The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  Some time in the eleventh century, Egyptian naval power declined and from the end of the first decade of the twelfth century, the Fatimids seem to have withdrawn into their shell after a series of military failures against the Franks. The loss of supply bases, such as Acre and Tyre, had a serious impact on the Fatimid navy and disturbed the naval alarm systems protecting the security of the Egyptian coast.

  Some sporadic activity by the Fatimid fleet is reported in 496/1103,216 and again in 516/1122. In the latter case, a convoy of forty galleys built in the arsenal at Cairo made for Jaffa in response to an appeal for help from the Muslims of Syria, and on its way back was destroyed by the Franks.217 The Egyptian historian Ibn Muyassar mentions that Fatimid fleets continued to operate in the mid-twelfth century. A naval expedition was launched in 546/1151 by the Fatimid vizier al-’Adil ibn al-Sallar against the Levantine ports, apparently in retaliation for the Franks’ destruction of al-Farama the previous year.218 But this initiative seems to have been a rare instance of Fatimid naval success. The fleet is described by the contemporary chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi as a fleet of ‘exceeding strength and plenitude of number and equipment’. The fleet numbered seventy warships and was ‘such a fleet as had never come forth in previous years’.219 It seized many Byzantine and Frankish ships at Jaffa and wrought havoc at Acre, Tyre, Beirut and Tripoli. But the possibility of a joint Muslim attack by land and sea against the Franks was lost because of Nur al-Din’s unwillingness to fulfil his promise of help.220 So these efforts seem to have made little impact.221

  After the fall of Ascalon, the last of the Syrian coastal towns still in Muslim hands, in 1153, Egypt lost its last bastion through which the rest of the country could be warned of the coming of enemy ships. The loss of Ascalon ushered in a period of great pressure on Egypt from the Crusaders, described in some detail by Ehrenkreutz.222 Combined sea and land offensives then followed, culminating in 1168 with Amalric’s all-out attack on Cairo. The Egyptian fleet had fewer ships than the Crusaders (in 1152 the Fatimids had a raiding fleet of seventy ships), and even those ships they did possess in 1168 were burned in the conflagration at Fustat in an attempt to impede the Crusader advance. Thus Saladin would have to start more or less from scratch in trying to build a fleet.

  Figure 8.38 The constellation Argo Navis, al-Sufi, Kitab suwar al-kawakib (‘Book of Fixed Stars’), 519/1125, Baghdad, Iraq

  It may well be possible, too, that the Egyptian navy declined because the Fatimids experienced difficulty in acquiring the raw materials necessary for building new ships in the twelfth century. After all, timber from the cheapest source, namely the European countries to the north, became part of the sinews of war from the moment that the Crusaders arrived in Fatimid Syria. No doubt trade did not grind to a halt once war had broken out, but it is only to be expected that key military supplies (including timber for ship-building) would now be somewhat harder to obtain from European sources. The enthusiastic papal support for the Crusades was also a potential deterrent for European Christian traders contemplating commercial undertakings with Fatimid merchants.223

  Figure 8.39 The constellation Argo Navis from a brass celestial globe dated 674/1275–6, Iraq (?)

  The Naval Policies of Muslim Leaders in the Period 1100–1174

  Why did the Syrian Sunni Muslim forces under Zengi and Nur al-Din not attempt to take the coastal towns and to confront the Franks at sea? It would seem that they were too involved in the difficult tasks of carving out a realm for themselves against their many political rivals and of beginning to reunite the various post-Seljuq successor states, whose genesis had been occasioned by Seljuq weakness and fragmentation. Besides, all the early Muslim Counter-Crusade leaders – Il-Ghazi, Mawdud, Tughtegin, Zengi and even Nur al-Din – were psychologically land-locked. They all came originally from lands east of the Euphrates and did not have a mind-set that thought with ease about naval matters. This deficiency seems also to have afflicted the Mamluks later on.

  The task of retaking the Syrian ports was, in any case, a difficult one, requiring commitment and resources and, ideally, simultaneous attacks by land and sea. Characteristically, the Franks had taken good care to bolster the defences of the coastal towns as soon as they had taken them in the early years of the twelfth century. So it fell to Saladin to perceive the importance of building up the Muslim navies once he had acquired access to the sea with his conquest of Egypt in 1171. But his success in this enterprise was only limited and transient.

