Download PDF | Muslims, Mongols And Crusaders, An Anthology of Articles Published in The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, By G.R.Hawting, Routledge (2005).
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MUSLIMS, MONOLS AND CRUSADERS
The period from about 1100 to 1350 in the Middle East was marked by continued interaction between the local Muslim rulers and two groups of non-Muslim invaders: the Frankish crusaders from Western Europe and the Mongols from Northeastern Asia. In deflecting the threat those invaders presented, a major role was played by the Mamluk state which arose in Egypt and Syria in 1250. The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has, from 1917 onwards, published a variety of articles pertaining to the history of this period by leading historians of the region, and this volume reprints some of the more important and interesting of them for the convenience of students and scholars. In making the selection the interests of those who are not specialists in the history of the Middle East and may not know the languages of the region have been taken into account. This volume will be of interest to historians of medieval Europe who are concerned with the Crusades as well to those interested in the Middle East and the Mongols. The papers here reprinted include discussion on Arabic and other sources for the period (including the controversial Marco Polo and his ‘Travels’), innovative studies of military, diplomatic, administrative and other issues, and wider treatments of such things as the image of Saladin and historiography on the Mongol Empire. An introduction by the editor puts the papers in the historical and scholarly context.
G.R.Hawting is Head of the History Department and Professor in the History of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His special interest and most of his publications relate to the early development of Islam in the Middle East
INTRODUCTION
The period and its historiography One notable feature of the period in the history of the Middle East with which the articles collected in this volume are concerned is the migration into the region, or its invasion, by peoples—Turks, Franks and Mongols—originating outside it. These groups ruled over and settled among an already existing population which was diverse but by this time probably predominantly Muslim, and Arabic or Persian speaking. It may be useful to begin with a summary account before proceeding to reflect on the way in which academic scholarship on the period has developed.2 During the ninth and tenth centuries, Turks became the most important element in the armies of the eastern Islamic world. Some achieved positions of power to the extent that they were able to establish and maintain dynastic states independent of the authority of the caliphs in Baghdad. Frequently, the Baghdad caliphs were little more than figureheads, with real power in the hands of Turkish generals and commanders.
The Turks had first come into the Islamic world as individual slaves, selected for training as soldiers and conversion to Islam, to be followed by manumission and service in the armies of the caliph or other powerful figures. Islam had not yet spread among the Turkish tribes of Central Asia and they were still legitimate targets for Muslim raiders and slave traders, their reputation as fighters high. The institution of the slave soldier (ghulām, mamlūk) was to remain a characteristic feature of Muslim armies in pre-modern times, and so long as there were still non-Muslim Turkish populations they were to remain a favoured source of military manpower. During the second half of the tenth century, however, Islam began to spread among some groups of Turkish tribes in and beyond what were then the eastern border regions of the Islamic world. The reasons for, and the nature of this process of Islamization, are to some extent obscure but, given the earlier willingness of groups of Turks to adopt religions associated with the settled cultures with which they were in contact, not too difficult to envisage. One of the groups which became Muslim at this time was that of the Oghuz tribes, and in the first half of the eleventh century they began to migrate west under the leadership of the Seljuk family. By 1055, they had won control over most of Persia and Iraq, including Baghdad, the residence of the caliphs who were the nominal leaders of Sunni Islam. Subsequently, groups of Turks continued to move west into Syria, over most of which they established control in the 1070s, and northwest into Asia Minor. There, their victory at Manzikert near Lake Van in 1071 over the Byzantine army led by the emperor Romanus Diogenes opened up Asia Minor for the first time to Islamization and Turkification. That region, before Manzikert largely Christian and Greek speaking, is now the heart of the country known as Turkey. These free Turkish migrants into the Islamic Middle East came as Muslims, and their progress from Central Asia to Baghdad and beyond was relatively slow. This enabled them, or at least their leaders, to adapt and assimilate to the predominantly Perso-Islamic culture of the eastern regions of the Muslim world but without losing their own Turkish identity. The Christian Franks who came as crusaders from western Europe and who arrived in Syria at the end of the eleventh century, in contrast, had no interest in assimilation, although inevitably during the nearly 200 years of their presence in the region they had to adapt to many of the features of the local way of life. Coming from the north in 1099, the Franks quickly established four Latin Christian polities in the region of Syria: the kingdom of Jerusalem, the principality of Antioch, and the two counties of Edessa and Tripoli. To a large extent this intial success must be explained by the disunity and disharmony of the several Muslim powers who, between them, struggled for hegemony in Syria and more widely in the Middle East. The Ismā‘īlī caliphate, ruling in Cairo since 969, partly as a result of the coming of the Turks, had been forced to abandon its aim of establishing its authority throughout the Muslim world. The Seljuks proclaimed themselves champions of the Sunni form of Islam, and their arrival in Syria ended expansion there. Nevertheless, the fatimids still had supporters in the area and an interest in maintaining a presence at least in Palestine and Ghaza in order to protect Egypt, the heart of their Shiite state.
