105. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 447–8.
106. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, IV, 155.
107. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, IV, 156.
108. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 449.
109. Quatremère, I, 7.
110. Thorau, The Lion, 160.
111. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Rawd, 231; Quatremère, I, 7; al-Yunini, II, 318; Thorau, The Lion, 161.
112. Cf., for example, Ibn al-Furat, Lyons, 144–6.
113. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Tashrif, 77–86.
114. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Tashrif, 77.
115. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Tashrif, 78.
116. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Tashrif, 78.
117. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Tashrif, 78.
118. Warfare, 210.
119. Ibid.
120. B. Gray, ‘A Fatimid drawing’, in Studies in Chinese and Islamic Art, ed. B. Gray, London, 1987, vol. II, 193–9.
121. D. Storm-Rice, Le baptistère de St. Louis, Paris, 1953.
122. Ibid., plate IX.
123. Ibid., plates XII, XV.
124. Ibid., plate XXXIII.
125. Ibid., plate XXXIV.
126. Ibid., plates XXVI, VII and VIII.
127. Storm-Rice, Le baptistère, 22–3.
128. E. Atil, Ceramics from the World of Islam, Washington, 1973, 112–15.
129. Warfare, 183–209.
130. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Gibb, 134–5.
131. Cf. p. 445.
132. Marshall, Warfare, 209.
133. Al-Aqsara’i, trans. Tantum, 196–8.
134. Al-Aqsara’i, trans. Tantum, 199.
135. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 47.
136. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 448.
137. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 49.
138. Cf. J. Sauvaget, La poste aux chevaux dans l’empire des Mamelouks, Paris, 1941; EI2: barid.
139. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 48.
140. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 49.
141. Lewis, Islam, I, 223–4; Ibn al-Athir quoted in Abu Shama, I/2, 520–1.
142. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 166.
143. Trans. Darke, 74–5.
144. Ibid., 95.
145. Trans. Scanlon, 51–8.
146. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 51.
147. Al-Maqrizi, trans. Broadhurst, 154–5, 159.
148. Quoted by Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 319.
149. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 328.
150. Kedar, ‘The subjected Muslims’, 152–4.
151. Ibn al-Furat, Lyons, II, 88–9.
152. Al-Maqrizi, Suluk, I, 485.
153. Usama, Hitti, no.
154. Usama, Hitti, in.
155. Usama, Hitti, in.
156. Ibn Jubayr, Broadhurst, 322.
157. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III, 242–3; cf. also al-‘Umari, trans. Lundquist, 50.
158. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III, 243.
159. Lit. ‘in custody by striking and stabbing’.
160. Ibn Taymiyya, Lettre à un roi Croisé, trans. J. R. Michot, Louvain, 1995, 74.
161. M. van Berchem, ‘Inscriptions arabes de Syrie’, Mémoires de ’lnstitut Egyptien, III (1897), offprint 32 (repr. in Opera Minora, 380).
162. RCEA, VIII, inscription no. 3146, 254–6.
163. Van Berchem, ‘Inscriptions arabes’, offprint 23, Opera Minora, 371.
164. Ibid.
165. Ibid., offprint 24, Opera Minora, 372.
166. M. van Berchem, ‘Notes sur les Croisades’, Journal Asiatique, 9th series, 19 (1902), 422.
167. Usama, Hitti, 111.
168. Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, X, 327.
169. Ibn al-’Adim, Zubda, Dahan, II, 192–3.
170. Ibn al-Furat, Lyons, 45–6.
171. Usama, Hitti, 187–9.
172. Ibn al-Azraq, A Muslim Principality, 65.
173. Usama, Hitti, 190.
174. Thorau, The Lion, 170.
175. Usama, Hitti, 106.
176. Ibn al-Furat, Lyons, 28. According to al-Maqrizi (trans. Broadhurst, 308), the figure was 300–400 prisoners beheaded a night.
177. Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, X, 321–2.
178. Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, X, 322.
179. Usama, Hitti, 133.
180. Usama, Hitti, 133.
181. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 277.
