The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives

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The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives Page 7

by Carole Hillenbrand


  Ibn al-Furat, Shayyal = Ibn al-Furat, Tarikh al-duwal wa’l-muluk, partial ed. M. F. El-Shayyal, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1986.

  Ibn al-Jawzi = Ibn al-Jawzi, Al-muntazam fi tarikh al-muluk wa’l-umam, X, Hyderabad, 1940.

  Ibn al-Qalanisi, Gibb = Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl tarikh Dimishq, trans. H. A. R. Gibb as The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, London, 1932.

  Ibn al-Qalanisi, Le Tourneau = Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl tarikh Dimishq, trans. R. Le Tourneau as Damas de 1075 à 1154, Damascus, 1952.

  Ibn Jubayr, Broadhurst = Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. R. J. C. Broadhurst, London, 1952.

  Ibn Khallikan, de Slane = Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-a‘yan, 4 vols, trans. W. M. de Slane as Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary, Paris, 1843–71.

  Ibn Muyassar = Ibn Muyassar, Akhbar Misr, ed. H. Massé, Cairo, 1919.

  Ibn Shaddad, RHC = Ibn Shaddad, Al-nawadir al-sultaniyya, RHC, III.

  Ibn Shaddad, Eddé = Ibn Shaddad, ‘Izz al-Din, Al-a’laq al-khatira, trans. A.-M. Eddé as Description de la Syrie du Nord, Damascus, 1984.

  Ibn Shaddad, Nawadir = Ibn Shaddad, Al-nawadir al-sultaniyya, ed. J. El-Shayyal, Cairo, 1964.

  Ibn Taghribirdi, Nujum = Ibn Taghribirdi, Nujum al-zahira, Cairo, 1939.

  Ibn Wasil = Ibn Wasil, Mufarrij al-kurub, ed. J. al-Shayyal, Cairo, 1953–7.

  Ibn Zafir = Ibn Zafir, Akhbar al-duwal al-munqati’a, ed. A. Ferré, Cairo, 1972.

  IJMES = International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

  ‘Imad al-Din, Kharida = ‘Imad al-Din, Kharidat al-qasr, Cairo, 1951; Baghdad, 1955; Tunis, 1966.

  ‘Imad al-Din, Sana = ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Sana al-barq al-shami, ed. F. al-Nabarawi, Cairo, 1979.

  IOS = Israel Oriental Studies

  IQ = Islamic Quarterly

  JA = Journal Asiatique

  JAOS = Journal of the American Oriental Society

  JESHO = Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient

  JRAS = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

  JSS = Journal of Semitic Studies

  Köhler = M. A. Köhler, Allianzen und Verträge zwischen frankischen und islamischen Herrschern im Vorderen Orient, Berlin and New York, 1991.

  Lewis, Islam = B. Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, New York, 1974.

  Mémoires = C. Cahen, ‘Les mémoires de Sa’d al-Din Ibn Hamawiya Djuwayni’, in Les peuples musulmans dans l’histoire médiévale, Damascus, 1977, 457–82.

  MW = Muslim World

  Nasir-i Khusraw, Schefer = Nasir-i Khusraw, Safarnama, trans. C. Schefer, Paris, 1881.

  Quatremère = Al-Maqrizi, Kitab al-suluk, trans. E. Quatremère as Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks de l’Égypte, Paris, 1837–45.

  RCEA = Repertoire Chronologique d’Épigraphie Arabe, Cairo, 1931 onwards.

  REI = Revue des Études Islamiques

  RHC = Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Orientaux, I-V, Paris, 1872–1906.

  Runciman = S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Cambridge, 1951–4.

  Sibt = Sibt b. al-Jawzi, Mir‘at al-zaman, Hyderabad, 1951.

  Sibt, Jewett = Sibt b. al-Jawzi, Mir‘at al-zaman, facsimile edn by J. R. Jewett, Chicago, 1907. Sivan, L’lslam = E. Sivan, L’lslam et la Croisade, Paris, 1968.

  Sivan, ‘Modern Arab historiography’ = E. Sivan, ‘The Crusaders described by modern Arab historiography’, Asian and African Studies, 8 (1972), 104–49.

  Usama, Hitti = Usama b. Munqidh, Kitab al-i‘tibar, trans. P. K. Hitti as Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman, Beirut, 1964.

