The Battle of Hattin was a disaster for the Crusader States. King Guy had stripped the Kingdom of Jerusalem of defenders to raise an army big enough to confront Saladin, but by nightfall on July 4 almost the entire force was either dead or in captivity. The kingdom now had too few soldiers to raise a new army or to maintain its borders. In the months that followed, the kingdom collapsed, and its towns and strongholds fell like dominoes to Saladin’s advancing army. Jerusalem was taken in October. Tyre alone among the kingdom’s cities managed to hold out. Saladin also drove north, sacking both the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch, which were in no position to oppose him now that Jerusalem’s army had fallen. Saladin’s sweeping victories fundamentally shifted the balance of power in his favor, and now there was a very real prospect that the Crusader States would be utterly annihilated.
When news of the defeat reached western Christendom, the papacy promptly launched a massive new campaign: the Third Crusade. The response was overwhelming, and vast numbers of knights from across Christendom took the cross, determined to retake Jerusalem from Saladin. Armies set out from across western Christendom, and soon a new war was brewing in the Near East, one that would pit Saladin against his most famous opponent: Richard I, “Lionheart,” king of England. The Franks on the Levantine mainland still had a future, and their lands in the Levant would briefly revive in the thirteenth century before finally being overthrown in 1291. However, that does not detract from the importance of 1187. The great crusader kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced from a preeminent Near Eastern power to a tiny territory consisting of only one city.
Looking back across the history of the Crusader States, from the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 to its fall in 1187, one can clearly identify three phases when the crusaders had a real chance to expand inland from the coastline and consolidate their rule across the Near East through the conquest of either Aleppo, Damascus, or Cairo. If nothing else, the mere fact that they were able to strike at these centers of power so repeatedly proves that the demise of the Frankish position in the Levant was not a foregone conclusion. Complete victory remained a realizable outcome at least until the 1170s.
Of these three moments, it was the struggle for Aleppo that came closest to victory. By 1118 the Franks already possessed much of Aleppo’s hinterland and many of its satellite towns. They were able to apply direct pressure to the city itself for a prolonged period; this was very different from the later assaults against Damascus (1148) and Cairo (1168), which were both one-off lunges. In addition, they had good relationships with important regional allies during the struggle for Aleppo, including the Banu Uqayl of Qalat Jabar, Dubays, and the Armenians. During this contest, the Franks could also draw upon the long-standing momentum of conquest built up during and after the First Crusade. On this occasion they came within a hair’s breadth of driving inland and achieving a position of regional dominance. Consequently, the struggle for Aleppo, and the Battle of the Field of Blood in particular, have to be considered vital turning points in the struggle for the Near East, representing critical moments that blunted the Frankish advance.
Still, victory continually eluded them, at Aleppo and then again in their later attacks on Damascus and Egypt. Indeed, the history of the Crusader States and their rulers’ military ambition to achieve regional conquest is a curious tale of repeated near misses. Why did all three of these attempts to drive inland fail? Each was launched with a solid chance of success, but they all ended badly. So why did the Crusader States prove so consistently incapable of breaking down their enemies’ centers of power?
The answer to this must lie, on the one hand, within the specific events surrounding each campaign. As we have seen already, it is vital to understand the cut and thrust, the move and countermove, of the various protagonists engaged in each struggle. So in each case, these attacks and their reasons for failure are unique, specific to the individual campaign.
Yet on the other hand, there is a curious symmetry to these thwarted wars of conquest. In each case, prior to the main attack, the Franks struck up a strong and reciprocal rapport with the city’s urban elites: Aleppo was virtually an Antiochene protectorate in 1117–1118, the Kingdom of Jerusalem had a long history of cooperation with Damascus prior to 1148, and Egypt had agreed to be a Frankish protectorate in 1167. Then, in each case, the Franks broke off the relationship and commenced offensive operations.43 In each case they then besieged the city, waiting outside the walls without making a serious attempt at a frontal assault. Then, as Turkish reinforcements began to arrive, whether from Aqsunqur in 1125, Nur al-Din in 1148, or Shirkuh in 1168, the Franks—astonishingly—showed only a slight willingness to put up a fight. In 1125 they did not seek to engage Aqsunqur, even though Dubays wanted to fight. In 1148, outside Damascus, the Franks did not seek to fight their way back from a waterless area to a more advantageous position. In 1168, Amalric did try to intercept Shirkuh as he advanced upon Cairo, but he did not seek to continue his attack once Shirkuh’s forces reached the Egyptian capital. And last, in all cases, the Franks retreated.
The parallels among these endeavors are striking, and they raise the possibility that there may have been broader issues in play that consistently inhibited the Franks from pressing home their sieges. One such broader issue may have been the sheer size of the cities. These were the largest cities in the region. It is impossible to establish precise population figures, but numbers around the six-figure mark for Damascus and Aleppo and a much higher six-figure mark for Cairo seem reasonable. Consequently, the urban population would have been many times larger than the besieging forces. It is nowhere stated explicitly, but perhaps when the Frankish commanders contemplated the reality of securing permanent dominion over these centers of power and the risks and resources entailed, they were daunted by the sheer enormity of the task. Cities had devoured assaulting contingents whole in the past. In 1153, at the siege of Ascalon, a Templar force assaulted the city through a newly formed breach in the wall, crossed into the city, and simply disappeared.44 Perhaps the thought of a conquering Frankish army crossing the enemy’s ramparts only to scatter itself within a maze of narrow alleyways filled with hostile eyes and knives in the dark sent shudders down commanders’ spines, and this may explain why determined assaults on the walls were not launched at any of these sieges.