In central and northern Syria, geographical fragmentation and the divisions inside the Seljuk empire following the death of the sultan Malik Shah in 1092 allowed the development of a political and religious patchwork and a shifting pattern of alliances and hostilities, sometimes involving also the Frankish states. One other notable element here was that of the Nizārī Ismā‘īlīs, known to the Franks and to the west as the Assassins. In the 1090s, they had separated from those Ismā‘īlīs who continued to recognize the leadership of the fatimids caliphs in Cairo, and they had established politically active groups in various parts of Persia and Syria. Slowly during the twelfth century these divisions among the Muslims were diminished, although never completely overcome. The process culminated in the rule of Saladin (1169–93), who was able to make himself master of Egypt and of extensive territories in Syria. Saladin’s most famous achievement was the wresting back of Jerusalem from the Franks following the battle of in 1187; earlier (1171) he had ended the line of caliphs in Cairo. His seizure of Jerusalem did not, however, bring the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem to an end, and at the time of Saladin’s death it still hung on in Acre and Tyre. It was to remain a significant player in the region for another century. Two of the originally three crusading states to the north, those in Tripoli and Antioch, also still survived, but the county of Edessa had been eliminated as early as 1144. Saladin was succeeded in his Egyptian and Syrian territories by various members of the family to which he belonged, forming a loose, often mutually antagonistic, dynasty—the Ayyūbids whose name is derived from that of Saladin’s father (see the dynastic table in Peter Jackson’s article in this volume on the crusades of 1239–41). These successors of Saladin were faced with the incursions of several more crusading expeditions from Europe and with the continuing presence of the crusading states in Syria. By this time, however, the crusading movement itself had become more liable to rivalries and competing aims between the various participants, and the crusaders in Syria did not pose the threat to the Muslims that they had before Saladin’s time. During the first half of the thirteenth century, a more immediate and greater danger to the Muslim rulers came from the rise of the power of the Mongols and the disturbances that it triggered in east and Central Asia. Between 1218 and 1221, some of the great Muslim towns of Central Asia were devastated by the raids of Genghis Khan’s followers, but the Middle East itself was spared for some years as the Mongols consolidated their conquests in China and expanded in the southern Russian steppe. Genghis himself died in 1227. In the 1240s, renewed Mongol raids led to the submission of a number of Muslim territories, including the Seljuk sultanate of Rūm which had developed in Asia Minor after Manzikert, and to the influx into Syria and Palestine of significant numbers of refugees from Khwarazm, a Muslim state to the southwest of the Aral Sea. This new ingredient in the situation in Syria was to be an important element in the relationship between Ayyūbids and Franks in the region. In the 1250s, the Mongol invasion of Persia began and by 1258, after the destruction of the strongholds in Persia of the Nizārī Ismā‘īlīs (the Assassins), Baghdad was taken. Whereas the Muslim Seljuk Turks, two centuries earlier, had posed as champions of the Baghdad caliphs and saw the advantages of maintaining the caliphate and exercising control over it, the non-Muslim Mongols had no use for it. They killed the reigning caliph, and effectively ended an institution that dated back to the earliest Islamic times By this time the caliphate had lost its importance in the life of Islam. From the middle of the ninth century its religious authority had been usurped by the religious scholars (the ulema), and the caliph in Baghdad had become little more than a symbol of the unity of Sunni Islam, even though some of the later caliphs were able to take advantage of temporarily favourable conditions to revive their political authority and, to some extent, the prestige of their office. At the level of theory, the writings of several Sunni Muslim scholars reflect the diminished status of the caliphate and it may be argued that by 1258 the institution was no longer of fundamental importance for Muslim religious and political life. Although the idea of the caliphate survived, and although later individuals claimed to be, and to some extent received recognition as, caliphs, the institution henceforth had only an attenuated existence. (See the article in this volume by P.M.Holt on the Abbasid caliphate in Cairo.) Mongol ambitions in the Middle East were not limited to Persia and Iraq and by 1260 they had entered northern Syria and were pushing south into Palestine. But there they experienced their first significant defeat—at the battle of ‘Ayn Jālūt in that year. That proved to be a decisive reverse. Excluded now from lands west of Iraq, the Mongol ruler Hülegü (d. 1265) established his capital in Azerbaijan and he and his Mongol descendants as rulers of Iraq and Persia became known as the dynasty of Il-Khans (1256–1335).3 The Mongols had been defeated at ‘Ayn Jālūt by the recently installed Mamluk sultanate of Cairo. Like earlier Muslim rulers, the Ayyūbid successors of Saladin, especially al-Malik sultan of Egypt 1240–49, had built up their armies by the extensive use of slave soldiers. At this time the majority were slaves acquired from among the Turks of the Kipchak steppe of southern Russia. died during the crusade to Egypt led by Louis IX in 1249 and shortly afterwards his son and successor was killed by some of the Turkish soldiers. By 1257, following a period of puppet rulers and violent intrigues in which one of concubines, Shajar al-Durr, played a leading part, power in Egypt was seized by the soldier a Khwarazmian. at first claimed to act on behalf of the son and successor of a previous sultan but soon felt secure enough to send the nominal ruler into early retirement. This was a pattern of succession that became frequent during the following more than two and half centuries when Egypt and Syria were ruled by a series of sultans who had originally been recruited as slave soldiers. It was who commanded the army that defeated the Mongols at ‘Ayn Jālūt but soon afterwards he was killed by Baybars, a Turkish Mamluk who had played an important part in the battle and had been involved earlier in the murder of successor. Baybars (1260–77) was the first important sultan in the line of Mamluk rulers of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517). Baybars’ immediate priority was to secure his territories against further attacks from the Il-Khanid Mongols in Persia. To this end he began to extend his control over Syria by moving against those elements there—Franks, Armenians, Nizārīs and survivors of the Ayyūbid dynasty—who had been or were potentially allies of the Mongols, and to forge links with another Mongol power in the region, the Golden Horde. The Horde controlled the Russian steppe and exercised suzerainty over the Russian princes to the north. Its rulers were enemies of the Mongol Il-Khans of Iran. Its Khan Berke (1257–67) had accepted Islam although generally the Islamization of the Horde proceeded at a slower pace than that of the Il-Khanid Mongols. From the point of view of Baybars, probably the most important factor was that the Horde controlled the region which was the source of the supply of slaves for the Mamluk territories. Following the killing of the caliph in Baghdad a member of the ‘Abbāsid family escaped and made his way to Cairo where, in 1261, he was installed as caliph by Baybars. This successor caliphate in Cairo continued until the