The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  Other scholars, however, believe that while the Muslims adopted individual weapons arms and fighting techniques from the Franks and refined their tactics in response to how the Franks fought, the impact of Frankish military methods on the Muslims should not be overplayed. After all, the Muslims had their own widely varying range of military traditions on which to draw, as well as the experience of facing the terrifyingly lethal military methods of the Mongols.

  Historians of military tactics, such as Oman, have concentrated on what actually happened in the battlefield. Smail and Marshall take a broader view, examining the diverse kinds of military encounter which occurred during the Crusades. They argue persuasively that it was the capture of fortresses and castles, not victory in battle, which proved the key to the military history of the Crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.269 Marshall argues that, by the thirteenth century, the Muslims were superior in most types of military encounter.270

  Marshall also emphasises that low-level warfare was a regular feature of the Crusading period and he stresses the importance of raids, both in their own right and as an integral part of a wider strategy, for instance when they acted as the prelude to a siege.271 The series of raids conducted in the thirteenth century against Acre were in his view part of the Muslims’ overall military strategy. They deployed their resources carefully and cumulatively built up the pressure on Christian targets. The aim of most warfare in this period was the capture or defence of territory by taking or keeping fortresses.272 The obsessive castle-building programme of the Franks in the twelfth-century Levant was conceived in the same spirit.

  Figure 8.50 Brass box with blazon of ‘Izz al-Din Aydemir al-Ashrafi al-Dawadar, Governor of Aleppo (whose citizens nicknamed him ‘Salam ‘Alaykum’ because of his propensity to hail people before they had a chance to greet him), 773/1371, Syria

  A number of military historians point out that both sides in the Crusading period, although they had a small standing army ready, would avoid pitched battles until the very last moment.273 As Scanlon aptly puts it: ‘Battle, then, was the very last recourse.’274 Keegan points out that the Franks’ weakness in battle lay in their undue dependence on the armoured charge when their Muslim enemy was not prepared to stand and receive it. The Muslims were quite prepared to fight at a distance and to retreat so as to avoid the critical blow.275

  An Overview of the Value of the Islamic Sources on the Conduct of War

  An analysis of the Islamic sources, both chronicles and military manuals, leaves many large questions unanswered. Although there are scattered references in the Islamic sources which shed light on aspects of warfare, they do not provide sufficient basis on which to build firm hypotheses. Ibn al-Qalanisi, for example, speaks of ‘the [cavalry] charges for which they [the Franks] are famous’,276 but there are few concrete details in his chronicle, or any other for that matter, about the nature and sequence of individual cavalry charges in important battles between Franks and Muslims. A statement of ‘Imad al-Din describing a Frankish cavalry charge as ‘the passing of mountain winds’ is powerful but imprecise.277 The Islamic sources do not give a clear picture of the Frankish armies, of how they fought and the degree, if any, to which they adapted to local challenges and military methods as time went on. The Islamic sources do not give us any idea of how Muslim armies really functioned,278 or of the actual sequence of particular battles or of whether Muslims in their turn were influenced by Frankish military methods and technology.

  Figure 8.51 Centrifugal group of riders on a cast brass bowl, probably first half of thirteenth century, Mosul, Iraq

  The use of military terminology by these sources is vague and unexplained. Their statements about the size of the Muslim and Frankish armies cannot be taken seriously. All that can be deduced about the numbers of troops is a rather vague order of magnitude.279 There is no explicit emphasis in the Islamic sources on the fact that the Muslims were able to call on vast resources of manpower, although that was clearly the case. The Muslim rulers of Syria, such as Nur al-Din and Saladin, would often summon military help from their vassals in distant Jazira, for example, and considerable rein-forcements would be sent to them. The Franks, on the other hand, often did not have sufficient men to defend their citadels and field an army in battle, unless they received reinforcements in the form of a new Crusade from Europe. The numerical superiority of the Muslims was obviously a key factor in their eventual (and inevitable) success.

  The Islamic sources leave on one side the important issue of Muslim maritime weakness and choose to ignore the fact that it was a very significant factor in the Franks’ continuing presence in Muslim territory. Had the Muslims been masters of the sea as well as the land, the whole conflict could – as argued above – have been terminated much more quickly.

