Download PDF | David Nicolle, Adam Hook - Saracen strongholds, 1100-1500_ the central and eastern Islamic lands-Osprey (2009).
68 Pages
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR
Born in 1944, DAVID NICOLLE worked in the BBC's Arabic service for a number of years before gaining an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and a doctorate from Edinburgh University. He has written numerous books and articles on medieval and Islamic warfare, and has been a prolific author of Osprey titles for many years.
ADAM HOOK studied graphic design, and began his work as an illustrator in 1983. He specializes in detailed historical reconstructions, and has illustrated Osprey titles on the Aztecs, the Greeks, the American Civil War and the American Revolution. His work features in exhibitions and publications throughout the world. He lives in East Sussex, UK
INTRODUCTION
The medieval walls of the port. | To interpret the fortifications erected by a particular culture, its political as city of Qalhat were of simple well as military circumstances need to be understood. For example, the idea construction, with inner and outer skins of roughly trimmed field-stone, a loose rubble core that the later medieval Islamic world was dominated by despotic foreign rulers — usually Turks — who dominated the great cities by military force is greatly and small, widely spaced exaggerated, as is the supposed weakness of local urban and rural elites.
In towers. (Dionisius Agius) reality these groups shared power and responsibility, largely because the efforts of foreign military rulers to undermine the long-established power of local tribes, clans, families and households were never entirely successful. Another feature which distinguished the medieval Islamic realms from those of medieval Europe was that Muslim rulers rarely had anything like a ‘divine right’ to rule. Instead, they had to negotiate with existing secular, religious, economic and even military elites while their positions of authority depended upon administrative and military effectiveness, and respect for Islamic religious values.
The power and influence of women was also much greater than is generally realized, particularly within military households and those of Turkish origin. Such powerful women were, in fact, notable patrons of architecture while the cost, and thus the prestige, of major public works fell on a remarkable variety of people, both male and female. Most of the new, largely Turkish and almost invariably Turkishinfluenced ruling classes were strict military heirarchies, maintained in power by troops who were divided into ethnic groups with differing prestige and even legal status, of free or unfree origin. Membership of such a military group became virtually the only path to political power for a new dynasty, and perhaps inevitably the new ruling class developed something of a fortress mentality in relation to their own subjects. This was reinforced by persistent ethnic and linguistic separation between the ruling elite and the bulk of the population (Rabbat 2006, pp. 85-86).
Directly linked to these new political and military structures was what has been described as a ‘militarization of taste’. The new and largely Turkish ruling class did not start the process, however, which could already be seen during the 11th century (see Fortress 76: Saracen Strongholds AD 630-1050). Furthermore these new rulers, unlike their predecessors, tended to live in genuinely fortified —_citadels that also contained barracks, stables and parade grounds as well as administrative facilities. Paradoxically, the Mamluk sultans who ruled Egypt and Syria between 1260 and 1517 saw a reversal to an earlier aesthetic dominated by civilian, religious and even mercantile values — though in a new form.
Each region responded in a slightly different way to these political, military and cultural developments. In Egypt, duringthe second half of the 11th and most of the 12th centuries, the long-established Fatimid caliphate changed from an old-style Islamic theocracy into a military dictatorship under wazirs (chief ministers) whose power usually rested upon regiments recruited from the same linguistic origins as themselves. For example, wazirs of Armenian origin, known as the Jamalids, relied upon Armenian troops who were themselves mostly Christian; these regiments were quartered just north of the Fatimid palace city of al-Qahira (Cairo), outside the great Bab al-Futuh and Bab al-Nasr gates which had been built by the first Jamalid wazir, Badr al-Jamali, between 1087 and 1091. It is also important to note that Badr al-Jamali’s new fortifications were in response to the Seljuk Turkish threat, not that of the crusaders, who only appeared on the scene a decade later.
The situation in Syria was more complex, and even before the Seljuk Turks invaded the region the declining military power of the Fatimid caliphate led to the refortification of Jerusalem in the mid-11th century. In 1089 the Fatimid wazir Badr al-Jamali retook Acre and the other coastal cities from the Seljuks. These outposts remained in Fatimid hands for some years even after the First Crusade conquered the hinterland. Further north the Nusayri Mountains, facing what is now the Syrian coast, were densely populated during the Middle Ages and had been, as they still are, home to a remarkable variety of religious minorities, both Muslim and Christian. Several of the castles that were taken over by the Isma’ilis (the so-called ‘Assassins’) in the 12th century had already played a significant role during the 11th-century struggles between Byzantines and Arabs.
Even before the battle of Manzikirt in 1071, Byzantine power was declining in the borderlands of northern Syria. The Byzantine empire even agreed to demolish some of its newest castles in the 1060s in the hope of maintaining good relations with neighbouring Arab leaders. To the east, in the Euphrates Valley, the fluid and complicated political and military situation in the second half of the 11th century resulted in a number of fortifications which remain difficult to interpret. Here some of the last Arab rulers apparently felt a need for fortresses, as they also did in western Syria.
At the eastern end of the Jazira region, known to the ancient world as Mesopotamia, the early Islamic fortifications of the city of Mosul had seemingly been regarded as unnecessary until they were rebuilt during the local Ugaylid rulers’ struggles against the invading Seljuks in 1081-82. The situation in what is now central and southern Iraq and western Iran was again different. Baghdad, the seat of an ‘Abbasid caliphate which no longer exercised temporal power, may have been reduced to one-tenth of its previous population and extent.
Meanwhile most Iranian cities still had fortifications dating from the previous period, some of which had been updated in the face of more recent threats, most notably from the Seljuk Turks. The latter were Muslim, at least superficially, even before they conquered the old Islamic heartlands of Iran and the Middle East. Yet they stemmed from a pre-Islamic, Turkish, Central Asian civilization which had its own traditions of urban and military architecture, including fortified towns, caravansarais and isolated castles, especially along the caravan trade routes which are now generally referred to as the ‘Silk Routes’.
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