Download PDF | (History of the Near East) Holt, Peter Malcolm - The age of the Crusades _ the Near East from the eleventh century to 1517-Longman Publishing Group_Routledge, Taylor and Franics Group (2013).
265 Pages
Foreword
This volume is intended to offer the student and the general reader an account of the political history of the eastern Mediterranean lands from the eve of the First Crusade in the late eleventh century to the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Egypt in 1516-17. Although much has been written on some aspects of this period, notably the Crusades, for which European sources are abundant, others have been left in obscurity; there is, for example, no comprehensive modern treatment in English of the Mamluk sultanate, although this was the great power of the eastern Mediterranean for two hundred years and more.
It is still true today that any general survey of developments in these centuries must be uneven in its treatment, sometimes because of an actual lack of primary source-materials, and often because of the irregular progress of research and publication in various parts of the field. My hope is, nevertheless, that this book will serve as an introduction to a fascinating period, relevant in one respect to the history of medieval Europe, whose rulers shared many of the political and administrative problems of their Muslim counterparts, in another to that of the modern Near East, whose peoples are the heirs of the region’s past.
My thanks are particularly due to my former colleague, Professor V. L. Ménage, for his advice on the forms of Mamluk names. For anomalies and errors in this as in other matters, the responsibility is mine.
P. M. HOLT , Kirtlington November 1984
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, Wiesbaden, for an extract from al-Safadi, al-Waft bi’l-wafayat, VI, ed. S. Dedering (Wiesbaden 1972), pp. 182-4; and an extract from P.M. Holt (trans.), The memoirs of a Syrian prince (Wiesbaden 1983), pp. 16-17. Also to the Editorial Board of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for permission to quote from ‘Some observations on the ‘Abbasid of caliphate of Cairo’, BSOAS XLVII/3, 1984, pp. 501-7.
We have been unable to trace the copyright holder in Kitab al-sulik li-ma’rifat duwal al-mulak (Cairo 1970) and Kitab al-mawa’iz wa’l-i‘tibar bi-dhikr al—khitat wa’l’athar (Beirut) and would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.
Introduction: The Lands and their Peoples
The area of which the history will be surveyed in subsequent chapters consists of three main regions: in the north, Anatolia (substantially the modern Turkish Republic); in the centre, geographical Syria or the western Fertile Crescent comprising the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel; in the south, the Nile valley, now divided between Egypt and the Sudan. Each of these regions has its distinctive geographical characteristics, which have influenced both its own history and the relations of the regions with one another.
The greater part of Anatolia is a peninsula. To the north is the Black Sea with a narrow outlet by the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles to the Aegean Sea on the west — a channel then as now of great strategic importance. The Mediterranean proper lies to the south of the peninsula. To its east lie the great mountain-ranges of the Armenian massif in which rise the headwaters. of three major rivers, the Araxes (Turkish, Aras), flowing eastwards into the Caspian Sea, and the Tigris (Arabic, Dijla) and Euphrates (Arabic, al-Furat) setting their course ultimately south-eastwards to the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf through the modern state of Iraq. South of the upper valleys of the Euphrates and Araxes lies Lake Van. From this highland knot two mountain-systems run westwards along the northern and southern coasts of Anatolia respectively.
The northern range or Pontic Mountains leaves only a narrow coastal plain with few harbours. Among the ancient cities of the coast is Trebizond (Turkish, Trabzon), where a Byzantine state maintained its independent existence from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
The southern mountain-system, known generically as the Taurus, is more complex and in parts higher than the Pontic Mountains. The main range extends westwards to reach the sea beyond the Gulf of Antalya at the south-western corner of the penin-sula. The southern coastal plain is also generally narrow but there is one important exception — the plain of Cilicia lying between the Taurus and the Gulf of Alexandretta (Arabic, Iskandartin), with Adana as its chief city. Here and in the surrounding mountains was the medieval kingdom of Lesser Armenia. The Amanus range, a branch of the Taurus, separates Cilicia from geographical Syria and the northern cities of Aleppo and Antioch, the latter now part of the Turkish Republic.
