Download PDF | Nicholas Morton - The Crusader States and Their Neighbours_ A Military History, 1099-1187-Oxford University Press, USA (2020).
308 Pages
Acknowledgements
Historians are in the main a friendly bunch and one of the great joys of this career has been the positivity and supportiveness I have encountered at every turn from so many scholars. There are many people I would like to thank for their advice on specific points in this present work and these include: Alan Murray, James Titterton, John France, Paul Cobb, and Kevin Lewis, but I would also like to acknowledge the broader atmosphere of friendly enquiry and synergy-seeking that has been my experience in so many conferences and conversations in recent years.
Turning to my friends and colleagues at Nottingham Trent University, I would particularly like to thank the inter-library loans team whose unstinting willingness to acquire vast stacks of books and articles for this present project has been absolutely fundamental to its completion. I am also very grateful to have been granted a sabbatical in order to write-up this book; again it could not have been completed without this assistance.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my beloved family for their ongoing love, enthusiasm, and support and it is to them that this book is dedicated.
Introduction
The study of warfare in the Medieval Near East is a fascinating—if often grim— field of research. Here was a region where tens of different factions vied for supremacy decade-after-decade in a rolling sequence of conflicts that saw the relentless making and unmaking of dynasties, empires, and alliances. These wars pitted a bewildering array of military traditions against one another. Protagonists ranged from the well-resourced empires of Fatimid Egypt and Byzantium through to the nomadic Bedouin and Turkmen tribes.
Then there were the invading armies of the Crusaders from Western Christendom and the Turks from the Central Asian Steppe; the former determined to maintain and expand their position on the Levantine coastline, and the latter endeavouring to maintain their still-tenuous grip on the Near East as a whole. There were also a myriad of regional powers including Arab dynasties, Kurdish tribes, Armenian lords, and Nizari communities (known as ‘Assassins’), each with its own interests in this complex world, each pursuing a distinct approach to war-making.
The military history of the Near Eastern region during the twelfth century is consequently extraordinarily complex. Its reconstruction—at least as far as the sources allow—requires a detailed understanding of all the key players and, by extension, the treaties, ambitions, prejudices, affinities, and political events that guided their decision-making. The resulting web of events is deeply entangled and cannot be unpicked with simple tools. The traditional notion for example that this period can be understood through the lens of straightforward Christianvs-Muslim antagonism is wildly too simplistic. As will be shown, ideas of holy war represent only one strand within the complex mesh of pressures and imperatives which cumulatively guided the region's political-military development.
This present project was launched with such thoughts in mind: a desire to bring out as fully as possible the convoluted nature of these wars and the entangled nature of their broader political context. Readers expecting the clean-cut rationalization of Near Eastern warfare into a simple take-home soundbite will— I'm afraid—be disappointed. In geographical scope, it is the intention here to attempt a ‘big picture’ reconstruction of warfare conducted across a region defined broadly by the Nile Rapids in the south, Mosul and the Tigris in the east, Melitene in the North, and the Isle of Cyprus in the west. Chronologically, it covers the period 1099-1187, but also draws upon material from the First and Third Crusades, whose sources are too rich in military detail to be excluded from this analysis.
The main focus, as the title suggests, is the Crusader States and yet a fundamental conviction underpinning this research is the idea that the Crusaders’ many neighbours have to be fully explored if the Franks’ own military behaviour is to be understood. This then is an attempt at a holistic study. Groups who have received little attention in previous military histories of the region, will here receive close scrutiny. These include: the Turkmen tribes, the Kurds (prior to the Ayyubids), the Bedouin and the Arab dynasties of northern Syria (such as the Banu Kilab and Banu Uqay]l), as well as the Armenian lords both in Cilicia and further east.
Structurally, this work will begin by working chronologically through the military history of this period, seeking to recreate the challenges and opportunities which guided the decision-making of the Near East’s key protagonists, whether Frankish, Turkish, Arab, Fatimid, or Armenian, etc. (Chapters 1-6). Interspersed within these sections will be more focused discussion on key topics including various factions’ approaches to (a sample): the construction of fortifications, the despatch of long/short range raids, the employment of mercenaries, the availability of financial/military resources, and the socio-cultural norms which shaped their approach to warfare. Chapter 7 will then focus specifically on the question of whether any faction in this period could really be said to have ‘innovated’ in their approach to war, while the concluding chapter will seek to offer some synthesis on the broader question of why the Crusader States ultimately collapsed in 1187.
