The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives
Page 15
Because of the scanty documentation it is not possible to establish whether similar demographic movements affected the Syro-Palestinian countryside but it seems likely that the exodus from the cities must have continued – though less dramatically – throughout the twelfth century and that it may have affected villages too.
Crusader Expansionism and Muslim Disunity, 491–518/1099–1124
The Islamic chroniclers are well aware of the dismal catalogue of continuing Crusader conquests and Muslim failures which followed in the wake of the fall of Jerusalem. Of the subsequent territorial gains, Tripoli eventually succumbed to become the fourth of the Crusader states in the Levant and the sources devote detailed coverage to its protracted siege by the Franks. Geographical factors influenced the spread of their conquests. They were able to occupy the Syrian coastline, but when they tried to expand eastwards they were less successful. Nevertheless, their achievements were impressive, especially in view of their small numbers and unfamiliarity with the terrain. As we have seen, the Islamic sources do not point this out, stressing instead Muslim disunity and lack of concerted response to the Franks.
The case of the Assassins typifies this disunity. As already mentioned, the Assassins had formed a breakaway Isma‘ili group in Iran after the death of al-Mustansir in 487/1094. They soon adopted a policy of murdering prominent political and religious figures in Iran and began to exploit the weakness and instability of Syria. Hasan-i Sabbah, the Assassin leader based in Alamut in north-western Iran, decided around the beginning of the twelfth century to send missionaries to spread their secret doctrines in Syria. This timing was of course disastrous to the Muslim war effort against the Franks. Although their numbers were very small, the Assassins were able eventually to seize a number of mountain citadels and to entrench themselves there. But during the early decades of the twelfth century they operated from Aleppo and Damascus. They added to the complexity of the fragmented political landscape and came to be used on both sides, Muslim and Frankish, as the century progressed.
There were, of course, serious efforts on the part of the Muslims to stop the Frankish threat and it is now time to examine these. Three possible areas might have provided armies with which to stem the rising tide of Crusader expansionism in this period – Fatimid Egypt, the Seljuqs in the east and the local rulers of Syria. Even better than a single one of these would have been a coalition of two or more of them. In the event, all Muslim attempts to stop the Franks failed.
The Egyptian Response
Despite the negative judgements voiced in the Islamic sources, Fatimid Egypt responded, and responded early, to the Crusader threat. Soon after the fall of Jerusalem in 492/1099, as we have already noted, al-Afdal, the Fatimid vizier, went in person to Palestine where the Franks inflicted a heavy defeat on his army. He then retreated to Cairo.136 Ibn Zafir records reproachfully: He had given up hope of the Syrian coastline remaining in Muslim hands and he did not personally wage war against them after that.’137
However, Fatimid activities in northern Syria and Palestine did not cease altogether, although, as Ibn Zafir mentions: ‘Most of the cities of Syria and the country were divided up between the Turks and the Franks (may God curse them).’138
In fact several other attempts were made against the Franks from Egypt by land and sea. In 503/1109, for example, after the Franks had finally taken Tripoli, the Egyptian fleet arrived – eight days too late to defend it. Al-Afdal also tried on two occasions to enlist help from Damascus against the Franks. In 498/1104–5 a combined Egyptian-Damascene force met the Franks between Jaffa and Ascalon, but the outcome of this encounter was inconclusive.139 Further campaigns were spearheaded from Ascalon by the Fatimids, in 499/1105–6, 505/1111–12 and 506/1112–13, but they became increasingly infrequent as more and more of the coastline fell to the Franks.
As a result of these easy victories, the Franks even felt bold enough to attack Egypt itself. Baldwin, the king of Jerusalem, reached al-Farama and Tinnis in 511/1117. Ibn Zafir records this campaign by Baldwin, mentioning that he burned the main mosque and other mosques in al-Farama, as well as the town’s gates. Baldwin died on his way back to Palestine. Thereafter, the Fatimids withdrew within their borders and interfered little in the affairs of the Levant.
