Chapter Five: The Decline of the Arab Empire, 809-1300

The transformation of Islam and the intellectual trends that we examined in Chapter Four occurred against an increasingly anarchic political backdrop. While the Caliphate had enjoyed an almost-unbroken string of success since its founding in the early-seventh century, it abruptly entered a more challenging period immediately following the reign of Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-909). For the next century and a half, the caliphate experienced a sequence of debilitating civil wars, factionalism, and instability. As a result, the Abbasid Dynasty gradually saw its authority shrink until, in 945, it fell under the dominance of an Iranian dynasty, the Buyids (934-1055).

Worse followed. From the end of the eleventh century to the late-thirteenth century, a succession of Turkic nomadic groups, crusading Western Christian knights, and, most dangerous of all, powerful Mongol warriors launched a series of sustained attacks on the region. These invasions had enormous consequences for the Middle East. They produced a fundamental political reordering in the region, resulted in a legacy of misunderstanding over the nature and intent of the Crusades and, in the case of the Mongols, seemed for a time to constitute an existential challenge to Islamic rule.

The Withering of Abbasid Power

Civil War

Ironically, the decline of the Abbasid Dynasty began during the reign of the caliph widely viewed as the caliphate’s greatest leader, Harun al-Rashid. Indeed, the idea that the caliphate was on the cusp of difficult times would have struck contemporaries as entirely implausible. After all, at the time of al-Rashid’s death in 809, the empire was in an enviable position in nearly every regard. It had a strong, centralized system of administration, broad legitimacy throughout the Islamic world, and, perhaps most importantly, a powerful army centered on the Abna, the descendants of the Khurasani Arabs who had supported the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyad Dynasty. Harun al- Rashid had also left it with a treasury of enviable proportions owing to a steady stream of tax revenues from both the provinces and, most importantly, the Sawad: the fabulously rich agricultural land of southern Iraq that the Abbasids controlled directly.

In one critical way, however, al-Rashid had set the stage for the weakening of Abbasid power. As was typical of caliphs at that time, he had a number of sons by different mothers, and each could advance a claim to succeed him. In many ways, this was a wise practice. Infant mortality rates were staggeringly high in pre-modern times, so having multiple potential successors was a prudent hedge against the possibility that all legitimate claimants to the throne might pre-decease the reigning caliph, a development that could, in turn, set the stage for a disputed succession and attendant political instability. At the same time, however, that approach ran a different risk. As was not infrequently the case in hereditary monarchies, the existence of a large number of legitimate successors threatened to open the door to an alternate kind of crisis in which half-brothers jockeyed for the succession or, worse, followed the caliph’s death by engaging in outright civil war.

Aware of these risks, Harun al-Rashid took two steps to ensure a smooth succession. First, he publicly declared that his son, al-Amin (r. 809-813), would succeed him as caliph. This decision was a prudent one that appeared to lay to rest the question of which son would accede to power upon al-Rashid’s death. However, his second action was considerably less sensible. He followed by announcing that another son by a different mother, al-Mamun (r. 813-833), would concurrently become the governor of the wealthy, autonomous province of Khurasan and, critically, would become al-Amin’s successor. Harun al-Rashid was not blind to the dangers inherent in this unorthodox arrangement. To ensure that al-Amin and al-Mamun abided by it, he required them to sign the Mecca Protocol in which they pledged before God that they would respect his wishes. This agreement may have satisfied the caliph, but it did little to assuage the concerns of those who doubted the wisdom of his convoluted succession scheme.

Indeed, many astute observers predicted that his decision to name an heir to an heir would cause discord between the two and produce a civil war.

They were not wrong. Though both al-Amin and al-Mamun appeared initially to be abiding by their father’s wishes, competing factions soon pushed the brothers into conflict. The growing dissension revolved around control of the lucrative tax revenues of Khurasan. The Abna lived in Baghdad and supported al-Amin and they wanted the tax revenue of their ancestral homeland to continue to come to the capital as it had since the Abbasids had overthrown the Umayyads in 750. Opposed to them were the aristocrats of Khurasan. Backing al-Mamun, they sought greater autonomy from Baghdad and wished to retain the ample tax receipts that the province generated. Engaged in a bitter contest, these competing groups quickly poisoned the waters and helped spark a war of words between al-Amin and al-Mamun. Finally, in late 810, al-Amin irrevocably broke with al-Mamun by having his son Musa named as his successor and by burning the agreement that he and his brother had signed.

At first, few observers believed that al-Mamun could win the war. Al-Amin had much deeper financial and military resources than his brother, and, importantly, he retained the loyalty of the Abna that had constituted the core of the Abbasid army for the prior seven decades. Initially both sides assumed that they were fighting not to resolve the question of which brother would reign as caliph, but instead to determine whether al-Mamun would be able to retain control of Khurasan.

However, despite al-Amin’s substantial advantages it was al-Mamun who prevailed in the civil war. Three events tipped the contest in his favor. First, after defeating al-Amin’s army in central Iran, al-Mamun’s military commander, Tahir ibn Hussein (c. 775-822) seized control of the Sawad region in a lightening campaign and thus denied al-Amin what had been his main source of revenue. Second, rifts emerged between the Abna and al-Amin’s other Arab supporters that paralyzed his effort to coordinate the resistance to his brother’s army. Finally, growing awareness that al-Amin was responsible for the rupture and had ordered his subordinates to rip up the Mecca Protocol cost him nearly all his remaining popular support. As a result, by the time that Tahir’s army surrounded Baghdad in August 812, al-Mamun had secured recognition as the rightful caliph everywhere but in the capital.

Still, the war dragged on. Indeed, it was only after a grueling, thirteen-month siege that Tahir’s forces were finally able to breach the defenses and take control of the now-devastated city. In the process, al-Amin was killed while trying unsuccessfully to arrange his surrender.

To a degree, al-Mamun’s triumph turned out to be a pyrrhic one. It is true that he had defeated his brother and taken control of the throne; in the process, however, his conflict with al-Amin had grievously weakened the Abbasids’ grip on the empire. Most obviously, the dynasty had suffered its first meaningful loss of territory when the governor of the distant North African province of Tunisia, Abdallah ibn Ibrahim (r. 812- 817), took advantage of the chaos of the civil war to secure de facto independence for the Aghlabid Dynasty (812-909). More importantly, al-Mamun’s inevitable decision to disband the Abna army had left the Abbasids without a reliable military force of their own. As a result, the new caliph had no choice but to enter into a relationship with the Tahir family to secure its continued military support. According to the understanding that they worked out, the Tahirids would rule Khurasan and much of the eastern part of the caliphate as autonomous, junior partners of the ruling dynasty; in exchange, they would provide the caliphate with the military force needed to maintain control of the empire.

