The Crusades 1095-1197

by Jonathan Phillips

  The next decade was to see important advances for both the Christians and the Muslims. In late 1149 Baldwin managed to steady the situation in northern Syria and then he returned south. His attention was focused on Ascalon, the only port on the Eastern Mediterranean coast still under Muslim control; in this case, the authority of the Fatimids of Egypt. In January 1153 Baldwin started to besiege the city and after eight months the Christians captured it. This was a significant achievement for the Franks because it enhanced the southern security of the kingdom of Jerusalem, gave them a potential springboard into Egypt and, more importantly, it denied the Egyptians a port on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. The need for fresh water supplies and the limited nature of naval technology at the time meant that the range of ships was severely restricted. Without Ascalon, Egyptian ships were much less able to threaten the Frankish ports or intercept valuable pilgrim or commercial traffic arriving from western Europe.

  The capture of Ascalon was soon offset by events at Damascus. By portraying himself as the leader of the jihad and contrasting himself to the pro-Frankish stance of the existing rulers, Nur ad-Din convinced a majority of the people of Damascus to let him take over the city in April 1154. For the first time in the Frankish occupation of the Levant the two key cities of Damascus and Aleppo were ruled by the same man. William of Tyre noted ‘this change was decidedly disastrous to the interests of the kingdom’ (William of Tyre, tr. Babcock and Krey, 1943: 2. 225). Nur ad-Din married the daughter of the previous ruler to align himself with the area even more closely and set about consolidating his power. The Franks, however, were not cowed by this development. They took the fight to the Muslims, but suffered a heavy defeat at Jacob’s Ford. This loss, combined with the damage inflicted in an enormous earthquake, induced an appeal to Pope Adrian IV asking for help — the first such request since 1150 and the start of a series of calls that would prove the dominant feature of relations between the Latin East and the West in future decades. Adrian issued a bull for a new crusade, although it provoked a negligible reaction. On this occasion it mattered little because in the same summer Count Thierry of Flanders arrived in the Holy Land. His appearance was far too quick to have been a response to Adrian’s appeal (it usually took a crusader over a year to put his affairs in order before he could set out for the Levant), but was a considerable boost to the settlers nonetheless. Thierry was an experienced crusader who had been to the Levant in 1139 and on the Second Crusade; he was from a prestigious and wealthy family; he was closely related to the ruling house of Jerusalem (his wife, Sibylla, was the half-sister of Baldwin III); and he was an extremely pious man, committed to the defence of the Holy Land; in short, the ideal crusader.

  In the autumn of 1157 the Franks besieged the important castle and town at Shaizar, a crossing point of the River Orontes that dominated the fertile floodplain lying in the adjacent river valley. The king intended that Count Thierry should take control of Shaizar and establish a lord-ship there. Nur ad-Din was seriously ill at the time and with Thierry’s presence, the Franks were poised to strengthen their position considerably. Yet at this moment, two of the settlers’ fatal weaknesses emerged: first, the effect of rivalry between Antioch and Jerusalem; and secondly, resentment of newcomers arriving and securing substantial territorial benefits. Reynald of Antioch, who had become ruler of the principality in 1153, objected to the plan. Traditionally, Shaizar had been connected with Antioch and Reynald argued that Thierry should, therefore, swear homage to him. The count refused, saying that he swore homage only to kings, not mere princes, and the siege broke down. From our perspective and knowing of the eventual demise of the Latin East, such dissensions seem baffling. Surely the settlers should have put aside their differences for what might be perceived as the greater good of the Christians? In fact, from a contemporary viewpoint the position was far more complex. Given Thierry’s close ties with Baldwin, Reynald may well have feared the extension of Jerusalem’s influence into northern Syria. Reynald was an outsider and, as such, had faced some opposition to his marriage to Princess Constance, the heiress to Antioch. Clearly Reynald felt threatened and was determined to establish his own authority. In these circumstances such a priority was understandable and probably explains the prince’s actions. Any momentum that the Franks might have attained was further reduced when, in the winter of 1157, Nur ad-Din recovered and began to reassert his old dominance over Muslim Syria.