Another common factor may have been a fundamental weakness in the Franks’ basic strategic approach to conquering big enemy cities. They seem to have considered the idea of assaulting a city militarily to be incompatible with the idea of working with collaborating factions among the local population. For example, at Aleppo, the Franks first worked with the city’s elites, adopting the role of protector, but then jettisoned this policy for one of outright hostility. A similar pattern can be seen in their attacks on Damascus and Cairo; in both cases they had previously worked alongside local factions, before changing their stance and attacking. This was an obviously flawed approach in that the later “assault” phase entirely negated any advantage derived from the earlier “negotiation” phase.
The Turks were substantially more sophisticated in the strategies they used to break into big cities; they often effectively combined military force with political pressure, and they recognized the importance of securing goodwill among the urban population. It has to be remembered that during this same period, Turkish or Kurdish commanders repeatedly strong-armed their way into Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, sometimes more than once, just as their Frankish neighbors conspicuously failed in all their own attempts. The Turks tended to be far more effective at exploiting existing divisions within the cities’ urban elites, using the local quarrels to win allies and supporters among the population: divide and rule. The manipulation of internal alliances coupled with the application of external military pressure (generally brought about by strangling the city’s food supply) gave them considerable leverage. The Turks also seem to have had a gift for staging round after round of negotiations during their sieges, often finding fac
e-saving excuses that would allow the urban population’s representatives to justify capitulation. It may also have helped that the Turkish commanders tended to be at least nominally Muslim and could therefore appeal to a common faith, although it has to be noted that urban populations were also prepared to talk to Frankish commanders. Once within the walls, the Turks often proved equally adept at winning the populace’s support—or at least submission—either by lowering taxes or, conversely, by brutally purging the city’s leaders: a carrot-and-stick approach.
Comparing the Frankish and Turkish approaches to the conquest of cities, therefore, reveals several major deficiencies in the standard Frankish game plan. They do not seem to have evolved the same hybrid tactics used so effectively by the Turks, simultaneously applying external military pressure while seeking to take advantage of internal civic infighting. Although it is true that at Aleppo in 1125 Baldwin II had the support of several Turkish and Arab leaders, he or they seem to have been ineffective in their attempts to use that support to create rifts and divisions among the urban population. Instead, in the winter siege of 1124–1125, the allied Frankish-Arab army’s rather clumsy attempts at psychological warfare and intrigue served only to unify the populace in their opposition to their besiegers.
A final common factor connecting these campaigns could perhaps be captioned as a “fear of the consequences of failure.” Again comparing the relative strengths and weaknesses of Frankish and Turkish armies, it swiftly becomes apparent that the Franks were extremely ill-suited for wars of conquest conducted deep within Turkish territory. If they were to advance on an enemy city, fight a major battle against a Turkish relief army, and lose, they would immediately find themselves facing complete annihilation. Their defeated Frankish army would have to return to friendly territory, mostly on foot, while suffering endless attacks from Turkish light cavalrymen, who were highly suited to this kind of pursuit. If the Turks, by contrast, were to suffer a defeat and fail to seize a major city, they could simply scatter, immediately evading any lumbering Frankish pursuit. In short, the consequences of failure were asymmetric for the two sides. For these reasons, Frankish commanders had to be exceptionally cautious when striking at enemy centers of power because they could not risk suffering a major battlefield defeat far from their own borders. They had no choice but to be risk averse in such circumstances. This may help explain why they took so few risks in combat during the sieges of Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, and why they were skittish about fighting relief armies. It may by extension go some way to explaining why they were so consistently unsuccessful.
The Franks’ best chance—according to their very limited strategic toolbox—at forcing the submission of a major city was an ultra-slow process. It required them to maintain prolonged control of all the surrounding territory and neighboring towns and fortifications. Only then could the city be isolated and any relieving armies be engaged in battle with the reassurance that they possessed strong places of retreat should matters take a turn for the worse. The city could then slowly be ground down until it was so weak that it could no longer offer resistance. This approach could work. It was the method the Franks used to get into Tyre and later into Ascalon. Nevertheless, it was cumbersome, expensive, and painstakingly slow, often taking many decades to complete. Also, isolating inland cities such as Aleppo and Damascus, which possessed excellent supply lines connecting them to the Turkish heartlands in Iraq, was a substantially harder task than blockading the more isolated coastal cities. This martial logic was also predicated on the belief that a city’s urban population would have to be cowed en bloc, rather than divided through political intrigue and chicanery—again, a much harder task.
The Franks did not even get close to achieving this kind of position during their assaults on Damascus and Cairo, but they were at the point of forcing a blockade around Aleppo by 1118. By this stage, they held many of the surrounding towns and fortifications and were almost at the point of isolating the city from its main avenues of support. This consideration underlines the importance of the Franks’ failure to secure Aleppo between the years 1118 and 1125.
