by Tariq Ali
An attendant proffered a silver plate with salt. Bertrand took a pinch and placed it on his tongue.
“Now you may speak, Bertrand of Toulouse,” said the Sultan, simultaneously signalling that the Frank should be seated.
Bertrand spoke Arabic in a harsh, guttural voice, but the smiles soon disappeared as his impressive command of our language became clear to all present.
“I am grateful to Your Majesty for receiving me so soon after my arrival, and for taking me on trust. I am indeed Bertrand of Toulouse, a member of the Order of the Knights Templar, and for the past five years I have been with my Order in Jerusalem, which you call al-Kuds. We were under the command of our King Amalric, who is as well known to the Sultan as you are to him.
“What you are all wondering is why I have twice risked my life to escape from my kingdom and to enter yours. The first time was by fleeing from my Order under cover of darkness two nights ago. I was nearly captured, and the price of freedom is this wound on my face. The sword which marked me belonged to a knight who was close to the Grand Master himself. The second risk was to be killed by your men, who might not have been patient enough to either ask questions or to wait for my response. Speaking your language, even though I do so imperfectly and with much hesitation, helped me to survive the journey and to reach your court safely.
“Let me begin my story with a confession. In the eyes of my Church, I am a heretic. If heresy is another way of expressing the struggle for the real God, then I am a heretic and proud of the fact.
“I come from a small village near Toulouse, and it was there that I came under the influence of a preacher who denounced our Church and preached a new vision of God. He used to say that churches lacked congregations, that congregations lacked priests, that priests lacked reverence and virtue and, lastly, that Christians lacked Christ. He used to say that there were two Gods, a good God and an evil God, and that there was a permanent struggle between these two powers which were both eternal and equal.
“He used to say that the Holy Trinity of the Christians was a manifestation of evil; the Holy Ghost represented the spirit of evil, the Son was the son of perdition, and the Father was none other than Satan himself. He used to say that there were two Christs. The Christ in the celestial spheres was good, but the Christ on earth was evil. He used to say that Mary Magdalene was the earthly Christ’s concubine, and that John the Baptist was a forerunner of the Anti-Christ. The Devil was Christ’s younger brother and the cross was God’s enemy, a symbol of pain and torture. As such, it was an icon that should be destroyed rather than worshipped.
“Our entire village, some three hundred souls in all, joined this preacher and helped spread the word to neighbouring villages. To their amazement, they discovered that others had been there before them. We soon learnt that the Counts of Toulouse were sympathetic to these ideas, and this knowledge strengthened our village’s resolve. When I was fifteen years old, almost exactly fifteen years ago to this month, we tore down every cross we could find. We either set them on fire or used the wood to fashion tools that could be of use to the village. This single act made us worse than demons and vampires, for these creatures of the dark are supposedly frightened by the cross, whereas we heretics were brazen beyond belief.
“In our sect, there are three stages of becoming a True Believer. We start off as Listeners, imbibing the new Truth and learning the dual art of debate and dissembling in relation to our Christian opponents. The next stage is that of a Believer. Now we have to prove ourselves by winning new adherents to our cause. After we have won fifty new Listeners, we become known as the Perfecti and can participate in the election of a Council of Five, which makes all the important decisions.
“I am a Perfectus. I was asked by the Council to penetrate the Order of Knights Templar, to dissemble and to win them over to our cause. Constantinople had urged the Grand Master to burn the bitter and evil falsehoods of the heretics in the fire of truth, and our Council felt we should be represented inside this Order so as to warn our followers of impending doom.
“Excessive fornication and the consumption of alcohol is not permitted by our Council. They believe that drink and carnality weakens our resolve and makes us vulnerable.
“I was betrayed by a Listener, who was in his cups and, unaware of the presence of the Master’s henchmen, was boasting wildly of our successes. I was not made aware of this till he was in prison suffering torture. Because of our method of organisation, he could only name me and two others.
