One senses in some of the sources at least that Muslim chroniclers would have liked Nur al-Din rather than Saladin to have won the prize of Jerusalem. As Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200) writes: ‘He was resolved to conquer Jerusalem, but fate overtook him’ (plate 3.35).94 Certainly, until the dawn of the modern era, it was Nur al-Din, rather than Saladin, who was taken by later Muslim writers as the prototype of the mujahid, the model jihad fighter. Saladin, as we shall see in Chapter 8, became popular in the Muslim world initially – and paradoxically – as a result of his glowing reputation in Christian Europe.
Plate 3.32 Jami‘ al-Nuri, minbar (now in Hama Museum), with a Qur’anic inscription (25: 62–3) perhaps punning on the associations with light (nur) in the title ‘Nur al-Din’: ‘Blessed be He that fixed to the firmament the constellations, who hung the lamp, and the moon that shines. He has made night and day …’, 559/1164, Hama, Syria
Plate 3.33 Jami‘ al-Nuri, minbar (now in Hama Museum), upper section, S 59/1164, Hama, Syria
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 6079)
Abu Shama (d. 665/1258) relates how the minbar was transported to Jerusalem and stresses the role of Nur al-Din in the ultimate conquest of the city as well as his vow to see the minbar taken to its rightful destination:
As it happened, the blessing which he [Nur al-Din] received from God was extended to Islam after him and sealed by the conquest of Saladin… The minbar had stayed in its place in the great Mosque of Aleppo … until the present day, when Saladin ordered the fulfilment of the vow of Nur al-Din and had the minbar transported to the place for which it was destined in Jerusalem.95
Figure 3.36 Jami‘ al-Nuri, minbar, inscription at the rear with the shahada (the Muslim confession of faith), 559/1164, Hama, Syria
Plate 3.34 Jami‘ al-Nuri, minbar (now in Hama Museum), upper section with dome, 559/1164, Hama, Syria
(Creswell Photographic Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. C. 6078)
Plate 3.35 Funerary madrasa of Nur al-Din, 567/1172, undated cenotaph, Damascus, Syria
Ibn Jubayr saw the minbar in 1182 when it was in Aleppo and writes: ‘I have not seen in any other country a minbar which resembles its shape and the uniqueness of its manufacture … It rises like an enormous crown above the mihrab until it reaches the ceiling.’96
Another tantalising snippet of evidence testifying to the preoccupation of Nur al-Din with Jerusalem is an inscription from the Nuri mosque in Mosul. The monument was founded by Nur al-Din on his taking possession of the town in 1171,97 in other words, shortly before his death. It suggests that the recapture of Jerusalem was still very much on his mind and that he wished to announce in faraway Mosul the jihad message which he had exploited so successfully in Syria. The damaged inscription (plate 3.36), now in the Museum in Baghdad but once part of the Nuri mosque,98 includes a portion of a verse from the Sura of the Cow: in this context the crucial words from it are as follows: ‘And whencesoever thou comest forth turn thy face toward the Inviolable Place of Worship.’99
The choice of this inscription in the mosque founded by Nur al-Din in Mosul is deliberate; it is an allusion to Jerusalem since the preceding verses in the Qur’an refer to the First Qibla of Islam – Jerusalem. Mosul, in northern Iraq, was of course distant from the operations of Nur al-Din in Syria; but he nevertheless seized the opportunity to score propaganda points about Jerusalem, the constant focus of his ambitions.
Plate 3.36 Jami‘ al-Nuri, part of Quranic inscription band in white marble and dark paste referring to Jerusalem as the First Qibla, s66–8/1170–3, Mosul, Iraq
According to the chronicler Abu Shama, in 1173, the year before his death, Nur al-Din announced in a letter to the caliph his intention to reconquer Jerusalem. His stated aim was ‘to banish the worshippers of the Cross from the Aqsa mosque… to conquer Jerusalem … to hold sway over the Syrian coast’.100
The evidence of the minbar and the Mosul inscription allow us to have much greater belief in this statement, which might at first glance seem to be prompted by the piety of a later generation of Muslim historians.
