The Crusader States

by Malcolm Barber

  Further pressure was evidently needed and at the end of the year the Franks decided to destroy the orchards around Ascalon in the hope of undermining the city's economic base. These orchards were valuable to the town since the sandy soil in the immediate vicinity was unsuitable for agriculture, although the Egyptian government regarded Ascalon as sufficiently important to send troops and subsidies on a regular basis. Given the difficulties such an action entailed, both in the danger of attack from Christian ships and in the problems of making safe anchorage along a windswept coast, this shows the high priority given to the town in Cairo and suggests that it was unlikely that the Franks could bring it down through an economic blockade. William of Tyre's belief that, if Ascalon fell, Egypt would be open to invasion was apparently shared in Cairo.

  If William of Tyre is correct, the destruction of the orchards was not initially intended to be a full-scale attack, but the terror of the inhabitants persuaded the Christian leaders that the town could be taken and, on 25 January 1153, they encamped around the walls. The seriousness of the operation can be seen by the presence of the True Cross and by the level of participation. The leading prelates and secular nobles and the heads of the military orders were present, as well as newcomers from the West such as Reynald of Châtillon, a younger son of Hervé II, lord of Donzy, about 25 miles north of Nevers in central France, who served for pay. A fleet of fifteen warships, commanded by Gerard of Sidon, was deployed to blockade the town, while scouts were posted around Gaza in case the Egyptians sent a relief force by land.

  Preparations on this scale were fully justified, despite the isolation of the town. The walls and towers were kept in good order and the Greater Gate, facing east, was protected by a series of bent entrances which precluded direct assault. Outworks in the form of embankments prevented direct access to the walls. Although Ascalon had no natural springs, it was well supplied with water by wells and cisterns. As William of Tyre points out, it had resisted all attempts to take it for fifty years. Not surprisingly, after two months’ hard fighting the besiegers had made no progress, so the additional forces provided by the arrival of ships from the West in the annual spring crossing were very welcome. Ships were purchased so that their timbers could be used to construct a siege engine and mangonels, and the extra forces enabled them to clear the ground so that the engine could be brought close to the walls. This occurred around Easter, which fell on 19 April, and more or less coincided with the murder of Ibn al-Salar, the Egyptian vizier, in Cairo. Apparently resentment at his autocratic rule had arisen among the emirs and one of them, his stepson, al-Abbas, had assassinated him in his bed.5 As there had not been an adult caliph since 1149, the occurrence of a struggle for control of the vizirate at the same time that Ascalon was under siege can only have helped the Christian cause.6

  In fact, the instability of the Egyptian government did not prevent the sailing of the fleet that Ibn al-Salar had been organising to relieve the town. In early June, seventy galleys accompanied by transports loaded with supplies arrived at Ascalon, and soon drove off Gerard of Sidon's squadron.7 This revived the spirits of the defenders, who determined to destroy the siege engine, piling up debris in the gap between the engine and the wall and setting it alight. However, a strong easterly wind blew up and the fire was driven against the wall, causing a whole section to crumble during the night and leaving a breach through which the Christians could enter. The Templars under their new master, Bernard of Tremelay, were manning that sector and immediately rushed into the town. William of Tyre alleges that they then prevented others from entering so that they could claim all the spoils, but more probable are some western accounts, apparently based on eyewitnesses, which say that the rest of the army was slow to follow, leaving the Templars isolated.8 When the defenders realised they were faced with only about forty knights, they slaughtered them, while at the same time shoring up the breach with large beams derived from the fleet. The disaster was compounded by the abandonment of the siege engine, which had been damaged by falling masonry when the wall collapsed. Triumphant at their success, the Muslims hung the bodies of the dead Templars from the walls, taunting the besiegers with their failure.9