Naturally, some elements of the Near East’s military history have been told many times before. Historians require little further discussion on: the kingdom of Jerusalem’s conquest of the Levantine coastal cities from 1099-1124, or the struggles between Nur al-Din (Zangid ruler of Syria)’ and King Amalric I (king of Jerusalem) over Fatimid Egypt (1160s), Saladin’s rise to power (1160s—70s), the involvement or the military orders in the defence of the Crusader States, or the major crusading expeditions. A brief history of these wars/themes is supplied here in the interests of providing an over-arching narrative, along with some attempt to apportion them an appropriate role in the developing military affairs of this time. Nevertheless, this work does not seek to recapitulate existing work. It is concerned, firstly, with opening up new topics of conversation and, secondly, providing new interpretations—where possible—to existing questions.
To take the former ambition, historians working in this area have to date focused overwhelming on the kingdom of Jerusalem, with only the more adventurous scholars making bold forays further north to report major battles such as the Field of Blood (1119) or Harim (1164). Far less interest has been shown in the military history of the principality of Antioch (although its overall history has been recreated by Cahen and more recently by Asbridge and Buck), still less for the county of Edessa.” Likewise scholarly discussion on the relationships between the Anatolian Turks (Seljuks and Danishmendids) and the northern Crusader States is patchy at best; so too is the thirty-one-year relationship between Tughtakin (atabeg and later ruler of Damascus) and the Crusader States (1097-1128). We know very little either about: Kurdish-Frankish relations (pre-1168), Nur al-Din’s relations with the Anatolian Seljuks, or the impact of Turkmen migrations on Zangid or Frankish political history. These are the kinds of lacuna this work plans to fill.
To take the latter ambition, this work is the product of a granular analysis of Near Eastern warfare—embracing every expedition I could find mentioned in the surviving sources, ranging from the smallest raid through to the most contested sieges. These encounters were then entered into a now huge spreadsheet containing details of every identified military encounter to be fought in the Near Eastern region during this period. The idea was to agglomerate as much information as possibe. The main benefit of this research tool has been the ability to render visible patterns of warfare that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to spot. This has in turn shed new light on old questions whilst suggesting new macro approaches to the study of warfare on a regional scale. New answers are proposed here on debates, such as: the Franks’ near-consistent ability to defeat the Fatimid Empire in battle (1099-1123), the military logic and objectives underpinning the Second Crusade’s siege of Damascus (1148), and the reasons for Saladin’s great victory at Hattin (1187). New interpretive models are also offered for thematic questions such as: the Franks’ and Turks’ differing attitudes towards fighting pitched battles, the manpower resources available to the Crusader States, and the scale of the mercenary establishment in the Near East.
Turning to the source material, the surviving evidence whether textual or nontextual can only be described as an embarrassment of riches—at least by medieval standards. For so many contemporary authors, writing in so many traditions, military-political history was a—often the—major point of interest consuming much of their text resulting in a huge quantity of relevant material. Some of these sources have been well thumbed by modern historians (William of Tyre’s historia being the obvious example), others less so. Indeed, astute readers looking through the footnotes suppplied in this work will notice that it leans heavily on texts produced by Muslim and Syriac authors, most of which are known, but few of which have received considerable attention from this perspective. These sources are then supplemented by the region’s rich architectural legacy and the many surviving artefacts from this period; materials which likewise supply an invaluable supplement to the written record.
One of the outcomes of the research phase of this project was to reveal how much more work is needed on this topic. There may be several weighty tomes concerning crusading warfare (and related topics) but compared to the sheer scale of the source material available, the historiography is actually fairly slight. Among the main works in this area, the best known is naturally R. C. Smail’s influential study: Crusading Warfare: 1097-1193.° This pioneering work broached questions on a whole array of topics. Smail’s insights on themes including pitched battles, fighting marches, and the role of castles in the Crusader States has been instrumental in stimulating debate in later decades. More recently, Marshall’s Warfare in the Latin East: 1192-1291 represented another major step forward.* He focused on the situation in the thirteenth century—offering a clear survey— but it is his methodological contribution which is of particular relevance for this present work. He showcased the benefits of tabulating military encounters so as to identify patterns and trends.* This approach has subsequently been taken to the next stage by scholars who have sought to produce meaningful statistics based on the available evidence.° This present work follows in their footsteps by tabulating a huge quantity of data and using this to produce many statistical findings on issues such as: the number of incursions made by a given faction over time, the average number of expeditions launched per year by a given commander, or the frequency with which various factions encountered victory or defeat in battle.
More recently, Tibble has produced his study The Crusader Armies.’ Among his many thought-provoking arguments, he builds out on the idea that the struggle between the Franks and their many Turkish opponents should be understood as a conflict between a predominantly agricultural society (the Franks) and a society still transitioning from the steppe warfare of earlier generations (the Turks from the Central Asian Steppe).* Nicolle’s research and reference works on the arms and armour (including hundreds of images) employed by all factions during this period is a true gift to scholars working on this field.”