In the short term, this arrangement proved to be mutually beneficial. While Tahir assumed control of Khurasan and its abundant tax revenue, his capable son, Abd Allah (c. 798-c. 845) quickly restored caliphal authority over Syria, Egypt, and other parts of the empire that had broken away from the central government during the civil war. At the same time, however, dependence on the Tahirids for military support put the Abbasids in a very precarious position: without their own troops, they were vulnerable to being displaced in the future by their militarily powerful junior partners.

Al-Mutasim

Al-Mamun’s younger brother, al-Mutasim (r. 833-842), came up with an innovative and effective solution to this dilemma. In the decade following al-Amin’s defeat, he began to purchase Turkish slaves and to organize them into an army. The Turks made excellent soldiers. Hailing from Central Asia, they were a tough, nomadic people who were highly skilled in the sophisticated military tactics of the steppes. It is important to understand that they were not slaves in the traditional sense. On the contrary, though legally considered to be the property of the caliph, they lived as free men of high status and earned an enviable salary.

Disciplined, powerful, and, above all, highly loyal, al-Mutasim’s small but rapidly growing army paid substantial dividends for the dynasty. In the immediate aftermath of the civil war, it proved vital in helping al-Mamun to restore caliphal authority to the empire. Later, as the only military formation that the Abbasids directly controlled, it gave the dynasty a force that could balance the Tahirids’ powerful army, ensuring, in the process, that the ruling family would not find themselves pawns of their junior partners. Indeed, al-Mamun perceived the new army to be of such critical importance to the dynasty’s independence that he felt compelled in the late 820s to name al-Mutasim rather than his own son, al-Abbas, as his successor.

The new force of Turkish slave soldiers played a large part in impelling al- Mutasim to make the fateful decision to relocate the seat of government soon after he became caliph in 833. The proximate cause of the move was the bitter resentment that the Abna felt toward the Turks who had replaced them in the caliph’s army. Angry at their loss of social and economic status, they had begun to vent their frustration by assaulting and even murdering Turkish soldiers in the streets of the capital. Less immediate but equally important in spurring the move was the fact that Baghdad was already fully built out and thus lacked the room needed to house and train his new troops. Accordingly, in 835, al-Mutasim decided to move the army, palace, and bureaucracy to a new city, Samarra, located 130 kilometers north of Baghdad along the banks of the Tigris River.

At first, the shift to Samarra was an unalloyed success. The move ended the attacks on al-Mutasim’s Turkish soldiers and provided him with ample land on which to house and train his new army. Moreover, the benefits of the relocation were not limited to the military, moving the capital to Samarra paid substantial political dividends as well. Most notably, doing so gave al-Mutasim access to a new source of patronage that he could use to maintain the support of key aristocrats: developable land. Prior to the relocation, he had acquired at essentially no cost title to all of the property in and around Samarra, which, by virtue of its proximity to the new seat of power, was now of inestimable value. He then used it to secure the continued support of the elite by carefully doling it out to his most loyal supporters.

Anarchy in Samarra

However, the advantages inherent in the move to Samarra proved to be transitory. By the 860s, successive Abbasid caliphs found themselves virtual prisoners in their new capital. What accounted for this dramatic change in circumstance? At root, the Abbasids’ worsening situation in Samarra was a function of the seemingly inevitable intrusion of the slave-soldiers into politics. The trouble began in 861 when a group of Turkish leaders learned that Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) was planning to depose them and seize their wealth. In desperation, they moved to defend their position by murdering him at a drinking party and by replacing him with his son, whom they believed they could more easily control. This event was a watershed moment for the Abbasids. It initiated a nine-year period of anarchy in Samarra wherein successive caliphs, isolated from their supporters, could neither assert their control over the government nor arrest the growing power of the slave-soldiers.

Unsurprisingly, the chaos did not remain limited to Samarra. Instead, it sparked a vicious cycle across the caliphate that bred yet further disorder. Instability in the capital allowed warlords, strongmen and even provincial governors to establish de facto independent states on the periphery of the empire, in the process denying the central government the tax receipts it needed to meet the demands of the increasingly restive slave soldiers. Frustrated by their inability to get the money they felt they deserved, the Turks would respond by violently deposing the reigning caliph in favor of a candidate who they believed would be more pliable and therefore more likely to pay them. The rapid change in leadership would then further weaken the central government and permit even more regional leaders to secure autonomy, thus perpetuating the cycle.

The result was anarchy on a grand scale. With the Turks making and unmaking caliphs with abandon, no fewer than four men sat on the throne between 861 and 870, all of whom died violently at the hands of their slave soldiers when they proved unable to come up with the revenue that the Turks demanded. Thus, by the late 860s, the Abbasids found themselves in dire circumstances. They had lost authority over large parts of the empire and had become prisoners of their angry and rebellious troops.

The Abbasid Revival

That Abbasid rule continued after that 860s owed largely to the efforts of one man: prince al-Muwaffaq (842-891). Though he never formally held the title of caliph, he served as the de facto regent and the power behind the throne from 870 until his death in 891. In that capacity, he took several critical actions to restore the dynasty’s position. First, he moved to revive Abbasid fortunes by placating the soldiers. Having a military background and a strong relationship with the army, al-Muwaffaq was able to end the anarchy in Samarra and bring the Turks back into the fold by reassuring them both that they would retain their position as the core of Abbasid military power and that the government would pay their salaries on a regular basis. The restoration of order in Samarra and subsequent relocation of the government back to Baghdad set the stage for his second action: the reestablishment of Abbasid authority over the empire’s many rebellious provinces and breakaway states. Here, too, al-Muwaffaq enjoyed substantial success. In 870, the dynasty had controlled little more than northern and central Iraq; by the time of his death in 891, in contrast, it had regained control over western Iran, most of Syria, and southern Iraq.

The Abbasids were never able to reassert the central government’s authority over the rest of the empire, however. As noted earlier, rebels, outsiders, and regional governors had exploited the paralysis in Samarra during the 860s, to carve independent fiefdoms out of the empire’s peripheral territory. In 868, for instance, the governor of Egypt, Ahmad ibn Tulun (r. 868-884), had established the independent Tulunid Dynasty (868-905); a few years later, Ismail Samani (r. 892-907) followed suit by consolidating the existing Saminid Dynasty (819-1005) in the eastern province of Transoxiana. More troublingly, in 861, a rogue coppersmith named Yaqub al-Saffar (r. 861-879) had established the Saffarid Dynasty (861-1003) when he took control of the province of Sistan, located along the border between modern-day Iran and Afghanistan. Exploiting the instability in the capital, he moved quickly to acquire additional territory in the east. Most notably, al-Saffar was able to take possession of the Tahirid capital of Nishapur in 873, in the process ending the sixty-year long partnership between the Tahirids and the Abbasids.