Overall, between 1099 and 1187 the Franks instigated three long-term attempts to strike inland and conquer their enemies’ centers of power. They failed on every occasion. Among these three endeavors, the struggle for Aleppo came closest to success. For this reason, the Franks’ failure to achieve this goal must sit squarely within any attempt to explain their inability to conquer the Near Eastern region. It also underscores the importance of the Battle of the Field of Blood, which broke the Frankish noose around the city just as it was tightening.
AFTERWORD
WHILE WRITING ABOUT the Field of Blood and the wars fought over Aleppo from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, it is natural to reflect on the current state of northern Syria. At this moment, our screens are filled with haunting images of a shattered Aleppo circled by many combatant factions. The human cost of war, which was bad enough at the time of the Crusades, is now far greater, the product of a higher population density, the enhanced killing power of modern weapons, and a readiness to take human life that is at least equal to that of the crusading era (in some cases I suspect it is greater today).
Reflecting on this present situation, it is natural to ponder comparisons between these two murderous contests for this much-coveted city. Almost nine hundred years of history separate the two wars, yet there are some striking similarities. It is again a struggle in which Arabs, Turks, and Kurds are locked in a complex political game played out both around the negotiating table and on the battlefield. The protagonists again include proponents of jihad mixed with other factions whose motives include money, power, political stability, or, for many, survival. The West is again caught up in a conflict that it only partially understands and in which its attempts to achieve a degree of control are immediately skewed as multiple local factions seek to twist its interventions to their own advantage. And again, there is no easy political resolution to the conflict.
These significant parities serve as reminders that the political, ethnic, and religious fault lines dividing the region are deep and historic. They will not be solved easily—if they are to be solved at all. The entrenched hostilities, rivalries, and alliances that play their part in shaping the conflict have been handed down from generation to generation. They are inextricably entwined in the fabric of society.
In recent years, considerable pressure has been placed on policy makers, particularly in western Europe and the United States, to “solve” the problems of the Middle East. Such pressure has been exerted by commentators from all shades of the political spectrum. Yet this assessment vastly overestimates the West’s power and influence. The West has played its part in shaping the course of recent events and undoubtedly has the potential to play a part in resolving the pressing problems confronting the region (if resolution is possible). Nevertheless, it is essential to recognize that many of the core issues at play predate the modern world, and most predate the Crusades. Indeed, many of these tensions were old even when the Crusades were young.
It might be possible to ease tensions temporarily with a photo-opportunity handshake of politicians making peace, and it might be possible for international institutions such as the United Nations to play some role in separating the embattled factions. Nevertheless, a long-standing resolution can only take place at a grassroots level when these historic hostilities are finally confronted by all factions and at all levels of society with an eye to reconciling their differences. We can but hope.
As for the Crusades and the wars of the Latin East, they are in the strange position of simultaneously being both irrelevant and highly relevant to the modern Middle East. Let me explain what I mean. For those interested in the causes of modern-day events and the long-standing roots of conflict, the Field of Blood, or indeed the Crusades as a whole, scarcely register as direct causes. The medieval struggle for the Near East took place a very long time ago; almost nine hundred years separate
us from the Field of Blood. In the intervening period, empires have risen and fallen, trade routes have sprung up and collapsed, leaders have shaped their people’s history and then died, and both Christendom and Europe, on the one hand, and the empires of the Muslim world, on the other, have had many other neighbors and concerns to divert their attention. The Crusades are simply one strand among thousands of others in the warp and weft of events that have shaped the modern world. True, the Crusades persisted long after the eradication of the Frankish presence on the Levantine mainland in 1291, but they were often waged on other frontiers, such as the Baltic or against heretics, and were frequently launched in Christendom’s defense rather than as aggressive campaigns.
Yet from another perspective, the Crusades remain all around us. The propagandists of jihad have seized on these historic wars, manipulating their memory to establish precedents for their own violence. This is weaponized history: the use of the past to create a narrative that drives violence in the present. Time and again terrorists and jihadists have announced that their atrocities have been guided by the desire to fight “crusaders,” although increasingly the designation of being a “crusader enemy” has broadened to encompass just about anyone standing in their path. Worryingly, I have also started to hear tales of far-right movements in the West drawing on crusading-themed ideas.
The irony of all such violent arguments is, of course, that the actual twelfth-century struggle between the Franks and the Turks only occasionally bore a resemblance to an interreligious conflict of the kind touted by modern-day advocates of hate. Both the Turks and the Franks had far more complex agendas than straightforward sectarian violence, and they were prepared to cooperate with one another when their interests coincided. Their worldviews were also broad enough that they could respect and even admire their opponents. Some even became friends with their foes. War in the Middle Ages could be brutal, but when the fighting was done, there remained space for the combatant factions to engage in trade, conversation, and diplomacy. As we have seen, there were occasions during the crusading period when warriors could seek out their enemies after the fighting was done and share stories about their deeds on the battlefield, confident in the knowledge that they would receive their enemy’s welcome and hospitality.
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