  The spotlight continued to fall on Prince Reynald. His marriage to Constance had not been welcomed by everyone in Antioch, particularly Patriarch Aimery, who wanted to hold on to the regency he was entitled to as long as the princess remained unmarried. Reynald’s response to Aimery’s opposition was brutal. The patriarch — an ageing man — was tied up on top of the citadel, his head was smeared with honey and the prince released a hive of bees on to him. Reynald’s heavy-handed touch extended to international diplomacy. In 1156 he launched a savage raid on Cyprus, killed the Byzantine governor and sent the Antiochene troops to ravage the island. We might recall that in 1145 Prince Raymond of Antioch had travelled to Constantinople to pay homage to Manuel. For Reynald to attack the lands of his overlord was foolish in the extreme and in 1158-59 the emperor marched to northern Syria to punish him. Reynald’s actions on Cyprus had also horrified King Baldwin; as we saw above, he had decided that closer ties with Byzantium would be to the long-term benefit of all the Latin settlers. Furthermore, in 1157 he had become betrothed to Manuel’s niece, Theodora, and they married in September 1158. As Manuel reached northern Syria, Baldwin hurried to Antioch determined to try to mollify the Byzantine ruler and to bring Reynald into line. He did not reach the area before the emperor, however, and Reynald had to prostrate himself in the dust at Manuel’s feet to apologise for his actions. Baldwin’s arrival improved the atmosphere considerably and the emperor showed his interest in developing relations with the Latin East by taking Maria, one of Reynald’s step-daughters, as his bride. It seems that Baldwin and Manuel formed a close personal bond and when the king of Jerusalem broke his arm in a hunting accident it was the emperor who set it for him.

  Plainly, though, a strategic purpose lay behind such diplomatic niceties and in 1159 the armies of Antioch, Jerusalem and Byzantium marched towards Aleppo. Nur ad-Din saw the gravity of this threat and offered a truce and to release the Christian prisoners he held, many of whom were Germans captured eleven years previously during the Second Crusade. The terms of this deal evidently satisfied the emperor, although one might have expected him to try to capitalise on the size of the Christian armies and to attack Nur ad-Din. Perhaps Manuel still regarded the settlers as untrustworthy, and felt that if the Muslims were defeated the Antiochenes would be in a sufficiently strong position to try, yet again, to break free from Byzantine overlordship. On the other hand, a campaign of the sort mounted in 1159 would make the point to Nur ad-Din that he should not threaten the Christians too seriously or else he risked facing the full might of Byzantium. From Manuel’s point of view, the expedition preserved the status quo and he was able to enforce a long-held wish to install an Orthodox patriarch in the city. The office had been preserved in exile in Constantinople since the armies of the First Crusade had forced the patriarch to flee, but in 1165 Athanasius entered the city to re-establish Orthodox tenure of the patriarchal seat. From the Frankish perspective, Baldwin III had, as he had hoped, succeeded in establishing strong ties with the Greeks and, while Nur ad-Din had not been defeated, at the very least his ambitions had been checked.

  The rise of Nur ad-Din

  The threat from Nur ad-Din and the Muslims of Syria developed real momentum during the 1160s, although before exploring this it is worth assessing the nature of his power and authority. The ruler of Aleppo and Damascus was, undoubtedly, an extremely pious man and a shrewd political operator. After his victory over Prince Raymond of Antioch at Inab in 1149 he spent considerable energy consolidating his standing in the Islamic world; so much so, in fact, that in 1157 the caliph of Baghdad chide
d him for fighting his own people rather than the Christians. The complex and fragmented nature of the Muslim Near East meant that Nur ad-Din had to bring together many rival and independent rulers to ensure the stability of his position before he could confront the Franks. Whether the jihad against the Christians was his overriding aim at this stage is not clear, but the sources describe a significant change of attitude in the early 1160s and a far greater devotion to the prosecution of the holy war. After his recovery from serious illness in 1157-58 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca and in 1163 he suffered a heavy defeat by the Franks at al-Buqay’a. The last event seems to have had a profound effect on him and from this time onwards he adopted a more austere style of clothing and his focus on the jihad assumed real prominence.

