The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  Figure 6.72 Mounted hunters, inlaid brass basin known as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria

  The Treatment of the People of the Book in the pre-Crusading Period

  Since the Revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam has preached tolerance and protection for the ‘People of the Book’ who have entered into a covenant (dhimma) with the Islamic community (umma). It would seem fair to say, moreover, that in the period before the Crusades the Muslims generally followed the pronouncements of the Qur’an and that within the ‘House of Islam’ admirable tolerance was practised towards the indigenous Christians and Jews of the Near East. The Islamic sources are replete with references to individual Christians and Jews who rose to high office in Muslim government, while others among them played important roles in society as ambassadors, merchants, bankers, physicians and scholars. On the other hand, such toleration had its due limits and the Muslim lawyers, who codified the Shari‘a and wrote extensive commentaries on it, were capable of issuing stern warnings to the faithful about the undesirability of consorting too closely with Christians and Jews.

  The model instructions for the way in which Muslims should treat their dhimmi populations were enshrined in the so-called Covenant of ‘Umar, based on the principles of the Qur’an and the Sunna. The various versions of the Covenant must have changed in the course of time but they present the obligations and rights of Christians and Jews under Muslim rule. These groups were obliged to pay the poll-tax (jizya) and to observe certain restrictions in dress and social conduct.291

  Discriminatory measures against Christians and Jews had certainly become enshrined in the legal books by the eleventh century. This is clear from the work entitled the Kitab al-tanbih composed in Baghdad between 452/1060 and 453/1061 by the Shafi‘ite legal scholar al-Shirazi.292

  Al-Shirazi writes: ‘It is necessary that dhimmis should distinguish themselves from Muslims in dress.’293 He goes on to stipulate that male dhimmis should wear a lead or copper ring or a little bell around their necks when they go into the baths.294 As for the dhimmi woman: ‘She will wear a ring around her neck to go into the public baths; one of her shoes will be black and the other white.’295

  Similar restrictions should be imposed in other spheres of activity. Al-Shirazi points out that the dhimmis should not ride horses but only mules or asses and that they should hold back from any form of public display:

  They will not occupy the first place in an assembly and they will not be greeted first and they will move to the side of the road to give way [to Muslims]. They will be forbidden from raising structures higher than those of the Muslims but they will not be forbidden from raising them to the same height … They will be forbidden the public use of what displeases God, such as wine, pork, the clapper for the call to prayer and the reciting of the Old and New Testament.296

  Thus we see that social contacts between Muslims and dhimmis were not encouraged. The great medieval Muslim thinker al-Ghazali speaks in similar vein, and enjoins his fellow-believers not to take Christians as friends. Muslims should not make way for Christians, greet them first, follow their customs or engage in business with them.297 A century later Nasir al-Din Qunawi, writing about the essential teachings of Islam, urges the seeker after truth to remember prophets and saints who tread the path to God and to seek ‘refuge from the companionship of the outsiders who were deprived of this blessing – like Jews, Christians and other truth-concealers’.298

  Such strictures were the result of the evolution of the Shari‘a, an ideal code based on the sacred Islamic texts, the Qur’an and the hadith, as interpreted by successive generations of Islamic legists. Although such legists might urge Muslims to stay away from the People of the Book, it is nonetheless important to stress that there is not a single religious injunction which urges or indeed permits Muslims to persecute Christians and Jews. On the contrary, the Qur’an lays down that once such groups have entered into a covenant with the Muslims, they should be given a clearly defined status within the Islamic community, tolerated with justice and given protection. Whilst later scholars may have wished to place Christians and Jews in an inferior position within Muslim society, it is difficult to determine to what extent in any one particular time or place such measures were implemented in reality. The occasional instance of religious persecution launched by Muslim rulers, such as the ninth-century ‘Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil,299 or the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (ruled 996–1021), who passed some highly eccentric and discriminatory laws against his Christian and Jewish subjects, plainly flouted the dictates of the Islamic faith.300

