The Field of Blood: The Battle for Aleppo and the Remaking of the Medieval Middle East

by Nicholas Morton

  However, shortly after he began his march toward the Tripolitan border, Sultan ibn Munqidh approached Mawdud and begged him for a second time to assist beleaguered Shaizar. Mawdud this time agreed and diverted his forces toward the besieged city.21 This was a huge relief for the Munqidhs, who were obsequious both in showing their gratitude and in cultivating Mawdud’s goodwill. They took pains to ensure that his troops were well provisioned, and their family members personally waited on the leading Turkish commanders.22

  Outside Shaizar, the situation had deteriorated still further by this time. Tancred had joined his forces with those of his rival, Baldwin of Jerusalem. Tripoli and Edessa had also sent soldiers. The combined armies then moved out toward Shaizar. Fortunately for the Munqidhs, with the arrival of Mawdud’s army, the two camps quickly became locked in a stalemate across the Orontes River, which flowed past Shaizar’s walls. On one bank were the Turks and the Munqidhs, and on the other were the Franks. The Turks’ strategy was to play to their main military strength: mobility. Their numerous companies of light horsemen circled the Christian encampment, depriving it of supplies, and their bowmen prevented the Franks from collecting water from the river. Eventually, their harassment paid off, and, much to the Munqidhs’ delight, Tancred and Baldwin were compelled to retreat after days spent enduring a depressing standoff. Shaizar was safe.

  Now, with the Franks returning to their own lands, there was a chance for the combined Arab-Turkish force to strike a blow against the Frankish army, perhaps converting its retreat into a rout. Historically, tactical withdrawals have always been difficult maneuvers, testing even the most experienced commanders. Tancred’s strategy was to break camp during the night and march under the cover of darkness. This was a sensible choice.23 The darkness prevented the Turks’ archers from using their bows effectively, compelling them either to permit the Christians to leave or to engage in hand-to-hand combat (which the Franks usually won). However, the Turks were clearly buoyed up by their initial successes, so they set out in pursuit and harried the Frankish army when Tancred tried to make a new camp further downstream. For a second time, Tancred had to abandon his camp and order another night march. This time the Turks were so confident that they attacked the Franks’ marching column, despite the darkness. The crusaders were clearly on the verge of a major defeat, but disaster was averted by an individual act of heroism. A single Frankish knight charged out of the Christian ranks and assaulted the entire Turkish army. The knight’s horse was killed almost immediately, but the man himself managed to fight his way on foot back to his own comrades while deterring the Turks from advancing any further.

  This astonishing act of courage has an interesting sequel. Some months later, this same knight traveled to Shaizar, bearing both his wounds and a letter of introduction from Tancred. He explained that he had come to visit them and to observe their warriors in training, and he was welcomed by his Arab enemies. This incredible meeting again captures the spirit of the age. Warriors might fight bitterly on the battlefield and their leaders might perform all manner of brutal acts to secure their own political advantage, but this was not a head-to-head confrontation between either religions or ethnicities.24 There was always room for admiration, knightly deeds, and even friendship across the cultural barrier.

  After their notable victory, Sultan ibn Munqidh of Shaizar bade farewell to Mawdud and his departing Turkish troops. Sultan had achieved a great personal success, narrowly averting a major crisis while strengthening his own position. He was really the only winner in the campaigning season of 1111. For the Franks it was a disappointment; they had failed to take Shaizar and had been driven back. For Mawdud, the campaign must have been an embarrassment. He now had the task of explaining to Sultan Mohammed why he had achieved virtually nothing with his colossal army except to ravage lands belonging to the very people who had originally appealed to the sultan for help. The army may have been raised to offer support to Aleppo, but in the end it had left the city even more vulnerable than before.

  The Munqidhs had won this round in their family’s long game of survival, but their security would not last forever. The Arab position across the Near East was in long-term decline. The Turks were steadily driving most Arab dynasties, particularly those whose lands lay further to the east, out of the handful of towns that remained under their control. Shaizar itself would eventually be claimed by the Turks after an earthquake in 1157.

