by John Man
Or Radulph, as he is also known; in Gesta Tancredi, quoted in Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, as is Albert of Aix.
What could Muslims do? Not much. There was no hope of a united response, whether from Islam as a whole or from local princes. Every leader, Sunni or Shia, wondered if the new arrivals might perhaps be of use against their Islamic rivals. Every town was on its own, and the only way to survive was to flee or to fawn: ‘Kiss any arm you cannot break’, in the words of a popular proverb. Delegates arrived bringing gifts of gold, jewellery and horses, hoping to bribe the ‘Franj’ either to become an ally or to move on in peace.
So the Franks advanced, with almost no opposition, to the walls of Jerusalem, which they assaulted for a month with two siege-towers and fourteen stone-throwing catapults. In mid-July 1099, they took the city, with terrible consequences for the place they claimed to venerate. In an outpouring of xenophobia and greed, all suffered – Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christians. The Crusaders sacked the Dome of the Rock (sometimes wrongly called the Mosque of Umar, the second successor of the Prophet). They expelled from the Holy Sepulchre all eastern Christians – Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Copts and Syrians – who had shared the place for centuries. There followed the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of men, women and children. ‘Some of the pagans were mercifully beheaded,’ wrote the chronicler Raymond d’Aguilers. ‘Others pierced by arrows plunged from towers, and yet others, tortured for a long time, were burned to death in searing flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet lay in the houses and streets, and indeed there was a running to and fro of men and knights over the corpses.’ The mob of Crusaders, apparently berserk with bloodlust, burned the main synagogue around a mass of Jews hoping for sanctuary. Afterwards, Muslim survivors were forced to drag the bodies outside the walls, where they made piles ‘as big as houses’.
In early August, the newly appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem, Arnulf, made the discovery that all Christians wanted. Arnulf needed a coup of some sort. He and others had been doubtful about the previous ‘discovery’ of the Holy Lance in Antioch. Peter had countered the doubters with more visions, and finally with an offer to undergo an ordeal by fire, the idea being that if he was telling the truth, the fire would not touch him. The flames did what flames do. Scorched almost to death, and then mobbed by a crowd, Peter said Christ himself had actually protected him and blamed the crowd for his burns. He died twelve days later. After that, the Holy Lance lost its holiness, leaving the Crusaders without a talisman. The only one that really mattered now was the True Cross, which supposedly lay somewhere in the Holy Sepulchre, of which Arnulf was the guardian. Only the Greek Orthodox priests knew where it was, and they weren’t telling. Arnulf had them tortured until they did. The True Cross, as it was called – though it was in fact a piece of wood embedded in a gold-and-silver cross – became the most sacred relic of the Christian Holy Land. It was their object of power, to be displayed at the head of armies as if it were some sort of secret weapon.
No one seems to have known what was supposed to happen next. Most Crusaders trickled homewards, but many stayed, as soldiers helping to subdue other cities and as citizens of four ‘Latin’ statelets: Edessa, Antioch and Jerusalem, plus Jerusalem’s semi-independent offshoot, Tripoli. So by 1110 the four colonies controlled the coastal bits of present-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel by means of thirty-six formidable castles, which dominated the ports and trade routes.
Turks or Arabs at first saw the Crusaders as animals, drunk on a brew of religious zeal, bloodlust, xenophobia and greed. Devout Muslims demanded holy war, jihad. ‘Do you not owe an obligation to God and Islam?’ an anonymous poet begged the reluctant sultans.5 ‘Respond to God! Woe to you! Respond!’ But hatred and despair achieved nothing, because emotion was not focused by leadership. Despite overwhelming numbers and several counter-attacks, nothing worked, for many reasons – bad luck, treachery, lack of courage, lack of leadership – the main one being that, frankly, most Muslim leaders had better things to do fighting each other. Better a Christian than a heretic, better a Christian buffer state than a rival Muslim neighbour. ‘The sultans did not agree among themselves,’ wrote the historian Ali ibn al-Athir, ‘and it was for this reason that the Franj were able to seize control.’
Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, p.70.
The response, when it came, was not a holy war, more an unholy peace. Both sides accommodated. The Franks employed locals, introduced a form of feudalism that promoted mutual responsibilities, adopted the local dress and cuisine, and married into local families. Each side sought alliance with the other, each mini-state squabbled with others, each had its disputes over succession. Much changed superficially, and nothing changed fundamentally. By the time of Saladin’s birth in 1137–8, almost forty years after the loss of Jerusalem, hatred of the Franks had been diluted by both complacency – since many ordinary Arabs preferred the Franks to their own grasping and unreliable leaders – and a growing belief that no great leader would arise to heal Muslim rivalries and drive the Franks into the sea.
