To perform the Pilgrimage (hajj) once in a lifetime is one of the five Pillars of Islam. To many medieval Muslims this occasion of profound religious significance involved enormous expense and hardship. Over the centuries the safety of the routes leading to the Hijaz were threatened by marauding Bedouin, keen to plunder the wealth of the caravans passing through their territory. Now, however, with the advent of the Franks, the threat to the traditional pilgrimage routes was intensified.
The castle of Karak to the east of the Dead Sea had been built in 1142; together with Shawbak, it was intended to threaten the main routes leading from Syria to Egypt and down into Arabia. One of the major assembly points for the hajj was Damascus. Crossing the territory policed by these and other Crusader castles in the area required the making of treaties with the Franks; otherwise, the Muslims wishing to perform the hajj had to travel by more circuitous and dangerous routes. In the 1180s Ibn Jubayr describes Karak as ‘lying astride the Hejaz road and hindering the overland passage of the Muslims’.65
Figure 5.26 Departure of the pilgrimage caravan with the mahmal (ceremonial litter), al-Hariri, al-Maqamat (‘The Assemblies’), 634/1237, probably Baghdad, Iraq
Figure 5.27 Tombstone with Kufic inscription, undated but probably tenth century, Hijaz, Arabia
The extreme attitudes and actions of Reynald of Chatillon, the Crusader lord of Karak, should be seen against this background. In 580/1184–5 he broke a treaty and attacked a particularly well-laden caravan (figure 5.26). ‘Imad al-Din states that he was in league with an ‘evil-intentioned bunch’ who were positioned on the pilgrimage route to the Hijaz, hinting thereby that Reynauld had joined up with some local Bedouin tribesmen.66 Earlier, in 578/1182–3 Reynald had undertaken the enterprise which had gained him widespread opprobrium in the Islamic world. He had gone down the Red Sea by ship and threatened to attack the Holy Cities themselves.67 (figure 5.27) These two incidents, aimed at the very heart of the Islamic world, were viewed as a hideous outrage against its revered sanctuaries.68
Popular Muslim Views of Frankish Filth and Contamination
The perception that the Franks had not only invaded but – far worse – polluted Islamic territory was pervasive. It was not just theological: it did not spring only from the academic circles of those who engaged in polemical writing to prove the superiority of Islam over Christianity. It was the concern of all Muslims who every single moment of their lives tried to adhere to the strict rituals of purity enshrined in Islamic law. It was also a deeply felt perception which manifested itself as clichés and jokes about the ‘other side’, pitched at a crude and comic level.
We have already referred to Ibn Jubayr’s description of Crusader Acre as stinking of excrement and refuse. This perception is reinforced in popular literature. The Tale of ‘Umar b. Nu‘man in the Thousand and One Nights contains revealing passages about underlying Muslim perceptions of Christianity. The story, like many others in the collection, seems to conflate Muslim struggles against the Byzantines in the ninth and tenth centuries with jihad in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries against the Franks.
To tell you something of the supreme incense of patriarchal excrements: When the High Patriarch of the Christians in Constantinople made a motion, the priests would diligently collect it in squares of silk and dry it in the sun. They then would mix it with musk, amber and benzoin, and, when it was quite dry, powder it and put it in little gold boxes. These boxes were sent to all Christian kings and churches, and the powder was used as the holiest incense for the sanctification of Christians on all solemn occasions, to bless the bride, to fumigate the newly born, and to purify a priest on ordination. As the genuine excrements of the High Patriarch could hardly suffice for ten provinces, much less for all Christian lands, the priests used to forge the powder by mixing less holy matters with it, that is to say, the excrements of lesser patriarchs and even of the priests themselves. This imposture was not easy to detect. These Greek swine valued the powder for other virtues; they used it as a salve for sore eyes and as a medicine for the stomach and bowels. But only kings and queens and the very rich could obtain these cures, since, owing to the limited quantity of raw materials, a dirham-weight of the powder used to be sold for a thousand dinars in gold. So much for it.69
The story concentrates further on the juxtaposition of crosses and excrement:
In the morning King Afridun assembled the captains and lieutenants of his army and, making them kiss a great cross of wood, fumigated them with the incense described above. On this occasion there could be no doubt as to the genuineness of the powder as it smelt terribly and would have killed any elephant in the Muslim armies.