It is important to note that none of these states publicly declared that they were independent of the central government. Both regional leaders and caliphs alike saw value in upholding the fiction that the local dynasties ruled as subordinates of the Abbasids. Regional rulers such as the Samanids acquired legitimacy through this arrangement, while the caliphs enhanced their much-diminished status by being able to claim authority over their nominal subordinates’ territories. In reality, of course, caliphal power had diminished greatly. Claims to the contrary aside, the local dynasties that emerged in the late-ninth and early-tenth centuries were independent states in all but name. In reality, real caliphal authority did not, and never again would, extend beyond Iraq, western Iran, and parts of Syria.

The revival that al-Muwaffaq had spearheaded began to slow and then regress in the early tenth century. Fiscal issues accounted for this reversal of fortune. A combination of mismanagement, adverse environmental change, and the destruction of critical irrigation works in the civil wars and revolts of the ninth and early-tenth centuries had dramatically reduced agricultural productivity in the vital Sawad and thus the tax yield on which Abbasid rule depended. To offset the decline of this critical revenue stream, the government resorted to fiscal expediencies such as tax farming: the practice of selling the right to collect state revenue in a province to private individuals. In the short run, this arrangement benefited the government by supplying the treasury with an upfront infusion of cash, since the practice encouraged the tax farmers to squeeze as much revenue out of the province as they could. However, it depressed economic activity in the long run and thus came at the cost of substantially diminished future tax receipts.

By the 920s, the bill for the caliphate’s fiscal imprudence had come due. Put simply, the regime lacked the revenue needed to maintain the cost of the palace and the army. The result was renewed chaos in the capital. Now compelled to get by with greatly diminishing resources, the central government experienced a new round of factional infighting and civil war capped by the murder of the incompetent Caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908-932). Nominal subordinates of the central government were quick to pounce.

Taking advantage of the paralysis in Baghdad, provincial governors and others established de facto independent states in Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran. As a result, by the early 930s the caliph controlled little more than the capital and its immediate surroundings.

The Buyids

The end of caliphal autonomy finally came in 945. That year, the Buyids, a new, Shiʿa dynasty that originated on the south shore of the Caspian Sea, took advantage of the instability in Baghdad to seize the capital. Dynamic and powerful, the Buyids quickly reversed the collapse of central authority that had begun under al-Muqtadir, adding Iraq and large parts of Syria to their existing possessions in east and central Iran.

Though its rule did not last very long, the Buyid Dynasty would have an enduring impact on other medieval Muslim states. Three of its governing practices would prove to be especially influential. First, aware that they lacked broad public support because of their adherence to Shiʿism, they opted not to depose the Abbasids but instead sought to legitimate their rule by pretending to govern in the name of the caliph. The Abbasids thus continued to reign as figureheads, as they would under future regimes, while a succession of Buyids wielded real power under the title amir al-umara, or Commander of the Commanders. Second, building on fiscal changes that had begun in the caliphate in the ninth century, the Buyid Dynasty put an end to the Abbasid tradition of having a central bureaucracy direct the affairs of the state and oversee the collection and distribution of taxes. Instead, it adopted a highly decentralized, tax farming arrangement wherein it divided its territory into semi-feudal land grants called iqtas that it then sold to military leaders. Iqta holders were obliged to provide military service to the state and to forward a reduced share of the tax revenue they collected to Baghdad; in exchange, they retained the bulk of the taxes that their iqta generated. Finally, the Buyids expanded and institutionalized the practice of recruiting slave soldiers that the Abbasids had begun.

The Buyids’ semi-feudal, decentralized political system rapidly caught on. Other contemporary dynasties in the Middle East and Central Asia such as the Ghaznavids (977-1186) quickly adopted it, and it soon became the basic political structure that all subsequent medieval Muslim states would adopt. That it proved so influential is perhaps surprising in light of the fact that it had significant shortcomings. Three stand out. First, predictably, the decentralization of power produced internecine conflict among military leaders that helped to undermine the stability of the Buyid state. Second, the iqtas proved to have the same costs and benefits typical of other tax-farming systems: while they provided the central government with a short-term infusion of revenue, they did so at the expense of long-term income. Finally, because the iqtas were revocable, the system encouraged those who held them to pursue quick profits at the expense of long- term agricultural productivity, a change that accelerated the increasingly precipitous decline of the Iraqi economy that had begun in the ninth century.

The Fatimid Challenge

While the Buyids downplayed their Twelver beliefs to mollify their Sunni subjects, another Shiʿa dynasty, the Fatimids, initially flaunted their religion and explicitly declared their intention to replace the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate with an Ismaʿili Shiʿa one. This new dynasty originated in the late-ninth century with a Syrian man named Ubayd Allah (r. 909-934). Claiming descent from Imam Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil (c. 740-813), and, thus, from Ali ibn Talib (r. 656-661) and the dynasty’s namesake, Muhammad’s daughter Fatima (605-632), he declared publicly his intention to replace the Sunni caliphate with a Shiʿia one. Finding Syria inhospitable due to its close proximity to the Abbasids’ seat of power in Iraq, he sent emissaries to the fringes of the Muslim world to search for an appropriate place to start his revolution. He found it in Tunisia. The Amazigh (Berbers) who lived in the interior of that region were both receptive to Ismaʿili Shi’ism and, just as important, resentful of the ruling Aghlabid Dynasty. Accordingly, Ubayd Allah left Syria in the early-tenth century for Tunisia, where, after a brief campaign, his local troops succeeded in overthrowing the Aghlabids. He followed by assuming the title of Mahdi and by declaring the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate.

Tunisia was a good starting point for Ubayd Allah, but it was too far away from the heart of the Muslim world to launch an effective challenge to the Abbasids. The Fatimids consequently set their sights on conquering the wealthy and populous province of Egypt, from which they could more effectively contest Abbasid dominance. Early efforts were unsuccessful, and for a time the dynasty appeared to be fated to remain little more than a bit player on the periphery of the caliphate. However, the Fatimids’ situation changed quickly in the 960s. A combination of political instability and famine had grievously weakened the Ikhshidid Dynasty (935-969) that had ruled Egypt since 935. Astutely sensing the province’s weakness, the Fatimid general Jawhar seized Egypt in a nearly bloodless coup de main in 969. He followed his victory by ordering the construction of a new capital, Cairo. Four years later, the Fatimid caliph, al- Muizz (r. 953-975), relocated his government to the city and declared forthrightly that the dynasty intended to displace the Abbasids as the leaders of the Muslim world.

As a result of its astute economic policies, his dynasty appeared for a time to be poised to achieve that ambitious goal. Most notably, a crash program of infrastructure construction and the suppression of pirates allowed the Fatimids to shift the western terminus of the lucrative, long-distance Indian Ocean trade from Iraq to Egypt, a change that produced a dramatic increase in tax receipts. The bulk of the new revenue went to the expansion of the army and navy, which gave the Fatimids the strength to seize control of the Hijaz and most of Syria. However, they did not spend all of their fiscal windfall on the military, instead, they devoted a substantial share of their newfound tax wealth to the goal of burnishing the dynasty’s image in the Muslim world. As part of that effort, the Fatimids constructed the al-Azhar Mosque, a magnificent center of learning in Cairo, and moved to ensure the safety of the hajj pilgrims by paying off the Bedouin tribes that had been attacking the caravans traveling to Mecca. For a time, these initiatives were enormously successful. Indeed, by the year 1000, the Fatimids seemed to be well on their way to displacing the Abbasids as the rulers of a universal caliphate.