2
A Teenager in Damascus
WHAT BROUGHT ONE-YEAR-OLD YUSUF – SALADIN AS HE would become – to Baalbek?
He was born in Tikrit, in present-day Iraq, now famous as the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. His father Ayyub was there because his father, a Kurd from Armenia, had sought a better life in Baghdad, the capital of the decaying Abbasid Empire, now under new Turkish rulers, the Seljuks. Ayyub’s father was appointed governor of Tikrit, a position inherited by Ayyub, who was therefore governor when, in the 1130s, civil war broke out between the Seljuks. One of the participants was a bristly bearded, heavy-drinking, brutal and erratic Turk named Imad al-Din (‘Pillar of the Faith’) Zangi,6 who had won the governorship of Aleppo and Mosul (today’s northern Iraq and northern Syria) in earlier, more stable times. He was more than the sum of his faults, also being austere, immensely tough, a leader who identified with his state, and a strict disciplinarian who knew how to win respect from ordinary soldiers. He was not interested in luxury. When he arrived at a city, he would disdain its palaces and sleep outside the city walls in a tent. No wonder one chronicler, al-Athir, overlooked his faults and called him ‘the gift of divine providence to the Muslims’. He would become a vital link in the chain of events leading to Saladin’s rise.
Or Zengi. As usual, transcriptions vary.
Character is not always destiny, but it was in the case of Zangi and Ayyub. In 1132, Zangi fought and lost a battle near Tikrit. Wounded, he needed help to get back to his power-base in Aleppo. Ayyub might have stuck with his masters in Baghdad and handed Zangi over. But he didn’t. Perhaps it was his innate generosity, perhaps some political insight that guided him, for he was, in the chronicler Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad’s words, an ‘honourable, generous and good man’. In any event, he treated Zangi’s wounds and ferried him and his army to safety across the river Tigris, allowing him to set himself up in Aleppo.
We still need to know why Ayyub left Tikrit. Ayyub had a brother named Shirkuh (Asad al-Din Shirkuh), a fine soldier but rather quick-tempered, who killed a man in a quarrel. As a target for the enraged family, he had to get out, fast. Ayyub backed him and the two fled together, with their families. Tradition has it that they left on the very night of Saladin’s birth on some unrecorded day in 532 AH (September 1137–September 1138). The following year, with the two brothers by his side, Zangi, eager to extend his power-base, added to Baalbek’s ruins by bombarding the city with fourteen giant catapults. He promised to spare the garrison if they surrendered, then broke his word by crucifying thirty-seven of them. Whatever his faults, though, Zangi was not one to forget a generous action. He made Ayyub the town’s governor and Shirkuh an army officer in Aleppo, where he rose rapidly to become Zangi’s top general.
Meanwhile, what of the new alien menace, the Crusaders? Zangi was the only one willing to confront them. Over almost two decades, he
had several minor successes and in 1144 a major one, with consequences far beyond the world of Islam.
Edessa (today’s Urfa, in Turkey), whose 10,000 inhabitants were mostly Armenian Orthodox Christians, had been in Frankish hands for half a century. It lay in a steep valley, with its walls running between hills. Its ruler was Joscelin II, who was notorious for his ugliness – short, with a big nose and bulging eyes – and lack of military skills. Towards the end of 1144, he took a small force on a raid along the Euphrates, opening a route to Edessa. Zangi, eager to expand his empire into Christian lands, took advantage of this and led his army to besiege the city. Since the only occupants were (as the Syrian bishop Abu’l-Faraj put it) ‘shoemakers, weavers, silk merchants, tailors and priests’, the city’s most senior officials were three bishops – Frankish, Armenian and Abu’l-Faraj himself. Zangi was keen to get a surrender before Joscelin returned. His troops began to undermine the walls. Joscelin, having discovered the situation, had no intention of tangling with Zangi’s superior force until he got more help from some other Christian state, Antioch or Jerusalem. In several letters, Zangi repeated his message to the dithering bishops: ‘O, unfortunate people! You can see that all hope is lost. What do you want? What can you still expect? Have pity on yourselves, your women and your homes! Act now, that your city may not be devastated and emptied of its inhabitants!’ No help came for Joscelin, or from him to his city. Zangi’s sappers continued their work, removing all the foundations of the north wall and replacing them with immense quantities of wood doused with inflammable animal fat, sulphur and naphtha. The fire started, smoke blanketed the city, the wall collapsed, the Turks fought their way in over the rubble and began to kill. Over 5,000 died, says Abu’l-Faraj (though all figures should be seen as approximate, and were often exaggerated to serve the agendas of the writers). The women and children fled to an upper citadel, only to find the door barred, because the Frankish bishop had ordered the guards to open it only to him in person. In the panic, many were trampled to death. ‘It was a lamentable and horrifying spectacle: about 5,000 people, perhaps more, died atrociously, twisted, suffocating, pressed together in a single compact mass.’ Zangi intervened personally to stop the killing, and sent a message to Abu’l-Faraj, offering peace in exchange for the city. ‘You know very well that this city was a thriving metropolis during the 200 years that the Arabs governed it. Today, the Franj have occupied it for just 50 years, and already they have ruined it.’ There was no choice, and Zangi was free to assert his will. While the Syrians and Armenians – the original residents – were allowed to return to their homes,
everything was taken from the Franj: gold, silver, holy vases, chalices, patens, ornamented crucifixes, and great quantities of jewels. The priests, nobles and notables were taken aside, stripped of their robes, and led away in chains to Aleppo. Of the rest, the artisans were identified, and Zangi kept them as prisoners, setting each to work at his craft. All the other Franj, about 100 men, were executed.