Jihad Literature from the Time of Nur al-Din
Sufi and Mirrors for Princes’ Literature
The concept of the spiritual struggle, the greater jihad, was well developed by the time of the Crusades and any discussion of jihad in this period should always take into account the spiritual dimension without which the military struggle, the smaller jihad, is rendered hollow and without foundation.101 The twelfth-century mystic ‘Ammar al-Bidlisi (d. between 590 and 604/1194 and 1207) analyses the greater jihad, declaring that man’s lower soul (nafs) is the greatest enemy to be fought.102 Abu Shama speaks of Nur al-Din in just these terms: ‘He conducts a double jihad against the enemy and against his own soul.’103
The Bahr al-fava’id (the ‘Sea of Precious Virtues’) is an anonymous treatise written in Persian in the middle of the twelfth century. It is one of the numerous works written in the medieval Islamic world in a genre known as ‘Mirrors for Princes’. Its author states that it was written in Syria for a distant patron, the ruler of Maragha, Aq Sunqur Ahmadili, and its recent translator Meisami narrows it down to Aleppo.104 She points to the fact that scholars from Persia were recruited to staff the religious institutions founded by Nur al-Din.105 The book is interesting amongst other reasons because it contains a lengthy chapter on jihad which dates from the very time when Nur al-Din was promoting his policies of jihad in that same area of Syria, so it is an illuminating reflection of the religious milieu of the developing Counter-Crusade movement.
After the author’s preface, he launches directly into a discussion of the conduct of Holy War. Through Qur’anic and hadith quotations and stories of pious ancestors, saints and Sufis, he lays emphasis on the ‘greater’ jihad against man’s internal enemy, his baser soul: ‘Holy war means slaying the soul with the sword of opposition; he who opposes his soul to please God deserves to be called manly, for opposition to the soul is harsher to it than a sword’s blow.’ The baser soul is hard to discipline: ‘He [God] created it hasty; He created it impatient and weak, powerless to endure heat or cold. He created it concupiscent, loving carnal pleasures and loathing afflictions and the toil of ordinary men.’
Chapter 4 turns to the ‘outward Holy War’. Here this author makes simple and unsophisticated analogies with animals to describe the ideal jihad warrior: he must be like a lion in courage and valour, a leopard in pride and haughtiness, a bear in strength, a wild boar in attack, a wolf in speed of escape. When taking booty, he must be like an ant – which carries ten times its own weight – like a rock in resoluteness, like an ass in tenacity, like a dog in loyalty and like a rooster, which awaits the chance to reach its goal.106
The ‘Merits of Jerusalem’ (Fada’il al-Quds) Literature
The term fada’il (‘merits’) had already been used in the titles of various forms of religious writings, extolling the virtues of performing the pilgrimage to Mecca, or the merits of fighting Holy War, or the inimitable qualities of the Qur’an. Fada’il works had also been produced as a result of rivalry between Islamic cities vying for religious supremacy; these included Mecca, Medina, Basra and others. Ibn Jubayr, the Spanish traveller in the time of Saladin, read a book entitled the Merits of Damascus and quotes from it.107
The Fada’il al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem) literature is little known in the West. Virtually none of the works in this genre have been translated into a European language and only very few have even been edited. The earliest surviving Merits of Jerusalem work is that of al-Wasiti (a Shafi‘ite preacher in the Aqsa mosque in 410/1019). However, before that date, the seeds of the future Merits of Jerusalem genre were already in existence, scattered throughout a variety of other kinds of Qur’anic writings, such as works of Qur’anic exegesis – those of Muqatil (d. 768) and al-Tabari (d. 923) discuss Jerusalem extensively. Another source for such material is geographical literature; the Muslim geographers al-Muqaddasi and Ibn al-Faqih devote muc
h space to the city.