  WZKM = Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes

  Sources for the Illustrations

  The illustrations were taken, and drawings made, from the following sources:

  Abdullah, T., O’Kane, B., Sakkut, H. and Serag, M., Arab and Islamic Studies in Honor of Marsden Jones (Cairo 1997): ill. 6.7

  Baer, E., Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images (Leiden 1989): ills. 3.39, 4.6, 6.53–6

  Balog, P., The Coinage of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria (New York 1964): ills. 1.19, 1.29, 4.21–2, 5.22, 5.34—5, 8.14, 9.7

  Boase, T. S. R., Castles and Churches of the Crusading Kingdom (London 1967): ills. 6.42–3, 7.51, 7.65

  Brice, W. C., An Historical Atlas of Islam (Leiden 1981): ill. 4.2

  Briggs, M. S., Muhammadan Architecture in Syria and Palestine (Oxford 1924): ill. 4.26

  Brisch, K., Kroger, J., Spuhler, E, and Zick-Nissen, J., Museum für Islamische Kunst Berlin: Katalog 1971 (Berlin 1971): ills. 2.8, 6.15, 6.29, 7.17

  Budge, E. A. W., Cook’ Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan (London 1905): ill. 4.37

  Burns, R., Monuments of Syria: An Historical Guide (London 1992): ills. 7.56, 7.60

  Cornu, G., et al., Tissus d’Égypte: Témoins du monde arabe VIIIe-XIVe siécles (Geneva and Paris 1993): ill. 3.13

  Creswell, K. A. C., The Muslim Architecture of Egypt I–II (Oxford 1952 and 1959): ills. 1.11–12, 1.28, 2.16, 4.9

  Du Ry, C. J., trans. A. Brown, Art of Islam (New York 1970): ills. 6.61–2, 6.71, 8.48

  Elisséeff, N., Nur al-Din: un grand prince musulman de Syrie au temps des Croisades (Damascus 1967): ill. 3.27

  Ettinghausen, R.., Arab Painting (Geneva 1962): ills. 5.26, 7.9, 8.6, 8.35

  Flury, S., Islamische Schńftbänder. Amida-Diarbekr. XL fahrhundert (Basle 1920): ills. 1.15, 2.9–10

  Gailani, A. R. al-, ‘Islamic Art and the Role of China’ (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Edinburgh 1973): ill. 1.24

  Garcin, J. C., Maury, B., Revault, J. and Zakariya, M., Palais et Maisons du Caire. I. Epoque Mamelouke (XIlle-XVle siècles) (Paris 1982): ill. 4.34

  Gayet, A., L’Art Arabe (Paris 1893): ills. 2.17, 2.22, 3.30, 3.32–3, 4.28, 4.32, 4.35, 4.38, 5.4, 5.11, 5.25, 5.29, 5.32–3, 5.36–7, 6.24, 6.51–2, 6.68, 7.32, 7.46, 8.27, 9.3, 9.8–11, 9.13

  Ghitany, G., et. al., Trésors fatimides du Caire (Paris 1998): ills. 3.28, 6.50, 6.75, 6.77, 8.36

  Gladiss, A. Von, Kröger, J., and Niewöhner, E., Islamische Kunst: Verborgene Schätze (Berlin 1986): ills. 3.1–2

  Gorelik, M. V., in Elgood, R. (ed.), Islamic Arms and Armour (London 1979): ills. 2.14, 2.25, 2.28, 3.4–5, 3.9–10, 3.38, 4.24, 4.29, 4.30–1, 5.31, 7.35–9, 7.41–2, 7.44–5, 7.48–9, 8.1, 8.16, 8.19, 8.23, 8.29–8.32

  Grabar, O., in Ars Orientalis V (1963): ills. 6.67, 8.33–4

  Gray, B., The World History of Rashid al-Din. A Study of the Royal Asiatic Society Manuscript (London 1978): ill. 8.45

  Grotzfeld, H., Das Bad im Arabisch-Islamischen Mittelalter: Eine kulturgeschichtliche Studie (Wiesbaden 1970): ill. 5.13–14

  Grube, E. J., The World of Islam (Feltham 1967): ills. 2.16, 2.24

  Herzfeld, E. and Sarre, F., Archäologische Reise im Euphrat-und Tigrisgebiet (Berlin 1911–20): ill. 3.20

  Herzfeld, E., in Ars Islamica IX (1942) –XIII–XIV (1948): ills. 2.21, 3.18, 3.22–6, 3.29, 3.39, 4.11, 4.25, 4.27, 4.39, 6.47–9, 7.63

  Herzfeld, E., Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum. Deuxième Partie: Syrie du Nord.