In the single combat that follows, the Christian protagonist Luka b. Shamlut, grotesquely described as an ass, ape and a cross between a toad and a serpent, ‘had stolen his colouring from night and his breath from old latrines. For these reasons he was known as the Sword of Christ.’70 We see here details which would no doubt entertain and amuse a popular audience assembled on street-corners or at public festivities.
Disease and filth are associated with the Franks: the unfortunate Baldwin IV, the Crusader leper king, is spared no sympathy in the tirade of the Qadi al-Fadil who describes him amongst other epithets as a ‘blue-eyed, freckled, leprous evil-doer’.71 ‘Imad al-Din also refers to the Franks as ‘a swarm of flies’,72‘grasshoppers without wings’,73 and ‘howling, savage dogs’. Ibn al-Furat writes that in a raid against the Franks in 530/1136 the shihna of Aleppo killed ‘innumerable pigs’.74 Whether he means this literally or metaphorically is not clear. Ibn Jubayr, on the other hand, unambiguously calls Agnes of Courtenay, the mother of Baldwin IV, ‘the sow known as Queen who is the mother of the pig who is the Lord of Acre’.75
Figure 5.28 Part of a militantly Shi‘ite verse inscription, Mamluk silver-inlaid bowl, probably early fourteenth century, Syria (?)
Speaking of a portable tent church used by the Franks, Usama says scathingly:
The patriarch pitched a huge tent which he used as a church in which they hold their prayers. The church services were conducted by an old deacon who had covered its floor with bulrushes and grass, which resulted in a pest of fleas.76
Ibn Jubayr is deeply concerned for the religious health of those Muslims, especially the masses, whose faith will become contaminated by proximity to the Franks: ‘There can be no excuse in the eyes of God for a Muslim to stay in any infidel country, save when passing through it, while the way lies clear to Muslim lands.’77 In particular, the Muslims will face the pains and terrors of
the hearing of what will distress the heart in the reviling of him [Muhammad] whose memory God has sanctified, and whose rank He has exalted; there is also the absence of cleanliness, the mixing with the pigs, and all the other prohibited matters too numerous to be related or enumerated.78
Beneath the scatological humour of the Tale of ‘Umar b. Nu‘man and the concerns of Ibn Jubayr, the deep Muslim revulsion for Christian defilement comes through. Such feelings must have been especially deep in respect of Crusader presence in Muslim territory and Crusader occupation of Muslim religious monuments, such as the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque. These were, after all, not ordinary religious buildings but the jewels in the crown of Jerusalem, the third holiest city of Islam and the First Qibla of the faith. The grossly offensive antics of the fanatical Crusader buccaneer Reynald of Chatillon on the Red Sea, when he publicly threatened the two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, must have sent profound shock waves around the Muslim world since the sanctity of the Ka‘ba itself was in jeopardy.
The Muslims were long used to seeing Oriental Christians practising their faith in the Near East and not adhering to the requirements of Islamic purity. But the Franks had transgressed Islamic sacred space. The Muslim population in Syria and Palestine were also well used to the damage wrought by foreign invaders – Turks, Byzantines, Persians – but their reaction to the Crusader newcomers’ adorning the Dome of the Rock with crosses and statues and to
the Templars’ lodging in the Aqsa mosque must have been profound atavistic disgust.
1. Youthful rider
(Joe Rock and A. K. Sutherland)
2. (above and opposite) Abu Zayd preaching, al-Hariri, al-Maqamat (‘The Assemblies’), 634/1237, probably Baghdad, Iraq
(Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
3. Two men on camels
(Joe Rock and A. K. Sutherland)
4. Extract of a letter in Mongol script sent in 705/1305 by the Mongol ruler of Iran, Öljeitü, to King Philip of France, recalling the ancient ties of friendship between the house of Genghis Khan and the French court
(Courtesy of Archives Nationales, Paris)
5. Thirteenth-century Arab map of the coast of the Levant
(Courtesy of Ahuan Ltd.)
