purpose was stated thus: to “defend the poor and the churches” of the Holy Land.1 The Rule never actually says against whom, but it was understood that the greatest danger to the poor and the churches came from the Saracens.
But who were the Saracens? It’s not certain where the word came from but it was in use by the time of the Romans to refer to the people of the Arab peninsula and, by association, it came to mean Moslems.2 It was a handy term for the crusaders to use since they were fairly vague on variations of belief and ethnic origins in the Near East.
The people of the area were, and still are, a mix of every migration of the world. The Near East is the pathway connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia, and even armies on their way to conquer something else had to go through it to get there. The first people to venture out of Africa went through on their way to populating the rest of the earth. The area has been ruled by Hittites, Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, Jews, Romans, and Arabs. So by the end of the eleventh century the strip of land from Suez to Constantinople contained Armenian Christians, Jacobite Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, Karaite Jews, Samaritans, Arab Moslems, Persian Sunni Moslems, Druze, Egyptian Shi’ite Moslems, and the new guys, the Turks, who were ultraorthodox Sunni. And that’s just the religions. The coming of the Franks was no more than a new ingredient to the mix.
However, one problem the Western invaders had was that they weren’t up on all these variations. They didn’t understand that the Jacobite Christians were less oppressed by the Moslems than by the Byzantines, or that the Shi’ite city of Damascus preferred dealing with Christians than coming under the dominance of the Sunni caliphs of Baghdad.
In some ways, the Templars as a group learned the ropes sooner than the new princes and counts of the crusader kingdoms. In his autobiography, de Usama ibn Munqidh, emir of Shaizar, relates a tale about visiting the church that had been made next to the Temple in Jerusalem (the Templars’ headquarters—before and after the crusades, the mosque of al-Aqsa). “Whenever I went into the mosque, which was in the hands of the Templars who were friends of mine, they would put the little oratory at my disposal, so that I could say my prayers there.”3 Usama was not particularly fond of the Franks but he saw and judged them as individuals and did have friends among them, including Templars.
The Templars and Hospitallers also had groups of Moslems who paid tribute to them. For instance the Assassins paid two thousand bezants a year to each order. In 1230, the two military orders joined forces to exact retribution from the town of Hamah, which refused to pay.4
However, the main contact that the Templars had with the “Saracens” was in battle. Among the Turks, their first opponents, they came up against three very different leaders: Zengi, Nur ad-Din, and Saladin.
ZENGI (IMAD AL-DIN ATABEG)
The first of the great Turkish adversaries of the crusaders was known to the Franks as Zengi (Zangi, Zanki), atabeg of Mosul. For most of his early career Zengi, working for the Sunni caliphs of Baghdad, concentrated on defeating the Shi’ites of Egypt and Damascus.5His first known contact with the Templars was in 1137 near Montferrand, in Tripoli.
At that time Zengi had come to the defense of the Moslem fortress of Homs, and defeated Pons of Tripoli, who died in the battle. As a result, King Fulk came north with a force that included several Templars. The Norman historian Orderic Vitalis relates the story of the battle and its aftermath:
Countless thousands of the Pagans fell, but by the will of God, whose judgments are just and right, almost the whole Christian force crumbled and all except thirty knights were slain. Only the king himself escaped, with ten of his household knights and eighteen knights of the Temple, and fled to a castle . . . called Montferrand where they stoutly resisted, although besieged for some time. . . . Zengi, although he had lost thousands of his men by the swords of the Christians, was nevertheless elated at winning the victory he had hoped for.6
At this point, Zengi was more concerned with conquering Shi’ite towns than attacking the Franks. But, since he was in the neighborhood, the opportunity was too good to pass up. He hadn’t had much luck with the Shi’ite town of Hims, and so the defeat of Fulk and his army was especially satisfying. He then besieged the remnant of the army at Montferrand and had reduced them to eating their horses and dogs, when a relief force appeared.7
The Chronicles of Damascus reports that Zengi was still the victor, even though he had to leave the field:
It became necessary under the circumstances to grant the besieged their liberty, and he made an agreement with them, on the grounds that they acknowledged his suzerainty, and stipulated for a sum of fifty thousand dinars, which they should pay him forthwith.8
Orderic doesn’t mention a payment or that King Fulk agreed that Zengi should be his lord. He states that the two men agreed to an exchange of prisoners and that Fulk, not knowing that relief was on the way, surrendered the castle in return for freedom.9
It’s interesting to me that both the Moslem and Christian accounts use the same language and that both Zengi and Fulk are fighting by the same conventions. Foot soldiers are killed; leaders and noblemen held for ransom. However far apart the worlds may seem to be, these are men of the same warrior culture. The fact is that they are part of a long tradition of Romans, Greeks, and Persians invading each other over many centuries. Even though Fulk was of German stock and Zengi Turkish, they had each grown up in a society in which the rules of war were identical.
