Download PDF | Helen J. Nicholson, David Nicolle - God's Warriors_ Crusaders, Saracens and the Battle for Jerusalem-Osprey Publishing (2005).
225 Pages
PART ONE HATTIN 1187 , INTRODUCTION
The Crusades seemed to erupt into the late 11th-century Middle East without warning. Yet in reality they were the culmination of a century during which Catholic Western Europe had been changing at an increasing rate, not least in its attitudes towards war and religion. The 11th century had also seen considerable economic and population growth and, although there were ups and downs, it would be wrong to see the First Crusade as a product of poverty, despair and religious hysteria. Hysteria there may have been, but this did not create the Crusades. In early Christian times warfare had been seen as, at best, an unfortunate necessity.
Now, however, the concept of Holy War spread, along with such phenomena as the Holy Banner given by the Church to a military leader, and of the Militia Christi or Warrior of Christ, and the growing cult of warrior saints. It was also increasingly accepted that men who fell fighting for the Church now died as martyrs. Whether these ideas owed anything to the Islamic concept of 'lesser' jihad - widely mistranslated as Holy War - is hotly debated, as is the influence of early Byzantine concepts of religiously justified warfare upon the idea of military jihad in the first place. What is clear is that, in Christian Western Europe, co-existence with Islam was increasingly denied. Christ's supposed enemies must be defeated and destroyed - 'truth' was to be proved by the sword.
During the 12th century, four so-called Crusader States were established in the Middle East, in and around the Holy Land of Christianity but also in the heartland of Islamic civilization. Furthermore 'Frankish' or Western European Latin or Catholic Christians now occupied Jerusalem, a city that was sacred to all three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In fact, the First Crusaders had expelled the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the Holy City with great slaughter. The First Crusade had indeed been a resounding, and even today astonishing, success from the Westerners' point of view. By the 1180s the realms carved out following the First Crusade were no longer real 'Crusader States', because the descendants of the First Crusaders were no longer striving to expand. Instead they were struggling to survive and to protect the Holy Places of Christianity from Muslim reconquest. Leadership was also passing to men who were working towards co-existence with the surrounding Muslim peoples.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem remained the most important of the Latin States in Syria and Palestine. Of the others the County of Edessa (Urfa) had already been reconquered by the Muslims, the Principality of Antioch had fallen under Byzantine influence and even the small County of Tripoli now resisted Jerusalem's suzerainty. In the early 1180s the Kingdom of Jerusalem had 400,000 to 500,0000 inhabitants, no more than 120,000 of whom were Latins (Christians of Western European origin). The rest consisted of indigenous 'Oriental' Christians, Muslims, Jews and Samaritans. The balance of power between feudal lords and ruler in late 12th-century Jerusalem is not entirely clear, but in general it seems that the king and lesser aristocracy were losing out while the leading barons grabbed ever more control. Meanwhile the Military Orders (Templars and Hospitallers) were growing in power, being given more castles which only they seemed able to garrison effectively. The defence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was theoretically the responsibility of all Western European Christians, yet in reality the Latin States had to rely on themselves after the fiasco of the Second Crusade in 1148. What its leaders now wanted were professional soldiers and financial support - not hordes of belligerent Crusaders who stirred up trouble then went home.
Meanwhile the catastrophic Byzantine defeat by the Saljuq Turks at Myriokephalon in 1176, and a massacre of Latins in Constantinople eight years later, meant that help from the Byzantine Empire was an illusion. The Kingdom of Jerusalem also faced problems within its borders. Few Armenians settled in Palestine and the warlike Maronite Christians of the mountains lived away from the main centres of power while the majority of Syriac-Jacobite Christians remained deeply suspicious of the Latins. The Latins' adoption of some eastern habits of dress and cleanliness was superficial and the cultural gulf between Latins and locals remained unbridged until the end. Relations between the Latin States and neighbouring Muslim states remained rooted in war, lasting peace probably being impossible as each side clung to ideologies that could not accept the other's existence. Attitudes based on the easy victories of the First Crusade meant that the military elite of the Latin States was still hugely overconfident.