“I am told the Grand Master was outraged when I was so named. He refused to believe that this could be true. Fortunately I was warned of all this by a Believer in the Grand Master’s entourage. I knew I was being observed and I broke off all contact with our people. After a few days, I was detained and subjected to five hours of continual question by the Grand Master. I denied all knowledge of the Council and expressed my full confidence in the Churches of Rome and Constantinople. I thought I had convinced them, since they released me. They appeared to stop following me and watching my every move.
“There were three other Perfecti in Jerusalem. We met one night and they advised me to leave and seek refuge in Cairo. I woke before sunrise the next morning, and was saddling my horse, when I was challenged by a knight. He had his own suspicions of me. He used a secret word which is only known to our sect. It was clear that he had obtained it by torturing the three Believers. It caught me unprepared and I responded before I could see his face in the dark. He drew his sword. I killed him, but not before he had marked my face. I rode like the wind, Your Majesty. If I had been caught, they would have killed me in the most ugly fashion.
“That is the end of my story, and I am now at the mercy of the great Sultan Salah al-Din, whose generosity is known to all the world.”
While Bertrand of Toulouse had been speaking only three faces had remained impassive. These belonged to the Sultan, Qara Kush and al-Fadil. As for the rest of the company, and here I must include myself, we had been actively exchanging glances. The description of the heresy had seen several hands going to their respective beards. These had been nervously stroked, as if to quell the agitation disturbing their owners’ heads.
“We have listened to you with great interest, Bertrand of Toulouse,” said the Sultan. “Are you prepared to be questioned by our scholars?”
“With great pleasure, Your Highness.”
It was the Kadi who asked the first question, this time in a honeyed voice.
“What the Church regards as your heresy is your opposition to the Holy Trinity and your hostility to icons. Our Prophet, too, did not favour the worship of icons or images. Have you ever studied the Koran? Do you know the message of our Prophet, peace be upon him?”
Bertrand of Toulouse did not flinch.
“One advantage you possess over all others is the impossibility for any person to doubt the existence of your Prophet. He was very real and, therefore, it is not possible to ascribe dual features to him. He lived. He married. He fathered children. He fought. He conquered. He died. His history is known. This magnificent city and all of you are one of the consequences of your Prophet’s remarkable vision.
“Of course I have studied the Koran, and there is much in it with which I agree, but, if I may speak frankly, it appears to me that your religion is too close to earthly pleasures. Because you realised that you could not live by the Book alone, you encouraged the invention of the hadith to help you govern the Empires you had gained. But is it not the case that many of these hadith contradict each other? Who decides what you believe?”
“We have scholars who work on nothing else but the hadith,” replied the Sultan quickly. He did not want his Kadi to dominate the discussion. “As a young man I studied the hadith with great joy and care. I agree with you. They are open to many interpretations. That is why we have the ulema to ascertain the degree of their accuracy. We need them, Bertrand of Toulouse, we need them. Without these traditions, our religion could not be a complete code of existenc
e.”
“Can any religion ever become a complete code of life when, within the ranks of the Believers, there is such disparity in interpretation? The followers of the Fatimid Caliphs, to take the most recent example, do not share your beliefs or those of the Caliph in Baghdad. The same applies to our religion or that of the Jews. He who rules, makes the rules.”
“You truly are a heretic, my friend,” laughed Salah al-Din, indicating that any of those present could speak to Bertrand if they so wished.
An old man, a much-respected scholar from al-Azhar, rose. He spoke in a weak and husky voice, barely above a whisper, but so great was his authority that everyone strained to hear each word.
“With the Sultan’s gracious permission, I would like to explain one fact to our visitor. The greatest fear that haunts each human being, regardless of his religion, is the fear of death. It is a fear which oppresses us all. Every time we bathe and enshroud a corpse, we see in it our own future. In the days of Ignorance, and long before even that, this fear was so strong that many people preferred not to accept death as real, but to see it as a journey to another world. Islam has broken this fear of death. That alone could be counted as one of our great achievements, for without breaking this fear we cannot move forward. We are held back. It was our Prophet who understood the importance of this question before all else. That is why, Bertrand of Toulouse, our soldiers reached the edge of this continent and the heart of yours. That is why nothing can stop this Sultan from taking al-Kuds, your so-called Kingdom of Jerusalem.”