The dynasty’s success in the tenth century did not continue in the eleventh, however. Instead, thanks to a combination of internal and external challenges, the Fatimids’ efforts to supplant the Abbasids soon ground to a standstill. Three issues combined to stymie the dynasty. First, the Fatimids found themselves limited by the enduring appeal and deep roots of Sunni Islam. Ismaʿili missionaries did enjoy some success in spreading Shiʿism in Syria, but, on balance, they gained little traction among the Sunni majority that dominated the heart of the Islamic world. Ironically, they had even less success in Egypt. There, however, the failure to win converts was less a function Shiʿism’s lack of appeal than of the Fatimids desire to avoid taking actions that might spark dissension at home. Second, early in the eleventh century, the Fatimids adopted a slave-based military patterned on the system that the Buyids employed. The Turkic and African slave soldiers they purchased fought well and ensured the dynasty’s continued military success; however, they also undermined the regime from within, first when they began to engage in debilitating factional intrigue and then, in the 1060s and 1070s, when they waged outright civil war among themselves. Finally, the Fatimids faced two serious political challenges in the Muslim world. From the west came a reinvigorated Umayyad dynasty and in the east the dynamic and powerful Turkic Seljuq Empire.

Reemergence of the Umayyad Caliphate

As we saw earlier, a couple of male members of the Umayyad dynasty had escaped the fate of the rest of the family and one, Abd al-Rahman, had eventually made his way to al-Andalus and had set himself up as emir in the southern city of Cordoba. Despite seeing the Abbasid caliph as a usurper, the Umayyads did not initially challenge the tradition that there could only be one caliph, by trying to claim the title for themselves. Indeed, ‘Abd al-Rahman actually allowed the Abbasid caliph to be named during the weekly khutba, a portion of which consists of a prayer containing the name of the ruling caliph. This was probably at first an unthinking accident on the part of the Umayyad prince and once a recently arrived relative pointed out the absurdity of the situation he had the practice discontinued. It was only until over a century later, when ‘Abd al-Rahman III al-Nasir finally proclaimed himself caliph, that the practice of inserting the caliph’s name in the Friday prayer would be resurrected.

The rule of ‘Abd al-Rahman I (756-788) and his immediate successors would never extend much further than the boundaries of Cordoba as frequent revolts and rivals would consistently weaken the central government. This weakness, as well as the distance of Cordoba from the core areas of the Abbasids, might very well be why the reigning caliphs in Baghdad did not try harder to finish the eradication of the Umayyads that had begun during the revolution. Since the Umayyads were not seen as such a large threat, and since the Abbasids themselves were still consolidating their own authority, the cost of sending a large force such a great distance could have been ruled too great to be justifiable.

Even though the legitimacy of Abd al-Rahman to rule was provided by his pedigree, that does not mean that he had an easy time consolidating his authority. Though the old emir was no longer a distraction, there were still many members of the Arab aristocracy in al-Andalus who did not take kindly to this outsider exercising authority over them. The Amazigh tribes were also not too keen on the idea of being under a new, Arab, master. Though they had initially been supportive of Abd al-Rahman, they proved to be his most persistent antagonists, carrying on guerrilla warfare against him for many years until 776.

In addition to internal competition from fellow Muslims, Abd al-Rahman I also had to be aware of the Christian powers of Western Europe.  In this period the domestic Christians were of minor consequence. The tiny kingdom of Asturias, located in the northwestern portion of the peninsula, was for the time being of little concern to the Muslim monarch. However, his successors might have in hindsight wished that Abd al-Rahman would have crushed the kingdom before it evolved into the mighty dual kingdoms of Leon and Castile. There were also local Christians known as Mozarabs (mast’arab or: pseudo Arabs), but for the most part they had integrated into society.

The real threat from Christians, if it did in fact manifest during this period, would come from the northeast, over the Pyrenees Mountains. When the attack finally did come in 778, it would be led by Charlemagne. The great Frankish leader had been invited into the Iberian Peninsula by the governor of Zaragoza, who was in turn working on behalf of the Abbasid caliph. Charlemagne made his way into the peninsula by way of the pass of Roncesvalles during the spring. He had an easy time until he reached the gates of Zaragoza, where the governor’s lieutenant refused him admittance. Charlemagne set in for a siege, but shortly into it, he received word that the Saxons were revolting against his rule. Charlemagne left for the north, having not really accomplished anything, especially in respect to Abd al-Rahman.

The departure of Charlemagne would be remembered in The Song of Roland, an epic French work that portrayed the destruction of the Frankish rear guard by a “Muslim” force (though in actuality it was probably Christian Basques). Neither Charlemagne nor his successors would ever threaten al-Andalus again. The aborted attempt to reduce the power of the new Umayyad emir actually had the opposite effect.

Abd al-Rahman at first tried to work with those he had conquered, but due to the many conspiracies and rebellions he constantly faced, his policy changed to rule by an iron fist. Though he had to spend most of his thirty-two-year long reign putting down the revolts, both domestically and externally organized, of his new subjects, by the end of his reign al-Andalus would become centralized, a trend that would continue for the next two and a half centuries.

Though the military aspect of the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman I is the central component of this time period, it must also be noted that he also found time to patronize the arts and architecture. As we have seen, part of being a leader in the Islamic world was at least portraying yourself as an intellectual by having a large library. Abd al Rahman didn’t have to pretend as the library at Cordoba was said to rival even the Bayt al-Hikmah. Also, even though its construction was not completed until the reign of his son Hisham I, the Great Mosque of Cordoba was begun by the first Umayyad emir. This beautiful specimen of architecture can still be viewed in Cordoba in modern times, though its function was shifted, and its structure modified, to that of a Christian church after the fall of the city to the Christian king Ferdinand III of Castille in 1263.

Abd al-Rahman I and his immediate successors were able to establish control over lands in central al-Andalus, yet their hold was never more than tenuous at best. This situation would continue until ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) became the Emir of Cordoba.  Over his fifty-year reign, Abd al-Rahman III would have many military successes and would finally reestablish his family’s claim to the caliphal title in 929.

Abd al-Rahman III, would continue to rule from Cordoba for another thirty-two years after being proclaimed caliph. However, Al-Andalus as an Umayyad state would not long outlive ‘Abd al-Rahman III. Upon his death in 961, the caliphate passed to his son al-Hakam II (961-976). During the fifteen years of his reign, al-Hakam II would rule over a fairly peaceful realm that was on good terms with its northern Christian neighbors. The caliphate of Cordoba was the wealthiest, the most politically centralized and was militarily the strongest political unit on the Iberian Peninsula and was recognized as such at the time.

