The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

by Thomas Asbridge

  In adversity’s wake

  All Louis IX’s hopes of subjugating Egypt and winning the war for the Holy Land had ended in failure. But in many ways the true and remarkable depth of the French king’s crusading idealism only became apparent after this humiliating defeat. In similar circumstances, shamed by such an unmitigated debacle, many a Christian monarch would have sloped off back to Europe, turning his back on the Near East. Louis did the opposite. Realising that his men would likely remain rotting in Muslim captivity unless he continued to pressure the Egyptian regime for their release, the king chose to remain in Palestine for the next four years.

  In this time, Louis served as overlord of Outremer and, by 1252, had secured the liberation of his troops. Working tirelessly, he set about the unglamorous task of bolstering the kingdom of Jerusalem’s coastal defences–overseeing the extensive refortification of Acre, Jaffa, Caesarea and Sidon. He also established a permanent garrison of one hundred Frankish knights in Acre, paid for by the French crown at an annual cost of around 4,000 livres tournois.

  Given the ardent self-promotion typical of other crusade leaders–from Richard the Lionheart to Frederick II of Germany–Louis also showed an extraordinary willingness to accept responsibility for the dreadful setbacks experienced in Egypt. The king’s supporters tried their best to transfer the blame to Robert of Artois, emphasising that it had been his advice that led to the march on Mansourah in autumn 1249 and criticising the count’s reckless behaviour on 8 February 1250. But in a letter written in August 1250, Louis himself praised Robert’s bravery, describing him as ‘our very dear and illustrious brother of honoured memory’, and expressing the hope and belief that he had been ‘crowned as a martyr’. In the same document, the king explained the crusade’s failure and his own incarceration as divine punishments, meted out ‘as our sins required’.51

  Eventually, in April 1254, Louis travelled home to France. His mother Blanche had died two years earlier, and the Capetian realm had become increasingly unstable. The king returned from the Holy Land a changed man, and his later life was marked by extreme piety and austerity–wearing a hair shirt, he ate only meagre rations of the blandest food and engaged in seemingly constant prayer. At one point Louis even considered renouncing his crown and entering a monastery. He also harboured a heartfelt, lingering desire to launch another crusade, thereby, perhaps, to win redemption.

  The Egyptian expedition reshaped King Louis’ life, but the events on the Nile also had a wider effect upon Latin Europe. The crusade of 1250 had been carefully planned, financed and supplied; its armies led by a paragon of Christian kingship. And still it had been subjected to an excoriating defeat. After one and a half centuries of almost unbroken failure in the war for the Holy Land, this latest reversal prompted an outpouring of doubt and despair in the West. Some even turned their backs on the Christian faith. In the second half of the thirteenth century–as Outremer’s strength continued to fade and new, seemingly invincible, enemies emerged on to the Levantine stage–the chances of mounting another crusade to the East seemed bleak indeed.

  VICTORY IN THE EAST

  22

  LION OF EGYPT

  For more than half a century after Saladin’s death in 1193, members of his Ayyubid dynasty dominated Near Eastern Islam. Saladin had brought doom and defeat to the Christian Franks living in the Levant, reconquering Jerusalem and holding back Richard the Lionheart’s Third Crusade. But wrapped up in their own petty rivalries, later Ayyubids proved willing to live in relative peace alongside the remaining crusader states. And with Muslims and Christians both keen to maintain mutually profitable trade links, negotiation, accommodation and truce became the order of the day. The Islamic rulers of Damascus, Cairo and Aleppo still claimed to be champions of jihad, but their struggle turned inwards, to be expressed in works of spiritual purification and religious patronage. Rather than embrace the external militaristic form of jihad by waging holy war, the Ayyubids sought, in the main, to limit conflict–ever conscious that aggression might provoke a dangerous and disruptive western European crusade.

  This delicately balanced modus vivendi was to be dramatically overturned when two new oriental superpowers–the Mamluks and the Mongols–rose to prominence in the Levant. Each was imbued with fearsome military strength, unlike anything yet witnessed in the age of the crusades, and their monumental clash reshaped the fate of the Holy Land and the history of the crusades. Overshadowed by these two behemoths, Latin Outremer became the third, sometimes almost incidental, challenger in the struggle for mastery of the East.

