The Crusades and the Near East

by Kostick, Conor

  145 Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, pp. 248–50, 391–406.

  146 Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl ta’rikh dimashq, pp. 171–2 [Gibb, pp. 108–9; Le Tourneau, p. 101].

  147 I.R. Netton, ‘Basic Structures and Signs of Alienation in the Rihla of Ibn Jubayr’, Journal of Arabic Literature 22, 1991, 26–8 [reprinted in I.R. Netton (ed.), Golden Roads: Migration, Pilgimage, Travel in Mediaeval and Modern Islam, London: Curzon Press, 1993, p. 61].

  148 Ibn Jubayr (1145–1217), al-Rihla (travelogue), pp. 278–9 [R.J.C. Broadhurst (tr.), The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Being the Chronicle of a Mediaeval Spanish Moor, London: Jonathan Cape, 1952, p. 320; M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes (tr.), Voyage d’Ibn Jobair, Paris: Paul Guethner, 1953, III.354].

  149 Ibn Jubayr, al-Rihla, p. 260 [Broadhurst, p. 300; M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, III.334].

  150 In Arabic: dunya. The translation world/ monde seems to be incurred. See E.W. Lane, An Arabic–English Lexicon, Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968 [1885], III.992/a (referring to Qur’an, al-ahzab, XXXIII.59).

  151 Ibn Jubayr, al-Rihla, p. 260 [Broadhurst, p. 301; Gaudefroy-Demombynes, III.335].

  152 P.D. Mitchell, Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds, and the Medieval Surgeon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 35–8.

  153 Claude Cahen, ‘Indigenes et Croises Quelques mots a propos d’un medecian d’Amaury et de Saladin’, Syria 15, 1934, 351–60 [reprinted in his Turcobyzantina et Orioens Christianus, London: Variorum reprints, 1974, article F].

  154 B.Z. Kedar and Etan Kohlberg, ‘A Melkite Physician in Frankish Jerusalem and Ayyubid Damascus: Muwaffaq al-Din Ya‘qub b. Siqlab,’ Asian and African Studies 22, 1988, 113–26.

  155 B.Z. Kedar and Etan Kohlberg, ‘The Intercultural Career of Theodore of Antioch’, Mediterranean Historical Review 10, 1995, 164–76.

  156 Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad b. Hasan al-Shaybani (132–89/752–805), Sharh kitab al-siyyar al-kabir, Salah al-Din al-Munajjid (ed.), Cairo: Dar al-Fikr, 1971, I.187

  (# 210); Ella Landau-Tasseron, ‘Is Jihad Comparable to Just War? A Review Article’, JSAI 34, 2008, 535–50.

  157 al-Shaybani, Sharh kitab al-siyyar al-kabir, I.190 (# 213).

  158 Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali. b. Muhammad al-Mawardi (972–1058), al-Hawi al-kabir fi fiqh madhhab al-imam al-shafi‘, A.M. Mu‘awwid and A.A. Abd al-Mawjud (ed.), 20, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyya, 1999, XIV.112–13.

  159 al-Mawardi, al-Hawi al-kabir fi fiqh madhhab al-imam al-shafi‘i, XIV.114.

  160 On participation of slaves in the fighting, see Usama ibn Munqidh (1095–1188), Kitab al-I‘tibar, P.K. Hitti (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930, pp. 26, 129, 147, 187, 279; David Ayalon, ‘The Mamluks of the Seljuks: Islam’s Military Might at the Crossroads’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Third Series, 6.3, 1996, 327–8.

  161 Reuven Amitai, ‘Food Soldiers, Militiamen and Volunteers in the Early Mamluk Army’, in C.F. Robinson (ed.), Texts, Documents, and Artifacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D.S. Richards, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 234–5.

  162 Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History: The Roots of Conflict between Christianity and Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 337.

  163 L.S. Northrup, From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Mansur Qalawun and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678–689 A.H./1279–1290 A.D.), Stuttgart: F. Steiner, Freiburger Islamstudien 18, 1998, pp. 103–4.