  This was a huge setback after five months of toil, expense and many deaths. When the Christian leaders held a conference, it became clear that opinion was divided between those who were ready to abandon the siege, which included most of the nobility and even the king himself, and those who wanted to persevere, led by Patriarch Fulcher and Raymond du Puy, master of the Hospital. In the end they decided to carry on and the assault that followed was so furious that the defenders felt obliged to call for a truce during which the bodies of the dead of both sides could be exchanged. This was the beginning of the end for the inhabitants, overcome by the extent of their losses at a time when there was little prospect of any further outside help. Negotiations followed and the populace was allowed to leave. Baldwin provided an escort as far as al-Arish, but after this they were suddenly attacked by a Turk called Nocquinus, who had actually been involved in the defence of the city but who now seized his opportunity to rob the refugees of all their possessions, leaving them, William says, ‘wandering in destitution’.10

  The taking of Ascalon had involved a massive effort extended over seven months, which had included a reverse so serious that the siege had almost been abandoned. The Christians entered the town on 22 August, where, following the True Cross, they processed to the principal mosque, later consecrated as the church of St Paul.11 Patriarch Fulcher ordained Absalom, a canon of the Holy Sepulchre, as bishop, and established prebends to support a chapter of canons, although the protests of Gerald, bishop of Bethlehem, and of his successor, Ralph, eventually led Pope Hadrian IV to overturn the appointment of the bishop on the grounds that the town appertained to the see of Bethlehem.12 Baldwin assigned a series of fiefs, some of which he sold, and the following year appointed his brother Amalric as count of Ascalon as well as Jaffa. William of Tyre says that these actions were taken ‘with the advice of his mother’, a phrase that suggests that, despite the events of the previous year, Melisende retained at least some influence in royal government.13

  For the Egyptians, the fall of Ascalon was compounded by the struggle for the control of the government in Cairo. After al-Abbas had seized power, his son, Nasir al-Din, murdered the caliph, replacing him with his five-year-old son, al-Fa'iz, but news of the caliph's death leaked out before they had time to consolidate their position, and they found themselves facing an uprising. They decided to flee from Cairo and seek help from Nur al-Din, enabling Tala'i ‘ibn Russuk, governor of Middle Egypt, to take over the vizirate. In early June 1154, as they hurried across the desert towards Damascus, they were ambushed by the Franks, who killed al-Abbas and captured Nasir al-Din.14 William of Tyre says that Nasir was held by the Templars, now the established power south of Ascalon, where they were able to operate from their base at Gaza. Nasir allegedly expressed an interest in converting to Christianity, but when the opportunity arose the Templars sold him to the Egyptians for 60,000 gold pieces. Taken back to Cairo in an iron cage, he was torn to pieces by the populace.15

  This incident emphasised the value of the capture of Ascalon, for it enabled the Franks to patrol the desert south of the kingdom and often provided tangible returns in the form of plunder from caravans. For Baldwin, however, it meant much more, for it opened the possibility of conquering Egypt itself. For the king, this was a very serious project. In a lost diploma, which can be dated between 1157 and 1159, the king granted Joscelin Pisellus an anticipatory fief of 100 knights in Egypt after its conquest. Joscelin must have been one of Baldwin's supporters in the civil war of 1152, since he first appears as a member of the king's inner circle, the homines regis, in April 1152. The trust placed in him can be seen in his role as one of the royal envoys sent to negotiate with the Byzantine emperor, Manuel, in 1157 and 1159.16

  A fief worth 100 knights would have been a huge step up for Joscelin, who held only a money fief of 1,2
00 Saracen hypereroi drawn on the cathena (port dues) at Acre, for which he owed a mere two knights. In contrast, in the 1260s, the jurist John of Ibelin reckoned a noble holding lands owing service of 100 knights was one of the four great barons of the kingdom.17 Nothing like that was available in the kingdom in the 1150s, although the king had also promised Joscelin the next vacant fief worth twenty knights. In fact, even a fief of this size was highly unlikely to materialise, for new opportunities were increasingly rare after the mid-century. The conquest of Egypt therefore held a strong attraction for a kingdom that needed more manpower but had insufficient resources to sustain it. In this context, Baldwin's agreement with Pisa in 1156 to embargo all arms and ship-building materials to Egypt gains added significance, and lends credibility to the view that Baldwin III was hoping to convince Manuel to ally with the crusader states in order to overcome Nur al-Din and to conquer Egypt.18