Ottoman occupation of Egypt in 1517. At a later date the Ottoman sultans in Istanbul claimed that the last caliph of Cairo (who had been taken to Istanbul in 1517) had transferred the office into their hands. The caliphate was proclaimed formally abolished by Kemal Ataturk when he established the state of Turkey in 1922. After the death of Baybars in 1277, the Mamluk sultanate eventually passed to a figure of similar stature, Qalāwūn (1279–90), who continued the policies of his predecessor. Largely as a by-product of the need for security against the Mongols in Iran, Qalāwūn was concerned to bring Syria more firmly under his control. His great achievement was the taking of the county of Tripoli in 1289. He died shortly afterwards while preparing for an attack upon Acre. That prize finally fell to Qalāwūn’s son and successor, al-Malik al-Ashraf Khalīl b.Qalāwūn (1290–93). A convenient conclusion to the period we are concerned with in this volume is signalled by the destruction of the last remaining Frankish possessions in Syria during the 1290s and by the conversion to Sunnī Islam of the Mongol Il-Khanid ruler of Persia, Ghazān Khan (1295–1304). The conversion of the Il-Khans to Islam symbolizes the gradual acculturation of the Mongol conquerors of Iran and was a significant stage in the disappearance of the Mongols as a distinct ethnic group in the Middle East. Thirty years or so after the death of Ghazān, the Il-Khanate itself had disappeared, and when—some twenty years later—a claimant to the Il-Khanid throne appeared, he bore the traditional Persian name of Anushirwan. Nevertheless, the acceptance of Islam by Ghazān Khan did not end the hostility between the Mongols in Iran and the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria. Ghazān was even able to take possession of Damascus for a short time in 1299–1300. A second attempted invasion in 1303 was less successful and Syria thenceforth remained under Mamluk control until the coming of the Turko-Mongol Timur (Tamerlane) a century or so later.
Clearly, a selection of articles concerned with aspects of Mamluk, Mongol and Crusading history, taken from the volumes of the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies published in the latter two-thirds of the twentieth century, will not be completely representative of the development of studies in these fields. There are scholars—Bertold Spuler, Claude Cahen and Ulrich Haarmann are just three who come to mind—who made major contributions but did not publish (at least on these subjects) in the Bulletin. 4 Equally there are areas, for example, artistic, intellectual and religious history in the period of this volume, which have received significant attention elsewhere but are largely unrepresented here. The majority of the contributions in this volume are concerned with political, diplomatic, administrative and institutional history, and the methods and evidence used are also predominantly traditional—that is, the critical analysis of texts, predominantly the chronicles and biographies written by contemporaries. Most of the research presented here is based on the appearance or easier availability of new textual sources, or by fresh exploitation of already known texts. Given the tight focus of most academic articles, it is not really possible on the basis merely of those in this volume to deduce how far and in what direction views about the significance of the period as a whole may have developed. It may be of value, however, to consider some views about the period generally and to see how far the articles collected here indicate developing understandings of it. Two of the contributors to this volume, in particular, have been concerned to view the period within the longue durée of the Islamic Middle East. H.A.R.Gibb, in an influential article assaying an interpretation of medieval Islamic history, which appeared in the first issue of the Journal of World History, characterized this period as one in which the “orthodox institution” of Islam (he was referring to the body of Sunni scholars concerned above all with the interpretation and implementation of the Law) lost its ability to integrate and provide leadership in society, a role that increasingly came to be taken over by Sufi movements. This development he associated with an urban and economic decline consequent upon the expansion of nomadism, and the coming of the Turks and Mongols was part of that phenomenon. The growing influence of Sufism, the major forms of which, according to Gibb, had grave intellectual consequences for Islam (“it drew intellectual energies off into subjective and antirational speculation”) was hastened on by the destruction of the still vigorous centers of Islamic culture in north Persia during the Mongol invasion of 1220, and the Mongol occupation of all western Asia (except Syria) after the capture of Baghdad in 1258. The orthodox institution was eclipsed under the rule of heathen princes, and though it gradually revived in the following century its social and political foundations were too weak to allow it to recover its former influence.5 Gibb, therefore, tends to view the period unfavourably in cornparison with the earlier one in which, following the Arab conquest of the Middle East, Islamic society and culture had formed. Gibb seems to value the Arab contribution over that of other ethnic and linguistic groups, urban society over that of agriculturalists and pastoralists, and Sunni “orthodoxy” over other forms of Islam in the religious sphere. The view of the period, especially between the coming of the crusades and the Mongol conquests, as one of stagnation or even decline has been shared by some other scholars. Historians who focus on political developments have often emphasized the political fragmentation of the Islamic world from the ninth century onwards—the period in which the importance of the Turks first became notable. Those who focus on intellectual and religious matters sometimes point to a perceived lack of innnovation in the tradition of Islamic philosophy (Averroes, d. 1197, and Maimonides, d. 1204, are often seen as the last significant scholars in that tradition); and to an alleged increasing narrowness and intolerance in the field of religion (Ibn Taymiyya, d. 1328, is sometimes seen as the key figure here; al-Ghazālī, d. 1111, although generally admired for the sophistication of his theology, is sometimes regarded less favourably for the impact of his attack on the philosophical tradition). Bernard Lewis shares the view that it was the already apparent internal weaknesses of Islamic state and society in the Middle East that made it susceptible to attack from outside. Those weaknesses were political, economic and cultural. Internally, the chief threat was posed by Ismā‘īlī Shiism, externally it came from the invaders from the east—the Turks and subsequently the Mongols. However, for Lewis, the Turks were not simply one aspect of the spread of nomadism at the expense of urban society. He emphasizes the identification of the Turks with Islam and the role they played in defending the Sunni form of the religion against the Ismā‘īlīs and the Crusaders, which allowed it to recover and develop its strength. He sees Sufism, not in the rather negative way of Gibb, but as strengthening Sunnism by providing it with an emotional content in addition to its legal and dogmatic ingredients. The development of the Sufi tradition was not at the expense of the “religious institution” but accompanied the rise of that institution to a position of authority which was in fact greater than that it had enjoyed in early Islam. Under the Turks the religious institution came to be incorporated into the structure of political authority, a process which reached its peak in the “gunpowder empires” which emerged in the period following the withering away of the Mongol presence.
