The Debilitating Effects of Religious Schism
Religious schism permeated Islamic life at every level of society. As ‘good Sunni Islamic rulers’ the Seljuqs had pursued a vigorous foreign policy in the period 1063–92, the main thrust of which had been to wage war not against Byzantium or the Christian kingdoms of the Caucasus, although such initiatives did occur, but against fellow Muslims – the ‘heretical’ Fatimid Shi‘ite caliphate of Cairo – and a protracted struggle was fought out in Syria and Palestine. The ideological and political enmity between Fatimid Isma’ili Shi‘ites and Seljuq Sunnis was deeply entrenched and in practice it was almost unthinkable for them to form a united Islamic front against the external enemy, the Crusaders.
Plate 2.1 Bab al-Futuh, 480/1087, Cairo, Egypt
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 3623)
Plate 2.2 Bab al. Futuh, bastions, 480/1087, Cairo, Egypt
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 3614)
Plate 2.3 Bab al-Futuh, 480/1087, Cairo, Egypt
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 163)
The Spirit of the Times
The loss of all effective leadership and the rampant sectarian suspicion and hostility within the bosom of Islam provoked disorientation and angst. The Muslims were living through exceptionally turbulent times. A new Islamic century – the sixth – was imminent (it would begin on 2 September 1106) and many awaited it with fear, especially after the year 492/1099 had witnessed the fall of Jerusalem. Perhaps some of them believed the Final Day was coming; others hoped that the new century would, like preceding centuries, bring a ‘renewer’ (mujaddid) of the Islamic faith. Indeed, many thought that al-Ghazali was that figure. During the years leading up to the new century, the fragmented Muslim world, torn apart by schism, wars and nomadic invasions, must have felt doom-laden. But even so, the last thing that the Muslims had expected was invasion from western Europe. After the initial onslaught had hit them, perhaps they thought that other even more cataclysmic events would follow. Medieval Muslims were acquainted with astrological phenomena – comets, meteors, the movement of the stars – and were accustomed to deriving omens and foreseeing the future from them. The Syrian chronicler al-‘Azimi, who incorporates only brief snippets of historical information in his work, takes the trouble to report for the year 489/1096 that when the Franks first appear ‘Saturn was in Virgo’.11 His readers would be able to interpret this account as being highly inauspicious and alarming. As the Muslim encyclopaedist al-Qazwini, writes: ‘the astrologers call Saturn the largest star of misfortune… and they ascribe to it devastation, ruin, grief and cares’.12
The incidence of plague, mentioned for Egypt in the years 490/1097 and 493/1099–1100, must have deepened the atmosphere of gloom.13 This disaster alone must have played its part in preventing the Fatimids from getting more closely involved than they did in the battles of the First Crusade and retaining their new-won control of Jerusalem and Palestine.
Plate 2.4 Bab al-Nasr, 480/1087, Cairo, Egypt
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 1429)
Figure 2.3 Signs of the zodiac, mirror of Artuq Shah, cast bronze, between 631/1233 and 660/1262, Turkey
The Eastern Perspective – Seljuq Disunity, 485–492/1092–1099
After the deaths of Nizam al-Mulk and Malikshah in 485/1092, the Seljuqs, and especially two sons of Malikshah, Barkyaruq and Muhammad, were locked in a protracted military conflict which lasted until Barkyaruq’s death in 498/1105. This conflict gobbled up almost all the available military resources. It was fought out in western Iran, but its repercussions were felt in Iraq, the traditional seat of the Sunni caliph, in eastern Iran and Central Asia, and, by default, in distant Syria and Palestine, earlier centres of Seljuq activity. The Seljuq princes in the east had no time or motivation to concern themselves with events in the Levant and left Jerusalem to its fate.