182. Al-Maqrizi, trans. Broadhurst, 60.
183. Al-Maqrizi, trans. Broadhurst, 60.
184. Usama, Hitti, 58.
185. Al-’Azimi, 391.
186. Usama, Hitti, 105.
187. Ibn Wasil, V, 328–9.
188. Ibn Taymiyya, Croisé, 73.
189. L. Fernandes, ‘On conducting the affairs of state’, Annales Islamologiques, 24 (1988), 84.
190. Ibid.
191. Al-Qalqashandi, Subh, III, 354.
192. Rabbat, The Citadel of Cairo, 55.
193. Ibn Jubayr, Broadhurst, 43.
194. Al-Maqrizi, trans. Broadhurst.
195. Cahen and Chabbouh, ‘Le testament’, no.
196. EI2: bahriyya.
197. Cf. p. 567 below.
198. Quoted by Lewis, Islam, I, 211, from al-Muttaqi, Kanz al-ummal.
199. W. Muir, The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline and Fall, Edinburgh, 1915, 205.
200. J. L. Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs, London, 1972, 120.
201. Casson, The Ancient Mariners, 167.
202. A key moment was the battle of Dhat al-Sawari in 34/655 in which the Byzantine fleet was defeated. EI2, Supplement, art.: Dhat al-Sawari.
203. G. Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Medieval Times, Beirut, 1963, 57.
204. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddima, 210.
205. Ibn al-’Arabi, 77. The evidence of underwater archaeology reveals that many Byzantine and Muslim ships are lying on the seabed. The incidence of shipwreck is confirmed by the written sources.
206. Ibn Jubayr, Broadhurst.
207. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, III.
208. Michaud, Histoire des Croisades, IV, 449.
209. Cahen, ‘St. Louis et ’lslam’, 6–7, quoting Ibn Wasil.
210. D. A. Agius, ‘Historical-linguistic reliability of Muqaddasi’s information on types of ships’, in Across the Mediterranean Frontiers: Trade, Politics and Religion (650–1450), eds D. A. Agius and I. R. Netton, Brepols, 1997, 303–32; cf. also Goitein, Mediterranean Society, I, 305 ff.
211. Agius, loc. cit.
212. Hourani, Arab Seafaring, 96.
213. Quoted by Goitein, Mediterranean Society, I, 305. Acacia and sycamore wood was used for the building of the ghurab. Possibly such wood came from Malabar (this information came from a personal communication from Dr. Agius).
214. Heyd, Histoire, I, 131–2.
215. Ibn al-Qalanisi refers to the help of the Genoese in the capture of Haifa in 494/1100–1, and at al-Suwaydiyya in 503/1109–10. Cf. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Gibb, 51 and 100.
216. Ibn Muyassar, 40.
217. Ibn Muyassar, 63. The Fatimid ships left Jaffa after six days, having been left in the lurch by the Muslims of Syria.
218. Ibn Muyassar, 91.
219. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Gibb, 307–8. Cf. also Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 72.
220. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Gibb, 308.
221. Further Fatimid naval raids occurred in 550/1155–6, 551/1156–7 and 553/1158. Cf. Ibn Muyassar, 92, 95–6.
222. A Ehrenkreutz, ‘The place of Saladin in the naval history of the Mediterranean Sea in the Middle Ages’, JAOS, 75 (1955), 100–16.
223. Cf., however, the discussion on p. 568 below.
224. Lit.: continuously and completely.
225. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 164–5.
226. Ibn Shaddad, RHC, IV, 220–1. Cf. also Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, XII, 42; he writes that the number of warriors on the ship was 700 and that the Muslim leader went by night to the bottom of the boat and pierced a wide hole in it.
227. Al-Maqrizi, Suluk, I, 72.
228. Al-Dimishqi, Kitab nukhbat al-dahr, 209.
229. Dar al-sina‘a, the term most frequently used to denote a place where warships were built and equipped.
230. Quo
ted by Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 114.
231. Cf. Cahen and Chabbouh, ‘Le testament’, 102 and 112.
232. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 211.
233. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 223; Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, XI, 317.
234. Quoted by Ehrenkrentz, ‘The place of Saladin’, 111.
235. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 413.
236. Ibn Khaldun, trans. Rosenthal, abridged Dawood, 211–12.
237. Ehrenkreutz, ‘The place of Saladin’, 116.
238. Khitat, II, 194.
239. EI2: bahriyya.
240. Rawd, 49; Holt, ‘Ideal’, 49.
241. In his thorough analysis of Baybars’ career, covering 300 pages, Thorau devotes only four to Baybars’ involvement in naval matters. Cf. Thorau, The Lion, 203–7.
242. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Rawd, 386–7; al-Yunini, II, 453–4; Thorau, The Lion, 207.
