Download PDF | (Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture) Carole Hillenbrand - The Medieval Turks_ Collected Essays-Edinburgh University Press (2021).
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Preface
I have always been fascinated by languages and I like to speak them as well as read them. As a teenager I made annual visits to France and indeed spent a year there teaching in a Burgundian convent school before entering university. I also visited Germany and Italy regularly to improve my knowledge of those languages. So my very first visit to the Middle East, which was to Turkey in 1967 and lasted two months, opened fascinating new linguistic horizons. As an undergraduate at Cambridge I had studied for a degree in modern and medieval European languages, specialising in French political thought, Romance Linguistics, Old French, Rumanian and Medieval Latin. So my initial predilection for languages became still more firmly established.
During my three undergraduate years I spent valuable time in Germany, Italy, Rumania and, above all, France. Those eight weeks in Turkey proved to be a new and fascinating experience which turned my career aspirations upside down. Turkey’s diversity, the contrast between the celebrated historic city of Istanbul and the rarely visited furthest eastern regions of the country, and a journey by sea along the coast of the Black Sea, proved memorable and exciting. Very soon I felt drawn to finding out more about the multicultural history of eastern Turkey, and in particular the area around Lake Van and the remote cities of Kars, Amid (now known as Diyar Bakr) and Mayyafariqin (now called Silvan) close to the Turkish border with Georgia and Armenia. There we hitch-hiked and took lengthy walks in search of little-known Armenian, Georgian and Kurdish sites and monuments as well as Turkish ones.
Knowing no Turkish at this point, we found that local men had learned some German during and after the Second World War; this helped with information about the location of the key places that we wanted to visit. On my return to Britain I finally decided to return to academic life. I went to Oxford to study Middle Eastern Languages, beginning with Arabic. I was thrilled to be the first person at Somerville College ever to study Arabic. My degree course was interrupted after two years by my husband’s need to visit Iran to carry out fieldwork for his DPhil, which was on the subject of medieval Iranian mausolea. We stayed in Iran for a whole year; this gave me a great opportunity to learn Persian and to visit many wonderful historical sites. I explore the impact of that year in more detail in the preface to Volume 3 of this set of my reprinted papers. Once back in Oxford I was fortunate to be taught modern and Ottoman Turkish by three scholars: Professors Victor Ménage and Geoffrey Lewis and Dr Richard Repp.
Then in 1972 I moved to Edinburgh, after my husband had been appointed Lecturer in Byzantine and Islamic Art there, and began a PhD under the supervision of another Turkish specialist, John Walsh. He was passionately committed to Ottoman studies and wanted me to undertake research on Ottoman Turkish history. He suggested that I should work on the diaries of Marino Sanuto, since I knew Italian, but I decided instead to go back in historical time to study the nomadic Artuqid Turkish dynasty, which ruled eastern Anatolia and the Jazira in the twelfth century. It quickly became clear that this would involve editing, translating and analysing the sections of two unpublished Arabic manuscripts in the British Library which related the history of the Artuqids in Mayyafariqin, work which had been identified as a desideratum by earlier scholars, among them Amedroz, Minorsky and Cahen.
The palaeographical challenges of this task were daunting; the scripts in both manuscripts were rough and ready, and the texts were unpointed. This chronicle, known as Ta’rikh Mayyafariqin wa-Amid, was written by Ibn al-Azraq al-Fariqi (died sometime after 1176–7), a scribe and official who worked for several Artuqid rulers. After completing my PhD in 1978, I was appointed as Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Edinburgh. For the next thirty years I taught, among much else, the first-year undergraduate Islamic history course, which covered the period from the rise of Islam to the Ottoman and Safavid empires until 1725. I was particularly keen, after the experience of my PhD, to continue studying the medieval Turks. The history of the early nomadic Turks in Central Asia and further east had already been analysed with great erudition by famous experts such as Wilhelm Barthold, Vladimir Minorsky, Richard Frye, Robert Dankoff and others. But there was still much to do. Once the nomadic Seljuq Turks had become the rulers of Iran, Iraq, the Jazira and Syria from the mid-eleventh to the end of the twelfth century, their history was destined to be recorded in works written in Arabic and Persian. At this time the Turks themselves had scarcely found a voice to tell their own story; they were nomadic newcomers to the Middle East and unschooled in its tradition of writing detailed historical chronicles. The same absence of contemporary Turkish language sources also marks the earlier history of the pre-Seljuq Turks in the Islamic world, notably that of the slave soldiers of the ‘Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad and the Ghaznavids in Iran and Afghanistan. The scholarship of the last forty years has done a great deal to fill this gap in modern knowledge of this period of Turkish dominion. I therefore remained determined that the centre of gravity in my research should be the history of the Seljuq Turks from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, a period when they remained the salient power in the eastern Muslim world from Central Asia to western Anatolia and the borders of Egypt. So from the beginning of my employment at the University of Edinburgh in 1979, I studied the Arabic and Persian primary sources that dealt with Seljuq history. I also consulted the copious modern secondary scholarship in Turkish written on this subject. Fortunately, in the thirty years of my career at Edinburgh, I was able to publish steadily on the Seljuqs, as well as teaching their history to first-year undergraduates in my Islamic History course. Unfortunately, only two of the fifty-nine postgraduates whom I supervised, virtually all of them working for a PhD, chose to study Turkish topics. I have given public lectures or conference papers on Seljuq history, many of them essentially the first versions of the papers reprinted in this volume, in the universities of Istanbul, Mardin, Bir Zeit, Salamanca, New York, St Louis, Yale and Notre Dame, as well as at a good number of British universities. I have also regularly published a series of articles and book chapters about the period of the Seljuqs, including such topics as military matters, the sultanate, the Seljuq approach to Islam, the vizierate – especially the career of Nizam al-Mulk – and the role of Seljuq women. In 2007, I undertook a more difficult research task, namely exploring the full context of the celebrated and seminal battle that consolidated the Turkish presence in Anatolia: the Seljuq victory over the Byzantine army in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. This was perhaps the pivotal medieval event in that country before 1453, which saw the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. For the account of the actual battle, I drew on a good number of primary Arabic and Persian texts, as well as a few Byzantine, Armenian and Syriac sources which had been translated into French and English. However, the book also examined the impact of this battle in later Turkish history; this required a prolonged analysis of Ottoman Turkish sources as well as other Ottoman material translated into French, German and English. The last part of the book explored how the Turks of modern times have understood the battle and its aftermath, and that required close study of the writings of key twentieth-century Turkish scholars. For understandable reasons, Manzikert has for centuries remained a crucial part of Turkish identity: a long-lasting and much-cherished symbolic memory of past Turkish greatness right up to the present day. Hence the title I chose for it: Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert. I was very happy that this book, published by Edinburgh University Press, was immediately favoured with a Turkish translation. I first encountered the medieval Turks at the outset of my career as a historian of the medieval Muslim world, and I count myself fortunate to have done so. Vivid memories not just of Istanbul but of such key Seljuq centres as Konya, Sivas, Kayseri, Erzerum, Alanya and Antalya, and more generally of eastern Anatolia where they were such a dominant presence and have left such magnificent monuments, have informed my study of the medieval sources for many decades. And the numerous visits I have made to Turkey since 1967 have served to embed in my consciousness a constant awareness of the land of Anatolia, its plains and mountains, its rivers and valleys – a land of breath-taking natural beauty. Those memories of the land, its people and its monuments have served as a corrective to the view of the Seljuqs seen through the distorting lens of the medieval historians who were predominantly Arabs and Persians, and who wrote in Arabic and Persian, not Turkish. Once again, then, personal experience can decisively inform scholarship.
Introduction
Il-Ghazi has received scant treatment by Islamic and Western historians alike. Historians of Islam have concentrated inevitably and justifiably on the vital task of establishing a basic chronology from the tangled information provided by the medieval chroniclers.1 Scholars of European history, on the other hand, have treated İl-Ghazi merely as an incidental figure in the wider sweep of Crusader history which spanned so much more than the career of this one Turkish amir, active at a time of Muslim disunity and Crusader conquest.2 Had İl-Ghazi lived half a century later, he might conceivably have been accorded more systematic scholarly study, such as the impressive corpus of work that has appeared on Nur al-Din3 and especially Saladin.4 It is perhaps premature to attempt to analyse the career of İl-Ghazi in a way which deviates from the standard approach of outlining the various stages of his career in chronological sequence and providing documentary support for the information given. Yet many good studies of the chronological kind have already been made, notably the article by Claude Cahen5 in which from a wide array of sources he gives in broad outline the complex political history of the period covered by the Artuqid section of Ibn al-Azraq’s Ta’rikh Mayyafariqin wa-Amid.