A linked field of research concerns Levantine siege warfare and castle building. Among the many leaders in this field, Ellenblum’s Crusader Castles and Modern Histories warrants particular attention, as does Raphael’s Muslim Fortresses in the Levant and Fulton’s recent Artillery in the Era of the Crusades.’® Other works could be named but these studies represent some of the most recent publications on questions pertinent to this present study. These include the distribution and purpose of frontier castles, the use of fortresses by Muslim rulers, and the development and effectiveness of siege technology. This work is not primarily concerned with supplying a detailed discussion on Frankish or Turkish military architecture or the mechanics of siege warfare, but it does engage strongly with these works in its assessment of the impact of either castles or siege technology on broader developments in warfare across this region—as Russ Mitchell has observed: its necessary to explore the ‘worms-eye-view if you want to understand the ‘bird’s-eye-view.** Another topic only lightly covered in this work is naval warfare. Whilst maritime activities are alluded to here, this topic lies beyond the scope of this project.’
Perhaps the most influential author in the framing of this present work is John France. He is well known for his magisterial Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade. This work remains the main ‘go-to’ monograph on this subject and yet it is the insights and questions raised by many of France’ later articles that have triggered several of the discussions contained in this work. France's ideas concerning: the role played by cities in the military landscape of the Near East, the availability or mercenaries and, more broadly, the extent to which we should view the conduct of war by commanders in this region as ‘innovative’ — breaking new ground, whether technologically or organizationally—has broached or galvanized debates that are picked up throughout this work.
Methodology and Definitions
As mentioned above, one of this project’s key research tools is a detailed spreadsheet agglomerating information on every reported military encounter to occur between 1099-1187. It now contains almost 1300 entries. It enables a granular reconstruction of events and marks a break from many previous studies and survey works which have tended to concentrate on the more famous campaigns and major battles. Naturally it would have been ideal to include this spreadsheet as an appendix to this present work, but unfortunately it is so enormous that it will require a volume in its own right and I am currently exploring options to publish this compiled data either as a stand-alone book or as an online source.
By seeking to identity all known military encounters across the above region, it has been possible to draw statistical conclusions from the tens of battles and hundreds of sieges, raids, and skirmishes that have been tabulated. This is not to say that it is possible to create a complete data set of every military encounter which ever occurred; we are naturally limited by those reported in the sources. Some armed clashes are known merely through a chance comment or throwaway line. Some exist as ‘known unknowns’ —for example, occasions when a castle was conquered by one faction in one year and was then reconquered by them many years later but with no indication about when or how it was lost in the intervening years. The surviving sources also provide better coverage for some regions/polities than others. The military histories of the county of Edessa and the Danishmendid Turks have been perhaps the most challenging to recreate. Likewise, there are chronological gaps in the evidence. For example the kingdom of Jerusalem lacks contemporary sources for the 1130s, but has more detailed texts for the earlier and later periods. Having said this, the sheer quantity of military data—taken as a corpus—is impressive.
One of the earliest tasks in this project was to devise specific definitions for the different types of military encounter to occur in this era: sieges, raids, battles, skirmishes, and rebellions. Laying down precise boundaries between these types of encounter is difficult, not least because at times they overlap; for example, rebellions can become sieges, raids can involve skirmishes. Such boundaries raise awkward questions which have tended to be passed over by scholars such as: how ‘big’ does a field encounter need to be in order to be classified as a battle?
Consequently, five basic categories are used in this work: battle, skirmish, raid, siege, rebellion. Pigeon-holing encounters within this system proved easier than expected and awkward cases were surprisingly few. Nonetheless at times it was very difficult to attach a suitable label. For example, when Bohemond H, prince of Antioch was ambushed and killed in Cilicia by the Danishmendids (1130), should this Frankish defeat be regarded as a skirmish or a battle? The sources provide insufficient detail to make a firm judgement about the scale of the encounter. In such cases, I have tended to be conservative, assuming that a smaller encounter took place where doubt exists (thus this encounter is listed as a ‘skirmish’).
he definitions employed for this study are as follows: Skirmish
¢ Scale: an encounter ending in the defeat or forced withdrawal of a contingent of at least 200 soldiers and/or 50 Frankish knights.’?
¢ Context: a conflict taking place between at least two parties not divided from one another by a permanent fortification (i.e. a siege).
Siege
¢ Context: a conflict taking place between at least two parties separated from one another by a permanent fortification.
e Scope: a ‘siege’ can be said to include all attempts to assault a defined fortification as well as a certain amount of liminal fighting along the wall’s margins and minor attacks on the besieger’s camp. Defining a ‘siege’ is actually very difficult because the sources frequently report that one protagonist ‘took or ‘seized’ a stronghold without specifying whether fighting actually took place. For the purposes of this study, the definition of a ‘siege’ includes the negotiated surrender of a stronghold using the threat of immediate assault, even if it is not clear whether actual fighting took place. Attacks against unfortified settlements are defined as raids."*
e Exceptions: major sallies from the walls, involving—or likely to have involved—forces of greater than 200 soldiers and/or 50 Frankish knights, are considered separately as skirmish encounters.