  The main source for the siege and fall of Ascalon is the vivid account of William of Tyre, who, as later in his narrative, demonstrates his great skill at retelling the stories of the participants as if he himself had actually witnessed the events.19 Nevertheless, he attributes the fall to divine mercy in a manner that he by no means applies consistently throughout his work, and he seems to be trying to balance the failure at Damascus with the success at Ascalon, both of which he links to the will of God in an attempt to counter the view commonly held in the West that the Franks in Palestine had betrayed the Christian cause for their own selfish and material ends.20 Indeed, William had already set out to show that God intended these Christians should hold Jerusalem, even though from time to time he withdrew his favour. In November 1152, just before the decision to attack Ascalon, in an extraordinary incident, the city of Jerusalem was suddenly assailed from the east by a large army of Turks led by men whom William describes as claiming the city by hereditary right. The leader appears to have been Timurtash of Mardin, whose father, Il-Ghazi, and uncle, Soqman, had been driven out of Jerusalem by the Fatimids in 1098.21 Although the Damascenes tried to dissuade him, he nevertheless pushed on with the plan, urged on by his mother. He arrived at Jerusalem when the bulk of the Christian army was at Nablus, but even so the inhabitants of the city were still able to beat him off, falling upon the Turks in the narrow defile of the road to the Jordan. ‘The hand of the Lord,’ says William, ‘was indeed heavy upon our enemies that day.’22

  Ascalon had received no help from Nur al-Din, but he had taken advantage of Baldwin's concentration on the siege to bring renewed pressure on Damascus, which remained his primary goal. Unur's ambivalent relationship with his overbearing neighbour meant that he hesitated to commit himself to the jihad against the Franks, despite continued raids from Tyre and Acre into Damascene territory.23 He contributed forces to Nur al-Din's armies, but was not willing to cede control of Damascus itself, even though Nur al-Din's increasingly powerful self-presentation as the champion of Islam had attracted widespread support, including from some in Damascus itself. In the years after the Second Crusade, Nur al-Din frequently brought his army into the vicinity of Damascus, sometimes posing as the protector of the peasantry of the Hauran, whom he claimed had suffered at the hands of the Franks. However, he restrained himself from actually besieging Damascus on the grounds that it would involve the shedding of Muslim blood, although he must have been well aware that it was not an easy target, especially after what had happened to the crusaders.24 Unur's death in August 1150 certainly strengthened his hand, but it was not until April 1154 that he finally managed to enter the city, where he met little resistance. He was, says Ibn al-Qalanisi, received with joy by the people ‘because of their sufferings from famine, the high cost of food, and fear of being besieged by the Frankish infidels’.25

  The implications of this triumph went beyond the city's strategic importance. In 1156, the Banu Qudama, a family that followed the strict precepts laid down by the jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbul in the ninth century, emigrated from the villages around Nablus, complaining of their maltreatment at the hands of the overlord, Baldwin of Ibelin. They were led by Ahmad ibn Qudama, who had been accused of diverting the peasants from their work through his Friday preaching and who now claimed he was in fear of his life. There were, however, evident positive reasons for the move to Damascus, for there the family could hope for a status appropriate to those who believed in Nur al-Din's commitment to the jihad.26 Only eight months after the conquest of the last Muslim enclave on the Palestinian and Syrian coast, the crusader states were faced with a regime more threatening than ever before. As William of Tyre saw it, nothing worse could have happened to the Christians.27

  Moreover, although in 1153–4 Damascus took priority in Nur al-Din's plans, he was alert to the possibilities that the fall of Ascalon opened up for the Franks, and in 1158 he started negotiations with the Egyptians despite their Shi'ite allegiance. An embassy led by his chamberlain, Mahmud al-Mustarshidi, arrived back in Damascus on 7 October, bringing one of the leading Egyptian emirs, as well as gifts of money and horses. It was a timely initiative. Since 1153, the Franks had become accustomed to intervening in the lands south of Gaza, and Mahmud's party had itself been attacked. Soon after, in a typical skirmish, Ibn al-Qalanisi says that the Egyptians had defeated a force of 400 Frankish horsemen at al-Arish, another striking indication of the scale of the Frankish presence in the region.28