  164 P.M. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.

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  165 D.P. Little, ‘The Fall of Akka in 690/1291: The Muslim Version’, in Moshe Sharon (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization: In Honour of Professor David Ayalon, Jerusalem: Cana, 1986, pp. 159–81.

  166 al-Tawba, IX.40–1, says: ‘Allah made the word of the unbelievers the lowest; and Allah’s word is the uppermost; Allah is All-mighty, All wise. Go forth, light and heavy.

  Strive and struggle in the Path of Allah with your possessions and your selves; that is better for you, did you know.’ And see II.193, VIII.39.

  167 The Qur’an instructs unambiguously: ‘O believers, take not my enemy and your enemy for friends, offering them your love, even though they have disbelieved and rejected the truth that has come to you. O Believers, take not for friends a people whom Allah is wrathful.’ Al-Mumtahanah, LX.1, 13 and compare LX.9 and IX.23.

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  O F C H R I S T E N D O M

  The impact of the crusades on Byzantium

  Chris Wright

  This chapter examines the role played by Byzantium in the crusading movement and the effects of the crusade on Byzantine thought, arguing that the prevailing theme uniting the variety of ways in which the crusades affected Byzantium was the empire’s marginalisation. Central to the origins of the crusade, imperial concerns were soon relegated to the periphery of crusading thought, while the Byzantine reaction to crusading encouraged western Christians to regard the empire as occupying an ambiguous position on the margins of the Christian community. The crusades embodied a profound challenge to the imperial state’s own notion of its special status in the world, and worked to undermine the centrality of that state to its inhabitants’ conception of their own society and identity.

  As a force lending enhanced unity and definition to the peoples of western Christendom as a group, and doing so through a common military enterprise on behalf of Christianity to which the empire’s concerns were peripheral, from the outset the crusades disrupted the Byzantine idea of the world by implicitly supplanting the empire from its claimed position as leader and protector of the faith. This challenge to ideology and identity was vastly intensified by the shattering impact of the Fourth Crusade. By ousting the empire from its capital and dividing its scattered inheritors, and by installing Latin regimes and a Latin Church hierarchy across much of the Byzantine heartland, it undercut the potency and credibility of the imperial state as a unifying and defining force shaping the identity of its subjects and erstwhile subjects. Such effects were deepened by the final permutation of the empire’s relationship with crusading, as the pressure for Church Union on Latin terms in return for military aid further complicated loyalties.

  This tendency to push the empire from centre to periphery was in large part a product of the role it played in the crusading movement itself, being perennially entangled in crusading affairs, but usually remaining on the margins of crusading 55

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  endeavour, not being full participant, prime beneficiary, or principal enemy. As the foremost Christian state of the eastern Mediterranean, Byzantium could never be irrelevant to the crusading movement. This was particularly true while major crusading armies continued to travel by land, crossing the breadth of the empire’s territories and passing through its very heart, where the choke-point of the straits brought all such expeditions into close proximity to Constantinople. Yet, though the notion of bringing aid to eastern Christians molested by Muslims and to a beleaguered Byzantium in particular played a formative part in the origins of the crusading movement, the early emergence of the liberation of Jerusalem as that movement’s principal goal pushed the empire to the margins. Rather than being a central preoccupation of the crusades, Byzantine interests could thus only be benefited by them in passing. Conversely, from the early days of crusading, Byzantium was considered by some crusaders to be a suitable target for the movement’s aggressive attentions, but this sort of central role also proved the exception rather than the rule, despite the catastrophic impact of that exception as manifested in the outcome of the Fourth Crusade. The oblique, peripheral quality of the empire’s involvement with crusading accounts for much of the complexity, ambiguity and volatility of the relationship that developed.