The country lying between the Pontic and Taurus ranges is a high plateau, drained on the west by rivers running down into the Aegean. Their valleys are among the most fertile parts of the peninsula, and have been the sites of important cities since Classical times, when western Anatolia was colonized by the Greeks. Some of the ancient harbours have been silted up, but Smyrna (Turkish, Izmir) was in the Middle Ages, as it still is, a great port, which served the Byzantines and Turks in their turn.
Other historic cities lie on or near the passage from the Black Sea to the Aegean, above all Byzantine Constantinople or Turkish Istanbul, the guardian of the straits on the European shore. Nicaea (Turkish, Iznik) and Bursa, early capitals of the Seljukids and Ottomans, lie inland on the Asian side.
Geographical Syria, although a mountainous region like Anatolia, is essentially different in its configuration. Basically it consists of two parallel highland ranges, running north and south and divided by a rift-valley. The northern sector of the rift-valley forms the bed of the River Orontes (Arabic, al-‘Asi), which after running north for most of its course turns sharply westwards past Antioch to enter the Mediterra~ nean at the port known to the Crusaders as St Simeon and to the Arabs as al-Suwaydiyya. The River Leontes (Arabic, al-Litani) and the Jordan, both running southwards, occupy the central sector of the rift-valley, which continues beyond the Dead Sea as the dry depression of the Wadi’l—‘araba until as the Gulf of ‘Aqaba it merges into the Red Sea. The western highland range includes Jabal Ansariyya in the north, Mount Lebanon in the centre and the Palestinian hills in the south. The plain of the Biqa* with Ba‘labakk as its chief town lies between the Lebanon range on the west and Anti-Lebanon on the east. The coastal plain is usually narrow, and has since ancient times been the site of important ports. Among these in the period of the Crusades were Tripoli, Beirut, Acre and Jaffa. A break in the western highlands giving access from the coast to the interior is the plain of Esdraelon and its continuation, the valley of Jezreel, in northern Palestine. Of strategic importance from biblical times, this was the site of the critical battle of ‘Ayn Jalut between the Mamluks and the Mongols (658/1260). The eastern highland range is for the most part lower and more broken than the western, and formsthe rim of the Syrian Desert, which extends to the Euphrates. On the fringe of the desert lies the great southern city of Damascus in an oasis watered by the River Barada, which flows down from the AntiLebanon range to lose itself in the sands. :
The desert and mountains of the Sinai peninsula separate the western Fertile Crescent from the Nile valley, where since ancient times human life has been able to subsist, and civilization to flourish, within the range of the annual inundation. The most extensive area of cultivation is, and has always been, the Delta, lying between the two branches of the Nile which fork below Cairo and reach the sea at Damietta in the east and Rosetta in the west respectively. Between Cairo and the First Cataract above Aswan is the long, narrow, inhabited stretch of Upper Egypt. Chief among the towns on the Nile banks at this period was Qis, whence a route ran across the eastern desert to the Red Sea coast. The First Cataract formed until modern times a natural frontier on the south of Egypt as the deserts did on the east and west. Above it in the upper valley of the Nile was the land of the Nubians, a different people from the Egyptians with (at this time) a different language and religion. Beyond the Nubians and their neighbours in the eastern desert, the nomadic Beja, were the legendary tribes of the unexplored heart of Africa.
