The Siege of Jerusalem: Crusade and Conquest in 1099

by Conor Kostick

  Sailing towards Latakia, where a great many of his troops were based, Count Raymond was unfortunate in becoming separated from his fl eet and having landed at Tarsus, he was immediately arrested by a knight called Bernard the

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  Stranger and sent to Antioch. It must have been painful for the Provençal veteran to be a prisoner of the young Norman prince, but Tancred could hardly justify holding Raymond for any length of time. Th

  e count was released aft er

  vowing that he would not campaign in the region of Antioch.

  From this low point of military defeat at the hands of a Muslim army and capture by a fellow Christian, Raymond’s fortunes improved dramatically.

  Reunited with those Provençal troops remaining in the Near East – some 300 knights – Raymond conquered for himself a new principality at the expense of the Muslim rulers of the cities and towns around Tripoli. From a base at Tortosa, Raymond conducted raids and by the spring of 1104 he had constructed a major new castle overlooking Tripoli itself. Raymond died at this castle, Mount Pilgrim (or the castle of Saint-Gilles as the Muslim world called it) on 28 February 1105, shortly aft er the emir of Tripoli had resigned the suburbs of his city to Christian control.

  Of the other prominent Christian fi gures involved with the siege of Jerusalem, Peter the Hermit returned to Europe and founded an Augustinian monastery at Neufmoutier, Flanders (in modern day Belgium). He died in 1115

  as prior of his monastery, a celebrated fi gure. Arnulf of Chocques, on the other hand, had a more troubled career. Having won the position of Patriarch of Jerusalem in the aft ermath of the siege, he lost it in December 1100 with the arrival of the genuine papal heavyweight, Daimbert, legate and archbishop of Pisa. Hanging on in the position of archdeacon of Jerusalem, Arnulf made a comeback to the Patriarchate in 1112, only to once again be deposed by a papal legate in 1115. On appeal to Pope Paschal II, Arnulf regained his high position in 1116, which he kept until his death in 1118.

  Eustace, the older brother of Godfrey, returned to Europe aft er the crusade to rule the very important and wealthy county of Boulogne. Even so, the kingdom of Jerusalem was suffi

  ciently attractive that Eustace set out to take the

  crown when, in 1118, he heard of the death of his younger brother Baldwin I.

  Having reached Apulia, Eustace learned that another former crusader, Baldwin of Bourcq had managed to obtain the throne ahead of him, so he turned back and remained lord of Boulogne until his death around 1125.

  Of the less senior fi gures involved in the crusade, a great deal is known about the French knight Th

  omas of Marle, because he returned to a life of notoriety

  in the vicinity of Reims. Th

  ere he outraged the church by his constant depreda-

  tions and sadistic tortures of those who resisted him and his men. Eventually Th

  omas drew upon himself the wrath of Louis the Fat, and died, on 9 November 1130, as a result of injuries sustained when Raoul, count of Vermandois, acting on behalf of the king, ambushed him.

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  A close friend of Th

  omas on the crusade followed a similarly errant path on

  return to Chartres. Raimbold Croton came home a hero, celebrated in verse for being the fi rst to place his hand on the walls of Jerusalem in the premature assault of 13 June. But the positive reputation Raimbold had earned with the population and the clergy of Chartres was dissipated as he used violence against non-combatants to resolve a dispute with Bonneval Abbey. Raimbold had one of the monks whom opposed him castrated. As a result, the crusader was given 14 years’ penance by Bishop Ivo of Chartres.3

  Aside from the famous, or notorious, fi gures in the Christian army at the siege of Jerusalem, can anything be said about what happened to the former serf, the female servant, the farmer and the other categories termed pauperes by contemporaries? Th

  e scant evidence that exists for the lowly crusaders sug-

  gests that providing they managed to avoid death or captivity as a result of a Muslim raid, they did very well. No one in the newly founded Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was a serf, with all the onerous obligations and restrictions that lay upon that class back in Europe, rather, those who settled down as farmers had what for the times was a relatively large degree of freedom. Th

  is can be seen

  from the charters of the kingdom.

  At Beit-Jibrin, for example, built in 1136 and whose charters were renewed in 1158 and 1177, the settlers had the right to leave the land if such was their choice. Instead of fi eld use being subject to the decision of the lord, tenures in Beit-Jibrin were hereditary and could even be sold by the farming family who owned one. Th

  e farmers did have to pay rent to the lord, but this was not

  a fi xed one base on the amount of land cultivated, rather it was terraticum, a portion of the crops. Th

  is gave the farmer some security against years of natural

  hardship or years where warfare led to the loss of the crop.

