our brothers, members of Christ's
body’, in practice they were made up of a heterogeneous collection of different Churches and races. The great earthquake of 1114 in Antioch, acknowledged Walter the Chancellor, affected ‘Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, strangers and pilgrims’,57 while the pilgrim John of Würzburg, visiting Jerusalem in c.1165, felt unable to give an account of the ‘people of every race and tongue’ he found there, ranging as they did, he claimed, from Greeks to Indians.58

  By ‘Greeks’ the crusaders meant members of the Orthodox Church, adhering to the tenets of the faith as set down at the council of Chalcedon in 451. After the fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs in 638, these were called Melkites; some spoke Greek and used it as their liturgical language, but others spoke Arabic and used Syriac as their liturgical language, a distinction largely based on education and class.59 Under Muslim rule these communities had followed their own liturgies and retained their traditional legal forms, and they continued to do this even after the crusader conquest, despite a diminution in the numbers of patriarchal clergy in Jerusalem. Moreover, although after 1099 a Latin hierarchy replaced them, so that the Greek patriarchs of Jerusalem spent most of their time in exile, the powerful monastic tradition that they represented still commanded respect, providing a continuous link to the anchorites and early monastic communities, which went back to the third century.60 The Orthodox were present throughout the crusader lands, in all the coastal cities, in the major centres like Antioch, Edessa and Jerusalem, and in smaller communities in places like the south-eastern Transjordan or in the scattered monasteries sought out by John Phocas in the 1180s (see plate 5).