  What do the Islamic sources say? They give a clear impression of the sheer number of small-scale engagements – raids, skirmishes, ambushes – as well as short and long sieges throughout the Crusading period. They also point to the comparative rarity of pitched battles. There was certainly no major naval battle. The sources underline clearly that in the end the Muslims defeated the Franks through a steady and systematic campaign of sieges of individual Crusader strongholds and ports.

  The Islamic sources do not hide the fact that Crusaders and Muslims often fought on the same side against other confederations of Crusaders and Muslim troops. Such expediency sits ill with the exalted concepts of Crusade and jihad. Clearly such ideals were apt to be jettisoned in favour of a cold-eyed Realpolitik whenever occasion served. Such a reality, highlighted as it is in both the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, suggests that their fighting methods must have been quite similar or at least mutually compatible.

  The extensive and spectacular network of castles and towers built by the Franks had a deep impact on the way in which the Muslims dealt with the problem of ousting them. Whatever the efficacity of battles and raids may have been in reducing Frankish forces and equipment and lowering the enemy’s morale, there remained the obstacle of the Frankish monuments – castles and fortresses – to which the depleted Frankish forces could retreat, recover their strength and await reinforcements from Europe. Whilst the string of castles remained occupied by the Franks there was always the chance of Frankish revival and counter-attacks. It follows from this state of affairs that the only sure way to defeat the Franks was to conduct a remorseless series of sieges and to capture and destroy these Frankish implants, one by one. In this procedure lay the key to Muslim success far more than in any number of pitched battles.

  If the Muslims had followed this course of action sooner, the Franks would not have survived as long as they did. The fact that it took so long is testimony to the lack of concerted will on the part of the Muslims to get rid of the Franks. It argues, indeed, that the Muslims did, for protracted periods of time, get accustomed to the Frankish presence in the Near East and treated them almost as just another group of ‘indigenous’ elements in the political jigsaw of the time. The word ‘Crusade’ signals to a Western sensibility something special about these warriors, but it awakened no answering resonance in the accounts of the medieval Muslim chroniclers, to whom these Franks were adventurers, polluters and infidels but absolutely not the vanguard of long-term Christian expansion into the Levant.

  Figure 8.52 Mounted warrior, glazed ceramic figurine, twelfth century, Raqqa, Syria

  Eventually, it was the Mamluks who had the expertise, resources and will to conduct such a series of sieges and to uproot the Franks definitively. Had the Muslims also developed a more effective navy, had they blockaded and taken all the Levantine ports and thus prevented the Franks from continuing to land more troops and resources, the Muslims would have managed to strangle the power of the Franks much more quickly. The words of al-Sulami after the coming of the First Crusade ring prophetically true, for at that stage he had already foreseen that the Franks would seize the Syrian ports if the Muslims did not act quickly. However, such a far-sighted strategy wo
uld have required overall Muslim unity, powerful, astute military leadership and, above all, overcoming the strongly ingrained Muslim prejudice against maritime warfare. After Hattin, the Muslims were poised to win but they lost their advantage, arguably because of their lack of means of dealing with the Franks’ maritime superiority. There was no permanent Muslim navy in Ayyubid or Mamluk times, and no experienced naval personnel. Fleets were constructed from time to time in response to external aggression from the Franks but they usually had to be built from scratch. It is not surprising that the Franks ruled the waves, harried the coasts of the Levant and went unchallenged at sea, landing men and equipment at will as reinforcements for their beleaguered co-religionists on land.