This deals with the period from the establishment of İl-Ghazi in Diyar Bakr to the reign of the third Artuqid ruler of Mardin and Mayyafariqin, Najm al-Din Alpı. More recently, the Turkish scholar, Ali Sevim, has written at some length about ‘the political deeds’ of Artuq, İl-Ghazi’s father, Suqman, his brother, and İl-Ghazi himself;6 and Osman Turan devotes six pages to İl-Ghazi in his recent history of eastern Turkey.7 He adds nothing new, however. More summary and general still are the articles on the Artuqids, and more especially on İl-Ghazi, in the Encyclopaedia of Islam8 and the Türk Ansiklopedesi. 9 Although of varying standard, these provide a skeletal chronological framework for the career of İl-Ghazi. The various works listed in this paragraph may differ in points of detail, but their basic concerns remain similar; to establish a chronology which includes the major political events of İl-Ghazi’s life and not to analyse the implications of the various facts cited. If a new primary source came to light, there would be justification for a fresh analysis of the detailed facts year by year. In the absence of such a bonus, there is a need, as Gibb indicated many years ago, for monographs on the important figures of the First Crusade, such as Tughtegin, Zengi and İl-Ghazi.10 In this article, therefore, the career and personality of İl-Ghazi will be considered under certain broad themes, in the hope that new light may be shed on this little-known but significant ruler. The sources used are those concerned with the First Crusade, which are too well known11 to be described yet again. The work of Ibn al-Azraq will also be used as a source, but principally for İl-Ghazi’s activities in Diyar Bakr and above all for the author’s account of İl-Ghazi’s campaign into Georgia in 515/1121–2. Historians of the Crusades have discussed what they take to be the flamboyantly barbaric personality of İl-Ghazi and despite the somewhat lacunary information available have pronounced strong judgements upon him. Röhricht, as a creature of his times, condemns İl-Ghazi as a brute given over to drunkenness and excess,12 whilst the same opinion is expressed with greater restraint by Grousset, who labels him a coarse old trooper.13 Runciman has more level-headed criticisms of İl-Ghazi,14 but even he judges him to a great extent, though not entirely, from the viewpoint of Crusader history. Such an attitude is totally justified in a scholar who is writing about the Crusades, but it presents a rather one-sided view of İl-Ghazi, leaving undiscussed many vital facets of his career. From the Muslim standpoint his dealings with the Franks were of secondary importance in comparison with his crucial role in the Jazira. It is indeed a commonplace of Islamic history that the advent of the Franks in the last decade of the eleventh century and their territorial expan-sion in northern Syria thereafter exercised no dominant influence in the internecine political struggles of the Islamic heartland.15 Furthermore, İlGhazi, throughout his career, was orientated eastwards towards the Jazira and Baghdad, even to western Iran – that is, to the territory of his overlord the sultan – and his ambitions and activities were inextricably linked with developments in the Seljuq empire. It is especially against the background of late Seljuq history, therefore, that İl-Ghazi’s achievements should be evaluated. In the discussion which follows, therefore, İl-Ghazi’s career will be assessed primarily in the context of Seljuq decline. His role as a semi-nomadic chief will also be considered. His relations with the Franks cannot of course be ignored, but the Franks will be accorded subsidiary status as a small but significant political entity operative in northern Syria in the early twelfth century. They will not take over the foreground of the discussion, as is standard practice in works on the Crusades. The following abbreviations are used in this article:
Anon. Syr. Chron. A. S. Tritton, ‘The First and Second Crusades from an Anonymous Syriac Chronicle’, with notes by H. A. R. Gibb, JRAS (1933), 69–101, 273–305. al-‘Azimi C. Cahen, ed., ‘La chronique abrégée d’al- ‘Azimi’, JA CCXXX (1938), 353–44. Bar Hebraeus The Chronography of Gregory Abû’l Faraj, the Hebrew Physician, commonly known as Bar Hebraeus, tr. E. A. W. Budge (London, 1932). al-Bundari Zubdat al-nusra wa nukhbat al-‘usra, ed. M. T. Houtsma (Leiden, 1889). al-Husayni Akhbar al-Dawla al-Seljuqiyya, ed. M. Iqbal (Lahore, 1933). Ibn al-‘Adim, Bughyat Bughyat al-talab fi Ta’rikh Halab, ed. A. Sevim (Ankara, 1976). Ibn al-‘Adim, Zubda Zubdat al-halab min Ta’rikh Halab II, ed. S. Dahan (Damascus, 1954). Ibn al-Athir, X al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh X, ed. C. J. Tornberg (Leiden and Uppsala, 1864).
Ibn al-Athir, Atab. Ta’rikh al-dawla al-atabakiyya, ed. A. Tulaimat (Cairo, 1963). Ibn al-Azraq, Ms. A Ta’rikh Mayyafariqin wa-Amid, B.M. Or. 5803. Ibn al-Azraq, Ms. B Ta’rikh Mayyafariqin wa-Amid, B.M. Or. 6310. Ibn al-Azraq, ed. ‘Awad Ta’rikh al-Fariqi, ed. B. A. L. ‘Awad (Cairo, 1959). Ibn al-Furat Ta’rikh al-Duwal wa’l-Muluk, Vienna MS A.F. 811. Ibn Khallikan Wafayat al-a‘yan, tr. Baron W. M. de Slane (Paris, 1843–71). Ibn al-Qalanisi Dhayl Ta’rikh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908). Marsh 333 Ibn Shaddad, al-A‘laq al-khatira, Bodleian Ms. March 333. Matthew of Edessa Patmut’iwn, tr. E. Dulaurier (Paris, 1858). Michael the Syrian Chronique de Michel le Syrien, tr. J.-B. Chabot (Paris, 1899–1914). RHC Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens orientaux (Paris, 1872–1906). Sibt b. al-Jawzi, ed. Jewett Mir’at al-Zaman (Hyderabad, 1951); facsimile ed. by J. Jewett (Chicago, 1907). Usama, tr. Hitti Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman, tr. P. K. Hitti (repr. Beirut, 1964).
The Career of İl-Ghazi – First Phase The decline of the Seljuq empire did not manifest itself markedly until the deaths in quick succession of Nizam al-Mulk and Sultan Malikshah in 485/1092–3, although the seeds of its decay had been sown long before.16 During the early part of his career, that is before 485/1092–3, İl-Ghazi’s role was most probably identical with that of many prominent leaders of the Turcoman tribes who had helped to bring the Seljuqs to power in the Islamic world. He fought in the service of the Seljuq sultans wherever they might send him and was presumably rewarded. At this stage there would have been little opportunity for him to gain independence or to acquire territory on his own account. Sultan Malikshah and Nizam al-Mulk seem to have exercised a tight control and commanded loyalty from their military commanders, who were ordered to take cities and subjugate enemies – but in the name of Malikshah.17 Before 485/1092–3 İl-Ghazi probably fought with his father, Artuq, on his various military campaigns to Diyar Bakr18 and Jerusalem,19 and while Artuq was alive, İl-Ghazi was under his controlling influence.