Battles’*
¢ Scale: an encounter ending in the defeat or forced withdrawal of an army of at least 3000 soldiers and/or at least 350 Frankish knights. Please note that an encounter in which two large armies sent out skirmishers to fight one another, but did not engage one another with their main forces, is not included in this category but could be listed if appropriate as a ‘skirmish.
e Context: a battle may include temporary field defences but it cannot include encounters fought between enemies separated by a permanent fortification (ie. a siege).
¢ Impact: a battle needs to have been reported as a major encounter by writers from at least two different cultural traditions (thus reflecting the impact and scale of its consequences)."®
Raid
e Scope: a raid is an attack in which the aggressor causes substantial damage to an opposing party, typically laying waste to crops, agricultural infrastructure, etc. It might also include the killing or forced deportation of the local population. Attacks on unfortified towns and villages are also contained within this definition.
Rebellion
e Scope and scale: an insurrection taking place within a town, city, or major fortification sufficient in scale for the rebels either to assume control of said urban space or for the existing urban authorities to either call for external help or to use major military contingents to suppress the rebellion. Widespread rural rioting can be considered under this heading but only if the rebel forces are of a sufficient scale to assault a permanent fortification or to fight a skirmish/battle. Sudden and effective palace coups or changes in allegiance are not counted in this category unless they include a substantial military encounter.
¢ Purpose: rebellions can include insurrections taking place for any purpose including: dynastic rivalries, popular revolt, or aristocratic infighting.
e Escalation: where rebellions spill beyond this definition, for example, to include marching armies of rebels laying siege to multiple strongholds or waging campaigns on their own account then these later encounters are listed separately as sieges or battles, the point being that only the initial insurrection is listed as a rebellion. Following the moment of the initial rebellion, it is considered that a new faction has been formed.
Alongside these categories it has been necessary define several further terms which will be used throughout this work. These are classified as follows:
e An Incursion: an attack waged against enemy territory including one or more of the following events: a skirmish, raid, battle, or siege. Attacks in which the aggressor causes no known damage but seeks construct an offensive fortification on hostile territory are also considered incursions.
Success/failure (battles and skirmishes): the victor in a battle or skirmish is defined as the party still in possession of the battlefield at its conclusion. The defeated party is, by contrast, the faction compelled to yield possession of the field. The only exceptions are encounters in which one (or more) factions made no attempt to hold the field of battle. An example might be a ‘fighting march’ or a Turkish attempt to slow or degrade a Frankish field army with no intention of defeating it, or taking/holding the land it occupies. In such cases, the victor is defined as the faction which best achieved its desired objective. In cases where it is not possible to define a victor then the battle is considered ‘indecisive’
¢ Success/failure (sieges): in a struggle over a strongpoint then the victor is defined as the faction in possession of that strongpoint at the culmination of the siege.
I would also point out that where I use the term ‘frontier’—a term which has received considerable scrutiny in recent years—I may use it broadly both to indicate a frontier zone or a specifically defined frontier. On the issue of whether precisely defined frontiers existed in the Latin East, I have little to add to Pringle’s summary—that while frontiers in some areas could be ‘fuzzy or fluid) they were normally identifiable and well known.””
Methodology: Army Sizes
A common issue discussed in many analyses of medieval warfare is the vexed question of determining army sizes. The fundamental problem here centres on the question of whether historians can plausibly believe some/any of the numbers supplied by contemporary authors.'* In some cases, reaching a verdict is not difficult. For example, when the Hospitallers reported that at the battle of Montgisard (1177) the Christian army defeated 75,000 enemy troops, it is easy to recognize that they were deliberately exaggerating, even though this letter was written immediately after the event by a senior Hospitaller who had either been present at the battle or who certainly had access to those who had." This verdict can be stated confidently because such a force would have been greatly in excess of any army raised by any Egypt-based power of this era, including the Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks. The most natural conclusion is that the author wanted to artificially amplify the extent of the Christian victory. Likewise in 1119 Usama ibn Mungidh describes a skirmish against the Frankish garrison in Apamea during which one of his men fled back to the town of Shaizar claiming their force had been attacked by 1000 troops. By contrast, Usama himself says that the Franks only had sixty cavalry and sixty infantry; clearly numerical estimates could be affected by perception and experience.”® Other concerns could be raised regarding reported army sizes in other contexts: perhaps an author deliberately reduced an army's size so as to make its defeat less ignominious; perhaps an author wanted to report a battle in grandiose terms, dialling up the size of both forces; perhaps a source had mistakenly included camp followers and merchants in a calculation of fighters, etc. Army commanders might likewise deploy their army in such a way as to give a false impression of the size of the forces under their command, thereby skewing the numerical estimates reached by their opponents.”" The list of potential problems goes on and such thoughts all militate against taking the statistics offered in medieval sources too seriously.”