Figure 2.4 Signs of the zodiac, Vaso del Rota, inlaid metal, late twelfth century, Iran
Plate 2.5 Bab al-Nasr from within, 480/1087, Cairo, Egypt
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 151)
Anatolia in the Late Eleventh Century
The same disunity characterised other areas of the Islamic world. The nomadic Turks of Anatolia were the first Muslim foe to be encountered by the Crusaders after they left Constantinople. As already mentioned, the battle of Manzikert in 463/1071 is usually taken as a convenient date to symbolise the beginning of a gradual but steady process by which diverse groups of nomadic Turks infiltrated the Byzantine empire, pursuing their time-honoured lifestyle of pastoralism and raiding. We do not know how numerous these groups were: some were authorised to raid by the Seljuq sultans, others progressed unchecked by any allegiance, even nominal, to a supra-tribal authority. The Seljuq ruler of western Asia Minor, Qilij Arslan (ruled 485–500/1092–1107), called ‘sultan’ retrospectively in the sources, came from a renegade branch of the great Seljuq family, and even though he was far from Iran he was still attached emotionally to his tribal heritage in the east. In the political instability of the post-485/1092 period he interfered whenever possible in the affairs of the Seljuq sultanate in the east, to exploit its weakness and to gain territory for himself. This was of far greater moment to him than embarking on campaigns across the mountains into Syria and Palestine to fight the Crusaders. Even within Anatolia there was no semblance of overall political unity between the disparate nomadic Turkish groups vying for territory there in the aftermath of the battle of Manzikert.14 The Danishmendids, who held sway in central Anatolia between Sivas and Malatya, did, it is true, form a temporary alliance with the Seljuqs of western Anatolia for the battle of Dorylaeum (July 1097), but such alliances were always ephemeral. Any concerted Turcoman initiative into Palestine or Syria was inconceivable.15
Figure 2.5 Sign of Libra, Mamluk bowl, inlaid metal, fourteenth century, Syria(?)
Figure 2.6 Apotropaic door-knocker for a mosque, cast bronze, c. 1200, fazirat ibn ‘Umar (Cizre), Turkey
Figure 2.7 Harpy, stone relief on city wall, early thirteenth century, Konya, Turkey
Figure 2.8 The sun as an astrological image, inlaid bronze basin, c. 1250, Mosul, Iraq
Figure 2.9 Inscription on city walls, late twelfth century, Diyarbakr, Turkey
The Turks of Anatolia, although fierce and effective fighters, were few in number. They could not prevail in fixed encounters, where superior numerical forces were bound to win. But they could harass their enemies by firing arrows from horseback and they caused much hardship to the incoming Crusader armies. What they could not do, however, was stop the progress of the Franks en bloc across Asia Minor. Unfortunately, being nomads, they did not leave behind written records of their achievements; more especially, there are no accounts of the First Crusade from the perspective of these nomads of Anatolia.
The Egyptian Perspective 487–492/1094–1099
The Fatimid rulers of Egypt are portrayed most unfavourably by the great Sunni historians of the Islamic Middle Ages, for they had begun life as a secretive, esoteric, extremist Isma‘ili Shi‘ite sect and in the second half of the eleventh century they became the major enemies of the Seljuqs, who presented themselves as the ‘defenders of Sunni Islam’. On the eve of the First Crusade, the Fatimids were experiencing difficulties. Their ‘aberrant’ religious persuasion usually cut them off altogether from alliances with neighbouring Sunni Muslim powers in Syria and Palestine. Their de facto rulers, the viziers Badr al-Jamali (d 488/1095) and then his son, al-Afdal (d 515/1121), chose to rule through young puppet caliphs. The great medieval Muslim biographer Ibn Khallikan (d 681/1282) believes Fatimid decline to have been under way as early as the year 466/1074: ‘the authority of al-Mustansir had been greatly enfeebled and the affairs of the empire had fallen into disorder’.16
Figure 2.10 Seljuq inscription on city walls, 4j6/1083–4, Diyarbakr, Turkey
&
nbsp; Plate 2.6 Bab al-Nasr, 480/1087, Cairo, Egypt
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 3430)
Events within the Fatimid empire and initiatives launched by its leaders into Palestine and Syria played an important part in the build-up to the coming of the First Crusade. All too often, it must be said, Fatimid activity in this period has been sadly neglected.
The Nizari Schism
In 487/1094 the death of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir provoked a major succession crisis: his eldest son, Nizar, was passed over in favour of another son, al-Musta‘li. Nizar fled to Alexandria where he was killed, and al-Musta’li came to the throne. This so-called Nizari schism split the Isma’ilis once again. The heart went out of the Fatimid ideology in Cairo. It was around this time, in 483/1090, that the Persian Isma’ilis, who under the charismatic leadership of Hasan-i Sabbah had made the remote citadel of Alamut in north-west Iran their headquarters, espoused the claims of Nizar and broke away from Cairo. Henceforth the missionary zeal and revolutionary dynamism of the Isma’ilis were vested in this breakaway group – popularly known, amongst other derogatory titles, as the Assassins (Hashishiyya). In the twelfth century they were to play a significant part in the rich tapestry of Levantine and Crusader political life and intrigues.