  Muslim Views of Crusader Fleets

  The Muslim chroniclers were clearly awe-struck and impressed by the Crusader naval war effort. Muslim strength on land was constantly threatened by Frankish power on the high seas; a typically audacious and offensive demonstration of this fact was the raid by Reynald of Chatillon on the Red Sea in 1191. Indeed, the venom with which this expedition is described in the Muslim sources – due of course to its avowed aim of attacking the holiest shrines of Islam – may also owe something to the fact that it was a maritime expedition and totally unexpected. The whole episode for the Muslims is not just another Crusader military strike; it is sinister, criminal and depraved.

  ‘Imad al-Din gives a detailed description of the Sicilian fleet which attacked Alexandria in 569/1174: The beginning of the fleet arrived at noon and kept coming fast and furious224 until the late afternoon.’

  This was a famous Frankish fleet which, according to ‘Imad al-Din, had threatened the islands belonging to Byzantium. He then lists the number and kinds of ships:

  They disembarked their horses from the transport ships and their infantry from the vessels. The horses numbered 1,500 and the warriors, including cavalry and infantry, were 30,000. The transport ships carrying the horses numbered 36. They had with them 200 galleys, each containing 150 infantrymen. There were six ships carrying weapons of war and siege, made of large pieces of wood and other materials. The number of ships carrying provisions and men was 40; in them were royal horse guards, grooms for the horses, builders of ships, towers, siege machines and mangonels, numbering 50,000 men.225

  The total number of ships of various kinds listed for this Sicilian fleet by Abu Shama is 282. Even if this number is exaggerated, his evidence is a clear indication of the sophistication of this fleet, the grandiose nature of its operations and the range of ships used.

  Nor do the Islamic sources shirk the task of chronicling dire Muslim losses at sea because of superior Frankish maritime expertise. Ibn Shaddad describes the sinking of a Muslim ship after the arrival of Richard from England in 587/1191. He mentions that Richard came accompanied by twenty-five galleys, full of men, weapons and provisions. He then gives details of the incident, which involved a naval battle, though sadly he does not discuss the actual fighting techniques used at sea. There is in his account no awareness of the practicalities of war at sea – how the ships were actually propelled by sail or oarsmen – and there are no details of ramming or climbing aboard the enemy’s vessels and of the ensuing hand-to-hand fighting.

  On 16 Jumada I a great ship (busta) arrived from Beirut laden with war machines, weapons, provisions, foot-soldiers and fighting men. The sultan [Saladin] had ordered that it should be loaded and sent from Beirut and he had placed in it a great number of warriors in order that it should be able to enter the town [Acre] in spite of the enemy. The number of fighting men was 650. [The king of] England intercepted it with a number of ships, numbering, it was said, forty sails. They surrounded it on all sides and launched a fierce attack on it. Fate decreed that the wind stopped. They fought hard and a great number of the enemy were killed. Then the enemy galleys multiplied their attacks on the people in the ship. Their leader [on the ship] was an excellent man, courageous and experienced in war, called Ya’qub, a native of Aleppo. When he saw the signs of [Frankish] victory, he made an opening in the ship and all those in it were drowned, together with all the war machines, provisions and other items and the enemy did not obtain any of it at all.226

  It is interesting to note th
at although Ibn Shaddad records this disaster at some length, albeit with gritted teeth, he softens the blow somewhat by pointing out that at least the Franks did not succeed in enriching themselves with the spoils of the ship. He follows up this story with a description of the Muslims’ triumphal burning of the Frankish dabbaba, the implication being that what the Franks can do well at sea the Muslims can do just as well on land, an attitude fully shared by the Mamluks later on. The advent of the awe-inspiring fleets of the Franks must have provoked defensive measures on the part of the Muslims to protect the Levantine parts, although precise details are rare in the sources. Early in the thirteenth century the Seljuq sultan ‘Ala al-Din Kayqubad built a naval installation for constructing ships in the lee of the massive fortifications which he erected in the port of Alanya on the south-west coast of Turkey. It was the practice for important Muslim harbours to be protected at their entrance by an iron chain. The port of Damietta was defended against attack by sea in the 1180s by two towers and a chain (silsila).227 In the fourteenth century al-Dimishqi mentions that an iron chain defended Ladhaqiya, a ‘marvellous and extensive harbour’ against enemy ships.228

