Download PDF | Ibn al-Furat, Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders, vol 2: Translation, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith, Malcolm Cameron Lyons, Ursula Lyons (1971)
330 Pages
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
The extracts here edited and translated cover the years from 1244 to 1277. Although little information is given about events in the 1250's, the narrative is very full for the period after 1260, years marked by the great sultanate of Baibars, who began the series of campaigns that led to the destruction of the Latin states in Palestine and Syria. In 1244 the Arab lands in the Near East were ruled by quarrelsome descendants of Saladin, the Ayyübids, among whom the important centres of power had changed hands with bewildering speed in the half-century that had followed Saladin's death. There were, however, two constant factors. Control of Egypt was essential to a ruler who wanted to extend his power in Syria; and the Ayyübids were not usually aggressive itowards the Christian settlements on the Syrian coastline. Their own rivalries absorbed their energies, while they recognised the economic advantages that accrued from
| keeping open the commercial routes through Christian territory to the sea. The early
` 1240's witnessed one of those confused situations that periodically followed the death of a dominating member of the house. Al-Kàmil had died on 9 March 1238 and had been succeeded by the reckless and extravagant al-‘Adil II, against whom a consensus of his relatives’ opinion was soon turning. Al-Muzaffar Taqi al-Din of Hama and al-Nàsir Dà'üd of Kerak conspired his deposition with al-‘Adil’s own Mamlukes and on 4 May 1240 the sultan was arrested by his troops, to be replaced on 18th by his elder brother, al-Salih Ayyüb. In the previous September, however, Ayyüb's son had been driven from Damascus by a great-uncle, al-Sälih Isma‘il, who now rightly suspected that steps would be taken against him. Ismā'īl turned to the Franks, the only power in Syria who, he believed, could profitably support him.
The Christians were deeply divided over the benefits of an alliance with Damascus. For the decade between 1229 and 1239 their relations with Egypt had been governed by a treaty made by the Emperor Frederick II and al-Kàmil, and, although a Crusade was now mustered in Syria, there was a strong body of opinion that favoured a new treaty with Egypt, especially as Ayyüb, like Ismā'īl, was prepared to grant the Franks territory in return for their support. In 1241 agreement was reached with Ayyüb, but by 1244 political events within the Kingdom of Jerusalem had resulted in the predominance of a party which favoured Damascus, led by the Templars and including, it seems, the majority of the baronage. The treaty with Egypt was forgotten, but the new alliance with Isma‘il was to be the last between Jerusalem and a Muslim power in which the Latins were to be treated as equals. It ended in catastrophe at Gaza, but that should not lead us to underestimate its importance. The years 1240-44 were not only those in which the Latin Kingdom reached its greatest territorial expansion of the thirteenth century. The disputes among the Franks over the alliances with Egypt and Damascus also showed their state integrated into the politics of the Near East, treated by the Muslims like its neighbours. This may seem to be self-evident; but it is not. Latin Syria is often treated by historians as a European colony — which it was — divorced from the realities of Arab politics — which it demonstrably was not. The colonial features of the Latin states are seen to be most pronounced in the later years, when their survival was dependent on the supplies fed into them by Western Europe and when many of their leaders were men sent into Syria by the papacy or the French crown. But it can be argued that, dependent as they were on Europe for men and material, at no time in their history are their indigenous features to be seen so clearly as in the years after 1243. And if they were finally to be absorbed by the Mamluke empire in 1291, their fate was only the same as that which had already befallen Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo. In this respect the history of Jerusalem and Antioch-Tripoli is closely linked to that of the other small separatist states that had flourished under the Ayyübids.