  Inscriptions et monuments d’Alep (Cairo 1955): ill. 6.41

  Hillenbrand, R., Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh 1994): ills. 3.11, 3.19, 3.35, 4.9–14, 4.16, 4.23, 4.32, 4.36, 5.24, 6.21, 6.38–40, 6.46, 7.62

  Ipşiroğlu, M. S., Saray-Alben. Diez’sche Klebebände aus den Berliner Sammlungen (Wiesbaden 1964): ills. 8.7, 8.25, 8.28

  Jones, D. and Michell, G. (eds), The Arts of Islam (London 1976): ills. 1.13, 2.26, 6.3, 6.9–10, 6.20, 6.26, 6.66, 6.82, 9.1

  Kühnel, E., trans. K. Watson, Islamic Arts (London 1971): ills. 1.26, 2.6, 6.80, 6.83, 8.47

  Lanci, M., Trattato delle Simboliche Rappresentanze Arabiche e della Varia Generazione de Musulmani Caratteri sopra Differenti Materie Operati (Paris 1845): ills, 2.3–4, 2.18, 6.25

  Leacroft, H. and R., The Buildings of Early Islam (London 1976): ill. 7.67

  Lewis,
B. (ed.), Islam and the Arab World: Faith, People, Culture (London 1976): ills: 1.10, 1.17, 1.22–3, 2.2, 4.1, 4.15, 6.5, 6.19, 6.27, 6.31, 6.67, 6.74, 7.11, 7.15, 7.59, 8.13, 8.46, 9.14

  Lloyd, S. and Rice, D. S., Alanya (‘Ala’iyya) (London 1958): ills. 7.54–5, 8.40–1, 8.43

  Marchal, H., et al., Arts de l’lslam des origines à 1700 dans les collections publiques françaises (Paris 1971): ill. 6.17

  Masmoudi, M., La peinture sous verre en Tunisie (Tunis 1972): ills. 5.5–9

  Mayer, L. A., Saracenic Heraldry: A Survey (Oxford 1933): ills. 5.3, 5.10, 5.12, 7.14

  Mayer, L. A., Mamluk Playing Cards, ed. R. Ettinghausen (Leiden 1971): ill. 6.81

  Michell, G. (ed.), Architecture of the Islamic World (London 1978): ill. 6.64

  Mirza, N. A., Syrian Isma‘ilism (London 1997): ill. 7.68

  Moaz, K., in Revue des Études Islamiques, LVI (1990): ill. 4.7

  Mostafa, M., in Bulletin de l’lnstitut d’Egypte LI (1969–70): ills. 7.10, 7.27, 8.53

  Müller-Weiner, W., Burgen der Kreuzritter im Heiligen Land, auf Zypern und in der Agais (Munich and Berlin 1966): ills. 5.2, 5.31, 7.50, 7.52,–3, 7.64, 7.66

  Newsday (6 September 1990): ill. 9.6

  Nicolle, D., in Elgood, R. (ed.), Islamic Arms and Armour (London 1979): ills. 2.15, 3.17, 4.8, 7.2–4, 716, 7.20, 7.25, 7.29, 7.31, 8.4

  Nicolle, D., in Hillenbrand, R. (ed.), The Art of the Saljuqs in Iran and Anatolia (Costa Mesa, Cal., 1994): ills. 4.5, 4.18–9, 5.1, 7.1, 7.13, 7.40, 8.2, 8.52

  Nicolle, D., Early Medieval Islamic Arms and Armour (Madrid 1976): ill. 4.19

  Otto-Dorn, K., trans. J.-P. Simon, L’Art del’lslam (Paris 1967): ills. 1.14, 1.21, 2.1, 2.7, 2.11, 3.3, 3.6, 3.34, 3.37, 6.2, 6.4, 6.23, 7.8, 7.12