The Career of İl-Ghazi – Second Phase
The death of Malikshah in 485/1092–3 and that of Artuq shortly afterwards afforded İl-Ghazi the beginning of a freedom from constraint, both personal and governmental, which was further aided by the death of his elder brother Suqman in 498/1104–5,20 whereupon İl-Ghazi became head of the Artuqid family. Between the death of Malikshah and İl-Ghazi’s acquisition of the fortress of Mardin some time around 502/1108–9, İl-Ghazi played an important part in the bitter and protracted conflict between the successors of Malikshah. He also participated in the equally dangerous struggle for power amongst the Seljuq military commanders themselves, of whom he was one. All of them were eager to emancipate themselves from centralised control and acquire territory of their own. İl-Ghazi’s brother, Suqman, as well as Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi, Chökermish and others all played the same game. They aligned themselves according to political expediency with one or other of the Seljuq contenders. According to the caprice of fortune they could gain wealth and power if they had backed the winning side, but they found death or imprisonment if they lost. In the last decades of the eleventh century, then, İl-Ghazi sought advancement in the same way as the other Turcoman chiefs in the Seljuq empire by attaching himself to a powerful scion of the Seljuq family. He was active in northern Syria in the struggle between Duqaq and Ridwan21 and he held power briefly in Jerusalem. Artuq, İl-Ghazi’s father, had been given Jerusalem as an iqta‘ by Tutush in 478/1085–6. When Artuq died, Suqman and İl-Ghazi succeeded him there. It is not altogether clear which of the two brothers was in charge, or whether they ruled jointly.22 Whatever the arrangement in Jerusalem, it was short-lived, since the Fatimids, profiting from Seljuq weakness, attacked the city in 489/1095–6 and took it from the Artuqid family.23 At that point both Suqman and İl-Ghazi were there, with their cousin Sevinch and their nephew Yaquti. The presence of this cluster of Artuqid princes may be interpreted as an attempt by the family to carve out an appanage for themselves in the Jerusalem area. After al-Afdal had granted them safe conduct out of Jerusalem, the two brothers parted company, Suqman staying in Edessa whilst İl-Ghazi went to Iraq.24 The Jerusalem interlude is not of great significance in İl-Ghazi’s career, but it is an interesting foretaste of the geographical distance he was time and again to cover in his search for profit. Of paramount importance, however, to an understanding of İl-Ghazi’s motivation and later career is the move he made from Jerusalem to the service of the future Sultan Muhammad at a time when the latter was struggling for the supremacy in the western part of the Seljuq empire, namely western Iran and Iraq. Sanjar, Muhammad’s full brother, was already ruler of Khurasan. The move to Iraq by İl-Ghazi was not necessarily an obvious one, for he could have thrown in his lot with Ridwan who was operating just north of the Jerusalem area. Suqman, it will be noted, decided to remain in Syria, and this decision may have influenced İl-Ghazi. It is also possible that representatives of the Artuqid family were still at Hulwan, his father’s old iqta‘. 25 İl-Ghazi’s relationship with Sultan Muhammad overshadowed his whole career and henceforth he was never free of the spectre of Muhammad at his shoulder until the latter’s death at the end of 511/1118. The presence was not always a malevolent one. When İl-Ghazi went to Iraq, some time after 489/1095–6, he probably went to Hulwan, and thereafter gave military service to Muhammad. In 494/1100–1, Sultan Muhammad and Sanjar made their way to Baghdad and were joined at Hulwan by İl-Ghazi whom Ibn al-Athir praises, saying that he served the sultan well.26 No doubt as a reward for his services, Sultan Muhammad appointed him shihna of Baghdad in the following year.27 The post of shihna in Baghdad was powerful and prestigious. The shihna was the main representative of the sultan in Baghdad, charged with maintenance of law and order and with the task of restraining any attempt by the caliph to interfere in the sultan’s sphere of influence.28 The evidence given by Ibn al-Athir reveals that İl-Ghazi became attached to this office, although the people of Baghdad did not share this enthusiasm. The presence in and around Baghdad of İl-Ghazi’s Turcoman groups engendered civil unrest and riots. On one occasion, in Rajab 495/April–May 1102, İl-Ghazi, instead of using diplomacy and his power as their leader to subdue his men, set about looting the city in retaliation for the seizure of one of his followers. Only the efforts of the caliph, al-Mustazhir, prevented İl-Ghazi from extending the pillaging elsewhere in the city.29 There is no record that Muhammad exacted retribution for this gross misrule. Perhaps the enjoyment he found in controlling Baghdad and his lack of any territory apart from Hulwan contributed to a disastrous political mistake which İl-Ghazi made in 497/1103–4 when he changed his allegiance from Muhammad to Barkyaruq. Under the terms of the uneasy peace treaty made between Muhammad, Barkyaruq and Sanjar in that year,30 Barkyaruq was to be overlord of Baghdad. Instead of removing himself from that city to seek service elsewhere with Muhammad, who had been given the territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Jazira, Mosul and Syria – territories which lay more within İl-Ghazi’s sphere of operations than south-western Iran and southern Iraq – İl-Ghazi remained in Baghdad and inserted Barkyaruq’s name in the khutba in Jumada I 497/February 1104.31 It is not hard to guess İlGhazi’s motivation in changing sides. He explained his reasons to Sadaqa who announced his intention of driving İl-Ghazi out of Baghdad. He told Sadaqa that his only possession until he became shihna of Baghdad had been Hulwan, and that it was because of Baghdad that he had recognised Barkyaruq as his sultan. Sadaqa apparently understood these arguments and returned to Hilla.32 Nor was İl-Ghazi’s new-found loyalty likely to ingratiate him with Sultan Barkyaruq, who, if Ibn al-Athir’s chronology is to be trusted,33 had already sent his own shihna, Gümüshtegin, to Baghdad in Rabi‘ I 496/December 1102, in an attempt to oust İl-Ghazi, his brother’s candidate. İl-Ghazi had allied himself with Sadaqa, the lord of Hilla, who had recently shifted his allegiance from Barkyaruq to Muhammad,34 and with his own brother Suqman, whom he had summoned from Hisn Kayfa, and all together they had succeeded in driving Gümüshtegin out of Baghdad.35 It seems unlikely that their joint action was instigated by Sultan Muhammad although he was no doubt glad of the discomfiture of Gümüshtegin. But İl-Ghazi had now rendered himself unacceptable to Sultan Muhammad and was at best reluctantly allowed by Barkyaruq to continue as shihna. İl-Ghazi’s visit to Isfahan in 498/1104–5 to see Barkyaruq may well have been motivated by a desire to persuade the sultan of his loyalty, as well as to press him to come to Baghdad to strengthen his precarious hold over the city. It was en route to Baghdad that Barkyaruq died.36 Instead of attempting at this point to make amends to Muhammad by mentioning his name in the khutba at Baghdad, a move which might conceivably have reinstated himself in Muhammad’s favour, İl-Ghazi proceeded with Barkyaruq’s infant son, Malikshah, and his atabeg Ayaz, as far as Baghdad. There they proclaimed Malikshah sultan.37 This move was of course prompted by a desire to acquire more power for themselves since they could rule through the small boy. İl-Ghazi’s attachment to his post in Baghdad had induced him to make another egregious error of judgement. Soon after, Muhammad marched on Baghdad and assumed control of his brother Barkyaruq’s territories,38 thereby putting an end to İl-Ghazi’s ambitions in Iraq. Sultan Muhammad’s coolness towards him was understandable; so too was the sultan’s next move, which was to replace İl-Ghazi39 at Baghdad in 498/1105 by Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi.40 With the establishment of Sultan Muhammad as sole Seljuq ruler in the west in that year, and in view of İl-Ghazi’s record of insubordination and unpredictability, a rift between the two was inevitable. In the years that followed, Sultan Muhammad’s attitude was to harden from probable coolness to anger and hostility, whilst İl-Ghazi’s personal animosity towards the sultan provided a bitter spur for many of his subsequent acts of insubordination. By a strange coincidence, İl-Ghazi found himself deprived of position and prestige at the same time as his elder brother Suqman, who had possession of Hisn Kayfa and Mardin, died on his way to answer an appeal from Tughtegin in Damascus.41 İl-Ghazi’s decision to go to Diyar Bakr and assume the leadership of those members of his family who were already there was to pave the way for his eventual acquisition of his own territory.
