This lack of interest in Edessa – doubtless due to its happening to be in Christian hands already at the time of the First Crusade – is in sharp contrast to the loud historiographical fanfares which understandably greeted the Islamic reconquest of Edessa by Zengi in 539/1144.
The Fall of Antioch
The loss of Antioch, on the other hand, is viewed with some attention by the Muslim chroniclers. This was a much bigger city and it had a greater strategic importance than Edessa. The city underwent a protracted siege (from October 1097 to June 1098). The governor, Yaghisiyan, was killed in flight. A relieving army under the command of the ruler of Mosul, Kirbogha, met the Crusaders in battle but was defeated. The citadel then surrendered and became the centre of the second Crusader state, the Principality of Antioch, under the rule of Bohemond. Ibn al-Qalanisi gives a detailed report of events at Antioch. He relates that on the news of the approach of the Franks, Yaghisiyan fortified the city and expelled its Christian population. He also sent pleas for reinforcements to the rulers of Syria.67 Ibn al-Qalanisi gives few details about the actual siege, except to point out that oil, salt and other necessities became hard to find but that so much was smuggled into the city that they became cheap again.68 He also mentions that the Franks dug a trench between themselves and the city because of the frequent attacks made on them by the army of Antioch (for a different account, see p. 68 below).
The fall of Antioch was, according to Ibn al-Qalanisi, precipitated by the treachery of some of the armourers in Yaghisiyan’s retinue who harboured a grudge against him. They conspired with the Franks and agreed to hand over the city to them. The traitors seized one of the bastions of the city, sold it to the Franks and then let them into the city at night.69 Later on in his narrative Ibn al-Qalanisi blames only one armourer, an Armenian called Firuz, for handing Antioch over to the Franks.70 Yaghisiyan fled, fell from his horse repeatedly and died. But the departure of the city’s governor was not the end of the siege. Although many of the population were killed or taken prisoner, some three thousand men fortified themselves in the citadel of Antioch and refused to move.71
The account of Ibn al-Qalanisi of the actual battle of Antioch (26 Rajab 491/29 June 1098), when the Muslims came to recapture the city, is vague and inadequate. The relieving army of Syria besieged the Franks until ‘they were reduced to eating carrion’. His narrative then continues:
Thereafter the Franks, though they were in the extremity of weakness, advanced in battle order against the armies of Islam, which were at the height of strength and numbers, and they broke the ranks of the Muslims and scattered their multitudes.72
We are given no account of the actual course of the battle and no reason for Crusader victory, although the chronicler is honest enough to admit that the Muslims were numerically superior and that the Franks were weak with hunger.
Al-‘Azimi, the contemporary of Ibn al-Qalanisi, blames the Muslims squarely for the defeat at Antioch: The Franks went out to them. They [the Franks] were extremely weak and the Muslims were strong. The Muslims were defeated, because of the evil of their intentions.’73
What of the version of Ibn al-Athir, whose account of the First Crusade the Italian scholar Gabrieli describes as ‘the most complete and convincing, if not the most strongly factual’?74 His narrative is fuller than that of Ibn al-Qalanisi.75 Ibn al-Athir stresses too that the Franks were weak and short of food.76 They had nothing to eat for twelve days; so the rich ate their horses and the poor ate carrion and leaves from the trees. Kirbogha’s army contained contingents who had rallied to him from many quarters but, according to Ibn al-Athir, he lacked the necessary leadership skills and alienated the other army chiefs by his pride and ill-treatment.77 Indeed, ‘they [the other Muslim commanders] plotted in secret anger to betray him and desert him in the heat of battle’. When the Franks asked Kirbogha for safe-conduct he would not allow them it, declaring instead that they would have to fight their way out.
Ibn al-Athir mentions the names of some of the Crusader leaders – Baldwin, (Raymond of) St. Gilles, Godfrey (of Bouillon) and Bohemond whom he describes as their leader. He also includes the story of Christ’s lance, which is discussed in Chapter 5.