Fatimid Involvement in Syria and Palestine
In the year 491/1097–8, during the early stages of the First Crusade, the Fatimid army under the personal leadership of al-Afdal, the vizier and de facto ruler of the empire, made a pre-emptive strike on Palestine and seized Jerusalem. The city had been left in the hands of two Seljuq vassals, Turcoman chiefs of the Artuqid family: Sukman and his brother, Il-Ghazi.17 A year later the Crusaders took Jerusalem and routed an army under al-Afdal at Ascalon.18 The sudden move by al-Afdal on Jerusalem, with its extraordinary timing, requires an explanation which scholars on the Islamic side do not give. Why did al-Afdal make this move? Was he acting because he had prior knowledge of the Crusaders’ plans? If so, did he take the city on behalf of the Crusaders, with whom he may have made an alliance beforehand, or did he do it to stop the Crusaders capturing Jerusalem? These are important historical questions to which one might expect to find answers in the Islamic sources. The evidence is very scanty indeed but is worth examining here,19 since, as the German scholar Köhler observes, scholarly discussions on this question tend to ignore the Islamic evidence.
Figure 2.11 Hare, Fatimid lustre dish, eleventh century, Egypt
What do the Muslim chroniclers say about all this? The Aleppan chronicler al-‘Azimi relates for the year 489/1095–6 that the Byzantine emperor ‘wrote to the Muslims informing them of the appearance of the Franks’.20 This is a very early date for the Muslims to have known of the Franks’ plans. It is not clear which Muslims are meant here, but it could well have been the Fatimids, and the information, which incidentally could be interpreted to put the Byzantine emperor in a bad light, might well have sparked off al-Afdal’s decision to take Jerusalem. Alternatively, this snippet of information may have been included so as to suggest that the Byzantine emperor was party to an agreement with both the Crusaders and the ‘Muslims’ and that he was just telling the latter when to expect the Crusaders’ arrival. Or again, the Byzantine emperor may have been threatening the Muslims. The fact that no other source mentions this letter could mean that it is a fabrication or that other Muslim chroniclers omitted it because it puts some of their co-religionists (whoever they may be) in a bad light.
Figure 2.12 Horsemen in combat, Cappella Palatina, ceiling, c. 1140, Palermo, Sicily
All these interpretations suggest that one group of Muslims knew about the coming of the Crusade in good time but that possibly they had their own reasons for not spreading the information and trying to defend Islamic territory more effectively.
A second piece of evidence from another chronicle should now be mentioned. The chronicle of Ibn Zafir (d. 613/1216) is the earliest surviving account of the last century of Fatimid rule. When speaking of the Franks’ seizure of Jerusalem from the Fatimids, Ibn Zafir writes: ‘nobody there had the strength to resist the Franks. If it [Jerusalem] had been left in the hands of the Artuqids [i.e. Sukman and Il-Ghazi] it would have been better for the Muslims.’ For al-Afdal, Ibn Zafir goes on to say, it was better that the Franks should occupy the Syrian ports, ‘so that they could prevent the spread of the influence of the Turks to the lands of Egypt’.21
This strongly suggests that initially at least al-Afdal was adopting a policy of favouring the Crusaders rather than the Seljuq Turks, whom he viewed as his greater enemy; and that he hoped that the Crusaders would form a buffer between Egypt and the Turks. The invasion of Syria by the Turcomans under Atsiz in the 1070s was still a traumatic memory for the Fatimids.22
Why then do we read that the Franks routed al-Afdal and the Fatimid army who had attacked them while they were besieging Jerusalem? It may well be that al-Afdal thought that the Franks would allow him to keep Jerusalem as part of a pre-arranged agreement and that he then found out too late that the Franks had their own sights on the city. So he broke with them. Certainly the Franks’ siege of Jerusalem seems to have prompted al-Afdal to move against the Franks, as is suggested by Ibn Muyassar: ‘In Rajab [492] the Franks laid siege to Jerusalem … al-Afdal went out to them with his troops. When the Franks heard about his departure [from Cairo] they persisted in besieging it until they took possession of it on Friday 22 Sha’ban.’23 After the city had fallen, according to Ibn Muyassar:
‘Al-Afdal came to Ascalon on 14 Ramadan. He sent an envoy to the Franks rebuking them for what they had done.’24
The Frankish response, such as it was, menaced al-Afdal with references to their great numbers of men. They then attacked al-Afdal’s army. He fled to Ascalon which the Franks then besieged. They departed and al-Afdal departed by sea for Cairo.25