  Figure 6.73 Leisure pursuits, inlaid metal basin made by Da’ud ibn Salama al-Mawsili, 650/1252, probably Damascus, Syria

  In general, then, the medieval Muslim sources themselves confirm that there were isolated cases of religious persecution of dhimmis in certain periods of Islamic history and in various areas of the Muslim world. But it can be argued overall that there must have been broad tolerance and a measure of autonomy for the indigenous communities in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. Indeed, the very longevity of such groups as the Copts in Egypt suggests strongly that they must have been allowed freedom of worship under Muslim rule. In other words, it is justifiable to say that before the coming of the Crusaders the ‘House of Islam’ within certain limits treated its Christian and Jewish communities well.

  The modern writer who uses the Hebrew pseudonym ‘Daughter of the Nile’ (Bat Ye’or) goes so far as to suggest that Islamic society has not been tolerant towards dhimmis - Christians or Jews – in any period of its history.301 Another Jewish scholar, Goitein, however, drawing upon his vast knowledge of the Geniza documents and the history of Islam, concludes that in the Near East in the eleventh and the major part of the twelfth century ‘a spirit of tolerance and liberalism prevailed, in particular in the Fatimid empire’.302

  Did the Crusaders Trigger Muslim Discriminatory Measures against the Oriental Christiansi

  Certainly it would not have been surprising if lessons learned from Crusader fanaticism engendered a more zealous attitude amongst those Muslims most directly in contact and conflict with them, and thus that the Crusades sharpened religious differences between Islam and Christianity. From the Western side, Runciman says with his customary eloquence à propos the fall of Jerusalem and the ensuing bloodbath of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants: ‘It was this bloodthirsty proof of Christian fanaticism that recreated the fanaticism of Islam.’303

  However, this whole issue is more complex than it seems and should be discussed with historical sensitivity and without the retrospective imposition of any modern political or religious agenda.304 In particular, the question of how the Oriental Christians within the House of Islam were treated during the period of Crusader occupation of parts of the Near East and after their departure needs to be analysed.

  Modern scholarship has produced a wide spectrum of opinion on these issues. Claude Cahen, for example, insists that the concept of jihad was unaffected by contact with the idea of the Crusade and by response to it and that the treatment of the local Christians living under Muslim protection did not change.305 Edward Atiya, on the other hand, argues that the lot of the Oriental Christians worsened after the coming of the Crusades: ‘The most enduring result of the crusades was the vehement reaction of the Islamic polity to the continued aggression of Western Christendom against Moslem territory for three centuries.’306 It will be convenient to treat this issue in chronological sequence rather than trying to impose generalities on the entire period.

  The Period 492–583/1099–1187

  Sivan argues that the revitalised jihad movement which arose in reaction to the Frankish presence did not have any impact in the twelfth century on the People of the Book (that is, the local Christians and Jews) under Muslim rule.307

  Figure 6.74 Virgin and Child, Gospel book, 1216–20, Mosul, Iraq

  Certainly, it must have taken the Muslims some time to differentiate and compare the Franks and the
Oriental Christians and to become aware of the more fanatical stance and alien ways of the newcomers in contradistinction to the local Christians with whom they had been in contact all their lives. The situation was by no means clear-cut, however. Ibn al-Qalanisi mentions an instance when the Armenians who were in the castle of Artah in 498/1104–5 surrendered to the Muslims under Ridwan ‘because of the injustice and grievous tyranny which they suffered from the Franks’.308 Sometimes local Christian forces fought alongside the Franks, as in 510/1116–17.309

  Yet even in the early days of the Frankish occupation there was a tendency, according to the chroniclers, to use the Oriental Christians as scapegoats for Muslim defeat. Whether this is just a device imposed by later Muslim writers for their own motives or a reflection of genuine collusion between Franks and Oriental Christians is impossible to say. It is intrinsically likely that the Oriental Christians might have seen their best interests as often residing in collaborating with their fellow Christians, the Franks. The fall of Antioch in 491/1098 is blamed, for example, on ‘the devices of the armourer who was an Armenian named Firuz’.310