243. Al-‘Ayni, RHC, II, 241.
244. Al-Maqrizi, Suluk, I, 594, quoted by Ayalon in EI2: bahriyya.
245. Ibid.
246. Ibn Taghribirdi, Nuįum, VI, 590ff.; VII, 122ff.
247. EI2: hisar.
248. Abu’l-Fida’, RHC, I, 164.
249. Ibn Kathir, Biday a, XIII, 321; al-Maqrizi, Suluk, I, 747, 764–5; Ibn Taghribirdi, Nujum, VIII, 8, 11; Stevenson, The Crusaders, 385.
250. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir, Sirat al-Malik al-Mansur, Cairo, 1961, 88.
251. EI2: hisar.
252. Ibid.
253. Ibn Taghribirdi, Nujum, VIII, 15 4–7.
254. Lyons, The Arabian Epic, I, 60–1.
255. Ibid.
256. Ibid., 61.
257. Ibid.
258. Ibid., 62.
259. Ibid., 63–4.
260. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, I, 37.
261. Marshall, Warfare, 120.
262. Marshall, Warfare, 214.
263. Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima, 208.
264. Oman, War in the Middle Ages, I, 232–3.
265. ‘De l’art militaire’, 194.
266. Ibid.
267. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 4–5.
268. Lynn White, jun., ‘The Crusades and the technological thrust of the West’, in Parry and Yapp, War, Technology and Society, 100–1.
269. R. C. Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097–1193, Cambridge, 1967, 83; Marshall, Warfare, 5–6.
270. Ibid., 257–61.
271. Ibid., ı83ff.
272. Ibid., 17.
273. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 83.
274. Al-Ansari, trans. Scanlon, 29.
275. J. D. P. Keegan, A History of Warfare, London, 1993, 294.
276. Quoted by Gabrieli, 58.
277. Abu Shama, RHC, IV, 425.
278. Al-Aqsara’i, trans. Tantum, 188.
279. Cf. Mouton, Damas, 72.
CHAPTER NINE
Epilogue The Heritage of the Crusades
With such glorious civilisations and military achievements behind them, the Arabs cannot stop brooding over the comparison between their present and their past. That history was constantly bedevilled with the conflict with Europe, which made them look all the time over their shoulder, check and compare.1 (Kishtainy)
Introduction
THIS BOOK has highlighted some of the Islamic perspectives of the phenomenon known in the West as the Crusades and has attempted to show how medieval Muslims were affected by this unheralded invasion from Christian Europe.
It is of course true that the Crusading phenomenon did not stop abruptly with the fall of Acre in 1291. Offensives on both sides, European and Muslim, were repeatedly launched in subsequent centuries. These could be, and often were, labelled as Crusade or jihad and were conducted in the same spirit as similar undertakings which had taken place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. So there was no sudden or decisive end to the Crusades, whose reverberations continued to echo long after the withdrawal of the European military presence from the Levant.
Figure 9.1 Sphinx, glazed ceramic bowl, late twelfth–early thirteenth centuries, Raqqa, Syria
The story of the confrontation of the Muslim world with the Crusaders who lingered in the Mediterranean after 1291 is beyond the remit of this book.2 Nor is it the aim here to discuss the Ottoman offensives in Europe which many have seen as an Islamic revanche for the Crusades.3 The psychological scars left by the Crusades on the Islamic world and the way in which the experience of the Crusades has moulded the Muslim corporate psyche will, however, be discussed here. These factors are, after all, of direct relevance to a clearer understanding of the long-term Muslim perception of the Crusades and they also shed light on twentieth-century relationships between the Islamic world and the West.
Such an enormous topic as modern Islamic perceptions of the Crusades should really be the subject of several other books; so what is offered here are only a few general thoughts and brief glimpses into a vast and multifaceted phenomenon. The ‘idea’ of the Crusades quietly permeates many aspects of modern life in the Arab and the wider Islamic world. For some, the concept of the Crusades is seen as a manifestation of the continuing struggle between Islam and Christianity, of which the chain reaction began with the Islamic conquests, produced a Christian counter-response in the Crusades themselves, an Ottoman revanche notably in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Western colonialising interference in the last two hundred years. Others see the Crusades as the first stage of European colonialism (isti’mar mubakkar – ‘premature imperialism’) or as a combination of the effects of religious zeal and political inter-vention. Whatever their interpretation of the Crusading phenomenon may be, there is no doubt that it affects political rhetoric, jihad literature and, more pervasively but intangibly, the way in which many Muslims view western Europe, and by extension, the United States. It is no exaggeration to say that international understanding and world peace would benefit significantly from a better under-standing of this issue.