The Career of İl-Ghazi – Third Phase
After the struggle for power between Barkyaruq and Muhammad had ended and the latter had become ruler of western Iran and Iraq, the Seljuq empire gained a sovereign who recognised the need to impose his control over the dissident factions within his territories and to restore unity.42 His removal of İl-Ghazi from the post of shihna of Baghdad indicated clearly his determination to tolerate no amir of doubtful loyalty in such a key post. After his departure from Baghdad, İl-Ghazi stayed in Diyar Bakr, far from the new sultan’s capital. His deliberate policy appears to have been to ally himself with the enemies of the sultan, whilst initially, at least, maintaining a semblance of obedience. In 501/1107–8, the caliph attempted to mediate in a quarrel between Sadaqa and the sultan. In his reply, Sadaqa informed the caliph that Chavlı Saqao and İl-Ghazi had agreed to make common cause with him in any war that he might have with the sultan or any other person. He had only to call and they would come with their troops.43 This is one explicit indication of İl-Ghazi’s declared willingness to lend support to powerful enemies of the sultan. Once secure in the fortress of Mardin, well known to be virtually impregnable and situated far from Muhammad’s centre of government – a fortress which he took in 502/1108–9 – İl-Ghazi gradually became bolder in his hostility to the sultan. Muhammad appointed Mawdud to the post of governor of Mosul, dismissing Chavlı Saqao in 501/1107–8.44 This position was of key importance in consolidating the sultan’s authority over the Jazira and carried with it great prestige. Opinions vary as to the extent to which the successive armies which were sent out from Mosul between 500/1106–7 and 509/1115–16 acted on the direct orders of the sultan. Some scholars have seen these campaigns as expressing the ambitions of successive governors of Mosul; others regard them as inspired at least in part by the sultan, who called on his amirs to participate in a joint enterprise against rebel amirs (İl-Ghazi and Tughtegin) and the Franks, in order to restore his direct control over Syria and Diyar Bakr.45 Whatever the exact motivation of such campaigns, a series of armies were sent out from Mosul, under Mawdud, Aq Sunqur alBursuqi and Bursuq b. Bursuq, within the space of five years. Their activities directly affected İl-Ghazi, already incensed by the appointment of Mawdud as governor of Mosul. Two of these armies were sent via Mardin so that efforts could be made to bring İl-Ghazi to heel. These efforts were invariably unsuccessful. In the event, the latter two armies also experienced humiliating reverses. At first, İl-Ghazi’s own actions betrayed indecision. He may well still have cherished hopes of the sultan’s favour, especially if after a period in disgrace he had shown his behaviour to be exemplary. This is a plausible explanation for his inconsistency with Chavlı, the dispossessed ruler of Mosul, who wanted to enlist İl-Ghazi’s help in 502/1108–9. İl-Ghazi was too weak at that time to resist Chavlı’s threats, especially when the latter actually came to Mardin, and so he unwillingly accompanied him. But he grasped the first possible opportunity to escape back to Mardin.46 A similar inconsistency marked İl-Ghazi’s conduct in 503/1109–10, when he went to Syria with his Turcoman groups in answer to the sultan’s appeal to take part in a joint campaign with other amirs under the leadership of Mawdud, lord of Mosul.47 Although he participated in the fighting, İl-Ghazi quarrelled with Suqman al-Qutbi during the campaign. Suqman was a close territorial rival of his, and his career, in contrast to İl-Ghazi’s, had advanced smoothly through his calculated loyalty to the sultan. After the quarrel, İl-Ghazi withdrew to Mardin.48 There he remained, refusing to fight. When the campaign was renewed the following year (504/1110–11) a vast army assembled under the leadership of Mawdud. As İl-Ghazi did not dare at this early stage to refuse the sultan altogether nor to oppose his army, he did send troops, but under the leadership of his son Ayaz, not himself. He was the only amir summoned to fight who did not appear in person.49 The murder of Mawdud in 507/1113–1450 removed one powerful rival from İl-Ghazi’s path but in the event its consequences were to fan still further his resentment against Muhammad. İl-Ghazi had already been ignored once by the sultan when the latter had appointed Mawdud as governor of Mosul. Now, in 508/1114–15, the sultan replaced Mawdud with Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi, the man who had taken over İl-Ghazi’s position as shihna in Baghdad.51 İl-Ghazi’s short-lived attempt at conformity with the sultan’s wishes had proved fruitless, and he refused to answer the next call to arms from the sultan. In 508/1114–15 Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi went to Mardin and forced the reluctant amir to submit to the sultan’s authority. The most İl-Ghazi would concede was to hand over a body of troops under his son, Ayaz. Aq Sunqur did not accept this insult lightly. He subsequently arrested Ayaz and plundered the countryside around Mardin.52 İl-Ghazi enlisted help from his nephew, Da’ud of Hisn Kayfa, fought and defeated Aq Sunqur and freed Ayaz.53 By this defeat of Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi, İl-Ghazi’s transparently halfhearted support of the sultan had given way to open defiance.
At this juncture, İl-Ghazi apparently began to fear the wrath of the sultan, even in the security of his fortress at Mardin, especially after he had received threatening letters from Muhammad. Seeking an ally with a similar outlook, he fled to Tughtegin in Damascus and joined forces with him.54 Tughtegin had just cause to believe that he had incurred the sultan’s displeasure after Mawdud had been murdered in the previous year whilst in his company at Damascus. Although the blame for the assassination had been placed as usual on the Isma‘ilis, some of the chroniclers suggest Tughtegin’s own complicity in the deed.55 The alliance formed by İl-Ghazi and Tughtegin in 508/1114–15 was of long duration and mutually beneficial. Together they made a treaty that same year with Roger of Antioch56 and awaited the arrival of the combined forces of the sultan sent out under a new general, Bursuq. The twin objectives of this campaign were to quell the pride of İl-Ghazi and to prosecute the jihad against the Franks.57 The order of priorities is significant here. After İl-Ghazi, Tughtegin and Roger of Antioch had assembled their troops and Bursuq’s army had arrived near Aleppo, no battle actually took place. After eight days, Bursuq retreated, fell into an ambush set by Roger at a place called Danith, and was defeated. The battle took place in Rabi‘ II 509/September 1115.58 This serious defeat of an army sent out under the auspices of the sultan appears to have aroused feelings of guilt and fear in Tughtegin and perhaps in İl-Ghazi too. Tughtegin in Damascus was closer to Frankish territories and had more to lose from a complete break with the Seljuqs. He therefore broke off his alliance with Roger and made his peace with Sultan Muhammad.59 It seems that Tughtegin was not asked to break off relations with İl-Ghazi as the price of peace; he may even have spoken up for İl-Ghazi at Baghdad. İl-Ghazi did not feel the same pressures as his ally, although he did not fight again on the same side as the Franks. He apparently saw no need to seek pardon from the sultan since he had no cause to fear any more reprisals.60 Nevertheless he did not provoke the sultan further by continued defiance. He waited until the sultan’s death at the end of 511 and then sent his son, Temürtash, to Muhammad’s successor, Mahmud, with whom no doubt he hoped to have more friendly but indirect relations.61 For his part, after Danith Sultan Muhammad made no other serious attempts to quell the ambition of İl-Ghazi, nor did he send out another large army into Syria. İl-Ghazi’s rebellious stance had prevented direct interference by the Seljuq sultan in his affairs, if somewhat belatedly (the sultan died in 511/1118 and İl-Ghazi himself in 516/1122), and had permitted him to establish his own small but independent territory in the Jazira. After Muhammad’s death, and the succession problems that ensued, İl-Ghazi wielded genuine power in his own right. From the viewpoint of the external enemies of Seljuq power in the Near East, especially the Franks, and the Georgians, who had begun harassing the northern borders of Muhammad’s territories,62 the sultan’s struggles to impose order within his empire by disciplining amirs like İl-Ghazi successfully diverted Muhammad’s attention away from their own activities, wasted his valuable time and energy and prevented him from undertaking serious military action against them. These reflections prompt a somewhat critical assessment of the role of Sultan Muhammad. Muhammad has been praised by Muslim chroniclers who see him as a strong ruler who brought order and unity to a decaying state, torn apart by internal strife.63 Whilst fortune favoured him by the absence of any strong rival claimants to the throne, his efforts to establish his authority over his amirs, especially İl-Ghazi and Tughtegin, were remarkably unsuccessful. Fear of reprisals by Muhammad may have dogged the steps of these two rebels but it did not generally deter them from continuing to pursue their own independent policies. Once Mawdud had been killed, and two successive armies from Mosul had been defeated, one by İl-Ghazi himself and one by the Franks at Danith, Sultan Muhammad’s hold on affairs in Syria and Jazira became seriously enfeebled. His death provided the opportunity for even more independent actions by the amirs of the Jazira and Syria.64 Although his turbulent relationship with Muhammad looms large in İl-Ghazi’s career from the fall of Jerusalem onwards, that career may also be viewed as a continual effort by İl-Ghazi to establish himself in the area of Diyar Bakr and to extend his sphere of influence in the surrounding area. The process by which he acquired territory must have been arduous and complex. The difficulty of holding onto any city or citadel in a land where the central government barely controlled the contending local warlords was a perennial one in the medieval period. But at this time it was exacerbated by the presence in Diyar Bakr of the nomadic or semi-nomadic Turcoman groups from whose ranks İl-Ghazi had come. The two major exigencies of nomadic existence had to be satisfied: one was grazing lands for their flocks, the other was booty. The inherent mobility of nomadic life, and the raids necessary to make a livelihood, explain on the one hand the vast geographical area, extending from Jerusalem to Tiflis, from Aleppo to Isfahan, which was covered by İl-Ghazi and his Turcomans, and on the other highlight some of the difficulties they must have experienced in becoming entrenched in one specific geographical area. The area which İl-Ghazi had selected for his territory was Diyar Bakr. He had probably visited it with his father, Artuq, who took part in Ibn Jahir’s campaign to seize Mayyafariqin in the name of Malikshah, stamp out the Marwanids and take their treasures.65 The territory of Diyar Bakr was eminently suitable for İl-Ghazi’s purposes. His brother had possession of Hisn Kayfa and Mardin and other members of the Artuqid