Unification of the small states in the Near East has often been achieved only when they have been faced by strong external pressures: in this period the Crusades and the Mongol invasions. These occasional and arbitrary incursions can be seen as elements of chance which give the politics of the time a particular fascination. The narrative of Ibn al-Furàt here opens in the aftermath of the Crusade of 1239-41, perhaps the most inefficiently organised expedition of all, but at the same time the most successful since the First in terms of territorial gain. There were to be two more Crusades, both undertaken by St. Louis IX, King of France. The second, against Tunis, had little effect on the situation in the East, although fear of its success caused the Egyptians briefly to halt their conquests and two fragments from it, the expeditions of the Aragonese and the English, arrived to bolster and ultimately to disappoint Christian resistance. But the first of Louis' Crusades was of great importance, not only to the Christians — this will be considered below — but also to political developments in the Muslim states. It was militarily a failure, ending in the defeat and surrender of an army inextricably caught in the Nile Delta. But the presence in Egypt even of a defeated force, perhaps too the magnitude of the Egyptian victory, contributed to an internal crisis which culminated in the murder of the Sultan Tūrānshāh and the emergence of a new line of rulers drawn from the ranks of the Mamlukes, the only group capable of taking over the government.
The Mamlukes were far from firmly established during the next decade. Ayyübid legitimists continued to oppose them in Syria, and there were bitter quarrels among the Mamlukes themselves: between 1254 and 1257 many of the Bahriya were living as refugees with the Ayyubid princelings of Syria. To give their rule stability they needed | some external danger which would unite the Arabs behind them; and this was provided | by the arrival of the Mongols. In 1206 one of the chieftains of a group of nomadic tribes north of China had taken the name of Genghis Khan, Universal Emperor, and had embarked on the conquest of the world. By 1241 his successors were invading | Poland and Hungary; and in 1243 the Mongols of Persia destroyed the army of Seljuqid | Rüm, Anatolia becoming their protectorate. So far, Syria and Palestine had escaped the impact of invasion, although the signs of the Tartar advance were apparent to all. Driven west before the Mongols like squalls before a storm, bands of Khwarizmians, the survivors of a great Empire south of the Aral Sea, appeared in the region in the
1220's and were to disturb it until they were destroyed as an independent force before :
Homs in 1246. The storm itself broke in 1258, when the Abbäsid Caliphate in Baghdad , Was destroyed; and in the following years the Mongols conquered upper Mesopotamia | and entered northern Syria, taking Aleppo and Damascus. Their advance was only halted at ‘Ain Jalut in Palestine by the Egyptian armies in September 1260.
The victorious forces were led by the Mamluke sultan Qutuz, who had come to power in the previous November when the council of state in Cairo, convinced by the destruction of the caliphate that strong government was needed, had deposed the young ‘Ali, son of the first Mamluke ruler Aybeg. Qutuz fulfilled the council's expectations and after his victory the Egyptians were able to extend their rule over much of Syria, restoring many of the Ayyübid princes to their petty states as Egyptian governors. But on his return to Egypt Qutuz was murdered by the foremost of his | generals, Baibars, who had entered the service of al-Sälih Ayyüb in 1247.
Baibars' reign from 1260-1277 has deservedly attracted more attention than that of any other Mamluke sultan. From the point of view of his relations with the Franks, it is perhaps best to compare him with that other great conqueror, Saladin. Both greatly reduced the territory held by the Christians in Palestine and Syria, but to neither was accorded the privilege of driving them completely from the Levantine mainland. Both were usurpers whose power rested on control of Egypt. There were, however, profound differences between them, not only in their backgrounds, but also in the instruments at their disposal and the methods they used. Unlike Saladin, Baibars throughout his reign had to watch a second front in the north-east, behind which lay the Mongols, and his achievements must not be belittled; but in some ways the Tartar pressure was of advantage to him. The Mongol invasion had destroyed some of the Ayyübid principalities; others owed their existence to the favour of the Mamlukes once the Mongols had withdrawn. Whereas Saladin had to hold his empire together