The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  Figure 6.50 Mosque lamps, Fatimid manuscript, twelfth century, Egypt

  Ibn al-Shihna also mentions that the sigma-shaped sacramental table also had a Greek inscription which perhaps bore Diocletian’s name (Herzfeld comments that this ‘good piece of medieval criticism’ was correct).226

  The prominent displaying of this patina in the Madrasat al-Halawiyya epitomises the reasons why Muslim conquerors and religious leaders, such as Nur al-Din, were keen to reuse objects that had previously been part of Christian worship. It was also clearly an artefact of great beauty. Its translucent quality fitted well into the context of Islamic worship where God’s light is such a powerful symbol, epitomised by mosque lamps (figures 6.50 and 6.51) and windows (figure 6.52). The Qur’an itself declares in the Light verse: ‘Allah is the Light of the Heavens and the earth.’227

  This patina was thus not only a constant and splendid reminder of Islam’s victory over Christianity, but in its new context acquired distinctively Muslim connotations.

  Figure 6.51 Inscription in the form of a lamp carved in a mihrab, stone, Mosque of Qusun, 730/1329–30, Cairo, Egypt

  Figure 6.52 Mamluk stained-glass windows, fifteenth century, Cairo, Egypt

  Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Imagery

  Compelling evidence survives to indicate that the Crusader knightly and mercantile classes acquired a taste for the luxury goods of the Near East. Indeed, the interiors of their houses must have been sumptuous, judging by the precious enamel-painted glass beakers and glazed pottery fragments excavated at Crusader sites.228 The Ayyubid period is noted for the production of many fine Islamic artefacts – silver inland brasses, underglaze-painted ceramics and tiles and enamel-painted glass. This flourishing of the so-called ‘minor’ arts owed much to the refined taste and sponsorship of the Turkish and Kurdish rulers who commissioned such works and whose names – such as the Turkish atabeg Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ and the Ayyubid sultan al-Malik al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub – figure on the pieces. The examples of such artefacts which have survived testify to the tastes of the Islamic upper classes but also, it is important to add, to the tastes of the Christians, both Oriental and Crusader.

  It is noteworthy that although Christian imagery can be found sporadically in Islamic art which pre-dates the Crusades, it is during the thirteenth century that it becomes a salient feature in the Islamic decorative repertoire. Baer has studied eighteen surviving Ayyubid inlaid brasses with very elaborate workmanship and shown how Christian themes and motifs were adopted and absorbed by Islamic craftsmen on a large scale in thirteenth-century Syria (figures 6.53, 6.54, 55, 56). These brasses depict Gospel scenes, images of the Madonna and Child, and friezes of Christian saints and clerics alongside traditional Islamic themes such as the standard cycle of princely amusements. This representation of Christian motifs in Islamic art was unprecedented. Amongst the various questions raised by these artefacts – which include incense burners, trays, caskets, ewers, candlesticks – the most relevant in the context of this chapter is why they were produced in thirteenth-century Muslim society.229

  Figure 6.53 The Virgin and Child, inlaid metal pyxis, early thirteenth century, Syria

  Figure 6.54 Christian figures, tray, inlaid metal, early thirteenth century, Syria

  Figure 6.55 Christian figures, tray, inlaid metal, early thirteenth century, Syria

  Figure 6.56 Christian figures, tray, inlaid metal, early thirteenth century, Syria

