The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  Jerusalem henceforth was to be ruled from Egypt.99 The hard-headed attitude of the later Ayyubids towards Jerusalem and their preference for Egypt as a power base continued until the very end of the dynasty. Indeed, al-Salih Ayyub advised his son Turanshah, the last Ayyubid sultan of Egypt: ?f they [the Franks] demand the coast and Jerusalem from you, give them these places without delay on condition that they have no foothold in Egypt.’100

  This dismal picture of Ayyubid Realpolitik coupled with indifference to jihad and the fate of Jerusalem was occasionally modified by individual Ayyubid rulers in Syria. The alliance between the religious classes in the Ayyubid period and the military leadership remained stronger there than in Palestine. The modern scholars Sivan and Pouzet argue that two Ayyubid princes, al-Mu’azzam ‘Isa and his son al-Nasir Da’ud, showed a real spirit of jihad, thus salvaging the reputation of the dynasty at least to some extent.101 The city of Damascus and especially its Hanbalite quarter, al-Salihiyya, remained a milieu impregnated with the spirit of jihad. Here were produced at least two treaties on jihad in the Ayyubid period, one by Ibn Qudama (d. 620/1223) and the other by Diya’ al-Din al-Maqdisi (d. 643/1245).

  Figure 4.18 (above and opposite) Foot soldiers, stone relief, Bab al-‘Amadiyya, between 631/1233 and 657/1259, Iraq

  Generally speaking, however, the impulse of the religious classes towards the propagation of jihad against the Franks, which had sustained and strengthened Saladin’s activities – certainly in the years immediately preceding the reconquest of Jerusalem – was an embarrassment rather than a stimulus to these sultans. They preferred pragmatism to piety and worked towards an accommodation with the Franks. Occasionally the sources refer to explicit pressure from the religious classes aimed at making the ruler prosecute jihad. One example is an episode which occurred as early as 601/1204, when Ibn Qudama openly accused the Ayyubid sultan al-‘Adil of occupying himself with wars against his fellow Muslims and of neglecting the fight against the infidel.102

  The Power of the Preacher to Rouse the Populace to Jihad

  The contemporary chronicler Sibt b. al-Jawzi describes the prelude to a military campaign conducted by the Ayyubid prince al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa in the year 607/1210–11. The author himself was one of the greatest preachers of the day and he used his skills to mobilise the population on behalf of the ruler:

  I sat in the congregational mosque on Saturday 5 Rabi ‘I and the [throng of] people stretched from the gate of the shrine of Zayn al-‘Abidin to the gate of al-Natifanin and the gate of the clocks. The [number of people] standing in the courtyard103 was more than what would fill the Damascus mosque [for the Friday prayer]. They estimated 30,000 [people] and it was a day the like of which had not been seen in Damascus or anywhere else.

  Such was his fame as a preacher that he had drawn crowds more numerous than those who came to pray on Fridays: certainly, the Great Mosque in Damascus could house a vast number of worshippers.104

  Sibt b. al-Jawzi relates that many strands of hair had come into his possession and he recalled a story of a woman who had cut her hair and sent it to him, saying: ‘Make it into a hobble for your horse in the path of God.’

  This example of devotional piety shows women’s participation in the corporate jihad activities of the community and is used to powerful effect in the rest of the story told by Sibt b. al-Jawzi:

  So I made fetters and hobbles for the horses of the jihad warriors (mujahidun) from the hairs which had come into my possession. When I climbed into the pulpit, I ordered them to be brought and they were put round the men’s necks. There were 300 fetters. When the people saw them they let out a great cry and cut [their hair] likewise.105

  Scenes like this demonstrate the power of the eloquent preacher to move the citizens to join the jihad.

