Holy Warriors

by Jonathan Phillips

  The finer points of warfare were also of interest to Usama. His terse assessment of Frankish strategy reflected their need to preserve men and horses: “The Franks (God curse them) are of all men the most cautious in war.”23 This was also a strategy born out of bitter experience. On several occasions the Christians’ excitement caused them to chase Muslim forces, apparently fleeing in disarray, only for the “defeated” enemy to turn, encircle their pursuers, and slaughter them. On a personal level Usama was keen to inform his audience about his own heroic achievements and to pass on tips; the list of “my favourite lance thrusts” is—to a nonexpert—perhaps a little self-referential, but it shows one measure of esteem among the military classes of the Muslim Near East.24

  Usama was also a keen recorder of medical practice. Sometimes he used his observations to ridicule the barbaric Franks—although it is striking that he often followed a ghastly or risible example of ill-treatment with something more sober or practical; in other words, he wrote in a series of antitheses that should not be broken up.25 Usama reported that a Frankish physician intervened in the treatment of a knight with an abscess on his leg and a woman afflicted with “imbecility.” He asked the knight,

  “Which would you like better: living with one leg or dying with both?” “Living with one leg,” replied the knight. The physician then said: “Bring me a strong knight and a sharp axe.” The physician laid the leg of the patient on a block of wood . . . and [the knight] struck him—I’m telling you I watched him do it—with one blow, but it didn’t chop the leg all the way off. So he struck him a second time, but the marrow flowed out of the leg and he died instantly. He then examined the woman and said: “This woman, there is a demon inside her head that has possessed her. Shave off her hair.” So they shaved her head. The woman then returned to eating their usual diet—garlic and mustard. As a result her dryness of humours [“imbecility”] increased. So the physician said, “That demon has entered further into her head.” So he took a razor and made a cut in her head in the shape of a cross. He then peeled back the skin so that the skull was exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman died instantaneously.26

  Easy as it is to mock these episodes they were followed by two stories of successful treatments: first, for the healing of wounds using vinegar; second for dealing with sores caused by scrofula, using a Frankish recipe.27 In fact, the physician who told Usama of these excruciating treatments was an Eastern Christian himself; indeed, it was often the indigenous Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, who had the most advanced medical knowledge. The works of the great classical author Galen had survived in Arabic, rather than Latin, and formed a basis for much contemporary treatment. It was undoubtedly true that, initially at least, the Franks lagged behind the locals; indeed, they often employed them at their own courts. Yet the newcomers began to assimilate eastern practices with their own techniques and in the case of the great hospital of the Knights of Saint John in Jerusalem (which could accommodate up to two thousand people in extreme emergencies), there was a marked improvement in the standards of medical practice, which, in turn, found their way back to Europe.28

  By the mid-1170s Usama had joined Saladin’s service and the poet’s son, Murhaf, became a close companion of the sultan and joined him on campaign. His aging father was, initially at least, very well treated. The sultan showed him great generosity, and Usama, in return, wrote in praise of his military strength, his achievements as the champion of Sunni orthodoxy, and his benevolence: “the sultan of Islam and the Muslims! Unifier of the creed of faith by his light, subjugator of the worshippers of the cross by his might, raiser of the banner of justice and right. The reviver of the dynasty of the Commander of the Faithful.”29

  Saladin sought Usama’s advice on warfare and, of course, adab. It is an interesting thought that some of the sultan’s famously courteous behavior could have been learned from the well-traveled poet of Shaizar. Usama’s work was popular at court and he regaled gatherings of the ruling household with his compositions. It was in this period that Usama wrote his major poetry anthology—The Kernels of Refinement—and The Book of Contemplation.30 Yet all was not well. If one reached the age of forty, then one was esteemed in the Islamic world, but by this time Usama was into his eighties. He felt that he had overstayed his time: “my life has been so prolonged that the revolving days have taken from me all the objects of pleasure.” He continued:

  Even as I write, my lines seem troubled

  Like the writing of one with hands terror-stricken, palsied

  I wonder at this feebleness in my hands as they lift up a pen

  When previously they had shattered spears in the hearts of lions.