  NEW POWERS IN THE NEAR EAST

  A new Islamic dynasty–the Mamluk sultanate, governed by members of the mamluk (slave soldier) military elite–seized power in Egypt in the wake of King Louis IX of France’s failed crusade. A convoluted and brutal power struggle raged throughout the 1250s, as various mamluk leaders sought to overthrow the last vestiges of Ayyubid authority in the Nile region. The elite Bahriyya mamluk regiment was forced to flee Egypt in 1254, when their commander Aqtay was murdered by the ruthless warlord Qutuz, spearhead of a rival mamluk faction. Three years later, Shajar al-Durr–widow of the last great Ayyubid Sultan al-Salih–was executed, and Qutuz gradually assumed control of Egypt, while still governing in the name of a young puppet-sultan, al-Mansur Ali.

  Meanwhile, the Bahriyya went into exile under the leadership of Baybars–one of the conspirators in the 1250 murder of the Ayyubid heir, Turanshah. Born around 1221, Baybars was a tall, dark-skinned Kipchak Turk, the hardy, bellicose people of the Russian steppes, known in the ancient world as the Cumans. He was said to possess a remarkably powerful voice, but Baybars’ most striking feature was his blue eyes, one of which held a small but distinct white fleck the size of the eye of a needle. Taken into slavery at the age of fourteen, Baybars began mamluk training, and then passed through the hands of a number of owners before eventually being recruited into al-Salih’s new Bahriyya corps in 1246. There his martial skill and leadership qualities were soon recognised, and he fought against King Louis’ crusaders in the Battle of Mansourah in 1250.

  In the mid-to late 1250s, Baybars and the Bahriyya served a succession of ineffectual Ayyubid emirs who were trying desperately to cling to power in Syria, Palestine and Transjordan. Among them was al-Nasir Yusuf, the nominal ruler of Aleppo and Damascus–an emir born of a noble bloodline, being Saladin’s grandson, but singularly incapable of facing the violent challenges of this turbulent era of shifting allegiances and emerging world powers. During this period, Baybars honed his abilities as a military commander, scoring a number of impressive successes, but also enduring some chastening defeats. Throughout, he was closely supported by a fellow mamluk and Kipchak Turk, Qalawun, perhaps his closest friend and comrade in arms. With an ever watchful eye upon events in Egypt, Baybars twice attempted to invade the Nile region and depose Qutuz, but, being heavily outnumbered, he proved unable to achieve a significant victory.

  By 1259, Baybars had shown himself to be an adept general with an obvious appetite for advancement, but as yet he had not been given the chance to realise his ambitions or evident potential. That opportunity would come, both for Baybars and indeed for the entire Mamluk regime, with the appearance of a new, devastating threat to the Muslim Near East.1

  Around the year 1206 a warlord named Temüjin united the nomadic Mongol tribes of the vast east Asian steppe grasslands of Mongolia and assumed the title of Chinggis, or Genghis, Khan (literally ‘stern ruler’). Genghis and his followers were driven by a boundless hunger for war and came to believe, within the tenets of their pagan faith, that the Mongols were destined by a heavenly decree to conquer the entire world. Through sheer strength of will Genghis transformed the feuding Mongol tribes into an unstoppable army, harnessing the innate resilience of his people and their peerless skills as horsemen and archers.

  For the next fifty years, first under Genghis Khan and then, after his death in 1227, under his sons, the Mongols exploded across the face of the Earth. They we
re a force unparalleled in the medieval world, perhaps in all human history. Unrelenting and utterly uncompromising in their approach to warfare, they expected enemies to show immediate wholesale submission or face total annihilation. And by 1250 their dominions stretched from China to Europe, from the Indian Ocean to the northern wastes of Siberia. This exponential expansion inevitably brought the Mongols into contact with the Christian and Muslim worlds.

  Having subjugated northern China, the Mongols began their westward advance in 1229, crushing the Islamic rulers of northern Iran–a move which prompted the Khwarizmians to flee into northern Iraq and eventually culminated in the Khwarizmian invasion of the Holy Land in 1244. Between 1236 and 1239 the Mongol horde defeated the eastern Christians of Georgia and Greater Armenia and, in 1243, invaded Asia Minor, overwhelming the Seljuq Turkish dynasty that had ruled there since the eleventh century. Through the 1230s Mongol armies also conquered the southern steppelands of Russia, establishing a polity that came to be known as the Golden Horde. Ironically, this caused many of the Kipchak Turks native to this region to become refugees. Flooding southwards, they fell into the clutches of slave traders and thus massively increased the availability of mamluk recruits for the Muslims of Egypt.