  A similar picture is evident from Castle Imbert, now Akhzib, where a colony was established by royal initiative during 1146–1153. To attract settlers, those who came to the town received houses as hereditary possessions without rent or duty. Each farmer obtained a plot of land for tillage and a further allocation of land in order to cultivate vines or a garden. Th

  e obligation that came with

  these holdings was simply to pay the king a quarter of the crop. Th e king also

  obtained revenues from his control of baking and bathing, but on the whole was drawing less wealth from the Christian peasantry of his realm than was a French, German or English lord of the same era. 4

  Another example also suggests that life for the Christian poor in the Near East could be relatively favourable. Writing in 1184 the historian and chancellor, William of Tyre, described a settlement where ‘certain cultivators of the fi elds from the neighbouring places had gathered together and . . . they had built

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  there a church and a suburb near the fortress of Daron, where the men of less substance could prosper more easily than in the city.’ Th

  e fact that the colonists

  were described as coming together in order to erect a church and dwellings on their own initiative suggests a great deal more autonomy existed for them than would have done in, say, France at the time. Th

  ese poor Christians seem to have

  been free from lordship and indeed prospering as a result.5

  If the serfs and farmers who had given up everything and left for the Promised Land had hoped to fi nd a better life at the end of the road, then it seems that their aim was achieved. Th

  e small minority of them, that is, who

  survived the hardship of the journey. Although he was exaggerating for the sake of encouraging more Christians to come settle around Jerusalem, Fulcher of Chartres, while living in the Holy City wrote a famous passage, which expresses this idea:

  For we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian.

  He who was of Reims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch.

  We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to many of us or not mentioned any more. Some already possess homes or households by inheritance. Some have taken wives not only of their own people but Syrians or Armenians or even Saracens who have obtained the grace of baptism. One has his father-in-law as well as his daughter-in-law living with him, or his own child if now his step-son or step-father. Out here there are grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Some tend vineyards, others till fi elds.

  People use the eloquence and idioms of diverse languages in conversing back and forth. Words of diff erent languages have become common property known to each nationality, and mut
ual faith unites those who are ignorant of their descent. Indeed it is written ‘Th

  e lion and the ox shall eat straw together’ [Isai.

  62.25]. He who was born a stranger is now as one born here; he who was born an alien has become as a native. Our relatives and parents join us from time to time, sacrifi cing, even though reluctantly, all that they formerly possessed.

  Th

  ose who were poor in the Occident, God makes rich in this land. Th ose who

  had little money there have countless bezants here, and those who did not have a villa possess here by the gift of God a city. 6

  As well as emphasizing the prospect of prosperity for those who settled in the kingdom, Fulcher’s description here, some 25 years aft er the massacre in Jerusalem, reveals that a certain amount of integration was taking place between Christians and Muslims. Christians, who had married converts, were living with their Muslim relations. Moreover, the religious affi

  liations of the

  people of the region were not permanently fi xed. Whilst on an expedition with

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  King Baldwin I, Fulcher was able to converse fi rst hand with local inhabitants of the kingdom who had recently converted. 7 Similarly the Muslim histories have very many examples of Christians converting to Islam.8

  In fact, despite the horror of the slaughter on 15 July 1099, the Muslim world was slow to respond to the crusade and the establishment of a Latin Kingdom based at Jerusalem. Bitter rivalry between the great centres of Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, Mosul and Aleppo meant that although the military forces available to the Christian lords were always very slender – except, temporarily, when a host of military pilgrims arrived at Jerusalem – for nearly three generations no Islamic ruler proved able to infl ict a decisive blow upon the Christian kingdom.

  Soon aft er the conquest of Jerusalem, however, there were some notable Muslim victories over Christian armies, which shattered the self-belief of the Christian knights and restored confi dence to Muslim princes in their military prowess. At Ramla in 1102 the Fatimids revenged themselves for Ascalon with a signifi cant victory over Baldwin I: the Christian ruler barely managed to escape with his life. At Harran in 1104 Jokermish, the governor of Mosul, and Suqmān, one of the Seljuk brothers who had ruled Jerusalem before it was captured by the Fatimids, outmanoeuvred a powerful Christian army that included Bohemond as one of its leaders. While the Norman ruler of Antioch escaped, Baldwin of Bourcq, lord of Edessa and future king of Jerusalem was captured. An even greater victory of Muslim forces over the Antiochene Christian army took place at Field of Blood in 1119, when Īlgāhzī, brother of Suqmān and now ruler of Aleppo, crushed the troops of Roger of Antioch, who was run through by a sword under his standard.

  Th

  ese victories were important psychologically and transformed the morale of the Muslim world with regard to their Christian enemies, but they did not lead to an overthrow of the Christian lordships due to the closely guarded autonomy of the major Muslim cities, which several times led Muslim princes to prefer alliances with Christian knights rather than let a ruler of their own religion become too powerful. Th

  e fractures in the Muslim political world were

  exacerbated by the growth of a new Islamic religious movement, the Bātinīds, more commonly known in the Western world as the assassins. Th

  is sect had

  broken away from the Sunni Caliph in 1094 and used the tactic to which their name has become attached, that of murdering prominent political and religious enemies, to create political instability among their opponents. Hasan ibn Sabbah, the Bātinīd leader based in Alamūt in north-western Iran sent missionaries throughout Syria in the early part of the twelft h century. Although their numbers were small they found a base of support, particularly in towns

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  and among the lower social orders. Th

  e Bātinī seized a number of mountain

  strongholds and entrenched themselves against their enemies. More than one Muslim leader who had been successfully fi ghting against the Franks died at the hands of the Bātinīds.

