Holy Warriors Read online

  In contrast to Christianity’s evolution of holy war and crusading theory, Islam was already equipped with such an ideology through the presence of jihad in the Koran and Hadith. Unfortunately for the Muslims the First Crusade arrived in the Levant at a time when jihad was in abeyance and the political authority of the Seljuk Turks had just fractured; few, therefore, were motivated to fight the latest invaders of the Near East, as the Damascene preacher al-Sulami discovered. The vital mutual interest in holy war on the part of the clerical and the ruling classes only emerged under Nur ad-Din and Saladin. Such a simple picture, however, is complicated by the dynastic conflict between these two men and it was only the former’s death in 1174 that prevented civil war. In other words, wholly secular actions are visible even in those held up as heroes of the jihad. The idea waned under Saladin’s successors and it was not until the Mamluk Baibars seized power in 1260 that holy war returned to the top of the agenda, leading to the expulsion of the Christians from Acre in 1291. Likewise, after another period of relatively low profile, the ghazi zeal of the early Ottomans brought jihad back to the fore once more.

  For all the high-profile focus on Christian (by which we really mean just Catholic) and Muslim conflict, it is worth remembering that a significant proportion of holy war—on both sides—was directed against people of their own faith, or rival groups therein. Crusades were sent to defeat the Cathars of southern France (a rather radical form of Christianity, admittedly) and the Hussites of Bohemia; and although the Fourth Crusade was not originally aimed at the Orthodox Greeks of Constantinople, the papal legate offered its participants spiritual rewards in April 1204. The sack of Constantinople remains an immensely sensitive issue even now. When Pope John Paul II visited Athens in May 2001 the city’s Orthodox archbishop made his anger abundantly clear: “Understandably a large part of the Church of Greece opposes your presence here . . . [we] demand . . . a formal condemnation of injustices committed against them by the Christian West. . . . The Orthodox Greek people sense more intensely in its religious consciousness and national memory the traumatic experiences that remain as open wounds on its vigorous body, as is known by all, by the destructive mania of the Crusaders and the period of Latin rule.”2 Crusades were also called against the political enemies of the papacy such as Frederick II and, at the time of Bishop Despenser’s crusade (1390), the French. In the Islamic world the fundamental divide between Sunni and Shi’a was an obvious fault line and leaders of the former made much of their efforts to wage jihad against the so-called heresy of their opponents in the centuries before, and during, the crusades. This desire to purge lands of religious enemies was a prominent aspect of the spiritual case put forward by Nur ad-Din and Saladin in their efforts to unify the Near East. It follows, therefore, that the Sunni–Shi’a split explains why Saladin is no role model for modern Shi’ite regimes because he was the man who destroyed their caliphate in Cairo in 1169–71.

  Notwithstanding the powerful rhetoric of holy war there was not a constant state of conflict between Christianity and Islam in the Near East and Iberia. We have seen numerous truces and diplomatic engagements—although in some cases these were impelled by reason of expediency and practicality, rather than mutual regard. There was a further complication in the Levant with the need to distinguish between most crusaders—western knights who came to the Holy Land, desperate to slay the infidel—and the Frankish settlers—those who were born and lived in the Levant. The priority of a group of men, inspired by preachers, who had traveled thousands of miles at great cost and risk, and were intent upon great deeds—but who would then go home—was different to those who existed in the Middle East day after day. Usama ibn Munqidh’s encounter with a bullying western crusader during his prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque vividly demonstrated this and, as we saw earlier, the contrast between this newcomer’s aggression and the restraint shown by the indigenous Templar knight was marked. The Frankish settlers had to bear in mind longer-term strategies and without the permanent presence of large western armies (the Military Orders notwithstanding), peace was sometimes preferable. This inherent tension between crusaders and settlers was a fundamental fault line in the practice of crusading because without a single overarching authority to direct or pull together the Christians, even the greater benefit of the Holy Land could be subsumed under the contrasting interests of either settlers or crusaders. In consequence, there was often considerable mutual mistrust between the Franks and the crusaders, as the aftermath of the failed Second Crusade exposed.

  In contrast to this expectation of mutual antipathy we have seen situations where the protaganists seek treaties across religious lines; the deal between Damascus and Jerusalem to resist Zengi of Aleppo and Mosul was but one example of a Christian–Muslim alliance against a common opponent. Usama described part of this particular process taking place during a hunting party, which also reminds us of the shared cultural values of two heavily equestrian societies. Count Raymond of Tripoli’s arrangement with Saladin in 1186–87 was perhaps the most nakedly self-serving of all cross-religious treaties, especially given the fevered atmosphere of holy war at the time. The most dramatic feat of diplomacy by a crusader was Frederick II’s recovery of Jerusalem. This was accomplished in part because of his political and military strength, in part on account of rivalries within the contemporary Muslim world, but also because of his skills as a linguist and a diplomat, along with his preparedness to engage wholeheartedly with the etiquette and culture of his opponents. His approach was not unique and again, in contrast to the familiar bellicose images of Richard and Saladin, we have seen that both were accomplished diplomats and, in fact, Frederick’s settlement was quite similar to ideas discussed by these men thirty years earlier.

