The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  He [Reynald] maltreated them, tortured them and put them in underground storehouses and narrow prison cells. They mentioned the truce to him and he said: ‘Tell your Muhammad to set you free’. When that [news] reached him [Saladin] he vowed that when Almighty God should give him victory over him [Reynald] he would kill him himself.68

  Figure 6.19 Terracotta stamps for bread, eleventh-thirteenth centuries, Egypt

  Thus Reynald’s sins of breaking truces and maltreating prisoners are compounded in Muslim historiography by his being seen as mocking Islam and its Prophet. Moreover, a vow to God seals Saladin’s personal commitment to Reynald’s downfall and death.

  An even more infamous incident concerns Reynald’s plans to threaten the Holy Cities themselves. In 578/1182–3 he built a fleet in Karak and carried the ships in pieces to the Red Sea coast where they were quickly assembled and dispatched.69 Ibn al-Athir describes the aims of this campaign as follows: They were resolved to enter the Hijaz, Mecca and Medina, may Almighty God protect them, to take the pilgrims and to prevent them from [entering] the Bayt al-haram and to go after that into Yemen.’70

  Small wonder that the Muslim chroniclers reserved their most virulent epithets for Reynald. Reynald’s subsequent raids down the Red Sea were foiled by a Muslim fleet under the leadership of Husam al-Din Lu’lu’. Reynald escaped capture but some of his men were seized. Their punishment was terrible: ‘He sent some of them to Mina [near Mecca] in order that they should have their throats cut as a punishment to those who had alarmed the sacred sanctuary of Almighty God.’71 Yet, Reynald, the instigator of this act which threatened Islam’s holiest places, had avoided punishment.

  The well-known story of Saladin’s capture of high-ranking Crusader prisoners at the battle of Hattin in 583/1187 is given great prominence in the Islamic sources. In the various accounts Saladin makes a very sharp distinction between the treatment which he normally accorded to captured Crusader rulers and the punishment which he decides personally to inflict on Reynald of Chatillon, who has flouted every honourable code. Saladin gave an iced drink to the king of the Franks (that is, Guy) who then passed it to Reynald. Ibn al-Athir’s account continues:

  Reynald also drank of Saladin’s iced water, so Saladin said: ‘This accursed one did not drink the water with my permission and so is excluded from my safe-conduct’. Then he spoke to the prince [Reynald], upraided him for his sins and enumerated to him his treacherous acts. He himself rose up against him and executed him.72

  Figure 6.20 ‘Hedwig’ glass beaker, twelfth century, Egypt (?)

  After Saladin had killed Reynald, his body was trailed ignominiously along the ground and out of Saladin’s tent, no doubt a prelude to being dragged by the forelock into the fires of Hell. Abu Shama’s account of the episode recalls Reynald’s earlier taunting of his Muslim prisoners:

  He [Saladin] summoned prince Reynald and reminded him of what he had said. [Then] he said to him: ‘I am the one who will take vengeance for Muhammad on you!’ … God took his spirit speedily to the Fire.73

  Honour had been satisfied; as Saladin is reported to have written in a letter recorded by ‘Imad al-Din: ‘It is important to recall that we had vowed to execute the prince, the lord of Karak, the perfidious one, the infidel of infidels.’74

  General Comments on Muslim Views of Frankish Leadership

  This evidence demonstrates of course all too clearly that medieval Muslim chroniclers were not interested in the wellsprings of the Franks’ behaviour. As far as they were concerned, an inscrutable – and malign – destiny had foisted these foreigners on them, and it was their duty as pious Muslims to defend the Dar al-Islam and send them packing. They were not concerned to probe the religious or for that matter the economic motivation of their foes.

  It often occurs in the sources that when a Frank shows signs of interest in Islam, reciprocal interest is shown in him, though that Frank’s intellectual leanings, especially in so far as these encroach on things Islamic, mark the limits of the enquiry. Conversely, the most severe opprobrium is reserved for Reynald because he had the idea of attacking the Holy Cities.