  From early on, however, there had been a current across the entire Muslim world in favour of taking the threat posed by the crusaders very seriously.

  Islamic theologians, such as al-Sulami who preached in Damascus, called for the Muslim world to rally against the Christian invaders and lamented the fact that the secular nobility no longer pursued jihad, the duty to wage holy war. Al-Sulami wrote his Book of Holy War in the years that followed the fall of Jerusalem, but outside of intellectual circles obtained little support for his proposal that the caliphs should conduct at least one expedition a year against the infi del. Th

  e fi rst prince to speak the same language and harness the idea of a counter-crusade against the infi del to his own political ambition was Zankī, atabeg of Mosul.

  In 1144, Zankī delivered the fi rst really serious blow to the Christian cause, one from which they never fully recovered. He besieged and took Edessa from its absent lord, Joscelin II. For this deed Zankī became famous throughout the Muslim world and just as the Christian knights who fought at the siege of Jerusalem thought that they had thereby earned the right to enter Heaven, it was said of Zankī that he appeared in the dreams of pious men, telling them that because of the conquest of Edessa God had forgiven all his sins. Th ere was

  a lot to forgive; Zankī was a prince who preferred to rule by fear rather than consent and his movements were accompanied by public executions of those whom he determined to be guilty of even slight misdemeanours. Th

  is harsh-

  ness was his own undoing, for less than two years aft er his famous conquest Zankī was killed at night in his tent by his own troops.

  While the Muslim world was slowly developing the notion of jihad and directing it against the Christians of the Near East, in Western Europe the concept of crusading was evolving also. Th

  e most innovatory feature of the notion

  that it could be holy to take up arms for Christ was the appearance of the military orders: fraternities of monks who retained their arms and military function. Living like monks with no personal wealth and with a great devotion to Christian ritual, the military orders nevertheless provided regular military service for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, initially by protecting the pilgrim routes.

  Some clergy found the idea that it was possible to be both a knight and a monk monstrous. But with the support of the papacy and especially of the infl uential leader of the Cistercians, Bernard of Clairvaux, the military orders went from strength to strength. Th

  e two largest orders were the Knights of the

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  Temple of Solomon of Jerusalem, the Templars – whose name derived from the fact they were based in the complex that had been the al-Aqsā Mosque but which the Christians mistakenly thought of as the Temple of the Lord – and the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Hospitallers.

  In the West the orders quickly obtained several major bequeathments of land and income and uncountable minor ones. Donations took the form of estates, buildings, dependent populations as well as fi nancial concessions. Th e

  most spectacular endowment of this sort was that of Alfonso I of Aragon who left his entire kingdom to the Hospitallers, the Templars and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in equal parts. Not that the Aragonese aristocracy allowed the inheritance to be disbursed in such a way, but in their settlement with the orders they left them with huge revenues and property.

  Th

  e other great evolution of the crusade was its acceptance at the highest levels of Christian society. Crusading became the pursuit of kings and, as a consequence, to go on crusade was to earn the approval of all of aristocratic society. On 1 December 1145, in response to the news that Edessa had fallen to Zankī, Pope Eugenius III issued a papal bull, now known from its opening words
, Quantum Praedecessores, in which he urged King Louis VII of France and his princes to go on a great expedition to the Holy Land. Th

  e original

  appeal of the pope had been made to Louis VII, but Germany too was galvanized to participate and on Christmas Day 1146, at Speyer, Conrad III agreed to lead a German contingent to the east. Th

  is was called the ‘second’ such expe-

  dition by contemporaries, who passed over the smaller and more sporadic adventures that had taken place since 1099 and the fall of Jerusalem.

  Despite the fact that kings rather than lesser lords led the Second Crusade, it was an abject failure. In the winter of 1147/8 both French and German armies came to grief in Anatolia. Short of supplies and harassed by the attacks of Turkish and nomadic armies, the Christian forces disintegrated, thousands of foot soldiers and poor crusaders being killed or led off to captivity. Only a small core fi ghting force of knights made their way to Jerusalem, where they were well received by Queen Melisende in the spring of 1148.

  A great assembly was held at Acre on 24 June 1148 with all the senior nobles of the kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the leaders of the Templars and Hospitallers meeting with the newly arrived crusaders. Aft er some debate the decision was taken to attack Damascus. Th

  eoretically it was a bold idea that

  had the potential to counter the growing strength of Mosul and Aleppo. But it was a high-risk strategy. Th

  e rulers of Damascus had proven themselves willing

  to ally with the Christian princes rather than submit to control from the East.

  A treaty from 1139 had been the most recent formal expression of this. To attack

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  Damascus, but to fail, would be to destroy that alliance and to throw Damascus into the hands of more powerful Muslim rulers to the east. And so it proved.

  Yet at fi rst the decision, taken against considerable opposition, seemed justifi ed. On Saturday 24 July 1148 the impressive Christian army fought their way to the gardens and orchards south of Damascus and set up position with good control of water and pushed their advance troops right up to the walls of the city. Something that, as Ibn al-Qalansi the Damascene eyewitness noted, had never been before achieved by an attacking army. 9