  The First Crusaders had arrived in a world where Turkish supremacy was in the process of entrenching itself across the region and native rulers had, for the most part, already submitted or been crushed. The Christian victories of 1097–1099 disrupted that dominance, creating a window of opportunity for those who wished to resist the Turks, and it was several decades before the Turks fully regained their grip. During this time, the remaining Arab emirs were still very much in play in the bitter arena of the Near East, and their leaders would help shape the events of the following years.

  For the Turkish leaders of northern Syria, the 1111 campaign was something of a nonevent. Yet Ridwan’s refusal to cooperate with Mawdud’s forces underlined the distrust and dissension that plagued the Turkish sultanate. There had always been some infighting within their ranks, but prior to the First Crusade it had rarely prevented the Seljuk Turks from expanding their authority across the Near East. Now, however, far from advancing, the Turks were struggling even to hold on to their existing lands. The Frankish threat to Aleppo was especially hazardous. The next few years would be decisive in determining whether the Turks would resume their former position of supremacy or be driven back. Their dominance across the Near East was deceptively frail. Like the crusaders, they were conquerors who had arrived in the region only recently, and their supremacy was not fully entrenched.

  The Turks’ earliest incursions into the Muslim world had begun in the years before the turn of the first millennium, far to the east. At this time, tens of thousands of nomadic warriors and their families had suddenly poured out of the steppe country of central Asia and into the cultivated agricultural lands of the Islamic world to the south. Exactly why this migration took place is unclear. One suggestion is that they were driven south by climate change: cooling temperatures forced these nomadic tribes south into warmer climates. Another hypothesis is that the movement was driven by the implosion of several tribal confederations.25 Whatever the underlying cause, multiple Turkic peoples along with other nomadic groups penetrated the Islamic world’s frontiers and swiftly took control across Persia (modern-day Iran) before moving west into Iraq. Their arrival caused widespread devastation as Turkish commanders battled against their rivals, and nomadic Turkmen tribes spread out to pillage the landscape.

  The Turks’ main leaders were the descendants of a mighty warrior named Seljuk (d. 1002). During the wars for the Islamic world, the Seljuk family managed to secure a position of supremacy over both their native Arab and Kurdish opponents and their Turkish rivals, and, following their capture of Baghdad in 1055, Seljuk’s grandson Tughril took the title of Seljuk sultan. In the following years, the Seljuks conquered province after province, drawing them into their newly founded empire. Some local Arab and Kurdish rulers submitted to Turkish rule, others managed to negotiate a form of quasi-independence, and still others chose to resist and were destroyed. Either way, Seljuk power grew steadily during this time and much of southern and central Asia and the Near East came under their control. By the 1060s their territories spanned from the Himalayas to the marches of Anatolia.

  During the 1070s and 1080s, the Turkish advance across Syria and Anatolia was almost uninterrupted. In 1071 the great sultan Alp Arslan moved into Syria, forcing Aleppo’s Arab ruler Mahmud to acknowledge him as overlord, before continuing on into Byzantine lands. At the Battle of Manzikert, he crushed the main Byzantine field army, led by Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes, breaking open the Greeks’ frontier defenses and allowing the nomadic Turkmen tribes to spread far into Anatolia, causing havoc. Alp Arslan had already laid waste to C
hristian Georgia only a few years previously. To the south, in Syria, the Turkmen commander Atsiz conquered Jerusalem in 1073 and Damascus in 1075. With these towns in his grasp, he was able to advance on Egypt, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the Fatimids drove him out of the Nile delta.

  The Turkish sultan’s authority reached its apogee in the 1080s under the leadership of Sultan Malik Shah and his great vizier Nizam al-Mulk. This high point did not last. Malik Shah’s death in 1092 caused a ruinous civil war that fragmented Seljuk power across much of their empire and ultimately opened the door to external invaders, including the crusaders. At the heart of the infighting was a major struggle over the sultanate in Iraq between Malik Shah’s sons Berkyaruq and Mohammed. This war, coupled with a slew of rebellions and invasions that broke out across the empire, kept the eyes of the Turkish world focused squarely on its central territories until Berkyaruq’s death in 1105.

  The arrival of the First Crusade on the empire’s western margins was initially not a priority for the combatants waging war over the sultanate. The coastal regions of Syria and the Holy Land were peripheral to the empire and had never been satisfactorily brought under Seljuk control. Karbugha, Berkyaruq’s commander in Mosul, did set out to engage the First Crusaders in battle, but this was an isolated case. There were far more pressing concerns for the contenders for the sultanate—in fact, some Arabic historians of the Seljuk dynasty recorded the events of this period without even mentioning the Franks.

