The Age of the Crusades

The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517

P.M. Holt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317871514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The kaleidoscopic political changes during the years covered by this volume include the rise and fall of the Crusader states, the expansion of the Mongol empire, the rise of the Mamluk sultanate and of its ultimate conquerors, the Ottomans. To all of these Professor Holt is a clear and skilful guide. He principally utilises, and to some extent reinterprets, the medieval Arabic sources, to present a picture which differs in important respects from the conventional western-orientated view.

Chapter One

The Near East on the Eve of the First Crusade

When the Crusaders entered Syria in the autumn of 1097, there were two claimants to the headship of the Umma, the universal Muslim community. One was the ‘Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, al-Mustaẓhir; the other was al-Āmir, the Fatimid caliph of Cairo. The reason for this schism in the Umma lay far back in its history. The ‘Abbasid caliph was recognized by the majority group of Muslims, the Sunnīs, as the legitimate heir of the earliest successors of the Prophet, the Caliphs Abū Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī. The ‘Abbasid dynasty, descendants of the Prophet’s uncle al-‘Abbās, had acquired the caliphate in a revolution which in 132/750 had overthrown the previous ruling family, the Umayyads. The founder of the Umayyad caliphate, Mu‘āwiya (a remote cousin of the Prophet), had himself risen to power in 41/661 at the expense of ‘Alī.

‘Alī was both a first cousin of the Prophet and the husband of his daughter, Fāṭima, by whom he had two sons, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn. The partisans of‘Alī (in Arabic, Shī‘at ‘Alī), known generally as the Shī‘a or Shī‘īs, survived the downfall and murder of their leader, and in ensuing generations were transformed from an Arab political faction to a group widespread throughout the Muslim world, holding religious and political doctrines which were in some important respects different from and incompatible with those of the Sunnīs. They came to hold that ‘Alī and his descendants had an indefeasible divine right to be the imāms, the heads of the Umma, of which they were the infallible guides. To them the Umayyads and the ‘Abbasids alike were usurpers. The Shī‘a, however, differed among themselves in tracing the line of succession to the imamate among ‘Alī’s posterity. One group, which developed as an esoteric, eschatological and subversive movement in the third/ninth century, was led by the alleged descendants of a great-great-great-grandson of ‘Alī named Ismā‘īl b. Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq. This group, the Ismā‘īlīs, scored an outstanding success in 297/909, when they established their imām as the head of a territorial state in what is now Tunisia. So began the Fatimid caliphate, taking its name from the ancestress of the dynasty. Under al-Mu‘izz, the fourth Fatimid caliph, Egypt was conquered in 358/969. Four years later the seat of the caliphate was transferred to the new capital of the Fatimids, Cairo.

By the late fifth/eleventh century neither the Fatimid caliph nor his ‘Abbasid rival held the reality of power. The ‘Abbasid caliphate had maintained effective supremacy over most of the Islamic lands for about 100 years from its establishment, but already in 138/756 a process of fragmentation had begun when an Umayyad prince, escaping from the destruction of his family by the ‘Abbasids, made himself the independent ruler of Muslim Spain. Autonomous rulers and dynasties subsequently proliferated elsewhere, preserving only the form of subordination to their ‘Abbasid suzerain. As their territorial possessions shrank, the caliphs themselves passed under the control of military chiefs who dominated the court and the administration. The earliest of these were the commanders of the caliphs’ own guards; then in 334/945 Baghdad and the person of the caliph fell into the hands of a family originating from Daylam in north-western Persia, the Buwayhids or Buyids. The predicament of the Sunnī caliph was particularly ironical in that the new rulers and their Daylamite followers were Shī‘īs. They were not, however, Ismā‘īlīs, and they felt no obligations towards the Fatimids, while their attitude towards the Sunnīs remained tolerant. The nominal sovereignty of the ‘Abbasid caliph was retained.

In the middle years of the fifth/eleventh century a new power arose in north-eastern Persia, that of the Oghuz (Arabic, Ghuzz) Turcoman tribesmen under the leadership of the Seljuk family. In 447/1055 their chief, Tughrul Beg, entered Baghdad, where Buyid authority had collapsed. He received from the Caliph al-Qā’im the title of “sultan” in recognition that he was the effective “power” (Arabic, sulṭān) in the state. Unlike the Buyids, the Seljukids and their Turcoman followers were Sunnī Muslims, and as such intent on upholding the supremacy of the ‘Abbasid caliphate against external enemies and internal dissidents.