  Pavlovskij, A. in Byzantinische Zeitschrift II (1893): ills. 1.4–5, 2.12, 6.1, 6.6, 6.11–14, 6.45, 6.58–9, 6.69

  Pinder-Wilson, R. H., in The British Museum Yearbook I (1976): ill. 8.39

  Rice, D. S., The Baptistère de St Louis: A Masterpiece of Islamic Metal Work (Paris 1953): ills. 1.7–9, 1.16, 1.20, 3.15–6, 5.21, 6.44, 6.57, 6.72, 7.54–5, 8.16, 8.20–1, 9.2, 9.12

  Rice, D. S., The Wade Cup in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Paris 1955): ills. 1.2–3, 1.6, 2.5, 3.31, 4.20, 6.18, 6.28, 6.30, 6.32, 6.73, 9.4–5

  Rice, D. Talbot, ed. B. Gray, The Illustrations to the ‘World History’ of Rashid al-Din (Edinburgh 1976): ills. 8.15, 8.18

  Rice, D. S., in Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida (Rome 1956): ills. 2.13, 4.17, 5.30, 8.44

  Rice, D. S., in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XV (1953) and XX-XXI (1957–8): ills. 1.27, 2.19, 3.7, 4.23, 5.28, 6.33, 6.60, 6.76, 6.78, 8.50–1, 9.15

  Rice, T. T., The Seljuks (London 1961): ills. 1.18, 6.65, 6.71

  Robinson, B. W. (ed.), Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book (London 1976): ills. 6.79, 8.10, 8.37

  Rogers, J. M., The Spread of Islam (Oxford 1976): ill. 7.61

  Safar, E, Wasit: The Sixth Season’s Excavations (Cairo 1945): ill. 6.34

  Salmony, G., in Ars Islamica IX (1942): ill. 3.14

  Sauvaget,J., La Mosquée Omeyyade de Médine. Etude sur les origines architecturales de la mosquée et de la basilique (Paris 1947): ill. 3.8

  Sauvaget, J., in Syria XI (1930): ills. 5.16–20, 7.57–8

  Sauvaget, J., La poste aux chevaux dans l’empire des Mameloukes (Paris 1941): ills. 4.33, 8.24, 8.26

  Schlumberger, G., et al., Lashkari Bazar: Une residence royale ghaznévide et ghoride. 1A. l’architecture (Paris 1978): ill. 7.47

  Schmid, H., Die Madrasa des Kalifen al-Mustansir in Baghdad (Mainz 1980): ills. 4.9–10, 4.12

  Schneider, M., Mubarak aì-Makki: An Arabic Lapicide of the Third/Ninth Century (Manchester 1986): ill. 5.27

  Schulz, P. W. Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei: Ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte Irans (Leipzig 1914): ill. 5.15

  Sotheby’s, Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures: London, Wednesday 29 April 1998 (London 1998): ill. 8.38

  Spengler, W. F. and Sayles, W. G., Turkoman Figural Bronze Coins and Their Iconography (Lodi, Wis. 1996): ills. 2.27, 8.5

  Sublet, J., Les Trois Vies du Sultan Baibars (Paris 1992): ills. 1.1, 2.23, 6.35, 6.63, 7.11, 7.18–19, 7.21–4, 7.26, 7.28, 7.30, 7.43, 8.3, 8.9

  Tabbaa, Y. in Goss, V. P. (ed.), The Meeting of Two Worlds (Kalamazoo 1986): ills. 3.21, 3.36, 4.3

  Tantum, G., in Elgood, R. (ed.), Islamic Arms and Armour (London 1979): ills. 7.23, 7.28, 8.8

  Tate, G., trans. L. Frankel, The Crusades and the Holy Land (London 1996): ills. 2.20, 7.5–7, 7.33–4, 8.10, 8.12, 8.42

  Walther, W., trans. C. S. V. Salt, Woman in Islam (London 1981): ill. 1.25

  Wellesz, E., in Ars Orientalis III (1959): ill. 8.49

  Wilson, E., Islamic Designs (London 1988): ills. 4.4, 6.8, 6.16, 6.22, 6.36, 6.70, 8.17

  CHAPTER ONE

  Prologue

  The history of the Middle Ages has no more imposing spectacle than the wars undertaken for the conquest of the Holy Land,1 (Michaud)

  General Introduction

  THE CRUSADES, as the Western viewpoint sees them, were a series of campaigns – at least eight of them – motivated by the desire on the part of western European Christians to bring the holy places of Christendom and, above all, Jerusalem under their protection. In the West the Crusades are thought to have lasted from 1095, when Pope Urban II made his famous call to arms, until the fifteenth century and even later, although many pinpoint the fall of Acre in 1291 as the termination of serious Crusader activity against the Muslim Levant.

