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

by Nicholas Morton

  Balak was the victor, but his achievement seems to have made him overconfident. After executing all the Frankish prisoners, he set out to organize the placement of his siege catapults against the walls of Manbij’s citadel. He was not wearing his armor, and one of the town’s defenders shot him in the left shoulder with an arrow. He died soon afterward. The Armenians seem to have had mixed feelings at his passing. They were well aware that his death was a source of profound relief for the Franks. Yet later Armenians would remember Balak with a degree of fondness. He had ruled over many Armenian subjects and was regarded as having been a just and compassionate master.27

  Later Muslim authors saw Balak as a great hero of jihad, just as his uncle had been before him, and he was remembered as the “sword of those who fight holy war.”28 Such a memorial scarcely captures the career of a man who had only shown a commitment to fighting the Franks—alongside other campaigns against rival Turks—in the last two years of his long career, a man who, moreover, had responded to the advent of the First Crusade with an offer of joint enterprise. But that was not the point. Those agitating for jihad needed heroes, and Balak had provided them with sufficient raw material to let them rework his deeds into an inspiring role model for holy warriors yet to come.

  When news arrived in Frankish territory of Balak’s death it must have seemed almost incredible that his campaigns against the Crusader States had only begun two years before. He had crammed a great deal of fighting into that time, and the fortunes of war had shifted repeatedly from one side to the other. Hatred and enmity had been stirred up on all sides to an almost unprecedented degree, and Franks and Turks alike had committed atrocities that at least equaled those of their forebears. As this storm passed, it became clear that the future of Aleppo—which had long been at the epicenter of the conflict—was once again uncertain. After all these years of war, the contest for the city was still not settled. There was one last hand to play in this cruel game.

  Following Balak’s death, Ilghazi’s son Timurtash took power in Aleppo, and on July 25, 1124, he agreed to a treaty with Joscelin of Edessa designed to bring about Baldwin’s release. The stipulations, brokered by the Banu Munqidh, were stringent. In return for his liberty, Baldwin agreed to pay eighty thousand dinars, deliver several high-ranking hostages (including one of his daughters), and hand over al-Atharib, Zardana, and Azaz along with several lesser towns. In essence, Timurtash wanted Antioch to strip off its armor plating by handing over its main frontier strongholds. Baldwin accepted these terms and was released into the keeping of the Banu Munqidh in Shaizar. Once he had arrived, Baldwin was treated with high honor, and he returned the Munqidhs’ hospitality by suspending their annual tribute payments.29 Baldwin left Shaizar a free man on August 29 and returned to Antioch, where he gathered his leading nobles to discuss how they might pay his ransom.

  The council finally agreed that the Franks would have to break their promise. They could not afford to yield either such vast sums of money or the frontier castles that guaranteed their safety. Instead, they took the opposite course of action, deciding to launch a frontal assault on Aleppo itself. In making this decision, they reneged on one further important clause in their agreement: a promise to support Timurtash against a new and dangerous foe named Dubays ibn Sadaqa, “king of the Arabs” and leader of the Banu Mazyad. Dubays had only just arrived in the Syrian region, but his arrival and his prominent position as a leading Arab emir threatened to destabilize Timurtash’s tenuous grip on Aleppo.

  Dubays ibn Sadaqa’s family (the Banu Mazyad) was the last Arab dynasty in the Near East to retain substantial resources in what was becoming an increasingly Turk-dominated region. They were a Shia Muslim family who ruled the region around al-Hilla in northwest Iraq, and unlike so many of their Arab counterparts, they had survived the Turkish conquest. In the 1050s they had joined a Fatimid-led coalition against the Turks, but that alliance had collapsed and they had been forced to change tactics and ingratiate themselves with their conquerors.30 In the chaos of the late eleventh century, Dubays’s father Sadaqa had steered his family safely through the civil war between Berkyaruq and Mohammed that had divided the Turkish world. He initially supported Berkyaruq, but, fortuitously, he switched sides to Mohammed in 1101. From then on he remained loyal to Mohammed, serving him in his struggle for the sultanate. Following this victory, Sultan Mohammed recognized how much he had relied on Sadaqa during the civil war and, seemingly intent on maintaining his loyalty, had showered his family with lands and gifts.31