by the force | of his personality and always had to reckon with the favour or disapproval of the | caliph in Baghdad, Baibars ruled territories which had been unified by an ever-present | external threat. In 1261 he was able to proclaim a refugee Abbasid caliph in Cairo. | Egypt became the seat of the caliphate and the centre of the Muslim world, but the caliphs were now firmly under Mamluke control. | The political circumstances of the reigns of Saladin and Baibars were reflected in the | composition of their armies. In fact the nuclei of their forces, the armies of Egypt, , were not dissimilar. Like his predecessor Nür al-Din, Saladin relied on his own guard ) and the regular regiments provided by his emirs from their igtā's. Under Baibars the sultan, a Mamluke by origin, was surrounded by a caste of emirs, themselves once Mamlukes, who held igtā's, two-thirds of each of which was divided among an emir's | private Mamlukes. The army consisted of three main units: the royal Mamlukes, the emirs’ Mamlukes and the troops of the halga, a corps of free cavalry. Both Saladin and Baibars made use of auxiliary forces of beduin, Turkmans and the like, but it is when one considers the forces used to supplement their Egyptian armies that one sees the differences between them. Saladin drew troops from provinces ruled by relatives or from states bound to him in precarious coalition. In Baibars’ empire the formal structure at the centre was echoed throughout the provinces where Mamluke emirs | exercised power on his behalf. The Mamluke army gives the impression of being a more unified, a more regular and above all a more permanent force than that at Saladin's | disposal.* The military strategies of the two men were of course dependent on their armies. | Saladin's incursions into Latin Syria were relatively ineffective until 1187. In that year, having painfully built up an empire, he sought a pretext for war and launched on campaign a great conglomerate army, containing contingents drawn from all over western Asia. It has been pointed out before that in many ways the invasion of Galilee in 1187 was a gamble. If Saladin had not succeeded in drawing the Christians towards him across the plateau west of Tiberias, if his army had been condemned to futile marching and counter-marching across Palestine, it might have begun to break up and with it perhaps might have fragmented his empire. Indeed, after his victory at Hattin and the great sweep of his forces through Christian territory in which most of it fell to him, the momentum of the Muslim advance began to slow down and Saladin was unable to resist effectively the partial reconquest of Palestine by the Third Crusade.
Baibars' main conquests from the Franks fell within six years, from 1265 to 1271, but they seem to have been carried out more deliberately than those of Saladin. In general terms, warfare in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries can be divided into two
| types. First there was the armed raid, called chevauchée by the Franks, the aim of which was to weaken the enemy by destroying his resources. Secondly there was the far more positive campaign with the intention of gaining land, characterised by the siege and reduction of towns and fortresses and their transformation into bases from which a further advance into enemy territory could be planned. The Mamluke campaigns are often seen as being indiscriminately destructive. This was not the case. Baibars' armies seem to have destroyed totally or partially Arsüf, Caesarea, Antioch and al-Qurain (Montfort). But Jaffa survived; Hisn al-Akràd (Crac des Chevaliers)
[ became an important Muslim castle; and there is evidence of reconstruction at Hünin
| (Chastel Neuf), Tibnin (Toron), Shagīf Arnün (Beaufort), Safad (Saphet) and in the hinterland of Arsüf and Caesarea after their capture. At Safad and Shaqif Arnün the castles were repaired and garrisoned and their territories were given new possessors.* But the most interesting example, and the one for which the most detailed evidence survives, concerns southern Palestine. Here, estates in the old lordships of Arsūf and Caesarea were assigned to Baibars’ leading emirs, but were given a new centre at Qäqün, which became an important fortress.f The sites of Shaqif Arnün, Safad and Qaqun were of strategic significance. Shaqif Arnün threatened the Latin lordships of Beirut, Sidon and Tyre; Safad controlled Galilee, as Christian chevauchées found to their cost; Oāgūn completed the ring of fortresses round Acre and at the same time dominated the roads from Acre down the coast and inland to Nablus and Jerusalem. The reduction of Frankish territory was therefore accompanied by the establishment of permanent centres of Mamluke power which encircled Acre.
