Individuals from all those areas would go to the Holy Land, but it was the Franks, from the area we now know as France, who formed the bulk of the volunteers who went east on the first “armed pilgrimage.” (The term crusade was not coined until much later.) Scattered throughout their various duchies, counties, and kingdoms, they had a variety of motivations. Many were prompted by deeply felt religious sentiments; others were interested primarily in the opportunity to gain glory and wealth; most embarked upon the venture for a combination of motives, and saw no contradiction in doing so.
Numerous groups headed off toward Constantinople, including the remarkable horde that followed Peter the Hermit. Others were little more than gangsters, who robbed and plundered their way across Europe until they themselves were robbed or killed. The primary force that is identified with the First Crusade, however, went to Constantinople in four groups, arriving between December 1096 and April 1097. Emperor Alexius was stunned by the arrival of the huge contingents, none of whom intended to give up their autonomy by submitting to his leadership. He warily aided the huge army in its siege of Nicaea, the capital of the Saljuqs of Rum. By a stroke of good luck, it was practically undefended, for the young Saljuq Sultan, Qilij Arslan, had recently left the city and led his army several hundred miles to the east in order to fight Turkish rivals who had challenged his power. He was unable to return in time to enter Nicaea, and his light cavalry lost a pitched battle with the Frankish heavy cavalry. The Byzantine emperor actually organized a clandestine rescue mission for the sultan’s family and reunited them to him. He also managed to claim the city for himself when its population surrendered to him rather than to the Franks.
The Franks, who had come to fight “infidels,” felt betrayed, and could not understand the nuances of the working relationship that the Byzantines and Saljuqs of Rum had established. They were convinced that their initial suspicions of the integrity of the eastern Christians were vindicated. They got their revenge a year later: When the city of Antioch finally fell after an eight-month siege in June 1098, the Franks refused to turn the city over to Alexius despite their earlier commitment to do so. Even before the First Crusade had accomplished its mission, relations between the Byzantines and the Franks had become cold at best and were often hostile. The original intent of the expedition was long forgotten, and the Byzantines and Franks would never trust each other again.
Meanwhile, the Fatimids, who were recovering from the Musta‘li-Nizari schism of 1094, were watching the campaign of the Franks with interest and curiosity. The wazir, al-Afdal, thought that it represented the beginning of a combined Byzantine– Frankish campaign to push back the Saljuqs, a prospect he found gratifying. He sent a note of congratulations to Alexius upon the fall of Nicaea and sent a delegation to the camp of the Franks during their siege of Antioch, offering a partition of Syria. He received no response to the offer, and he became increasingly uneasy. When, in the summer of 1098, he learned that Antioch had fallen, he seized several garrison cities in Palestine that the Fatimids had lost to Malik-Shah some two decades earlier. He left the area poorly defended, however, and the towns and garrisons of Palestine surrendered quickly in the spring of 1099 to the European invaders. Even Jerusalem, which the Fatimids thought was secure, fell to the Franks in July 1099 after a siege of only one month. In keeping with the pattern of previous sieges, the Crusaders massacred a large number of the population of the city, without regard for their religious affiliation. Al-Afdal sent an expeditionary force into Palestine to try to save the situation, but the Franks mauled it. He did not challenge them again.
The Franks had fought their way to Jerusalem, but they had yet to consolidate their gains. Over the next thirteen years, they secured the entire coast of the eastern Mediterranean, except for the two Fatimid-held cities of Tyre (finally captured in 1124) and Ascalon (captured in 1153). The conquered area was organized into four states. The County of Edessa was the least well defined territorially and the most vulnerable. It lay inland in northern Syria, straddling the Taurus Mountains as far east as the upper Euphrates valley. The storied city of Antioch became the focal point of the new Principality of Antioch, which lay on the upper Mediterranean coast from the Taurus Mountains to a point several miles north of the present Lebanese border. The County of Tripoli lay in the northern half of present-day Lebanon, and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem encompassed the territory included today within the borders of Israel and southern Lebanon.
