The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives
Page 12
The Seljuq military commanders and princes who ruled a series of city-states centred on places such as Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul at the turn of the eleventh century might well be mutually hostile and in a state of almost constant war with each other but these were, so to speak, family squabbles. The vast majority of these leaders had inherited a deep-rooted reluctance to make alliances with Fatimid Egypt, the old enemy Shi‘ite superpower. Therein lay their downfall. For such a supra-sectarian Muslim alliance – uniting the Fatimids, who still had access to the sea along the Egyptian coast, with the Turkish armies of the Muslim cities of Syria and Palestine – could have contained and even eradicated the Crusader threat before it was too late and before the Franks had seized and fortified the Syrian ports and gone on to establish four Crusader states in the area – Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli.
Figure 2.13 Epigraphic roundel on a brass basin made for Hugh de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem and Cyprus (1324-s9), the only Islamic vessel which bears the name and titles of a non-Muslim ruler; probably Egypt or Syria
Syria and Palestine on the Eve of the First Crusade
The religious identity of the Muslims of Syria and Palestine, the areas about to be affected most directly by the First Crusade, was not uniform. These lands were probably mostly Sunni but they also contained some Shi‘ite communities, such as in Tripoli and other cities which had periodically been under the suzerainty of the Fatimids, as well as in Aleppo and Damascus. There were also long-established Christian and Jewish communities in the area. The Christians had widely varying affiliations – the Maronites, Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians and Melkites were all represented – whilst in Egypt the Copts were a powerful minority, especially in the administration.
Some evidence as to Muslim attitudes to Christians in the eleventh century can be found in the work of the Muslim writer al-Wasiti, a Shafi‘ite preacher in the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. He composed a work on the Merits of Jerusalem (Fada‘il al-Quds) no later than 410/1019–20 and it is important to note that in it there is an unmistakable tone of hostility towards Christianity. Indeed, he warns Muslim pilgrims to Jerusalem not to enter the churches there.30 Perhaps this is a reflection of the atmosphere which may well have prevailed after the persecutions of al-Hakim. Those persecutions had of course culminated in the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcre itself on 4 Safar 400/28 September 1009.31
However, at least in the view of some observers, the situation had improved by the middle of the century. For example, the Persian Isma‘ili traveller Nasir-i Khusraw, who visited the Holy Land and Jerusalem in 438/1046, gives a much more neutral account. He records that Jerusalem was a centre of pilgrimage for those who could not make the journey to Mecca; in some years, more than 20,000 people assembled there.32 He also mentions the presence of Christians and Jews: ‘The Christians and Jews come there too in a great number from the provinces of the Byzantine empire and other countries to visit the Church and the Temple.’33
As well as a very detailed description of Jerusalem and its Islamic monuments, Nasir-i Khusraw describes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: ‘The Christians possess in Jerusalem a big church which bears the name of the Church of Refuse (Bi‘at al-Qumama) and they revere it greatly. Every year people come in large numbers from the Byzantine lands to make pilgrimage to it.’34 The derogatory pun, well known in Crusader times, on the name of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, known to the eastern Christians as Bi’at (or Kanisat) al-Qiyama – the Church of the Resurrection – was obviously in use by the 1040s.
Nasir-i Khusraw is full of admiration for the church, which he describes as holding up to 8,ooo people. His very detailed description is straightforward and free from religious rhetoric, and, unlike later Muslim writers, he does not pass judgement on the images that he sees displayed in this Christian place of worship: One sees there in several places pictures representing Jesus mounted upon an ass; one also notices portraits of the prophets Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and his sons.’35 These portraits were varnished and covered with glass which was polished every day. He ends up with the admiring words: This church is such that one could not see any other like it in any other place in the world.’36
Figure 2.14 Foot soldier, glazed ceramic bowl, ninth–tenth centuries, Iran
What of life in the Holy Land itself and in the sacred city of Jerusalem in particular, in the 1090s? A solitary Muslim source has survived from the period immediately preceding the First Crusade and this sheds light on certain aspects of life in the Holy Land in the last decade of the eleventh century. It is an account of a journey made to the east from Spain by a Muslim hadith scholar, Ibn al-’ Arabi (not the celebrated mystic of the same name), who set out with his father in Rabi’I 485/April 1092.37 The motives for this journey may have been to escape from political persecution, but Ibn al-‘Arabi, like many a Muslim scholar of al-Andalus before and after him, says that he went east in search of knowledge: ‘I was desirous of seeking knowledge in the utmost extremities [of the earth].’38 Father and son survived a shipwreck off the North African coast when the boat on which they were travelling broke into pieces near Barqa.