  Viewed from the sultanate’s perspective, the Syrian region was of secondary importance, merely one among a large number of frontier provinces. After Malik Shah’s death, rule in the area was claimed by his brother Tutush. He too had pretentions to become the new sultan but in 1095—on the eve of the crusade—he led his army against Berkyaruq, only to be defeated and killed at the Battle of Dashlu. Tutush’s power was split between his young sons, with Ridwan receiving Aleppo and Duqaq taking power in Damascus. Overall, Turkish authority in Syria on the eve of the First Crusade was in chaos. The civil war engulfing the central lands of the sultanate to the east drew the bulk of their attention (and troops). To make matters more complicated, Ridwan and Duqaq immediately began to fight one another and continued to do so even as the crusaders advanced from the north.

  As the crusade progressed, the Turkish position crumbled still further. Both Ridwan and Duqaq suffered major defeats at the crusaders’ hands in their separate attempts to break the siege of Antioch, and these losses encouraged dissent and rebellions from the region’s native Arabs and Armenians. The Fatimids also scented blood and took advantage of the chaos to invade from the south, retaking Jerusalem in 1098 (the year before the crusaders conquered the city). It was for these reasons that Turkish resistance to the Franks was so limited in the years following the First Crusade. Their authority was tenuous, and the Franks were merely one enemy among many.

  Confronting such hazardous regional politics, Ridwan of Aleppo had often judged it wiser to pay tribute to the Franks than to risk facing them in battle. He had tried to wage campaigns against them in 1097, 1100, and 1105 but had been defeated on each occasion. The city itself was riddled with dissent and imperiled by raiding from the local Arab tribes. Even some of his own Turkish officers had defected to the Franks. Moreover, the ongoing civil war for control over the sultanate both threatened his position and occupied warriors who might otherwise have marched to his aid.

  The events of 1106–1107 provide a classic example of the kind of political knots that entangled the competing Turkish warlords of the region and prevented them from offering serious resistance to the Franks. In 1106, the Seljuk sultan sent a commander named Jawuli to Syria to assert the sultan’s authority and to fight the Franks. Jawuli was promised control of the town of Rahba to serve as his base. He proceeded to Mosul to seek military support for this venture from its ruler. The ruler of Mosul, no doubt concerned about maintaining his own power, was reluctant to render aid, so Jawuli first raided his lands and then soundly defeated Mosul’s army in battle. The ruler of Mosul’s sons then appealed to the Turks of Anatolia, who came to their assistance against Jawuli but were also beaten off. Jawuli then traveled to Rahba, which he tried to seize, only to find himself vigorously resisted by the inhabitants (members of the Arab Banu Shayban tribe) and their overlord, the Turkish ruler of Damascus. At this point Jawuli summoned Ridwan of Aleppo and some Turkmen forces to his side. With their help, he captured Rahba, only to be almost immediately confronted again by the Anatolian Turks, who had arrived in force. He was forced to defeat this new challenger before heading east to take his revenge against Mosul, which he captured soon afterward. During this eastward journey to Mosul he alienated his former allies, Ridwan and the Turkmen.26

  This rather unedifying series of events played into Frankish hands. Jawuli may have been dispatched with the intention of striking a blow against the Crusader States, but his actions had the reverse effect. Rather than facing a new enemy, Frankish forces from Jerusalem, Edessa, and Antioch were all free to expand their territories, safe in the knowledge that the Turks were warring among themselves. The fractured political landscape of the Turkish world meant that suspicion, treachery, and conflicted loyalties prevented the many Turkish warlords in the region from forming a united front against any enemy, and the Syrian Turks distrusted forces led by the sultan’s commanders, fearing that they might try to force them to submit.