  If I walk, it is with cane in hand, bemired

  Are my legs as if I waded through a mud-soaked plain . . .

  Destiny has forsaken me, leaving me like

  An exhausted ack-camel abandoned in the wastes . . .

  A journey is coming, and its time is nigh.31

  In his final years Usama seems to have been sidelined from the court and was confined to his own house, reduced to looking back at his exciting youth and lamenting his decline. He acknowledged that God had spared him on countless occasions but now he prepared to meet his destiny. Examples of divine power suffused his writings. God intervened to save a person from death because it was not his or her time to die. God determined the destiny of all and there was no way to avoid one’s fate—Usama finally met his end in Damascus in November 1188.

  IBN JUBAYR: A SPANISH PILGRIM IN THE LANDS OF SALADIN AND THE CRUSADERS

  Just a few years before Usama’s death another celebrated poet of the Islamic world had passed through Damascus. Ibn Jubayr’s legacy offers a fascinating blend of religious devotion and sharply observed travelogue, the product of his pilgrimage to Mecca.32 His homelands were in Muslim-controlled Andalusia, but he left the great court of Granada in February 1183 and over the next two and a quarter years he passed through Ceuta in North Africa, then Sardinia, Alexandria, Cairo, down the Nile to the Red Sea, across to Mecca and Medina, over the Arabian Desert to Baghdad, up the Tigris to Mosul, over to Aleppo in northern Syria, and on to Damascus. He then stayed for thirty-two days in the kingdom of Jerusalem where he sought and secured passage home on a Genoese ship. This sailed via the Greek islands toward Sicily, but was shipwrecked outside Messina. Ibn Jubayr and his fellow passengers survived and he was able to complete his journey home on another vessel.

  One attraction of his book is its candid style: Ibn Jubayr was highly critical of numerous aspects of the Islamic Near East and scorned many of its rulers—the notable exception being Saladin, whom he regarded as a man of many splendid virtues. To read a Muslim visitor’s view of the Frankish East would be of interest in its own right but the fact that Ibn Jubayr was present in late 1184, just as the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was in the throes of an internal political crisis and facing immense pressure from the ascendant power of Saladin, makes it especially compelling. Ibn Jubayr’s book became widely admired in the Muslim world and it was copied and incorporated into the work of many later writers. They also praised his other compositions in poetry and prose; one wrote: “His reputation was immense, his good deeds many, and his fame widespread; and the incomparable story of his journey is everywhere related.”33

  Ibn Jubayr’s original career was as an administrator. One day in 1182 he was summoned by his master, the governor of Granada, who wished to dictate a letter to him. The governor offered him a glass of wine, but Ibn Jubayr followed the example of the Prophet and refused alcohol. His master was infuriated and roared: “By Allah! You will drink seven glasses!” Ibn Jubayr protested in vain but, fearful of the governor’s rage, he swallowed the forbidden liquid. Seeing his secretary’s acute distress the governor was overcome with remorse and called for some gold dinars. Seven times he filled Ibn Jubayr’s goblet with the coins and then tipped them into his gown. In spite of the fact that he had been coerced into the shameful act, the secretary resolved to use the mon
ey to make a penitential pilgrimage to Mecca to expiate his sins. As a devout Muslim Ibn Jubayr would have made this journey once in his lifetime in any case; this traumatic incident provided him with the motive and the means to accomplish it.34

  There is much in Ibn Jubayr’s writing that has the feel of an enthusiastic tourist, albeit a deeply religious one. He loathed sea travel and found parts of the land journey arduous as well; his description of luxury camel transport is heartfelt: “The best and most comfortable camel litters used are the shaqadif, and the best of those are made in the Yemen, for the travelling seats are covered with leather and are roomy. Two of them are bound together by stout ropes and put across the camel. They have supports at each corner, and on those rest a canopy. The traveller and his companion in counterpoise will thus be veiled from the blaze of the midday heat and may sit reclining and at ease beneath its covering. With his companion he may partake of food and the like, or read, when he wishes, the Koran or some other book; and who so deems it lawful to play chess may, if he wish, play his companion, for diversion and to relieve the spirit.”35 On the other hand, his comments on the heat of the Arabian Peninsula convey a tone of grim suffering: “We had lived between air that melts the body and water that turns the stomach from appetite for food.”36