Travel or transport over any considerable distance in Egypt was by the Nile, but elsewhere a network of land-routes linked the principal towns and ports. From Baghdad, which until it fell to the Mongols in 656/ 1258 was the main emporium of the eastern Fertile Crescent, travellers and goods went by river to al-Raqqa on the Euphrates and thence to Aleppo, the chief town of northern Syria, to Antioch and the Mediterranean ports of St Simeon and Latakia (Arabic, al-Ladhiqiyya). Aleppo was also the northern terminus of the great spinal route of Syria, which ran northwards from Damascus through Hims (conventionally spelt Homs) and Hamah. Damascus was the assembly-point for pilgrims going south to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz. Two important branches from the Aleppo—Damascus route passed through breaks in the western highlands. The shorter linked Hims with the coast at Tripoli. The longer crossed the upper Jordan above Lake Tiberias at Jisr Banat Ya‘qub (i.e. the Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters, “‘Jacob’s Ford” to the Crusaders), and passed through Galilee to the Palestinian coastal plain. Then from Gaza it traversed the Sinai peninsula to the Delta.
The routes of the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent were linked with those of Anatolia, but they constituted a distinct system formed by geography and the historical fact of Byzantine rule. The main Anatolian routes radiated from the north-western corner of the peninsula, the nearest part to Constantinople across the Bosporus. Chief among them was the military road to the south-eastern Byzantine territories, which had been a threatened area since the Arab conquests of the first/seventh century. This route ran from Nicaea up into the central plateau at Dorylaeum (Turkish, Eskishehir). Thence one branch went southeastwards to Philomelium (Akshehir) and Iconium (Konya), through the Cilician Gates, the pass across the Taurus, to the plain of Cilicia. This was the route taken by the First Crusade in 1097. Another route made its way across the centre of the plateau with branches to Cilicia, Caesarea (Kayseri), Sebasteia (Sivas) and the towns of the upper Euphrates and Araxes. Finally, the north-west of Anatolia was connected with the southern coast by a route passing mene Cotyaeum (Kiitahya) to the port of Attaleia (Antalya).
The society of the Islamic lands of the eastern Mediterranean was a symbiosis of three sub-societies: the nomads, the cultivators and the townspeople. Nomadic Arabs had played an important part in the initial spread of Islam; they had provided the warriors for the conquering armies and the garrisons for the conquered provinces. Through intermarriage with the indigenous peoples of the Muslim empire they were an agent in the arabization of much of the Near and Middle East. There were, however, tribal Arabs who had never left, or had gone back to, the nomadic life of their pre-Islamic ancestors. These were to be found in the original homeland, the Arabian peninsula and its northern continuation, the steppe (usually called the Syrian Desert) between the arms of the Fertile Crescent. Other nomad Arabs had migrated to the desert fringes of the Nile valley. In the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, when the ‘Abbasid caliphate was weak, Arab tribal chiefs succeeded in establishing territorial principalities centred in one or other of the towns of the Fertile Crescent. A notable Arab dynasty of this kind was that of the Hamdanids, who ruled in Mosul and Aleppo (see below, p. 13). Even later, a large tribe strategically placed was a factor of importance in the politics of the region. Thus Al Fadl, a division of the tribe of Rabr'a, nomads of the Syrian Desert, were alternately coaxed and coerced by the Ayyubids and Mamluks, who bestowed on the head of their paramount clan the title of amir al-‘Arab, i.e. chief of the [nomad] Arabs. An important function of the Arab tribesmen in the Mamluk period from the later seventh/thirteenth century was the service of the barid, the royal mail carried by post-horses, which provided a communication and intelligence network throughout the sultan’s dominions. The Arab tribesmen in Egypt were favoured by the Fatimid caliphs between the fourth/tenth and sixth/twelfth centuries, and they played an important part at court and in politics. Shawar and Dirgham,rivals for the office of wazir in the reign of the Caliph al-‘Adid (555-67/1160-71), were both Arabs. Under the Ayyubids, the Arabs of Egypt lost their ascendancy and their ultimate downfall as a politically significant element occurred under the Mamluks. The Sultan al-Mu‘izz Aybeg suppressed a serious tribal revolt in 651/1253, and a long period of repression, migration and sedentarization followed.