In modern scholarship as in the medieval period, it has been customary to blame Fatimid Egypt for its lack of effort against the Franks. The years under discussion in this chapter – so the argument goes – would have offered during this vital period of Frankish expansion, especially on the coast, the prime opportunity for the Fatimids (who still had access to their own ports) to have nipped the Frankish threat in the bud. Moreover, at this time the Fatimids could have reconquered some of the territories they had lost to the Seljuqs in the second half of the eleventh century. But the dynamic impetus of the Fatimid state was a thing of the past and, as Brett points out, the establishment of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem put an end to any territorial ambitions in Syria that the Fatimids may have had and ushered in a long period of Egyptian isolationism.140 However, another interpretation of Fatimid activities has been given recently by the German scholar Köhler. Following the line presented in some of the Islamic sources, he argues that the Fatimids did not want to have the Turkish rulers of Syria as their direct neighbours and that they preferred on the whole to maintain a buffer area between them and the Turks. So Fatimid attacks on the Franks were directed mainly at defending the Syrian ports, where their direct interests as a notionally maritime power were at stake. In other respects their efforts against the Franks may well have been deliberately perfunctory. Whatever the truth may be, the Fatimid army and navy could do little against the Franks.
Figure 2.26 Fatimid carved wooden panel, twelfth century, Egypt
The Seljuq Response
In sharp contrast to the treatment of the Shi‘ite Fatimids in the Sunni historical sources, the Seljuqs’ efforts against the Crusaders in this period are inflated by Muslim authors and the Seljuqs’ notable lack of success minimised. In particular, sultan Muhammad (d. 511/1118) is praised in the sources as a great jihad fighter, although the evidence for this image of him is singularly meagre. Despite praise for the Seljuqs’ campaigns against the Franks, it is clear from the sources that the many cries for help from dispossessed Levantine rulers and terrified citizens did not strike a very responsive chord in distant Baghdad and beyond. It was entirely understandable that appeals should be made to the Sunni rulers of the east by the Sunnis of Syria. Writing from Baghdad, the historian Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200) notes in his record for the year 491/1097–8, that is before the fall of Jerusalem: ‘There were many calls to go out and fight against the Franks and complaints multiplied in every place.’141 He mentioned that, on the orders of the Seljuq sultan Barkyaruq, commanders assembled: ‘But then this resoluteness fizzled out.’142
Barkyaruq himself, locked in a struggle for succession with his brother Muhammad, had, of course, other concerns on his mind. It is unlikely that he put his personal authority behind the drive to send help to Syria. The following year, after Jerusalem was taken, Ibn al-Jawzi records mournfully:
Those from Syria seeking help arrived [from Baghdad] and told what had happened to the Muslims. The qadi Abu Sa’id al-Harawi, the qadi of Damascus, stood up in the diwan [my italics] and delivered a speech which made those present weep. Someone was delegated from the diwan to go to the troops to inform them about this disaster. The people remained aloof.143
So we see that nobody was willing to help the beleaguered Syrians.
In the immediately following years, increased Crusader expansion, and in particular the activities of Tancred in northern Syria, prompted further appeals to Baghdad. Some prominent citizens from Aleppo made the long journey across the desert in 504/1111 to plead personally for help against the constant threat and pillaging of the Franks. On the first Friday of their visit in Sha’ban 504/February 1111 they publicly called for assistance in the sultan’s mosque. According to Ibn al-‘Adim (and
other sources), they completely disrupted the performance of the Friday prayers: ‘They prevented the preachers from giving the sermon, crying out for Islamic troops against the Franks, and they broke some of the pulpits.’144 Ibn al-Qalanisi writes in similar vein: ‘They drove the preacher from the pulpit and broke it into pieces, clamouring and weeping for the misfortunes that had befallen Islam at the hands of the Franks, the slaughter of men, and enslavement of women.’145
Figure 2.27 (above, opposite and overleaf) Coins of various Turcoman principalities, twelfth–thirteenth centuries, Turkey and Iraq
In view of the close connection in Islamic ritual between the pulpit and the reigning political authority, the breaking of the pulpit was no mere act of random vandalism but an unmistakable challenge to the sultan himself.
