The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

by Carole Hillenbrand

  The Evolution of the Saladin Myth

  Surprising as it may seem, Saladin, who was soon eulogised in medieval Europe in the centuries after the Crusades and then eagerly cast in heroic mould by the European Enlightenment – one has only to think of how G. E. Lessing or Sir Walter Scott portrayed him12-was ignored for centuries in the Middle East. In the period immediately after the Crusades, it was two other Muslim rulers who spoke more directly to their people as foes of the Crusaders. Nur al-Din earned the accolades of the Muslim religious classes as the model mujahid, combining personal piety with public service to the Islamic cause, while Baybars became the intrepid hero of Arabic folk literature.

  Figure 9.3 Marble panel, Mosque of al-Riia’i, fifteenth century, Damascus, Syria

  Figure 9.4 Hunting scenes, inlaid metal basin by Da’ud ibn Salama al-Mawsili, 650/1252, probably Damascus, Syria

  The first biography of Saladin to be written in relatively modern times by a Muslim was that of Namik Kemal, which was published in 1872. Kemal was one of the luminaries of the Young Ottoman movement.13 He was anxious to write a work which would be firmly based on Muslim sources contemporary with Saladin and to respond to what he perceived to be a highly tendentious and misleading European work on the Crusades – Michaud’s Histoire des Croisades, published in Paris between 1812 and 1822 – which had been translated into Turkish. Significantly, Kemal placed his work on Saladin in the same volume as the biographies of two great heroes of Ottoman history, Mehmet the Conqueror and Selim the Grim.14

  Gradually, the idea of parallels between European policies past and present crystallised in the Muslim consciousness. These parallels appeared increasingly apt as the nineteenth century progressed and the wave of European imperialism swept through the Middle East. A key voice was that of the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II (ruled 1876–1909), who announced repeatedly that Europe was conducting a ‘Crusade’ against the Ottoman empire. This idea of his was embraced and disseminated by the pan-Islamic press. ‘Ali al-Hariri refers to the words of Abdülhamid II, as already mentioned, in the introduction to his book on the Crusades.15

  Saladin’s fame grew greater as the news of his glowing reputation in Europe percolated into the Middle East. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who made the effort to visit Saladin’s tomb in Damascus in 1898, publicly proclaimed Saladin’s heroic status in Europe, eulogising him as ‘a knight without fear or blame, who often had to teach his opponents the right way to practise chivalry’.16 The following year, the famous Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi responded enthusiastically with an ode (qasida) eulogising Saladin’s achievements.17 In an article in a pan-Islamic journal written at the same time, Shawqi declared that of all the great Muslims of the past none, after the first four Rightly Guided caliphs, had been more meritorious than Saladin and Mehmet the Conqueror. He then poses a rhetorical question: how could Muslim writers have been so slow to a waken the memory of these two great heroes of Islam?18

  It has already been pointed out that Saladin was ethnically a Kurd, that he was brought up in a Turkish military milieu and that he came to rule the traditionally Arab lands of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. As a leader of the non-Arab Muslim military elite class he was also at the forefront of a movement of reinvigorated jihad which united the Sunni Muslim world of the Near East under his banner. He was therefore well placed to become a hero to many different groups in the Middle East in modern times.

  Saladin is probably the most famous Kurd of all time. Though without a homeland of their own, nowadays the Kurds comprise sizeable sections of the populations of Iran, Iraq and Turkey and nurture powerful nationalist ambitions. They are well aware of Saladin’s exploits and take pride in the fact that he is of their race. The Kurdish poet Shaykh Rida Talabani (d. 1910) speaks nostalgically of brief periods of an independent Kurdish past, and in particular of the Baban Kurdish dynasty which flourished on the western slopes of the Zagros mountains in the late eighteenth century. He writes: ‘Arabs! I do not deny your excellence; you are the most excellent; but Saladin who took the world was of Baban-Kurdish stock.’19

  However, the perception that Saladin waged a monumental struggle against the western European Crusaders was applicable not only to his own ‘people’, the Kurds. He was also eagerly embraced as a role model by Arabs, and also Turks, in their fight for nationhood and freedom from European interference. Despite his Kurdish origins, Saladin is viewed as leading the jihad of the Arabs and is an exemplar for all Muslims to follow. Though he was Kurdish, it is often argued that Saladin was immersed in Arabic culture and was the embodiment of Arabic chivalry.20