There is another way in which the deliberate nature of Baibars' advance is revealed: he never made a serious attempt to take Acre. It is true that he made several surprise descents on the city; but that none of them was really serious is clearly shown by a glance at the forces he brought with him — in particular at the absence of siege engines. They have little in common with the carefully assembled armies with which he besieged other major fortresses. His attacks upon Acre seem to have been chevauchées, aimed at weakening the Franks by ravaging their fields and villages around the city, but they may also reflect a desire to persuade his followers that he had designs on the chief centre in Christian hands. |
The absence of any serious preparations against Acre, even after the fall of Antioch or the great campaign of 1271, may be attributed to other causes besides the careful thoroughness of the Muslim advance. First, the Mongols imposed a constant limiting factor on Baibars' plans. Secondly, he had inherited an empire the prosperity of which depended to a large extent upon Acre itself. Although the importance of Acre in the Mediterranean trade of the twelfth century can be exaggerated, by the thirteenth the city was becoming one of the chief points of contact for European and oriental commerce. The first half of the century saw it growing steadily as the chief outle: for goods not only from Syria, but also from further East. This growth had been encouraged tacitly by the Ayyübids and, although the arrival of the Mongols led to a reopening of more northerly trade routes and the emergence of Ayas and the Black Sea ports as trading centres, Acre retained its importance until its fall in 1291. There is clear evidence in the chronicle that follows that Baibars regarded its prosperity as essential to the flourishing of Syria as a whole;* and it may be asked whether the success of his settlements around Qàqün and Safad depended to some extent upon the sale of their surplus produce in the markets of the Christian metropolis. It is not difficult to understand why he was reluctant to take and possibly destroy a place upon which the economic well-being of a large part of his dominions depended.
Two Latin states, Antioch-Tripoli and Jerusalem, lay on the coasts of Syria and Palestine. They had close relations with the Latinised Kingdom of Cilician Armenia to the north, although these were somewhat compromised by Armenia's heavy dependence on the Mongols in the mid-thirteenth century. The Kingdom of Cyprus was even more closely connected: its nobility and that of Jerusalem were made up of the same families; the two kingdoms had nearly the same laws; and for much of the thirteenth century they had the same rulers. Their history is so intertwined that one state cannot be considered apart from the other.
The principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli had been united under the Princes of Antioch on the death of Count Raymond III in 1187. Many lands, especially those around al-Marqab (Margat), Jabala (Gibel), Hisn al-Akràd (Crac des Chevaliers), Safitha (Chastel Blanc) and Tortosa, were in the hands of the Hospitallers and Templars who pursued independent policies towards the Muslims. The Prince-Counts rarely visited the city of Antioch, which for much of the time was cut off from the rest of their dominions by the Muslims at Lattakia; in the south Jubail (Gibelet) under its Genoese lords was periodically in revolt against them. And yet they seem to have been able to impose some sort of uniform policy for their state in its relations with its neighbours, even after 1260 when they followed the Armenian kings and sought an alliance with the Mongols, in spite of the opposition of the Franks in Acre.
In the period 1243-77 the constitution of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is fascinating, if complex.* Since 1228 the king had been the child Conrad of Hohenstaufen; and until 1243 the usual laws of regency in the time of a minority applied. The law laid down that the regent should be the child's surviving parent, provided he or she came to Palestine to receive the fealty of the vassals of the Kingdom. If a parent could not make the journey, the child's nearest relative of the royal line in the East would be given the regency. It will be noticed that to relationship to the heir had to be added presence in the kingdom, both rules being reflected in the phrase dreit heir apparent. If no relative came East to claim the regency, the choice of regent lay with the High Court, a body consisting not only of all tenants-in-chief of the crown, but, by the Assise sur la ligece, of all rear-vassals as well.
Until Conrad came of age, the bailliage, as the regency was called, had been held by his father, the Emperor Frederick II, although his rule had not been popular and there had been intense conflict between his officers and the knights of Acre. In 1243 Conrad reached his majority, but it seems that a new gloss was put on the law of the bailliage by a baronage determined not to submit to the direct rule of the Hohenstaufen. This was that a king who had come of age would be treated as though he was still a minor until he came East to be crowned and entered personally into the feudal contract with his vassals. In other words, the fact that Conrad and later his son Conradin never came to Acre to receive the homage of their vassals meant that the regency continued. Frederick's bailliage had lapsed and the High Court appointed as regent a baron called Odo of Montbéliard until Conrad's nearest relative in the East, Alice of Cyprus, claimed and received the bailliage. In 1246 she was succeeded by her son, King Henry of Cyprus, but, from his death in 1253 until 1258 when his son, Hugh of Cyprus, was brought to Acre to claim the regency, the regents were barons appointed by the High Court: John of Ibelin-Arsur, Philip Chamberlain and John of Ibelin-Jaffa. The acceptance of Hugh led to a further complication, for he was himself a minor: now both crown and bailliage were in minority. Following the usual rules, Hugh's mother Plaisance was appointed regent. She died in 1261 and it seems that the High Court put Geoffrey of Sargines into the bailliage until 1263, when Hugh's aunt Isabella claimed it as dreit heir apparent; and in 1264 she was succeeded by her son Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan, after his right to it had been disputed by his cousin, Hugh of Brienne. Succeeding to the throne of Cyprus in 1267, Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan was also crowned King of Jerusalem in 1269, after the death of Conradin.