  The tone of unfulfilled potential for a central role was set in the prehistory of the crusade. In response to reports of the Turkish advance into Ana
tolia, Pope Gregory VII in 1074 proposed to lead an army himself to drive back the Turks, and to resolve religious controversies by securing agreement with a grateful emperor and his Church en route.1 Such an expedition might have been better tailored to Byzantine interests in Anatolia than the movement which actually emerged two decades later, one focused on the defeat of the empire’s Turkish enemies rather than the retrieval and defence of Jerusalem. It is, however, very far from certain that the focus of the early proposals on assisting the empire against the Turks would have been carried through into an actual campaign, had the pope succeeded in raising an army and leading it to the East: already in Gregory’s later letters on the subject the prospect of continuing as far as Jerusalem had raised its head.2 Nevertheless, in their emphasis on opposing the Anatolian Turks for the sake of Byzantium, and in the role of Church unity as an implicit quid pro quo for such assistance, Gregory’s schemes represent the first appearance of a possible alternative version of crusading which would flicker from time to time in the shadow of the actual movement, but would not become reality until the eve of the empire’s dissolution. The quietly menacing potential of a Latin army arriving at the gates of Constantinople expecting a favourable ecclesiastical settlement hinted at darker possibilities for Byzantium which would also be long in coming to fruition.

  In the event it was left to another pope to realise something resembling Gregory’s schemes. The appeal for troops presented by Alexios I’s emissaries at the Council of Piacenza was the spark for Urban II’s call for volunteers for a holy war at the Council of Clermont, but it is also likely that the nature of the western military response that was actually orchestrated by the pope took the emperor by 56

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  surprise, in its scale, its character as a penitential pilgrimage and its adoption of the conquest of Jerusalem as its principal goal. It has been argued on the basis of the late thirteenth-century testimony of Theodore Skoutariotes that Alexios in fact proposed in his appeal that the liberation of Jerusalem should be the expedition’s goal, deliberately calculating on Latin solicitude for the Holy City to maximise recruitment.3 However, this may well be an interpretation based on hindsight, and it seems more likely that it was only after the appeal had been made that Jerusalem emerged as a prominent component of the scheme. Probably Urban himself was responsible for this crucial modification, although the earliest surviving account of his speech at Clermont, that of Fulcher of Chartres, contains no mention of the Holy City.4 It remains unclear whether the defence of eastern Christians against Turkish aggression and the possibility of ecclesiastical accord played a larger part in Urban’s original intentions and preaching than in the thinking of those who responded to his call.5

  Whatever its source, the establishment of the liberation of Jerusalem at the heart of the movement that emerged ensured that its original trigger, the contest between Byzantium and the Anatolian Turks, was swiftly and enduringly relegated to the margins. Only the First Crusade had a major impact on the empire’s conflict with its Muslim neighbours, and this was largely indirect. The crusaders’ haste to reach the Holy Land effectively precluded lingering in Anatolia. Their victories in battle and their help in capturing the Anatolian Seljuk capital at Nicaea weakened the opposition met by the ensuing imperial offensive which reconquered the western coastal plains of Anatolia, adding them to the northern littoral which was probably already largely under Byzantine control.6 Crusader conquests also facilitated the intermittent extension of imperial control over Cilicia, although this was initially accomplished only by forcibly ousting the Latins themselves and continued to be contested by them.7 However, the direct gains brought by the crusade beyond Nicaea proved transitory, with isolated garrisons installed on the central plateau but not heard of again and presumably soon regained by the Turks.8 Thus the momentary successes of a crusading army in transit created a window of opportunity for more durable imperial gains, but its swift departure along the road to Jerusalem precluded the kind of direct and lasting conquests later accomplished in Syria and Palestine. The capacity of such pilgrim armies to transform the empire’s military fortunes was by nature limited, and subsequent expeditions had a negligible effect in Anatolia.

  Since the imperial concerns that had triggered it were largely incidental to the crusading movement that emerged, the direct and concerted promotion of Byzantine interests could only have been brought about by positive initiatives on the part of the imperial government which would enable it to assume a leadership role. Any such role could not realistically be secured without the personal participation of the emperor in an expedition. During the First Crusade Alexios I enjoyed opportunities in this regard which would not be available to his successors. The empire’s reputation in the West had not yet been compromised by the ructions arising in the course of that expedition and its aftermath. Imperial 57

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  guidance and support were also of greater value to crusaders feeling their way through an unprecedented venture far from home than to those who would follow in the first expedition’s footsteps decades later. The role of such considerations is reflected in the view of the historian Fulcher of Chartres, a participant in the crusade: ‘It was necessary for all to confirm friendship with the emperor, without whose counsel and aid we could not have completed our journey, nor could those who were to follow us on that same road.’9