Under Tughrul Beg and his two successors, his nephew Alp-Arslan (455–65/1063–72) and the latter’s son Malik-Shāh (465–85/1072–92), the Seljukid territories formed an extensive empire including what are now Iran and Iraq, and stretching into Syria. Meanwhile the house of Seljuk became increasingly assimilated to the Perso-Arabic Muslim society over which it ruled. The Turcoman tribesmen, the original military base of the dynasty, became an embarrassment to sultans whose economic strength depended on sedentary cultivators and urban merchants. Hence, like the caliphs before them, the Seljukids recruited standing armies of Turkish slaves, the Mamluks. The assimilation of the dynasty is epitomized in the name of the third sultan. Unlike his two predecessors, he did not bear a Turkish name but was called Malik-Shāh – a combination of the Arabic and Persian words for “king”. Closely associated with Malik-Shāh throughout his reign was his wise and powerful minister, the Wazīr Niẓām al-Mulk – actually an honorific meaning “the Order of the Kingdom”. The assassination of Niẓām al-Mulk, followed in a few weeks by the death of Malik-Shāh himself, marked the beginning of the decline of the Seljukid sultanate. A succession struggle ensued, from which in 488/1095 the eldest son of Malik-Shāh, Berkyaruk, emerged as sultan.

Even at the height of their power, the Seljukid sultans did not rule a centralized empire so much as an assemblage of provinces inhabited by diverse nationalities speaking different languages, the products of varying historical developments. The tendency towards fragmentation which showed after the death of Malik-Shāh was facilitated by the Seljukid tradition of rule by the family rather than by an individual monarch, in consequence of which members of the royal house held provinces in appanage. This was to have serious results for Syria at the time of the First Crusade.

Besides this Great Seljuk sultanate, there was in the late fifth/eleventh century another Seljukid sultanate in Anatolia (see below, Ch. 19). The westwards movement of the Oghuz Turcomans brought them up against the Armenian frontier regions of the Byzantine empire, which they penetrated and raided. Then in 463/1071 there took place a great and decisive pitched battle at Manzikert (Malāsjird) near Lake Van between the armies of Alp-Arslan and the Emperor Romanus Diogenes, in which the latter was defeated and captured. The Byzantine frontier defences were shattered, and the Turcomans broke through, no longer merely to raid but to extend permanently the range of their pastures, and ultimately to settle in Anatolia. In this they were in fact assisted by Byzantine faction-leaders during the power-struggle which followed the overthrow of Romanus Diogenes. The leadership among the Turcoman immigrants was assumed by a Seljukid prince, Süleymān, the son of a certain Kutlumush who had been killed in 456/1064 in a revolt against Alp-Arslan. It is significant of the changed situation in Anatolia that Süleymān’s capital was Iznik (until recently the Byzantine city of Nicaea) in the far north-west. Like his Great Seljuk cousins, Süleymān was entitled “sultan”, the territory in which he ruled being known as Rūm, i.e. the lands of the former Roman empire in the east.

Just as the ‘Abbasid caliphate in its debility had been taken over by powerful warrior-chiefs ruling in the caliph’s name, the Fatimid caliphate had similarly declined and passed under military control. The original power-base of the Fatimids in North Africa had been constituted by Berber tribal warriors. After the transfer of the caliphate to Cairo, Turkish Mamluk troops were added, as well as Daylamites. Also, like previous rulers in Egypt, the Fatimids imported Blacks (Arabic, Sūdān) as slaves from Nubia. Risings and faction-fights among these heterogeneous forces were not uncommon. After the death of the autocratic and probably insane Caliph al-Ḥākim in 411/1021, his successors were feeble rulers, and the growing insubordination of the armed forces culminated in a long period of anarchy from 451/1060 to 465/1073. At its height the Black troops dominated Upper Egypt, into which they had been driven by their opponents, the Berbers held the Delta, and the Turks Cairo itself, where they forced the Caliph al-Mustanṣir to sell his vast treasures as they pillaged his great library. The anarchy ended only when the caliph called to his aid another war-lord, the governor of Acre (at the time a Fatimid possession), Badr al-Jamālī, a Mamluk of Armenian origin. He landed in Egypt with his own reliable Armenian troops, restored order, and ruled (formally as wazīr, actually as military dictator) from 466/1074 until his death twenty years later at the age of over eighty. He was succeeded in the wazirate by his son, al-Afḍal Shāhanshāh.