A regent was entitled to appoint a lieutenant to represent him if he had to travel outside the kingdom; and Alice, Henry, Plaisance, Isabella and Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan seem to have spent little time in Palestine. One finds a succession of Officers drawn from the baronage, often those very men put into the regency by the High Court when there was no near relative to claim it, acting on behalf of the hereditary regents and like them calling themselves baillis: Balian of Ibelin-Beirut, John and Balian of Ibelin-Arsur, John Fuinon, Geoffrey of Sargines and Henry of Antioch.
The long period of bailliage from 1228-1269 was bound to be of importance to the internal history of the kingdom. At the best of times the powers of a regent were limited. He was accorded only a conditional oath of fealty, and even this might be refused. In theory, he had no control of royal castles, the castellans for which were appointed by the High Court, and he was governed by the decisions of this body, of which he was little more than president. Judicial actions concerning the relations of crown and vassal had no validity once the bailliage had ended, and if, as was the case in the years 1243-53 and 1267-69, the king had come of age but had not been crowned, gifts made by the regent without his specific agreement could be repudiated by him when he came into his kingdom. Obviously the baillis could not provide strong government, but events in the period immediately preceding 1243 had created a situation in which their power was weakened still further. The unpopular officers appointed by Frederick II in the 1230's had been able to exercise authority only over the cities of Tyre and Jerusalem and the castle of Ascalon. In a time of confusion, certain institutions, notably those that had sources of wealth outside Palestine, were allowed, in some cases encouraged, to grow in power: the Italian Communes, the burgess confraternities, the Church and, within the Church, the Military Orders. In its conflict with Frederick II, moreover, the baronage had developed a coherent political ideology, in which the róle of the king was severely limited, to be expressed with great force in the legal treatises of the middle years of the century. Although it is hard to show that the rights of the crown had diminished constitutionally between 1228 and 1269, it is clear that some institutions had become far too powerful within the state, while the constitutional views of the baronage were inimical to strong central government.
To make matters worse, Hugh's accession to the throne in 1269 was challenged by his aunt, Maria of Antioch, who for a time pursued her case at the Court of Rome. It seems that technically her claims were stronger than his: certainly there was an important section of opinion in Acre that regarded him as a usurper. In 1277 Maria sold her alleged rights to the ambitious and brilliant King of Naples, Charles of Anjou; and in the following September Charles' representative was to arrive in Acre to demand the kingdom for his master. This lies outside our period; it is enough to emphasise that Maria's claims, the disapproval of the papacy and the growing interest of Charles of Anjou were sources of embarassment to Hugh until he left Syria in 1276, refusing to stay because, he said, he could not control the great corporations in Acre.