The prestige enjoyed by the Umayyad caliphs would abruptly end in 976 when al-Hakam died leaving as his heir a ten-year-old Hisham II (976-1009). Court intrigue and attempted coups were common during this transitional period. Although ultimately Hisham II would retain his position, he would now be under the tutelage of the wazir al-Mushafi and a little known court functionary Ibn Abi Amir, who would rise to prominence and become known to the world as Almanzor.

From his position of power, Almanzor would create an army of Amazigh mercenaries, who he would use to break the power of the Arab tribes, reconstituting them into multi-tribal units who would have loyalty only to him. With this army Almanzor would be able to control his more unruly subjects and keep the Christians fairly quiet in the north. Additionally, Almanzor used his steadily growing power to keep any sort of authority out of the hands of Hisham II, who was more than happy to let another run the affairs of state. Though the title of caliph must have been tempting, Almanzor never appropriated it for himself. By doing this, he was able to at least nominally show that the rightful caliph, Hisham II, was still the legitimate authority and that he was only acting with the authority that had been given to him.

In 1002 Almanzor died, setting off a chain of complicated events that would destroy the unity of the Islamic realm in the Iberian Peninsula. Almanzor would leave the rule of al-Andalus to his son (Abd al-Malik), who continued to rule in the name of an acquiescent Hisham II. Though he would attempt to continue his father’s military strategies and policies, he would shortly be the victim of illness, some chroniclers report poison, and die in 1008. Abd al-Malik was in turn succeeded by his politically inept brother, who proceeded to have Hisham confirm him as heir presumptive to the caliphal title.

Not ready to be ousted from their privileged position, other members of the Umayyad family rose up against the potential usurper in 1009, capturing and executing him. Hisham II was then forced to abdicate in favor of a kinsman which led to fighting and instituted a domino effect of assassinations and coups that would lead to a succession of eight caliphs between 1013 and 1031. The deposition of Hisham III (1027-1031) would see the end of the caliphate of Cordoba, with the Muslim aristocracy deciding to abolish the office of caliph. This act would usher in the period of taifa (party) kingdoms and spell the end of a unified al-Andalus and the emergence of the Christian kingdoms as the growing and often dominant force on the peninsula.

The Seljuq Turks

To the east of the Fatimids, the militarily powerful Seljuq Dynasty would profoundly alter the Middle East despite the fact that it dominated the region for only a relatively brief period. It originated among the powerful Oghuz Turks who lived east of the Aral Sea. Led by the dynasty’s namesake, the warlord Seljuq a group of Oghuz Turks migrated south in the late-tenth century to Transoxiana where they adopted Sunni Islam. Under Seljuq’s capable grandsons, the dynasty followed by conquering Khurasan and much of Iran before seizing Baghdad from the Buyids in 1055. Continued expansion westward soon brought them into conflict with the formidable Fatimid Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire. These, too, proved no match for the Seljuqs. Under the able direction of Alp Arslan (r. 1063-1072) and his son, Malik Shah (r. 1072- 1092), the Sunni Seljuqs handily drove the Fatimids out of Syria and wrested control of Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire. As a result, by the time of Malik Shah’s death, the Seljuq Empire stood without question as the most powerful state in the Middle East.

However, Seljuq success was not entirely without problems. The rapid expansion into the Muslim homeland created significant cultural friction between the Arabs and the Turkic newcomers. This situation may sound surprising in light of the fact that the Arabs had substantial experience interacting with Turkic slave soldiers. However, the enslaved Turks who served in the military had been relatively small in numbers and were generally taken as children. They thus had little connection with the culture into which they had been born and generally adapted to the customs of the Arab majority.

Retaining the cultural practices of Turkic Central Asia and adhering to Islam in only the broadest sense, the Seljuq Turks were a different story altogether. In the eyes of educated, urban Arabs, the newcomers were violent, undisciplined brutes who knew little of either Islamic law or the finer points of culture; as a result, Seljuq rule produced rumbles of discontent among the empire’s Arab majority.

In response, the Seljuq Dynasty made a deliberate effort to ingratiate itself with its Arab subjects. This campaign had three components. First, taking a page from the Buyids, the dynasty sought to legitimate Turkic rule by retaining the Abbasids as figureheads. Tughril thus did not declare himself caliph but instead adopted the title of sultan; a derivative of the Arabic word for authority. This indicated that the dynasty accepted the continuation of the caliphate while simultaneously making clear who held real power. Second, in an effort to win over the influential religious scholars, the Seljuqs signaled their embrace of education, culture, and Sunni orthodoxy by constructing and supporting religious colleges called madrasas. Finally, to overcome the Turks’ reputation for crudeness and violence, the new rulers restored order and rebuilt damaged infrastructure. These initiatives proved successful. Coupled with the Seljuqs’ ability to establish direct control over most of the caliphate, they satisfied the Sunni Arabs’ desire for continuity and orthodoxy and, importantly, seemed to suggest that the new rulers were in the process of reestablishing the universal empire that, since the ninth century, had existed only in name.

Ultimately, that conclusion proved to be inaccurate. The Seljuq family would continue to play a significant role in the Middle East for another century and a half following Malik Shah’s rule, but it did not oversee the restoration of a genuinely unified caliphate. Instead, shortly after Malik Shah’s death, the Seljuq state fragmented into a series of squabbling principalities. What caused the sudden splintering of the Seljuq Empire at a time when it faced little external pressure or internal unrest? Multiple factors played a role in its collapse, but the dominant one by far was the Turkic system of inheritance that the Seljuqs had brought with them from the steppes. Rather than practicing primogeniture wherein a single successor inherited the entirety of a political entity, the Turks followed a system of appanage in which families considered their holdings to be collectively held but individually administered. This arrangement functioned well enough when the dynasty was controlled by powerful figures who had the authority and respect needed to assign territories among their relations and to compel them to follow their commands. However, it did not work when the ruling family lacked a forceful leader. Such was the case following Malik Shah’s death in 1092. When no dominant figure emerged to oversee the Seljuq realm, it quickly fractured among his brothers, sons, nephews, grandsons, and generals into a collection of petty, warring states.

The Caliphate Divided

The breakup of the Seljuq Empire at the end of the eleventh century marked the culmination of the process of division and devolution in the caliphate that had begun during the civil war between al-Amin and al-Mamun. The changes that occurred during that period were far-reaching and produced a political, economic, and social environment that was dramatically different from that which had existed at the start of the ninth century. The political transformation of the caliphate was the most obvious.