As for the actual battle of Antioch, its contours are extremely blurred in the account of Ibn al-Athir. He explains that the Franks came out of Antioch in small groups and that the Muslims wanted to pick them off as they emerged. Kirbogha forbade this, preferring instead to wait for all the Franks to have left the city. The battle is minimised; the Muslim defeat is not in a military encounter:
When a good quantity of the Franks had come out and not one of them was left behind in Antioch, they attacked strongly, and the Muslims turned and fled… They were completely defeated without any of them striking a single blow with the sword or a single spear being thrown or a single arrow being fired… There had not even been any fighting from which to flee.78
A small valiant band from the Holy Land stood firm and fought. The Franks killed them by the thousand.
How could the Muslim army at Antioch ever have gained the victory in a period of such fragmentation, decentralisation and disunity? The fact was that there was no real corporate will to make the union effective, even in a single offensive against a common foe, the Franks outside Antioch. Such a motley combination of Janah al-Dawla of Hims, Tughtegin of Damascus, the Artuqid Sulayman from Mardin, and others, had no hope of working together amicably, especially under the leadership of Kirbogha, the ruler of distant Mosul, whose motives were no doubt questioned by the rest of the Muslim commanders. Disunity and infighting underlay this Muslim defeat, against all expectations and against distinctly underwhelming odds, outside Antioch. This much is suggested implicitly by the account of Ibn al-Athir, but on this occasion he certainly attempts to whitewash this ignominious defeat for the Muslims. The earlier and less detailed version of al-‘Azimi, on the other hand, does not shirk the responsibility of blaming the Muslims for the evil of their intentions, no doubt a reference to their mutual rancour, suspicion and hostility, and their lack of commitment to jihad. The geographer of northern Syria, Ibn Shaddad (d. 684/1285) mentions discord in the ranks of the Muslim army at Antioch, speaking of mutual suspicion between the commanders and discord between the Turks and Arabs.79
Ibn Taghribirdi (d. 874/1469–70) makes the Fatimids a scapegoat for the Muslim defeat at Antioch and specifically blames al-Afdal, the vizier of Egypt, for not sending out the Fatimid armies to join the Syrian commanders: ‘I do not know the reason for his not sending them out, [what] with his strength in money and men.’80 He repeats this sentiment at the very end of his account of the defeat at Antioch: ‘All this and still the armies of Egypt did not prepare to leave.’81 Thus he sidesteps the real reason for the Muslims’ ignominious and unnecessary defeat.
The real significance of the battle of Antioch for the Muslim world has to be teased out of the chronicles. Ibn al-Athir dismisses the significance of the finding of Christ’s lance, which Crusader sources say gave the Crusader morale a tremendous psychological boost: for him this is mere superstition. The real reason for the Crusader victory at Antioch is much more prosaic. Behind the bland statements that the Crusaders were hungry and weak and that the Muslims were numerically strong but that the Crusaders won the day is the unpalatable truth that this was probably the turning-point of the First Crusade. The Muslim commanders of Syria came together to relieve Antioch but in the decentralised political climate of the day they were unable even to stay together long enough to achieve victory. After Antioch, the way to Jerusalem lay open to the Crusaders.
The Fall of Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man
In Muharram 492/December 1098 the Syrian city of Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man (plates 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10,–2.11; cf. plates 5.2 and 5.4), situated between Aleppo and Hama, fell to the Crusaders. The city was never of any substantial size or importance, but these facts were overshadowed by the psychological effect of what happened there. The Muslim sources dwell on the fall of Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man
because of the dreadful massacre of the city’s population, which they recount in some detail. Ibn al-Qalanisi reports soberly that the Franks had made overtures for the peaceful handover of the city, promising security for lives and property, but that the citizens could not agree among themselves to accept these terms.82 Again, the theme of Muslim disunity is prominent. So the Franks took the city (by force) and ‘a great number from both sides were killed’.83 Thereafter, the Franks behaved treacherously to the citizens after promising them safety and plundered everything that they found.84
Ibn al-Athir, whose narratives are normally so detailed, has only a brief account of the fall of Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man. He comments: ‘For three days the Franks placed the sword among them: they killed more than 100,000 men and took many prisoners.’