The weakness both of the regents and the king concern us only in so far as they affected the kingdom's relations with the Muslims and its ability to defend itself against them. It must first of all be admitted that the limitations on the power of the
| regents, the weakness of King Hugh's position and the emergence of over-powerful
institutions made it difficult for a common policy towards Islam to be evolved, let alone enforced. Relations with the Muslims seem to have been discussed in parlements, attended by the king or bailli, members of the High Court, and representatives of the hierarchy and the Military Orders. The final decision seems to have lain with the king or, in his absence, with the members of the High Court who perhaps retired to vote on the matter and then announced their decision to the assembly. But this does not appear to have been regarded as binding even on the members of the High Court themselves. Individual baronies had their own treaties with the Muslims and
conducted their own campaigns against them; the Italians and the Military Orders followed their own paths; and, to add to the confusion, one great corporation might at the same time be pursuing two conflicting policies. The Hospitallers in northern Syria were aggressive towards the small Muslim powers nearby and at times were allied to the
\ Mongols. But in Acre they favoured the making of treaties with Egypt and at least
c
tacitly agreed to resistance to the Mongols. After the unification of all Muslim Syria under his rule, Baibars can be forgiven for distrusting the peaceful protestations of an Order whose representatives in Antioch-Tripoli were wringing tribute from‚dependencies of his empire and were in touch with his greatest enemies. * In its external
relations, therefore, the kingdom appeared more like a league of semi-independent states; and however ready these might have been to help each other in extremities, there can be little doubt that the lack of a common front aided Baibars in his conquests.
The weakness of the kingdom, however, can be exaggerated. For forty years it resisted armies that had conquered the rest of the Near East and had turned back the Mongols. One cannot avoid the conclusion that it was still militarily strong. Impressive citadels enclosed a compact area of land with good internal lines of communication, and these fortifications were greatly strengthened by St. Louis between 1250 and 1254: in spite of the failure of his Crusade, Louis must take much of the credit for the Franks’ long resistance to Muslim invasion. The Latins’ preference for a kingdom.
geographically restricted and their distrust of territorial expansion were revealed in their attitude towards Crusades, which they disliked for military reasons. In their view, a body of men would come to Syria on Crusade, would upset the delicate balance of alliances and would then depart. If successful they would leave the inhabitants with the problem of defending extended frontiers with the same manpower. If unsuccessful they might provoke a Muslim reaction that would fall not on them, but on those who had to remain in the East. The Franks' dislike of the Crusades was combined with a desire for additional manpower, but their urgent pleas for more soldiers may have led historians to exaggerate their weakness in this respect. The political vicissitudes of the kingdom seem hardly to have affected its potential military strength, and one can argue that even when greatly reduced in size it had at its disposal forces as strong as it had had in the twelfth century, if not stronger.
In the thirteenth century the Latins made use of troops drawn from five main sources. First there were the knights and sergeants who held fiefs in Palestine. Before 1187 the king could call on the service of c. 700 knights. The permanent territorial losses suffered by the kingdom after the Battle of Hattin must have reduced the number of those owing service de cors to the crown, but this reduction may not have been as drastic as one might suppose. Many members of the Jerusalemite feudality gained fiefs in Cyprus after 1192 and, although the Cypriot knights were not always prepared to aid their Palestinian cousins even when their king was also ruler of Jerusalem, they made a real contribution to the defence of the Holy Land. There is also clear evidence for the existence of a great many money-fiefs in Syria in the middle of the thirteenth century. These were often granted from the revenues of the coastal towns; and the loss of territorial fiefs may have been almost balanced by the additional money-fiefs coming available as the prosperity of these cities increased. The estimate given in the notes below for the size of the Christian force at Gaza in 1244 would support this argument: the Latin army was almost as large as that which had fought at Hattin and the proportion in it of lay knights was only slightly smaller, although it is true that both Cyprus and Antioch-Tripoli made significant contributions.* In this respect the loss of Jaffa, Arsüf and Caesarea in the 1260's must have had a serious effect on the numbers of knights available for the Christian armies.
Secondly there were the miscellaneous forces provided in time of necessity by the Church and the burgesses, while the arriére ban could in theory raise a national levy. Before 1187 the Church and the urban communities owed the king some 5,025 sergeants — it is not clear whether these were conscripts of poor quality or mercenaries. One cannot envisage this force being raised in the thirteenth century, but the Church certainly contributed mercenaries to the kingdom's defence, while the Italian Communes and various merchant groups were capable of raising men and arms. The Italians owed some sort of service and could at times put comparatively well-disciplined forces into the field, and it is clear that the burgess confraternities that became so important in thirteenth century Acre were primarily organisations committed to the defence of the Holy Land, almost miniature Military Orders.