  There are two elements to the jihad. The first, higher, form concerns the purification of one’s soul and Nur ad-Din’s personal bearing and his close association with men of religion indicate he was determined to follow this part of the struggle, as well as to engage in the second, worldly, aspect of the fight. He also sought to bring the virtues of faith and justice to his people. Many writers describe him as a law-giver and Nur ad-Din held weekly courts to dispense justice himself and to ensure fairness to all. He encouraged teaching and learning and sponsored the construction of many mosques and madrasas (teaching colleges) for Sufi mystics. He also developed civic amenities such as bathhouses, hospitals (examples of both survive in Damascus today), orphanages and caravanserai. Under Nur ad-Din the propaganda of jihad developed apace, with a great emphasis placed on the spiritual importance of Jerusalem as a place of pilgrimage for Muslims and as a city that should be brought back under Islamic control. Poetry, writings and inscriptions encouraged this message to take root in the consciousness of his subjects and, in conjunction with his own piety and the increasing role of the religious classes, this gave the jihad an institutional and political authority that it had thus far lacked in the conflict with the Franks.

  6. Nur ad-Din’s pulpit (now destroyed) in the al-Aqsa Mosque

  The struggle for Egypt

  Nur ad-Din’s main rival was not to be Baldwin III, but his brother Amalric, who ruled the kingdom of Jerusalem between 1163 and 1174. Baldwin died suddenly in 1163, aged only 33 years old; once he had broken free of his mother he had been a capable and energetic ruler who had shown a real awareness of the broader strategic picture through his creation of ties with Byzantium and, in the last years of his life, with his concern over Egypt. When Amalric had succeeded to the throne it was Egypt that became the prime battleground between the settlers and Nur ad-Din.

  What was the attraction of Egypt for the two powers? We saw earlier that it was ruled by the Shi’i Fatimid dynasty. On account of the fundamental split in the Islamic faith between the Sunnis and Shi’is a permanent rapprochement between Egypt and the Syrian Muslims was unlikely, particularly in light of Nur ad-Din’s stance as the champion of Sunni orthodoxy. But the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt was in decline. Egyptian forces were defeated at Jerusalem and Ascalon in 1099, although the latter remained in Egyptian hands until 1153 and posed some threat to the southern borders of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The settlers’ ambitions towards Egypt had a long history. In 1118 King Baldwin I had died en route home from a campaign in Egypt and his successor Baldwin II attacked the country in 1125. It seems that six years later the Franks were perceived as a sufficient threat for their ruler to try to make peace with King Fulk, although the proposal was rejected. Over the next twenty years the settlers focused on the gradual reduction of Ascalon and then, in the early 1160s, Baldwin III demanded and received an annual tribute from Egypt which demonstrated the relative strength of the two powers at this time. Further reasons existed for Baldwin’s interest in Egypt. First, if the Franks did not assume some kind of lordship or take control of the land, then Nur ad-Din probably would. This would have profound strategic implications because, for the first time, the settlers would face the same enemy to the south (Egypt) as well as the east (Syria). Secondly, there was the question of money because Egypt was enormously wealthy. The fertility of the Nile Delta and the importance of Alexandria as the prime port of the Eastern Mediterranean meant that whoever controlled Egypt’s resources would have a considerable advantage over their opponent. Both Amalric and Nur ad-Din needed to pay for their campaigns and the fact that the Franks made many requests for financial support to the West at this time indicates their monetary difficulties.

  Between 1163 and 1169 Amalric launched no less than five campaigns into Egypt. Ultimately he was to fail in his bid to conquer Babylon (as the Franks referred to it), but one of the most striking features of this period was Amalric’s determination in, first, trying to secure backing for his bid to conquer Egypt, and then, once Nur ad-Din had taken the country in 1169, his attempts to rally the Christians in the face of increased enemy power. In the course of these years he made diplomatic contacts with most of the senior rulers of western Europe, the emperor of Byzantium, the Pisans and the Muslim Assassins; in all, a remarkably diverse group. The mid-1160s saw the launch of an intensive diplomatic effort to persuade the West to help the settlers. Between 1163 and 1165 a series of letters (of which eleven survive) was sent to King Louis VII of France to try to induce him to launch a new crusade. The settlers appealed to Louis, as a fellow-Christian, to protect his brothers in the East, but the failure of the Second Crusade, as well as tensions between the Anglo-Norman realm and France, meant that he was unwilling to act.