While the idea of the universal caliphate endured, the umma was no longer unified; instead, it was divided into numerous competing states including no fewer than three dynasties that claimed to be the legitimate rulers of the Muslim world: the Abbasids in Baghdad, the Fatimids in Cairo, and, after, 929, the revived Umayyads in Spain. Significant social changes paralleled the political decline of the caliphate. Most notably, the slave-recruited Turkic troops that al-Mutasim had introduced and that the Buyids had popularized had gradually displaced the Arab elite that had made up the bureaucrats, Abna soldiers, and landowners who had dominated the empire during the early years of the Abbasid Dynasty. Finally, civil war, instability, and the spread of the iqta system did grievous harm to large parts of the Middle Eastern economy with Iraq suffering the greatest decline. In sum, the period from 809 to the end of the eleventh century had been a time of volatility and conflict, one that contrasted sharply with the stability, security, and unity that had existed at the end of Harun al-Rashid’s reign.

The Crusades

That the Middle East had fragmented politically toward the end of the eleventh century was a stroke of good fortune for the crusading European knights who were about to mount a series of attacks on the region. Derived from the Latin word crucesignatus, meaning “signed with the cross,” the term crusade denoted an armed, penitential pilgrimage organized and legitimated under the aegis of the Medieval Catholic Church. An innovation of the late-eleventh century, crusading was a broad phenomenon in both spatial and temporal terms. Indeed, over the next few centuries, Western European knights would undertake crusades in places as disparate as Eastern Europe, Spain, Italy, and the south of France. Throughout the period, however, the campaigns waged against the Muslims of the Middle East remained by far the most important crusades.

Origins

The Crusades were very much a product of the culture of Late Medieval Europe. They originated in the last decade of the eleventh century when a particular sequence of events, ideals, and needs came together to make them possible. While many of these factors were intrinsic to the culture of Western Europe, the proximate cause of the Crusades, the troubled situation in which Byzantium suddenly found itself in the last third of the eleventh century, was extrinsic. To understand the impetus for the Crusades, therefore, we must now briefly review the history of the Byzantine Empire in the centuries that followed the Arab Conquest.

For some time after the Arabs had irrupted from the desert, the Byzantines had confronted a remarkable combination of problems. Indeed, over the ensuing two centuries, they experienced what surely must have seemed to contemporaries like an endless series of political, economic, religious, and, especially, military crises. By the early ninth century, as a result, the once might Eastern Roman Empire had been reduced to a weak, regional power that controlled little more than Anatolia and a few scattered possessions in the Balkans.

However, not long thereafter, the dark times passed, and the Byzantine state began to recover. Its revival was multifaceted. Politically, the establishment of the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056) initiated a nearly two-century-long period in which a sequence of capable emperors provided effective leadership in Constantinople. Militarily, the maturation of the Theme System, a decentralized, semi-feudal structure of administration and recruitment established in the seventh century, had produced a capable, well-motivated army composed of farmer-soldiers who safeguarded their local provinces. Highly effective at defense, the Theme System military gave the empire the ability to reassert control of the southern Balkans and to stabilize the frontier with the Abbasid Caliphate. Economically, finally, the restoration of secure borders and the reestablishment of political stability set the stage for a period of sustained growth that dramatically improved the fiscal position of the state.

With the empire on a solid footing for the first time since the start of the seventh century, its leaders moved to recover some of the territory that their predecessors had lost. The founder of the Macedonian Dynasty, Basil I (r. 867-886), initiated this effort by reconquering southern Italy. Over the next century and a half, a succession of emperors followed suit with similar wars of reconquest. Relying on powerful new, heavy-cavalry units called tagmata, they regained control of Crete, Cyprus, southeast Asia Minor, and northern Syria, including the important city of Antioch.

Under Basil II (r. 976-1025), Byzantium’s revival reached its apogee. Abroad, his defeat of the Bulgars extended the empire’s border to the Danube River for the first time in four centuries and gave Constantinople uncontested control of a belt of territory stretching from southern Italy in the west to the Euphrates River in the east. At home, his reign coincided with a time of economic growth, political stability, and religious harmony. Indeed, his rule capped what had been a remarkable comeback, one that left Byzantium more stable, unified, and secure than it had been at any point since Justinian the Great (r. 527-565) had sat on the throne in the sixth century.

However, the empire’s revival came to an abrupt halt in 1071. At the Battle of Manzikert fought that year in eastern Anatolia, Alp Arslan’s Turkic warriors not only defeated the Byzantine army but also captured Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (r. 1068-1071). The engagement was neither a complete rout as earlier generations of historians had once described it, nor a defeat from which the empire could not recover; after all, it had weathered similar setbacks in the past. For two reasons, however, Manzikert turned out to be a fundamental turning point for the Byzantine state. First, the growing emphasis on the mobile, tagmata forces in the tenth and eleventh centuries had come at the expense of the Themes System army. As a consequence, by 1071 the empire no longer had the capable local military formations that had proven so effective at defending Byzantine territory in the eighth and ninth centuries and thus lacked the forces needed to prevent Seljuq troops from exploiting their victory. Second, the struggle to replace Romanus IV Diogenes failed to produce a quick winner; instead, it dragged on for a decade as Byzantine factions waged a vicious contest for control of the throne.

This divisiveness was a gift to the Seljuqs. With the Byzantine elite focused so intently on the internal contest for power, the empire’s borders, particularly its eastern frontiers, lay all-but undefended. Alp Arslan and his successor, Malik Shah, were well aware of the situation, and wasted no time in taking advantage of it to grab imperial territory. As a result, by the early 1090s the Seljuqs had taken control of nearly all of Anatolia, the territory that for centuries had constituted the Byzantine Empire’s beating heart.

Despite the dire situation, the empire somehow managed to stage yet another comeback. It began with the accession of Alexius Comnenus (r. 1081-1118) to the throne in 1081. The victor in the struggle for power that had marked the 1070s, he was determined to restore the empire and to recover the territory it had lost over the prior decade. That task would not prove to be an easy one, as Byzantine weakness had drawn the attention of a number of predatory states. Not only were the Seljuqs continuing to chip away at his territory in Anatolia, but Normans under Robert Guiscard (c. 1015-1085) and his son, Bohemond (c. 1054-1111) had launched an invasion of Greece the same year that Alexius had become emperor. Worse, powerful Pecheneg nomads invaded the northern Balkans in 1090. The situation was grim to say the least.

Fortunately for the empire, Alexius was a peculiarly capable leader who had the savoir faire and cunning to see it through this difficult time. Working tirelessly, he moved to restore the army by revamping military recruitment and by reforming the system of tax collection, and he pursued well-designed diplomatic initiatives designed to secure allies for the now-weakened empire. These efforts were successful. With critical assistance from the Venetians, his restructured army managed to drive the Normans out of Greece in 1085. More spectacularly, in conjunction with the nomadic Cuman people, it achieved a decisive victory over the Pechenegs in 1091 and thus restored Byzantine control of the Balkans.