  Reynald of Châtillon had not stayed to see the victory at Ascalon. At some point in the course of 1153, he had travelled to Antioch where he appears to have convinced Princess Constance that he would make a suitable husband. This was kept secret until they could obtain the king's consent, but the moment was well chosen as Baldwin was entirely focused on the siege and must have been pleased to see Antioch in the hands of an adult male ruler, given Constance's previous rejection of proffered husbands. William of Tyre, influenced by Reynald's subsequent behaviour, thought this a very poor match, calling him ‘a knight of the common sort’, although in fact he came from a distinguished family, even though he himself had no personal wealth.29 Most probably Reynald had come to the East in an attempt to rebuild his position, having, as he later put it in a letter to Louis VII of France, had a part of his patrimony ‘violently and unjustly confiscated’.30

  Almost immediately Reynald came into conflict with the patriarch, Aimery of Limoges. Antioch had been without a resident prince for four years and, according to Michael the Syrian, Baldwin had left Aimery as regent.31 The patriarch, says William of Tyre, was a very rich and powerful man who held the highest authority.32 He had established himself as a leader in the crisis that followed the death of Raymond of Poitiers in June 1149, when he had used a part of what William describes as his great wealth to hire soldiers, although he adds that such expenditure was ‘against his custom’.33 Even so, William presents him as a mediocrity, elected to replace Ralph of Domfront in 1140 by bribery, although he had neither the education nor moral qualities to justify such a position. He had benefited from the patronage of both Prince Raymond and Ralph of Domfront, becoming archdeacon and then dean. He had shown no loyalty to Ralph, for he was among those who had plotted the patriarch's deposition, supported by his kinsman Peter Armoin, castellan of Antioch and one of the count's immediate entourage.34 William's opinion, however, needs to be treated with caution, as he was undoubtedly influenced by the continuing dispute over jurisdiction between Antioch and Jerusalem. Aimery controlled the dioceses of the county of Tripoli, as had his predecessors, a situation to which William was never reconciled as he saw these bishops as his suffragans.35

  In fact, Aimery was much more accomplished than William presents him. Before his decision to settle in Antioch, Aimery had been a member of ‘the school of Toledo’, presided over by Raymond, archbishop of Toledo between 1124/5 and 1152. Toledo had been an important seat of learning well before the Christian reconquest in 1085, but had since flourished as a centre of translation, especially of Arab works obtained through Hebrew and vernacular intermediaries. Aimery could not have held his own
in such a high-powered intellectual environment without sophisticated linguistic skills, probably including Hebrew and Greek, and a solid grounding in biblical studies. He was the author of a description of the Holy Land called La Fazienda de ultra mar, written in Castilian and produced sometime before 1145, which incorporated not only Classical geographical knowledge but also sought to record the story of the people of Israel through the historical and prophetic works of the Old Testament, making use of the Hebrew text.36 Moreover, Aimery was also what Gerard of Nazareth, bishop of Latakia, calls ‘a sedulous promoter of the monastic life’. As patriarch, he showed particular concern for the numerous individuals living on the Black Mountain in the Amanus range to the north of Antioch, many of whom were not well prepared for the life they had chosen. He forbade them to live as solitaries unless they had a supervisor, evidently preferring that they remain within the institutionalised Church, perhaps in Jubin, Machanath or Carraria, houses of ascetics already established on the mountain.37

  When he emigrated to Antioch, Aimery may well have had his eye on preferment within the Church, but he also knew he was not entering an intellectual wasteland. Western scholars were aware that the larger cities of the Middle East contained important libraries and collections of manuscripts, including glossed Arabic translations of Greek works and original materials from Persia and India. When Tripoli fell in 1109, both the college and the libraries of private individuals were looted, which shows not only that the city had contained large numbers of books, but also suggests that some of them may have been sold in the aftermath, a proportion of which was likely to have ended up in Antioch.38 The boldest scholars sought out this learning. From about 1110, Adelard of Bath, one of the most radical scientific thinkers and mathematicians of the early twelfth century, embarked upon a series of journeys to Sicily, Greece and Syria, apparently financed by the English king, Henry I. He was particularly interested in acquiring knowledge of Arab and Greek learning and in about 1114 visited Antioch in order to study its manuscripts.39