News of the victory took the Arab world by storm, proving that the enemy could be beaten, inspiring talk of the re-conquest of Jerusalem. Zangi was the hero of the hour, being granted a string of titles by the caliph in Baghdad: victorious king, ornament of Islam, and many more. There would also be interesting consequences when the news reached Europe.
But Zangi had no time to do more, because two years later he was killed by one of his own slaves. He was the fifth of Aleppo’s rulers in thirty-two years to die by violence, but unlike the previous four there was no political motive. According to one account – there were several – he was besieging a fortress, Qal’at Jabr,7 in September 1146. He awoke from a drunken sleep to see the slave, a eunuch named Yarankash, snatching a surreptitious glass of wine. Zangi angrily swore he would punish him the next day, and went back to sleep. To avoid punishment, Yarankash stabbed his master and fled to safety. But Zangi was not dead. An aide found him, and reported, ‘when he saw me the atabeg [ruler] thought I had come to finish him off, and with a gesture of his finger, he asked for the coup de grâce. Choked with emotion, I fell to my knees and said to him, “Master, who did this to you?” But he was unable to answer, and gave up his soul, may God have mercy on him.’
The ruins of pink bricks jut up from a rocky hillock which is now a peninsula in a vast reservoir on the Euphrates, finished in 1974 and named Lake Assad after Syria’s then ruler.
At once, Zangi’s main rival – Unar, who had just appointed himself the new boss of Damascus – took advantage and besieged Baalbek. Ayyub, still officially the city’s governor, had no choice but to hand it over in exchange for a lesser position as administrator of some villages near Damascus. It was to Damascus, therefore, that Yusuf now moved with his family, at the age of nine, and there that he spent his teenage years.
Of Zangi’s three sons, the youngest one was the star. The oldest, Sayf al-Din, inherited the eastern half of Zangi’s realm, centred on Mosul (basically today’s northern Iraq), which would one day be inherited by the middle son, Qutb. That left the western half (northern Syria) and its capital Aleppo to the brilliant and very appealing Nur al-Din.
Nur al-Din (‘Light of Religion’) had the piety, reserve and sense of justice that made him a natural leader. He had his father’s positive qualities – austerity, courage, statesmanship – but none of his cruelty and lack of scruples. He looked the part as well. At twenty-nine, he was, in al-Athir’s pen-portrait, ‘a tall, swarthy man with a beard but no moustache, a fine forehead and a pleasant appearance enhanced by beautiful, melting eyes.’ The father got his way with fear; the third son with intelligence, high-mindedness and patience. In terms of today’s leadership theory, he was an exponent of ‘soft power’. Al-Athir said that, of all Islam’s rulers, excluding of course the first caliphs,8 ‘I have found no man as virtuous and just as Nur al-Din.’
Who were traditionally above criticism.
So it was Nur al-Din who took on the role of holy warrior, aiming to finish his father’s work, building a Sunni state that would confront the Franks, retake Jerusalem and crush the European infidels. To do this he became a master of propaganda, employing several hundred scholars to produce poems, letters and books to sway public opinion. He knew the publicity value of his own personality, carefully spreading stories about himself as the fount and origin of the qualities he admired: austerity, low taxes, dedication to Islam, generosity, charity. Ibn al-Athir tells one of these stories:
Nur al-Din’s wife once complained that she did not have enough money to provide adequately for his needs. He had assigned her three shops which he owned in Homs; these generated about 20 dinars a year. When she found that this was not enough, he retorted: ‘I have nothing else. With all the money I command, I am but the treasurer of the Muslims, and I have no intention of betraying them, nor of casting myself into hell on your account.’