  Reviewing some of the information presented here, one cannot help being struck by the random and sometimes even trivial nature of some of the comments made on the Crusader leaders by Muslim writers. It is possible to discern certain general Muslim opinions about the Franks. In addition to the qualities which arose directly from their nature as western European ‘barbarians’ and ‘infidels’, the Franks as a group, in Muslim eyes, possessed certain characteristics. They are frequently labelled as being contentious and untrustworthy, but they are also, on occasion, capable of exciting respect. Under the year 587/1191–2, Ibn Shaddad remarks of the Franks: ‘Look at the endurance (sabr) of these people in arduous tasks.’75 The Franks’ valour in battle is not disputed. To Nur al-Din himself is attributed the following statement which seems to reflect a general Muslim perception: ‘I have struggled only with the most courageous of people, the Franks.’76 Yet such comments tell us little of the Franks’ personalities or of what brought them to the Levant. The Muslim chroniclers remain too anchored in their own culture to develop a sense of these wider horizons. None of the Muslim chroniclers was sufficiently interested or well informed to draw up a general assessment of the Crusader leadership as a group. There is little evidence that they sought corroboration or extra information from other Christians on what might be called in Western terms the ‘phenomenon’ of the Crusaders.

  Figure 6.21 Qasr al-Banat, palace, plan, twelfth century, Raqqa, Syria

  Frankish women

  Young Frankish women

  Not surprisingly in a society which had long prized the lighter-coloured skin of Circassian female slaves, the physical attributes of Crusader women, so rarely seen in the Levant before the First Crusade, must have caused many a Muslim man and woman to turn and stare in the street. The Muslim poet Ibn al-Qaysarani, who had fled the Syrian coast after the advent of the First Crusade and who laments in plainest tones the devastation caused by the newcomers from Europe, can nevertheless appreciate the alien beauty of the Frankish women whom he espied in Antioch in 540/1145–6. Saladin’s scribe and biographer ‘Imad al-Din, who collected chosen extracts from the work of Muslim poets in the twelfth century, remarks that Ibn al-Qaysarani was much taken with the ‘blue-eyed’ beauty of a Frankish woman and he then quotes the following poetic lines of Ibn al-Qaysarani:

  A Frankish woman has captivated me.

  The breeze of fragrance lingers on her.

  In her clothing there is a soft branch

  And in her crown is a radiant77 moon.78

  We have already seen in the bathhouse story of Usama that Frankish women were regarded as having loose sexual morals. Under the year 585/1189–90, Abu Shama quoting ‘Imad al-Din continues this theme: he describes the arrival by sea of ‘three hundred beautiful Frankish women from the islands’. In flowery rhyming prose he rises to great heights of invective against their sexual profligacy, stating that they had come to offer relief to any Franks who wanted their services, and that the priests themselves condoned this conduct.79

  Another well-known tall story of Usama’s also illustrates the Frankish male’s lack of an appropriate marital jealousy (ghayra) and the Frankish female’s licentiousness. Usama remarks as follows:

  The Franks are without any vestige of a sense of honour and jealousy. If one of them goes along the street with his wife and meets a friend, this man will take the woman’s hand and lead her aside to talk, while the husband stands by waiting until she has finished her conversation. If she takes too long about it he leaves her with the other man and goes on his way.

  This kind of vague generalisation is applied to the Franks as a group but Usama then goes on to illustrate it with a particularly salacious incident which he alleges comes from his own personal experience:

  While I was in Nablus I stayed with a man called Mu‘izz, whose house served as an inn for Muslim travellers. Its windows overlooked th
e street. On the other side of the road lived a Frank who sold wine for the merchants.

  Usama is thus careful to cast a slur on the cuckolded husband from the beginning by noting that he is a wine-seller.

  Now this man returned home one day and found a man in bed with his wife. ‘What are you doing here with my wife?’ he demanded. ‘I was tired’, replied the man, ‘and so I came in to rest.’ ‘And how do you come to be in my bed?’ ‘I found the bed made up, and lay down to sleep.’ ‘And this woman slept with you, I suppose?’ ‘The bed,’ he replied, ‘is hers. How could I prevent her getting into her own bed?’ ‘I swear if you do it again I shall take you to court!’ – and this was his only reaction, the height of his outburst of jealousy!80

  Figure 6.22 Archer shooting birds, Blacas ewer, inlaid brass, 629/1232, Mosul, Iraq

  This is a cleverly constructed apocryphal tale which plays shamelessly on the prejudices of Usama’s readers.