Figure 9.2 (above, below and opposite) Animal friezes, inlaid brass basin known as the ‘Baptistère de St Louis’, c. 1300 or earlier, Syria
As Akbar Ahmed, a prominent Islamic writer who lives in the West, remarks:
The memory of the Crusades lingers in the Middle East and colours Muslim perceptions of Europe. It is the memory of an aggressive, backward and religiously fanatic Europe. This historical memory would be reinforced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as imperial Europeans once again arrived to subjugate and colonize territories in the Middle East. Unfortunately this legacy of bitterness is overlooked by most Europeans when thinking of the Crusades.4
The Development of Muslim Interest in the Crusading Phenomenon
It is difficult to assess the validity of drawing parallels between the past and the present. Of course, the past is often a live issue. On 10 Muharram each year Shi‘ite Muslims solemnly re-enact in deeply emotional ceremonies the battle at Karbala’ in 680 and the martyrdom there of the Prophet’s grandson, al-Husayn. The past can live on in different ways. It can be a source of pride – the Palestinians invoke the three glorious military victories of Yarmuk, Qadisiyya and Hattin and their hopes of present victory over Israel are sustained. On the other hand, the past can fester. It is a strange irony that western Europe lost the Crusades militarily but went on to ‘win the world’, whilst the Muslims won the Crusades but subsequently viewed themselves as being trapped in a subordinate position to the West: as the Tunisian scholar Matwi writes: ‘All the profit (ghunm) of those wars fell to the lot of the Crusaders, all the damage (ghurm) was the share of the Muslims.’5
The Islamic world was slow to draw lessons from the Crusades, their first experience of European interventionism. Nor did the Muslims tap the propagandistic potential of the Crusades until relatively recent times. Occasionally, within the context of Turkish military defeats at the hands of Russia or Austria, the Ottoman imperial historiographer Na’ima (d. 1716) would draw parallels between past and present, between the Crusades and his own time. As Bernard Lewis points out,6 Na’ima was not just a chronicler of events; he also reflected
on the philosophy of history. He describes how the Crusaders established themselves along the coasts of Syria and Palestine where they remained until Saladin restricted their power and his successors finally drove them out. Na’ima suggests that the leaders of his own time should model themselves on the example of the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans. When in defeat, the Muslim rulers at the time of the Crusades had seen the wisdom of making truces with the Crusaders – after all, one of the sultans had even signed a treaty handing Jerusalem over to them. So, Na’ima argues, the Ottomans who have been heavily defeated should be ready to make peace in order to build up their resources for an eventual victory.7
The Muslims showed little interest in the Crusades as a discrete entity, as a phenomenon of world history; the Arabic terms al-hurub al-salibiyya (the ‘Cross’ wars) or harb al-salib (the war of the ‘Cross’), which are used nowadays to signify the Crusades, were introduced as late as the middle of the nineteenth century. It is important to stress that these terms are European borrowings, although they have been embraced wholeheartedly into modern Arab and Muslim culture and indeed have acquired their own emotive force in Arabic in recent years. The Middle East learned to use these terms after Christian Arab authors began to translate the history of the Crusades from European sources. It is an ironically roundabout route for Muslims to take in search of their own past.
A history of the Crusading wars appeared in Arabic in Jerusalem in 1865: entitled History of the Holy Wars in the East, Called the Wars of the Cross, it was a translation by Muhammad Mazlum from a French work by Monrond, but it bore the imprimatur of the Patriarch of Jerusalem himself.8 The first work on the Crusading phenomenon by a Muslim, written in 1899, was the Splendid Accounts in the Crusading Wars (Al-akhbar al-saniyya fi’l-hurub al-salibiyya) of the Egyptian scholar Sayyid ‘Ali al-Hariri.9 This book is a pioneering landmark in Islamic historiography since it drew extensively on medieval Islamic sources which the author quotes at length. Even at this early stage, however, al-Hariri is well aware of the relevance of the Crusades to his own time. He writes in the introduction to this work: ‘Our most glorious sultan, Abdülhamid II has rightly remarked that Europe is now carrying out a Crusade against us in the form of a political campaign.’10 Yet al-Hariri’s book was not followed up very energetically by other similar works.11
The Crusades- Islamic Perspectives Page 65