  Occasionally in the Ayyubid period a serious external crisis could cause the rulers to act in concert against the Franks. The fall of Damietta in 616/1219 was one such rare occurrence when the Ayyubids showed solidarity. On this occasion Sibt b. al-Jawzi read out in the Great Mosque in Damascus a letter which al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa had written to him with the aim of rousing the people to fight jihad.106

  An Overview of Jihad in the Ayyubid Period

  The conflicting pressures of political expediency and jihad against the Franks, so apparent in the Ayyubid period, had, of course, manifested themselves since the very beginning of the Crusades. Yet the conduct of the Ayyubids – their lacklustre performance in jihad and their handing back of Jerusalem to the Franks – was castigated at the time and has since been roundly condemned as a betrayal of the aims and achievements of their illustrious predecessor Saladin.

  It is worth examining whether this is a just assessment. The emphasis on jihad which was the hallmark of Saladin’s later years until he captured Jerusalem should probably be viewed as an exception, a rare emotional peak for the Muslims, even within the context of his own career. For most of his adult life Saladin operated within the usual contemporary framework of shifting alliances, truces and petty territorial warfare, as other rulers and military barons did. This modus operandi was consistently the norm for the later Ayyubids too. As we have seen, it was in Saladin’s career, and perhaps partially also as a result of his charismatic personality, that the religious classes managed to carry with them the military leadership and the populace at large in a rare and focused campaign against the Franks. For a brief while jihad transcended the rhetoric of the propagandists and realised its full potential for the Muslims of Syria and Palestine in the conquest of Jerusalem. For the later Ayyubids, however, Jerusalem was a dispensable commodity: occasionally it could be the focus of displays of public piety on their part but more frequently it would fall victim to their hard-headed military realism.

  Various factors contributed to the lack of a single-minded focus by the Ayyubids on jihad against the Franks. They were enthusiastic about the benefits of trade with the Franks and the wider world, using the Frankish ports. A common interest in the local defence of Syria and Palestine no doubt motivated both Ayyubids and Franks to unite on occasion against external aggressors, be they the Khwaraz-mians, Franks from Europe or even Ayyubid rivals from Egypt. Certainly, in the early Ayyubid period, in the years immediately following Saladin’s death, there must have been an inevitable emotional anticlimax after the recapture of Jerusalem. Once Saladin, the charismatic military leader, had gone and the perfect focus provided for jihad in Saladin’s time, namely that of the recapture of Jerusalem, had disappeared, there was no longer a common will amongst the Ayyubid elite to finish off the job and remove the Franks definitively. Each Ayyubid ruler within the confederacy could adopt his own negotiating position with the Franks.107 In the time-honoured way of their ancestors the individual Ayyubids defended their portion of territory against all comers, Muslim or Frank, and united against outsiders with other local rulers in times of external crisis.108

  Figure 4.19 Horseman, glazed ceramic bowl, thirteenth century, Aleppo region, Syria

  The Mamluk Period until the Fall of Acre, 648–690/1250–1291

  Saladin did not, of course, oust the Crusaders definitively from the Near East. Acre and most of the Syrian coast remained in Crusader hands for another century and it was left to the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt, carrying on the traditions of Saladin’s family, to achieve the fall of Acre in 690/1291 and thereby to remove the Crusader presence once and for all from Muslim territory. Jihad played an important part in underpinning and inspiring the Mamluk military achievement.

  With the accession of the Mamluks in 648/1250 a new dynasty was established which was to survive until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 922/1516–17. The new rulers, the commanders of Mamluk regiments, were well equipped for the difficult decades ahead. Indeed, the early Mamluk period witnessed the last great Mongol attacks on the Middle East as well as continuing Crusading activity and occupation. The Mongol forces under Hülegü swept through Syria and threatened Egypt. The Mamluk army under the command of the future sultan Baybars confro
nted a depleted Mongol army now led by Kitbogha Noyan and defeated them at the battle of ‘Ayn Jalut in Ramadan 658/September 1260. Shortly afterwards, in a bloody coup d’état which put an end to the early instability at the heart of the Mamluk state, Baybars claimed the sultanate for himself. Under the firm hand of Baybars, the Mamluk state wiped out the Ayyubids in Egypt, extended its power towards Syria and continued to tackle the much-dreaded Mongols from the east. The Mamluks’ military successes against the Mongols went side by side with vigorous attempts to remove the Franks from Muslim soil. Unlike their predecessors the Ayyubids, the Mamluk sultans had to contend with the Mongols on their very doorstep and this moulded their international policies in a very significant way. As Berkey argues:

  Figure 4.20 Animated inscription on candlestick of Kitbugha, inlaid metal, early 1290s, probably Egypt

  The European Crusaders were in some ways the least of the problems faced by contemporary Muslims: more threatening to the social and political order were the repeated waves of Turkic and Mongol invasion and settlement, culminating in the continual stream of immigrating Mamluks themselves.109

  An enthusiastic and romanticised view of the Mamluks is given by the famous North African Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) who describes them as possessing:

  the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with the filth of pleasure, undefiled by the ways of civilized living, and with their ardour unbroken by the profusion of luxury.110

  Despite this romanticisation of nomadic peoples’, presaging the ideal of the Noble Savage, Ibn Khaldun’s praise for the way in which the Mamluks revitalised the Islamic Near East is in many ways justified. Ruling from Cairo rather than Syria and holding themselves formally aloof from the indigenous peoples whom they ruled, the Mamluks formed a highly centralised state, normally known in the Arabic sources as the ‘state of the Turks’(dawlat al-Atrak), which showed remarkable cohesion and could mount a unified front against the Crusaders. Although they had usurped power, their victories against both Mongols and Franks enhanced their prestige.

  Under Baybars, the Mamluk state inaugurated an era of ‘increasing aggression’ against the Franks.111 The religious classes who wrote their history present a curiously impenetrable, uniform and generally favourable image of this dynasty. But this favourable image seems to hold true. Abroad, the Mamluk sultans were seen as the supreme warriors of jihad, whilst inside the state they dispensed true justice and eradicated rebellion and heresy. They were interested in the public face of religion and readily donned the mantle of leaders of the Sunni world. They patronised the religious classes, performed the pilgrimage and built many monuments in the service of Islam, not just for political reasons but out of genuine interest and piety (plate 4.27). Many members of the Mamluk military cadres were actually religious scholars in their own right. Berkey argues convincingly that Islam had never been a static and monolithic entity and that the Mamluks helped to mould from within the Islam of their own day112 – religion, civilisation and society – more than has previously been recognised.

  Figure 4.21 Blazons on Mamluk coins, thirteenth–fifteen th cen turies, Egypt and Syria

  The Mamluks were at pains to have their activities legitimised and prosecuted jihad with a public display of vigour and determination. Some of the spiritual inheritance of the ‘Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad which had been snuffed out by the Mongols in 656/1258 was revived by the establishment of a puppet ‘Abbasid caliphate in Cairo in 659/1261. This move was typical of the ostentatious piety of the new dynasty, as was the reinvigorated ideal of jihad, with a greater emphasis on the military aspects of that concept – war against the infidel.

  Baybars was the key figure who began the process of finally eradicating the Frankish presence from the Near East. He began a series of successful campaigns in the 1260s. Pressures from the new enemy, the Mongols, and the continuing presence of the Franks formed a powerful focus for channelling the energies of the new dynasty.

  The Career of Baybars, 648–676/1260–1277

  Whilst Baybars’ military skills were undoubtedly remarkable, he was also favoured by unusually good luck in the timing of his accession. The Mongols were disunited after their withdrawal from Syria in 1260 and in his wars against the Franks he was able to utilise the numerous Muslim refugees who poured into Syria and Egypt from Iraq, still held by the Mongols. Nevertheless Baybars was a brilliant and ruthless sultan and an unusually energetic military leader who stayed in power for a long time. His numerous campaigns were extremely well planned. Before taking on the Franks, Baybars aimed at extinguishing all remaining opposition to his overall authority on the part of the Ayyubid princes. In other words, in a familiar pattern, he wished to achieve Muslim unity in Egypt and Syria and to secure his power base.