The Fada’il al-Quds genre began modestly in the period of Fatimid domination in Jerusalem in the early eleventh century. There are, in fact, three fada’il treatises which date from this time: those of al-Wasiti, al-Raba‘i and Musharraf b. Murajja al-Maqdisi.108 It is known that the work of al-Wasiti was read out publicly in Jerusalem in 410/1019.109 The genre then burgeoned dramatically in the second half of the twelfth century and was sufficiently well established to continue and increase steadily thereafter until the thirteenth century and beyond. It is significant that the date of the copying of the manuscript of the work of al-Wasiti is September 1187, one month before the reconquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. The manuscript also records that the mosque at Acre was used in that year by some religious scholars from Damascus to intensify the popular awareness of the sanctity of Jerusalem and to prepare for the imminent recapture of the Holy City.110
Figure 3.37 Mosque lamp, pierced bronze, twelfth century, Konya, Turkey
Many of the fada’il works which are mentioned in the chronicles are lost or have survived only in quotations in later authors. The famous hadith scholar al-Rumayli, killed by the Crusaders in 1099, as mentioned in Chapter 2, was a pupil of Ibn al-Murajja’ and he is himself reported to have written a work on the Merits of Jerusalem.111 But this loss is less serious than might first appear, since the content of the fada’il works is highly predictable and conservative. Indeed, many so-called ‘new’ fada’il works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are self-confessed verbatim summaries, extracts or reworkings of the two earliest treatises on the subject, those of al-Wasiti and al-Raba’i. The tradition of plagiarism – or rather of utilising, reworking and building on the works of one’s illustrious predecessors – was, of course, well established within Islamic historical and religious writings and it carried no stigma. Thus, for example, Ibn al-Firqa (d. 1329), in his fada’il work entitled The Book of Inciting Souls to Visit the Holy Place, Jerusalem states openly in his first paragraph that his book is partly a summary of al-Raba‘i’s work and partly an extract from two other fada’il writers whose treatises have not survived.
Like the books on jihad, the Merits of Jerusalem works contain few discursive elements and there is little or no comment by the so-called ‘author’ or rather compiler. They consist rather of collections of hadith grouped under various predictable headings. The thirty-four sections of the work of al-Wasiti include the merits of visiting Jerusalem, the superiority of prayer and pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the merits of the Dome of the Rock, the merits of dying in Jerusalem, the Prophet’s ascent into heaven from Jerusalem, the connections of the city with the Day of Judgement and so on. Indeed, the Resurrection cannot take place, as al-Wasiti writes, ‘before the Ka’ba is taken like a new bride to [the Dome of] the Rock.’112
Put another way, the traditions chosen fall into categories such as historical, liturgical and apocalyptic. Emanating as they did from a strictly theological milieu, the ‘Merits of Jerusalem’ works differ very little in their format and content, whether they were written in the twelfth or the fifteenth century. Although the first extant work of this kind is relatively early, significant numbers of books in this genre appeared at the same time as jihad propaganda got into its stride. Was the growth of the ‘Merits of Jerusalem’ literature the result of the Muslim loss of Jerusalem in 1099 and the realisation by Muslims of their need to regain the Holy City for Islam? The response to such a question must be a very qualified ‘yes’ since a full fifty years were to elapse before books on The Merits of Jerusalem began to appear in quantity. Between 1099 and 1150 no work of this kind seems to have been written, although it could be expected that the Crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem and their attachment to it might have enhanced the Muslims’ desire to possess it. It was with the career of Nur al-Din that Jerusalem came to loom large in the Muslim consciousness as a potent symbol of religious and political unity. Part of the most effective religious propaganda programme of Nur al-Din – emphasising Muslim unification and a call to jihad – focused on the sanctity of Palestine and more especially of Jerusalem.
Figure 3.38 Arab warrior with shield fastened to his back, Rashid al-Din, Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (‘World History’), 714/1314, Tabriz, Iran
Indeed, it was during the career of Nur al-Din that the idea of liberating Jerusalem seems to have been reinforced by an official or at least government-approved propaganda campaign using the Merits of Jerusalem works as a weapon. Thus in the 1160s the genre reappears, after a long period of silence, under the guiding hand of the historian and traditionist Ibn ‘Asakir, the head of the centre of hadith scholarship (the dar al-hadith) in Damascus and the personal friend of Nur al-Din. Ibn ‘ Asakir was a prolific writer, producing a treatise on jihad and another on the merits of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Even in his history of Damascus, which has survived, he devotes a lengthy chapter to Jerusalem and Palestine; this is copied from al-Raba’i’s work on the Merits of Jerusalem. It can therefore be assumed that similar material was found in his own (now lost) book on the Merits of Jerusalem.