  Crusading imagery and metaphor have survived, and indeed blossomed over the centuries. They have emerged in common, if diverse, use across many aspects of the cultural and political life of the West; the blend of historical resonances and a feeling of moral right are a heady mixture. The combination of epic confrontation, the clash of faiths, the sense of defending one’s own culture, a unified cause, and above all, the sense of moral right, have helped to keep the idea alive. Added to that, the deeds and desires of compelling characters, such as those covered here, also explain why the subject retains such an allure in popular culture; for example, the Knights Templar were prominent in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum (1988) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2002), while the fall of Jerusalem was the centerpiece of Ridley Scott’s major 2005 movie Kingdom of Heaven (although the film had a very secular idea at its heart with chivalry, rather than faith, being held up as the true belief). In the contemporary Muslim world Saladin is now starring as a children’s cartoon character, displaying his appeal in a less polemical form than usual.

  As we have seen, some sensed the troubles the crusading legacy might cause, and General Allenby’s determination to disconnect the medieval from the modern in Jerusalem in 1917 stands as a stark contrast to General Gouraud’s triumphal behavior in Damascus three years later (“Saladin, we have returned!”). Encouraged by such expression of superiority and, in the face of widespread western conquests of Islamic lands during the nineteenth century, many Muslims recalled both the traumas of the medieval age and also their ultimate success in defeating the crusaders. By tapping into their own history and folklore, as well as using the modern western constructs provided by men such as Kaiser Wilhelm II, they found a very potent set of images. The cumulative effect of the use of “crusade” by leaders as ideologically diverse as Sultan Abdulhamid II, Nasser of Egypt, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden, has given it a wholly abhorrent meaning to the Islamic world and one that reflects western imperialist aggression, rather than Christian zeal.

  What took place across so many theaters of war and involved so many millions of people has embedded itself into the consciousness of the Christian West and the Muslim Near East. Given the intrinsic nature of jihad to Islam it will never disappear, yet crusading has ended
. The failure of the Christians to hold on to the Holy Land, the conversion of the pagans of the Baltic, the successful reconquest of Iberia, rising distaste for the sale of indulgences, plus a growing sense of national identity and the Reformation, brought about its demise. What has survived is an immensely rich body of terminology, sentiment, and imagery. Crusading was, in many ways, initially conceived and justified as a defensive idea, but its later successors, such as colonialism, were unashamedly aggressive and share few elements of the same DNA. For centuries we have actually seen just shadows of the crusades, not true shapes. While many of these phantoms can guide us and—as Churchill implied—offer us warnings, the medieval and modern contexts are wholly different and for that reason such shadows need to be treated with real care—from all sides—to avoid disaster.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In the course of writing this book a great many people have offered invaluable advice and support, as well as providing me with opportunities to visit, to discuss, and to learn about some of the people and places covered here. I would like to thank: William Purkis, Francis Robinson, Jonathan Harris, Matthew Bennett, Natasha Hodgson, Peter Jackson, Osman Latiff, Justin Champion, Paul Sturtevant, Andrew Taylor, Andy Hershey, Dimitri Collingridge, David Jeffcock, and Will Lane. The good-natured enthusiasm and culinary skills of the students on the University of London MA in Crusader Studies have also been vital. I am very grateful to Catherine Clarke for her positive and clear-sighted guidance and to all the team at Felicity Bryan for their hard work; my thanks also to Fletcher and Co. in New York. Will Sulkin has shown immense faith in this project and provided crucial conceptual input and editorial advice; David Milner has been an excellent and observant editor and the help of Tim Bartlett and Kay Peddle has been much appreciated. My thanks, again, to Emmett Sullivan for his photographic expertise. The emotional and practical kindnesses of many others have been essential and I am hugely thankful to Alex and Ruth Windscheffel, Eileen Moore, Kate and Andrew Golding, Amanda and Lenny Goodrich, Lisa Drage, Sharon-Lee Broomfield, Bruno Heisey, the Chappell family, Roger and Leila Moore, and particularly Anne Meyer and Sir Idris Pearce, and Sophie and John Wallace. My greatest debts are to my parents for providing me with such wholehearted support throughout my life; thanks also to my dad for his interest and research at such a difficult time for him; to my sons, who both make me so proud: Tom for his ever-sharp observations and humor and Marcus for his happy enthusiasm. Finally, to my wonderful wife, Niki, for her patience, belief, and love, without which I could not be.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1. N. Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford, 2006); The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. J. S. C. Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995).

  2. My thanks to Thomas Phillips for his research on this point: Batman and Robin: The Complete 1949 Movie Serial Collection.

  3. J. P. Phillips, “Why a Crusade Will Lead to a Jihad,” Independent, September 18, 2001.

  4. E. Sivan, “The Crusader Described by Modern Arab Historiography,” in Asian and African Studies 8 (1972), pp. 104–49; C. Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999).

