Responsibility for the murder is unclear although, inevitably, Tughtigin was seen as the most likely suspect. Ibn al-Athir, writing three generations later, recounted what he had heard, probably from his father. ‘It has been said that the Btinis [Assassins] in Syria killed him because they feared him, or that Tughtakn feared him and so arranged for someone to assassinate him.’23 The Christians had no doubts. ‘Maledoctus [Mawdud],’ says Fulcher of Chartres, ‘was very rich and powerful and very renowned among the Turks. He was extremely astute in his actions but could not resist the will of God. The lord permitted him to scourge us for a while but afterwards willed that he should die a vile death and by the hand of an insignificant man.’ Fulcher claimed that Tughtakn was ‘odious’ to the Turks because he had been involved in Mawdud's murder.24 Unsurprisingly, Matthew of Edessa's view is totally uncompromising, for the bulk of the damage inflicted by Mawdud had been in the Edessan lands east of the Euphrates. Mawdud, he says, was ‘a wicked and evil beast’, who had brought about his own death by plotting to kill Tughtigin.25
Ibn al-Athir says that his father told him that Baldwin had written to Tughtigin when he heard of Mawdud's death, telling him: ‘A people that has killed its main prop on its holy day in its house of worship truly deserves that God should destroy it.’ Whether or not such a letter was ever written, Mawdud's removal certainly undermined the sultan's jihadist drive. He appointed Emir Aqsungur al-Bursuqi as governor of Mosul and sent his son, Mas'ud, ‘at the head of a vast army, and ordered him to fight the Franks. All the emirs were instructed by letter that they should obey him.’ The result was another large-scale attack on Edessa in April and May 1115, causing further damage to the surrounding environment. However, al-Bursuqi was a much weaker vessel than Mawdud. Soon after the Edessan campaign he confronted one of his rivals in Mesopotamia, Il-Ghazi ibn-Artuq of Mardin, over his failure to take part, and was defeated in battle. The sultan was much angered and his threats to Il-Ghazi so alarmed him that he took refuge with Tughtigin in Damascus. Tughtigin was himself out of favour, says Ibn al-Athir, ‘because the sultan attributed the murder of Mawdd to him’.26
The efforts of Sultan Muhammad to raise up the jihad against the Franks belie the view that there was a fundamental indifference in Baghdad to the plight of the Syrian Muslims. Indeed, more often it was internecine conflict among the Syrian emirs that prevented a united front against the infidel. Aleppo never represented a sustained threat, for Ridwan feared Turkish domination more than he did the Franks, a situation that did not change after his death in December 1113. In Damascus, Tughtigin's conviction that he would be overwhelmed by the Islamic champions chosen by the sultan considerably blunted his effectiveness, while idiosyncratic personalities like Il-Ghazi could not be relied upon to act in any way that did not serve their own immediate interests.