  Even before the First World War, an Arab author gave himself the pseudonym of Salah al-Din (Saladin) and warned against the Zionist threat in Palestine.21 A new university named after Salah al-Din Ayyubi was opened in Jerusalem in 1915. During the period of the British Mandate after the First World War, Saladin’s victory over the Crusaders at Hattin became a central theme in the Palestinians’ political struggle against the Zionists.22

  During the twentieth century the didactic value of the Crusade experience became fully recognised in the Arab world, especially after the establishment of the state of Israel. In general, it is Saladin who receives most attention as the heroic ancestor, the prototypical religio-political fighter against foreign oppression, rather than Nur al-Din or Baybars, both of whom made as great a contribution as he did to the Muslims’ ultimate victory over the Crusaders. Saladin’s special place in the affection and admiration of Muslims springs from the fact that it was he who recaptured Jerusalem in 1187; and his adulation in Europe in the Middle Ages as the epitome of chivalry and later as the model of Enlightenment virtue also helps.

  In the Arab world the usual perspective on Saladin nowadays is that of a great fighter for Islam against external aggression from the West, and Arab political leaders vie to become the ‘Second Saladin’. A notable example is Saddam Husayn, who, like Saladin, hails from Tikrit (plate 9.1). When the story of Saladin and the Crusades is told in Arab schools it is told in bold, heroic strokes, with no shades of grey.23 There is little reference to the pragmatic realities of Crusader history, such as the Muslim-Crusader alliances which punctuated the period 1099–1291, to the long periods of truce and détente, to trading links between East and West, to Saladin’s personal and family ambitions. Not surprisingly, the Crusades are seen through an antiimperialist prism and the Islamic response in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is viewed as the blueprint for modern Arab and Islamic struggles for independence from Western colonialist aggression, above all from Israel and the United States.

  The abiding memory of the Crusades to this very day finds striking visual expression in an ambitious and over life-size sculptural group erected in Damascus at municipal expense in 1992 (plate 9.2). It also figures prominently in the design of the current Syrian 200-dirham banknote. While statues of modern political leaders are not rare in Islamic countries – and indeed Syria is full of statues of President Hafez Asad – there is no indigenous tradition of public sculptures of historical subjects. For this reason alone the Damascus group sculpture is noteworthy. But it is the choice and the treatment of the subject that is particularly remarkable here. Its central focus is an equestrian portrait of Saladin. Flanked on one side by a Sufi in simple clothing (plate 9.3) and on the other by a spear-wielding infantryman, he urges his horse forward. Behind the horse two Crusaders slump listlessly on a rock (plate 9.4). One, who grabs the bag of money containing his ransom, is King Guy of Jerusalem. The other, his eyes fixed on the ground, his bowed posture betraying perhaps his certainty that he will not be spared, is Reynald de Chatillon. The Muslims all look ahead; the Christians are turned in the opposite direction. Significantly enough, the group is placed right in front of the Damascus citadel, a military ambience that matches its rousing message of protecting Islam from the infidel. The creator of the sculpture, ‘Abdallah al-Sayed (plate 9.5) explains that the group represents Saladin not as an individual warlord but as a leader who embodies a wave of
popular feeling against the Franks.24 Hence the emphasis on the Sufi, representing the down-to-earth religion of the people, and the simple foot soldier. Together they express a unity of purpose under the banner of Islam. Not a hundred metres away, the gate of the medieval citadel is hung with a massive portrait of the President of Syria, Hafez Asad (colour plate 15). The parallelism between the ancient and the modern defender of Islam and its territories against foreign infidel encroach-ment is plain to see. Saladin’s subjugation of the Franks depicted here is a powerful symbol which is easily understood by the man in the street – Israel is the new Crusader state of the Middle East, which will be brought to heel in the same way as the medieval Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  Plate 9.1 Saddam Husayn as the heir of Saladin, propaganda picture, probably 1980s

  Plate 9.2 Statue of Saladin, 1992, Damascus, Syria

  Plate 9.3 Statue of Saladin, foot soldier and Sufi, 1992, Damascus, Syria

  Plate 9.4 Statue of Saladin, Reynald de Chatillon (left) and King Guy of Jerusalem (right), 1992, Damascus, Syria