  5. C. Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert (Edinburgh, 2007).

  1. “Deus Vult!”: The First Crusade and the Capture of Jerusalem, 1095–99

  1. Robert of Rheims, account of Urban II’s speech at Clermont, taken from L. and J. S. C. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (London, 1981), pp. 42–45. For the full text of Robert’s chronicle, see Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade, tr. C. Sweetenham (Aldershot, 2005).

  2. C. J. Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London, 2006), pp. 1–24, elegantly sketches out the situation in Europe and the Mediterranean during the eleventh century.

  3. J. S. C. Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, third edition (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 5–9; J. S. C. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), pp. 5–8; Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 27–51. In a broader context, see F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975).

  4. See the accounts of Robert of Rheims, Baldric of Bourgueil, Fulcher of Chartres, and Guibert of Nogent, all translated in Riley-Smith, Crusades: Idea and Reality, pp. 41–53.

  5. Both the tympanum at Conques and at Autun are especially vivid.

  6. Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God Through the Franks: Gesta Dei per Francos, tr. R. Levine (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 28.

  7. Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosalimitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. R. Hill, tr. R. A. B. Mynors (London, 1962), p. 1; Guibert of Nogent, Deeds of God, p. 45.

  8. C. Hillenbrand, Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol; C. Hillenbrand, “The First Crusade: The Muslim Perspective,” in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. J. P. Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 130–41.

  9. J. Shepard, “Cross-Purposes: Alexius Comnenus and the First Crusade,” in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, pp. 107–29.

  10. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 55–60.

  11. R. Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, 1987).

  12. Ibid., p. 66.

  13. Ibid., p. 234.

  14. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and tr. S. B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007), pp. 52–53.

  15. Chazan, European Jewry, p. 69.

  16. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, pp. 56–59.

  17. M. G. Bull, “The Diplomatic of the First Crusade,” in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, pp. 35–56.

  18. Charter from Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, p. 114.

  19. Ibid., pp. 67–68.

  20. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, tr. F. R. Ryan, ed. H. S. Fink (Knoxville, 1969), p. 88.

  21. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, p. 43.

  22. A V. Murray, “Money and Logistics in the Forces of the First Crusade: Coinage, Bullion, Service, and Supply, 1096–1099,” in Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, ed. J. H. Pryor (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 229–50.

  23. Letter of Urban II to the congregation of Vallombrosa, October 7, 1096, tr. Riley-Smith, Crusades: Idea and Reality, pp. 39–40.

  24. AV. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099–1125 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1–93.

  25. For the letters, see H. Hagenmeyer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck, 1901), pp. 138–42, 149–52. The latter is translated in “Letter of Stephen of Blois to Adela of Blois,” in The First Crusade: “The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres” and Other Source Materials, ed. E. Peters, second edition (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 287–88. See also K. LoPrete, “Adela of Blois: Familial Alliances and Female Lordships” in Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, ed. T. Evergates (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 7–43.

  26. J. H. and L. L. Hill, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse (Syracuse, 1962).

  27. R. B. Yewdale, Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch (Princeton, 1924); Gesta Franco-rum, passim.

  28. Fulcher of Chartres, History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, p. 74.

  29. G. T. Dennis, “Defenders of the Christian People: Holy War in Byzantium,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of the Byzantine and Muslim World, eds. A. E. Laiou and R. P. Mottahedeh (Washington, 2001), pp. 31–40; Shepard, “Cross-Purposes,” pp. 108–13; J. Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades (London, 2003), pp. 53–60; Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, tr. E. R. A. Sewter (London, 1969), p. 319.

  30. J. France, Victory in the East: A Military History (Cambridge, 1994), p. 105.

  31. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, p. 323.

  32. J. Harris, Constantinople (London, 2006).

  33. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, pp. 84–85.

  34. Ibid., pp. 90–91; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, pp. 60–67.

  35. Hillenbrand, “The First Crusade: The Muslim Perspective,” pp. 130–41.
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  36. Ibid., p. 132.

  37. Fulcher of Chartres, History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, p. 85.

  38. Gesta Francorum, p. 19.

  39. Ibid., pp. 20–21.

  40. J. B. Segal, Edessa: The Blessed City (Oxford, 1970); C. MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, 2008), pp. 50–73.

  41. Gesta Francorum, pp. 44–47.

  42. Ibid., p. 62.

  43. R.-J. Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096–1204, trs. J. C. Morris and J. E. Ridings (Oxford, 1993), pp. 31–60; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, pp. 64–71.

  44. Gesta Francorum, pp. 59–60.

  45. Ibid., p. 68.

  46. Ibid., p. 69.

  47. France, Victory in the East, pp. 278–96.

  48. Ibid., pp. 303, 323–24; Ralph of Caen, The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A History of the Normans on the First Crusade, trs. B. S. and D. S. Bachrach (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 113–14.

  49. For a general context, see R. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water (Oxford, 1984), esp. pp. 70–102.

  50. T. S. Asbridge, “The Holy Lance of Antioch: Power, Devotion and Memory on the First Crusade,” in Reading Medieval Studies 33 (2007), pp. 3–36.

  51. O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London, 1996), pp. 777–78.