Having said this, such concerns have to be balanced against several other factors. Firstly, it was in every military commander’s interests to acquire precise information about the size of their own forces as well as those of their opponents. With regard to Frankish forces, these were generally composed from a series of contingents supplied—to take the kingdom of Jerusalem as an example—by elite families and allies. Again, rulers needed to know the size of each aristocratic contingent, partly so as to calculate the overall size of their own army but also to gauge whether the vassal in question was making a creditable contribution. In many cases the size of the contingent to be supplied by a magnate was established by contract.”* The size of mercenary forces would also be known precisely because they required pay. For these reasons, Frankish commanders would probably have had a fair idea about the size of the forces under their command. Thus, chroniclers with access to this information—such as Fulcher of Chartres (King Baldwin ls personal chaplain), William of Tyre (chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem), Walter the Chancellor (Antioch’s chancellor)—need to be treated with the utmost seriousness when they supply numbers, especially for their own forces. In some cases, the chronicler actually breaks down the overall army size to illustrate its component contingents. Describing the Edessan, Armenian, and Antiochene forces which assembled to fend off Mawdud of Mosul’s attack on the Crusader States in 1111 Albert of Aachen supplies specific figures for the contingents supplied by many of the participating noblemen (i.e. Richard of Marash: sixty cavalry and one hundred infantry; Engelger of Apamea: 200 cavalry, etc.).”*
With regard to enemy armies, commanders had several means by which they could gauge the size of the opponent’s forces. The most obvious approach was to send out experienced scouts who could be relied upon to make reasonable guesses. There are few reports of how reconnaissance troops reached such estimates, but—to take an English example—there is an interesting reference in an account of the battle of Lincoln (1217) to senior leaders including Sir Simon Poissy, the count of Perche and the earl of Winchester being sent out specifically to make a considered assessment of the size of the French army (and its English allies), returning very detailed figures.”° It is not unreasonable to suggest that Near Eastern commanders would have exhibited at least as much care. The Frankish forces besieging Damietta during the Fifth Crusade likewise possessed designated ‘estimators’ (estimatores) whose role was to guage the size of their own forces.*° Other methods suggested by contemporaries for determining the size of an enemy force include: (1) counting the number of hoof-prints left by their horses on soft ground, (2) calculating the size of their vacated encampments and (3) inspecting places where an army had crossed a river.?” Many sources also report the number of enemy killed in a particular encounter and Ibn al-Qalanisi speaks of experts who were tasked with the job of making a count of the fallen.”* In addition, some contemporary authors took substantial pains to ascertain the correct numbers. For example, describing the battle fought between the Zangids and Saladin in 1176, Ibn al-Athir criticized the author Imad al-Din for suggesting that Saladin defeated 20,000 enemy troops, accusing him of deliberately inflating the figures to flatter his master. Instead, he checked the official army register and established that the Zangid army was only 6000-6500 strong.”° For these reasons, it is necessary to recognize that the business of assessing army sizes was taken seriously by contemporaries who developed a whole series of skills and administrative techniques specifically to produce reliable figures. This is not to say that we should unproblematically accept every figure we are given, rather that we have to keep an open mind to the notion that there might be a solid basis to the figures supplied by contemporary authors, even for enemy forces.
This present work contains a series of tables listing the numbers supplied by contemporaries for a range of different forces, chiefly those deployed by Turkic powers and the Crusader States. The numbers supplied by the surviving sources have already been edited to some extent to include only those that are at least vaguely plausible (so the claim that the First Crusade encountered a Turkish force of 360,000 troops at Dorylaeum would not be included!).*° Plausibility in turn was assessed by applying a number of checks including the following questions: are the numbers supplied by a source for any given faction broadly consistent with figures supplied for this faction’s armies in earlier/later years? Is it plausible that an army of this size could have been maintained logistically in a conflict zone?*' Does the general language used by a source to describe the size of two embattled armies correspond to the numbers it supplies?
Having assembled references to army sizes from sources drawn from multiple traditions, it is notable that for some encounters the estimates supplied in the surviving sources are conspicuously different between authors—not even nearly similar. Having said this there are also instances of remarkable correlation. Three of the four estimates supplied for the size of the Antiochene/Armenian force at the battle of Harim (1164) are remarkably consistent, placing the Frankish army at between 10-13,000 troops, even though the three authors offering these figures wrote in very different traditions (Latin, Syriac, and Arabic). Even when numbers seem very different, they can actually be far closer than they might appear. For example, for the battle of Tell Danith (1115), Ibn al-Athir and Walter the Chancellor supply fairly similar numbers for the Frankish force (respectively: 500 knights and 2000 infantry and 2000 troops overall), but Matthew of Edessa and Bar Hebraeus supply far lower figures (700 cavalry and 500 cavalry respectively). Despite the seeming disparity, some authors report army sizes listing only specific contingents; sometimes just the knights, sometimes just the core force without its various allies. Consequently, these Eastern Christian authors seem to have listed only the Frankish knights and, as such, their estimates may actually correspond well to the other estimates.
