The Field of Blood: The Battle for Aleppo and the Remaking of the Medieval Middle East
Page 19
By the late 1140s, the Kingdom of Jerusalem had been trying to get hold of Damascus for years. Initially the Franks had hoped to conquer the city by force, so in 1126 and 1129 King Baldwin II staged two large-scale attacks on Damascene territory. There was also frequent fighting over the fertile Hawran region to the south of the city. Damascus depended on Hawran for its arable crops, so retaining it was vital to the city’s security. The Frankish assaults met with varying degrees of success, but on no occasion did Jerusalem get close enough to besiege Damascus’s walls.
The Franks changed their approach in the 1130s, temporarily suspending their attempts to seize Damascus by force and trying instead to draw the city diplomatically into their sphere of influence. This was a logical move. Damascus was becoming increasingly isolated, and Zangi was hovering on its northern borders, looking for an opportunity to swoop down and take control. That was a serious threat for the Franks: if Zangi added Damascus to his already-considerable landholdings, he would be unstoppable. Zangi attacked Damascus directly in 1135 and 1139; at other times he contested control of the towns of Baalbek, Hama, and Homs, which lay between his own territories and those of Damascus. The Damascenes needed allies in those years, and the Franks had every reason to offer aid. The Frankish-Damascene entente kept the city out of Zangi’s growing empire, but the rulers of Jerusalem remained keen to seize the city for themselves. Damascus would be a prize as great as Aleppo and would substantially enhance the Crusader States’ regional position.
The Franks did not get a chance to make another serious attempt to conquer Damascus until 1148, and by then the strategic situation had changed significantly, for several important reasons. First, Zangi had been murdered two years earlier, in 1146, while trying to seize the Arab stronghold of Qalat Jabar. The Damascene author Ibn al-Qalanisi reported that Zangi had been assassinated while in a drunken stupor by one of his eunuchs.19 His sons inherited his various landholdings. From the Frankish perspective, the most important of Zangi’s heirs was his second son, Nur al-Din, who took control in Aleppo. Nur al-Din was an exceptionally capable ruler and military commander, and in time he would become devout in his observance of Sunni Islam and strongly committed to the pursuit of jihad against the Franks. In his deep dedication to Islam, he differed sharply from his father, and this dissimilarity manifested itself clearly in the building programs conducted by father and son. Whereas Zangi had shown scarcely any interest in the construction of religious buildings,20 Nur al-Din was an enthusiastic builder, constructing and endowing tens of mosques, madrasas, and shrines, as well as other sites. These institutions stressed his pious credentials, reinforcing his spiritual authority with the populace and building support for holy war.21 The reconquest of Jerusalem became a leading goal of his rule, and in 1168 he boldly commissioned the construction of a minbar (a pulpit) for the symbolic purpose of installing it in Jerusalem after its future conquest. This was a powerful propaganda statement, one that focused his supporters’ attention on the struggle for the holy city.22
A second major shift that took place shortly before 1148 was the collapse of the Frankish-Damascene alliance. This relationship broke down in 1147, and there had already been considerable fighting over the crucial agricultural region of Hawran. With the outbreak of war between these former allies, the Damascenes switched their allegiance to Nur al-Din, marking an important shift in the region’s geopolitics.
The third important development, which gave the Crusader States the resources they needed to stage a renewed assault on Damascus, was the advent of the Second Crusade. This colossal military undertaking had been launched in 1145 by Pope Eugenius III in response to the fall of Edessa. Over the following months, preachers and letters had crisscrossed Christendom, seeking recruits for the new campaign and challenging knights and nobles to prove themselves worthy of their illustrious forebears who had conquered Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The response to the call had been enormous, and two major rulers, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, had taken the cross and marched east with large armies to support the Crusader States.
In the early phases of the Second Crusade, there had been a real chance that these great armies would substantially realign the balance of power in the Near East in favor of the Franks. But both armies suffered enormous casualties while trying to cross Anatolia. Conrad’s force ran into trouble shortly after leaving Byzantine territory. It was poorly equipped with archers, and the Turks wore the army down by hovering on its flanks and raining arrows down upon the Germans while using their nimble ponies to evade any attempt by the Christian cavalry to engage them in hand-to-hand combat. The French army penetrated somewhat deeper into Turkish territory, but they suffered badly from a sudden Turkish onset when they were trying to cross a high mountain pass.