Zengi then turned his attention back to his main objective of gaining control of Shi’ite towns. In 1139 he began to prepare for the siege of Damascus. After some time and several bloody battles outside the walls of the city, the leaders of Damascus sent to Fulk of Jerusalem for aid. Fulk agreed and made a treaty with the city.10On hearing this, Zengi backed off, contenting himself with raids on smaller villages, both Moslem and Christian, from which he looted “an innumerable quantity of horses at pasture, sheep and goats, cattle and furnishings.”11
You see what I mean about the rules of war. That’s exactly what the Christian forces were doing.
Even though he was more concerned with uniting the Moslem towns under Sunni government, Zengi still attacked Christian outposts. The Templar castle near the Jordan River was built as a result of Zengi’s massacre of six monks who were living in a church there.12
While he never was able to take Damascus, Zengi’s greatest triumph was the conquest of the city of Edessa on Christmas Eve 1144. This was the event that led to the Second Crusade.
NUR AD-DIN
The son of Zengi, Nur ad-Din (Nur al-Din, Nurandin) was a fit successor to his father and a daunting opponent to the crusader states. In appearance he was “a tall, swarthy man with a beard but no moustache and a pleasant appearance enhanced by beautiful, melting eyes.”13
Unlike Zengi, who was basically interested in the political conquest of Shi’ites as well as Christians, Nur ad-Din saw his mission as the elimination of the Latin kingdoms and the return of Jerusalem to Moslem control. He left a number of inscriptions on public buildings that emphasize this. One sign of his determination to return to a pure form of Islam is that the language of these inscriptions is Arabic, not Turkish or Persian, like those of his father.14He has been credited with reintroducing the idea of jihad, or religious war, into the Moslem world.15
His most remarkable feat was in 1154 when he took over the government of Damascus through propaganda rather than force. The leaders of Damascus feared him enough to make an alliance with the Franks but the people of the town had been listening to stories, songs, and sermons about how Nur ad-Din was a “true mujahid” and the only one who could assure a victory for Islam.16 They decided to overthrow their leaders and invite Nur ad-Din in.
Nur ad-Din died in Damascus on May 15, 1174. Despite the nearly thirty years of war between him and the Latin states, William of Tyre still wrote that “he was of great renown, a just prince, persecutor of the Christian faith, cunning and prudent and religious according to the traditions
of his people.”17
Nur ad-Din would be succeeded not by the son he left behind, but by the leader who, for the West, is the archetypal Saracen, the Kurd Saladin.
1“Paupers aut Ecclesias defendere,” in Laurent Dailliez, Règle et Status de l’Ordre du Temple (Paris: Dervey, 1996) p. 324.
2Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1971) p. 2639.
3“Usama,” in Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades (New York: Dorset, 1989) tr. from Italian by E. J. Costello p. 79.
4Ph. Gourdin and G. Martinez-Gros (dirs) Pays d’Islam et monde latin 950-1250 (Tourai, 2001) p. 263.
5Abua’lá Hamzah ibn Asad Ibn al-Qalanisi, The Damascus Chronicles of the Crusades, tr. H. A. R. Gibb (New York: Dover, 2002). p. 227ff.
6Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis ed. and tr. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford University Press, 1978) Vol. VI, book XIII, v. 94, pp. 496-97.
7Ibid.
8Ibn Al-Qalanisi p. 243.
9Orderic Vitalis, op. cit., pp. 500-03.
10Ibn Al-Qalanisi, pp. 259-60.
11Ibid., p. 262.