In contrast, the Franks had begun to pull together under Baldwin's leadership. With the collapse of the Byzantine alliance, Bertrand and Tancred had recognised their common interests and, when Bertrand died in February 1112, Tancred had accepted the succession of his young son, Pons, apparently granting him the fiefs of Tortosa, Safita, Hisn al-Akrad and Maraclea.27 Tancred died in December, and in 1115 Pons married his widow, Cecilia of France. The heir to Antioch was in fact Bohemond's young son, also called Bohemond, but as he was both absent and a minor, Tancred had given the regency to Roger of Salerno, son of Richard of the Principate, now lord of Marash, the most northerly of the Antiochene lands.28 Roger was married to another Cecilia, the sister of Baldwin of Bourcq, establishing a web of relationships that seems to have been aimed at stabilising the northern crusader states in the face of increasing Turkish pressure.29 The only real conflict was Baldwin of Bourcq's sudden and unexplained quarrel with Joscelin of Courtenay, whom he deprived of his fief and imprisoned in 1113, before allowing him to leave Edessa for the kingdom of Jerusalem, where Baldwin granted him the valuable Galilean lands centred on Tiberias. It has been speculated that Baldwin of Bourcq was attempting to rebuild his position, deeply undermined by the regular Turkish assaults on Edessa and its hinterland between 1110 and 1112, leaving it in a poor economic state barely fifteen years after its foundation, a situation exacerbated by a recent severe famine.30
In February 1115, the sultan put Emir Bursuq ibn Bursuq, lord of Hamadhan, in charge of a large force that included troops from Mosul and the Jazira. ‘The sultan ordered them first of all to engage Ilghz and Tughtakn and, when they had dealt with them, to march into Frankish territory, wage war on them and harass their lands.’ According to Ibn al-Athir, Il-Ghazi and Tughtigin were so alarmed they sought the protection of Roger of Antioch or, as Walter the Chancellor puts it, they made ‘a pretended peace’.31 Challenged by Roger and Baldwin, Bursuq apparently retreated, a move that persuaded Baldwin to turn back to Jerusalem in the expectation that the Muslim forces were about to disperse. However, with the departure of the king, Bursuq reappeared, taking Kafartab and besieging Zardana, and obliging Roger to reassemble his forces. Bernard of Valence, patriarch of Antioch, called on the soldiers to confess their sins: ‘those who would die in the war which was at hand would acquire salvation by his own absolution and also by the propitiation of the Lord.’32 On 14 September, Roger caught the bulk of Bursuq's army near Sarmin in the valley of Danith, about equidistant from Antioch and Aleppo, and although Bursuq himself was able to take refuge on a hill, he could not prevent the slaughter and flight of his forces. Huge booty was acquired and many prisoners taken. When Roger returned to Antioch he was met by a procession headed by the patriarch bearing holy relics: ‘they resounded with angelic voices, “Fear God and keep His commandments”, and they received him, praised him highly and revered him.’33
The assassination of Mawdud in October 1113, followed less than two years later by Roger of Antioch's victory at Sarmin, severely weakened the Turkish jihad and, for a brief period, until the disastrous Christian defeat at Balat in 1119, left the northern states reasonably secure, enabling the king to pay greater attention to the defence of the south of his kingdom. Baldwin had been interested in the region to the south-east even before he was crowned. In the autumn of 1115, he set out to consolidate his control over an area he had first visited in November 1100 by building a castle on a prominent ridge at Shaubak, which, according to Fulcher of Chartres, was about four days’ journey from Jerusalem and three from the Red Sea. ‘He decided to name this castle Montréal in honor of himself because he built it in a short time with a few men and with great boldness.’34 It was situated in a strong defensive position upon a conical hill separate from the adjacent plateau of Edom, but there is no contemporary description of its construction. William of Tyre later ascribed a curtain wall, towers, barbicans (antemurali) and a fosse to it, although it had evidently been much developed by his time.35 Within the enceinte there were two churches, the larger of which, on the eastern side, was apparently used as the parish church. A smaller chapel in the outer ward seems to have served the local Orthodox population. In both cases the churches created a focus for Christian settlement in the region, establishing a pattern that was repeated elsewhere.36 William of Tyre says that the castle had a productive hinterland which supplied grain, wine and oil. The choice may also have been influenced by the presence of springs within the rock which were used to feed internal cisterns.
Montréal appears to have been the first completely new castle built by Baldwin (as opposed to strengthening and extending existing fortifications), and was evidently part of a wider plan, for the next year Baldwin mounted another expedition, accompanied by 200 knights, as far as the Red Sea, which resulted in the construction of two more fortresses, Li Vaux Moise at Wadi Musa, near the ancient city of Petra, and Ailah, at the head of the gulf of Aqaba.37 His aim was both to dominate the caravans passing between Egypt and Damascus and to have advance warning of any attacks from this direction.38
In the early twelfth century, however, founding a new state was not solely a question of the conquest of territory and the capture
of cities. Baldwin knew he needed to develop the Crown's own institutions for those functions central to his rule. Crucial to this was the creation of a chancellery, first seen in the crusader states in 1115 with the appointment as chancellor of Pagan, probably a lay notary from southern Italy.39 Baldwin I's first genuine extant charter dates from 1106, but there is no doubt that both Godfrey and Baldwin issued charters from the very beginning. Lotharingian, Norman and Pisan influences can all be detected in these early efforts, which initially were probably the work of a cleric who had accompanied Godfrey on the crusade and who may be the same person as the Lotharingian called Robert who drafted Baldwin's charters until the advent of Pagan. His chief employment was very likely at the Holy Sepulchre, where he almost certainly held a canonical benefice and wrote charters for the patriarchs as well as for the king. Pagan's appearance may well have been connected to a reorganisation of government in which the king replaced a single viscounty with several, a decentralisation of power that needed an institutional framework.