With the European situation stabilized, Alexius next set his sights on regaining control of Anatolia. Conditions looked favorable for such an undertaking. As we have seen, the Seljuq Empire had split into a series of competing principalities and statelets controlled by rival members of the ruling dynasty following Malik Shah’s death in 1092; as a result, a Byzantine campaign in Anatolia would face a sharply divided enemy rather than the unified one that Arp Arslan had commanded. Even in division, however, Seljuq forces in the region remained strong relative to the still-recovering Byzantine army. The empire would thus need help if it hoped to overcome the Turks and regain its lost territories. Alexius had already identified the ideal force to provide that assistance: the heavy, lance-armed knights of Western Europe. Though he had emerged victorious, the emperor had nonetheless been immensely impressed by the power of those mounted warriors when he had fought them in Greece in the 1080s. In fact, he had come to conclude that a small force of such troops would give his army the extra punch it needed to beat the Seljuqs. The next step was to figure out how to acquire them. The political situation in Western Europe at the time was a mess and to make an alliance with one kingdom could lead to making potential enemies with its neighbors. Accordingly, he wrote a letter to Pope Urban II (r. 1088- 1099) in 1095 formally requesting the pontiff’s assistance in arranging for a contingent of knights to help his army regain the empire’s lost territory in Anatolia.

The First Crusade

His request for aid found a warm reception in Rome. Urban II had been in contact with Alexius for several years and was increasingly excited about the prospects of sending a force of knights to the east. However, the pope’s enthusiasm did not stem from a desire to help Alexius regain control of Anatolia. Rather, it emerged out of his belief that the emperor’s appeal could be repurposed to justify a project of vastly greater scale and significance: the conquest of the Holy Land from the Muslims. In other words, rather than taking Alexius’s request for what it was, a comparatively modest appeal for military assistance from one medieval lord to another, Urban II instead chose to use it as a pretext to mobilize the forces of Western Europe for a religious war against the Muslims states in the Middle East.

Success would allow Urban II to achieve three of the eleventh-century Vatican’s most cherished goals. First, commanding Christian nobles to wage war in the east would powerfully strengthen the papacy’s hotly contested claim that the pope rather than the Holy Roman Emperor was the head of the Church. Second, assisting the Byzantine Empire might end the schism that in 1054 had divided the Church into Eastern Orthodox and Catholic branches on terms favorable to the papacy. Finally, sending a large army to the Middle East raised the possibility of achieving an objective that the papacy had, with growing enthusiasm, recently begun to contemplate: the return of Jerusalem, site of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, to Christian control.

To win support for a holy war in the Middle East, Urban II went on a recruiting tour in 1095 capped by a massive gathering of nobles at Clermont in France. At the rally, he gave an impassioned address in which he called on the assembled aristocrats to organize a military campaign aimed at retaking control of Jerusalem. He was well aware that he was asking a great deal. Such an operation would come at substantial expense to those who participated in it and would take years to complete. Indeed, a similar proposal by one of his predecessors in the 1070s had met with a cool reception among nobles who were keenly aware of the costs that they would shoulder in undertaking such a complex and lengthy operation. Accordingly, Urban II carefully framed the expedition in a way that maximized its appeal to the aristocrats. Playing on the religious sentiment of the assembled lords, he characterized it not as a traditional military campaign, but instead as an armed, penitential pilgrimage. Critically, he also declared that those who participated would be absolved of all their sins.

This last provision was a peculiarly powerful inducement to the men gathered at Clermont owing to a dilemma that had long bedeviled members of their class. On the one hand, the masculinity-driven social code that they followed impelled them to wage ceaseless warfare against each other; on the other, the religious doctrines to which they adhered held that the violence they committed in those conflicts would condemn them to eternal damnation. Urban II’s request seemed to provide a way out of this painful predicament. Taking part in an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem would not only absolve them of the many sins that they had committed but would permit them to do so in a way that was consistent with their class’s social code. Accordingly, to shouts of “‘God wills it! God wills it!’” thousands of the assembled lords at Clermont agreed to take part in a crusade that they knew would involve an expensive, multiyear trip to the Holy Land from which many would never return.

Known to historians as the First Crusade, the operation got underway in the summer of 1096. Travelling overland, the first contingent of crusaders reached the outskirts of Constantinople in the fall. With the steady arrival of further groups of knights over the winter and spring of 1097, the crusader army gradually swelled to between 30,000 and 40,000 soldiers , a substantial force by the standards of the day. It did not take long for the growing size of the crusader army encamped outside the Byzantine capital to alarm Alexius and his advisors. The force of Western soldiers was far larger than the modest contingent that the emperor had requested of Urban II and was dangerously close to the empire’s seat of power; worse, their leaders included men like Bohemond who in the 1080s had sought to take advantage of the empire’s internal problems to seize some of its territory. However, Alexius was a shrewd leader and had little trouble identifying and exploiting the crusaders’ weaknesses. Aware that they were desperately low on food and required transport across the Bosporus, he compelled them to swear fealty to him as vassals, thus limiting their autonomy and ensuring that any former Byzantine territory they won would return to imperial control. The crusaders resented Alexius’ terms but, in no position to refuse, reluctantly agreed to abide by them, though most probably had no intention to abide by them.

The military phase of the First Crusade began in earnest in the spring of 1097. After crossing the Bosporus Strait in May, the combined Byzantine-crusader army took the city of Nicaea, the capital of the Seljuk leader Kilij Arslan. However, following the victory, there was a falling out between the crusade leadership and Alexius over what they would do next. The crusades were determined to head south towards Jerusalem while Alexius wanted to regain territory along the coast of the Black Sea.

Parting ways, the crusaders continued to the source and decisively defeated a substantial Turkic force at Doryleum, thereby restoring imperial control over western Anatolia and permitting unmolested passage into Syria. The crusaders followed this victory by marching on Antioch. After a grueling nine-month siege, they succeeded in taking the city in June 1098. Much needed, the victory was a major accomplishment for the crusaders.

Coming after a difficult winter in which the knights endured food shortages, illness and the bitter cold of northern Syria, the capture of the city lifted their badly flagging morale. Perhaps more important, their successful siege permitted them to regain their independence from Alexius. Using a misunderstanding between the crusaders and the Byzantine army over the conduct of the siege as a pretext, the leaders of the First Crusade reneged on the oath of fealty that they had taken to the emperor. As a result, the city did not retrocede to Byzantine control following its capture; instead, the ranking nobles of the First Crusade agreed to name Bohemond as the prince of Antioch.