family were there too.66 Diyar Bakr had good grazing lands as well as a chain of citadels which had existed since early Islamic times to man the frontier against Byzantium.67 Moreover, the area was conveniently far from the heartland of Seljuq power and this made it fairly safe from interference on the part of the central government. The interplay between the settled areas – the cities of Mardin, Mayyafariqin and other smaller Artuqid possessions – and İl-Ghazi’s Turcomans must have been violent and disruptive, although the custom of the times demanded that a city should be protected by its citadel, held by some armed force. The sources abound with examples of cities such as Tiflis,68 Aleppo69 and Mayyafariqin desperately seeking military protection from various Turcoman and other leaders, since to be defenceless was even more of a disaster than to be ruled despotically.70 Ibn al-Azraq is an unreliable source for any assessment of the effect of İl-Ghazi and his Turcomans on the cities he owned. His testimony is blatantly pro-Artuqid, since he worked for İl-Ghazi’s son, Temürtash, who incidentally receives far more eulogies than his father. The changes which Ibn al-Azraq claims that İl-Ghazi made are therefore intrinsically suspect, but they are nonetheless revealing. İl-Ghazi is said to have abolished billeting in the houses of Mayyafariqin, most of which was in ruins, and to have made the countryside safe from robbers who plundered the caravans in the immediate area of the town.71 There is, however, no reason to assume that in the years 502–16/1108–22, when İl-Ghazi’s centre of operations was Diyar Bakr, there was any improvement in the uneasy relationship between his Turcoman troops and the local inhabitants. The detailed description given by Ibn al-Athir of one turbulent incident at Baghdad during İl-Ghazi’s time as shihna72 is probably a more accurate picture of the impact of the Turcomans on Mardin, Mayyafariqin and Aleppo than that implied by Ibn al-Azraq’s bland eulogies. The real beginnings of a fruitful relationship between the Turcomans and the people of the cities ruled by the Artuqid family must have been made in the reign of Temürtash, who held on to Mayyafariqin and Mardin for thirty years. Genuine sedentarisation of course took very much longer than a single generation.73 After acquiring Mardin around 502/1108–9, İl-Ghazi must have wielded power unofficially in Mayyafariqin too74 and his grip on the city must have tightened after the death of its overlord, Suqman al-Qutbi, in 504/1110–11. The official date given by Ibn al-Azraq for his acquisition of the city is 512/1118–19.75 The vulnerability of the hinterland of this city after Suqman al-Qutbi’s death was soon revealed, as ‘despotic hands reached out’ to snatch whatever territory they could.76 Prominent amongst the claimants for this temporarily ungoverned territory was İl-Ghazi himself, who by that time had probably established himself as the overlord of the other amirs in that area. These included Toghan Arslan of Arzan and Bitlis, who answered his call to arms on the Tiflis campaign,77 and Amir Ibrahim, the lord of Amid.78 The more recent rulers of Mayyafariqin had been local amirs and it must have seemed natural for the pattern to continue. Thus in 498/1104–5 Qilij Arslan of Malatya had entered Mayyafariqin and received oaths of allegiance from the local amirs already established in the area.79 After Qilij Arslan had drowned in the Khabur in 500/1105–6 Suqman al-Qutbi had assumed overall control of Diyar Bakr from his centre at Akhlat.80 With his death the most likely choice was İl-Ghazi. İl-Ghazi’s centre of power was clearly Mardin. The sources refer to him constantly as lord of Mardin and it was a key city for him to hold in view of his predominant political interests in Diyar Bakr and the Jazira. The area of Diyar Bakr seems to have held considerable appeal to Artuq and his sons and Mardin, in particular, became the principal base for İl-Ghazi, the place to which he always returned, no matter how far afield he campaigned. Suqman, the brother of İl-Ghazi, had already in 490/1096–7 specified the future Artuqid connection with the area. Declaring his intention to march first on Diyar Bakr and take it from the rebels who had seized it, he announced: ‘Once strengthened in that country, I will leave my family there.’81 Mardin was the key to the continuance of Artuqid power after his death. If he had chosen Aleppo instead, his family name would probably have sunk without trace.
İl-Ghazi at Aleppo
İl-Ghazi showed an unfortunate lack of judgement in his two major attempts to secure territory outside Diyar Bakr. His first blunder was his involvement in the affairs of the city of Aleppo. After the Crusaders had gained possession of Tripoli in 502/1108–9, a rough equilibrium had been established in northern Syria. This uneasy balance was liable to be disturbed at any moment if Aleppo acquired a new ruler, Muslim or Frank. This city therefore became the focal point for the ultimate hegemony in northern Syria. At first, İl-Ghazi was only one of many chiefs interested in possessing Aleppo but by a series of complicated events, described in detail in Ibn al-‘Adim,82 he became master of the city in 511/1117–18. According to Ibn al-‘Adim, the townspeople sent for his help only very reluctantly, as a desperate measure.83 Aleppo was a vital strategic point but, as indicated above, it was dangerous to own, especially as the Franks, now masters of Antioch and Edessa, became increasingly aggressive; and its economy was in a lamentable state. Although the other cities owned by İl-Ghazi – Mardin and Mayyafariqin – had been subjected to constant changes of government and their surrounding countryside had been ravaged,84 the plight of Aleppo seems to have been especially pitiful. It had fallen prey to the depredations of the Turcomans some thirty or forty years earlier and had been continually harassed thereafter.85 According to Ibn al-‘Adim, İl-Ghazi was not the Aleppans’ first choice of protector, though they desperately needed someone to guarantee the security of the city.86 Nor was his first attempt at gaining possession of the city successful.87 He departed, leaving his son Temürtash behind, according to some sources as a hostage.88 On his second entry into Aleppo, however, İl-Ghazi gained access to the citadel89 and managed to make himself acceptable as the new ruler of the city.
Reference has already been made to the numerous vicissitudes experienced by the once prosperous city of Aleppo in the previous two decades. A succession of rulers – Tutush, Ridwan, Alp Arslan al-Akhras, Sultan-Shah (the two latter controlled by the eunuch Lu’lu’) had taken the city ever further from centralised control by the Seljuq government and by gross misrule had brought it to a lamentable state. Thus the Aleppo which greeted İl-Ghazi and his Turcomans was not destined to exert a permanent appeal to them. Above all, İl-Ghazi found the treasury empty.90 There was nothing with which to satisfy his Turcoman supporters who had come with him from Mardin. He stayed long enough to put the affairs of the city in order, placed his son Temürtash in charge as his deputy there and hastened back to Mardin.91 In the period between his taking of Aleppo and his death in 516/1122, İl-Ghazi seems to have visited the city regularly but never to have held it in particular esteem.92 His choice of Mardin rather than Aleppo as the centre of his power was astute. It would have been understandable had he opted for Aleppo, since it was a large and prestigious city, far more significant than Mardin on all counts. But it was much nearer the Franks’ sphere of operations, and the Isma‘ilis were very strong there. These factors would quickly have made his tenure of the city precarious and would have required a greater commitment on his part. As a result his descendants would probably not have entrenched themselves so firmly in their chosen area. İl-Ghazi, after the revolt of his son Sulayman, whom he had left as his deputy in Aleppo during the Tiflis campaign, seems to have made in 515/1121–2 a final bid for strong rule in Aleppo. He allied himself with Ridwan’s family by marrying his daughter and removed his own son from the role of deputy there, appointing his nephew Sulayman b. ‘Abd al-Jabbar in his stead. He tried to give himself and the city a respite by concluding a truce with the Franks for a whole year. But it was too late for the Artuqids to keep a firm foothold in Aleppo. Temürtash, who was to suceed his father at Aleppo, lacked the grandiose territorial ambitions of his father and was indifferent to the fate of the city after İl-Ghazi’s death. This indifference culminated in his probably deliberate move of letting the city slip from his hands. This was in fact a logical extension of the policy of İl-Ghazi, who considered the city unsuitable to serve as his base. The account which relates how on the way to Tiflis İl-Ghazi offered Aleppo to Dubays, his son-in-law, on condition that he helped him on their return in a plan which İl-Ghazi had to take Antioch, is an indication of the little value which İl-Ghazi placed on his possession of the city.93 Becoming involved in the affairs of Aleppo was exhausting and unprofitable. Answering the appeals for help from the people of Tiflis,94 however, was an egregious error. Sultan Tughril, who ruled in Arran,95 and who was therefore the nearest person to whom the people of Tiflis might turn in trouble, had been unsuccessful in curbing the incursions of King David the Restorer into the area. İl-Ghazi, whose reputation was at its height at the time of the request for assistance from Tiflis, must have been flattered by this appeal. Besides, Georgia was a frontier area, well suited for someone who wanted – as İl-Ghazi had consistently done – to rule independently of the central power. He had the requisite military strength, but an analysis on the exhausting schedule of activities which preceded his departure for Georgia reveals that he was foolhardy to undertake such a long journey into unfamiliar terrain. He had campaigned early in his career into parts of Armenia,96 but it is very unlikely that he had penetrated Georgia itself. The resounding defeat which David and his son Dimitri inflicted on İl-Ghazi and his army (the battle is analysed in detail below) was a bitter humiliation from which İl-Ghazi’s pride did not recover. Most of his men were killed or taken prisoner and he escaped with Dubays and a small band of followers to Mardin.97 Ibn al-Azraq’s account of the Tiflis campaign is the most detailed one by a Muslim author. Ibn al-Qalanisi attempts to soften this defeat by the assertion that the Muslim troops were victorius initially but were then routed by the Georgians.98 Other writers have based their accounts on Ibn al-Azraq.99 In fact, the description of the battle between David and İl-Ghazi is one of the few sections of the Ta’rikh Mayyafariqin wa-Amid where greater credence may be placed on Ibn al-Azraq than on other more reliable historians of the time. It was typical of İl-Ghazi’s uncoordinated, almost frenetic, military activity in the last years of his life that he should have allowed himself to be tempted to undertake the journey to Tiflis. Instead of acquiring the abundant booty and other material gain which no doubt to a great extent motivated the campaign, İl-Ghazi sustained considerable losses of men and possessions.