  All these problems manifested themselves in a new campaign instigated by the Turkish sultan in 1115. Two years earlier, Ridwan of Aleppo had died of illness, and Aleppo became engulfed in factional infighting. Ridwan’s eldest son and heir, Alp Arslan, attempted to take control, but he was assassinated by one of his eunuchs, a man named Lou Lou, in 1114. Lou Lou then called on the Turkish sultan Mohammed for aid, offering him the city in exchange for his protection. Sultan Mohammed saw an opportunity to solidify his power and launched another major campaign to the north. The resulting campaign revealed, yet again, the fracture lines in the Turkish world.27

  The army set out in February 1115 under the command of Bursuq of Hamadhan. It mustered additional forces in the Jazira and then marched west, crossing the Euphrates at Raqqa. As Bursuq approached Aleppo he asked Lou Lou to fulfill his promise to yield control of Aleppo, proffering letters from the sultan to confirm his authority. Lou Lou seems to have panicked and to have decided that it was too dangerous to give up power. Consequently, he called on the Damascenes (under their current ruler Tughtakin; Duqaq had died some years before) and the Turkmen commander Ilghazi to rescue him from this predicament.28

  This request placed Tughtakin and Ilghazi, two leading Turkish warlords in Syria and the Jazira, respectively, in a dangerous position. On the one hand, if they defied the sultan’s army, they were in effect declaring themselves to be rebels. This was not necessarily a major problem because both Tughtakin and Ilghazi were out of favor at this time anyway (and allied to the Franks), though purposely obstructing the sultan’s army would be an unnecessarily overt statement of their defiance. On the other hand, if they simply allowed Sultan Mohammed to acquire a strong foothold in Syria by taking Aleppo, it would only be a matter of time before all the local rulers were brought to heel—themselves included. The region’s Turkish chieftains might have been prepared to acknowledge the sultan’s theoretical supremacy, but that authority was generally far away, and the chieftains prized their independence. Eventually both men made their choice: they converged to defend Aleppo, in direct opposition to the sultan’s army.

  With armies massing to the east, the Antiochenes, under their new ruler Roger of Salerno (Tancred having died in 1112), grew alarmed at these troop movements and feared that the Turks were uniting to attack Antioch. So they too assembled their army, at their frontier stronghold of al-Atharib. They do not seem to have immediately appreciated the deep divisions hindering the Turkish army, but the fracture lines soon became apparent when Ilghazi and Tughtakin made contact with the Franks, offering to make common cau
se with them against the sultan’s army. The Franks accepted their offer and sought further aid from their allies in Tripoli and Jerusalem, who set out for the principality shortly afterward.

  These cascading events must have both surprised and alarmed Bursuq. He had been told to expect the willing compliance of the Aleppan leaders but was instead confronted by a major alliance of Syrian Turks and Franks. He was more enraged with his fellow Turks than with the Franks because, after taking a brief swipe at Edessa, he moved south to punish the Damascene ruler Tughtakin by attacking his town of Hama. This siege was swiftly and successfully concluded, and Bursuq moved on to Shaizar to confront the Frankish and Damascene armies, which were then encamped outside the Antiochene town of Apamea.

  For the Munqidhs in Shaizar, these events created yet another awkward dilemma: Should they support the sultan’s army as they had in 1111 (and risk angering all their neighbors, both Frankish and Turkish)? Or should they jettison the sultan’s goodwill and treat his approaching army as an invading force? In the event, they sided with the sultan. Unfortunately, this time they made a bad choice. The sultan’s army, under Bursuq, remained inactive outside Shaizar’s walls, and rumors abounded that the Turks were drinking heavily. It was only when news came that Baldwin I’s army would soon arrive to join forces with the existing Frankish-Turkish coalition that Bursuq’s forces stirred themselves to action.29

  Bursuq launched a frontal assault on the Antiochene camp before it could join forces with Baldwin I’s army but he achieved nothing. Roger of Salerno was a capable warrior who understood that the Turks’ strengths lay in their archers and in their mobility. Consequently, he formed his army into a tight array and harshly ordered his men to remain in line. He marched along their ranks, sword unsheathed, instructing them that under no circumstances were they to charge against the Turks. This was frustrating to many impetuous knights—eager for a chance at glory—but it was also sensible.30 The Turks wanted to provoke a reaction. If the Christians could be stung into making an ill-timed charge, the Turks would simply veer away and stay out of reach until the Christians exhausted their horses. Then the Turks could descend upon them. Roger understood this danger. He was also determined to wait for Baldwin’s arrival before he risked battle.