  As already mentioned, Baybars enforced strict discipline, morality and religious orthodoxy on his realm. He forbade all taverns and winepresses, and the cultivation and consumption of hashish, although the state lost much revenue thereby.81 Whilst in Alexandria in 661/1262 he ordered the city to be purged of ‘Frankish’ prostitutes.82 Incidentally, in Jumada II 667/February 1269 Baybars forbade prostitution in Cairo and the whole of his realm and stipulated that prostitutes should marry and be locked up.83

  Frankish Women Warriors

  ‘Imad al-Din finds the phenomenon of Frankish female warriors interesting enough to discuss at some length:

  Amongst the Franks are women knights (fawaris). They have coats of mail and helmets. They are in men’s garb and they are prominent in the thick of the fray. They act in the manner of those endowed with intellect [i.e. men] although they are ladies.84

  In battle they are indeed indistinguishable from men:

  On the day of the battle some of them come forth in the same way as the (male) knights. Despite their softness there is hardness (qaswa) in them. They have no clothing (kiswa) other than coats of mail. They have not been recognised [as women] until they are stripped and laid bare. A number of them have been enslaved and sold.85

  Such Frankish women undoubtedly possessed military skills. Ibn al-Athir mentions that at Saladin’s siege of Burzay in 584/1188 there was ‘a woman shooting from the citadel by means of the mangonel and it was she who put the Muslims’ mangonel out of action’.86

  Ibn Shaddad records the testimony of an old man who was present at the Muslim siege of Acre in 587/1191:

  Inside their walls was a woman wearing a green coat (milwata). She kept on shooting at us with a wooden bow, so much so that she wounded a group of us. We overpowered her and killed her and took her bow, carrying it to the sultan, who was very amazed about that.87

  ‘Imad al-Din draws a moral on the occasion of visiting the Frankish corpses on the battlefield before Acre in 586/1190: ‘We saw a woman slain because of her being a warrior.’88

  Frankish Women Travelling in an Independent Fashion

  Having railed against the morals of the 300 Frankish prostitutes, ‘Imad al-Din allows himself to discuss other kinds of Frankish women. Under the same year of 585/1189–90 he mentions that a wealthy Frankish woman of high status arrived by sea, accompanied by 500 horsemen with their horses and retinues. She supplied all their provisions and paid the expenses of the ship. The purpose of this aristocratic Frankish woman’s visit to the Levant is not stated. Maybe she was joining her husband who was already there – only the highest echelons of Frankish society could have afforded the expenses of such a trip from Europe. Alternatively, she may have been a female Frankish warrior, one of a category which ‘Imad al-Din then goes on to describe.

  Figure 6.23 Animated inscriptions on inlaid brass container (‘the Bobrinski bucket’), 559/1163, Herat, Afghanistan

  In an Islamic context it was not unheard of for high-class ladies to travel unaccompanied by their male relations (cf. figure 6.36) but it occasioned comment and seems perhaps to have been a practice amongst ladies of the Turcoman dynasties who may have been more used to an independent lifestyle. Ibn Jubayr mentions several examples of such women, including the daughter of the Saljuq sultan of Konya, Qilij Arslan II;89 her activities he describes as ‘among the strange affairs that are discussed and listened to by men’.90

  Old Frankish Women

  Old Frankish women are specifically mentioned by ‘Imad al-Din. Such an age group in medieval Islamic culture is often regarded as redoubtable and wise. A typical example is an old female slave, Burayka, who is mentioned by Usama, and above all Usama’s beloved grandmother.91 ‘Imad al-Din describes some of their Frankish counterparts as follows: ‘As for old women (‘aja’iz), the military posts are full of them. Sometimes they are harsh and sometimes they are soft. They stir up and inflame [the warriors].’92

  Usama tells a cruelly comic story of a Frankish festivity which he himself witnessed in Tiberias:

  The cavaliers went out to exercise with lances. With them went out two decrepit, aged women whom they stationed at one end of the race course. At the other end of the field they left a pig which they had scalded and laid on a rock. They then made the two aged women run a race while each one of them was accompanied by a detachment of horsemen urging her on. At every step they took, the women would fall down and rise again, while the spectators would laugh. Finally one of them got ahead of the other and won that pig for a prize.93

  Again the story is a caricature: the juxtaposition of two aged women and a pig is bound to lead to laughter for a Muslim audience.

  Marriage

  It is very probable that those Franks who came on Crusade and stayed on in the Levant intermarried for the most part with Oriental Christian women. However, some Franks must also have married Muslim women or have taken Muslim concubines. Unfortunately, confirmation of this is hard to find in the sources. Marriages between Crusaders and Oriental Christians would not merit a mention in Islamic sources but occasional comments suggest – not surprisingly in view of the relatively small number of Crusader women who must have come out to the Levant – that Crusader-Muslim marriages, especially in the lower echelons of society, must have occurred.