Whether İl-Ghazi seriously contemplated a government of his own in Tiflis is difficult to say. The Tiflis episode may well have been regarded as a mere military operation, with the lure of booty for his men and the chance of another glorious victory for İl-Ghazi, whose swollen pride is mentioned by the hostitle Christian sources.100 This same sentiment may well have inspired İl-Ghazi briefly with a vision of his rule over a principality extending from Aleppo to Tiflis. If so, the dream was soon shattered.
İl-Ghazi’s Military Ability
His Relationship with the Turcomans İl-Ghazi depended for his military strength on his bands of Turcomans who, according to the sources, were based in the area around Mardin.101 İl-Ghazi would embark on a campaign in the spring and would return with his Turcomans in the autumn to Mardin. The Turcomans were known to be fierce fighters and presented a spectacle which excited and fascinated the onlooker. Ibn al-Athir describes them thus: Each of them would come with a bag containing flour and mutton.102 Ibn al-Qalanisi likens them to birds and beasts of prey: He (Tughtegin) found the Turkmens already assembled thither from every quarter and every direction in vast numbers and manifest strength, as lions seeking their prey and gerfalcons hovering over their victims.103 While they were renowned for their undoubted fighting powers, the Turcomans were also known to be unruly and wayward. They were motivated only by lust for plunder.104 Any leader who depended on Turcoman troops therefore had to have the funds to pay them promptly; at the very least he had to be assured of ample booty in the campaign undertaken. İl-Ghazi’s relationship with his Turcomans moulded his career, to his advantage and detriment alike. The chronicles agree that he possessed an unusual power over them and that he inspired loyalty and devotion from them. Michael the Syrian says that the Turcomans ‘were very docile to İlGhazi’.105 Already in 499/1105–6 when İl-Ghazi was shihna of Baghdad, Ibn al-Athir describes him as strengthened by the large number of Turcomans who had joined his service.106 In Ramadan of that year İl-Ghazi, accompanied by 10,000 horsemen, went with Malik Ridwan of Aleppo on his campaign to take Nasibin. Through the machinations of Chökermish, Ridwan turned against İl-Ghazi and placed him in chains. When the news of the capture of İl-Ghazi reached his Turcomans they were so enraged at the treatment meted out to their leader that they attacked Ridwan’s men, plundering and pillaging livestock and other possessions.107 The behaviour of the Turcoman troops after a victory in battle could be disciplined and restrained under İl-Ghazi’s command. There was not always a wild rush for booty. After the victory over Roger of Antioch at Balat, for example, the Turcoman chiefs came bearing their spoils to İl-Ghazi, who had taken over Roger’s tent. He allowed the chiefs to retain what booty they had taken, reserving for himself only a few items, to present as gifts to other rulers.108 If such calculated generosity was typical of his dealings with his Turcomans, their loyalty to him would not be surprising. On the other hand, İl-Ghazi’s operations were also seriously curtailed by his use of Turcoman troops. Since the Turcomans could be persuaded to participate in a campaign only if there was the prospect of booty, İl-Ghazi was unable to consolidate his gains in a given area. Once a battle was finished, the Turcomans were unwilling to linger. They wished to return to Mardin straight after the battle with their spoils. According to Ibn al-Athir, İl-Ghazi never embarked on long campaigns against the Franks. Every hour mattered, since the Turcomans were anxious to return as quickly as possible. In fact, if the campaign became prolonged, they would disperse as he had no money to give them.109 It is clear from such comments, and from the evidence implicit in the sources, that even on campaign the aims of İl-Ghazi and his Turcomans were not always very compatible. But in times of peace the Turcomans were apt to be a much greater obstacle. They would never be able to share in the ambition of İl-Ghazi (or any other like-minded amir) to establish a permanent principality somewhere. Settling in a given area would mean that the interests of its inhabitants would, economically speaking, coincide broadly with those of their ruler. They could not be plundered like the enemy. In time the Turcomans would therefore have to travel increasingly further afield in search of booty, for after a comparatively short period they would systematically have laid waste the border areas. Alternatively, they would have had to settle on the land, a process which might take generations to be accomplished. The Turcoman response to the empty treasury at Aleppo exercised a great influence on İl-Ghazi’s attitude to that city and made him leave for Mardin, earlier perhaps than he had intended.110 Furthermore, the blame for İl-Ghazi’s failure to take Antioch after his victory at Balat may be attributed at least in part to the Turcomans. They refused to stay on after the battle and thus rendered İl-Ghazi incapable of moving on to Antioch, which as Ibn al-Qalanisi stresses lay defenceless after the death of Roger at Balat.111 Their short-term tactics thus foiled any possible long-term strategy which İl-Ghazi may have planned. Despite İl-Ghazi’s much-vaunted power over his Turcoman bands and their crucial role in his one major victory at Balat, there are signs that a rift was developing between him and them. As early as the period before Balat, when Tughtegin and İl-Ghazi were planning joint operations against the Franks, they discussed the unreliability of the Turcomans and they both went personally to Mardin to attempt to persuade the Turcomans to take part in the forthcoming campaign: It was agreed between them that the amir Najm al-Din Il-Ghazi b. Ortuq, for the better executing of his undertaking, should proceed to Mardin in order to assemble the Turkmens from his provinces, and urge them to destroy the factions of infidelity and error. It was considered desirable that the amir Zahir al-Din [Tughtegin] should go with him to reinforce their purpose and facilitate the realization of their hopes.112 A widening gulf between the Seljuqs of Iran and the Turcomans had long been perceptible and had led to friction and misunderstanding. Such a gulf was inevitable as the Seljuqs assumed the trappings of Islamic rulers in the Persian style, thus divorcing themselves from the Turcomans on whose military support they had depended and to whose ranks they had initially belonged. The same development may well have occurred gradually with İlGhazi and his Turcomans, as their interests diverged and İl-Ghazi developed a taste for wider political power.