  A particularly interesting example is a large canteen which demonstrates refined workmanship and a profusion of visual imagery in which Christian themes predominate.230 The obverse shows the enthroned Virgin and Child, surrounded by three panels with scenes from the life of Jesus (plate 6.7). Baer describes them as strikingly un-Islamic and inspired by Byzantine models.231 Following Islamic decorative conventions, however, the Christian scenes are separated by roundels with birds and imaginary creatures in them. Two Kufic inscription bands contain traditional formulae of blessing. Although there are Syriac Christian, Coptic and Byzantine precedents for much of the iconography on these brasses, other visual elements – such as the Islamic imagery of the secular ruler – also play a part in some of the scenes.232 Baer suggests that some of the brasses which are inlaid with Christian figures symbolise political power.233 Other brasses, however, which are almost exclusively decorated with motifs and figures that had little significance for Muslims, may well have reflected the taste of the Crusader nobility who had settled in Palestine and Syria and who – like the Normans in Sicily – may well have liked what they saw of Islamic art around them. These brasses include the Freer canteen and the Leningrad tray. They are luxury objects and may well have been designed for the wealthy Crusader class who would prefer to use local craftsmen to furnish their houses and emulate their Muslim counterparts in some of the appurtenances of elegant living. It was not important that Crusader customers were probably unable to read the Arabic inscriptions that adorned their metal objects made and acquired in the Levant. A candlestick now in Paris, inscribed with the maker’s name, Da’ud b. Salama al-Mawsili, and decorated with Christian religious subjects and other similar artefacts, seems likely to have been made by Muslim craftsmen for Crusader consumption.234 Such objects were probably prized for their ‘exotic’ value in much the same way as Oriental carpets are treasured today by their Western owners.

  Muslim and Crusader rulers exchanged luxury gifts as part of political life and there is little doubt that brasses given to or bought by the Crusader aristocracy would have pleased them, just as gifts of exotic animals (such as giraffes and elephants), mechanical contraptions and Oriental textiles titillated their tastes.235 In the case of the brasses, they were portable and could have been displayed in the lavishly furnished homes of the Crusader knights in the Levant or even brought back to Europe as a memento of their stay in the Holy Land. The more exotic the artefact the better, since quite apart from their obvious Christian allusions these works pandered to the medieval Western taste for marvels of the East. It is well known that the Arabic script appeared on many medieval European works of art often without any knowledge on the part of its users that it enshrined Islamic political messages.

  To sum up the significance of these brasses, it is clear that they were made for both Muslims and Crusaders for a short while in the thirteenth century. Baer concludes that for the Muslims who owned some of these objects the Christian scenes and figures depicted on them reminded them of their authority over the Christians.236 The Crusader nobles in their turn admired and possessed some of these brasses because of their delicate decoration and exotic aspect, including Arabic inscriptions.

  Plate 6.7 Ayyubid canteen with Christian scenes, front, inlaid brass, c. 1250, Syria

  This discussion of a small group of brass artefacts, far from being abstruse and esoteric, has shed an unexpected sidelight on the interplay between Crusaders and Muslims on an everyday level in Ayyubid Syria. The Crusaders were well ensconced in the Levant in a period in which, as already mentioned, they came to form part of the political fabric of Near Eastern life. There is clear evidence that Crusaders shared Muslim artistic tastes and that Muslim craftsmen tailored their artefacts to please a Crusader clientele.

  The Long-Term Effects of Crusader-Muslim Contact

  Scholars have alleged that there were two major effects of the Crusades on the Muslim world: first the opening up or enhancement of East-West trade and secondly a growth of discrimination by Muslims against Oriental Christians. We shall now look at these two broad areas.

  Realpolitik – Diplomacy and Trade between Muslims and Franks

  Side by side with the ideological divisions which separated Muslim and Crusader and the crescendo of jihad activity that punctuated the years 1099–1291, both protagonists saw the need for periods of respite from war, in order to protect property and land and – perhaps even more importantly – to facilitate travel and trade. Köhler’s book, based on a careful reading of the sources, is an important contribution to our
knowledge of the modus vivendi which developed between Muslims and Franks.237 Concentrating on the incidence of co-operation between the two sides, especially in the first half of the twelfth century, Köhler demonstrates that many contracts and treaties were signed, which suggests that co-existence and compromise were often deemed to be preferable to confrontation and warfare. Such arrangements were often interconfessional – Muslims and Franks aligning themselves against other Muslims and Franks – and were motivated, as we saw in Chapter 2, by shared local territorial interests and by the need for military help against political rivals. For the Muslims, they were also necessary for obtaining access to the Levantine ports, many of which remained in Frankish hands for considerable periods of time. The importance of sea-borne trade in this period guaranteed that the Muslims would try to reach some compromise with the Franks in order to protect and foster their mercantile interests.