A week later there was a similar disturbance in the caliph’s mosque. This suggests the deliberate orchestration of a campaign designed to shame into action both the titular and the de facto rulers of the Islamic state. The caliph, al-Mustazhir, was not amused; the timing of the Aleppan visit clashed with the arrival of his new bride from Isfahan who entered Baghdad amidst much pomp and ceremony. Al-Mustazhir was held back by the sultan from punishing those who had created all the commotion and the sultan agreed to send out an army to Syria.146
There were in fact some tangible results of this and other earlier protest visits to Baghdad. A few armies were set out in the course of the next few years into Syria with the publicly declared aim of fighting the Franks. These armies were headed by successive governors of Mosul who were working under the auspices of sultan Muhammad. Their achievements were singularly unimpressive. Mawdud, governor of Mosul, had led the first campaign, sponsored by the Seljuq sultan Muhammad, against the Franks in 503/1110; it was directed specifically at Edessa. Mawdud was joined by two Turcoman leaders who held power in what is now eastern Turkey, Sukman al-Qutbi of Akhlat and Najm al-Din Il-Ghazi of Mardin. This campaign was abortive. Muhammad then sponsored an army in 505/1111–12 to return to Syria, again under the command of Mawdud, together with the contingents of a number of other commanders from different Seljuq territories.147 This campaign was a total fiasco. The Seljuq prince Ridwan invited the army to come to Aleppo but when its members actually reached the walls of the city, they were incredulous as Ridwan closed its gates in their faces.148 Their incredulity soon turned to anger as the gates remained closed for seventeen nights. Rampage and pillaging in the territory around Aleppo then followed. Thus a great Muslim campaign, sponsored by the Seljuq sultan, fizzled out ignominiously and without any tangible successes, with wasted time and resources. Indeed, it positively weakened the position of the Syrians.
Clearly it is easy to use Ridwan, who is often castigated in the sources for having ‘Shi‘ite leanings’, as a scapegoat and to accuse him of vacillation and lack of loyalty to a higher Muslim cause. In an unusually scathing attack on him, Ibn al-‘Adim, who wrote a biography of him, notes:
Ridwan’s situation became weak and he began to favour the Batiniyya [the Isma’lis] and their sect appeared in Aleppo. Ridwan took their side and they established a missionary house (dar al-da’wa) in Aleppo. The kings of Islam wrote to him about them but he paid no attention.149
However, the evidence of the sources does not indicate that Ridwan alone was to blame for this military disaster. The commanders in the sultan’s army do not seem to have made much effort to win Ridwan over. Perhaps, at the last minute, he was afraid that the goal of the army sent by this relative from the east was to erode his personal authority at Aleppo.
Sultan Muhammad sent another campaign into Syria in 509/1115. On this occasion the rulers of Aleppo and Damascus actually sided with the Crusader leader Roger of Antioch, and the sultan’s army was soundly defeated in Rabi‘ II 509/September 1115 by Roger at the battle of Danith.150 This marked the end of the Seljuq offensive from the east against the Franks. It had foundered because of internal political factors within the Seljuq sphere of influence. Seljuq motivation was always mistrusted by local Muslim rulers in Syria who feared interference from Baghdad and Isfahan in their affairs, and these rulers would not generally give the Seljuq armies their support. And it could well have been the case that what the pro-Seljuq sources present as campaigns against the Franks in Syria were indeed efforts on the part of the Seljuqs of the east to reimpose the more centralised authority which had once existed under the Great Seljuqs before 485/1092. Whatever the motivation for these campaigns may have been – spearheaded from Mosul and nominally at least under the sponsorship of the Seljuq sultan Muhammad – they were a signal failure. One must also take into account the possibility that the missions dispatched from Syria to Baghdad to seek help against the Franks were popular in nature and did not always enjoy the support of the rulers themselves. Hence when help was sent, it was not accepted and the prospective saviours of Syria were reduced to attacking the very Muslims they had ostensibly come to help.