  As already mentioned, it appears that the Franks were not always perceived to be an enemy by the Muslims. They may have been regarded as an irritant, even a menace, but not to a degree sufficient to mobilise united and reiterated campaigns against them. The Franks must have become part of the fabric of Levantine society. This speaks volumes for their capacity to accommodate to an initially unfamiliar lifestyle and incidentally gives the lie to the familiar, indeed hackneyed, image of fanatical Western Christians dedicated to the extermination of the Muslim presence in the Holy Land. So what motivated the Muslims in the end to launch the final offensives against the Franks in the Mamluk period? It would seem that a key factor, a catalyst in the deteriorating relationship between Muslim and Frank, was the Mongol onslaught. This series of attacks on the Muslim world from a second and much more lethal foe than the Franks must have hardened the Muslim resolve to rid the Dar al-Islam of outsiders of any kind. Xenophobia increased as the Muslim world was assailed from both East and West; both these enemies, the Western Christians and the pagan Mongols, had to be excised from Muslim territory once and for all. Moreover, the perception that western Europe and the Mongols were moving towards an alliance against the Muslims, a pincer movement, would have strengthened the determination of the Mamluks to move definitively against them. The fall in rapid succession of Muslim Central Asia, Iran and Iraq, culminating in the sack of Baghdad in 1258, constituted an unprecedented series of disasters for the Muslim world at large at the hands of the Mongols; indeed, taken collectively, this was the worst catastrophe that the Islamic world had ever suffered. The destruction of Baghdad, the ancient seat of the caliphate, placed the leadership of central Islamic lands squarely on the shoulders of the Mamluks. It was they who, at the battle of Goliath’s Spring in 1260, inflicted the first serious reverse on the hitherto invincible Mongol hordes. The boost to Muslim morale was incalculable, and within a generation or so the Crusaders had reaped the bitter harvest of that victory.

  Figure 8.53 Spear-head, bow and arrows, furusiyya manuscript, c. 1500, Egypt

  The Muslim sources do not apparently evince any surprise that the Franks should have proved so tenacious, although from the fall of Edessa in 1144 they were restricted to the area between the Medi-terranean Sea and the Syrian desert. The Muslim sources do not, of course, praise the infidel Franks for their achievement in hanging on for so long, with ever-diminishing resources, to any territory at all in the Levant, although this was ample evidence of military skills of an unusually high order. The Franks were, however, despite the tradi-tional curses which usually accompanied any reference to them in the Muslim sources, deemed to be redoubtable foes possessed of great cunning and ingenuity in war.

  Notes

  1. Usama, Hitti, 177.

  2. R. Grousset, Histoire des Croisades, Paris, 1934, vol. I, 224–45; Runciman, I, 295–7; Runciman, II, 74–91. These sources are analysed by M. Brett, ‘Ramla’, 18.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid., 19.

  5. M. Brett, ‘The battle of Haydaran’, in Parry and Yapp, War, Technology and Society, 85.

  6. Ibid., 298.

  7. For the important research by Lev on the Fatimid army, cf. Y. Lev, ‘Army, regime and society in Fatimid Egypt, 358–487/968–1094’, IJMES, 19/3 (1987), 337–66; Y. Lev, ed., ‘Regime, army and society in medieval Egypt, 9th-12th centuries’, in War and Society in the eastern Mediterranean, 7th-15th centuries, Leiden, 1997, 115–52.

  8. The decline of Fatimid power in the twelfth century still awaits thorough scholarly analysis.

  9. W. Watson, The Genius of China, London, 1973, 110.

  10. EI2: kaws.

  11. This technique is depicted in Han dynasty art in China.

  12. Boudot-Lamotte, Contribution, 121.

  13. C. Cahen, ‘Les changements techniques militaires dans le Moyen Orient medieval et leur importance historique’, in Parry and Yapp, War, Technology and Society, 116.

  14. Manaqib al-turk, trans. Harley-Walker, 666.

  15. Ibid., 667.

  16. Ibid., 670.

  17. Boudot-Lamotte, Contribution, 148–9.

  18. Ibn al-‘Adim, Zubda, Dahan, II, 189.

  19. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Gibb, 160.

  20. Trans. Scanlon, 59.

  21. Trans. Scanlon, 78.

  22. Wisdom, 117.

  23. Al-Maqrizi, trans. Broadhurst, 170.

  24. Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, X, 451. Cf. also Mouton, Damas, 75.

  25. Trans. Scanlon, 70–1.

  26. Gabrieli, 99 (my italics).

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibn Shaddad, Tarikh al-Malik al-Zahir, ed. A. Hutait, Wiesbaden, 1983, 214.

  29. Thorau, The Lion, 251.

  30. Wisdom, 116.

  31. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, trans. Sadeque, 89–90.

  32. Usama, Hitti, 39. For a general discussion of Muslim armies, cf. EI2: harb; EI2: djaysh.

  33. Qur’an, 61:4.

  34. Traité’, 46.

  35. Ibid., 23–4.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid., 24.

  38. Ibid., 24.

  39. Trans. Scanlon, 95–111.

  40. Ibid., 95.

  41. Ibid., 95–6.

  42. Ibid., 97–8.

  43. Ibid., 104.

  44. Yusuf Khass Hajib, Wisdom, 117.

  45. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 210.