Moreover, even if all the figures supplied by an author feel inflated, it can still be helpful to examine them comparatively to get an idea of the relative sizes of different armies.** For example, many of the figures supplied for Artuqid Turkmen forces by many authors are implausibly high, but the fact that several quite sober authors supply such figures (authors who are normally quite measured elsewhere) informs us at the very least that the Artuqid armies were perceived as being substantially larger than most other contemporary forces.
Consequently, the basic approach taken in this study consists firstly in acknowledging that assessing the validity of numbers supplied in the surviving sources is indeed very difficult. Secondly, however, this work is founded on the conviction that if a judicious and comparative approach is taken to the sources and if all the available figures are brought together in a single place, then it is possible at least to reach an informed estimate.
The Near East in the Summer of 1099
In the 1080s Anselm, prior of Bec and future archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to a friend named William. Anselm’s purpose was to dissuade him from travelling to Jerusalem in pursuit of his brother who had set out for the east a little while previously, but had not returned. Anselm deployed a range of arguments to steer him away from his goal, but among them he pointed out the chaos engulfing the region noting that the holy city, ‘is no vision of peace, but rather of tribulation.**
Anselm was not wrong. Even before the First Crusade, the Near East—politically speaking—was a complete mess. This was not a new state of affairs. The region’s tortuous politics was the product of multiple convulsions spanning back well over a century, each of which contributed its own legacy whilst adding a new layer of complexity.
First, there was the break up of the Abbasid Empire in the tenth century. In the wake of this empire's collapse, several Arab and Kurdish dynasties took control across the region’s major powerbases including: the Banu Kilab in Aleppo, the Banu Ugayl in Mosul, the Banu Mazyad in al-Hilla in Iraq and the Marwanid Kurds in the Diyar Bakr.** Meanwhile, the Shia Fatimid dynasty seized control in Egypt and soon after began to contest control over many of the Levant’s major cities and coastlands.
Then the Turks made their entry onto this fractured scene. Turkic tribes had been moving south-west out of the Central Asian Steppe and across the Oxus river in ever increasing numbers for decades. They are commonly known as the ‘Seljuk Turks and yet the Seljuk family was itself merely the leader of the largest— if always a rather fragmentary—confederation of groups within a much broader movement of tribal communities. The Ghaznavid Turks of Persia and Khurasan sought to block their advance for a time, but were driven back to their southern marches in the 1040s by the invading Turkish tribes who continued to drive west towards Mesopotamia and the Levant.
As the eleventh century progressed the Turks swept across Persia, with many of their constituent Turkmen groups ultimately finding themselves drawn to the fertile pastures of Azerbaijan, Mosul, and the northern areas of the Jazira. Local powers, whether the Kurds around Mosul, the Armenians and Georgians further north, the Arab tribes of Iraq (such as the Banu Mazyad), and the Buyids in Baghdad, made some attempt to offer resistance, whether singly or in co-operation, but the Turks proved highly adept at playing divide-and-rule, taking sides in internal disputes and preventing the formation of any united front. Determined resistance was fractured and sporadic. In 1055, the Turks made their first conquest of Baghdad.
More formal Seljuk rule over Syria itself began in the 1070s with the arrival of the Turkmen commander Atsiz, but he was preceded by unaligned or semialigned Turkic tribes, who either raided or offered themselves as mercenaries to local powers. A similar picture was true in Byzantine Anatolia. Turkic warbands arrived in growing numbers, either as raiders, pastoralists seeking grazing, or swords-for-hire; infiltrating local power networks and causing substantial disruption. The Byzantine Emperors attempted to drive them out but their ability to maintain sustained resistance was enfeebled by their own internal disputes, while those Byzantine commanders who did march against the Turks encountered difficulties using their slow-moving armies, burdened with waggons and supply trains, to tackle the fast moving Turkic forces. Defeats such as the famous battle of Manzikert (1071) served to highlight the Byzantines’ inability to drive away these foes, thus inciting more groups to seek their fortunes in the Anatolian region. The situation in Syria and the Jazira was much the same with the leading Arab families, governing the major cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Mosul, finding themselves under increasing pressure first to acknowledge Turkish supremacy, and then second to surrender control of their cities entirely.**
Further south, the Fatimids in Egypt worked hard to resist Turkish authority. Initially they attempted to galvanize regional resistance against the Turks by staging expeditions in Syria and Iraq in the 1050s, but with the failure of these campaigns the Fatimids themselves became a target and the Turks attacked into the Nile Delta in the 1070s. At the time the Fatimids were substantially weakened by their own internal problems. The repeated failure of the Nile floods led to drought and agricultural disaster, which precipitated in turn famine and a steep economic decline.*° This could not have come at a worse time. The Fatimids had been recruiting Turks in large numbers to serve in their army and these groups were persistently demanding more pay for their labour. The empire's economic weakness meant that financing the army became impossible; a fact which provoked a rebellion in the 1060s which almost destroyed the empire. Eventually the Fatamids, led by Badr al-Jumali, managed both to suppress their own rebelling Turkish forces and to drive out a major Turkish invasion—launched out of Syria in 1077 — but these endeavours left them exhausted and weakened.
