The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  This comment makes it clear that the various Crusader principalities maintained naval forces which they used to reinforce each other in times of crisis. It was therefore not simply a question of Muslim fleets being overwhelmed by much larger forces arriving directly from Europe. The early loss of the Levantine ports to the Crusaders meant that the leaders of the various Muslim forces could not offer each other mutual support at sea.

  With the benefit of hindsight, one may ask what Saladin should have done to counter the Crusaders at sea. Certainly, for the coastal towns of Syria, so well fortified by the Crusaders from the beginning of the twelfth century, he would have done well to have pursued the same policy as that adopted a hundred years or so later by the Mamluks, and to have tried to invest the Syrian ports one by one and in turn raze them to the ground. In Saladin’s defence, however, it should be pointed out that in his time the Crusaders and the Muslims were often evenly balanced, as demonstrated by his only narrowly failing to eradicate the Crusader presence altogether after Hattin. In Mamluk times the Muslims held the balance of power.

  Ehrenkreutz describes Saladin as the last medieval ruler of Egypt to try to revive its naval power.237 Under him, the Egyptian fleets made a last attempt to compete for domination of the eastern Mediterranean. As al-Maqrizi writes: ‘After the death of Saladin the affairs of the fleet were given little attention… Service in the navy was considered to be a disgrace to such an extent that to call out to an Egyptian “O sailor” was treated as an insult.’238

  Figure 8.43 Graffiti of ships, Ehmedek section of citadel walls, undated but post-Seljuq, Alanya, Turkey

  The Navy in the Mamluk Period

  The Mamluks in Egypt certainly knew how to build ships and al-Maqrizi points to continuing activity in this domain. This knowledge was not, however, exploited to best advantage in their military efforts against the Franks. The status and efficiency of the Mamluk navy as a fighting force were undermined by the use of convicts and prisoners of war to man the fleet. Not one Mamluk biographical dictionary contains an entry for a naval man.239 The chronicler Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir rebukes Sultan al-Mu‘azzam Turanshah because during the crisis provoked by St Louis’s campaign, Turanshah did not ride a horse into battle but ‘sailed in a boat like a spectator’.240 It was perhaps predictable in a militarised society, where the horse reigned supreme, that the Mamluks should have held strong prejudices against the sea.

  Baybars and the Navy

  By omission Ehrenkreutz seems to bypass completely the contribution of Sultan Baybars at sea; this is certainly one conclusion to be drawn from his statement that under Saladin the Egyptian fleets made their last efforts at dominance in the Mediterranean.241 Baybars also shared the Mamluks’ distrust and dislike of the sea, but he was too shrewd a strategist to neglect the Mamluk navy altogether. Indeed, in his reign, the Mamluk navy is at least mentioned as playing some role in military events, although how important it was in reality remains unclear. One wonders how large the fleet actually was, how much financial investment Baybars really made in it and how he expected it to function properly without qualified mariners and marines. Probably, in fact, naval matters had not improved since the time of Saladin.

  In 668/1270 Baybars heard of an impending Crusade led by Louis IX, and directly put the coastal cities and his fleet on the alert. It is widely reported that Baybars ordered his fleet to attack Cyprus in 669/1271. According to the Arabic sources, this was a diversionary tactic intended to lure Hugh of Lusignan away from Acre. To deceive the enemy, the Mamluk galleys were painted black like Crusader ships and displayed flags bearing the cross. The whole enterprise was a complete disaster. During the night most of Baybars’ ships were blown by a strong wind on to reefs off Limassol and were stranded. Around 1,800 crew and soldiers were taken prisoner.242

  Figure 8.44 ‘Hugh de Lusignan [transcribed ‘Uk de Lazinyan’], may his power endure’: Arabic inscription on a brass basin made for Hugh de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem and Cyprus (1324–59); probably Egypt or Syria

  After this destruction of Baybars’ fleet, Hugh wrote a triumphantly snide letter to the sultan telling him about the disaster. Baybars’ alleged response is recorded by Al-‘Ayni, quoting Baybars al-Mansuri:

  It is remarkable that you [Hugh] should prize the seizing of iron and wood more than the seizing of fortified citadels. Victory given by the wind is not beautiful. Only victory by the sword is beautiful. We can erect a number of ships in a single day whilst not a piece of a citadel could be erected for you. We can prepare a hundred sails, whilst not a single citadel could be made ready for you in a hundred years. Anyone who is given an oar can row but not everyone who is given a sword can cut and thrust extremely well with it.243

  Figure 8.45 Noah’s ark, Rashid al-Din, Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (‘World History’), 714/1314, Tabriz, Iran

  Such nonchalance towards shipbuilding skills is a probable reason why the Mamluk ships sank. Baybars goes on to make his famous distinction between the power of the Islamic world and that of the Franks: ‘For you, your horses are ships; for us, our ships are horses.’244

  Baybars was immersed in a society which emphasised equestrian skills above all. This scornful attitude on the part of Baybars, provoked as it was by Hugh and by the need to retaliate appropriately in the epistolary war of words, is nevertheless revealing of the mind-set of Baybars and indeed of the Mamluks. At one level, the letter reveals a complete lack of realism about the time needed to build sturdy and secure ships – never mind manning them – as well as a marked prejudice against maritime warfare and for conventional fighting on land and seizing land-based citadels. The episode in Cyprus demonstrated too that Baybars did not have naval experts on whom to rely.

  The sources relate that on hearing the news of the disaster, Baybars thanked God for giving him such a light punishment; his ships were, after all, manned only by peasants and the common folk.245

  The Final Mamluk Offensive against the Crusaders

  Predictably, in the end the Mamluks did not eradicate the last Crusader presence in the Levant by fighting them even partly at sea. Instead, they destroyed the Crusader fortifications along the coastline of Syria and Palestine. Saladin had begun this policy by destroying Ascalon in 587/1191. The Mamluks followed suit by demolishing one after another of the ports and fortifications of the Syro-Palestinian littoral. The resultant devastation was particularly marked in the region between Sidon and al-’Arish. Thereafter, the Syro-Palestinian coastline was abandoned. Henceforth, the Mamluks would concentrate on the fortifying of the Nile delta only; the Egyptian ports and coastal fortifications were retained both to defend Cairo with its major concentration of Mamluk forces and also to encourage the continuation of trade with the outside world.246

  Figure 8.46 Mamluk river boat with archers, painted leather (used in shadow plays), fifteenth century, Egypt

  The Link between the Navy and Siege Warfare in the Mamluk Period

  An important dimension of the Mamluk neglect of the sea was the resultant impact on their siege warfare. In all their offensives against the Franks, there is not one example of a siege conducted simultaneously by land and by sea. As Ayalon points out, all the Mamluk sieges along the coast were carried out ‘almost as if the Mamluk navy did not exist at all’.247 This crucial strategic flaw on the part of the Mamluks meant that they could undertake only partial investment of the fortresses which overlooked the sea, and – still worse – that they allowed the besieged the possibility of being reinforced and indeed rescued by sea. Such was the case in the siege of Acre in 690/1291, when an especially fireproof Frankish warship was on hand to attack the Muslims.248 Even the presence of a Mamluk warship was not enough to stop the Franks evacuating refugees and taking them to harbours still under Frankish control and bringing reinforcements to the besieged.249 The Mamluk navy, in other words, was simply not strong enough to prevent the Franks from landing at practically any port of their choosing on the Syro-Palestinian littoral.

  It was extremely difficult for t
he Muslims to capture or destroy the Frankish citadels on the coast; and even more problematic for them to seize islands off the Syrian coastline, such as Arwad, which had been fortified by the Franks. Maraqiyya is a telling example. It was a strong fortified citadel standing in the sea ‘at a distance of two bowshots from the shore’. According to his biographer Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir the Mamluk sultan Qalawun pronounced that it was impossible to besiege Maraqiyya because: ‘It is in the sea, and because the Muslims have no ships to cut off its provisions and to stop those who want to enter or leave it.’250

  The island of St Thomas opposite Tripoli was taken by the Mamluks, not because of the ability to reach it by boat but as a result of a fortunate timing of the tides. According to Ibn al-Furat, it was the eternal good fortune of the Muslims that a low tide allowed them to cross over to St Thomas on foot and horseback and to capture the Frankish settlement.251

  A notable exception to this rather spineless Mamluk response to the sea occurred in 702/1302 when they seized Arwad, which, as Ayalon points out,252 was the only Frankish stronghold captured by a naval operation, involving both Egyptian warships and an army from Tripoli.253 This occurred, of course, about a decade after the fall of Acre, when Mamluk morale vis-à-vis the Crusaders was at a high point.