Whilst his father went on to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn al-‘Arabi opted to stay on in the Holy Land and to imbibe the religious knowledge which he saw all around him. His account of the religious milieu in Palestine indicates that it was ‘teeming with scholars’,39 both inhabitants of the area itself and those who had come from other regions of the Islamic world. Faced with such an opportunity, he felt impelled to postpone the pilgrimage.40 In Jerusalem, Ibn al-‘Arabi found thriving madrasas for the Shafi‘ites and the Hanafites, and he lists the names of prominent scholars who met to study and to engage in scholarly disputations there.41 Perhaps the most famous figure whom Ibn al-‘Arabi met in Jerusalem was al-Tartushi, who had also come from distant Spain and was staying in a part of the Aqsa mosque. This holy monument also housed religious scholars from Khurasan in eastern Iran.42 Ibn al-‘Arabi is fired with enthusiasm for what he saw: ‘We entered the Holy Land and reached the Aqsa mosque. The full moon of knowledge shone for me and I was illuminated by it for more than three years.’43
Incidentally, it was around the end of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s stay in Jerusalem that the most famous medieval Islamic scholar of all, al-Ghazali, underwent his spiritual crisis in Baghdad in 488/1095 and came for a while to Jerusalem to meditate daily in the Dome of the Rock.44 Ibn al-‘Arabi stresses that Jerusalem was the meeting place for religious scholars of all three faiths – Islam, Christianity and Judaism.45
Figure 2.15 Foot soldiers, cauldron, inlaid metal, early fourteenth century, probably Iraq
Ibn al-‘Arabi does not suggest that the local Christians were suffering from oppression on the part of their Muslim overlords; nor were the Jews, for that matter. Commenting on Jerusalem as a whole, he remarks that the Christians cultivated its estates and kept its churches in good repair.46 When he moved to Ascalon, Ibn al-‘Arabi found a similarly thriving scholarly atmosphere, describing it as a ‘sea of culture’.47
It is, of course, dangerous to generalise on the basis of an isolated account of one traveller, Ibn al-‘Arabi, who visited the Holy Land, stayed for only a short time there and wrote up his experiences ten years later when he arrived back in Spain. Nevertheless, his testimony, dated as it is to the very eve of the First Crusade, does give some information on the Islamic religious milieu of Jerusalem and the Holy Land just before the Franks came. According to Ibn al-‘Arabi at least, Jerusalem was a religious centre for believers in all three monotheistic faiths, Muslims, Christians and Jews. There is no suggestion here that Christian pilgrims, either from Byzantium or western Europe, were being prevented from visiting the Holy Places of Jerusalem.
However, the rosy picture given to us by Ibn al-‘Arabi should be counterbalanced by an interesting observation recorded by al-‘Azimi for the year 486/1093–4: ‘The people of the Syrian ports (al-Sawahil) prevented Frankish and Byzantine pilgrims from crossing to Jerusa
lem. Those of them who survived spread the news about that to their country. So they prepared themselves for military invasion (ghaza).’48
Here is a clear statement – but only in a single source – that Muslims had harassed Christian pilgrims and that not all of them had survived to tell the tale.49
Why Did the First Crusade Come? – Muslim Interpretations
We shall now look in chronological order at what was said by some of the Muslim chroniclers themselves in the centuries immediately following the First Crusade and at how much they understood of this unexpected invasion of the House of Islam. It was common practice for each successive generation of chroniclers to copy the historiographical material of their predecessors – there was no ignominy attached to such plagiarism which was seen as the continuation of a long tradition to be safeguarded. Thus there is much similarity between many of the Muslim accounts of the First Crusade which date from different periods and many of them relate the events without comment or interpretation. The excerpts given here have been chosen because they say something of special interest which makes them stand out from the usual narratives. The Islamic chroniclers do not seem to link the arrival of the western Europeans with the distant event of al-Hakim’s destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre nor with the appeals by Byzantium to Europe for help against the Turkish threat on its eastern borders. Nor do the Muslim sources present sophisticated analyses of historical events – their horizons are narrowly Islamic – but some of them at least drop revealing hints.
