All this bibliography should, of course, be balanced by a thorough reading of the much more extensive body of work done on the Western side of the Crusades: an excellent starting point is still S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols, Cambridge, 1951–4, but this should now be complemented by the more recent works of J. S. C. Riley-Smith written for the general reader, such as The Crusades: A Short History, London and New Haven, 1987, and What Were the Crusades?, London, 1992; and by the composite book The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. J. Riley-Smith, Oxford, 1995.
Translations of Primary Arabic Sources
As already mentioned, a major problem for Crusader historians in modern times has been the relative lack of translations of Islamic sources into European languages. Those works which are translated are indeed used, but the remainder remain inaccessible; and they are so numerous that the whole historiographical picture of an event or a reign from the Islamic side cannot be grasped. It should be added that sometimes the translations that have been made are faulty, although of course it can be argued that ‘half a loaf is better than no bread’. It is sobering to see how often in the few existing books on the Crusades from the Muslim side the same limited number of Islamic sources have been used again and again. It makes a reconsideration of the primary sources all the more imperative.
Figure 1.8 Mounted archer, inlaid brass basin known as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria
Figure 1.9 Enthroned ruler, inlaid brass basin known as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria. Note the artist’s signature on the throne
It is therefore incumbent on those who can read the Islamic sources, and especially modern historians in the Middle East itself, to produce thoughtful, careful editions, translations and analyses of the texts and thus enable a wider public to understand more profoundly the Muslim perspectives on the events of the period of the Crusades. The Mamluk period is particularly rich in historiographical materials which often contain excerpts from earlier lost chronicles.
A useful starting point for sampling the Arabic chronicles is F. Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, London, 1969. However, its excerpts were translated from Arabic into Italian and then into English and are thus some way from the original. Moreover, they often seem more like summaries of the original texts than actual translations. On the basis that any translation is better than none, the much criticised Recueil des historiens des Croisades: Historiens orientaux I-V, Paris, 1872–1906 (Arabic excerpts with French translations) is still of use for those who cannot read Arabic but can read French, despite its frequent faults of editing and its mistranslations. The reader will find a fuller list of other primary Arabic sources which have been translated into European languages in the Bibliography at the end of this book.
The Crusades: A Short Historical Overview
The short historical overview which follows is intended to provide a broad chronological framework within which to place the thematic chapters which form the heart of this book. Much more detailed discussions on these events will occur at appropriate places within the book.
Introduction: The Pre-Crusading Period
Europe’s first encounter with Islam was the result of the expansionist policies of the new Muslim state, established after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. A century later, the Muslims had crossed the Pyrenees and conquered lands extending from northern India to southern France. For the next two hundred years, the balance of power between Europe and the Islamic world remained decisively in the hands of the Muslims, who enjoyed massive economic growth and whose culture flowered in spectacular fashion. From 750 onwards the ‘Abbasid state was moulded by Perso-Islamic culture and government and increasingly sustained by the military support of Turkish slave armies.
By the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, the political fragmentation of the great ‘Abbasid empire centred on Baghdad was well under way; the situation favoured the reappearance of Europeans in the eastern Mediterranean and the beginnings of the revival of Christian power in Spain. Trading links were followed up by maritime successes against the Muslims. The Normans took Sicily from the Muslims and the Christians of northern Spain reconquered Toledo and began an inexorable advance southwards. The close neighbour of the Islamic world, Byzantium, had conducted successful raids into northern Syria in the late tenth century and briefly held towns there.
During the first centuries of Muslim rule, Christian pilgrims from Europe had usually been able to visit the sacred places associated with their faith in Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they travelled overland via the Balkans, Anatolia and Syria or took the sea route to Egypt or Palestine. Thus news came back to Europe of the sophisticated way of life and high cultural achievements of the Islamic world; in the eleventh century, the Pope and European monarchs were also told of the weakening and decentralisation of Muslim political and military power. However, rumours of the notoriety of one particular Islamic ruler – the sixth Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim – had also reached Europe (figures 1.11, 1.12). His persecution of the Christians within his realm, which extended to Syria and Palestine, culminated in the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcre in Jerusalem in 1009–10.13 Al-Hakim’s actions are usually considered to have been a contributing factor to the gradual evolution of the desire in Christian Europe to launch the First Crusade and to rescue what were perceived as the endangered holy places of Christendom.