  Sadaqa understood that the best way to guarantee his family’s lands and safety was to teach a powerful Turkish patron to depend on his assistance. Still, Mohammed’s need for Sadaqa’s support did not last forever. In 1107, within a few years of Berkyaruq’s death, rumors began to spread in the sultan’s court that Sadaqa was a Nizari (a member of the Assassins). The Seljuks hated the Nizaris, making this a particularly damaging allegation, even though it was false. Other voices drew Mohammed’s attention to Sadaqa’s considerable power and resources, citing the potential threat this posed to the sultan’s authority.32 The conspirators succeeded in driving a wedge between Sadaqa and the sultan, and, with some reluctance, the two men found their relationship deteriorating. It finally became an all-out war in 1108. Sadaqa discovered that he was not without allies in the conflict, and Ilghazi and other Turkish rebels from the Jazira—Mohammed’s detractors—were prepared to offer their support.

  The war began with a series of major confrontations in northern Iraq between the Banu Mazyad and the Turkish sultan. Initially Sadaqa had the upper hand. He could raise tens of thousands of troops, and his armies could compete with even the largest Turkish hosts. Nevertheless, the tide turned on March 4, 1108, when the Arab and Turkish forces came together at the village of Matar near the banks of the Tigris. Sadaqa picked a good spot from which to give battle. He aligned his forces carefully, taking advantage of the strong wind sweeping the battlefield, ensuring that it would blow directly into the faces of the oncoming Turks. This was a shrewd decision because it would disrupt the Turks’ main tactical advantage: their famous archery barrage. But the wind suddenly betrayed Sadaqa and began to blow in the opposite direction. So when Sadaqa’s cavalry charged, it was into a hailstorm of arrows. The Turks had also deployed themselves in such a way that a canal lay between them and the advancing Arab cavalry squadrons. Consequently, the Arab charge stalled, and Sadaqa’s forces were shot down. It was a disaster, and Sadaqa himself died from an arrow wound.33

  Dubays participated in this defeat, and the memory of his father’s death exercised a powerful influence on his later career. In the wake of the battle, he was taken prisoner and, recognizing the weakness of his position, made peace with Mohammed. Still, Dubays was itching to make trouble for his Turkish masters. His chance came in 1118, when Mohammed died and the Seljuk sultanate once again descended into civil war. There were a series of confrontations between Mohammed’s sons and his brother Sanjar over the sultanate, and Dubays sought to elevate his own position in this contest by playing the rival parties off against each other. He did so with some skill for a time, but it was a dangerous game. In 1120 his position became perilous when his candidate for the sultanate, Mohammed’s son Mas‘ud, suffered defeat in battle. Dubays was suddenly on the losing side in a Seljuk civil war, just as Ilghazi had been all those years before. Now it was his turn to flee to the sanctuary of the Jazira. He gathered his men, sent his women into hiding in Iraq’s marshlands, and headed north.34

  Once in the Jazira, Dubays made common cause with Ilghazi, knowing him to be a famous rebel who had supported his father.35 Dubays may have felt safe in the far north, yet even there his enemies tried to reach him. It was the caliph in Baghdad, al-Mustarshid, rather than the new Turkish sultan, Mahmud II, who now bore him the greatest enmity, perceiving Dubays as a threat to his own rising power. The caliph wrote to Ilghazi, asking him to break his association with the Arab leader and send him away. Although Ilghazi did not agree to the cali
ph’s request, the letter seems to have persuaded Dubays that it was time to return to Iraq to confront his enemies.

  In about 1122 Dubays raised a new army and set out for Baghdad. Thus began a period of intense warfare in northern Iraq. Rather like his father, Dubays won his first major battle but lost his second, in March 1123. His army was destroyed near his family’s lands in al-Hilla. He only narrowly escaped from his army’s collapse by swiftly crossing the Euphrates. Riding with what forces he could muster, he returned once again to the north, an angry but not a beaten man.36

  On reaching northern Syria, Dubays immediately set about building a new power base. He knew both that Aleppo had a large Shia population and that there were long-standing tensions between this community and their Turkish masters. Consequently, he used his own status as a major Arab Shia leader to try to plot the overthrow of Ilghazi’s son Timurtash.37 These designs ultimately came to nothing, but they worried Timurtash sufficiently for him to seek support against Dubays by making Baldwin’s release conditional on the king’s joining forces with him against the new threat.