It is hardly surprising that the establishment of a proper chancellery such as this took time; many of the chancelleries of the West were themselves quite primitive in the late eleventh century. It does appear, however, that Godfrey the Bearded, grandfather of Godfrey and Baldwin, drawing on his experience as margrave of Tuscany, had begun to see the value of producing his own charters rather than leaving them to be drawn up by the recipients of grants; he may not have had an organised chancellery, but he had clerics who could at least edit the charters provided by the recipients into a standardised form. Moreover, he was using a ducal seal from 1069, and he was followed in this by Godfrey of Bouillon, so that it is easy to see that charter seals would be used in the diplomas of Jerusalem, although the heat necessitated the use of lead rather than wax.40
Closely associated with the chancellery were the court clerics, whose formation into a royal chapel suggests a further strengthening of the Crown's institutional structure. All the important leaders of the First Crusade had had their own chaplains, men whose education had enabled them to write their lords’ letters and, in some cases, even act as their historiographers. Fulcher of Chartres was the chaplain of Baldwin of Boulogne and continued in that role after the latter had become king, probably sustained by a canonical benefice either in the Temple of the Lord or the Holy Sepulchre, while Arnulf of Chocques, after his removal as patriarch, is recorded as the scriniarius of the king, guardian of the relics and treasures of the royal chapel.41 In the course of Baldwin's reign the royal chapel came to serve the Crown in many ways. Most obviously it provided the means by which the king could worship regularly, even when he was on campaign, as well as offering prayers for the kingdom on a daily basis. To these spiritual duties were added practical responsibilities: the guarding of the royal relics and altar vessels, the keeping of the royal archives, the drafting of royal correspondence with both the West and Byzantium, and even the issuing of charters in times of necessity.42
Medieval governments did not of course seek to establish total control, a role that monarchs found neither practical nor desirable, and most were willing to cede ‘social service work’ to the Church, not the least because of its cost.43 The development of facilities for pilgrims is a good example of this process. When Jerusalem fell in 1099 the only specifically Latin establishments in the city were: the Benedictine monastery of St Mary Latin, situated just to the south-east of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and built sometime before 1071 with funds provided by merchants from Amalfi; a nunnery dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, dating from before 1081–2, where the sisters took care of female pilgrims; and a special hospital for men, dedicated to St John the Baptist, established soon after, perhaps to cope with the increasing numbers arriving as a consequence of the growing popularity of pilgrimage in the second half of the eleventh century.44
The hospital had been administered for many years before 1099 on behalf of the abbot and convent by a man named by William of Tyre only as Gerard, who apparently came from Provence or southern Italy.45 Either just before or very soon after the conquest it was separated from St Mary Latin and, like other contemporary religious institutions, was the recipient of donations by the rulers of Jerusalem. Within months of the fall of Jerusalem, Godfrey had ceded a village and two ovens and, in September 1101, euphoric after the victory over the Egyptians at the battle of Ramla, Baldwin had granted them a tenth of the spoils and plunder, a striking concession given the king's constant monetary needs.46 In 1110 and 1112, the king, the patriarch and the archbishop of Ceasarea all made donations, giving the hospital property not only in Jerusalem, but also in the other major centres of Nablus, Jaffa and Acre. As well as this Arnulf exempted the hospital from the payment of tithes in the patriarchate.47 There is no doubt these resources were needed, for many pilgrims arrived exhausted and penniless after long and difficult journeys, where the conditions were sometimes exacerbated by the insecure state of the routes from Jaffa to Jerusalem and other desirable places on the Jordan and in Galilee.