The destruction of the caliphate by the Mongols, according to this view, was no more than the laying to rest of something already moribund, and Lewis also plays down the long-term destructive effects of the Mongol devastation. Without minimizing the depredations of the Mongols in the lands that they conquered, he stresses too the potential for speedy recovery and the fact that the Mongols never reached Egypt which, by this time, had replaced Baghdad as the centre of Islamic civilization in the Middle East. He regards, however, the coming of the Mongols as deleterious for the long-term political and agricultural development of Iraq. The chief legacy of the period other than the resurgence of Sunnism, according to Lewis, was the division of the Islamic Middle East into two cultural zones—that dominated by Persian and Turkish to the north and east and that by Arabic to the south and west—although to some extent this division was countered by the revival of Sunnism.6 Lewis’s presentation, therefore, seems less negative than that of Gibb. For Lewis, the period seems generally to be one of recovery and development (although not necessarily constant and consistent), preparing the way for the flourishing of Islam in the period of the “gunpowder empires” (the Ottomans, Safavids and Moghuls) before the impact of modernity on the Middle East from around the end of the eighteenth century. Our other contributors have been less ready to paint with such broad strokes, perhaps reflecting a feeling shared by many contemporary historians that their primary task is to understand rather than to evaluate and that the broad delineation of periods of history may be at the expense of their complexity and diversity. It is perhaps possible to deduce, nevertheless, that few of them would share the negative views of Gibb. Assuming that scholars do not devote themselves to the study of topics that they do not consider important and attractive, the recent revival of interest in the Mongols (illustrated here especially by the contributions of Amitai, Jackson and Morgan) and in the Mamluks (Amitai, Ayalon and Holt here, Haarmann and others elsewhere) points to a more positive evaluation of these groups compared with that of some earlier writers (and of much popular writing). At the beginning of his article on “The position and power of the Mamlūk Sultan” (chapter 8, below), Holt quotes the view of Prideaux in 1722 that “they scarce did anything worthy to be recorded in History”. His own article then goes on to illustrate the power, wealth and sophistication of the Mamluk state and to argue that it was more stable and united than the previous Ayyūbid regime. The achievement of the Mamluks in their struggles against the Mongols and Franks has long been recognized, but Holt’s assessment of them seems to go beyond that.7 To say that there has been a clear and marked change in the scholarly treatment of the period is perhaps to put the case too strongly, but any attempt to discuss it generally today would take account of, for example, increased awareness of the richness and diversity of the Shiite (Ismā‘īlī and Twelver) tradition of Islam, the importance of Sufism in spreading Islam in Asia and Africa, and the importance too of the Mongol conquests for the spread of Islam in central and eastern Asia. The Arab, Sunni and urban bias which characterized the interpretation of Gibb has declined in scholarship, if not necessarily in popular accounts and in the use of the Crusaders and the Mongols in political propaganda. On two particular points modern scholarship has taken issue with views expressed in popular and politically inspired presentations. The Crusades have naturally elicited comparisons in some circles with what is portrayed as the threat from “western” imperialism and Zionism. One result has been to magnify the importance of the Crusades as a factor in the history of the Middle East and that has been a consequence too of the modern idealization of Saladin and the wish on the part of several modern Arab leaders to be seen as inheritors of his mantle. In contrast, modern scholarship on the Crusades has tended to diminish their importance in the development of Islamic and Middle Eastern history generally, in contrast to their importance in European history. It has been pointed out that following the liquidation of the last Frankish states in the 1290s the historical memory of them faded in the Middle East until the nineteenth century when it revived as European historical works came to be translated into Arabic. The Arabic expression for “crusades” did not exist prior to the nineteenth century; until that point the common name for the crusaders in Arabic was the ethnic designation “Franks”, and no historical works on the Crusades appeared in Arabic before the late nineteenth century.8 The significance of the Crusades in the history of the Middle East may be debated but modern scholarhip is inclined to limit it.9 The second point concerns the long-term consequences of the destruction caused by the Mongol raids and conquests in the first half of the thirteenth century. That the Mongols were destructive of agriculture and towns is not questioned, but there has been a reaction against the view, sometimes expressed in popular and politically motivated writings, that the Mongols are to be blamed for many of the ills which have been claimed to afflict the Middle East even into the twentieth century—agricultural and economic “backwardness”, the failure to develop representative political institutions, the dominance of society by the military, etc.10 The period treated in this volume continues to inspire research and interest, and it is hoped that the greater accessibility of these articles as a result of their republication here will contribute to that.