  Unfortunately for Timurtash, his plan backfired spectacularly. Rather than fighting Dubays, Baldwin and Joscelin broke their promise and allied themselves to the rebel Arab leader through the offices of the Banu Uqayl in Qalat Jabar. Then, in October 1124, the Franks and the Arabs staged a combined assault on Aleppo.38

  The decision to launch a combined assault on Aleppo opened new opportunities for the Franks. For Baldwin, it raised a very real chance to finally take control of this vital city, a vision that in turn dangled the prospect—yet again—of the wholesale conquest of northern Syria. His attempts in recent years to regain the momentum of earlier Frankish conquest in the north had been rewarded. The balance of power had tipped in the Franks’ favor, and Aleppo was again vulnerable.

  By the time Dubays’s men joined forces with the Franks outside the walls of Aleppo, the Arab army had already scored an early victory, meeting Timurtash in battle and driving him out of the province.39 The city was suddenly confronting a serious combined attack without its ruler, and Baldwin was eager to bring his long struggle over the city to a conclusion. He appears to have struck a deal with Dubays by which the Franks would control the Aleppan region and Dubays would rule Aleppo itself as the Franks’ governor. It was unusual to start a siege in October—campaigning tended to take place in the spring and summer—but then, these were not usual circumstances. Baldwin was determined to act immediately, and to this end the besiegers built houses outside Aleppo’s ramparts to protect themselves against the cold.

  Baldwin’s army outside Aleppo’s walls was a powerful coalition. In addition to Dubays’s men, it included troops sent by the Banu Uqayl of Qalat Jabar. This Arab clan was a long-standing ally of the Banu Mazyad, and they probably realized that destroying Turkish authority in Aleppo would help stave off the rising tide of Turkish power that was choking Arab rulers across the land. The army also contained various rebel Turks, including a member of Ilghazi’s family and, perhaps most curiously, a son of the late Aleppan ruler Ridwan. Viewed along either ethnic or religious lines, the 1124 siege of Aleppo was a bizarre affair: a Frank-led coalition including Arabs, Turks, and probably Armenians, besieging a city with a mixed population governed by an absent Turkish ruler.

  The siege that followed was vicious. It was conducted in the depths of winter. The Aleppan populace starved, and it was rumored that some resorted to cannibalism; sickness spread through the city. Its garrison of only five hundred men looked insufficient to hold off the powerful coalition outside the walls. The besiegers sought to increase the citizens’ miseries, hoping to drive them to capitulate. Tombs were opened, and the dead were subjected to mockery within sight of the walls. The defenders kept up their side of this grisly conversation by publicly torturing any prisoners who fell into their hands. At the outset of the siege, Dubays had hoped that the citizens would view him favorably and support him and his allies in their attempt to seize the city. However, the brutality of the struggle destroyed any credibility Dubays may ever have had with the populace, who derisively shouted his name from the walls.40 The horrors perpetrated by the combatants during this winter siege reflect how entrenched the struggle over Aleppo had become. The conflict had degenerated into a horrific orgy of violence.

  As their predicament deteriorated, the Aleppan people searched yet again for a protector. Their ruler Timurtash was their most obvious hope, but he was not prepared to march to their aid. He had retreated to his father’s town of Mardin and was intent on staying there. By this stage he may well have come to view Aleppo as a poisoned chalice and shuddered at the thought of reentering the contest for its possession. Consequently, he allowed himself to be diverted by the news that the ruler of the nearby town of Mayyafariqin had died and, rather than heading west to Aleppo, set out in the opposite direction to secure this more promising prize.41 No help would be coming from him.