As well as the Arabs, there were two other ethnic groups who lived as nomads in the eastern Mediterranean lands. The Berbers were chiefly to be found in North Africa west of the Nile valley, but part of one important tribe, Hawwara, which shared in the Fatimid conquest of Egypt, was settled in the Buhayra, the semi-desert province west of the Rosetta branch. Late in the eighth/fourteenth century, some of these Hawwara were transferred to Upper Egypt, which they frequently dominated until the time of Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth century. The second group, nomadic Turkish tribesmen, usually called Turcomans, accompanied the Seljukids on their advance westwards in the fifth/eleventh century. Some found territory and grazing for their flocks and herds in the Syrian Desert, but the majority flooded into Anatolia when the Byzantine frontier defences broke down after the battle of Manzikert in 463/1071 —the start ofa process by which Christian and hellenized Anatolia was transformed into the Muslim Turkish homeland.
Although the cultivators settled in the villages presumably formed the majority of the population in the eastern Mediterranean lands, their history is even more fragmentary and obscure than that of the nomads, who from time to time disturbed the social and political order. In Syria and Egypt the peasantry were for the most part Muslim and Arabicspeaking; in Anatolia by the end of the period, Muslim and Turkishspeaking. Speech and religion, however, give uncertain indications of the ethnic origins of the cultivators — how far they were descended from the Arab, Berber and Turcoman immigrants, how far from the former inhabitants of the region. Nor is it easy to assess economic and social changes in their condition in these centuries, although it may be said with certainty that the migrations of the steppe peoples of Central Asia, the Seljuk Turks in the fifth/eleventh century and the Mongols in the seventh/thirteenth, by causing movements of refugees disturbed both rural and urban society outside the territories they actually raided and occupied. Another factor in the deteriorization in the condition of the cultivators in this period was the igta‘, i.e. the grant to officers of land-tax to be levied directly from the peasantry, a consequence of the militarization of government.
The history of the eastern Mediterranean lands in this period is, as far as we know it, largely a history of the town-dwellers. Although the original conquering armies of Islam were recruited chiefly from the nomad Arab tribesmen, they were commanded, and the campaigns were planned, by an urban mercantile aristocracy, Quraysh of Mecca; and the towns became and remained the centres of Islam. Their origins were diverse. There were the three Holy Cities - Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem; the garrison cantonments of the Arab conquerors such as al-Fustat, in Egypt, which had grown into great towns; the palaces and governmental complexes founded by particular dynasties, such as the Fatimid capital, Cairo, which had undergone a similar transformation; finally there were the ancient cities which entered on a new epoch with Islam, such as Damascus and Aleppo. In these and the other cities and towns there were three essential institutions, symbolizing respectively their religious, administrative and commercial significance: the Friday mosque (jami‘) for the weekly observance of congregational prayer at which the ruler’s name was recited in the sermon (khutba); the official quarter, which in great cities such as Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo was centred in the citadel; and the market (s#q), subdivided according to the crafts practised and commodities sold. The various quarters of the town were inhabited by separate communities, distinguished by their occupations, their ethnic origins or their religions. The whole was protected by a city wall.
The tripartite subdivision of the population into nomads, cultivators and townspeople was politically less significant than another grouping. On the one hand, there were the rulers and warriors, the military in the widest sense; on the other, the subject population. The militarization of society and government in the eastern Mediterranean lands was already far advanced by the late fifth/eleventh century, and was virtually complete 300 years later. The coming of the Seljuks initiated a new phase in which the rulers and warriors were principally of Turkish origin, either free-born Turks such as the Seljukid ruling clan and the Turcoman tribesmen, or Turks recruited as slaves (Arabic sing., mamlak) outside Muslim territory, then converted, trained and emancipated to fight or to govern. The apogee of this system came with the establishment of the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt and Syria in the mid-seventh/thirteenth century. Another wave of central Asian conquerors, the Mongols, failed to overthrow the Mamluk sultanate and occupy these western territories. The one notable exception to the general Turkish military and political ascendancy in this period was the rule of the Kurdish Ayyubids, who were, however, in all but their ethnic origin a successor-dynasty to the Seljukids. At the end of the period during the ninth/ fifteenth century, Circassian Mamluk sultans maintained the tra-ditions of the previous Turkish Mamluks until they were overthrown by the Ottoman Turks.