  The importance attached to Byzantine involvement was such that, despite early scuffles and disputes, at Constantinople the leaders of the crusade invited Alexios to assume command of their forces: ‘They reported that Bohemond, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Flanders, and other princes besought Raymond to make a pact concerning the crusade with Alexius, who might take the Cross and become leader of God’s army.’10

  Even after his failure to relieve the crusaders at Antioch, with its severe implications for relations between the emperor and the crusade leaders, they invited Alexios to come in person to take possession of Antioch and to join their continuing advance, albeit largely so as to absolve themselves of their obligations to him should he decline.11 His failure to take up these proposals, while very understandable, set the seal on the swift relegation of imperial concerns to the margins of the crusading agenda and contributed to Latin suspicions regarding the empire’s commitment to Christian solidarity.

  Whereas Alexios declined the opportunity to put himself at the heart of the crusade, his grandson Manuel I strove at some length to achieve that end, but without any lasting result. His response to the Second Crusade, early in his reign, was considerably chillier than Alexios’s cautious collaboration.12 Later years, however, saw a sharp change of direction as Manuel sought to cultivate a relationship with the crusading movement that would secure a prestigious and advantageous central role for the empire. Adapting the policies of his father John II, he enforced renewed acknowledgement of imperial sovereignty over the Principality of Antioch and perhaps extended this recognition of his overlordship to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, through a combination of threat and military aid against the Muslims of Syria and Egypt.13 Manuel apparently sought to extend this line of policy through a fresh crusade summoned by Pope Alexander III to establish firm Christian control of the land route to Jerusalem, clearing the way for pilgrims and future crusading armies.14 That is to say, this time the targets of the expedition were not to be the Muslim states of Syria and Egypt but the Anatolian Turks, and its goal the extension of imperial territory. Without compromising the ostensible focus on pilgrimage and Jerusalem, Manuel would be able to redress in part the empire’s consignment to the periphery and exploit the crusade as an instrument of imperial interests. If successful, this endeavour would also have enabled him to place himself at the head of a crusading army, in the hope of helping to counteract jaundiced views of the empire’s role in previous crusades.

  In the event, the defeat of his solo offensive against Ikonion by the Seljuks at Myriokephalon stifled the enter
prise at birth.15 The potential to put Byzantine 58

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  interests at the centre of crusading activity, in practice if not in theory, remained unfulfilled.

  Manuel’s efforts also formed part of a wider effort to rehabilitate the empire’s reputation in the Latin world, which had suffered from the experience of the first two crusades. Judging by surviving Latin assessments of him, Manuel seems to have achieved some success in enhancing his own reputation, but not in negating more general animosities. He attracted laudatory assessments from Latin writers, but these tended to present him as a kind of honorary Latin, a ruler who favoured westerners above his own subjects because he shared the Latin view of his people’s vices.16 William of Tyre, a Latin prelate and historian from the Kingdom of Jerusalem who had visited Manuel’s court, could move seamlessly from praise for the emperor into a diatribe against his subjects:

  During the reign of Manuel, beloved of God, the Latins had found great favour with him – a reward well-deserved because of their loyalty and valour. The emperor, a great-souled man of incomparable energy, relied so implicitly on their fidelity and ability that he passed over the Greeks as soft and effeminate and entrusted important affairs to the Latins alone.

  Since he held them in such high esteem and showed toward them such

  lavish generosity, men of Latin race from all over the world, nobles and men of lesser degree as well, regarded him as their great benefactor and eagerly flocked to his court. As the result of this eager deference, his affection toward the Latins increased more and more, and he was

  constantly improving their status.

  The Greek nobles, especially the near kindred of the emperor, and the rest of the people as well, naturally conceived an insatiable hatred toward us, and this was increased by the difference between our sacraments and those of their church, which furnished an additional incentive to their jealousy. For they, having separated insolently from the church of Rome, in their boundless arrogance looked upon every one who did not follow their foolish traditions as a heretic.17