Such a development is impossible to prove. But certain evidence which dates from İl-Ghazi’s involvement in Aleppan affairs deserves discussion at greater length in this context. As has already been mentioned, the Turcomans found Aleppo wanting in funds and urged İl-Ghazi to return home to the area around Mardin. Aleppo was not an attractive territory to the Turcomans. It had been much more the arena of war than Diyar Bakr and was still the focus for great military activity. İl-Ghazi, on the other hand, returned to Aleppo the following year and, as Ibn al-Qalanisi states, spent some time with Tughtegin persuading the Turcomans to come with them.113 İl-Ghazi’s political aspirations in Aleppo, where he had been invited to come after many factions had been struggling for supremacy there, were clearly in conflict with the Turcomans’ desire to remain in Diyar Bakr. It is at this point that, according to Sivan’s interpretation, İl-Ghazi made the first conscious use of jihad propaganda to impose his authority over his Turcoman forces. The particular occasion – before Balat in 513/1119–20114 – made such an appeal well-timed. İl-Ghazi is accorded an important role in Sivan’s analysis of the gradual reawakening of the concept of jihad amongst the Muslims in the early twelfth century.115 After explaining the factors which contributed to the absence of an awareness of jihad amongst the Muslims of northern Syria at the time of Frankish expansion and consolidation in the area in the period 491–512/1097–1118, Sivan analyses the beginnings of a change of attitude in the face of increasing aggression on the part of the Franks who were threatening to take Aleppo around 1118.116 Sivan asserts that in 1118, when İl-Ghazi came back to Aleppo for the second time after the city had been under siege from the Franks, and when he finally assumed control there, he seems to have been in no way imbued with the zeal of a ‘warrior of the faith’. He had been an ally of the Franks in the past and had been enticed into Aleppo only by the promise of considerable financial rewards. The following year, with increasing pressure on Aleppo from Roger of Antioch, however, İl-Ghazi found himself in a city in a ferment with the idea of jihad. He now realised full well the use he could make of this ‘galvanising’ idea to boost the morale of his troops in this dangerous enterprise.117 The appearance of the qadi Ibn Khashshab before the assembled Turcoman troops is seen by Sivan as the first instance of the use of an official jihad propaganda in the Muslims’ fight against the Crusaders. İl-Ghazi made his amirs swear an oath ‘to do their duty courageously, to fight heroically, and not to retreat, even if they had to shed all their blood for the holy war’.118 After encountering initial indifference and even contempt,119 Ibn al-Khashshab brought ‘tears of ecstasy’ to the eyes of the Turcomans, who then went into battle and won a glorious victory over the Franks. Sivan’s evidence is certainly persuasive. It may well be that İl-Ghazi had perceived the benefits of jihad propaganda and used it to strengthen his flagging hold over his troops.120 The events of the following year are also significant. In that year, 514/1120–1, İl-Ghazi crossed the Euphrates with his men on a new campaign, having made the unusual prohibition that they were not to pillage during the campaign. When some of his men disobeyed, he punished them by shaving and hamstringing them. At this point, his troops disbanded and deserted him, leaving him with only a small handful of men. It was very fortunate for him that Tughtegin came in time to save him from Frankish attacks.121 The sequel showed, then, that İl-Ghazi was ill-advised to decree that his soldiers were not to pillage during the campaign. His motives for taking this unusual step are not clear. Perhaps he thought it would be wasteful to pillage territory that would soon be his. Or perhaps he was determined that his men would concentrate their energies only on fighting. Presumably he was confident that he could control them with the promise of battle plunder, in place of the casual pillaging of fields and livestock which was their normal practice. But what most probably motivated his rash decree was a misplaced confidence in his own abilities as a general, a confidence greatly strengthened by his recent victory at Balat. During the years 513/1119–20 and 514/1120–1, therefore, İl-Ghazi’s control over the Turcomans seems to have been slackening. His troops were subsequently decimated in the Tiflis campaign and it may well be that if the casualty figures were as high as the chroniclers suggest122 İl-Ghazi’s forces were irremediably depleted. He engaged in no major offensive after Tiflis in 513/1121–22, nor is there evidence that he was planning one, and he died a year later.
İl-Ghazi – A Military Strategist?
It would be false to attribute to İl-Ghazi a consistent, well-planned military strategy, even in the period of his success from 502–16/1108–22. He took as allies known enemies of the Seljuq sultan Muhammad, such as Dubays. He also allied himself with rulers who were near at hand, such as Tughtegin and Roger of Antioch. But he played the same game of making and breaking alliances as the other local chieftains in the struggle for power in Northern Syria. İl-Ghazi’s military abilities may be highlighted by a detailed analysis of his two major battles, Balat in 513/1119 and Tiflis in 515/1121. These are well-documented. They also represent victory and defeat and thus present a certain balance. In 513/1119 Aleppo stood in great danger of being taken by the Franks after Roger of Antioch had harassed the area around the city and captured Buza‘a. The people of Aleppo summoned İl-Ghazi who came from Mardin in Safar 513/June 1119.124 Roger of Antioch, ceding to pressure from the lords of Frankish castles in the area around Aleppo – their territories were being ravaged by İl-Ghazi – decided to fight alone. He positioned himself in a valley at Balat. Despite a marked numerical superiority125 İl-Ghazi seems to have been unsure whether to attack or not, since he was awaiting the arrival of Tughtegin with re-inforcements. Once again the pressing demands of his Turcoman troops forced his hand and he attacked. His victory was inevitable, for Roger had placed himself in an extremely vulnerable position and did not expect İl-Ghazi to attack. The Turcomans rushed into the valley from three sides at the same time and the Franks were powerless to resist. Roger was killed and the flower of the Norman cavalry was cut down. Ibn al-Qalanisi writes that the Turcomans swooped down like a flight of falcons wanting to protect their nests126 and even the anonymous Christian writer of the Syriac chronicle is moved to an unusual descriptive detail, saying that the Turcomans showered arrows on the camp like clouds of hail.127 It was a victory calculated to delight the Turcomans. It had not taken long and afforded booty and prisoners. Yet İl-Ghazi had been lucky that Roger had made a fatal blunder in sallying forth too soon and in positioning himself so unwisely. İl-Ghazi was fortunate too that he had allowed himself, against his better judgement, to be swept along by the demands of his troops for an early engagement with the enemy. Moreover, he had enjoyed a considerable advantage in numbers. Lastly, the battle had suited Turcoman military tactics and had not required the talents of a gifted general. It did require strategic ability, however, to plan the next move in the territorial game and İl-Ghazi lacked the military acumen to make that move. The accession of Roger of Antioch had united the Franks in northern Syria. With his death, the Franks were in disarray and Antioch lay defenceless. It is clear that the people of Antioch were afraid that İl-Ghazi was coming to attack. They made what preparations they could,128 but İl-Ghazi did not follow up the great opportunity that presented itself. Instead his troops, following the time-honoured practices of nomadic life, dispersed with their booty and according to Western sources perpetrated a full-scale massacre of Frankish prisoners.129 The Turcomans would not contemplate further battles and thus Antioch slipped from İl-Ghazi’s hands. But it is not even entirely clear that İl-Ghazi himself had intended to exploit this rare opportunity. The sources say that he was unable to fight for three weeks after the battle. According to some writers, including Usama,130 the illness was caused by excessive bouts of drinking in celebration of his victory. Such a report would accord ill with the image of a great strategist, but it tallies with earlier accounts of Muslim historians stressing the drunken habits of İl-Ghazi. At all events, by the time he fought the Franks again, in August, the outcome was indecisive; Baldwin had had time to restore the morale of the Franks and forestall any immediate threat to Antioch.131 İl-Ghazi has incurred much opprobrium from modern historians for his failure to follow up his victory at Balat by an attack on Antioch. As Runciman expresses it: The great Artuqid campaign fizzled out. It had achieved nothing material for the Muslims, except for a few frontier-posts and the easing of Frankish pressure on Aleppo.132 This kind of criticism is inappropriate to an analysis of İl-Ghazi, since it seems to endow him with an overall strategy, a master plan, which extended beyond the immediate campaign with which he was concerned at any time. This was manifestly not the case with him or his contemporaries. They shifted their allegiance to meet the demands of the moment. İl-Ghazi would have needed exceptional gifts of imagination, decisiveness and leadership to have been able to exploit his sudden victory to the full. Zengi and Nur al-Din may well have