  Plate 9.5 Statue of Saladin, members of his army and Crusaders, with the sculptor, ‘Abdallah al-Sayed, Damascus, Syria

  Modern Manifestations of the Islamic ‘Counter-Crusade’: A Few Case Studies

  The following discussion deliberately uses borrowed terminology – ‘Counter-Crusade’ – since it seeks to restrict itself to modern movements, ideologies and political rhetoric which target the West and which are seen in the Muslim world as direct extensions of the Crusading phenomenon itself. Although much of what is labelled jihad is indeed directed against the West and can of course be seen as a continuation of the Islamic response to the Crusades, it should be stressed that the term jihad in the Muslim consciousness has associations more profound and subtle than mere military or propaganda movements directed at Europe and America.

  Ayatollah Khumayni wrote extensively on jihad, stressing that man must wage the ‘greater jihad within his soul before fighting against injustice, corruption and tyranny in this world.25

  In these statements Khumayni is drawing on the centuries-old tradition of jihad interpretation within Islamic legal circles, but his views are interpreted by Western observers – not without some justi-fication – as a jihad against Western civilisation.

  The concept of the Crusades is widespread and deep-rooted in modern Islamic political ideologies.

  Figure 9.5 Hunting scenes, Blacas ewer, inlaid brass, 629/1232, Mosul, Iraq

  The Writings of Sayyid Qutb

  Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian ‘fundamentalist’ writer, the principal spokesman for the Muslim Brothers movement in Egypt after its dissolution in 1954, was eventually executed for treason in 1966. In his most famous work entitled In the Shade of the Qur’an he speaks of a confrontation between Muslims and polytheists which has gone on for fourteen centuries; within this struggle he mentions specifically two key periods, the early Islamic conquests and the Crusades.26

  Figure 9.6 Cartoon of the Gulf War (adaptation of a medieval stained-glass window, St-Denis, Paris), Tack Sherman, Newsday, 6 September 1990

  In his rhetorical outbursts Qutb argues that Crusade should be interpreted to mean all Christian attacks on Islam from its earliest days. Crusade even embraces Christian military opposition to the first Islamic conquerors in Syria and Palestine in the seventh century. Crusade encompasses Christians fighting Muslims in medieval Spain, just as it includes the twentieth-century persecution of Muslims in parts of Africa – Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Kenya and southern Sudan – in recent times. The battle of Christianity against Islam may be conducted in the name of ‘land, of economics, of politics, of military bases … whatever’ but its secret purpose is about doctrine – ‘international Zionism, international Crusaderism – in addition to international Communism’.27

  For the Muslim Brothers after 1947, the activities of the United Nations in Palestine were viewed as ‘a new declaration of Zionist-Crusading war against the Arab and Islamic peoples’. Zionism was fully identified with Crusading Western imperialism and the terms ‘European Crusading’ (al-salibiyya al-urubbiyya) and ‘Jewish Crusading’ were interchangeable.28 Qutb describes Crusading as being against ‘the spirit of Islam’: Crusading concerns the retreat of Muslim civilisation in the face of Western civilisation. Rising to heights of anti-Western invective he declares:

  Crusading was not confined to the clangor of arms, but was, before and above all else, an intellectual enmity. European imperial interests can never forget that the spirit of Islam is firmly opposed to the spirit of Imperialism …

  There are those who hold that it is the financial influence of the Jews of the United States and elsewhere which has governed the policy of the West. There are those who say that it is English ambition and Anglo-Saxon guile which are responsible… And there are those who believe that it is the antipathy between East and West… All these opinions overlook one vital element in the question… the Crusader spirit which runs in the blood of all Westerners.29

  Hizb Allah and Other Radical Groups

  For the even better-known Hizb Allah in the modern Middle East, the Crusades have never ended. Khumayni spoke of the need to fight the ‘last stage of the historical Crusades’.30 Moreover, some Muslim radical groups believe that the Crusades have not ended for Christians either; in their view, the ‘Christian powers’ of the West remain determined to destroy Islam. Mehmet Ali Agha, the Turk who made an attempt on the Pope’s life in 1981, wrote in a letter: ‘I have decided to kill John Paul II, the supreme commander of the Crusades.’31 Eighteen years later, on 9 June 1997, two hijackers held up an Air Malta Boeing plane en route to Istanbul and diverted it to Cologne/Bonn airport; they were demanding the release of Mehmet Agha.