  Ibn Jubayr provides a remarkably detailed description of Mecca and its environs. He took part in numerous processions and religious events and visited countless mosques, shrines, tombs, and colleges while fulfilling his spiritual obligations. Throughout these episodes one senses his devotion and can share in his pride when, for example, in the house of the Prophet’s birth he was able to press his cheek onto the marble basin that marked the place of nativity.37

  While he marveled at the heartlands of Islam, he cared little for some of its inhabitants: “This is the country of Islam most deserving a hisbah [flogging] and in this case the scourge employed should be the sword.”38 While it is true that Saladin, temporarily at least, managed to bring a semblance of political unity to the Muslim Near East, Ibn Jubayr’s comments indicate that there remained—then as now—a huge degree of sectarian tension:

  “The greater number of the people of these Hejaz and other lands are sectarians and schismatics [Shi’ites] who have no religion and have split into diverse schools of thought.”39 He also felt that women were poorly treated in Mecca: “On the whole, in comparison with the men they are wretched and cheated. They see the venerated house and may not enter it, they gaze upon the blessed Stone, but cannot touch it, and their lot is wholly one of staring and feeling the sadness that moves and holds them. . . . May God, by His grace and favour, advantage them for their sincere intentions and their faith.”40

  Ibn Jubayr was unimpressed by Baghdad, a huge city, some sections of which were in ruins. He regarded its citizens as vain and exploitative, although he admired the beauty of the women and praised the quality of the preachers and clerics. Next he traveled northwest and in the course of his journey saw flaming bitumen pits, evidence of the presence of oil in the region. It seems that he felt more comfortable in Syria, both emotionally and physically. Damascus was easily his favorite city: “the Paradise of the Orient” as he described it.41 Ibn Jubayr offers a vivid description of the Great Umayyad Mosque with its refulgent gold and green mosaics depicting buildings and plants (Islamic art should not represent humans). Even today, these entrancing works, in restored form, decorate the front of the main prayer hall. He climbed onto the great dome above the hall and marveled at its technological sophistication, and he venerated a definitive recension of the Koran, owned by the “Uthman, the third caliph of Islam and a companion of Muhammad, and sent by him to Syria.”42

  It was in Damascus that Ibn Jubayr came into close contact with members of Saladin’s court. His treatment of Saladin is, of itself, highly interesting. He was not in the sultan’s employ, unlike several other contemporary writers, such as Beha ad-Din ibn Shaddad or Imad ad-Din. The author was an outsider who had no prior obligation either to praise or to condemn the man. In the event, his opinion was overwhelmingly positive. The sultan was a gift from God, a righteous man, and Ibn Jubayr praised him for “his zeal in waging holy war against the enemies of God.”43 Saladin was energetic: never retiring to a place of rest, always ready to make his saddle his council chamber. Ibn Jubayr did not meet him in person because the sultan was besieging Kerak while the author was in Damascus; he did, however, talk to a jurist and a gathering of learned men about their leader.44 Notwithstanding his primary purpose as a travel writer Ibn Jubayr was pleased to set out stories regarding the sultan’s virtues and he provided episodes that demonstrated his magnanimity, his generosity, his impartiality, and his belief in the importance of law and justice. “May God, by His favour, grant that Islam and the Muslims may long enjoy his preservation of them.”45 Ibn Jubayr was also careful to note that the setting of the tale concerning generosity was a poetry symposium, a matter close to the author’s heart and, of course, an indication of the sultan’s cultivation and interest in adab. These positive aspects of Saladin’s rule and personality are familiar to us from the writings of other Muslim commentators and also from western sources, such as the Old French Continuation of Archbishop William of Tyre, the most important historian of the Frankish East. But Ibn Jubayr helps to confirm, if further evidence was needed, the reality of such character traits.46

  After leaving Damascus, Ibn Jubayr traveled into the kingdom of Jerusalem where he encountered a few surprises. As we shall see, in the mid-1180s Saladin launched ever more serious attacks on the Franks; indeed, as Ibn Jubayr departed from Damascus he met a returning raiding party that carried money, furniture, cattle, and huge numbers of Christian prisoners for the slave markets. This was the jihad in action and the author abandons his usual equanimity and launches into a tirade against the Franks. Of Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem he wrote: “at this place [Tibnin], customs dues are levied on the caravans. It belongs to the sow known as Queen who is the mother of the pig who is the lord of Acre—may God destroy it.”47 Yet, much to the author’s amazement, in spite of these ferocious cultural and religious confrontations, trade and pilgrimage continued.