His version of events stresses, however, that the citizens were not prepared to surrender peacefully.85 So the Franks prepared to attack by force, as was customary in their rules of war for a city which offered resistance. The numbers cited by Ibn al-Athir are of course absurdly inflated – they imply, if taken at face value, that Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man was one of the great metropolises of the Near East. It may be that this inflation of the figures of the victims – the number of people killed is given as being the same as at Jerusalem, as we shall see – is the result of the surge of indignation felt by later generations of Muslim chroniclers.
Figure 2.21 (above and opposite) Great Mosque, minaret, elevation, 483–7/1090–5, Aleppo, Syria (left); Great Mosque, minaret, elevation, c. 1170, Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man, Syria
Plate 2.7 Minaret and courtyard, Great Mosque, twelfth century, Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man, Syria
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 6037)
Plate 2.8 Minaret, detail, Great Mosque, c. 1170, Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man, Syria
Plate 2.9 Treasury, Great Mosque, twelfth century(?) but using pre-Islamic spolia, Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man, Syria
Plate 2.10 Courtyard and sanctuary, Great Mosque, twelfth century, Ma‘arrat al-Nu‘man, Syria
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 6039)
The most detailed Muslim account of the fall of Ma’arrat al-Nu‘man is that of the chronicler of nearby Aleppo, Ibn al-‘Adim (d. 660/1262). He emphasises the carnage and devastation caused in the town:
They [the Franks] killed a great number under torture. They extorted people’s treasures. They prevented people from [getting] water, and sold it to them. Most of the people died of thirst… No treasure remained there that was not extorted by them. They destroyed the walls of the town, burned its mosques and houses and broke the minbars.86
The Conquest of Jerusalem
Predictably, the fall of Jerusalem in 492/1099 receives full coverage in the Muslim sources – even the earliest extant works were written by authors who had had time to assess the significance of this event and many later Muslim authors knew well the importance that Saladin had attached to regaining the Holy City (plate 2.12).
Plate 2.11 Courtyard and sanctuary, mosque, twelfth century, Ma’arrat al-N?man, Syria
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 6034)
Under the year 492/1099 al-‘Azimi’s narrative is very brief. ‘Then they turned to Jerusalem and conquered it from the hands of the Egyptians. Godfrey took it. They burned the Church of the Jews (Kanisat al-Yahud).’87 This ‘church’ was presumably the principal Jewish synagogue.
Ibn al-Qalanisi’s account is longer and is sober and restrained. On the news that al-Afdal was on his way with a large army against the Franks, they renewed their attempts to take Jerusalem:
The Franks stormed the town and gained possession of it. A number of the townsfolk fled to the sanctuary and a great host were killed. The Jews assembled in the synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads. The sanctuary was surrendered to them on guarantee of safety on 22 Sha‘ban [14 July] of this year, and they destroyed the shrines and the tomb of Abraham.88
By the time of Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200), however, the story of the fall of Jerusalem has become embroidered with new details about massacre and pillage:
Among the events in this year was the taking of Jerusalem by the Franks on Friday 13 Sha’ban [5 July]. They killed more than 70,000 Muslims there. They took forty-odd silver candelabra from the Dome of the Rock, each one worth 360,000 dirhams. They took a silver lamp weighing forty Syrian ratls. They took twenty-odd gold lamps, innumerable items of clothing and other things.89
Plate 2.12 Southern stairway to the upper platform, Haram al-Sharif, undated but medieval, Jerusalem
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 4980)
The account of Ibn Muyassar (d. 677/1278) contains some of these details, adding that the Franks burned copies of the Qur’an.90
As for Ibn al-Athir (d. 630/1233), he includes in his account similar information about candelabra and lamps but he includes a new detail, emphasising the killing of Muslim holy men:
The Franks killed more than 70,000 people in the Aqsa mosque, among them a large group of Muslim imams, religious scholars, devout men and ascetics from amongst those who had left their homelands and lived in the vicinity of that Holy Place.91
By the time of Ibn Taghribirdi, the story has become even more elaborated. The Muslims are killed in both the Aqsa mosque (plate 2.13) and the Dome of the Rock and the number of those killed has increased to 100,000, including the old and the sick.92 Even the lower figure of 70,000 dead is, as we have shown, not mentioned in the earliest extant Muslim sources and is obviously exaggerated. However, the city must have contained a sizeable population at the time of the Crusader siege, since, as well as its own inhabitants, it probably also housed refugees from other towns and villages who had sought asylum behind its walls.