Then Qara Kush spoke.
“With the Sultan’s permission, I would like to ask Bertrand of Toulouse a single question. What in your opinion, O brave knight, is the single most important difference between your beliefs and those of our Prophet?”
There was not a moment’s hesitation on Bertrand’s part.
“Fornication.”
There were several gasps amongst the scholars, but Salah al-Din smiled.
“Explain yourself, Bertrand of Toulouse.”
“Only at Your Majesty’s insistence. Ever since I came to these parts and learnt your language, I have been studying the hadith and also certain commentaries on the Koran. It appears to me that fornication, and the rules under which it should or should not take place, has occupied the Prophet and his followers a great deal. In your Koran, if my memory is correct, the sura entitled ‘The Cow’ overturns the traditional Arab taboo on coitus during fasting.
“Some of the hadith record the Prophet as saying that your Allah had preordained the share of every man’s copulation, which he will do as fate requires. Each indulgence is thus predestined. The old scholar has just explained that your religion has removed the fear of death from the minds of its adherents. Is this not, at least partially, related to your conception of the Paradiso? Your heaven is the most voluptuous of all. Are not your knights who fall while fighting the jihad promised the most delicious pleasures in heaven? Erections which last for eternity and an unlimited number of houris to choose from, while they sip from rivers heavy with wine. Your heaven removes all earthly prohibitions. In these circumstances, only a man who had lost possession of his senses would fear death. All this flows from the self-confidence of your Prophet. He was a man of few doubts. Is it not the case that when your Prophet died, his son-in-law Ali cried out—and here Your Highness will forgive me since I only know the words in Latin—‘O propheta, O propheta, et in morte penis tuus coelum versus erectus est.’”
The Sultan frowned, till the Kadi whispered a translation in his ear.
“The Frank refers to Ali’s remark, as he gazed on the dead body of our Prophet: ‘O prophet, O prophet, even in death your penis is erect and pointing to the heavens.’”
Salah al-Din roared with laughter.
“Our Prophet was made of flesh and blood, Bertrand of Toulouse. His virility was never in doubt. Even his sword was known as al-Fehar, the one that flashes. Our prophet was a complete man. We are all proud of his activities. It was only because we held on to the stirrup of our Prophet that Allah has rewarded our people. Would that we ordinary mortals were as blessed as our Prophet so that even in death he pointed towards heaven. I think, however, that you are wrong. The driving force of our religion is not fornication, but the relation between God and the Believer. If you wish you could say that our way of looking at the world is perhaps too much influenced by merchants and traders. You look surprised. It could be argued that Allah is like a master-merchant and everything in this world is part of his reckoning. All is counted. All is measured. Life is a trade in which there are gains and losses. He who does good earns good, and he who does evil earns evil, even on earth. The Believer provides Allah with a loan; he is in other words paying in advance for a place in our Muslim paradise. At the final reckoning Allah has a book of accounts from which the deeds of men are read and carefully weighed. Each is paid what is his due. This is our religion. It shows the influence of our world. A real world. It speaks a language which is easily comprehensible and that is the reason for its success.
“Enough of theology for one evening. Let us eat and drink. Tomorrow you will inform us of Amalric’s plans, and we shall ask you many searching questions about the towers and battlements of al-Kuds. My emirs, you will discover, are less polite than our scholars.”
THIRTEEN
Shadhi tests the Cathar hostility to fornication by spying on Bertrand of Toulouse; Jamila recounts how Salah al-Din defied the traditions of the Prophet by spilling his seed on her stomach
SHADHI AND I HAD just finished eating and were relishing the morning in the palace courtyard, bathed in the sunshine of early spring. He had been talking of the military secrets that Bertrand of Toulouse had brought with him and which were now lodged safely in the Sultan’s head. He did not enlighten me as to the nature of this information, except to wink and whisper that al-Kuds was already as good as ours.