treatment of the period is perhaps to put the case too strongly, but any attempt to discuss it generally today would take account of, for example, increased awareness of the richness and diversity of the Shiite (Ismā‘īlī and Twelver) tradition of Islam, the importance of Sufism in spreading Islam in Asia and Africa, and the importance too of the Mongol conquests for the spread of Islam in central and eastern Asia. The Arab, Sunni and urban bias which characterized the interpretation of Gibb has declined in scholarship, if not necessarily in popular accounts and in the use of the Crusaders and the Mongols in political propaganda. On two particular points modern scholarship has taken issue with views expressed in popular and politically inspired presentations. The Crusades have naturally elicited comparisons in some circles with what is portrayed as the threat from “western” imperialism and Zionism. One result has been to magnify the importance of the Crusades as a factor in the history of the Middle East and that has been a consequence too of the modern idealization of Saladin and the wish on the part of several modern Arab leaders to be seen as inheritors of his mantle. In contrast, modern scholarship on the Crusades has tended to diminish their importance in the development of Islamic and Middle Eastern history generally, in contrast to their importance in European history. It has been pointed out that following the liquidation of the last Frankish states in the 1290s the historical memory of them faded in the Middle East until the nineteenth century when it revived as European historical works came to be translated into Arabic. The Arabic expression for “crusades” did not exist prior to the nineteenth century; until that point the common name for the crusaders in Arabic was the ethnic designation “Franks”, and no historical works on the Crusades appeared in Arabic before the late nineteenth century.8 The significance of the Crusades in the history of the Middle East may be debated but modern scholarhip is inclined to limit it.9 The second point concerns the long-term consequences of the destruction caused by the Mongol raids and conquests in the first half of the thirteenth century. That the Mongols were destructive of agriculture and towns is not questioned, but there has been a reaction against the view, sometimes expressed in popular and politically motivated writings, that the Mongols are to be blamed for many of the ills which have been claimed to afflict the Middle East even into the twentieth century—agricultural and economic “backwardness”, the failure to develop representative political institutions, the dominance of society by the military, etc.10 The period treated in this volume continues to inspire research and interest, and it is hoped that the greater accessibility of these articles as a result of their republication here will contribute to that.
modelled upon the “great yāsa” or code of law promulgated by Genghiz Khān. The article was published under wartime conditions, and appended at the end are a number of critical comments contributed by the great Iranologist, Vladimir Minorsky (d. 1966), the first of which questions the validity of Poliak’s thesis. Subsequent work, notably that of the late David Ayalon (see especially the reference at note 1 of Morgan’s article on the Yāsa below), and the article of David Morgan which is included in this volume, has served to weaken much of Poliak’s argument and even to question the nature and existence of the alleged yāsa of Genghiz Khan. Nevertheless, his willingness to contemplate the Mamluk sultanate in a wider comparative context is refreshing, and some of his suggestions and details seem deserving of continuing reflection. H.A.R. (Sir Hamilton) Gibb (d. 1971) was perhaps the foremost British Arabist and historian of the Middle East of his generation.17 Professor of Arabic at the universities of London, Oxford and Harvard in succession, his writings deal with many aspects of Arabic literature, Middle Eastern history and Islam. He contributed four chapters to the first volume, and one to the second, of the monumental A History of the Crusades, published by the University of Wisconsin Press under the general editorship of K.M.Setton.18 The career of Saladin in particular was a theme to which he devoted several articles and a posthumous book. In addition to the chapter “The rise of Saladin, 1169–1189” in the first volume of Setton’s History, mention may be made here of his “The armies of Saladin”, Cahiers d’Histoire égyptienne 3 (1951): 304–320; “The achievement of Saladin”, Bulletin of the John Ryland’s Library 35 (1952): 44–60; (both were reprinted in Stanford J.Shaw and William R.Polk (eds), Studies on the Civilization of Islam by Hamilton A.R.Gibb, London 1962); and The Life of Saladin from the works of ‘lmād ad-Dīn and Bahā’ ad-Dīn, Oxford 1973. Gibb’s “Notes on the Arabic materials for the history of the early Crusades” (1933–35) is a pioneering analysis of the mediaeval Arabic source material for the early period of the crusades. It was occasioned by the appearance of the first of the three volumes of René Grousset’s Histoires des Croisades et du Royaume Franc de Jérusalem (Paris 1934–36). Gibb argues that on a number of points the understanding of Grousset and others may be criticized because they interpret the early period of the crusades in the light of conditions and attitudes that only developed later. This anachronistic view of the early period is the result of excessive reliance on sources dating from the time of Saladin and later. To some extent that was inevitable since it was the later sources, in particular the universal history (alKāmil fi’l-ta’rīkh) of Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233), which were the first to become known to western scholars. In the second part of his article, Gibb shows that the understanding of the events of the earlier period which Ibn al-Athīr presents must be corrected by comparison with earlier material, more contemporary with the events treated. Particularly important is the Dhayl Ta’rīkh Dimashq (Continuation of the History of Damascus) by Ibn al-Qalānisī (d. 555/1160). Gibb himself had made some of the important passages of Ibn al-Qalānisī’s work available in an English translation a few years earlier (The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, London 1932). Bernard Lewis was, at the time of his retirement (1986), Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, and currently holds that title as Emeritus Professor. Before his move to