12Malcom Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge University Press, 1996) p. 89.
13Ibn Al-Athir, in Gabrieli p. 68. Ibn Al-Athir (555/1160-630/1233) wrote a history of the Moslem world. He was fourteen when Nur ad-Din died.
14Yasser Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message: Propagation of Jihad under Nur Al-Din,” in Vladimir P. Gross, ed., The Meeting of Two Worlds (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1986) p. 224.
15Ibid., pp. 223-37.
16Gourdin and Gros, p. 195.
17William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnholt, 1986) 20, 31, p. 956. “Noradinus, maximus nominis et fidei christiane presequutor, princes tamen justus, vafer et providus et secundum gentis sue traditiones religiosus.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Saladin
In medieval and modern legend, he was the most chivalrous of all those involved with the crusades. He was mighty and merciful, wise and brave. He was also the man who destroyed the dream of a Christian Jerusalem and started the slow retreat of the Latin kingdoms.
In the west he is known as Saladin.
Salah-ed din Yusef ibn Ayub was born in the year 1138.1 His family was of the Rawadiya clan of Kurds who had migrated to Baghdad and entered the service of the caliphs. They were devout Sunni Moslems and Yusef, that is, Saladin, was a shining example of the ideal warrior for orthodox Islam.
Saladin’s father, Ayub, was governor of the town of Baalbek in Syria. Saladin was born in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and spent his childhood in Mosul.2 In 1152, at the age of fourteen, he entered the service of Nur ad-Din, the son of Zengi, who had captured Edessa, precipitating the Second Crusade.3
Shi’ite Damascus was often a reluctant ally of the kings of Jerusalem against the incursions of the newly converted Sunni Turks. When, in 1157 Nur ad-Din took Damascus the only major Shi’ite stronghold left was Egypt. The country had been weakened by internal battles for power. The Shi’ite Fatimid dynasty was failing. Around 1162, the vizier to the Fatimid caliphs, Shawar, was unseated in a palace coup. Shawar fled to Syria and convinced Nur ad-Din to support him in an attempt to regain power. Nur ad-Din sent his lieutenant Asad al-Din Shirkuh to lead the army. With him Shirkuh took his nephew Saladin.4
Shawar was restored to his position in 1164 and Shirkuh and Saladin returned to Syria. However, Shawar was “obsessed by the fear of a Turkish invasion.”5Not trusting his Turkish-Sunni allies, he contacted the Frankish king, Almaric, who had already been in negotiations with the Egyptians and asked the king to protect him from Shirkuh if necessary. The king’s representatives to the vizier were Hugh, lord of Caesarea, and Geoffrey Fulcher, a Templar.6
Almaric agreed to join forces with Shawar. The combined armies were able to roust Shirkuh from the town of Balbis, which he had recently taken. But, while Almaric and his men were in Egypt, Nur ad-Din took advantage of the situation and attacked the Latin city of Banyas.7 This was typical of the problems of the Latin kingdoms. There were too many fronts to defend.
In 1167, King Almaric and Vizier Shawar again met Shirkuh in battle. In this battle Saladin distinguished himself, capturing the envoy, Hugh of Caesarea, and many others.8However, after defending the city of Alexandria during a long siege, Saladin and his uncle were forced to retreat once again.
Finally in 1168, Almaric was told that Shawar was sending messages to Nur ad-Din, asking for his help to maintain power in Egypt. It is not at all certain that this was true. According to William of Tyre, the Templars refused to take part in this expedition because they didn’t believe Shawar had broken the treaty. He also suggests that the Templars were annoyed because the invasion was the idea of Gilbert d’Assaily, the master of the Hospital.9William always had mixed feelings about the Templars.
Whatever the reason, Shawar was seriously weakened by the Christian attack. After he had made another truce with Almaric, the king retreated back to Jerusalem, leaving the way open for Shirkuh and Saladin.
Shawar greeted the Turks as rescuers but Shirkuh was highly suspicious of a man who made treaties with idolaters against other Moslems. He felt that this was because the caliphs of Egypt were, in his mind, Shi’ite heretics. Therefore, he decided to oust the vizier.10
Saladin was dispatched to arrest Shawar. The vizier was beheaded and his head sent to Cairo. Shirkuh was made vizier in his place.11 The Fatimid caliphs were kept as puppet kings for the time being.