Ultimately, only a fraction of either of these two major armies reached the Crusader States, but the crusader reinforcements were still sufficient, when combined with the local Frankish forces, to attempt the conquest of a major city. Although retaking Edessa had been the crusade’s original target, that goal was rapidly becoming impractical. The county had disintegrated too far to be easily rebuilt, and King Louis argued with the Antiochene ruler, Raymond of Poitiers, soon after his arrival in Frankish territory, destroying any possibility of a cooperative venture in the north. Consequently, the decision was taken to stage an advance on Damascus.
The campaign against Damascus began reasonably well. The combined Christian army reached the city’s outskirts and began fighting its way through the outlying orchards to reach the main city walls. What happened next is not entirely clear. For some reason, having reached the walls, the Franks suddenly shifted their main encampment to the north, to a location that had no water. It seems that they had hoped to find the city poorly defended on that quarter, but that proved not to be the case. They then attempted to return to their former position but found it blocked by enemy forces. News then reached them that reinforcements from Nur al-Din would be arriving shortly, so the Franks were forced to raise the siege and return to Christian territory.
The Second Crusade thus fizzled out in an astonishingly lackluster denouement. It was followed by a storm of controversy as frustrated participants and commentators singled out scapegoats and sought to assign blame. Some pointed the finger at the local Frankish barons, claiming they had been bribed by the Damascenes to lift the siege. The suggestion was also made that there had been discord among the crusaders over who should rule Damascus once it had fallen into Christian hands. Nevertheless, when the hubbub of blame and accusation had settled down, the political reality set in: a promising attempt to conquer Damascus had failed. Yet again the Franks had failed to drive a road inland and seize a major center of Turkish power.23
After the withdrawal of the Second Crusade, some Damascenes must have seen Nur al-Din as a savior: the man who drove away the crusaders and protected the city. That should have put him in a strong position to aspire to take Damascus for himself, yet when he attempted to do so in 1149 he was firmly rebuffed, and the Damascenes resumed their entente with the Franks. For the next few years, Nur al-Din periodically harassed Damascus, encamping on its estates, despoiling its farmlands, and assailing its inhabitants with demands that they launch a jihad against their Frankish allies. These bullying tactics eventually bore fruit. In April 1154, after Nur al-Din blocked the city’s grain supply and won a skirmish against its troops outside the city walls, he managed to strong-arm his way through one of the main gates and take control. He was finally in.24
The conquest of Damascus was a critical event. Nur al-Din now had two of the region’s most powerful cities in his grasp, and that consolidation of power dramatically enhanced his position. His victory also quashed the Franks’ long-cherished hope of taking the city for themselves. They had been trying to get inside the walls of Damascus for over two decades, and, as with their former efforts to secure Aleppo, they had come close to achieving that aim, first during the 1120s and then during the Second Crusad
e. That struggle was now over, and Nur al-Din had emerged as the victor.
The Franks would not get another chance to make a serious strike against an enemy center of power for over a decade after the failure of the Second Crusade. In the meantime, Nur al-Din pummeled the Crusader States time and again. With the Damascene territories firmly linked to his original Aleppan power base, he now shared a lengthy land border with the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as with the northern Crusader States. Unlike the earlier rulers of Aleppo and the Jazira, he had the resources to engage the full might of Jerusalem’s field army, not simply expeditionary forces sent to relieve the pressure on Antioch.
Even so, the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s military remained arguably the strongest force in the Near East at that time, and it could deliver heavy blows. In addition, the kingdom continued to gather strength, even as Nur al-Din grew in power to the northeast. In 1153 Jerusalem’s forces finally conquered the Fatimid city of Ascalon, severely reducing the threat of land-based attacks from Egypt and allowing the Franks to settle the fertile coastal strip immediately surrounding the city. Jerusalem’s rulers could now concentrate their efforts on Nur al-Din, just as he was steadily focusing on the Franks.25
For all his zeal, Nur al-Din achieved little in his struggle against the Franks before 1164. Most of his campaigning tended to concentrate on the Frankish frontier outposts, which represented gateways to the hinterlands beyond. On the Antiochene frontier, the fortress of Harim was endlessly contested by both powers.26 On the border between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Damascus, the town of Baniyas was repeatedly attacked. The Franks, for their part, launched swinging raids across Nur al-Din’s territories, but they lacked the strength to tackle his main centers of power.