  Driving further west, the Mongols eventually encountered the Latin Christians of Europe, where their advent was greeted with a mixture of fear, confusion and uncertainty. News that the Muslims of Iran had been defeated by an unknown force from the distant lands of the East reached the Fifth Crusaders in Egypt in 1221, causing many Franks to imagine that the Mongols might actually be valuable allies. At first this view gained credence, because the shadowy Mongols were equated with the ancient legend of Prester John–a powerful Christian king, prophesied to emerge from the East in Christendom’s darkest hour. Over time, it also became clear that Nestorian Christians (a sect long settled in Central Asia) had managed to gain some influence among the Mongols, even converting the wives of some leading warlords.

  But Latin Christendom slowly realised that the Mongols, or Tartars as they came to be known in Europe, were not merely a distant foreign power, but an immediate and potentially lethal threat. In 1241 the Mongol army pushed on from Russia and spent the next year ravaging and terrorising Poland, Hungary and eastern Germany, causing untold destruction. Even in the wake of this devastating incursion, the rulers of western Europe–locked in their own disputes–were slow to react, and many continued to nurse ideas of accommodation or alliance. From the late 1240s onwards, the Roman papacy sent two missionary embassies to the Mongols, led by groups of Friars. These Frankish envoys travelled thousands of miles to visit the lavish Mongol court at Qaraqorum (in Mongolia), hoping to convert the Great Khan to Christianity; they returned with blunt ultimatums instructing Rome to submit to Mongol authority. During his time on Cyprus, Louis IX also made contact with the Tartars. In 1249 he sent his own representatives to the Mongols in Iran, but when this embassy returned in 1251 to find Louis in Palestine, it likewise bore a stark demand that he begin paying an annual tribute, which, needless to say, he ignored.

  In spite of this uncompromising approach to diplomacy, the Mongol Empire actually started to decay in the second half of the thirteenth century, corroded by dynastic struggle and the problems attendant on governing such an immense realm. Nonetheless, they remained an awe-inspiring force. In the 1250s, the new Great Khan Möngke (Genghis Khan’s grandson) initiated a renewed wave of expansion into the Muslim world of the Middle East and beyond, placing his brother Hülegü in command of a massive host of tens of thousands of warriors, alongside the leading Mongol general Kitbuqa. Marching through southern Iran in 1256, this mighty army turned towards Baghdad, where an enfeebled member of the Abbasid dynasty still claimed the title of Sunni caliph. In February 1258 Hülegü crushed Baghdad, putting in excess of 30,000 Muslims to the sword and destroying much of the once great capital. He went on to subjugate most of Mesopotamia, establishing what came to be known as the Mongol Ilkhanate of Persia (stretching from Iraq to the borders of India). Hülegü then crossed the Euphrates to arrive on the borders of Syria and Palestine in 1259.

  Not surprisingly, the coming of the Mongols terrified the peoples of northern Syria. The Christians continued to harbour the hope that Hülegü might prove to be an ally against Islam, encouraged by the fact that his wife was a Nestorian. King Hethum of Cilician Armenia had submitted to Mongol rule as far back as 1246, and had been allowed to retain partial autonomy in return for the payment of an annual tribute. Hethum now convinced his son-in-law Bohemond VI (ruler of both the principality of Antioch and the county of Tripoli) to ally with Hülegü’s army. Al-Nasir, the Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo and Damascus, had also been paying the Mongols tribute since 1251 in the hope of forestalling a direct invasion, but in autumn 1259, with the horde now marching into Syria, the limitations of the policy of appeasement became apparent.2

  The Battle of Ayn Jalut

  While the advent of the Mongols brought panic and chaos to much of the Muslim Near East, their arrival infused the Mamluk world with a new sense of unity and purpose. In November 1259, Qutuz used the Mongol threat to justify his overthrow of the existing young sultan and had himself proclaimed as the new ruler of Egypt. At the same time, al-Nasir’s grip on power was faltering. Stationed near Damascus, the Ayyubid emir seems to have been wholly immobilised by fear as the Mongols advanced on Aleppo–certainly he did nothing to react, even as streams of refugees poured into southern Syria from as far afield as Persia.