6. Image of the world, al-Qazwini, ‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat, 790/1388
(Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
7. The Golden Dome (i.e. the Holy Sepulchre) in Jerusalem, al-Qazwini,‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat, 790/1388
(Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
8. Iskandar (Alexander) fighting the Amazons, al-Qazwini, ‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat, 790/1388
(Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
9. A high-ranking military office (amir), inlaid brass basin knowr. as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria
(Courtesy of the Louvre, Paris)
10. Aqsa Mosque, minbar of Nur al-Din, 564/1168 (now destroyed); in the background, the mihrab restored by Saladin after 583/1187–8, Jerusalem
(Alistair Duncan)
11. Map of the Muslim East on the eve of the Crusades
12. Siege, glazed mina’i dish, c. 1240, probably Kashan, Iran
(Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (Accession number 45.8))
13. Siege, Fatimid drawing with added colour, twelfth century, Fustat, Egypt
(© The British Museum)
14. Maristan (hospital) of Nur al-Din, interior view of portal dome, 549/1154, Damascus, Syria
(Robert Hillenbrand)
15. Citadel, tower, thirteenth century, with modern political poster depicting President Asad, Damascus, Syria
(Robert Hillenbrand)
16. Jami‘ al-Nuri, courtyard and sanctuary, after 552/1157, probably 558/1163 and later, Hama, Syria
(Robert Hillenbrand)
17. Dome of the Rock, exterior, 72/691–2 and later, Jerusalem
(Robert Hillenbrand)
Plate 5.4 Fountain, Great Mosque, twelfth century (?) but using pre-Islamic spolia, Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man, Syria
The Evidence of Contemporary Muslim Poetry
Poetry, in many ways the quintessential Arabic literary achievement and renowned in Arab lands for its power to move the hearts of its hearers, is a powerful vehicle in the Crusading period. Contemporary poetry is replete with the symbolism of pollution and purity. The brutal irruption of the Franks in the First Crusade provides an ideal locus for these themes. An anonymous poet of the time writes these moving words:
The unbelief of the infidels has declared it lawful to inflict harm on Islam,
Causing prolonged lamentation for the faith.
What is right is null and void and what is forbidden is (now) made licit.
The sword is cutting and blood is spilt.
How many Muslim men have become booty (salib)
And how many Muslim women’s inviolability has been plundered (salib)
How many a mosque have they made into a church!
The cross (salib) has been set up in the mihrab.
The blood of the pig is suitable for it.
Qur’ans have been burned under the guise of incense.79
There is a clear perception in these lines of Muslim spatial consciousness; it is obvious that sacred space has been invaded and polluted. This invasion is both physical and psychological. The Crusaders are portrayed as polluters, invaders, and eaters of unclean meat, and the poet dwells on the word-play between salib (booty) and salib(cross).
The poet Ibn al-Khayyat suggests in powerful imagery the terror of Muslim women normally protected by the walls of the harim:
How many young girls have begun to beat their throats and necks out of fear of them [the Franks]?
How many nubile girls have not known the heat [of the day] nor felt the cold at night [until now]?
They are almost wasting away with fear and dying of grief and agitation.80
This imagery of rape is being used at the time of the First Crusade; the Crusaders are jeopardising that most sacred pillar of Islamic society, the sanctity of the womenfolk.
The Purification of Islamic Space
With so much emphasis on the defilement of the Franks, it is not at all surprising that Islamic victories are described with the antithetical symbolism of purification. Describing the surrender of Damietta to the Muslims in 648/1250, Ibn Wasil declares: ‘God purified Egypt of them [the Franks]’.81 The fall of Acre in 690/1291 is heralded by Abu’l-Fida in similar terms: ‘Thus the whole of Syria and the coastal areas were purified of the Franks.’82
However, the main emphasis on purification in the Islamic sources is reserved – not surprisingly – for the Holy City itself, Jerusalem, and its twin foci, the Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The desecration of these two monuments provides an ideal opportunity to draw telling parallels between Islam and Christianity, to express long-suppressed outrage and to reclaim publicly and corporately these holy places which belong to Islam.