  46. Unfortunately, the battle of Dorylaeum (1097) is not recorded in Muslim sources but it is known from Crusader sources that the Franks won this battle through a decisive cavalry charge by a relief force.

  47. Cf. Ayalon in EI2: harb: the Mamluk sultanate.

  48. Mouton, Damas, 75, citing Sibt, 80.

  49. Ibid., 75, citing Ibn al-Qalanisi, Le Tourneau, 123.

  50. For example, Shaqif which could not be worn down by any mangonel. Cf. al-Dimishqi, Kitab nukhbat al-dahr, 211.

  51. Marshall, Warfare, 212–13.

  52. Ibid., 229.

  53. According to Kennedy, Crusader Castles, 108.

  54. Al-Tarsusi, ‘Traité’, 39.

  55. A ratl is a measure of weight which in Syria corresponds to around 3.202 kilos.

  56. Usama, Hitti, 143.

  57. D. Hill, Islamic Science and Engineering, Edinburgh, 1993, 120.

  58. Kennedy, Crusader Castles, 109.

  59. Ayalon in EI2: hisar.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Abu’l-Fida, RHC, IV, 24.

  62. Abu’l-Fida, RHC, IV, 24; Gabrieli, 344–5.

  63. Little, ‘Akka’, 171.

  64. Dozy, Supplement, I, 421.

  65. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III, 188.

  66. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III, 187.

  67. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III, 187.

  68. Cf. Ayalon in EI2: hisar; al-Qalqashandi, Subh, II, 136–8.

  69. Cf. EI2: naft; L. Casson, The Ancient Mariners, Princeton, 1991, 214–15.

  70. Ibid., 215.

  71. EP:naft.

  72. Al-Tarsusi, Traité’, 43.

  73. Lewis, Islam, II, 223; al-Tarsusi, 20–1.

  74. Usama, Hitti, 104.

  75. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III, 221–2.

  76. Marshall, Warfare, 212.

  77. Ibid., 214.

  78. Ibn al-Furat, Lyons, 76.

  79. Quatremère, II, 125; Marshall, Warfare, 224.

  80. R. C. Smail, The Cru
saders in Syria and the Holy Land, London, 1973, 120.

  81. EP: hisar.

  82. Crusader Castles, 100. Cf. also Marshall, Warfare, 247.

  83. Ayalon in EI2: hisar.

  84. Ayalon in EI2: hisar; C. W. C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, London, 1924, vol. I, 134.

  85. Kennedy, Crusader Castles, 105.

  86. Usama, Hitti, 102–3.

  87. Crusader Castles, 104. Perhaps, too, these sappers were muqannis – specialists in digging underground water-channels.

  88. Ayalon in EI2: hisar; Oman, War in the Middle Ages, I, 134.

  89. Marshall, Warfare, 232.

  90. Cf. ibid., 237–8.

  91. Ibn al-Furat, Lyons, 73–4.

  92. Ibn Kathir, Biday a, XIII, 321; Ibn Taghribirdi, Nujum, VII, 6.

  93. M. S. Ipşiroğlu, Das Bild im Islam. Ein Verbot und seine Folgen, Vienna and Munich, 1971, pl. 36 (colour).

  94. Ibn al-Furat, Shayyal, 30.

  95. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Rawd, 292–4; al-Yunini, II, 374–5; Thorau, The Lion, 204.

  96. Ibid., 171; cf. R. D. Pringle, Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Cambridge, 1997, 91–2.

  97. Warfare, 211–12.

  98. According to Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 165.

  99. Abraj al-zuhaf: towers in which there were soldiers armed with arbalests and war machines. Such a tower was transported on a cart which was pushed against the walls of a fortress under siege. Dozy, Supplement, I, 581–2.

  100. This passage is translated particularly badly in the Recueil, with whole phrases omitted or misunderstood. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 165–6.

  101. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 254–5.

  102. G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, Beirut, 1965, 526–7.

  103. Ta‘allaqa.

  104. Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, XII, 5–6.