He bought his own food and clothing rather than relying on servants, respected Islamic law without being a fanatic, and often risked his life in battle, always carrying two bows. There was no denying his commitment or his effectiveness. His first major action was to nip in the bud a Christian attempt to retake Edessa, a move that prompted the city’s governor to give Nur al-Din his daughter in marriage. He was a worthy predecessor, even a role model, for the young man who would become his protégé, Saladin.
The connection was close, for when Nur al-Din arrived in Aleppo to assume his share of his father’s estate in September 1146 he brought with him Saladin’s uncle, Shirkuh.
Damascus was the first Islamic capital outside Saudi Arabia, taken over by the Prophet’s successors in the seventh century to secure Islam’s frontier with Christian Byzantium. It is not an obvious place for a capital – not central, not on a great river, no access to the coast. But nature and the weight of history made up for its lack of strategic advantages.
Close by the city, to the north, reared the angular 1,100-metre peak of Mount Qasiyoun, where Abraham had been born, in a cave which now lay beneath a mosque – so t
he Andalusian traveller ibn Jubayr reported anyway. It was also on this mountain that Cain killed his brother Abel, an event recalled then and now by the so-called Cave of Blood. Prophets used to climb the mountain to make their ascent to heaven. On the horizon to the south-west was the snow-capped ridge of Mount Hermon, Syria’s highest point at 2,814 metres, and also the site of the highest shrine of the ancient world.
Damascus’s immediate surroundings were a joy, in contrast to the desolation further out. Whether you approached from the north and west, following the gorge where the Barada river, the city’s lifeblood, tumbled from the forbidding Anti-Lebanon mountains and fanned out into seven branches; or from the south, across a lava wilderness and the cores of dead volcanoes; or from the east across a monochrome desert – from all directions you were relieved to reach a huge oasis, the Ghouta, which encircled the city with villages, rivers, canals, orchards and fields. Damascus was always famous for its water-supply. In the Bible, when Naaman is told by the prophet Elisha to bathe in the Jordan to heal his leprosy, he replies angrily, ‘Are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?’9 According to ibn Jubayr, the greenery was ‘like a halo round the moon’, or, as the historian Philip Hitti puts it, the city was ‘set like a pearl in the emerald girdle of its gardens’.
Well, no, they weren’t actually. He did as he was told, bathed instead in the river Jordan, and was cured (II Kings, 5.12–14).
A pearl is an apt image. To modern eyes, the city was tiny, an oblong a mere 2 kilometres long and one across. It was its compactness that made it so appealing, with its canals, houses of wood and mud-brick, close-packed alleyways and markets, and crowds pressing through the eight gates in the strong walls.
At its heart stood the superb Umayyad Mosque (or Great Mosque), which is still one of the wonders of the city, and of all Islam. The 15-hectare rectangle had been a place of pagan worship for 1,000 years, then in succession a Roman temple and a Christian cathedral dedicated to John the Baptist, making it a perfect site for the eighth-century sultan al-Walid to proclaim the dominance of Islam over all other religions. His creation is still the fourth in holiness after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Employing a multinational workforce of 12,000, al-Walid rebuilt the whole thing, creating three naves, a transept, a vast courtyard, colonnades, arches and a great dome, all decorated with mosaics in gold and – in ibn Jubayr’s words – ‘all kinds of remarkable colours in the pattern of plants throwing out branches and arranged amongst the gold stones with the most wonderful of exquisite work that it is impossible to describe, and that dazzles the eye with its brightness and lustre.’ Ibn Jubayr often says he was overwhelmed by this or that glory, claiming to be speechless, incapable or incompetent. He lacks words for what he sees, and then lacks words to describe his own inadequacy. Here, praise is heightened by self-denigration: overwhelming, awe-inspiring, miraculously executed, so grand as to beggar description, words cannot express, etc., etc. But in this case, he had good reason for awe and humility. In the vestibule a fountain spouted water like silver wands. The portico contained a unique clock of twelve doors, each of which opened in turn to mark the hour, the action being dependent on two brass falcons which dropped balls into bowls, while out of sight an attendant collected the balls and put them back where they came from. Each door had a perforated disc above it, and at night a lamp shone through each in turn, being moved from disc to disc by a water-powered mechanism. A shrine to John the Baptist, which supposedly contained his head, was the focus of special worship, since he is honoured in Islam as well as in Christianity. Ibn Jubayr was particularly struck by the main dome. With a party of other travellers, he mounted stairs to the roof and, ‘nearly carried away by giddiness’, circled the lead-covered dome on a platform – eighty paces around, about three-quarters the size of the dome of St Paul’s. He then climbed inside the dome through a narrow entrance, to find that it was a double dome, ‘a spectacle that sends the senses reeling’, the inner one being of wood bound with iron, with windows into the interior through which the men on the floor far below seemed as small as boys.