By the 1080s the situation had begun to stabilize somewhat with the Levantine region split down the middle. In the north, the Seljuks were firmly in control. In 1084-5, Sultan Malik Shah and his commanders embarked upon a major campaign across the Jazira and Northern Syria which essentially quashed or brought to heel all the smaller regional protagonists. The leading Arab dynasties were firmly disenfranchised from all their major settlements, being compelled to resentfully content themselves with a handful of strongholds or smaller towns. Here at least, the Turks were in the ascendant. Further south, the situation was more muddled. Much of the coastal region was in Fatimid hands; thus this was a major frontier of war between two hostile factions. Jerusalem itself changed hands several times, suffering a brutal overthrow by Turkish forces in 1077 following a rebellion the previous year.*” From c.1084 onwards Jerusalem was held by the Turkish commander Artug (originator of the Artugid dynasty) and his heirs in the name of Tutush (Malik Shah's brother).** The holy city itself had suffered greatly in previous decades as the Fatimid rulers of Egypt, preoccupied with their own civil wars, proved unable to prevent the encroachment of Bedouin tribes on the holy city and its immediate hinterland.*? The population was in decline and pilgrims from Western Europe were often waylaid whilst others observed that many of the region’s churches had been despoiled.
The quasi-stability, brought about by Malik Shah's intervention in the north and the stabilization of the Fatimid Empire following the convulsions of the 1060s and 1070s was fleeting. Malik Shah’s death in 1092 plunged the Near East into renewed turmoil. Multiple factions emerged from among the late sultan’s closest male kin. These claimants then became locked in a series of long-term civil wars over the sultanate that decisively ended the brief period of meaningful Seljuk authority over the Jazira and Syria. In any case, these were distant frontier regions when viewed from the perspective of the Seljuks’ heartlands around Isfahan, Rayy, and Hamadhan.
The result was further chaos. Malik Shah’s brother Tutush controlled much of Syria but he was killed in 1095 pursuing an almost successful attempt to claim the sultanate. His passing caused his sons Ridwan and Duqag to separately inherit his major cities of Aleppo and Damascus and they too immediately began fighting one another after taking power.
This then was the world which the First Crusaders entered in 1097. They advanced south-east across Anatolia to Antioch; then south either down through the Syrian highlands or along the shoreline to Arqa; and from there down the coast towards Jaffa and Jerusalem. In taking this route they were marching along the frontline between the embattled Seljuk and Fatimid Empires. From the perspective of regional politics, the Crusader advance essentially served to throw a brick into already troubled waters. From the Turks’ standpoint, the Crusaders’ astonishing ability to defeat nearly all their main regional field armies seems to have come as a shock. In former decades the Turks had suffered occasional defeats, but nothing on anything like this scale, and never with this consistency. Time and again, at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, and then three times near Antioch, the Turks were driven from the battlefield.
For the first time in years the Turks were genuinely on the back foot. This reality was not lost on the region’s former rulers and many seized the opportunity to reassert themselves. The Fatimids retook Jerusalem in 1098 (having regained control over the port city of Tyre only the year before); the Banu Kilab—former Arab governors of Aleppo—started to raid the Turks in the Aleppan region;*° the Armenians rebelled against the Turks, their warlords either asserting their independence or seeking Crusader protection; the Bedouin made an alliance with the Crusaders within only a few months of the Franks’ arrival.*t Even a few Turkic warlords—seeing the way the wind was blowing—tried to strike up accords with the Crusaders. Further afield, the Byzantines used the Crusader advance to retake much of Western Anatolia*? and the Georgians threw off their tribute to the Seljuk Sultanate and began to contemplate an advance to the south.** Viewed from a Turkish perspective, the First Crusade was a catastrophe, threatening a sweeping rollback of Turkish supremacy across the entire region.**
Consequently, when the Franks brutally conquered Jerusalem in 1099, the regional map was highly fractured. In the south, the Fatimid Empire remained the most coherent and arguably the most powerful regional player. Egypt was its powerbase but it also possessed the city of Ascalon on the southern Levantine coast, a little over forty miles west of Jerusalem. Many of the coastal cities further north, such as Tyre, Acre, and Tripoli, looked to Egypt for protection whilst existing in a state of semi-independence.