  Figure 6.57 Sphinxes in wheel formation, inlaid metal trays made for Badr al-Din Lu’lu’, first half of thirteenth century, Mosul, Iraq

  Similar pragmatism lay at the heart of the policies of co-operation promoted by the Ayyubid princes, and despite the hard-line stance of the Mamluk sultans they too pursued realistic commercial and economic goals which involved collaborating with the Franks. Treaties were signed, inaugurating periods of truce and often stipulating precise arrangements for trade and commercial and pilgrim travel.

  Figure 6.58 Musicians, Cappella Palatina, ceiling, c. 1140, Palermo, Sicily

  A number of treaties were signed by Mamluk sultans with western European states, such as Genoa and Aragon.238 The actual treaties were preceded by a flurry of reciprocal diplomatic missions to Europe and the Levant. The treaty signed by the Mamluk sultan Qalawun with Genoa in 1290 is a typical example and indicates some of the practical motives on the Muslim side for making trade agreements with the enemy: ‘In the end, for the sake of the prosperity of the ports, and because of the wealth brought in by this nation, and the large sums accruing to the customs from them, a truce was drafted for them.’239

  The treaty assured the personal security of Genoese merchants and of their possessions throughout the Mamluk empire. It also granted the Genoese bringing merchandise, gold or silver to Alexandria or elsewhere the right to sell without coercion, and it established procedures for customs administration. A far cry then from the high-flown anti-infidel rhetoric of the writings of the ‘ulama’ and the bellicose posturings shown in exchanges of letters between Mamluk sultans and European sovereigns.

  According to Holt, there are seven treaties drawn up between the Mamluk sultans and the Frankish states whose wording has been preserved in historical works of the period. These treaties are bilateral and reciprocal in their provisions. One such treaty is the one concluded by Baybars with Isabella of Ibelin, the Lady of Beirut in 667/1269. It opens as follows:

  Figure 6.59 Dancer, Cappella Palatina, ceiling, c. 1140, Palermo, Sicily

  The blessed truce is established between the Sultan al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars and the exalted, virtuous and glorious Lady N, the daughter of N, the Lady of Beirut and of all its mountains and lowlands, for the period of ten successive years beginning on Thursday, 6 Ramadan 667.240

  This treaty is typical in that it is precisely dated and it gives the duration of the truce and the names of the contracting parties. The treaty guarantees security for travellers coming and going to and from the sultan’s lands and it guarantees similar security for Isabella’s subjects too. Details are given on the compensation to be made for a homicide; this takes the form of the release of a captive of equal status, with four grades being given – knight, Turcopole, foot-soldier and peasant. As with other such treaties, the final provision requires Isabella not to afford any help to the enemies of the sultan and more especially ‘any Franks of any kind’. As Holt says in his analysis of this treaty, it may be in the form of a truce but its real purpose was to agree to maintain normal political and diplomatic relations.241

  This book will not dwell at any length on the important topic of trade between Europe and the Middle East during the Crusading period. Much work has already been done in this area, notably by Heyd, Ashtor, Abulafia, Udovitch and others.242 Such scholars as these, drawing on extensive documentation from western European sources, have presented very detailed accounts of European-Levantine trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and beyond. There is, of course, evidence from the Islamic side, which these scholars have also used in drawing up their corpus of information on the minutiae of trade – ships, merchandise, customs duties, commercial agreements – and their broad theories on the nature and importance of this trade. Readers who wish to deepen their knowledge of this facet of the Crusading phenomenon and medieval Islamic and western European economic history generally should consult these works and the vast array of scholarly articles which chronicle individual aspects of this subject in greater detail.243

  Until the early eleventh century the main commercial centre of the Islamic world had been Baghdad. Thereafter, with the commercial expansion of western Europe and its renewed trade links with the Islamic lands that bordered on the Mediterranean, the centre of Muslim commercial gravity shifted to Egypt.