  The Turkish warlord Aqsunqur, however, proved to be a more reliable source of support. By this stage he had risen in status, becoming the ruler of the prosperous city of Mosul (a position he had formerly held until 1115 or 1116). He had two strong reasons for wanting to march to Aleppo’s aid. First, he had long wanted to gain control over the city. He had attempted to take control in 1116, but the citizens had refused to admit him. Now, however, with their backs to the wall, they were perfectly prepared to encourage his candidature.42

  A second pressing motive for intervening in the siege was his hatred for Dubays. The feeling was entirely mutual. The two men loathed each other. In 1108 Aqsunqur had fought against Dubays’s father during his last, fatal, battle, and in the wake of the encounter he had presented Sadaqa’s severed head to Sultan Mohammed.43 Dubays had held a grudge ever since. Aqsunqur had later commanded armies in the name of both the sultan and the caliph in their wars against Dubays. He had become Dubays’s leading antagonist, and their ongoing struggle had only further entrenched their shared enmity. Now, in late 1124, Dubays was weak, isolated, and far from home. There was a real opportunity here for Aqsunqur to dispatch his enemy once and for all.

  For these reasons, when the Aleppan messengers reached Aqsunqur offering him their city, he decided to march to their assistance even though he was seriously ill at the time. He mustered a force of seven thousand men and four thousand camels and set out first for Rahba, writing to Tughtakin asking for help, and then headed for Bales and the Aleppan region.44

  The news that Aqsunqur was en route for Aleppo took some time to reach the besiegers. Dubays initially learned only that Aqsunqur was ill, and he rejoiced in the mistaken belief that sickness would prevent his long-standing foe from lifting the siege. Dubays then taunted the Aleppans for putting their faith in such a savior. Eventually this celebration was shown to be premature. Reports began to arrive that Aqsunqur’s army would soon reach the besiegers’ camp. Dubays reacted aggressively to the threat, advising his Frankish allies to march out and attack Aqsunqur as he tried to cross the Euphrates.45

  This was a reasonable suggestion for two reasons. First, armies were often vulnerable when traversing major rivers because it took time to move a large army from one bank to another. An army attacked midway through the maneuver could be taken off guard and destroyed before it could gather its forces on the nearside bank. The Franks themselves had suffered just such a defeat when crossing the Euphrates in 1110. Second, Aqsunqur’s army was large, but not overwhelmingly so. The allied forces outside Aleppo were probably at least a match for the oncoming Turkish foe.

  However, Baldwin did not agree to Dubays’s plan. He would not march against Aqsunqur. He was probably weighing the potential consequences of failure against the opportunities raised by success. Typically, the Franks did not like fighting big battles so far from their own borders, and any temptation Baldwin may have felt to adopt this head-on approach would have been tempered by consideration of the catastrophic consequences of a rout. If his army was defeated, his surviving forces would have
to march—possibly for days—through flat enemy territory while being harried by Turkish cavalry (who were exceptionally well suited for this kind of pursuit). He might also have known that Aqsunqur had called on Tughtakin for reinforcements, which could appear at any time. Moreover, even if he succeeded in battle against Aqsunqur, the allied army could easily suffer too many casualties to be able to resume the siege of Aleppo, and in that case, their victory would be both perilous and pointless.

  Instead, in January 1125, Baldwin decided to lift the siege, and he retired back toward al-Atharib and the Antiochene frontier. Dubays could not maintain the siege on his own, and he too left the field. Aqsunqur had outmaneuvered him again, and the Aleppan people welcomed the Turkish commander as their new ruler. This was a galling outcome for Dubays, so he set out eastward and laid waste to Aqsunqur’s lands around Mosul.46 He was determined to leave some teeth marks on his foe even if he could not defeat him in person. He later sought out another claimant to the Seljuk sultanate and opened a new front in his rebellion against the sultan and caliph.

  After his abortive siege, Baldwin returned to Antioch and from there to Jerusalem. He reached the holy city in April 1125, after an absence of nearly two years. He had proved himself to be an able defender of the northern Franks, but he had failed in his main offensive objective: the conquest of Aleppo. That struggle was now finally over. The Franks had come so close to winning on so many occasions, but now their hopes lay in ruins.