  In 1163 and 1164 Amalric mounted attacks on the Egyptian fortress at Bilbais, about 50 kilometres north-east of Cairo, but these were not successful. One reason for this was that Nur ad-Din had exploited the king’s presence in Egypt to attack Frankish lands and in the autumn of 1164 he took the important town of Harim in the principality of Antioch and Banyas in the kingdom of Jerusalem. A further disaster affected both Muslims and Franks alike because an enormous earthquake hit northern Syria and destroyed castles, towns, villages and crops. As usual following such a calamity, a truce was established to allow both sides to recover.

  Diplomatic contact with the West and Byzantium

  The next decade would see the struggle for Egypt intensify and in consequence Amalric mounted an unprecedented effort to secure outside support. In the aftermath of the 1164 earthquake, the years 1165 and 1166 were relatively peaceful, although Amalric’s approaches to the West bore fruit in a number of ways. Pope Alexander III issued two papal bulls calling for a new crusade. The second of these was prompted by a legation led by Gilbert d’Assailly, master of the Hospitallers and the highest-ranking envoy used by the settlers for many decades. He carried the bull to northern Europe where he tried to use it to persuade the rulers of England and France to help the Holy Land. Mutual suspicion of each others’ territorial ambitions continued to prevent Henry II and Louis from taking the cross, although the Angevin did institute a general tax on behalf of the settlers and, not to be outdone, Louis followed suit. These appeals also resulted in a number of French nobles taking the cross. For example, Count William IV of Nevers (in Burgundy), a man with crusading ancestors from 1099 and 1148, took a body of knights with him to Acre in 1168 only to die of sickness, a common fate for a crusader. Yet, welcome as such contingents were, they did not constitute the large force that Amalric needed. It required the participation of a king to generate the momentum for an expedition of sufficient size to threaten the Muslims; failing this, alternative sources of help had to found.

  In the autumn of 1166 it seems that the king was aware of a renewed Muslim offensive, led by Nur ad-Din’s general, Shirkuh, in Egypt. To counter this he gathered money from the lands of Jerusalem by instituting a tax (of one tenth on all moveable property) approved at a special assembly of all the kingdom’s nobles at Nablus. This meeting also made arrangements for the military strength of Jerusalem to gather at Ascalon in January 1167 to march south. In light of the limited response of the rulers of northern Europe and, on account of the military requirements of a campaign in
Egypt (in essence, the navigability of the Nile Delta and the presence of Alexandria and Damietta, two of the country’s key towns on the northern coastline), he had made an agreement for a Pisan fleet to join him. The kingdom of Jerusalem had a weak navy and, as we saw in 1124 at Tyre, when naval expertise was required, the settlers often looked to the Italian city states. Alongside their religious motivation as fellow-Christians concerned for the salvation of their souls and the defence of the holy places, strong commercial reasons must have encouraged Pisan involvement. They had existing interests in both Egypt and the Latin East and hoped to cement their position ahead of Genoa and Venice as the leading western traders in the region.

  The threat from Shirkuh was sufficient to convince Sultan Shawar of Egypt to ally with the Franks. On payment of 400,000 dinars the Christians agreed not to leave Egypt until Shirkuh had also departed and to seal the Frankish-Egyptian alliance they established a perpetual and inviolable peace between the two powers. Count Hugh of Caesarea led the Jerusalem delegation and William of Tyre secured much eye-witness information from him, including a vivid account of the splendour of the caliph’s palace:

  There, supported by columns of marble covered with designs in relief were promenades with fretted and gilded ceilings and pavements of various coloured stones. Throughout the entire circuit royal magnificence prevailed. So elegant was both material and workmanship that involuntarily the eyes of all who saw it were ravished by the rare beauty and never wearied of the sight. (William of Tyre, tr. Babcock and Krey, 1943: 2. 319)

  Contrary to all usual etiquette, Hugh insisted on the treaty being ratified by shaking the caliph’s uncovered hand. This was a remarkable moment: aside from this possible breach of the caliph’s dignity, strict Islamic law dictates that the jihad only ends when all the world has submitted to Islam. Truces were permissible in the course of this struggle, but a permanent peace of the form set out here was contrary to holy law. For the caliph to break this showed how desperate he was to fend off the threat from Sunni Islam — a deal with the Franks may have been undesired, but it gave the Shi’i caliphate a chance to preserve its power in Cairo.