  Figure 6.75 Bust of Christ, lustre ceramic fragment, eleventh-twelfth century, Fustat, Egypt

  Figure 6.76 ‘Blessing from Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate’: Kufic inscription on a metal lamp, c. 900, perhaps from Iran

  One episode in the year 518/1124–5 is worthy of mention in this context. The Frankish leader Joscelin had been conducting devastating raids in northern Syria. The geographer Ibn Shaddad writes that:

  When the Franks besieged Aleppo in the year 518 and they disturbed the graves which were outside it and burned what was in them, they [the people of Aleppo] went to four of the churches that were there and made them into mosques.311

  Ibn al-’Adim, the chronicler of Aleppo, is even more explicit:

  With the agreement of the leaders of Aleppo the qadi Ibn al-Khashshab ordered that the altars (maharib) of the churches belonging to the Christians in Aleppo should be destroyed and mihrabs should be made for them towards the direction of the qibla and their doors should be altered and they should be made into mosques. That was done in their great church and it was called the mosque of the saddlers (masjid al-sarrajin) and it is the college of the candy sellers (madrasat al-halawiyyin) now. The church of the ironsmiths (kanisat al-haddadin) is now the college of the ironsmiths (madrasat al-haddadin) … He left only two churches, no more, for the Christians in Aleppo and that is still the case.312

  Figure 6.77 Coptic priest swinging a censer, lustre bowl, after c. 1050, Egypt

  This is a revealing episode in a number of respects. First, the local qadi took it upon himself, despite his position as a Shari‘a judge, to contravene its dictates and sequestrate four of the existing Christian churches, leaving only two. This he did apparently with the agreement of the local Muslim leaders. Secondly, there is a direct relationship made between the aggressive activities of the Franks and the lives of the local Aleppan Christians. The Franks disturbed Muslim graves outside the city and Ibn al-Khashshab retaliated with devastating reprisals on the local Christians. In the early decades of the twelfth century, when power was decentralised, it was possible for a zealous Muslim, one of the few who is mentioned explicitly in the sources as having tried to infuse a spirit of jihad into Muslim troops before battle against the Franks, to act on his own initiative against the dhimmis. His action was a severe blow to the Christians in Syria and the loss of the cathedral at Aleppo must have been especially painful.

  Cahen says confidently that this was an isolated incident, prompted by anger at the desecration of Muslim graves.313 Silence in the sources does not necessarily mean, however, that there were no other instances of this kind. What is surprising, perhaps, is that Ibn al-’Adim should mention this Aleppan episode at all, although with the benefit of hindsight and later anti-Christian antagonism (Ibn al-’Adim lived in the thirteenth century) and his close friendship with a prominent member of the Khashshab family, Baha’ al-Din,314 he may well have thought that this tough action by the illustrious ancestor of Baha’ al-Din should be interpreted as reflecting credit on the family.

  Public indignation and humiliation linger long in the corporate memory. It may well be that the Muslims of Aleppo still remembered the degrading days of Ridwan’s rule when in 496/1102–3 the victorious Franks had made him hang a bell on one of the western towers of the citadel and place a cross on the minaret of the great mosque of the citadel. Incensed by righteous indignation, Ibn al-Khashshab put pressure on Ridwan to renegotiate the agreement and the cross was moved to the church of St Helen. This church was one of those converted into a mosque in 518/1124 and the cross was taken down. As for the bell, until 589/1191 it rang three times a night to mark the military watches.315

  Figure 6.78 Depictions of houses on a brass bowl inlaid with silver and gold, fifteenth century, Egypt or Syria

  In the 1180s Ibn Jubayr is very positive about the Christians of Damascus. He mentions that there is a much-venerated church called Mary’s Church:

  After the temple in Jerusalem they have none more esteemed than this. It is an elegant structure with remarkable pictures that amaze the mind and hold the gaze, and its spectacle is wonderful indeed. It is in the hands of the Rum (Christians), who are never molested within it.316

  Ibn Jubayr saw monuments built by the Copts in upper Egypt at Ikhmim: ‘In this city are monuments and constructions built by the Copts and churches attended till today by the Christian Copt clients.’317

  The Ayyubid Period

  A significant turning-point may have been the Ayyubid period, during which – because of links, either real or supposed,318 between the Franks and the local Christians – reprisals were taken against the latter because of the misdeeds of the former. Sivan lists three major uprisings of this kind – the first in 1219 in Egypt during the siege of Damietta, the second in 1242, also in Egypt, at Fustat, and the third in 1250 at Damascus.319 The Copts of Egypt enjoyed mixed fortunes under the rule of Saladin and his family. On occasion they were dismissed from office because of alleged links with the Crusaders, and their churches were destroyed. Yet members of their community were still appointed to high positions-Saladin had a private secretary, Ibn Sharafi, who was a Copt, and Saladin’s brother, al-‘Adil, put a Copt named Ibn al-Miqat in charge of the army ministry (diwan al-jaysh). The appointment of a Christian to a position of such power in war-time and in an area that was militarily so sensitive tells its own story. Indeed, the loyalties of the Copts in the Ayyubid period seem often to have lain more with the Muslims and with their own local interests than with the Crusaders. This was demonstrated in the Crusade of Damietta in 1218 when the Copts helped to defend the city, and as a consequence suffered greatly at the hands of the Crusaders.320

  The evidence for Ayyubid Syria is rather mixed. The anti-Christian bias of the Mamluk chronicler al-Maqrizi should always be borne in mind but he certainly mentions discriminatory measures taken against the Christians by the Ayyubid ruler of Damascus, al-‘Aziz, on 14 Sha‘ban 592/13 July 1196: ‘He prohibited the people of the convenant in the Sultanic service, and they were compelled to wear the dress distinguishing non-Muslims.’321

  It seems that Oriental Christians may well have been treated under the Ayyubids in Syria in much the same way as they had always been. If Christian (and Jewish) doctors are taken as an example of a prominent group within Muslim society – and there is evidence above all from the biographical dictionary of doctors by Ibn Abi Usaybi‘a322-it is clear that they were treated relatively tolerantly. But doctors may well have been a special case.323

  Figure 6.79 Design for a playing card, c. 1250, Fustat, Egypt

  A distinction might perhaps be drawn between Egypt and Syria, although the evidence is too scanty to allow firm judgements.

  The Mamluk Period

  We have seen that in the Mamluk period the combined impact of Crusader interventionism and fanaticism, on the one hand, and the terror and brutal ferocity of the Mongol c
onquests, on the other, aroused a heightened desire in the hearts of the Muslims of Syria, Palestine and Egypt to defend their territories, and an iron determination to interpret the Islamic concept of jihad to suit their own circumstances and predicament. Indeed, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt prosecuted jihad with devastating strength and success.

  Figure 6.80 Leisure pursuits, Fatimid carved ivory plaques, eleventh-twelfth centuries, Egypt

  That said, how far can it be asserted that the situation for the Oriental Christians deteriorated during and after the Crusading period? It would appear that matters did worsen, especially after 1291, and it is thus legitimate to wonder whether the Crusades were the cause, indirectly or directly, of the persecution of the Oriental Christians by their Muslim overlords.

  There was great pressure on individuals and groups to convert. The Mamluk government did not have consistent policies towards its non-Muslim subjects. Sometimes it tried to protect its non-Muslim officials who because of their wealth and influence often excited outrage amongst the Muslim population. On other occasions, however, the Mamluk government was forced to give in to popular pressure and allow discriminatory measures and persecutions, since public order was their prime concern. A strong lead came from the ‘ulama’ who insisted on a strict interpretation of the subordinate position of Christians and Jews within Islamic society.