The testimony of ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, who was present at the conquest of Jerusalem, is particularly important, and he exults in the central role played by his master Saladin in the re-Islamisation of the city. Once the city had been captured, the most urgent task was the restoring of the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque to a state in which they were fit again for Islamic worship. The actions taken by Saladin and his followers were not mere ceremonies of reappropriation of Muslim religious buildings: these centres of Islamic sanctity needed to be cleansed and purified of Frankish pollution. The occasion was recorded on the Dome of the Rock itself. When Frederick II of Sicily entered Jerusalem and visited the Dome of the Rock he saw an inscription which had been engraved on the dome; it read: ‘Saladin has purified this sacred house from the polytheists.’83
Figure 5.29 Muqarnas squinch, fourteenth century, Cairo, Egypt
Saladin’s nephew, Taqi al-Din ‘Umar, was in charge of the actual process of purification. Rose-water was poured over the walls and floors of the two buildings which were then perfumed with incense. Before valid Islamic worship could take place, the Dome of the Rock had to be denuded of all the Christian trappings placed on it during the Crusader occupation.
Ibn al-Athir remarks soberly that once Jerusalem had been taken and the infidels had departed, Saladin ‘ordered the purification (tathiτ) of the [Aqsa] mosque and the [Dome of the] Rock of the filths (aqd-hai) and impurities (anjas) and it was all done’.84
‘Imad al-Din is more fulsome in his language. After the re-Islamicisation of the building, the Dome of the Rock emerged like ‘a young bride’.85 This simile was often applied to the Ka‘ba in medieval Islamic poetry, and the allusion would not have been lost on his hearers. The implied equation of the Dome of the Rock with the Ka⅛a itself is a measure of the sanctity which surrounded the Jerusalem shrine. The description of ‘Imad al-Din pinpoints those features which were abhorrent to the Muslims in this, their holy sanctuary, their haram: images, statues, monks – these constituted the hallmarks of Christianity in the Muslim popular imagination.
Similar changes were necessary in the Aqsa mosque (plates 5.5, 5.6). The niche (mihrab) had to be uncovered again since it had been concealed by a wall built by the Knights Templar, who had made the building into a granary, or, in the version of ‘Imad al-Din, into a lavatory. He dwells on the defiled state of the Aqsa mosque:
Plate 5.5 Aqsa Mosque, Ayyubid m
ihrab with glass mosaic ornament restored by Saladin, 583/1187–8, Jerusalem
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 5002)
The Aqsa mosque, especially its mihrab, was full of pigs and obscene language, replete with the excrement they had dropped in the building,86 inhabited by those who have professed unbelief, have erred and strayed, acted unjustly and perpetrated offences, overflowing with impurities. Slackness in purifying it is forbidden to us.87
Once again one may feel that ‘Imad al-Din’s pen is running away with him, and once again it is hard to believe that ‘the Aqsa mosque, especially its mihrab, was full of pigs and… excrement’. But this invective, a kind of performance art, fulfils its purpose in maintaining the mood of abhorrence for the spiritual defilement of the Christians.
‘Imad al-Din speaks of ‘the driving away (iqsa’) of those whom God had driven away (aqsa’) with His curse from the Aqsa’.88 Church bells have been silenced by the call to prayer and the faith has been purified ‘from the pollutions (anjnas) of those races (ajnas) and the filths of the lowest people (adnas adna al-nas)’.89
‘Imad al-Din uses this remarkable verbal dexterity and erudition to give expression to the long-suppressed indignation at the occupation of the Islamic monuments, the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque, by the infidel Franks. The Christianity of the Franks is identified by the hated bells of the church towers and reviled at a much deeper level by their invasion of the Islamic sacred space which has been contaminated by their pollution and filth. The conquest of Jerusalem is viewed as Islam’s triumph over Christianity.
The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives Page 34