This proliferation of fada’il literature enhanced the desire on the part of the Muslims to reconquer Jerusalem. It is significant that Ibn ‘Asakir’s works glorifying Jerusalem were read out publicly to large audiences in Damascus from 1160 onwards. Such public meetings no doubt intensified popular awareness of the sanctity of Jerusalem and built up the expectation that the Holy City would be recaptured.
Jihad Prayers and Sermons
The text of a little-known jihad prayer of invocation made after a Friday sermon and allegedly dating from the late eleventh century has survived in at least two later works. Written by a scholar called Ibn al-Mawsilaya, the prayer is very revealing of the type of propaganda used to arouse the faithful to jihad.113 The Arabic is highly rhetorical in style, interspersed with suitable Qur’anic quotations. It lacks the stylistic felicities and elegance of the rhymed couplets used in the classic sermons of Ibn Nubata, the famous tenth-century preacher who has already been mentioned; indeed, the style of the prayer is baroque in its piling up of hyperbole, word-plays and esoteric vocabulary. When read aloud, however, its rousing resonances make up for its linguistic flaws and it reflects the deep-rooted Near Eastern belief in the effective value of the spoken word. The following lines come from this prayer:
O God, raise the banner of Islam and its helper and refute polytheism by wounding its back and cutting its ropes. Help those who fight jihad for your sake and who in obedience to you have sacrificed themselves and sold their souls to you.
The prayer ends powerfully: ‘Because they persist in going astray, may the eyeball of the proponents of polytheism become blind to the paths of righteousness.’114
There must have been many jihad sermons, no doubt modelled on those of Ibn Nubata which expressed the same rousing emotions, but their texts have not survived.
Figure 3.39 Foot soldier, inlaid metal vase made by ‘Ali ibn Hamud al-Mawsili, 657/1259, Mosul(?), Iraq
Special Books on Jihad
We have already referred to the Book of Holy War composed by al-Sulami at the beginning of the twelfth century. This fitted into a genre of writing which dates from the eighth century; the first such work was written by Ibn al-Mubarak (d. 181/797).115 Such books flourished above all in the second half of the twelfth century, precisely at the time of Nur al-Din and Saladin; these works served as weapons in the armoury of jihad propaganda, alongside inspiring sermons, eloquent poetry and Fada’il al-Quds literature. The book of jihad contained a compilation of selected hadith which evoked the memory of the wars at the beginning of Islam and the promise of Paradise to those who fought jihad.
There was a direct link in the chroniclers’ minds between such literature and military action. Indeed, a relative of the famous Muslim writer Usama, namely ‘Ali b. Munqidh, was taught a Book of Holy War by Ibn ‘Asakir. Thus inspired, ‘Ali went to defend Ascalon in 546/1151 against the Franks and perished in the battle.116 Amongst those who compiled book
s on jihad was Ibn Shaddad, Saladin’s biographer (d. 623/1234), who presented a work, now no longer extant, entitled The Merits of Jihad, to Saladin when the latter was besieging the castle of Krac des Chevaliers in 580/1184. This book allegedly gathered together all the hadith of the Prophet on the subject of Holy War.
Poetry Extolling the Virtues of Jihad
Perhaps the most rousing literary vehicle for jihad was the poetry written by contemporary poets to their patrons, the princes and commanders of the time, and especially to Nur al-Din. Such poetry would be read out publicly at court and would greatly affect those listening to it. As already mentioned, enthusiastic poetic claims were made for Zengi after the conquest of Edessa by poets such as Ibn Munir and Ibn al-Qaysarani.117 After ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani joined the service of Nur al-Din, he too wrote poetry in praise of his master’s pursuit of jihad. He writes:
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