  The year 1998 saw the rise to prominence in the world media of an umbrella organisation of Islamic groups led by Usama bin Laden, described as ‘America’s most wanted man’32 – it is called The World Islamic Front for Crusade against Jews and Crusaders.33

  Hamas

  Hamas, which is an acronym of harakat al-muqawama al-Islamiyya (‘movements of Islamic resistance’) was founded in the Israeli Occupied Territories in 1967 and has been mentioned regularly in the media ever since. The goal of Hamas is to liberate Palestine from occupation by the ‘Zionist enemy’ and to re-establish an Islamic state.34

  According to Hamas ideology, Palestine has a special position in Islam because Jerusalem was the first qibla (direction of prayer) for Muslims and the Aqsa mosque is revered as the third most holy place in Islam.35 Given the central importance of Jerusalem and Palestine to Islam, it is not surprising that throughout history enemies have sought to regain Palestine from the Muslims.36 The Crusaders fought in and for Palestine for two hundred years during the Crusades, and the attempts by the West to take it in the First World War were only yet another example in a long line of Western incursions into Palestine.37 The fight for Palestine can be won only under the banner of God – this fact has been proved in history by Muslim victories over the Crusaders and the Tartars (Mongols).38

  Figure 9.7 Blazons on thirteenth–fifteenth centuries, Egypt and Syria

  The Islamic Liberation Party (the Hizb al-tahrir al-islami)

  The ideals and activities of the Islamic Liberation Party (ILB) have been studied very thoroughly in the recent research of Suha Taji-Farouki. Her scholarly findings reveal once again the omnipresent memory of the Crusades in modern Islamic political thinking.39 The ILB was established in Jerusalem in 1952 by Shaykh Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, who had broken away from the Muslim Brotherhood. The group presented itself as a political party with Islam as its ideology; its goal was the revival of the Islamic umma, purged of the contamination of colonialism.40 The Islamic character of the party was stressed by its choice of Jerusalem as its headquarters.

  Figure 9.8 Marble intarsia work, sabil (fountain), fifteenth century, Cairo, Egypt

  The party claims to be active in a wide range of Middle Eastern countries as well as in parts of Europe.41 The
Palestine question is not central to the main thrust of the ILP’s efforts but the party certainly has strong views on this issue.42 Israel is seen as a colonialist bridgehead through which America and Europe perpetuate their control and their economic exploitation of the Muslim world. Israel is ‘a poisoned dagger plunged deep into its breast’.43 The creation of the state of Israel, according to ILP thinking, was inspired by the Crusades. They view Saladin’s reconquest of Jerusalem on behalf of the Muslims as a momentous psychological blow to the world of the unbelievers. Ever since that time, the West has been obsessed with the desire for revenge: the history of the last eight centuries consists of a reaction to the battle of Hattin and its immediate consequences:

  The Crusaders’ malice remained concealed in their hearts, till they disclosed it when they succeeded in doing away with the Ottoman Caliphal state and then establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. This they deemed a two-fold revenge for their defeat at the hands of the heroic Muslim leader Salah al-Din.44

  Links between the Crusades and European colonialism are also highlighted. Colonialism is seen as a strategy to exploit the Muslim world in vengeance for the failure of the Crusades. There is, according to the ILP perspective, evidence of a continuing Crusader mentality among Westerners, as evidenced by the remark allegedly made at the time of the First World War by General Allenby on his occupation of Jerusalem in December 1917: ‘only now have the Crusades come to an end’.45

  It is not significant in the war of propaganda that Allenby did not actually make his famous ‘remark’. Indeed, it seems clear that the British government wished to be respectful to Islam. Allenby in fact wanted to enter Jerusalem in a more culturally sensitive way than the German emperor Wilhelm II, who twenty years earlier had arrived on horseback dressed as a medieval Crusader.46 Nevertheless, Allenby’s alleged remark was propagated by Sayyid Qutb and other Muslim writers and it epitomises the way in which the modern Islamic world views the spectre of the Crusades.