This did wonders for their morale but would soon lead to military disaster. Yet elements of doubt were already creeping in, and the second half of the 12th century saw the building of many defensive castles. The eastern frontier of the Kingdom of Jerusalem actually consisted of distinct sectors. In the north (the Litani valley) were some impressive castles. The central sector from Mount Hermon (Jabal al Shaykh) along the Golan Heights to the Yarmuk valley was supposedly shared with the rulers of Damascus. The Muslims thought this zone should have extended as far as the Balqa hills around Amman but in fact the Latins dominated a fertile plateau between the River Yarmuk and the Ajlun hills.
Southward again lay the Latin territory of Oultrejordain, lying between the River Jordan, Dead Sea and Wadi Araba in the west, and the strategic road from Amman to Aqabah. From Oultrejordain the Latins had levied tolls on Muslim traffic between Syria and Egypt, even on Muslim Haj or pilgrim caravans travelling south to Mecca and Medina. Then, in the early 1170s, Saladin's reconquest of territory south of Montreal (Shawbak) had a profound psychological impact, 'liberating the Haj Road' so that pilgrims, at least from Egypt, no longer paid humiliating tolls to the infidel.
The most striking development on the Muslim side of the frontier had been Saladin's unification of Islamic territory neighbouring the Latin States. Only in the far north did the Latins now have any neighbour other than Saladin, and that was the fellow Christian state of Cilician Armenia. Yet there had been other equally important changes in the Muslim Middle East. The concept of jihad as war against the infidel, long dormant, was revived by 12th-century Sunni Muslim scholars. ]ihads became organized campaigns to recover the Holy Land, just as Crusades had been to conquer it. They were not, however, intended to convert the enemy by the sword since Islam has always frowned on forcible conversion. Nevertheless the 12th century did see a hardening of religious attitudes, greater intolerance and increased pressure on indigenous Oriental Christians. This Sunni Muslim revival was also directed against the Shi'a Muslim minority.
The loss ofJerusalem to the Crusaders had actually increased the city's importance to Muslims, being followed by an outpouring of fada'il or 'praise literature' about the Holy City. The responsibilities of rulers were also described in a number of books known as 'Mirrors for Princes', and one of the most interesting was written by an anonymous Syrian living near the Crusader frontier a year or so after Saladin's death. It went into great detail about jihad and although the best jihad was still against evil in one's own heart, fighting the unbeliever came a good second. In fact the inhabitants of Syria's cities, particularly Aleppo in the north, had long traditions of scientific siege warfare and the 12th century saw the building of many new fortifications in Muslim Syria, just as it did in the Latin States. Meanwhile the Arab bedouin of the desert fringes remained strong but, having lost political dominance to the invading Turks, now generally preferred to be left alone. The people of Egypt, on the other hand, largely left warfare to their rulers, yet even here fundamental changes were taking place. The Arabization of the country really started under the Fatimids who had ruled Egypt from AD 969, and the Arab bedouin of Egypt continued to prosper after Saladin seized control in 1171.
Islam's relations with Europe, rather than just the Latin States in Syria, were also changing. By the 12th century Islamic naval power in the Mediterranean was in steep decline while Italian merchant republics such as Pisa, Genoa and Venice controlled the sea lanes. Saladin would, in fact, be the last ruler of medieval Egypt to attempt a serious revival of Egyptian naval power - an attempt that ultimately failed. In the Red Sea, however, Egypt remained dominant, defeating Latin Crusader raids and piracy with relative ease. Saladin's unification of so much of the Middle East took decades of war and diplomacy. From his power base in Egypt he and his family, the Ayyubids, won control of Yemen (1173), Damascus (1174) and Aleppo (1183).