  From the outset, the Crusades formed important chapters in two distinct but interconnected histories, Occidental and Oriental. In the first, they were part of the evolution of medieval western Europe. Their significance has long been recognised and studied by many generations of Western scholars. Indeed, the Crusades are an undeniably fashionable area of Western medieval studies – this is hardly surprising in view of the fact that they were a Western phenomenon.2 In the Muslim East, the Crusades played a transient but unforgettable role which has left its impact on the Islamic consciousness until the present day; but it must be emphasised that the body of scholarship produced on them in the Middle East is incomparably less. The Muslim world has approached the subject less globally and in more piecemeal fashion. The full, composite story of the Crusades needs, of course, the drawing together of evidence from both sides of the divide to illuminate each other. Such a task needs to be redone in each generation. But it will be helped without doubt by a fuller understanding of the Muslim perspective.

  This book is the first full-length monographic treatment of the Crusades as seen by the Muslims – a study devoted not to establishing the bare chronological facts, vital though they are, but rather to evoking the detailed response of the Muslims to the Crusader presence. As a pioneering venture, it cannot hope to do more than sketch an outline for future research.

  Figure 1.1 Horseman, enamelled glass beaker, c. 1260, Aleppo, Syria

  The Approach of This Study

  This book is intended primarily for students and the general public, although it is hoped that specialists will also find something of interest in it. As its title suggests, only Islamic perspectives of the Crusades will be discussed. Through the evidence of Islamic sources only, an attempt is made to enter the mind-set of the medieval Muslims who suffered the impact of the Crusades and to tease out from the sources some hints at least of how the Muslims felt and how they reacted to the unprecedented experience of western European intervention in their lands and in their lives. It may seem an affectation, an exaggeratedly one-sided stance, to view the phenomenon of the Crusades from a solely Muslim perspective. Yet such a stance is timely, since so much of the scholarship on the Crusades has been unabashedly Eurocentric and has been penned by scholars of the medieval West. This study hopes to redress the balance. Such a focus should yield new insights into a phenomenon which left an indelible mark on the Muslim Near East psychologically and id
eologically, even if the actual military occupation of the Crusaders touched only a small area of the Islamic world.

  No aspect of Mediterranean history has been studied more thoroughly than the Crusades, and given their Western origins it is natural that they should have generated so much scholarship in the West. Yet on the Muslim side too, although medieval writers did not view them as being so momentous – coupling them jointly with the Mongol scourge as hated interventions into the Islamic world by infidel outsiders from outside – there is still much to be said. Beyond the establishment of chronologies and events, the background and context of Syria and Egypt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries need further study. Moreover, although lip-service is paid to the phenomenon of Muslim-Crusader cross-cultural relations, there is still more to be done in this area.

  What is the justification for presenting, or attempting to present, just the Muslim side? A few words of introductory background are needed. For the non-Muslim reader living in a so-called secular age in different parts of the world at the end of the twentieth century – indeed on the eve of the 900th anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusading armies – there is great benefit to be derived from an examination of the way in which one medieval religious ideology shaped history by confronting another similarly deep-felt religious ideology. It is also salutary for the heirs to the Judaeo-Christian tradition in the West to view the Crusades through the eyes of the Muslims who were the victims of this onslaught on their territories from a completely unexpected quarter. Nowadays, when Christian ‘fanaticism’ is normally regarded as the preserve of extreme sects whose activities are given sensationalist treatment by the media, and with Muslim movements declaring jihad and a return to fundamental Islamic principles frequently in the headlines and represented negatively, it is worth returning to the period of the Crusades to see what lessons can be learned and what insights gleaned.

  Figure 1.2 (above and opposite) Signs of the zodiac on the Wade Cup (a: Taurus, b: Cancer, c: Virgo, d: Scorpio, e: Capricorn, f: Pisces), inlaid brass, c. 1230, Iran

 

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