The Europeans set up a society on the basis of what they knew, which was the Frankish feudal structure. It was not an exact replica, for the European landlords lived in towns in Syria, not in castles on their holdings, and the cash economy of southwestern Asia forced a revision in the pattern of service obligations to which the Franks had been accustomed in Europe. The local landowning class was completely replaced by Franks, and in each of the new states, the Franks ruled over a mixed population of Muslims and Christians. In several large areas, the indigenous Christians were the majority. The Catholic Franks characteristically regarded the local Orthodox and other Christians as suspect as the Muslims.
One indignity the Muslims had to endure was the payment of a poll tax, which had been the obligation of non-Muslims in the area for the previous four centuries. But in the towns, the indigenous merchants and craftsmen—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—retained some rights, just as their urban counterparts in Europe had obtained in the eleventh century (although Jews were not allowed to resettle Jerusalem for over a century). Some Christian Arabs even succeeded in becoming members of the knightly class, but such assimilation to Frankish mores was the only cultural interaction which interested the Franks. Whereas the Franks of Syria adopted certain features of local dress, medicine, and creature comforts, they had no interest in a cultural symbiosis. In this regard, they were quite different from their contemporaries, the Normans of Sicily and the Christians of the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula, who often took an avid interest in the scholarship and arts of the Muslims. Only a tiny number of the Franks even learned to speak Arabic.
The success of the expedition to Jerusalem had left the Franks confident of their superiority over their Muslim neighbors, but their new states were much more fragile than they realized. They feuded with each other, the leaders and soldiers were in a culture they did not understand, and they were surrounded by rival states. Perhaps most problematic for them was their dependence for leadership and protection on men who viewed their service in the region as temporary, with the result that Frankish manpower had to be constantly replenished just to keep the numbers stable. The Italian city–states of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa took advantage of this need to increase their seaborne trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Their fleets had assisted in the provisioning of the military expedition of 1098–1099 and even blockaded the besieged Muslim ports. Now their role was invaluable in bringing to the feudal states supplies, soldiers, and pilgrims who had money to spend.
Muslim rulers in the region were slow to respond to the Frankish challenge. They had been accustomed to defending their power against fellow Muslims rather than against foreigners. After the death of Malik-Shah in 1094, the Saljuq rulers of Damascus, Hama, Homs, Aleppo, Mosul, and other cities were rivals of each other as well as of their fellow Turks across the Taurus Mountains. Among the latter were the Sultan of Rum (who had relocated to Konya after his defeat at Nicaea) and his Turkish enemies in eastern Anatolia. Thus, the Crusaders had embarked on their enterprise with exquisite timing. Normally at each other’s throats in Europe, they had united militarily just as the Saljuqs had splintered into a decentralized system that resembled feudal Europe in many respects. Had the Franks invaded Syria during Malik-Shah’s reign, they might well have met with disaster. Instead, they were able to pick off the jealously independent city–states along the coast. All but the formidable Antioch proved to be relatively easy to subdue.
In addition to their rivalry with each other, petty Muslim rulers were also determined not to become subservient t
o the Great Saljuq sultan. Although theoretically still appointed to their positions by him, the local rulers of Syria were autonomous and had everything to lose by allowing troops from Esfahan to occupy their cities. The Great Saljuqs themselves were actually more interested in Iran than in Syria, but religious leaders, Sunni and Twelver Shi‘ite alike, managed to inflame public opinion against the invaders. Demonstrations in Baghdad—still the seat of the Abbasid caliphate—forced the Saljuqs to respond. Sultan Muhammad, whom we last saw as the victor in the Saljuq war of succession after the death of Malik-Shah, organized several limited campaigns against the Franks beginning in 1110. These, however, were handicapped by lukewarm support from the local rulers in Syria. In 1115, a campaign sent by the sultan actually found the Muslim princes of Damascus and Aleppo allied with the Franks against him. After this betrayal, Muhammad vowed that he would not intervene against the Franks again.