Egypt's Fatimid rulers also had some claim on the loyalties of northern Syria's considerable Shia population, many of whom viewed them as their natural overlords. These ties go some way to explaining the willingness of the Turkish ruler Ridwan to strike an alliance with the Fatimids in 1097, even going so far as to have the khutbah said for the Fatimid caliph in all his lands except Antioch, Aleppo, and Maarrat an-Nu‘man.** Ridwan of Aleppo was in a difficult position. He had to balance the demands of his substantial Shia population, which included a large community of Nizaris (who the Seljuks had grown to hate in previous decades), against the expectations of his fellow Seljuks (at least nominally Sunni), who were appalled at the idea of a Fatimid (Shia) alliance. Faced with the additional complications of the Crusaders’ attack on Antioch he may even have offered to convert to Shia Islam if, by so doing, he could secure some relief from the Fatimids for his embattled situation.*®
Returning to the south-east, the Transjordan region was Bedouin territory. It had never been satisfactorily conquered by the Turks and the Bedouin had moved into the power vacuum left by the retreat of the Fatimids in the mid-eleventh century; a process resulting from the Fatimid civil war and the many droughts and famines suffered by the region.*”
To the north of Transjordan were the fertile lands of the Hawran and then the townlands and orchards of Damascus. Damascus at this time was a bastion of Sunni authority and here at least Turkish authority was secure.** To the north of Damascus were the major towns of Hama and Homs and also the Arab town of Shaizar. The rulers of Shaizar were the Banu Mungqidh, an Arab dynasty which had only recently risen to prominence, purchasing the town in 1081.*° They had managed to hold onto at least some of their power despite the rising tide of Seljuk authority. Predictably, with the advent of the First Crusade, they chose to remain neutral, making a peace treaty with the Franks and selling them some horses, but taking no further action; the logical course of action of a small state sandwiched between two conquerors.”°
Further to the north, the regional topography was dominated by the Euphrates and—situated near a crucial crossing point of this major river—was the fortress of Qal'at Ja‘bar. This stronghold and a few outlying settlements were all that remained of the once-powerful Arab Banu Ugay] clan which had formerly controlled Mosul and subsequently been suppressed by the Turks.** Mosul itself, on the other side of the Jazira was firmly in Turkish hands, but in its hinterlands the Turks had only limited control over the various Kurdish groups that populated the area. Along its northern margins there were also a range of semiindependent Turkic dynasties, only sporadically acknowledging the Seljuk Sultanate, including the Artuqid family who would later come to dominate the fertile lands of the Diyar Bakr from their major seat at the town of Mardin.* This region was also influenced by a substantial Turkmen (Turks who still maintained a nomadic way of life) presence.** The fertile belt—spanning from Azerbaijan in the east, through the foothills of Southern Anatolia and the northern Jazira, all the way across to the Taurus mountains and the area around Melitene—attracted these Turkmen groups in large numbers and their presence continued to expand throughout the twelfth century and beyond. The Turkmen tribes ultimately pushed west into Anatolia’s Meander valley, the Cilician plains, and Antioch’s farmlands. From a demographic perspective, this Turkmen belt was the Syrian Turks’ main reserve of manpower and whilst Turkmen groups are reported further south, grazing in the Homs Gap, the hilly territory north of Lake Tiberias, and the hinterland around Damascus, many Turkish rulers drew heavily upon these northern tribes to supply themselves with manpower.
Southern Anatolia and the Cilician plains were also home to a substantial population of Armenian Christians, who formerly had lived—often reluctantly— under the authority of the Byzantine Empire and subsequently the Seljuk Turks. At the time of the First Crusade, they had been under Turkish rule for many years, but the advent of the Franks sparked them into a rebellion, which drove the Turks out of vast swaths of territory and ultimately paved the way for the first Crusader state: the county of Edessa, centred on the city of Edessa itself but expanding quickly to incorporate many surrounding towns such as Saruj and Samosata. The second major Crusader state—the principality of Antioch—also had a substantial Armenian population, particularly in its northern marches. Indeed, the Gesta Francorum observed that ‘Saracen’-populated territory only began south of Antioch; implying the existence of a demographic frontier across this zone.**
The third Crusader State, founded as part of the First Crusade, was naturally the kingdom of Jerusalem centred on the eponymous city and boasting little immediate hinterland. A handful of nearby towns fell to the Crusaders during their advance including Bethlehem, Lydda, Ramla, and more distantly, Tiberias on the shores of Lake Tiberias, but it had only one port—the small haven of Jaffa.°° This then was the situation at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem. A few years later a fourth Crusader State was founded when the First Crusade commander Raymond of Toulouse laid siege to the city of Tripoli. In time this would become the county of Tripoli.
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