  Figure 6.24 Dome inscription, mausoleum of Sitta Nafisa, before 683/1284, Cairo, Egypt

  When well-born Frankish women fell into Muslim hands as an inevitable result of the vicissitudes of war, they may well have been spared enslavement if they were young and pretty. Badran b. Malik, a scion of the ‘Uqaylids, a Bedouin Arab dynasty which held Qal‘at Ja‘bar for several generations, was the son of the union between his father and a beautiful Frankish girl who had been taken prisoner on a pilgrimage to Afamiyya and was sent to Malik as a present by Usama’s father.94

  Usama tells the story of a Muslim woman from Nablus who was married to a Crusader. She killed her husband and made a practice of assassinating travelling Frankish pilgrims.95 Unfortunately, there are no more details about this woman and we are left in the dark as to the reasons why she married her Crusader husband, why she killed him and why she embarked on her career as a highwaywoman.

  Ibn Jubayr, whose impressions of Crusader Tyre are much more positive than of Acre, includes a detailed account of a Crusader wedding procession near the town which he witnessed personally. He describes the event as ‘an alluring worldly spectacle deserving of record’.96 The bride was clad most elegantly,

  in a beautiful dress from which trailed, according to their traditional style, a long train of golden silk. On her head she wore a golden diadem covered by a net of woven gold, and on her breast was a like arrangement.

  Figure 6.25 Lady at her toilette attended by her maid, Blacas ewer, inlaid brass, 629/1232, Mosul, Iraq

  Her ‘alluring’ attractions move Ibn Jubayr to write: ‘Proud she was in her ornaments and dress, walking with little steps of half a span, like a dove, or in the manner of a wisp of cloud.’.97 Ibn Jubayr then protects himself as usual from the dangers of praising the Franks, adding
carefully and sententiously: ‘God protect us from the seductions of the sight.’98 The procession involved many of the town’s wealthy people and was watched by Muslims and Christians alike.99

  Education

  The Muslims felt themselves to be far advanced vis-à-vis the Crusaders in education. Usama made friends with a Crusader knight who offered to take Usama’s son back to Europe to learn of the arts of politics and chivalry. The Crusader knight then added that on his return home Usama’s son would be a truly cultivated man. Usama comments caustically: ‘A truly cultivated man would never be guilty of such a suggestion; my son might just as well be taken prisoner as go off into the land of the Franks.’100

  Medicine

  The skills of Arab doctors are apparent in various places in Usama’s narrative. They are proficient in diagnosis and in finding cures, in bone-setting,101 in stitching,102 dressing wounds,103 diet, bloodletting,104 and cauterisation. Usama had a great personal interest in medicine. In a section about noteworthy cures, he mentions remedies for hernia, dropsy, colic and the common cold.105

  He speaks in a tone of ironic superiority about the level of Crusader medical knowledge which lagged far behind the great medieval tradition of Arab medicine. He relates how an Oriental Christian doctor went to look at a Crusader knight with an abscess on his leg and a woman with consumption.106 The story is worth retelling in full:

  They brought before me a knight in whose leg an abscess had grown; and a woman afflicted with imbecility. To the knight I applied a small poultice until the abscess opened and became well; and the woman I put on a diet and made her humor wet. Then a Frankish physician came to them and said, ‘This man knows nothing about treating them’. He then said to the knight, ‘Which wouldst thou prefer, living with one leg or dying with two?’ The latter replied, ‘Living with one leg’. The physician said, ‘Bring me a strong knight and a sharp axe.’ A knight came with the axe. And I was standing by. Then the physician laid the leg of the patient on a block of wood and bade the knight strike his leg with the ax and chop it off at one blow. Accordingly he struck it – while I was looking on – one blow, but the leg was not severed. He dealt another blow, upon which the marrow of the leg flowed out and the patient died on the spot. He then examined the woman and said, ‘This is a woman in whose head there is a devil which has possessed her. Shave off her hair.’ Accordingly they shaved it off and the woman began once more to eat their ordinary diet – garlic and mustard. Her imbecility took a turn for the worse. The physician then said, ‘The devil has penetrated through her head.’ He therefore took a razor, made a deep cruciform incision on it, peeled off the skin at the middle of the incision until the bone of the skull was exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman also expired instantly. Thereupon I asked them whether my services were needed any longer, and when they replied in the negative I returned home, having learned of their medicine what I knew not before.107