  Figure 8.40 Tershane (ship-building installation) and citadel walls, elevation, shortly before 634/1237, Alanya, Turkey

  Figure 8.41 Tershane (ship-building installation), plan, shortly before 634/1237, Alanya, Turkey

  Saladin and the Navy

  In 1955 Ehrenkreutz wrote a very detailed article on Saladin and the navy in which he chronicled the phases by which Saladin tried to take on the Crusaders at sea. Ehrenkreutz rightly pointed to Saladin’s role in the naval history of Egypt since, after all, nearly all accounts of his exploits emphasise what he did on land.

  It should be stressed that Saladin was the first Muslim leader of the Counter-Crusade to tackle the sea. But given the seemingly impossible task in the period c. 1130–60 of recapturing the Syrian ports in view of the land-locked internal power struggles of Muslim leaders, and given Fatimid inertia and impotence, it was only Saladin’s seizure of Egypt that empowered him to be the first Muslim leader of the Counter-Crusade actually able to launch naval offensives against the Crusaders. Egypt, as already noted, was the key to the development of a Muslim fleet, given the continuing entrenched occupation of the Syrian coastline by the Crusaders.

  In 1169, when Saladin took power in Egypt, there were few naval resources. But his earlier experiences in Egypt had made it clear to him that the Crusaders had to be tackled at sea as well as on land. He began well. In a visit to Alexandria in March 1177 he ordered the construction of a fleet. He revived the arsenal229 at Alexandria and he raised sailors’ pay by 20 per cent, probably to encourage recruitment into this unpopular job. According to Ibn Abi Tayyi‘, the Egyptian ships were in a poor state of repair. Saladin began therefore to acquire the material and craftsmen necessary for rebuilding a fleet.230 With this in mind, he concluded commercial treaties with the Italian maritime city-states and they undertook to supply him with timber, iron and wax. Although these were the very cities which were launching Crusader fleets against the Muslims, the Italian merchants were clearly not inhibited by religious scruples from selling munitions of war to the Muslim enemy. Business is business.

  The importance of the navy for Saladin is emphasised in the so-called testament of the Ayyubid sultan al-Malik al-Salih Ayyub, as recorded by al-Nuwayri. In a letter ‘written in his own hand’ – this detail invests the advice contained in the letter with a particular solemnity and force – Saladin recommends that the tax (kharaj) of al-Fayyum, Samannud and the Sahil should be allocated to the fleet: ‘For the fleet is one of the wings of Islam. Therefore the sailors must be well fed.’231

  The letter goes on to say that if the sailors are paid a fixed sum regularly, they will enrol. Properly qualified men who know how to shoot and fight will come from all directions. This testimony indicates clearly that sailors had not been fed or paid regularly in the past and that only men of indifferent fighting skills had enlisted in the Egyptian navy, at least in the period immediately preceding Saladin’s time in power.

  By the spring of 1179, the Egyptian fleet numbered eighty ships – sixty were galleys and twenty were transport vessels – and thus the fleet was restored to the level it had enjoyed in the heyday of the Fatimids. Nevertheless, this was small in comparison with the Frankish Sicilian fleet already described. Fifty of Saladin’s ships were to protect the coast of Egypt and the remaining thirty were to attack the Crusaders. In 1179 the Egyptian fleet attacked Acre, taking all the enemy ships, and the Muslims seemed poised at last to challenge the Crusaders at sea. As Abu Shama said: ‘Our fleet, once destroyed, became in turn the destroyer of the enemy… Never was a similar victory achieved by a Muslim fleet.’232 In the following year, 1180, Saladin established the diwan al-ustul, a separate department to finance the navy.