After the separation from St Mary Latin, a link seems to have been established with the Augustinian canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who would have provided for their religious needs, notably church services and confession, and many donors continued to associate them with the Holy Sepulchre until the middle of the century.48 However, they obtained practical autonomy in 1113 when they received a privilege from Pope Paschal II known as Pie postulatio voluntatis, which established them as a company of fratres directly under papal protection, exempt from tithes on their own properties, effectively creating a new monastic order, that of the Hospitallers. In keeping with the principles of reform, the pope gave them the right to elect their own leader.49
To some extent they were little different from other embryonic ecclesiastical institutions in the East, but the publicity generated by increasing pilgrimage traffic attracted donations from the West. The continued flow of funds from Amalfi may have drawn the attention of Roger of Sicily. At any rate a third part of a grant of 1,000 gold besants that Albert of Aachen alleges had been embezzled by Patriarch Daibert in 1101 had been sent for ‘the support of the hospital for the feeble and other sick’.50 Thereafter they received a steady supply of endowments in the West; by 1121, the year after the death of Gerard, they had sufficient property in Languedoc, southern Italy and Catalonia to justify an administrative centre at Saint-Gilles, adding one more strand to the web of interconnections between the crusader states and the Latin West.51
These facilities were crucial because a fervent desire to visit the holy places drew pilgrims in greater numbers than to anywhere else in Christendom. Between 1106 and 1108, a Russian abbot, Daniel, possibly from Chernigov, just to the north of Kiev, made an extensive tour, perhaps even leading a diplomatic mission since he brought an entourage with him. Whatever his official status, the visit was an intensely personal experience for him and his account of his feelings articulates what many others must have felt. ‘And by the grace of God I came to the holy city of Jerusalem and saw the holy places and travelled round the whole of the Galilean land and the holy places about the holy city of Jerusalem, where Christ our God walked with his own feet and where he performed great miracles. And all this I saw with my own sinful eyes, and merciful God let me see what I had long desired in my thoughts.’52
The focal point was the church of the Holy Sepulchre. After the crusaders had broken into Jerusalem in July 1099, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in a bloodbath recalled by Saladin when he besieged Jerusalem in October 1187, the author of the Gesta Francorum records how ‘they all came rejoicing and weeping from excess of gladness to worship at the Sepulchre of Our Saviour Jesus, and there they fulfilled their vows to him’. Later, in a brief appendix, he describes Golgotha, the place of the Crucifixion, and continues: ‘From thence, a stone's throw to the west, is the place where Joseph of Arimathea buried the holy Body of the Lord Jesus, and on this site there is a church, beautifully built by Constantine the king. From Mount Calvary the nav
el of the world lies thirteen feet to the west.’53
The building which the author of the Gesta believed to have been the work of Emperor Constantine was in fact a reconstruction paid for by a much more recent emperor, Constantine Monomachus, in the 1040s, made necessary by the destruction wrought by Caliph al-Hakim in 1009. Constantine the Great had indeed ordered the excavation of the cave identified as the tomb of Christ, as well as the construction of a large basilica to the east known as the Martyrium. Between the two sites was a paved and enclosed court, the triporticus, so that pilgrims visiting the tomb would first have entered the Martyrium from the street to the east and then passed through the triporticus. However, al-Hakim's orders had been quite thoroughly carried out, so that the Martyrium had been razed, leaving the remains of the rotunda which had been built over the tomb in the seventh century. The repairs of the mid-eleventh century produced a larger rotunda resting on eighteen pillars, in the centre of which was the edicule around the tomb itself. Abbot Daniel described the paving as marble and walls as decorated with mosaics of Christ and the Prophets.54 The Byzantines had built additional chapels attached to the rotunda, one on the north side and three on the south, as well as a large semicircular apse to the east.55
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