By 1186 Saladin also imposed his suzerainty over the Jazira (eastern Syria, south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq), a rich region which provided a reservoir of military manpower. Overconfident the leaders of the Latin States may have been, but they watched the growth of Saladin's power with alarm and sent embassies to various parts of Europe seeking support. King Henry 11 of England had long been sympathetic, though his help took the form of cash rather than troops. A special tax in aid of Jerusalem had already been levied and in 1172, as part of his penance for the murder of Becket, Henry promised to support 200 knights for one year in Jerusalem. Five years later he sent a chest of money to Jerusalem and in 1185 promised yet more. In fact these donations may have totalled 30,000 marks, a huge sum for those days and one that would play a crucial role in the forthcoming Hattin campaign. Within the Latin States a census was conducted to discover their real military potential, while taxes were raised and castles strengthened.
The strategic importance of Oultrejordain also increased now that Saladin controlled both Egypt and Syria. Here Reynald of Chatillon, who ran an effective intelligence service among the bedouin, planned to smash the Muslim ring surrounding the Latin States and perhaps even break into the Indian Ocean with its fabulous wealth of trade. In 1181-82 Reynald raided the Hijaz and the support he got from some local tribes clearly worried Saladin. Reynald's spectacular but disastrous naval expedition into the Red Sea the following year sent shock waves throughout the Islamic world and dented Saladin's status as Protector of the Muslim Holy Places in Mecca and Madina. The Sultan struck back immediately, and then again in 1183. In response the Christians fielded the largest army so far raised by the Latin States, but adopted a defensive stance by refusing to meet Saladin in a set-piece battle. This strategy was effective and the Muslims withdrew. Yet the invasion caused great damage and many people blamed Count Raymond, on whose advice the passive strategy had been adopted, for missing a chance to destroy Saladin.
Iron mines were almost as important as water sources and the ]abal Ajlun to the north of Oultrejordain had such mines. These hills had come under Saladin's control by 1184 and the Sultan sent Izz al Din Usamah, previously governor of the iron-rich mountains near Beirut, to build a new castle overlooking Ajlun itself. But although the Muslims were nibbling away at the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Saladin faced problems away in the east. A severe drought also struck Palestine in 1185 and so it was with some relief that both sides agreed to a four-year truce. This did not mean peace on all fronts, of course. In 1186 the Principality of Antioch raided its Christian neighbours in Cilicia while in south-eastern Anatolia a bloody struggle broke out between Kurds and Turcomans (nomadic Turks), both of whom were vital sources of military manpower for Saladin's armies. The Byzantine Empire was also wracked by dissention. Two leading noblemen, Isaac and Alexius Angelus, had sought refuge at Saladin's court but in 1185 Isaac Angelus returned to Constantinople and overthrew the Emperor Andronicus to become Byzantine Emperor himself.
The following year his brother Alexius was imprisoned in the Latin States as he made his way home. There were similar tensions on Saladin's eastern border. In 1180 the new caliph Al Nasir had succeeded to the throne of Baghdad and under his energetic rule the once mighty Abbasid dynasty saw a final burst of glory. Yet Al Nasir's ambitions clashed with Saladin's plans in northern Iraq and relations between the two Muslim leaders were cool. In Jerusalem the leper king, Baldwin IV, died in 1185 and in August 1186 his child successor Baldwin V also died, throwing the Kingdom into a major crisis. The regent, Count Raymond of Tripoli, was ousted in a coup by a belligerent 'Court Party' who wanted a tougher policy towards the Muslims. They had Sibylla, sister of Baldwin IV, crowned queen and thus her husband, a French nobleman named Guy de Lusignan, became king. For months many Jerusalem nobles refused to recognize the coup - though in the end only Count Raymond continued to deny homage to King Guy.
Instead Raymond retired to Tiberius, capital of the seigneurie of Galilee, which he held through his wife Eschiva of Galilee. Naturally Saladin watched this crisis with interest. He released some of Raymond's knights who had been prisoners of war and sent his own troops to support Raymond in Tiberius and for a while it looked as if King Guy would attack Raymond. Beyond Jerusalem Prince Raymond III of Antioch also refused to recognize Guy, though he would do so after war broke out with Saladin.
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