Princeton in 1974 he was Professor of the History of the Near and Middle East in the University of London, and he is a former editor of BSOAS. His many writings range widely over the pre-modern and modern history of the Middle East, but his earliest interest was in the mediaeval period and especially in the history of the Ismā‘īlī branch of Shiite Islam, and its subgroup, the Nizārī Assassins. His revised University of London PhD thesis was published as The Origins of Ismailism: a study of the background of the Fatimid caliphate (Cambridge 1940, reprinted New York 1975), and his The Assassins. A radical sect in Islam, London 1967. He also contributed the chapter on “The Ismā‘īlites and the Assassins” to vol. I of Setton’s A History of the Crusades. Lewis’s “Saladin and the Assassins” (1953) may be understood as an exercise in source criticism similar to that in Gibb’s article, as much as an exploration of its avowed theme. Lewis suggests that Saladin’s own presentation of himself as the champion of “orthodox” Sunni Islam against the Shiite “heretics”, an image which seems to be corroborated by many of the sources, may be called into question. By examining the range of available sources, including the semi-legendary historical work of the Ismā‘īlī Abū Firās, Lewis is able to present Saladin’s relationship with the Assassins as more pragmatic than one would guess from the rather idealizing accounts produced by his own officials and biographers. David Ayalon, who is represented in this collection by three articles on the structure of the Mamluk army (1953 and 1954), devoted the majority of his work to the study of military slavery in Islam and put the study of the Mamluk state on a new footing. His academic career was associated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where, at the time of his death in 1998, he was Emeritus Professor of Islamic History. For a useful summary of his work, see Reuven Amitai, “The rise and fall of the Mamluk institution: a summary of David Ayalon’s works”, in M.Sharon (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon, Jerusalem and Leiden 1986, 19–30; for a brief obituary and complete bibliography, see idem, “David Ayalon, 1914–1998”, in Mamlūk Studies Review 3 (1999), 1 ff. Most of his articles are now available in four volumes of the Variorum Collected Studies Series: Studies on the Mamluks of Egypt, 1250–1517, London 1977; The Mamluk Military Society, London 1979; Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols and Eunuchs, London 1988; and Islam and the Abode of War, Aldershot 1994. His best known book is Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to a Mediaeval Society, London 1956. Ayalon’s three articles here on the structure of the Mamluk army represent a major item in his scholarly work and a continuing substantial introduction to the structure and terminology of the ruling institution of the Mamluk state. As has been emphasized by Amitai, Ayalon’s scholarly strength was his concern for the correct understanding of terminology, but he was also willing to stand back and present the details in a broader context. P.M.Holt, who is represented in this volume by five articles was, at the time of his retirement in 1982, Professor of the History of the Near and Middle East in the University of London. Much of his earlier work had concerned Egypt and the Sudan in the Ottoman and modern periods, but he went on to make a number of important contributions to the history of the Middle East in the time of the crusades and the Mamluks. He is the editor of a collection of seminar papers, The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades, Warminster 1977; he translated from the Arabic The Memoirs of a Syrian Prince: Abu’l-Fidā’, Sultan of Hamah (672–732/1273–1331), Wiesbaden 1983; and is the author of The Age of the Crusades: the Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517, London 1986; and Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260–1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian Rulers, Leiden 1995. Among his articles are: “Qalāwūn’s treaty with Genoa, 1290”, Der Islam 57 (1980): 101–108; “Three biographies of Baybars”, in D.O.Morgan (ed.), Medieval Hisorical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, London 1982; “Literary offerings: a genre of courtly literature”, in Thomas Philipp and Ulrich Haarmann (eds), The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society, Cambridge 1998, 3–16; and “The last Mamlūk Sultan: al-Malik al-Ashraf Tūmān Bāy”, in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 25 (2001): 234–246. His translation from the French of Claude Cahen’s The Formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rūm, 11th to 14th century also appeared in 2001 (London: Longman). By the time of Holt’s review article, “Saladin and his admirers: a biographical reassessment” (1983), which was occcasioned by the appearance of the work of Lyons and Jackson on Saladin,19 the scholarly reassessment of Saladin had developed considerably. A study by A.Ehrenkreutz (publication details in Holt’s article) had even presented him as something of a disaster and a villain. Holt underlines the place of Gibb in a tradition of idealization of Saladin that in the west goes back to Walter Scott and earlier, while its ultimate roots may be traced to the success of the propaganda that Saladin and his panegyrists Ibn Shaddād and ‘Imād al-Dīn created. The author himself shares the middle of the road position of Jackson and Lyons rather than the more polemical stance of Ehrenkreutz. The other four of Holt’s articles reprinted here are contributions to Mamluk history (and in one case to Il-Khanid history also). His “The position and power of the Mamlūk Sultan” (1975) discusses such things as accession ceremonies, titles, symbols of office, the roles of the Sultan and his relationship with the Mamluk amirs and the representatives of Islam. Holt’s suggestion that rulers of slave origin could nevertheless adopt some of the trappings of sacral kingship is especially interesting. The article emphasizes the complexity and evolving character of the Mamluk sultanate and argues that, in spite of inherent weaknesses, for two and half centuries it not only survived but exercised political and military power more effectively than had its Ayyūbid predecessor. Holt’s “The treaties of the early Mamluk sultans with the Frankish states” (1980) discusses aspects of seven treaties (or “truces” as they are regarded according to Islamic law) between the Mamluk rulers in Cairo and various Frankish