  In the early eleventh century a small group of merchant cities such as Naples, Marseilles, Venice and Amalfi traded directly with the Levant.244 Towards the end of the century the building of larger ships enabled more distant countries such as Spain or France to sail to Egypt or the Levant directly.245

  It is no easy task to reconstruct the development of Muslim-Frankish trading relations, either locally or internationally. The French scholar Claude Cahen writes: ‘Economic and social history is written above all with the help of archival documents. For the Muslim world, apart from Egypt, we do not have any.’246 In making an exception of Egypt, Cahen is referring to what can only be described as the phenomenon of the Geniza.

  Scholars of medieval Islamic economic history have made great use of a vast cache of documents known as the Geniza (Hebrew: ‘a hiding place’) which was found in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo). They date mostly from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries and include valuable first-hand documentary evidence in the form of some 10,000 private and business letters and deeds of sale. Written for the most part in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew script), the Geniza documents cast important light on the everyday life of Jews (and Muslims) in the medieval Islamic world and in particular on the realities of Mediterranean trade.247 The brilliant synthesis of the Jewish scholar Goitein reveals that before the Crusades the Italians already had the largest share of Mediterranean trade. The Geniza documents show that there was lively interaction before the Crusades between East and West in the Mediterranean and that merchants from Pisa and Genoa traded actively in North Africa before 1100 and occasionally reached Alexandria.248

  Figure 6.60 Brass casket with benedictory Kufic inscriptions and musicians, c. 1200, Iraq or Iran

  On the specific issue of trade in Syria and Palestine, detailed knowledge from Arabic sources is lacking. Ashtor claims that in the second half of the eleventh century the rich merchants in the Syrian ports, such as Tripoli and Tyre, wanted to take advantage of trading opportunities with the Italian mercantile republics. These ports shook off the yoke of Fatimid control from the 1070s onwards and set up independent city-states.249 Whatever the situation may have been before 1099, what is clear is that once the Franks had seized the ports of the Syro-Palestinian littoral the Muslim hinterland needed to come to a commercial accommodation with them.250 Reciprocal arrangements were also needed for the transportation of goods by land through each other’s territory. With Frankish ships in the waters off the Levantine coasts and in possession of the Syrian ports, the local Muslim merchants must have feared for their livelihood.

  Not surprisingly, therefore, the immediate result of this new situation was that some of the Muslims in authority along the Levantine coast sought to protect these interests. Speaking of
Shams al-Khilafa, the governor of Ascalon in 504/1111, Ibn al-Qalanisi mentions that he made a truce with Baldwin, since he preferred trade to battles. ‘Now Shams al-Khilafa was more desirous of trading than of fighting, and inclined to peaceful and friendly relations and the securing of the safety of travellers.’251 Pressures from commercial inactivity could make traders foolhardy. Ibn al-Qalanisi reports for the year 504/1110–11 that ‘a company of travelling merchants, chafing at their prolonged inaction, lost patience and set out from Tinnis, Damietta and Misr [= Fustat] with a great quantity of merchandise and moneys’. They and their goods were, however, soon seized by Frankish vessels.252

  Figure 6.61 Border of Fatimid tiraz textile, twelfth century, Egypt

  Figure 6.62 Fatimid textile with repeat patterns of lionesses attacked by birds, eleventh century, Egypt

  It is significant that merchants as well as religious leaders figured prominently in the various delegations that made their way to Baghdad in the first decade of the twelfth century to protest and ask for help against the Franks from the caliph and the sultan.253 Usama writes in one of his stories that the word burjasi means merchant and that such a person does not fight.254 Nevertheless their livelihood depended on the military classes to create the right conditions for trade.

  The basis of international trade between Europe and the Levant was mutual need, and increased contact at the time of the early Crusades brought an expansion of European-Levantine trade. The Europeans wanted Oriental spices, especially pepper and ginger, which came to the Near East via both land and sea routes, and alum (a fixative) used by Western cloth manufacturers.255 They also imported perfumes, cloth and gold. Conversely, the Muslim world needed timber and iron for constructing ships and weapons of war, such as battering rams and other siege machines, and armaments. They were also keen to acquire linen, silks and woollens from Europe,256 especially in the thirteenth century and thereafter.