As already mentioned, most Sunni Islamic sources try to whitewash Seljuq indifference to the loss of Jerusalem and the Syrian ports and they point to these campaigns which were actually sent out under the auspices of the Seljuq sultan to wage jihad against the Crusaders. However, no matter how biased they are in favour of the Seljuqs, these accounts cannot disguise the fact that Crusader expansionist aims were not stopped as a result of any of these military efforts. The Franks slotted easily into the atmosphere of small territorial units with ephemeral alliances and changing priorities which prevailed in Syria in the first decade of their presence in the area, and they exploited this labile situation to their full advantage. Had the Seljuqs from the east focused on the Franks and sent a unified army under the leadership of the sultan himself, things might have ended differently. It has often been pointed out that it was the Turkish warriors, not the Fatimid armies, who posed a real military threat to the Crusaders. Only the Seljuq armies could seriously have arrested Latin Christian expansion in the Levant. Whilst the Seljuq sultan paid lip service to the cause and sent some armies to fight the Franks, he did not take the field himself at the head of an army in Syria, as Alp Arslan had done against the Byzantine emperor at the battle of Manzikert in 463/1071. Muhammad did not dare to leave his power base in the east undefended.
And that was the territory that counted for him, not Syria. The fate of Jerusalem and the Syrian ports was sealed, therefore, in distant Isfahan. This geopolitical reality is often overlooked in accounts of the First Crusade and its immediate aftermath. As we shall see in Chapter 7, the disparate nature of the Seljuq army – composed as it was of the standing troops, provincial contingents under local commanders, and groups of nomadic Turcomans organised on tribal lines – necessitated strong military leadership, epitomised in the figure of the sultan. Otherwise, and this proved the case in this crucial period of Crusader consolidation in the region, there was dissension, defection and defeat on the Muslim side.
The Local Syrian Response to the Frankish Presence
Henceforward, if there was to be resistance to the Franks it would have to come from those who lived closest to them. The Turcoman Artuqid ruler of Mardin, Il-Ghazi, who held Aleppo for a while, showed the way with a resounding victory in 513/1119 over Roger of Antioch in a battle which came to be known as the battle of Balat or the Field of Blood. Roger was killed.151 This was the first major Muslim victory against the Franks and significantly it had been achieved without help of outside armies from the east. But it was an isolated success and Il-Ghazi did not follow it up by moving on Antioch. Ibn al-Qalanisi rises to unusual heights of eloquence in his description of this victory:
The Franks were on the ground, one prostrate mass, horsemen and footmen alike, with their horses and their weapons, so that not one man of them escaped to tell the tale, and their leader Roger was found stretched out among the dead. A number of the eye witnesses of this battle… saw some of the horses stretched out on the ground like hedgehogs because of the quantities of arrows sticking into them. This victory was one of the fine
st of victories, and such plenitude of divine aid was never granted to Islam in all its past ages.152
After the First Crusade and in the year immediately following it, the power of the local Muslim rulers in Syria and Palestine was gradually eroded and their lands were first pillaged and then captured by the Franks. Instead of uniting against a common enemy, the Muslims tended to make unilateral agreements with the Franks and pay tribute to them. Lacking a strong overall leadership, such as could have been provided by the Seljuq sultan to the east, and still cut off by religious differences from the Shi‘ite government of Fatimid Egypt, the local Muslim rulers of Syria and Palestine could and did form ephemeral alliances with each other against the Franks, but these were extremely fragile and were broken at the least provocation.
Far from uniting against a common enemy, local rulers in Syria with their power centred on a single city, such as Aleppo or Damascus, had no intention whatsoever of sacrificing their own political interests for the sake of some nebulous ideal of Islamic solidarity. It was precisely in this period of the early Crusader presence that the political and military alliances mentioned above were frequently established between Muslims and Franks in which their shared local interests in Syria were paramount.153
Two episodes illustrate this very clearly. Aleppo under Ridwan and Antioch under Tancred formed an alliance against what they perceived as military interference in their affairs by the ruler of Mosul, Jawali Saqao, Ridwan’s main political rival. Accordingly, Ridwan wrote to Tancred saying that it would be right for the two of them to unite against Jawali in order to drive him from their territories.154 Such alliances as these were, of course, opportunistic and short-lived. After Tancred’s death in 506/1112, Ridwan allied himself with Tughtegin of Damascus. Such readiness to become involved in the pragmatic politics of survival and co-existence characterises this period.