Figure 1.10 Border of a robe of honour made for the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (386–411/996–1021), Egypt
Figure 1.11 (above) Western minaret, Mosque of al-Hakim, 380–93/990–1003, Cairo, Egypt
Figure 1.12 (right) Northern minaret, Mosque of al-Hakim, 393/1003, Cairo, Egypt
Figure 1.13 Fatimid carved wooden frieze, eleventh century, Egypt
In the second half of the eleventh century Syria and Palestine became the arena for a fierce conflict between the Seljuq Turks who ruled the eastern Islamic world and the Fatimid empire centred on Egypt. The Fatimids, who were Isma’ili (Sevener) Shi‘ites, espoused an ideology which was anathema to Sunni Muslims, especially since Fatimid ideology – dynamic and expansionist in aim – threatened at one point to overthrow the Sunni ‘Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. The Seljuq Turks, recent converts to Islam, presented themselves as supporters of the ‘Abbasid caliph and Sunni Islam, and embarked on protracted military engagements against the Fatimids.
The Seljuq leadership were still reliant on their nomadic kinsmen for military support. The Turkish nomads lived in an uneasy relationship with the cities of the Near East. Their chiefs mulcted the cities for taxes, and through this contact were often attracted into assuming some at least of the trappings of settled rulers. The attitude of the urban population towards the nomads was ambivalent: they often needed them for military protection but they found their alien ways irksome and disruptive. On balance, the recent influx of nomadic Turks in large numbers was probably regarded as a necessary evil within the Islamic body politic because of their unrivalled military skills and religious zeal. The famous Muslim intellectual al-Ghazali (d. 1111) argues:
In this age of ours, from amongst the [various] kinds of human beings it is the Turks who possess force… If there should be an insurrection in any region of the earth against this resplendent state [the Seljuqs] there is not one among them [the Turks] who on seeing strife beyond its frontiers would not fight in the way of God waging jihad against the infidels.14
Figure 1.14 Monolithic funerary statues depicting Turkic princes, c. ninth century, southern Siberia
Figure 1.15 Seljuq inscription on city walls, 484/1091–2, Diyarbakr, Turkey
Figure 1.16 Mounted hunters, inlaid brass basin known as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria
The reality of the nomadic Turkish presence was, however, often hard to bear and the cities and countryside of Syria and Palestine, soon to receive the impact of Crusader attacks, had already suffered much at the hands of the Turcomans (i.e. nomadi
c Turks) and had served too as the arena for the lengthy military engagements between Seljuq and Fatimid forces.
The political situation in nearby Anatolia (nowadays Turkey) was also destabilised at this time, with Byzantium losing to the Seljuq Turks its buffer territories to the east, formerly under Armenian control. The Byzantine empire suffered a devastating blow to its prestige; it was defeated by the Seljuq Turks under sultan Alp Arslan at the battle of Manzikert (sometimes known as Malazgird) in 1071. This famous confrontation is usually taken by historians as the point after which waves of nomadic Turks, loosely affiliated to the Seljuq empire further east or sometimes completely independent of it, accelerated a process begun earlier in the century of infiltrating and occupying Armenian and Byzantine territory (plate 1.4). One group of Turks under the leadership of Sulayman b. Qutlumush, a scion of the Seljuq family, established a small state, first at Nicaea (Iznik) and later at Iconium (Konya), which was to develop into the Seljuq sultanate of Rum (the Muslim name for Byzantium). This polity ruled parts of Anatolia until the coming of the Mongols and beyond. Other Turkish groups, most notably the Danishmendids, vied with the Seljuqs of Rum in Anatolia and incidentally made the land journey from Constantinople to Syria and the Holy Land, which passed through their territory, precarious.