authorities in the kingdom of Jerusalem and the county of AntiochTripoli in the second half of the thirteenth century. These treaties, and details about their conclusion, have been preserved in Arabic literary sources for the period. Particularly interesting is the final account of the abrogation by Qalāwūn of his treaty with the Latin kingdom in 1290, which a year later was to lead to the final extinction of the kingdom of Jerusalem. “Some observations on the ‘Abbāsid caliphate of Cairo” (1984) discusses the circumstances and considerations, different in each case, which led Baybars to install the first two of the caliphs, and examines the largely powerless position of the caliph in the Mamluk sultanate. Holt quotes the saying of a Mamluk amīr, “For God’s sake—nobody takes any notice of the caliph!” Nevertheless, the sultans found it useful to try to legitimize their seizure of power by having the caliph play a role in their accession ceremonies, and it may be added that some of the Delhi sultans in India, too, thought it politic to emphasize their allegiance to the Cairo caliphs. Holt demonstrates the evident falsity of the claim that the last Cairo caliph transferred his position to the Ottoman sultan after the Ottomans had captured Cairo and taken the caliph to Istanbul.20 Finally, Holt’s “The Īlkhān embassies to Qalāwūn: two contemporary accounts” (1986) compares two Arabic accounts of embassies, letters and gifts sent by the first of the Il-Khānid rulers to be converted to Islam, Tegüder (681–683/1282–1284), to the Mamluk sultan Qalāwūn (678– 689/1279–1290).21 acceptance of Islam was a personal conversion which preceded the later “communal conversion” of the Il-Khānate under Ghazān Khān (694–704/1295–1304), aspects of which are considered in the article of Reuven Amitai-Preiss reprinted here. Holt draws attention to some discrepancies between the accounts, which agree, however, regarding the display put on by the Mamluk ruler in attempting to impress his Mongol contemporary with his might and magnificence. Behind this, however, Holt detects the continuing fear and mistrust of the Mongols among the Mamluks. Peter Jackson is currently Reader in History at the University of Keele, and is especially known for his work on Mongol and Persian history in the period with which this volume is concerned. As well as being the author of several articles in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, he is the author of “The accession of Qubilai Qa’an: a re-examination”, Journal of the Anglo-Mongolian Society 2 (1975): 1–10; “The dissolution of the Mongol empire”, Central Asiatic Journal 22 (1978): 186–244; “Jalāl alDīn, the Mongols, and the Khwarazmian conquest of the Panjāb and Sind”, Iran (1990): 45–53; “From Ulus to Khanate: the making of the Mongol states, c.1220–c.1290”, in Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan (eds), The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, Leiden 1999; “The state of research: the Mongol empire, 1986–1999”, Journal of Medieval History 26 (2000): 189–210; and “The fall of the Ghurid dynasty”, in Carole Hillenbrand (ed.), The Sultan’s Turret, Leiden 2000. For another contribution by him on the crusades see “The crisis in the Holy Land in 1260”, English Historical Review 95 (1980): 481–513. Jackson also edited volume 6 of the Cambridge History of Iran, and he is the author of a history of the Delhi Sultanate (Cambridge 1999). He translated and, together with David Morgan, provided the scholarly commentary for, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: his journey to the court of the Great Khān Möngke, 1253–55, London 1990. Jackson’s discussion of “The Crusades of 1239–41 and their aftermath” (1987) is concerned with a relatively neglected period in the history of the Franks in Syria. He demonstrates both the substantial increase in source material, western and eastern, since the time of Gibb’s paper, and what can be done by someone able to exploit the full range of sources. He is able to exploit in particular volume iv/2 of the Arabic History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, the edited and translated text of which became available in 1974, and which has new information on military history in the early 1240s. That enables Jackson to present a picture which underlines the complexities in the military and political situation faced by the Franks and to counter the propaganda directed against Theobald, especially that emanating from the Emperor Frederick II who was concerned to maintain the commercial links between Sicily and Egypt. “Marco Polo and his ‘Travels’” (1998) discusses the problems surrounding the provenance and nature of the work associated with the name of the famous Venetian traveller. The article is relevant in the context of the present volume because, while the Travels have sometimes been regarded as a valuable source for aspects of Asian and Middle Eastern history in the last decades of the thirteenth century, recent research has tended to be more sceptical and to cast doubts on the value of the information it contains. In particular the work of Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo go to China?, London 1995, has suggested that the Venetian may not have gone further east than Constantinople or the Black Sea. Jackson’s conclusions are less sceptical: he argues that the book as it exists (and the manuscript history is very complex and difficult to reconstruct) should be regarded as an account of the known world rather than a relation of the journey of Marco Polo, and that, while the stature of Polo is likely to have been exaggerated, nevertheless some of the material pertaining to China and the Mongols must be the result of personal observations. Although his judgements incline towards the positive, he demonstrates the difficulties of reaching firm conclusions about the value of the Travels as an historical source. David Morgan is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was until 1999 Reader in the History of the Near and Middle East at SOAS, a member of the Editorial Board of BSOAS on various occasions, and Editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Morgan is the author of The Mongols, Oxford 1986, and Medieval Persia, 1040–1797, London 1988. In addition to his contribution to The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck (for which see under Jackson, above) and his joint editing with R.Amitai of The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, Leiden 1999, he is the editor of Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, London 