Saladin’s biographer states that Shirkuh “was a great eater, excessively given to partaking of rich meats. He suffered many bouts of indigestion.” 12 On March 22, 1169, Saladin’s uncle died, perhaps after a particularly rich meal, and Saladin became vizier of Egypt. He never looked back. In 1170 he captured Gaza, a frontier town long held by the Templars.
Like Nur ad-Din, Saladin was devoutly orthodox and believed it was his duty to rid the Holy Land of infidels. Like the Christians, he also believed it necessary to either convert or silence heretics within his own faith, like the Shi’ites. One of his first tasks in Egypt was “strengthening the Sunni cause and planting in the local population pious learning, law, Sufi practice and [true] religion.”13 This included the crucifixion of the Sufi heretic al Suhrawadi in 1180 because “it was said that he rejected the Holy Law and declared it invalid.”14
When the last Fatimid caliph died in 1171, Saladin replaced him. His dynasty would be known as the Ayyubids, after Saladin’s father, Ayub.
Once established in Egypt, Saladin put his energy into driving out the Franks and in establishing his independence from Nur ad-Din without causing an outright rupture in their relations. He was aided in both these things by the deaths in 1174 of both Nur ad-Din, on May 15, and King Almaric, on July 11.15Nur ad-Din’s heir was a young boy. Almaric’s was the thirteen-year-old Baldwin IV, who had suffered from leprosy since the age of nine. Neither was able to provide the leadership needed, although poor Baldwin tried.
Saladin seems to have felt that he was the spiritual heir of Nur ad-Din. He took over the city of Damascus and married Nur ad-Din’s widow. Now he controlled both Egypt and Damascus. He was able to attack the Latin kingdoms from both the east and the west.16Jerusalem braced for the blow. Instead, to the great relief of the Christians,
Saladin. (Art Resource, NY)
Saladin turned east to finish taking over the lands that Nur ad-Din had left to his young son, including the cities of Mosul and Aleppo.
In 1180, Saladin made an alliance with the Seljuk sultan of Anatolia, Kilij Arslan II, in order to fight against the town of Mosul.17He married one of his daughters to Kilij’s son, who slowly pushed his father out of office and proved a strong supporter of his father-in-law.
While still working to capture Mosul, Saladin was able to take Aleppo, which he gave to his brother, al-Adil, to govern.18
Mosul still held out, so, in 1185, Saladin made a four-year truce with young Baldwin, despite his earlier reservations about those who mak
e treaties with infidels in order to fight other Moslems.
What happened next depends on one’s point of view. But, in one of the unpredictable quirks of history, the fate of Jerusalem may have been decided by the actions of one hotheaded man.
Once upon a time there was a knight named Reynald de Chatillon. He was good looking and adventurous, but poor. So, perhaps seduced by romance tales popular in France, he came to Antioch in the 1150s to seek his fortune. Amazingly, he found it in the person of Constance, princess of Antioch. She had been the little girl married at the age of nine to Raymond of Poitiers. Raymond was dead and Constance was not inclined to marry again for the good of the realm. Instead, she chose Reynald.19
He wasn’t popular with his in-laws. When Reynald was captured by Nur ad-Din in 1160, no one bothered to ransom him.20By the time he was freed in 1176, his wife had died. Since she was the heiress of Antioch, Reynald had no claim on her property. The soldier of fortune was once again without funds.
Captivity seems to have done nothing to diminish his charm. The next year Reynald married Stephanie of Milly, the daughter and heiress of Templar Philip of Nablus. Through her, Reynald gained control of the province of Outrejordan.
According to most of the chronicles, Reynald felt that the truce with Saladin didn’t apply to him. He behaved much like the Moslem raiders had in the first part of the century. He attacked pilgrims on their way to Mecca, burned towns, and, as the last straw, in 1187 he pillaged a Moslem caravan going from Cairo to Baghdad. “He seized it treacherously, maltreated and tortured its members. . . . They reminded him of the truce, but he replied, ‘Tell your Mohammad to release you.’ ”21
The Real History Behind the Templars Page 14