As the next chapter will show in greater detail, the last decade of the eleventh century saw ever greater Muslim political weakness, instability and disunity. The deaths in quick succession of the Seljuq chief minister (wazir) Nizam al-Mulk and the Seljuq sultan Malik-shah in 1092, followed by those of the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadi and the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir in 1094, left an enormous political vacuum. Internal strife and jockeying for power in both the eastern Islamic world and Egypt ensued. Fratricidal struggles amongst the Seljuqs deprived the Sunni Muslims of any effective leadership and led to further decentralisation in Syria and to the emergence of small, often mutually hostile city-states. Further west in Egypt, the Fatimid empire was never again to exert the supremacy it had enjoyed in the first half of the eleventh century and became introverted and striferidden. The Islamic world was thus in no position to fend off the utterly unexpected and indeed unprecedented attacks from western Europe which were about to occur. Appeals for European help from Byzantium had begun after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 when the Byzantine emperor begged for military support on his eastern border against the Seljuq Turks. In the 1090s the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus once again appealed to Europe which was moved by what it heard of Seljuq oppression of Near Eastern Christians. The Papacy itself had its own reasons for wishing to move against the Muslims. Pope Urban II pronounced a momentous sermon on 27 November 1095 at Clermont, calling on Christians to set out to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from Muslim oppression. By 1097 a mixed Christian army under various leaders from different parts of western Europe had reached Constantinople and had embarked on the land journey across Anatolia towards Jerusalem.
Plate 1.4 Horseman, stone tympanum, twelfth century, Daghestan, eastern Caucasus
Figure 1.17 Peacock, Seljuq underglaze tile, thirteenth century, Kubadabad, Turkey
Figure 1.18 Seljuq doubleheaded eagle on city wall, thirteenth century, Konya, Turkey
Thus began the series of military campaigns spearheaded from western Europe against the Islamic Near East which have come to be known as the Crusades.
The First Crusade
The First Crusade, despite its mixed leadership, which included Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Sicily and Godfrey of Bouillon, achieved significant military successes whilst still en route through Anatolia. The Franks conquered the Seljuq capital at Iznik in June 1097 and inflicted a heavy defeat on the Seljuq army under Sultan Qilij Arslan at the battle of Dorylaeum in July of the same year. On reaching Antioch in northern Syria, the Crusader forces laid siege to it in October 1097. A splinter group of Crusader forces under Baldwin of Boulogne crossed to the Christian Armenian city of Edessa and conquered it on 10 March 1098, thereby establishing the first Crusader state in the Near East (usually known as the County of Edessa).
Antioch fell to the Crusaders in June 1098 and in January of the following year the Principality of Antioch was inaugurated under the leadership of the Norman ruler Bohemond of Sicily. The ultimate prize – Jerusalem – was gained on 15 July 1099 and Godfrey of Bouillon became its first ruler. The final Crusader state, the County of Tripoli, was established when that city fell to the Franks in 1109. Thus four Crusader principalities were created in the Near East: Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli. It is noticeable, however, that even in the first flush of success the Crusaders were unable to capture either of the two major cities in the region, namely Aleppo or Damascus.
The Muslim Response to the Crusaders: The First Phases
The Muslim response to the coming of the Crusades was initially one of apathy, compromise and preoccupation with internal problems. The early decades of the twelfth century were a period of great Muslim disunity; there was little military reaction to the ever more pressing danger of Frankish expansionism and no substantial Muslim gains in territory were achieved. Instead of fending off the Crusader threat, the disunited petty Muslim rulers of Syria made truces with the Franks and were perennially engaged in small territorial struggles, often within a framework of Muslim-Crusader alliances. Against a fragmented, weakened Muslim world, the Franks, by contrast, showed themselves during these years to be strong and determined, vibrant with fanaticism and highly motivated to build structures of defence which would ensure their continuing presence in the Levant.