The meeting had been confined to the Sultan, six of his most trusted emirs, and Shadhi, who had really taken to the Frankish knight. He had tried to convince him that there was sham and superstition in every religion, and corruption in each of the sects that composed any religion. False prophets and rhetoricians could be bought in the bazaar of Cairo or Damascus. The Frank had refused to accept that the Cathars—the name given to them by the Church—were degenerate in any way.
Shadhi had attempted to test the Cathar hostility to fornication. He sent one of the most beautiful serving-women from the harem, who was also one of the wiliest, to tempt the virtue of the knight. Shadhi had promised her rich rewards if she was successful. Bertrand, to Shadhi’s exasperation, had resisted her charms and had firmly, but nicely, propelled the woman from his chamber. Shadhi’s devious brain was now preparing another trial for the Sultan’s most welcome guest. From a special brothel reserved exclusively for the nobility, a young male prostitute had been borrowed for the night and, since Shadhi had entrusted the master cook with his idea, news of the plan had spread throughout the palace.
Nowhere was tomorrow’s dawn so eagerly anticipated as in the harem, and it was in that direction that Shadhi pushed me after we had digested our meal. In response to a request from the Sultana Jamila, he had obtained the Sultan’s permission for her and Halima to meet me for a short time in a special chamber adjoining the harem. It was there that he led me, muttering and grimacing at the eunuchs, whose numbers increased as we neared the site of the harem.
Halima smiled to acknowledge my presence. It was no ordinary smile. It lit her entire face, causing my heart to quicken, even though the cause of her happiness was not the sight of this tired scribe, but the woman who stood at her side. It was the Sultana Jamila. She was a striking woman. Of that there could now be no doubt. I was observing her with my own eyes. She was taller than the Sultan. The hair on her head matched the blackness of her eyelashes, her thick, arched eyebrows and lustrous eyes. She was dark-skinned, just as Halima had described, but there was something about the way she moved, the way she met my gaze, and
the way she spoke, which displayed a sense of confidence and authority not usually associated with the women in the harem—or at least, that is what I thought at the time. I was wrong, of course. The portrait painted by Halima and Jamila of their secluded quarters was to banish the old images from my mind for ever.
Jamila looked at me knowingly and smiled, as if to say: mind yourself, scribe, this young girl has told me all I need to know about you. I bowed to their presence, which made Halima laugh.
“Ibn Yakub,” said Jamila, and though her voice was soft and unbroken, it possessed an easy confidence due, I suppose, to the fact that she was the daughter of one sultan and married to another. “How did Bertrand of Toulouse describe the corpse of our Prophet, peace be upon him? I ask you since you were present on that occasion. You may repeat the words in Latin, a language with which I am familiar.”
I was speechless with embarrassment. It was not the question I had expected. Halima smiled reassuringly, nodding at me to encourage a response. I repeated the words ascribed to Ali by Bertrand in Latin. Jamila translated them for Halima and both women shrieked with laughter.
“Is it also true that the Frank regarded our religion as being too concerned with the details of fornication?”
I shook my head in affirmation.
They laughed again. I could not help observing the demeanour of these two women as they laughed and joked with each other. It was like the happiness of lovers during the first few months of bliss. It was strange to see the strong-willed Halima completely enthralled by this enchantress from the Yemen, who was now speaking to me again.
“Was Salah al-Din amused by Bertrand’s observation?”
“He was, noble lady. He laughed and proclaimed that it was an honour for the Believers to have had such a strong and virile Prophet. A man in every sense of the word. He even mentioned the name of his sword in this regard.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” said Jamila, “for I have said the same to him for many years. Some of our scholars cook our history to make a camel taste like a lamb, which is unhealthy for the development of our intellects. Your Sultan may be well versed in the hadith, but not as well as I am. I remember one occasion, soon after I had become his wife. We were in bed and he suddenly decided to practise al-Azl, by withdrawing at the critical moment and spilling his seed on my stomach. I was slightly surprised, since the main purpose of our encounter had been for me to provide him with a son or even two.