  One of the most astonishing things that is talked of is that though the fires of discord burn between the two parties, Muslim and Christian, two armies of them may meet and dispose themselves in battle array, and yet Christian and Muslim travellers will come and go between them without interference. . . . The Christians impose a tax on the Muslims in their land which gives them full security; and likewise the Christian merchants pay a tax upon their goods in Muslim lands. . . . The soldiers engage themselves in war, while the people are at peace and the world goes to him who conquers. Such is the usage in war of the people in these lands. . . . The state of these countries in this regard is truly more astonishing than our story can convey. May God by His favour exalt the word of Islam.48

  Most disturbing to him was the Franks’ treatment of Muslims within their lands and the attitude of those Muslims who lived under Christian rule. As he moved toward the port of Acre, “our way lay through continuous farms and ordered settlements whose inhabitants were all Muslims, living comfortably with the Franks. God protect us from such temptation. They surrender half their crops to the Franks at harvest time, and pay as well a poll tax for each person. Other than that they are not interfered with, save a light tax on the fruits of trees . . . their hearts have been seduced, for they observe how unlike them in ease and comfort are their brethren in the Muslim regions. . . . The Muslim community bewails the injustice of a landlord of its own faith and applauds the conduct of its opponent and enemy, the Frankish landlord, and is accustomed to justice from him.”49

  Ibn Jubayr could barely reconcile this state of affairs with the contemporary strategic situation and he roundly condemned his coreligionists. The Franks had generally treated Muslim farmers well since the earliest years of the conquest—in large part, simply as a matter of expediency. They had tried to persuade westerners to come and settle
in the Holy Land; agents toured Europe and offered advantageous deals on tax, ownership, and status: in effect an appeal to “Go East, Young Man.” While these efforts had drawn some to a new life, the majority of the population remained either indigenous Christian or, in some districts such as that near Acre, Muslim. If the Franks had slaughtered or purged these peoples there would have been no one to farm the land and no one for them to tax; within months the economy would have collapsed. In one instance we know that Tancred of Antioch arranged for the wives of native laborers to return to their farms (now under his control) from Aleppo, where they had fled for safety. Had the Franks systematically abused their Muslim tenants there would have been a real prospect of rebellion. In fact, as Ibn Jubayr’s outraged description demonstrates, as landlords and farmers the Franks ruled the Levant successfully and, until the autumn of 1187 when Saladin’s victory was certain, only one Muslim revolt was recorded.

  Our guide described the city of Acre, one of the premier ports of the Frankish East, but at this time, a place of little distinction to him. Even allowing for Ibn Jubayr’s bias the picture is not flattering: “Its roads and streets are choked by the press of men, so that it is hard to put foot to ground. Unbelief and impiety burn there fiercely, and pigs [Christians] and crosses abound. It stinks and is filthy, being full of refuse and excrement.”50

  Amid this olfactory assault, however, the writer noted that one part of the central mosque remained for use by Muslims. In order to keep some semblance of order, the Franks allowed individual prayer by Muslims throughout their lands. What was banned, however, was the khutba, the Friday prayer meetings—in other words, communal gatherings that could have provided a primary forum to preach and to stir up discontent. From Acre, Ibn Jubayr went north to Tyre, a place that he found cleaner and friendlier to Muslims. There he witnessed a Christian wedding and, in spite of his prejudices, he could not help but be drawn into the celebration. The rich detail with which he described the event brings the ceremony vividly before us: the noise, the color, the sense of everyone sharing a joyous occasion, almost regardless of their faith. The author’s attraction to the bride was a source of particular concern to him; one can feel his cultural and religious principles reassert themselves over his more earthly emotions; a victory for the greater jihad.