The earliest surviving sources – Ibn al-Qalanisi and al-‘Azimi – both write about the coming of the First Crusade, but Ibn al-Qalanisi does not say why the Franks have come. Instead, he just launches straight into the story.50 Moreover, al-‘Azimi, as already noted, is the only writer to mention as an immediate casus belli that Christian pilgrims were prevented from visiting Jerusalem in the year 486/1093–4 and he links this event with the Crusaders coming to the Levant.
Al-‘Azimi’s chronicle has survived in very fragmentary form: his work often looks like draft notes for (or from) a longer history. Despite the brevity of his account, he implies that there is a pattern of Crusader movement southwards which extends from Spain through North Africa to the Levant. He sees the link between the fall of Toledo to the Christians of Muslim Spain in 461/1068,51 the taking of al-Mahdiyya in North Africa by the Normans of Sicily in 479/1086,52 and the coming of the Crusaders to the Levant.
Figure 2.16 Mosque of al-Hakim, perspectival view, 380–403/990–1013, Cairo, Egypt
Figure 2.17 Mosque of al-Hakim, inscription band, 380–403/990–1013, Cairo, Egypt
These rudimentary hints of al-‘Azimi – which, for all their brevity, reveal a remarkable grasp of the geopolitical situation – are followed up by a later Muslim historian, the great Ibn al-Athir (d. 630/1233) in his Universal History. For the year 491/1097–8 he writes:
The beginning of the appearance of the state (dawla) of the Franks and the intensification of their activity and their departure to the lands of Islam and their conquest of some of them was the year 478 (1085–6). They took the city of Toledo and other parts of al-Andalus [Muslim Spain] as already mentioned. Then they attacked in the year 484 the island of Sicily and conquered it, and I have already mentioned that too, and they turned to the coasts of North Africa and conquered part of that….53
Ibn al-Athir then begins his account of the Franks in Syria and Palestine. Thus we see that he too grasps the significance of the whole sweep of Christian conquests southwards in the wider Mediterranean world. However, he does not seem to see any specific religious motivation behind the Crusaders’ arrival in the Holy Land, or for that matter in their conquests in Spain, Sicily or North Africa.
Reporting for the year 490/1097 an imaginary correspondence between a certain Baldwin and Roger of Sicily, Ibn al-Athir represents Roger as singularly reluctant to join forces with Baldwin in conquering the African coast (where he has allies for the moment and for which he has his own plans for conquest). Instead, Roger deflects the European offensive eastwards, telling Baldwin’s messenger: ‘If you have decided to make war on the Muslims, the best thing would be to conquer Jerusalem and to liberate it from their hands; and the glory will be yours.’54
We have already noted that one strand of the Muslim historical tradition blamed the Fatimids for inviting the Crusaders to come and attack Syria and Palestine in order to protect Egypt from the Seljuqs. With his usual breadth of vision, Ibn al-Athir gives both interpretations for the coming of the First Crusade, ending with the usual cautionary statement ‘God knows best’.55 He does not see it as his job to adjudicate between these contradictory versions of events.