  In 663/1265 he began a series of offensives against the Franks which continued until 670/1271. In these years important Frankish citadels fell into Muslim hands and Antioch, which had been ruled uninterruptedly by the Franks since 1097, was also conquered. At the same time Baybars fought against the pagan Mongols,113 Christians in Little Armenia, fellow Muslims in Anatolia and Isma‘ili ‘heretics’. Out of a total of thirty-eight campaigns which he led into Syria, however, twenty-one were conducted against the Franks, and by the time of his death in 676/1277 he had inflicted very serious damage on them. His aim may be seen primarily as defensive – to secure the frontiers of the Mamluk state against the infidels from both east and west. His activities against the Franks formed a key part of the image created of him by his propagandists, that of a mighty warrior of jihad and defender of the Islamic world. His legendary exploits lived on in the popular folk epic Sirat Baybars.

  Figure 4.22 Blazons on Mamluk coins, thirteenth-fifteenth cen turies, Egypt and Syria

  Figure 4.23 Part of a militantly Shi‘ite verse inscription, Mamluk silver-inlaid bowl, probably early fourteenth century, Syria (?)

  Plate 4.27 Great Mosque, Mamluk minaret (1923 photograph), probably fourteenth century, Hama, Syria

  (Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 6067)

  The Jihad Titulature of the Mamluks – Evidence of Monumental Inscriptions and Chancellery Documents

  Predictably enough, the Mamluk sultans, with their military achievements against the infidel, Christian Frank and pagan Mongol alike, were accorded grandiloquent jihad titles by their epigraphers and chroniclers.

  In three inscriptions dated Dhu’l-hijja 664/September 1266 on a mausoleum in Hims in Syria, Baybars is described in the most glowing terms as a supreme jihad warrior. One of them calls him:

  The sultan, the victorious prince, the pillar of the world and religion, the sultan of Islam and the Muslims, the killer of infidels and polytheists, the tamer of rebels and heretics, the reviver of justice in the two worlds, the possessor of the two seas, the lord of the two qiblas, the servant of the two noble sanctuaries, the heir of the kingdom, the sultan of the Arabs and the Persians and the Turks, the Alexander of the age, the lord of the fortunate conjunction, Baybars al-Salihi, the associate of the Commander of the Faithful.114

  The inscription also records that it was engraved ‘on the occasion of his [Baybars] passing through [Hims] to fight (ghaza) in the land of Sis [Armenia]’.115

  This inscription is a valuable contemporary historical document. The occasion is right: Baybars is on his way to conduct jihad against the Christians of Armenia. The titulature is elaborate; in it Baybars is accorded the role of defender of Islam, just ruler and fighter against the infidel. The careful antithetical patterning of the words and the use of such devices as antiphonal pairing of words, or rhymed endings, adds a formal and sonorous note to these ceremonial, proclamatory words. Baybars is shown to be the defender of the most holy sanctuaries of Islam in the Hijaz. Like Tamerlane after him, Baybars is called the Alexander of the age, the one favoured by auspicious astrological signs to lead the whole Muslim world – Arab, Persian, Turk. Such fancifu
l rhetoric (the Mamluks did not and never would rule in the east) is accompanied by a clear view of the publicity value of the location of the inscription. This is no ordinary monument on which to carve an inscription as Baybars and his army passed through Hims. After all, this is the mausoleum of the most famous of all Arab Muslim generals, ‘the Sword of Islam, the Companion of the Messenger of God, Khalid b. al-Walid’, the great architect of the first Muslim conquests in the seventh century. Thus Baybars is seen by his propagandists as forging a lasting link between the glorious days of Islam and his own achievements on behalf of the faith.

  Figure 4.24 Soldiers wearing Mongol armour, Rashid al-Din, Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (‘World History’), 714/1314, Tabriz, Iran

  Figure 4.25 Kufic inscription stating ‘this is the mosque of Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Companion of the Prophet, blessings’ and quoting Qur’an 2: 256 and 3: 17. Shrine of Khalid ibn al-Walid, eleventh century, Hims, Syria

  A more explicit association with the Franks is made in an extant inscription in the name of Baybars on the citadel of Safad dated 666/1267–8:

  He ordered the renovation of this citadel and its fortification and the completion of its building and its embellishment after he had delivered it from the hands of the accursed Franks and he gave it back to the hand of the Muslims after having removed it from the possession of the Templars to the possession of the Muslims.