The kingdom also received aid from pilgrims coming out to Palestine on the passages that sailed twice a year from European ports. Their contribution declined in the thirteenth century; and the growing practice in the West of commuting the sentences of criminals in return for commitments to travel out East was of dubious benefit to the Franks. These men made undisciplined soldiers and they gave Acre only an unenviable reputation for vice.
On the other hand, the numbers of professional mercenaries serving in Palestine seems to have greatly increased. By the thirteenth century these probably made up the most important component in any Latin force. They fall into two main groups. First there was a large number of European knights and sergeants prepared to serve in the East for a time as sodées. Secondly there were turcopoles, who constituted a permanent element in the forces of the Military Orders but also served with the feudal host. They seem to have been originally native or half-caste light cavalry; but by the mid-twelfth century they appear to have included Europeans and it may be that the title of turcopole referred to the function rather than to the race of its holder, who seems to have been a light cavalryman serving for pay in a force that was characterised by its use of Arab harness and equipment. The size of the mercenary element depended of course on the Franks' ability to pay for it. Although there were times in the thirteenth century when the Latins were very short of cash, the large numbers of mercenaries in the East must be a sign of willingness to buy their services. Their most important employers were the Military Orders, but there is evidence that the money sent out to the Holy Land by the papacy throughout the century was used to buy soldiers. There were, moreover, small foreign regiments paid for by individual western rulers. The baillis of Frederick II and Charles of Anjou were accompanied by troops, but most important of all was a French force, established by St. Louis, which garrisoned Acre to the end and which seems to have provided the core around which most Latin armies were built in the 1260's and 1270's.
Finally there were the Military Orders. It may be assumed that the Templars had just over, the Hospitallers slightly under, 300 brothers-at-arms serving in the East. * One has no means of estimating the size of the other Military Orders, but, apart from that of the Teutonic Knights, their contribution must have been insignificant. Perhaps about 750 brethren-at-arms could be found in the Military Orders in the Latin states, but in practice a force this size could never have been mustered. Brothers-at-arms from the three main Orders would be required to garrison castles and administer commanderies; and the total of c. 600 brothers estimated to have been at Gaza in 1244 must have represented a really exceptional commitment.* On the other hand, the forces provided by the Military Orders were less affected by the strength or weakness of the Latin settlement as a whole, were well-disciplined and well-armed; and the brethren-at-arms would constitute only a fraction of their strength in the field, for their troops always contained large numbers of mercenaries.
The evidence suggests that it would be dangerous to infer that the Latin states in the thirteenth century had significantly fewer fighting men at their disposal than in the twelfth. And the Christian forces were not only behind improved fortifications with less land to defend, but they were also perhaps of a slightly higher quality than their predecessors. The feudality and the mercenaries seem to have been no less effective and, while pilgrim forces were probably of a poorer standard, the contribution of the Military Orders had greatly increased: the Hospital became a fully organised Military
| Order only late in the twelfth century;t the Teutonic Knights were founded only in
1197. It is, therefore, not surprising that of the smaller Near Eastern states only Antioch-Tripoli and Jerusalem were able to make a stand against the Mamlukes. The Kingdom of Jerusalem also defied the Mongols. The later history of the Latins in the East, far from being a story of tragic impotence and weakness, is one of achievement, even if the effort was to be in vain.
The section of Ibn al-Furāt's chronicle translated below provides a fairly complete narrative account of a vital period in the history of the Latin states in the East. It covers the last major Crusades, the appearance of the Mongols, the rise of the Mamlukes and the establishment by them of bases from which they were to drive the Christians from the Levantine mainland within two decades of Baibars' death. It reveals the caution with which the greatest of the Mamluke sultans approached the problem of loosening the grip of the Latins on Palestine and Syria and it gives priceless details which clarify conditions of life in those areas under Christian rule. Above all the fact that it is a full narrative means that the evidence it contains can be compared profitably with that provided by contemporary western sources. One is left with a feeling of wonder at the way in which the accounts of two groups of chroniclers, on different sides and from different environments, supplement and illuminate one another.
Link
Press Here