  Figure 8.42 Warship, furusiyya (military horsemanship) manuscript, thirteenth century, perhaps Egypt

  Saladin’s inexperience at handling military operations at sea began, however, to show in 578/1182 in the fiasco against Beirut. On this occasion he tried out the navy in a combined land and sea operation against Beirut. He blockaded the port for a month, but when 33 Crusader galleys appeared he lifted the siege and returned to Damascus. The operation was a failure because he had failed to synchronise his fleet with his land forces – indeed, instead of making a simultaneous attack by land and sea, he had sent the navy ahead. Above all, however, this enterprise against Beirut failed because of an inability or unwillingness on the part of Saladin’s navy to take on the Crusader fleet. Saladin’s naval commanders lacked the courage and skills necessary to embark on a sea battle even on this occasion when the balance of power between the two naval forces was roughly equal.233 Perhaps they were daunted by the psychological pressure exerted by the Crusaders with their history of almost a century of unchallenged superiority at sea.

  In 1187, Saladin’s greatest year, he launched major attacks against the Levantine ports held by the Franks. In that year the Franks held around 350 miles of coastline, including Ascalon, Jaffa, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Jubayl and Latakia. After his victory at Hattin that same year, Saladin and his commanders retook a good number of the ports, from Ascalon to Jubayl. But his performance at Tyre, a most crucial Crusader base, proved disastrous. At the end of 1187, he besieged it on land and he ordered his fleet in Acre to leave the harbour and establish a naval blockade, thus depriving the Crusader defenders at Tyre of any relief at sea. But the Muslim ships were taken by surprise on 30 December by Crusader raiding parties; five ships were seized. Saladin immediately ordered the remaining five ships to lift the blockade and to make for Beirut. Worse was to follow. Some Crusader galleys followed the five retreating Muslim vessels; the Muslim crews abandoned the ships and swam to the shore.

  This was an ignominious episode and a serious blow to Saladin’s prestige. The loss of the first five ships had come about through lack of vigilance, the second five through the pusillanimous conduct of the sailors. As ‘Imad al-Din said:

  This incident showed that the naval administration of Egypt… could not muster suitable manpower. Instead, it had to reassemble ignorant men, without skill or experience, or any fighting tradition, so that whenever these men were faced by danger, they were terrified, and whenever it was imperative to obey, they disobeyed.234

  The Muslim land forces at Tyre became totally demoralised by the defeat at sea, and Saladin’s army retreated.

  Subsequently Saladin seems to have continued to underestimate the naval strength of the Crusaders. This was particularly apparent at Acre during the years 1189–91 before it fell to Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France in July 1191. With the coming of the Third Crusade there were at least 552 ships at the initial blockade of Acre – fImad al-Din wrote that they transformed the coast ‘into a forest of masts’.235 Their arrival in such strength ruined Saladin’s ambitions at sea. Indeed, by the end of the Third Crusade the Franks had secured their hold over th
e Levantine ports from Tyre to Jaffa.

  An Assessment of Saladin’s Naval Strategy

  In sum, Saladin had made a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to enter the maritime fray against much more seasoned opponents. When under real pressure at Tyre, he demonstrated a disturbing lack of naval tactical skills. His earlier maritime successes were those of a promising debutant, but in the real test of the Third Crusade he could not cope. However much the Muslim chroniclers tried to dress up his naval achievements, they were only brief moments of Muslim success in an otherwise uniform picture of Crusader maritime superiority.

  Saladin’s efforts in matters maritime are reminiscent of those of Napoleon whose activity at sea was so much less effective than on land. Saladin saw the need to deal with the Crusaders at sea and to plan concerted land and sea attacks on the Muslim side; but he was inexperienced, lacked skilled naval advisers and worked only fitfully at naval matters. Faced with the accumulated naval knowledge and resources of the European maritime states, their numerically much greater naval forces and their more intrepid attitude to the sea, Saladin was bound to lose.

  Ibn Khaldun is well aware of Crusader naval superiority in Saladin’s time:

  When Salah al-Din [Saladin] Yusuf b. Ayyub, the ruler of Egypt and Syria at this time, set out to recover the ports of Syria from the Christian nations … one fleet of unbelievers after another came to the relief of the ports, from all the regions near Jerusalem which they controlled. They supported them with equipment and food. The fleet of Alexandria could not stand up against them.236