The fortunes of war swung repeatedly from one side to the other. Nur al-Din did make some limited advances, particularly in the north, and won a major victory over the Antiochenes in 1149, but he also suffered two big battlefield defeats, one at the hands of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1158 in the Hawran region and the other near the great Hospitaller fortress of Krak des Chevaliers in 1163.
The latter defeat was especially humiliating. Like so many others, it was a cavalry victory: as in the Battle of Tell Danith in 1115, the Franks sent out a flying column of horsemen who caught the Turks unprepared and stormed through their camp. Nur al-Din was almost killed in the encounter and only narrowly escaped. Apparently, when he learned of the approaching Frankish charge, he mounted his horse while he was still inside his main tent. The Franks knew where he was and were galloping straight for him. He urged his horse to flee only to find that it was still hobbled (horses are hobbled with a strap to prevent them from straying). A Kurdish bodyguard leaped down from his own steed and cut his master’s horse free. By this time the Christian heavy cavalry were only seconds away, but Nur al-Din managed to gallop away from the destruction of his army; his loyal Kurdish bodyguard was cut down before he had a chance to remount.27
The 1163 defeat also reflected another shift in the nature of conflict in the Near East. The Frankish forces in this encounter were led by a Templar knight, and the battle itself took place near a Hospitaller fortress. The military orders were a rising power in the Frankish states. By now they were formal institutions of the church, and their brethren took religious vows, committing themselves to the protection of Jerusalem (and for the Hospitallers, to the care of the sick). Both orders possessed considerable reserves of knights and infantry, and they were steadily being entrusted with some of the most embattled frontier fortresses across the Crusader States (Krak des Chevaliers, the fortress controlling the one clear invasion route into the County of Tripoli, being a case in point). The Templars and Hospitallers had the advantages of being both colossally rich and well represented in western Christendom. In recent decades, thousands of benefactors from across Europe, noble and nonnoble alike, had heaped donations on the orders, wishing to support both their work for the defense of the East and, in the case of the Hospitallers, their great hospital in Jerusalem. The orders had become wealthy, and they used their funds to assemble networks of hundreds of estates across western Christendom. These outposts, known as “commanderies,” served as supply bases for the Crusader States, and their staffs recruited local warriors to join the orders or to take up the cross for the distant wars of Jerusalem. They also raised money to send directly to Jerusalem, not only drawing income from their own assets but also cultivating local donors and securing further benefactions. Combining wealth with a deep-seated commitment to the defense of the Holy Land, Templar and Hospitaller knights were among the most elite forces of their day, and they added a new cutting edge to the Frankish armies.28
By 1163 the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Nur al-Din had been thumping each other for years, yet neither had gained a decisive advantage. Nur al-Din had strengthened his territorial position as much as possible, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was energetically seeking new crusaders from western Christendom and allies from Constantinople, but neither had yet found a way to break the deadlock and take the other’s main centers of power. But a new opportunity was about to appear.