  Figure 8.47 Enthroned ruler with attendants, stucco relief, thriteenth century, Iran

  The Muslim Navy in the World of the Folk Epic

  In the fantasy world of the folk epic reality took on a comforting gloss. It is axiomatic in these tales that Muslims are superior to the peoples of western Europe in matters of the sea. Here, in the world of the story-teller at the street corner or camp site, the Muslims excelled as much on sea as on land. As Lyons points out, the stories of the sea in the popular folk cycles merely re-enact war in a different environment, using the same tactics as they would on land.254 There is a particularly detailed account of a ‘land’ battle fought at sea in the Sirat Baybars. Baybars and his ally ‘Arnus set sail from Alexandria to fight a Catalan fleet of four hundred ships.255 The Catalan enemy, it is interesting to note, are surprised to see that the Muslim ships, like theirs, are drawn up in battle formation, as ‘they [the Muslims] know nothing of sea warfare’.

  The story then assumes the contours of a medieval superman encounter: after forty days of fighting,’Arnus has annihilated half the Catalan fleet (that is, 200 ships) single-handedly. The leader of the Catalans thereupon takes on the Muslims in the naval equivalent of a duel. Wearing a garment made of the skin of a black fish, he rides the waves in a boat made of ‘Indian wood, plated with Chinese iron’; he carries a phial of naphtha and there are three cannon in the boat. As for the Muslim champion, Abu Bakr, he sports a white fish skin and uses a boat ‘made of oak planks, plated with brass and mounting a tower’.256 He sinks the enemy ship with his single cannon, kills his enemy in the water and then sinks fifty more ships that night by boring holes in their planks.257 Thus in the world of fantasy at least, the Muslims dreamt of extraordinary feats of naval superiority over the Europeans.

  However, the medieval epics also contain many small details about seafaring and ships that are rooted in reality: the use of naphtha, grappling hooks for boarding ships, chains to prevent entry into harbours, and ships ramming each other.258 Underlying the naval dimension to these stories is no great liking for the sea; on the contrary, the story-tellers cannot wait to restore their heroes to dry land as soon as possible.259

  General Observations about the Naval Aspects of the Muslim-Crusader Conflict

  From the Muslim perspective, the maritime dimension of the history of the Crusades has been sadly ignored; for all that, it is probably the key factor in the continuing presence of the Franks on Muslim soil. It is obvious that had the Muslims dealt with this problem promptly and decisively, the Crusades would have finished much earlier. In the period of the Crusades, it is indisputable that Christian Europe enjoyed unchallenged supremacy in the Mediterranean, with dire consequences for the Muslims. Egypt, in particular, lost its former naval strength.

  It has been shown that in the period before Saladin, Muslim leaders in Syria did not grapple with the all-important problem of the continuing arrival of Crusaders from Europe by sea and the consequent pressing need to retake the Syrian ports. Moreover, the Fatimids, who did possess access to the sea, did not exploit this advantage to launch successful naval offensives against the Crusaders. As Goitein points out: ‘The possession of one single fortified seaport enabled the Christians to resume the crusades and to become again a power to be reckoned with in the Levant.’260

  Saladin’s efforts were certainly more creditable than those of Baybars. A picture emerges from the sources of a real determination on Saladin’s part to take on the Crusaders by sea, but clearly he was held back by a lack of trained personnel and of strategic and tactical expertise. As for Baybars, beneath the rhetoric in the sources, it appears that he did pay some attention to naval matters, though it was to little effect. A land-based strategy of razing coastal citadels to the ground was much more suited to his military training, experience and outlook. Yet, even though the Muslims increasingly dominated the hinterland, the Crusaders were still able to send help to beleaguered garrisons by sea, as at Ascalon in 1247 and Acre in 1291.261

  Figure 8.48 Dhow, al-Hariri, al-Maqamat (‘The Assemblies’), 634/1237, probably Baghdad, Iraq

  Saladin and Baybars tried to reverse Muslim misfortunes at sea but their efforts were neither consistent nor sustained and were not followed up by their successors. Indeed, in sum, the Muslim naval effort against the Crusaders was a fiasco.