Al-Mustanṣir himself died a few months later. The respective powers of the caliph and the wazīr were demonstrated at this juncture when al-Afḍal set aside the appointed heir to the caliphate, a middle-aged man named Nizār, and installed his much younger brother, al-Musta‘lī (487/1094). This arbitrary act of political calculation, which was followed by the revolt, defeat and death of Nizār, produced a schism in the Ismā‘īlī movement which still represented the ideological basis of the regime. Its dynamism and driving force now passed from the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt to a militant splinter group in the east. This was the organization known as the New Preaching (Arabic, al-da‘wa al-jadīda), founded by a Persian Ismā‘īlī named Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who had already in 483/1090 captured the fortress of Alamūt in Daylam as a base for operations against the Great Seljuks. The New Preaching, which later developed an important branch in Syria, has passed into Western historical writing as the Order of Assassins. Lacking military power, the order had recourse to political murder to destroy its opponents and spread terror. The Assassins’ first important victim was the Wazīr Niẓām al-Mulk.

Across the Red Sea from Egypt, western Arabia was a region of marginal historical and political importance at this time. In the Ḥijāz were the two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, which were of permanent significance as religious centres and places of pilgrimage, the former containing the sanctuary of the Ka‘ba, to which Muslims throughout the world turn in prayer. Medina had been the first capital of the Muslim empire, but had long since lost this position. In the late fifth/eleventh century both cities, although nominally under Fatimid suzerainty, were ruled by dynasties of local origin, claiming descent from the Prophet. The Yemen in the south-west of Arabia, lying remote from the centres of Sunnī power, was a place of refuge for minority groups of the Shī‘a. At the beginning of this period the principal power in the Yemen was the Sulayhid dynasty, whose founder, ‘Alī b. Muḥammad, had captured Ṣan‘ā’ in 455/1063 and Aden in the following year. The Sulayhids were Ismā‘īlīs and nominal vassals of the Fatimid caliphs.

Thus the great powers in the Near East at the time of the First Crusade were three: the Great Seljuk sultanate, the Seljuk sultanate of Rūm and the military wazirate which ruled in the name of the Fatimid caliphate. Although Anatolia had been almost wholly lost to the Byzantine empire after Manzikert, a revival had begun with the accession of a vigorous statesman and soldier, Alexius Comnenus, in 1081. At the meeting-place of the interests and rivalries of these powers lay Syria, where the political situation had long been extremely complex. Under the Umayyad caliphs, Syria had been the seat of the caliphate, a position it lost with the ‘Abbasid revolution ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Genealogical Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Note: Names, Titles and Dates
• Introduction: The Lands and their Peoples
• 1. The Near East on the Eve of the First Crusade
• 2. The First Crusade 1095–1099
• 3. The Frankish States and the Muslim Response 1099–1128
• 4. Outremer and its People
• 5. Zangī and Nūr al-Dīn 1128–1154
• 6. Nūr al-Dīn and the Rise of Saladin 1154–1174
• 7. The Ascendancy of Saladin 1174–1193
• 8. The Later Ayyubids 1193–1249
• 9. Institutions from the Seljukids to the Ayyubids
• 10. The Inauguration of the Mamluk Sultanate 1249–1260
• 11. The Reign of al-Zāhir Baybars 1260–1277
• 12. The Establishment of the Kalavunid Dynasty 1277–1293
• 13. The Reign of al-Nāsir Muhammad (1): The Usurpations 1293–1310
• 14. The Reign of al-Nāsir Muhammad (2): The Autocracy 1310–1341
• 15. The Later Kalavunids and the Circassian Succession 1341–1399
• 16. Egypt and Nubia to the late Fourteenth Century
• 17. Institutions of the Mamluk Sultanate
• 18. Diplomatic and Commercial Relations of the Mamluk Sultanate
• 19. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm and its Successors
• 20. The Mamluk Sultanate in Decline (1): The Sons and Household of Barkuk 1399–1461
• 21. The Mamluk Sultanate in Decline (2): The Later Circassian Mamluk Sultans 1461–1517
• Conclusion: Retrospect and Prospect
• Bibliographical Survey
• Glossary
• Genealogical Tables
• Maps
• Index