As members of the community of Islam, the Umma, the rulers and warriors were theoretically equal in status under the Holy Law (Shari'a) with the other Muslims, their subjects. In practice, of course, this was not so: wealth, privilege and naked power overrode and often negated the ideal equality and brotherhood of all believers. The rulers were nevertheless deferential to the Shari‘a and its experts, the scholars (ulama’) and jurists (fugaha’). In return, the ‘ulama’ legitimated the rulers’ frequently usurped authority: instances of overt opposition by an individual jurist are rare, by the ‘ulamd’ as a body virtually unknown. There is a familiar genre of anecdotes told for instance of Nur al-Din, Saladin and al-Zahir Baybars, which illustrate the formal submission of the ruler to the Holy Law —he appears before the judge (adi) to answer a complaint made by a subject, wins the case and magnanimously compensates his opponent. The two royal virtues of piety and generosity are thus pleasingly exemplified.
Although the profession of Islam might be of little avail to an ordinary Muslim against a ruler or warrior, it was of great importance in defining his legal and social status by placing him on the more favourable side of the great division between believers and dhimmis. The latter were the adherents of the tolerated religions — in this period and these lands, the Christians, Jews and Samaritans. In Egypt the great majority of Christians belonged to the Coptic Church, which had as its head the patriarch of Alexandria, and which was also established in Nubia and Ethiopia. The Orthodox (Melkite) Church had lost its formerly dominant position in Egypt on the ending of Byzantine rule by the Arab conquest, but in Syria it continued to be the chief Christian denomination. A smaller group, the Maronites, originally viewed as heretical by other oriental Christians, had by the time of the Crusades found refuge in Mount Lebanon, and from the late twelfth century entered into union with Rome. In Byzantine Anatolia the Orthodox Church was, of course, the state religion, although the Armenians had their own Church, regarded by the Orthodox as heretical. The Muslim rulers were uninterested in the niceties of Christian theology, and did not discriminate among the various churches.
The dhimmis formed a protected minority, living under certain legal disabilities which might or might not be enforced, such as sumptuary regulations. They played a large part in the civil service of Muslim rulers. This was notably true of the Copts, who retained from preIslamic times a monopoly of the financial administration of Egypt. Dhimmis were, however, debarred from a military career and fromholding the great offices of state. Actual persecution was rare and sporadic. One serious episode in Cairo in 721/1321 followed a number of fires. The Christians were accused of arson and fell victims to mob violence, which the Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad was unable to restrain. After this outburst, the persecution died down as quickly as it had begun.
It was thus to an area of considerable geographical diversity, divided among a number of rulers, and inhabited by peoples who differed in ethnic origins, speech and religion, that the Crusaders came at the end of the eleventh century. Their conquests and the establishment of the four Frankish states of Outremer — feudal Europe “‘beyond the sea’’ — was a factor, perhaps the essential catalyst, in bringing about the gradual political unification of two-thirds of the area. Muslim Syria was first brought under one ruler, then Egypt was integrated with it, and the Frankish states were reconquered, so that by the end of the thirteenth century all these territories were under the centralized government of the Mamluk sultanate. Meanwhile Seljukid Anatolia had been brought under Mongol domination. Among the Turkish successorprincipalities there was one, still of recent origin at the end of the fourteenth century, the beylik of ‘Osman Gazi, which was to grow into the Ottoman empire and to succeed the Mamluk sultanate as the greatest power in the Near East.
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