  To what can this fiasco be attributed? Certainly economic factors played a significant part; there was already a chronic shortage of funds to pay the land troops, so how could the sailors, an inferior and supplementary resource, be paid too? It was as expensive to keep a fleet at sea as to man it. One of the causes of the decline of shipbuilding in the Near East during the twelfth century may have been an increasing shortage of timber. Moreover, once the Muslims had lost the Levantine ports they also lost the facilities for building ships there.

  The main initiative on the Muslim side had to come from Egypt. The Mamluks held the upper hand in military matters generally and they faced a weaker Crusader enemy; yet they too, like the Fatimids and Ayyubids before them, could not cope with naval strategy.

  As Marshall rightly notes: ‘The Muslim fleet was not normally used against Christian targets, either generally to threaten the shipping routes or, more specifically, to support a Muslim land-based assault against a strongpoint.’262

  The Mamluks had no geographical barriers to prevent their building up fleets against the Franks. They were very probably aware of the sophisticated docking facilities (the tershane) developed by the Seljuqs of Rum in the thirteenth century at Alanya on the southern coast of Anatolia (figures 8.32, 8.33), since Alanya was a crucial transit port for the shipment of slaves from the Black Sea marts to Egypt. Yet they seem to have built no similar facility themselves. So what was their excuse? It is usually argued – and very convincingly by Ayalon – that their stress on horsemanship and equestrian fighting skills was inevitably land-based. Their society was permanently geared for war, but – as noted above – the idea of fighting at sea was envisaged only sporadically and undertaken only tentatively. Thus Mamluk failures against the superior expertise of western Europe in matters maritime are not surprising. Mamluk myopia and fear of the sea played a part in their general failure to fight their enemies at sea but this still does not fully explain this important gap in their otherwise formidable armoury of military skills.

  Figure 8.49 The constellation Argo Navis, al-Sufi, Kitab suwar al-kawakib (‘Book of Fixed Stars’), 400/1009, Iraq (?)

  Economic factors should therefore be examined in any investigation of the Muslims’ failure to build up a navy comparable to those of the Crusaders. Just as there was a constant problem of paying troops fighting on land, so too it was expensive to hire people to man the ships, while a wo
od shortage and the need to import it from Europe or Anatolia (via Alanya?) hindered the construction of ships. Even when the Mamluks decided to confront the problem of the Syrian ports which were still in Frankish hands, their final solution was not to capture them, with some inevitable destruction of fortifications, in order to rebuild and use them as part of their own defence system. Instead, they deliberately eradicated the ports along the Syrian littoral and concentrated on the maritime defence of Egypt itself.

  Ibn Khaldun, with his usual insight, declares: The Byzantines, the European Christians, and the Goths lived on the northern shore of the Mediterranean. Most of their wars and most of their commerce was by sea. They were skilled in navigating and in naval war.’263

  The Views of Military Historians

  According to the famous military historian Oman, military aspects of the Crusades comprise ‘a subject sufficiently vast and varied to fill many volumes’.264 As early as 1848 the French Orientalist Reinaud observed that the military arts of the Muslims must have been effective in order for them to have managed to chase the Franks out of the Holy Land.265 A counter-argument to this statement might well be the question: why did it take the Muslims so long to do this? Reinaud was right, however, to stress that experience of the military tactics of the two major foreign groups that assailed the Muslim world – the Franks and the Mongols – may well have improved the fighting methods of the Muslims and helped them in their task of removing these unwanted intruders.266

  More recently, Scanlon argues that the coming of the Franks emphasised to the Muslims their own vulnerability and the need to improve their weaponry and military tactics ‘in the face of the heavier European cavalry and more complicated siege machines and weapons’.267 Lynn White agrees with this view, stating that the Franks came to the Near East with the advantage of superior arms. The Muslims imitated Frankish military techniques and this helped them to defeat the Franks in the end.268