been endowed with such qualities, but they did not fall to the lot of İl-Ghazi. The irony was that this unexpected triumph of his, achieved by a fortunate concatenation of circumstances, should have been the first major Muslim victory against the Franks, who called it the Ager Sanguinis. With his Turcomans, this rebellious enemy of the sultan had achieved a feat that had been denied to more official campaigns mounted with the blessing of the sultan himself. Some lines of al-‘Azimi express the extent of İl-Ghazi’s prestige after Balat: Say what you want, your wish will be granted. After the Creator, our reliance is on you.133 It is all the more ironic, therefore, to reflect that after Balat İl-Ghazi’s career petered out miserably. İl-Ghazi did not, however, entirely lose sight of a possible attack on Antioch. In 514/1120–1 he made for the city, but it was too late for him to recapture the victorious mood of the previous year. He forbade his troops to pillage and had to withdraw from the neighbourhood of Antioch, and it was at this stage, as mentioned above, that his Turcomans, disgruntled at the lack of plunder and money, left him in the lurch.134 It is conceivable that İl-Ghazi still had his eye on Antioch during the Tiflis campaign in the following year, since he is reported by one source (as noted above) to have sworn an oath with Dubays that he would give him Aleppo if Dubays would bring money and troops to help him attack Antioch.135 When he returned from Tiflis in 515/1121, he was occupied for some time with affairs at Aleppo, where his son, Sulayman, had risen up against him.136 The Franks could, therefore, continue to consolidate their position in northern Syria unhampered by their principal opponent. One source describes İl-Ghazi before the Tiflis campaign as ‘uplifted’.137 Certainly the immediate consequence of his victory at Balat was a complacency expressed in an orgy of festivities and this held him back from a sustained effort against Antioch. Soon the news of Balat was resounding throughout the Near East, and it brought him glory. Robes of honour came from the caliph and verses were penned in his honour. This new-found fame and sense of his own achievement, coupled with the recent arrival of Dubays – who brought great wealth and more troops – and with the promise of future plunder in Georgia, must have all contributed to İl-Ghazi’s decision to answer the appeal from Tiflis. Several accounts of the Tiflis campaign survive.138 Ibn al-Qalanisi is anxious to soften the humiliation of the Muslim defeat. He relates that the Muslims were initially victorious but that the Georgians subsequently routed them, inflicting great losses.139 Ibn al-Athir’s short but factual account mistakenly puts the campaign in 514/1120–1 but the protagonists are the same; Tughril, Dubays and İl-Ghazi. Greater credence than usual may be placed on Ibn al-Azraq’s account. He himself visited Georgia some thirty years after the battle and probably discussed it with participants from the Georgian side.140 His account reveals that in this instance, at least, a desire to produce an accurate statement of the facts outweighed his usual wish to please the Artuqids. His description of a bitter Muslim defeat tallies with Christian sources, such as the Anonymous Syriac Chronicle141 and the Georgian version.142 According to the version of Ibn al-Azraq, copied later by Sibt b. alJawzi,143 İl-Ghazi and his troops, accompanied by Dubays, marched in 515/1121–2 from Mardin and advanced almost as far as Tiflis. Here an interesting parallel may be drawn with Balat. Georgia was unfamiliar terrain and İl-Ghazi and his men camped in a valley below a mountain, tired after their very long march. Sultan Tughril, who was in Arran, had been asked to send troops too and according to Ibn al-Azraq they had not yet arrived. Nor had reinforcements from İl-Ghazi’s ‘vassal’, Toghan Arslan al-Ahdab of Arzan. Just as the Turcomans had done at Balat, the Georgian troops under Dimitri, the son of King David the Restorer, swooped dowm on the Muslim troops from above and decisively defeated them. The mighty defender of Islam, the Star of Religion who only the year before had brought such glory to the Muslim cause, was now lucky to escape with Dubays and a handful of men and return in disgrace to Mardin. His men he could not save. In defeat as in victory, then, İl-Ghazi showed little of the military panache and resourcefulness of Zengi or Saladin. His victory at Balat had restored Muslim morale for a while but it did not mark the beginning of a counter-Crusade, and it was quickly balanced by an equally spectacular defeat, significantly enough at Christian hands. İl-Ghazi lacked the qualities of a general, though he was on the whole a good leader of Turcoman nomads. Sultan Muhammad may have been influenced by his awareness of İl-Ghazi’s rash nature and military limitations, as well as by their mutual animosity, when he systematically refused to appoint İl-Ghazi as overall leader of his military campaigns, naming instead Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi and then Bursuq b. Bursuq. Subsequent events proved that his judgement was sound.
İl-Ghazi’s Political Ability
İl-Ghazi was fortunate in the period from 502–13/1108–20 in that his potential rivals were gradually eliminated. In 507/1113–14 the murder of Mawdud, the energetic governor of Mosul, probably instigated by Tughtegin, who was tired of Mawdud’s interference in Syrian affairs and jealous of his military successes, removed a skilful military commander from Sultan Muhammad, and one who might conceivably have quelled İl-Ghazi. In the immediate are of Mardin, Qilij, to whom the amirs of Diyar Bakr had declared their allegiance in 498/1104–5,144 had been defeated in battle and drowned.145 The career of Suqman al-Qutbi, which, as noted above, had advanced smoothly thanks to a policy of strict adherence to the sultan’s commands, reached its apogee when he took Mayyafariqin, now without an overlord, in 502/1108–9.146 He had already ruled the area around Akhlat and the local princelings thought it prudent to declare suzerainty to him.147 It is significant that Suqman took possession of Mayyafariqin in the same year as İl-Ghazi gained Mardin, already in the hands of his family. It seems likely that both had their eyes on Mayyafariqin and that by seizing it first Suqman was underlining his dominance in Diyar Bakr. Their peaceful coexistence was virtually impossible. Fortunately for İl-Ghazi, Suqman died soon afterwards,148 and thereby vacated the overlordship of Diyar Bakr for his rival. Ibn al-Athir describes the raid which İl-Ghazi led on Suqman’s men as they returned to Akhlat with their master’s coffin.149 This was not merely an attempt to obtain plunder but was a deliberate move to destroy Suqman’s troops and thereby weaken the power of the principality nearest his own. Although the attack on Suqman al-Qutbi’s troops was unsuccessful, Suqman’s son, Ibrahim, never offered a serious threat to İl-Ghazi’s growing power in Diyar Bakr. The struggle for power within the Artuqid family itself, and especially between İl-Ghazi and his brother’s son, Ibrahim b. Suqman, seems to have been resolved with the death of Ibrahim around 502/1108–9.150 For a short time Suqman had ruled Mardin and Hisn Kayfa151 jointly. Ibrahim had wished to do likewise after his father’s death in 498/1104–5, when he inherited Mardin and ruled it from Hisn Kayfa. Thereafter, when İl-Ghazi came to Diyar Bakr, dismissed from his post as shihna and without obvious territorial possessions, there must have been a struggle for control of Mardin between him and Ibrahim, culminating in Ibrahim’s death. Ibrahim’s brother, Da’ud, then took Hisn Kayfa,152 whilst İl-Ghazi ruled at Mardin.
Thus these two cities, the cornerstones of Artuqid power, began to be ruled separately, a pattern which was to continue for a long time. After the death of Ibrahim, İl-Ghazi wielded supremacy over the Artuqid family.153 The amir whose power most nearly approached his own was his nephew Da’ud, whose subordinate status may be inferred from the fact that he sent troops to İl-Ghazi when he was called upon to do so.154 Da’ud seems to have maintained good relations with İl-Ghazi and not to have interfered with his uncle’s territorial ambitions. Such deference and restraint were not, however, evident once İl-Ghazi had died, for the two cousins, Da’ud and Temürtash, were destined to clash on several occasions in their power struggle in Diyar Bakr. Another of İl-Ghazi’s nephews, Balak, is mentioned as his constant companion in arms in the last year of İl-Ghazi’s life and seems to have possessed greater force of personality and energy than either the wayward, frivolous Sulayman or the more docile Temürtash.
Certainly, from the viewpoint of the continuation of jihad against the Franks, Balak was İl-Ghazi’s heir, not his sons. Balak’s qualities as a warrior were recognised by more than one medieval historian. He died, however, soon after his uncle in 518/1124. Between 502/1108–9 and 511/1117–18, İl-Ghazi managed to entrench himself at Mardin and extend his sphere of influence over the amirs in the surrounding area. After the death of Sultan Muhammad in 511/1118 and the succession quarrels that ensued, the Jazira was at last freed from the interference of the Seljuq sultans. İl-Ghazi now wielded genuine power in his own right. Even a hostile source such as the Anonymous Syriac Chronicle cannot deny the extent of İl-Ghazi’s prestige and power just before his death: Ghazi had become powerful and was uplifted because he ruled his own land, that of his brother Suqman’s sons, and that of his uncle’s son Daud,155 as far as Assyria, Armenia, and the land of the Iberians.
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