Franks through Muslim Eyes
Few Muslims, even in Andalus, had had contact with Franks prior to the era of the Crusades. A widespread assumption among educated Muslims was that the Franks must be slow witted and boorish, for they lived in a cold climate and had contributed nothing noteworthy to the sciences. Syrian Muslims who were forced to live under Frankish rule after the First Crusade found little reason to change their opinion of them. In the passage that follows, a Syrian Muslim describes the Frankish custom of trial by combat. Under this legal process, the accused could challenge his accuser to a fight, and the community believed that God would favor the righteous person. A logical extension of this theory made it possible for either party to name someone else to take his place in the combat, for God would not give the advantage to the unjust, even if he were stronger. To a Muslim acquainted with the highly developed rules of evidence and procedure in the Shari‘a, this system would seem bizarre.
I attended one day a duel in Nābulus between two Franks. The reason for this was that certain Moslem thieves took by surprise one of the villages of Nābulus. One of the peasants of that village was charged with having acted as guide for the thieves when they fell upon the village. So he fled away. The king [of Jerusalem] sent and arrested his children. The peasant thereupon came back to the king and said, “Let justice be done in my case. I challenge to a duel the man who claimed that I guided the thieves to the village.” The king then said to the tenant who held the village in fief, “Bring forth someone to fight the duel with him.” The tenant went to his village, where a blacksmith lived, took hold of him and ordered him to fight the duel. The tenant became thus sure of the safety of his own peasants, none of whom would be killed and his estate ruined.
I saw this blacksmith. He was a physically strong young man, but his heart failed him. He would walk a few steps and then sit down and ask for a drink. The one who had made the challenge was an old man, but he was strong in spirit and he would rub the nail of his thumb against that of the forefinger in defiance, as if he was not worrying over the duel. Then came the viscount …, i.e., the seignior of the town, and gave each one of the two contestants a cudgel and a shield and arranged the people in a circle around them.
The two met. The old man would press the blacksmith backward until he would get him as far as the circle, then he would come back to the middle of the arena. They went on exchanging blows until they looked like pillars smeared with blood. The contest was prolonged and the viscount began to urge them to hurry, saying, “Hurry on.” The fact that the smith was given to the use of the hammer proved now of great advantage to him. The old man was worn out and the smith gave him a blow which made him fall. His cudgel fell under his back. The smith kneld down over him and tried to stick his fingers into the eyes of his adversary, but could not do it because of the great quantity of blood flowing out. Then he rose up and hit his head with the cudgel until he killed him. They then fastened a rope around the neck of the dead person, dragged him away and hanged him. The lord who brought the smith now came, gave the smith his own mantle, made him mount the horse behind him and rode off with him. This case illustrates the kind of jurisprudence and legal decisions the Franks have—may Allah’s curse be upon them!
SOURCE: Ibn Munqidh, Usama. An Arab–Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usāmah ibn-Munqidh (Kitab al-I‘tibār). Translated by Philip K. Hitti. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 167–168.
The politics of the area was immensely complicated. Several times during the first twenty-five years of the Frankish occupation, Muslim rulers allied with one or more Frankish rulers against fellow Muslims. In addition, local communities of Nizaris gained influence with the rulers of both Aleppo and Damascus and encouraged them to cooperate with the Franks, seeing the European newcomers as tools to be deployed against both the Fatimids and the Sunni rulers. The Fatimids themselves, although in possession of the wealth of Egypt, were remarkably weak after bouts with famine and plague and the schism of 1094. They never threatened the Latin Kingdom. From the time of Badr al-Jamali (the Armenian wazir from 1073 to 1094) until the end of the Fatimid state in 1171, the authority of the caliph-Imam was minimal. Most of the caliphs were minors when they came to the throne, and they were never allowed to assume full powers. Al-Afdal, Badr’s son and successor as wazir (1094–1121), even abolished the distinctively Shi‘ite festivals and closed the Dar al-Hikma. The Fatimid state was living on borrowed time.