Figure 2.18 Signs of the zodiac, Vaso Vescovali, c. 1200, Iran
A later account by the Mamluk historian al-Nuwayri (d. 733/1333) also reflects on wider aspects of the coming of the First Crusade. Under the title of ‘What the Franks took of the coasts of Syria in 491 and afterwards’, al-Nuwayri speaks at some length, and with unusual breadth of vision, about Spain:
The beginning of their appearing, expanding and penetrating into the Islamic lands was in 478. This came about in the following way. When the kings of the lands of Spain became divided after the Umayyads and each area fell into the hand of one king and the soul of each one disdained to be led by the other and to enter into obedience to anyone else, they were like the Party Kings in Persian times.56
Al-Nuwayri writes that this fragmentation of Muslim Spain: ‘led to the disturbance of conditions and the conquering of Islamic countries by enemies. The first place they conquered was the city of Toledo in al-Andalus as we have related under the year 478’.57 He then, like Ibn al-Athir before him, mentions the conquest of Sicily by the Normans in 484/1091 and their infiltration into parts of the North African coast.58
The Course of the First Crusade: Muslim Accounts
The First Crusade is poorly documented on the Muslim side in comparison with the relative wealth of documentation in the Crusader sources. Nevertheless, the Muslim sources, such as they are, do give some interesting insights into the campaign.59 Muslim chroniclers have a clear idea of the sequence of the events, battles and conquests of the First Crusade, and they know its main landmarks. They are aware that many of the Crusaders assembled first in Constantinople and that they proceeded across Anatolia towards Syria. The alliance between the Crusaders and the Byzantine emperor, and the subsequent estrangement between the two parties, are well understood. As al-‘Azimi writes for the year 490/1097 (with the usual exaggeration over numbers):
The fleets of the Franks appeared at the port of Constantinople with 300,000 men and their kings were six. They swore oaths to the king of Byzantium that they would hand over to him the first fortress which they conquered but they did not keep faith about that.60
The Muslim sources mention the harassment of the Crusader army by the Turks as it crossed Anatolia. Ibn al-Qalanisi mentions the efforts of Qilij Arslan I to halt the Crusaders’ progress: ‘He marched out to the fords, tracks and roads by which the Franks must pass, and showed no mercy to all of them who fell into his hands.’61
Figure 2.19 (above and overleaf) Signs of the zodiac in their respective domicilia; ewer made for a Shi‘ite patron, c. 13so, probably Syria
Figure 2.20 (opposite) Map of the route of the First Crusade
Al-‘Azimi reports that the Turks burned the Crusader fleets and blocked the watering-places, and he mentions the fall of Nicaea (Iznik) very briefly.62
In July 1097 the Crusaders defeated the Seljuq sultan Qilij Arslan I at the battle of Dorylaeum on the edge of the Anatolian plateau. The early history of the nomadic Turks of Anatolia is, as already mentioned, very poorly documented; so we should perhaps not read too much into the neglect of this battle in the Islamic sources. Ibn al-Qalanisi does mention the battle, dating it to 20 Rajab 490/4 July 1097 and stating clearly that the Turks were soundly defeated.63 Ibn al-Athir, normally so comprehensive in his coverage, skates over the disaster in a s
ingle phrase: ‘they [the Franks] fought him [Qilij Arslan] and they routed him in Rajab [4]90’.64
Events in distant Anatolia perhaps deserved little attention in the eyes of the Islamic chroniclers; but as the Crusader threat loomed nearer and nearer to Syria and Palestine and thus to areas of greater concern to them, the historiographical coverage becomes fuller. The Muslim chroniclers spare no effort to relate the disasters which ensued – and especially at Antioch, Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man and, as the final catastrophe, at Jerusalem. Edessa (al-Ruha), the first of the Crusader states in the Near East, which was held by an Armenian lord named Toros, fell to Baldwin of Boulogne in March 1098. This is almost completely ignored by the Muslim chroniclers who in later years simply speak without explanation of the ‘Franks of Edessa’.65 Ibn al-Athir, as is often the case, is the exception: he does not place the fall of Edessa in its correct chronological slot but instead, under the year 494/1100–1, he writes: ‘The Franks had taken the city of Edessa through correspondence [letters] from its population because the majority of them were Armenians and there were only a few Muslims there.’66