Figure 1.19 Blazons on Mamluk coins, thirteenth-fifteenth centuries, Egypt and Syria
Figure 1.20 Servants, inlaid brass basin known as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria
The first decade of the twelfth century saw the Franks taking most of the Levantine seaports, thus ensuring that they would be able to receive reinforcements of men and equipment by sea. The territory henceforward occupied by the Crusaders was a long, narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean. When they tried to expand eastwards they were less successful; only distant Edessa penetrated the Euphrates and Tigris valleys; significantly too Edessa was the first Crusader state to be extinguished. As already noted, the Crusaders never possessed the key cities of Aleppo and Damascus and never controlled Syria.
There were some intermittent but uncoordinated Muslim attempts to combat the Crusaders in the early twelfth century. Several expeditions were launched from the east under the command of the ruler of Mosul, Mawdud, and the sponsorship of the Seljuq sultan Muhammad (in 1108, 1111 and 1113). These received little support from the rulers of Aleppo and Damascus, who did not welcome Seljuq interference. Indeed, a further expeditionary army sent by Muhammad into Syria in 1115 was routed by a combined Crusader-Muslim army at the battle of Danith. The Artuqid Turcoman ruler of distant Mardin, called upon by the people of Aleppo to defend them against the Franks, defeated Roger of Antioch at the battle of Balat (also known as the Field of Blood) in June 1119; this was a great but isolated Muslim victory and was not followed up. The first major signs of Muslim recovery may be seen in the career of the redoubtable Zengi (d. 1146) whose efforts were directed, at least partly, towards fighting the Franks. It was he who succeeded in conquering the first of the Crusader states for Islam, when he took Edessa in 1144. The fall of Edessa may be seen as the first major landmark in the Muslim recovery. Zengi was murdered by a slave in 1146; there can be little doubt that his removal from the scene was a major reprieve for the Crusaders.
Figure 1.21 Enthroned ruler and attendants, painted ivory casket, thirteenth century, Sicily
Nur al-Din and the Second Crusade
During the next phase of Muslim recovery, Zengi’s son, Nur al-Din (d 1174), combined strong-arm politics with very skilful religious propaganda. Within the context of his ambitions for himself and for his family, he worked slowly towards the unification of Egypt and Syria and the encirclement of the remaining Frankish states, beginning
with Antioch.
Figure 1.22 Horseman with a banner, lustre dish, tenth century, Samarra, Iraq
The loss of Edessa and the vulnerability of Antioch provoked the preaching and sending of the Second Crusade in 1147–8 under the command of Conrad III, the German emperor, and Louis VII, the French king. This Crusade was a fiasco. It made for Damascus, then under the control of the city’s governor Ünür, and conducted an unsuccessful siege of the city (which had an alliance at that time with Crusader Jerusalem). The Crusade then fizzled out, without recapturing Edessa or stemming the mounting power of Nur al-Din.
Nur al-Din conquered Damascus in 1154 and made himself supreme Muslim ruler in Syria. Both Nur al-Din and the Crusaders then turned their attention to Egypt and the ailing Fatimid caliphate, which was wracked with internal dissension and weakness. Ascalon had fallen to the Franks in 1153 and some factions at the Fatimid court favoured accommodation with them; others asked Nur al-Din for help. A Muslim army sent under the command of the Kurdish soldier Shirkuh in 1168–9 prevented the Crusaders from conquering Egypt. Salah al-Din (Saladin) b. Ayyub, Shirkuh’s nephew, took over the leadership of the Muslim army in Egypt in March 1169 on the death of his uncle. Acting officially as the lieutenant of Nur al-Din, Saladin took control of the Fatimid caliphate which he abolished in 1171. Nur al-Din had laid the foundations of Muslim reunification and reaffirmed the sole legitimacy of the Sunni Abbasid caliphate. A rift between Saladin and Nur al-Din, which was clearly on the cards, was prevented by the death of Nur al-Din in 1174.
Saladin, 569–589/1174–1193
The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives Page 9