The Franks on the Defensive
The Franks enjoyed a period of almost half a century before they were seriously challenged. A father-and-son team of Turkish warlords built up power in northern Iraq and Syria and then captured Egypt. A protege of this family, Saladin, continued the work of centralization and captured Jerusalem from the Franks. His successors in Cairo groomed Egypt to become the preeminent power in the Sunni Muslim world for the first time.
The Zengis
In 1127, ‘Imad al-Din Zengi became the ruler of Mosul, in northern Iraq. The following year he took over Aleppo, unifying northern Iraq and northern Syria. In 1144, he attacked and captured the city of Edessa, the first of the Frankish-held cities to be retaken by Muslims. Before he could follow up on the victory, he was murdered by a Frankish slave in 1146 and his possessions were divided between his two sons. Zengi’s exploits appeared to have died with him, as his miniempire was divided once again.
The fall of Edessa prompted the call for the Second Crusade. This expedition, however, was as disastrous as the first one had been successful. Edessa proved to be impregnable, so, in 1148, the Crusaders decided to conquer Damascus. Some of the Franks who had lived in the area for years objected to the decision, because the leaders of Damascus had been in a tacit alliance with the Kingdom of Jerusalem against the Zengi family for almost a decade. The Crusaders had their way, however, and laid siege to Damascus. Now, faced with a hostile takeover by Jerusalem, the Damascenes looked to Aleppo to help them. Imad al-Din’s son, Nur al-Din Zengi, was the ruler there, and he was gratified for the opportunity to extend his influence where his father’s had never reached. When he began marching south, the Crusaders abandoned their siege. When, in 1153, the Franks of Jerusalem finally captured Ascalon from the Fatimids, Damascus voluntarily submitted to Nur al-Din for protection from the Franks.
Christian Jerusalem and Nur al-Din’s holdings in Aleppo and Damascus were now the two major powers in Syria. For either of them to dislodge the other would require the acquisition of further resources. Those resources seemed ripe for the taking in the Nile valley, where the Fatimids were growing ever weaker. Amalric, who became king of Jerusalem in 1163, made every effort to conquer Egypt, and Nur al-Din matched him step by step. Both led several expeditions into Egypt and even fought each other there. The Fatimid wazir, realizing how weak his country had become, played one power off against the other in an attempt to remain independent. He pretended to favor one side, and then the other; he promised tribute to both (and then would not pay); and he allowed envoys to view the Fatimid court ceremony, which even in the last, sad, days of t
he caliphate left observers awestruck.
Saladin
Despite the best efforts of the wazir, however, in January 1169 Nur al-Din’s army, under the general Shirkuh, gained control of Cairo. Rather than dismantling the regime immediately, Nur al-Din authorized Shirkuh to become the new Egyptian wazir. When Shirkuh died a few weeks later, his nephew Salah al-Din, better known in Europe as Saladin, took his place. For over a year and a half, Saladin ruled Egypt without deposing the irrelevant Fatimid caliph-Imam. In September 1171, the caliph-Imam died, and Saladin took over as governor of Egypt. He formalized the change in the nature of the state by ordering that the Friday services in the mosques be said in the name of the Abbasid caliph. The Fatimid empire was at an end, after over two hundred fifty years of existence.
Nur al-Din, who had expanded his power to include Mosul in 1170, was now in possession of a large empire that extended from Mosul through eastern Syria and up the Nile valley. Despite the confidence that he and his father had invested in Saladin’s family (both Shirkuh and Saladin’s father Ayyub had served as governors for the regime), he became suspicious of Saladin’s ambitions and had evidence that he was withholding tribute from Aleppo. As he was preparing a campaign to bring Saladin to heel, Nur al-Din died in Damascus in 1174, leaving Saladin the autonomous ruler of Egypt.
A History of the Muslim World to 1405 Page 31