1982 (which includes his article “Persian historians and the Mongols”). Among his other articles are: “The Mongols in Syria, 1260–1300”, in Peter W.Edbury (ed.), Crusade and Settlement, Cardiff 1985, 231–235; “Mongol or Persian: the government of Il-Khan Iran”, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 3 (1996): 62–76; “Rashīd al-Dīn and Ghazān Khan”, Bibliothèque Iranienne 45 (1997); and “Reflections on Mongol communications in the Īlkhānate”, in Carole Hillenbrand (ed.), The Sultan’s Turret. His “Cassiodorus and Rashīd al-Dīn on barbarian rule in Italy and Persia” (1977) compares and contrasts the personalities, writings, and the historical times in which they lived, of two “native” administrators who worked on behalf of the “barbarian” conquerors of societies with long traditions of culture and bureaucratic government. In spite of some striking similarities, the article draws attention to the fundamentally different relationship between the Ostrogoths and the culture of the Roman aristocratic families, on the one hand, and the Mongols and the Perso-Islamic tradition, on the other. One difficulty that Morgan recognizes in the article is the question of the authenticity of the letters attributed to Rashīd al-Dīn which he uses as a source. Elsewhere he acknowledges the strength of the arguments against their authenticity mounted by A.H.Morton.2 Five years before the publication of his own book on the subject (The Mongols, referred to above), Morgan surveyed some other works of attempted synthesis and popular historical writing on the Mongols in “The Mongol Empire: a review article” (1981). This remains informative for its insights into the problems facing scholars working in the field of Mongol history. Undoubtedly the most challenging of the three articles of Morgan in this volume is his “The ‘Great Yāsā of Chingiz Khān’ and Mongol law in the Ilkhanāte” (1986). The notion of the yāsā, understood as a written law code promulgated by Genghiz Khān which served as the unalterable basis of Mongol law and administration, has been widely accepted in modern scholarship. Stimulated by a series of articles in Studia Islamica by David Ayalon,23 Morgan dissects the evidence on which this notion has been based, suggests possible explanations as to why and how the notion may have arisen, and calls into question—without completely rejecting—whether such an institution ever existed. Given the prominence of the idea in the literature on Mongol history— and, as is evident from the article of Poliak included here, on related fields —Morgan’s questioning of it marks an important development. For further discussion of the topic, see I. de Rachewiltz, “Some reflections on Cinggis Qan’s Jasay”, East Asian History 6 (1993): 91–104, and the remarks of Reuven Amitai at pp. 3–6 of his article “Ghazan, Islam and Mongol tradition: a view from the Mamlūk sutanate”, reprinted in the present volume. In the light of these and other recent studies, Morgan has looked again at the question in “The ‘Great Yāsā of Chingiz Khān’ revisited”, in R.Amitai and M.Biran (eds), Nomads and sedentary peoples in the Middle East and East Asia (forthcoming). Reuven Amitai24 is a Professor, and currently Head of Department, in the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of several articles on the history of the Mongols in the Middle East and of Mongols and Mamluks. The Mamluk-Īlkhānid War 1260–81, Cambridge 1995. He has edited, jointly with David Morgan, The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, Leiden 1999. For his appreciations of David Ayalon, see the note under Ayalon above. Among his other articles are: “Hülegü and the Ayyūbid lords of Transjordan”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 9 (1995–97); “Sufis and Shamans: some remarks on the Islamisation of the Mongols in the Il-Khanate”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1999; “Northern Syria between the Mongols and the Mamluks: political boundary, military frontier and ethnic affinities”, in Daniel Powers and Naomi Standen (eds), Frontiers in Question, London 1999, 128–152; “Al-Nuwayrī as a historian of the Mongols”, in Hugh Kennedy (ed.), The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950–1800), Leiden 2001, 23–36; and “The conversion of Tegüdar Ilkhan to Islam”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 25 (2001), 15–43. His “Ghazan, Islam and Mongol tradition: a view from the Mamlūk sultanate” (1996), uses Arabic sources, some only available in ms., to throw light on various aspects of the acceptance of Islam by the Il-Khanid Ghazan in 694/1295, and its consequences. He refers to the Islam held by Ghazan and those Mongols who followed him into it as “syncretic”, and shows that it existed together with attachment to Mongol tradition and religion, even though elements of that tradition and religion were in direct conflict with demands of the Sharia. As Amitai concludes, this is more historically convincing than to envisage that Islamization meant a decisive break with the Mongol past. T.H.Barrett is Professor of East Asian History in the University of London, and the current Chair of the Editorial Board of BSOAS. He is a specialist on the history of religion in China and author of several articles and books on pre-modern China. He has contributed “Qubilai Qa’an and the Historians: some remarks on the position of the Great Khān in pre-modern Chinese historiography”, to The Mongol Empire and its Legacy edited by Amitai and Morgan. The Secret History of the Mongols, with which his short note is concerned, is in David Morgan’s words, “the only substantial surviving Mongol work about the Mongol Empire, the only direct insight we possess into how the Mongols viewed things”.25 It has survived in a transcription in Chinese characters (originally it was written in the script of the Turkish Uighurs which Genghiz Khan had adopted for the writing of Mongolian) and in an abridged Chinese translation. The circumstances in which the Chinese transcription and translation were made are obscure, and Barrett’s note draws attention to a piece of evidence which has not previously been taken into account in discussions of the genesis of the texts. The new evidence seems to point to the existence of the Chinese translation at a date slightly earlier than that accepted previously. More generally, Barrett suggests that Ming historiography has not been sufficiently investigated regarding the information it may contain of interest to students of the Mongols.
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