In addition to the general carnage in Jerusalem which is mentioned in all the Islamic sources, the Franks on occasion targeted individual religious figures. The tale of al-Rumayli, a prominent religious scholar, is very poignant. He was taken captive by the Franks who said they would set him free in return for a ransom of a thousand dinars. Since the required sum was not produced they stoned him to death on 12 Shawwal 492/1 December 1099.93
In all these Muslim accounts of the fall of Jerusalem there is no recognition of the motivation – religious or military – for the coming of the Franks. They simply turn up out of the blue and wreak havoc among the Muslims. The conquest of the city is a disastrous event recorded with great sadness but without reflection; it is an event to be suffered and from which lessons are to be learned.
The Treatment of the Jews in the First Crusade
For the medieval Muslims, the Jews were ‘People of the Book’ and as such entitled to religious tolerance and protection within the Islamic community under the covenant (dhimma). According to the Muslim sources, there were Jews living in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade and they shared the same terrible fate as the Muslims when the city fell to the Franks. As already mentioned, al-‘Azimi reports that they burned the ‘Church of the Jews’.94 Ibn Taghribirdi is more detailed: ‘They collected the Jews in the “church” and burnt it down with them in it. They destroyed shrines and the tomb of Abraham – on him be peace – and they took the mihrab of David peacefully’.95
Not surprisingly, the Muslim chroniclers do not view the Jews with the same suspicion as that which they harboured on occasion towards the Oriental Christians who might, rightly or wrongly, have been expected to side with their co-religionists, the Crusaders. The subsequent fate of the Jews of Palestine during the Frankish occupation is not dealt with in the Islamic sources.
Plate 2.13 Aqsa Mosque, interior, Umayyad period (seventh century) onwards, Jerusalem
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 5003)
The Oriental Christians at the Time of the First Crusade
As already mentioned, the demography of Syria and Palestine at this period was very complex in ethnic and rel
igious terms. A number of different groups of Christians lived in the area. Ibn al-Athir singles out the ruler of Antioch, Yaghisiyan, for special praise for his treatment of the local Christian population of the city at the time of the siege of Antioch in 491/1098.96 Ibn al-Athir points out first that Yaghisiyan was afraid of the Christians who were in Antioch. So he made the Muslims and then the Christians build the trench outside the city. When the Christians wanted to go home at the end of the day he would not let them:
He said to them: ‘Antioch belongs to you. Give it to me so that I can see what will become of us and the Franks.’ They said to him: ‘Who will look after our children and our wives?’ He said to them: ‘I swear to you about them.’ So they kept away and stayed in the Frankish camp. They [the Franks] besieged it for nine months.97
Ibn al-Athir concludes: ‘Yaghisiyan protected the Christian population of Antioch whom he had sent away and prevented hands from reaching them.’98
This is an interesting narrative. Obviously Yaghisiyan, as a Muslim Turkish overlord, was worried how the local Christian population would respond to the Western Christian invaders – would they side with the Christian newcomers or remain loyal to the local Muslims with whom they lived? What the general mass of the Christian male citizens of Antioch thought as the siege progressed is not clear. However, as already noted, according to some sources – and this is a recurring theme in other chapters of the Crusades as told by the Muslims – it was a Christian who handed over Antioch to the Crusaders. As mentioned earlier, al-‘Azimi calls him Firuz and states that he was an Armenian, and some later sources continue this story.99
The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives Page 13