The reasons for the timing of al-Afdal’s attack on Jerusalem are also perhaps hinted at by the Damascus chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi. Immediately after his account of the fall of Antioch to the Crusaders in the month of Jumada 1491/June 1098, he launches into an account of al-Afdal’s conquest of Jerusalem the very next month.26 We may infer from this timing that for al-Afdal the fall of Antioch was perhaps a turning point, and that he felt he could not trust the Franks not to move south. If there ever had been an agreement between the Franks and the Fatimids to divide up the Levant, it certainly seems to have collapsed after Antioch. On the Muslim side the preceding evidence seems to be all that has come to light so far but it is enough to suggest initial Fatimid-Crusader collaboration, followed by Fatimid disillusionment. It is difficult to assess how much of this is anti-Fatimid propaganda on the part of later Sunni historians, but on balance – and especially bearing in mind the testimony of al-‘Azimi – the evidence is very telling.27
The chronicler Ibn al-Athir (d. 630/1233), speaking of the genesis of the First Crusade, includes an account which lays the blame squarely on the Fatimids:
It was said that the ‘Alid rulers of Egypt, when they saw the power of the Seljuq state and their strength and their conquering of the lands of Syria as far as Gaza, there remaining between them and Egypt no province to hold them back, and [when they saw too] Atsiz [a Seljuq commander] entering Egypt and blockading it, they were afraid and they sent messages to the Franks inviting them to go out to Syria to conquer it so that they [the Franks] would be between them [the Fatimids] and the Muslims.28
Incidentally, the writer’s prejudices against the Fatimids are clear here as he is speaking of two distinct groups, the Fatimids and the Muslims.
From the above accounts, we can see that unlike most other medieval Islamic sources which gloss over the Fatimids’ activities in the period immediately before and after the coming of the Franks, there are some clues here that the Fatimids were more interested in defending their own territories against their traditional enemy, the Turks, than in staving off the threat from western Europe. Long familiarity with the Christian Byzantine empire
may even have led to an agreement with Byzantium to collaborate with the Crusaders when they came. Possibly, too, al-Afdal viewed the Crusaders as working for the Byzantines, with whom he was well acquainted.
Whatever the fuller truth may be,29 the Fatimids clearly underestimated the objectives of the Franks and discovered them too late. We see here too the strong possibility that even before the fall of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Crusader states in the Levant, Muslim politicians were prepared to collaborate with the new ‘enemy’ against their traditional rivals, even though the latter were fellow-Muslims. This trend was to increase in the early decades of the twelfth century and to persist as a feature of Crusader-Muslim relations right up to the end of the Crusader presence in the Near East.
A Summary of the State of the Islamic Lands on the Eve of the First Crusade
It has frequently been said that the initial success of the Crusaders was due to their unity and to Muslim disunity. This disunity has just been dissected and re-emphasised. The Muslim world – to put it succinctly – was bereft of major leaders in all the areas which were to receive the impact of the Frankish invasions. Nor was there strong Muslim leadership in neighbouring countries. Previous scholarship on the Muslim world has also not adequately stressed the crippling effects of religious schisms. The ‘heretical’ Fatimid Isma‘ili Shi‘ite caliphate had set itself up in the tenth century in direct opposition to the ‘Abbasid Sunni caliphate centred on Baghdad. In the eleventh century the resultant rivalry manifested itself in military confrontation between the Fatimids and the Seljuqs. Indeed, the Seljuqs, despite being famous for their victory in 463/1071 under Alp Arslan over the Byzantine army under the emperor Romanus Diogenes IV at the battle of Manzikert, were in fact far more zealous in their prosecution of jihad against the ‘heretical’ Fatimids than in following up their success in Asia Minor. In making this choice of priorities the Seljuqs were merely conforming to the pattern of settled introversion which was so characteristic of much of the Muslim world in the Middle Ages. The close focus on the conflicts within the Dar al-Islam or Islamic community entailed a reciprocal neglect of threats from the outside world. The initial response to the Mongol invasions a little over a century later told the same story.
The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives Page 11