For King Amalric of Jerusalem (king of Jerusalem 1163–1174), 1167 was a year of great triumph, one that finally turned the tables on Nur al-Din. Amalric’s predecessors may have labored in vain to break Aleppo and Damascus, but Amalric had finally gained control over a far greater prize: Egypt. Such an achievement would have been unthinkable only a few years before, but in August 1167 the great banner of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was flying from the highest point of Alexandria’s majestic Pharos lighthouse, one of the great wonders of the ancient world. Egypt had become essentially a client state. It was militarily enfeebled and dependent for its survival on the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Egypt’s vizier, Shawar—the effective ruler—had just agreed to pay the colossal sum of one hundred thousand dinars annually in tribute to the kingdom. Nur al-Din’s Turkish army, which had contested control of the country, had been expelled. Christian knights were assigned to garrison Cairo’s main gates, and a permanent Frankish representative would be posted to the city. The Kingdom of Jerusalem had just gained an advantage in its war with Nur al-Din, one that could prove decisive.29
The struggle for Egypt had begun in 1163. Egypt was in full political meltdown at that time, and its enemies were legion. Ascalon had fallen to the Franks in 1153, and in 1154 the Sicilians—a rising naval power—had sacked the coastal town of Tinnis. In recent years, the Fatimid army’s Turkish and Sudanese troops had been wracked by infighting, and there had been a series of political coups. The most recent one took place in 1162 when Shawar, then the governor of Qus, launched a successful rebellion against the current vizier. After defeating and decapitating his foe, Shawar installed himself as vizier—only to be cast out of office in yet another coup by a rival named Dirgham.30
The Franks had been well aware of the trouble brewing in the Nile delta, but they only intervened militarily when the Egyptians failed to render their annual tribute to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This regular payment had begun during the reign of Amalric’s predecessor, Baldwin III, and it was sufficiently valuable for a default in payment to provoke an immediate invasion. Amalric then defeated the Fatimid army and forced Dirgham to promise an even larger tribute.
At the same time, the ousted vizier Shawar fled to Nur al-Din asking him to send a force to restore him to the vizierate. Nur al-Din acceded to this request, and he too dispatched a force to Egypt, led by a Kurdish commander named Shirkuh. The Turkish army began its campaign by sprinting daringly out from Damascus, across the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and into Egypt. Having arrived safely, Shirkuh swiftly completed his mission. He killed Dirgham, massacred his followers, and reinstated Shawar. Temporarily, this must have seemed like a great success to Nur al-Din’s men, but any celebration was short-lived. Once Nur al-Din’s Turks had restored Shawar to power, the new vizier denied that he was under any obligation to the Turks and demanded Shirkuh’s immediate departure. This betrayal enraged Shirkuh, who immedi
ately attacked the town of Bilbeis in northeast Egypt, possibly seeking to establish a base near the frontier closest to his master’s lands.
Shawar cannot have been surprised that Shirkuh would not meekly retire from Egypt, but he had lacked the force necessary to throw him out. Consequently, he turned to the Franks for assistance. Fearful that Nur al-Din and Shirkuh might seize Cairo—and alarmed at the news carried by Shawar’s emissaries—Amalric quickly launched another campaign and drove Shirkuh out of Egypt.
Egypt was then relatively quiet until 1167, when Shirkuh persuaded Nur al-Din, against his better judgment, to launch another campaign against Cairo. On this occasion Shirkuh headed straight for the city, making camp at Giza, near the pyramids. His purpose could not have been plainer: he was intent on direct conquest. The Franks reacted swiftly and sent their own army south. They joined forces with the Egyptian army, and together their combined armies forced Shirkuh’s withdrawal from the city, pushing him south along the line of the Nile. With the Turks on the run, the Franks set out in pursuit. They then fought an indecisive battle in the desert, which compelled the Franks to retire north toward Cairo.
Shirkuh’s next move was to travel north to seize the major port of Alexandria, but he found himself besieged by the Franks. At this point his campaign began to collapse, and he was eventually forced to make peace with the Franks and return to Syria. For their part, the Egyptians accepted a treaty that essentially rendered them a tributary state.
Consequently, in the summer of 1167, Amalric could reasonably claim a great victory. The Fatimids’ continued existence now depended on the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s protection, and Shirkuh’s aspirations had again been thwarted. But this achievement had come at a price. While Amalric was campaigning in Egypt in 1164, Nur al-Din took advantage of his absence to invade the Principality of Antioch, and on August 10 he soundly defeated its prince in battle at Artah. A few months later he attacked the Kingdom of Jerusalem, taking its frontier stronghold of Baniyas. He took the initiative again in the summer of 1167, ravaging the County of Tripoli while Amalric was in Egypt. Sacrificing the defense of the northern Crusader States was a bitter price to pay for control over Egypt, but Amalric probably felt that the risk warranted the reward. Certainly he could reasonably have told himself that hegemony over Egypt would give him the resources to fully repay Nur al-Din for these incursions.