  In early 1260 Hülegü laid siege to Aleppo, with the aid of Hethum and Bohemond VI, and by the end of February the city had been captured and subjected to a six-day-long orgy of violence. Bohemond personally set fire to the city’s main mosque and although he was later excommunicated by the Latin Church for aiding the Mongols, the prince made significant territorial gains as a result of the 1260 pact, including the reassertion of Frankish control over the port of Latakia. Hülegü moved on from Aleppo to overcome the likes of Harim and Homs, and soon attained full dominion of northern Syria. News of these events caused al-Nasir to flee Damascus and the city’s populace elected to surrender to the Mongols rather than face Aleppo’s fate. Thus, in March 1260, the Mongol general Kitbuqa arrived to occupy Islam’s ancient Syrian capital. The cowering al-Nasir was soon captured and sent to Hülegü–where, for the time being, he was treated as a valuable hostage–but news arrived of Möngke’s death, and Hülegü decided to leave Syria with the vast bulk of his army, returning east to oversee the succession of his brother Kublai as Great Khan. This left Kitbuqa in command of Mongol Syria, albeit with a much-reduced host at his disposal, but even so he received the surrender of Ayyubid Transjordan that summer.

  Mamluks and Mongols in 1260

  With the Mongols having swept into the Holy Land largely unopposed, overturning the Ayyubid world, it was now questionable whether any Levantine power had the will and resources to stem their advance. The Franks of the kingdom of Jerusalem did not share Bohemond of Antioch’s ready willingness to side with the Mongols, conscious of the fact that to do so might simply be to exchange a Muslim enemy for another, even more dangerous, pagan foe. Hoping to avoid any direct confrontation, the Latins adopted a policy of neutrality.3

  By the middle of 1260, therefore, only one force remained that might be capable of opposing the Mongol horde–Mamluk Egypt. By this time, Baybars had recognised that his Ayyubid paymasters would be unable to resist the Mongols, and thus he negotiated a rapprochement with Qutuz, travelling with the remaining members of the Bahriyya to Cairo in March. There a tense concord held, but a current of mutual animosity and suspicion swirled just beneath the surface. Both men were aware of the other’s ambition and Qutuz’s role in Aqtay’s murder was fresh in Baybars’ mind. One Muslim chronicler acknowledged that the profound hatred each held for the other was clear in their eyes.

  The Mamluks now faced a defining question: whether to confront or placate the Mongols. On this issue, at least, Qutuz and Baybars were in resolute ag
reement. Early that summer, an embassy from Hülegü arrived in Cairo demanding Mamluk surrender. The envoys were summarily butchered, their bodies cut in half and their heads hung from one of Cairo’s gates. With this extraordinarily defiant statement of intent the Mamluks went to war. Rather than wait in Egypt, in the hope of repelling an invasion on home ground, they chose to confront Kitbuqa head-on, while his army was still in a weakened state. If successful, this bold strategy promised to bring the Mamluks near-total dominion of the Near East. But the risks were colossal, for they involved direct battle with the Mongols–an invincible enemy, before which all other armies had fallen.

  In midsummer 1260 the Mamluks marched out of Egypt, rallying some additional Muslim troops who had formerly served the Ayyubids. Baybars was appointed as commander of the Mamluk vanguard and, together with Qutuz, formulated a plan of attack. Some attempt was made to draw the Franks into an active alliance. They refused, holding to their policy of neutrality, but did permit the Muslim host to march north unhindered through Latin territory to Acre. News of this advance brought Kitbuqa, then based in Baalbek (Lebanon), south, with additional troops levied from Georgia, Cilician Armenia and Muslim Homs.

  The great battle to decide the Near East’s fate took place at Ayn Jalut, in Galilee–where Saladin had sought to confront the Franks in 1183. Leading the vanguard, Baybars found the Mongol army camped beside this small settlement, at the foot of Mount Gilboa. He and Qutuz then led their Mamluk army south-east down the Jezreel valley and launched their attack on 3 September 1260. The opposing armies appear to have been roughly equal in terms of numbers–with somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 troops in each host–so, by the norms of medieval warfare, both sides were taking a perilous gamble. Qutuz and Baybars demonstrated skill and bravery in command, withstanding two massive charges, and, at a key moment, the Muslims from Homs positioned on the Mongol left wing fled the field. This turned the battle in the Mamluks’ favour, as they managed to surround the Mongols and slay Kitbuqa. In one of the epochal moments of history, the seemingly unstoppable tide of Mongol expansion was halted by the new champions of Islam.