The crusaders, known as the Franj to the Muslims due to most of them coming from northern France or Germany where they were referred to as Franks, were now closing on their final goal: Jerusalem. Determined to bring the First Crusade to a successful close, they headed south in January 1099 and began to lay siege to the city on June 7. The task turned out not to be an easy one. Attrition and the need to garrison captured territory had reduced the army that arrived outside Jerusalem to the point that the crusaders lacked the strength to fully surround the city and thus could not reduce it through siege. However, only nine months earlier the city had been besieged and conquered by the Fatimids and the locals outside the city were not willing to help Jerusalem’s new masters. Though the walls had been repaired and it had a strong garrison, maybe 1000 strong, it would not be able to stand to a sustained assault. The crusaders began on July 15 by staging a major attack on one side of the city as a feint. While the defenders were focused there the crusaders brought a siege tower up to the other side of the city and breached the walls. The Fatimid garrison holed up in the Tower of David for three days and finally settled a truce which saw them safely escorted out of the city

However, the rest of the city, which contained a population of 20,000-30,000 people was not so lucky as the attack turned into a blood bath as the crusaders indiscriminately massacred all its citizens, Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. One eyewitness, Raymond of Aguilers, claimed that the slaughter was so enormous that it filled the city “with blood ‘up to their knees.’” Another firsthand observer, Fulcher of Chartres (c. 1059-1128) described a grisly scene in which crusaders burned piles of bodies in order to find gold coins that Muslims had swallowed in a vain effort to prevent the Franks from seizing their wealth.

The savagery described in these accounts has drawn a great deal of scrutiny in recent times. Many characterize the violence as extraordinary in both scale and intensity. Such interpretations are not entirely inaccurate, but they overstate the extent and uniqueness of the violence in the Holy City. In reality, the crusaders’ actions were, while lamentable, neither extraordinary nor out of character with the times. Indeed, while the prevailing code of warfare to which both Christians and Muslims adhered entitled the crusaders to slaughter every resident of the city, current best estimates indicate that they only killed between 3,000 and 5,000 people. So what explains the lurid language that Aguilers and Fulcher used in recounting the events that they witnessed? Today, most historians agree that these descriptions were no more than the exaggerations typical of a less-literal time. The accounts were meant to be evidence of the might of the crusading army, not as an accurate depiction of what actually occurred.

Over the next few years, the crusaders solidified their hold on the Holy Land. Shortly after they took Jerusalem, they extended their control of the region south of the city by defeating a Fatimid army near Ascalon in southern Palestine, an engagement that is conventionally understood to mark the end of the First Crusade. Most of the remaining Franks thereafter returned to Europe to tend to their neglected landholdings. However, a steady stream of new arrivals offset their numbers and, with naval assistance from Venice, helped the crusaders who had remained in the Holy Land to reduce the remaining Muslim-controlled coastal cities that lay between Jaffa and Antioch. The conquest of these ports established the basic structure of what Europeans had come to refer to as Outremer, or the “land overseas.” Thereafter, it occupied a thin belt of territory that extended from Ascalon in the south to the city of Edessa in the north and consisted of four states: the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa, and, most importantly, the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The First Crusade had been a remarkably successful operation and had borne fruit beyond Urban II’s wildest dreams. Though operating in hostile territory thousands of miles from their base of support, the knights who had traveled east had managed to win four major and countless minor battles against powerful enemies. In the process, they had succeeded in taking control of dozens of wealthy and often-well-defended cities. Above all, the soldiers of the First Crusade had, despite long odds, achieved Urban II’s primary aim. Jerusalem and, with it, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that marked the sites of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, were once more under Christian control.

The success of the crusaders in the 1090s was nothing short of astonishing. Just four years after the pope had called them to arms, the knights and other soldiers of the First Crusade had succeeded in traveling thousands of miles to the Holy Land and in taking possession of dozens of wealthy cities including Jerusalem. That they hailed from a comparatively impoverished corner of the globe made their victories against powerful Turkic armies supported by the wealthy and sophisticated cities and states of the Muslim Middle East even more remarkable. How did they do it? That is, what explains the remarkable achievements of the crusaders in the face of such long odds?

Ultimately, three factors account for their success. First, the heavy knights that made up the elite nucleus of the crusader armies constituted an enormously potent military force. Heavily armored and equipped with powerful lances, they were capable of mounting charges of devastating effectiveness—particularly against Turkish forces that had little experience fighting them. Second, the knights played their diplomatic cards very shrewdly. Most notably, the leaders of the First Crusade managed to lull the Fatimid dynasty into a dangerous complacency by engaging it in lengthy diplomatic talks that they terminated just weeks before their army arrived outside Jerusalem. Most importantly, the First Crusade invaded the Middle East at a time when the region was politically divided. The collapse of the Seljuq Empire following Malik Shah’s death in 1092 meant that the crusaders faced not a powerful, unified state, but instead a collection of fractious principalities. Even in the rare instances when the crusaders did confront a larger combination of enemies, they often benefited from the emergence of factionalism in their opponents’ ranks. In a battle outside Antioch in 1098, for example, the crusaders were able to achieve victory over a powerful Muslim army in part because resentful vassals abandoned their patron, the Turkic leader Kerbogha in the heat of the fight.

Luck thus played a pivotal part in the First Crusade’s success. Had its participants attacked a few years earlier or a few decades later, they would assuredly have encountered a much more unified Middle East and would very likely have found the going far-more difficult if not impossible. There is irony in this situation, for the First Crusade succeeded for the same reason that the early Arab Conquest had. In both cases, the invaders triumphed not because they were the beneficiaries of divine providence, but instead because their timing was peculiarly fortunate.

Outremer

Unsurprisingly, given the motivations of the crusaders, the rulers of Outremer made little effort to respect the rights and position of their non-Catholic subjects during the early years of Frankish rule. As they solidified control of the Holy Land toward the end of the First Crusade, for example, the crusaders had sporadically massacred non- Catholics and, to the fury of their Muslim subjects, had converted a number of religious shrines and mosques, including the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, into churches or administrative buildings. However, the crusaders’ intolerant approach to the governance of the region did not long endure. Indeed, within just a few years, the Franks who remained in the Holy Land gradually shed the religious fervor of the First Crusade in favor of a more pragmatic approach that centered on accommodation, discretion, and tolerance.

Practical needs drove the change. Weak in numbers following the return of many crusaders to Europe, the Franks recognized that they would not likely maintain control over the region’s diverse population of Muslims, Jews, non-Catholic Christians, Druze, and Alawites if they continued to mistreat those people. Likewise, they quickly came to understand that the diplomatic structure of the region would remain dangerously tilted against them if they refused to engage in the cross-cultural diplomacy needed to maintain a favorable balance of power.

The Franks’ new, more-tolerant approach took several forms. To ensure domestic tranquility, the crusaders adopted a tolerant attitude toward their non-Catholic subjects that they patterned on the Muslim approach to the dhimmi. That is, in exchange for the payment of a poll tax, they left non-Catholic Christians, Muslims, and others free to practice their religion as they saw fit, an arrangement that guaranteed both domestic stability and the steady flow of tax revenues. Diplomatically, meanwhile, they entered into mutually beneficial, cross-religious alliances with nearby Turkic rulers aimed at preserving the balance of power and thus preventing any Muslim leader from establishing a powerful, unified state that could overwhelm Outremer. Most notably, the Kingdom of Jerusalem frequently allied with the Burid Dynasty of Damascus in order to prevent the powerful ruler of Aleppo from adding that rich and strategically located city to his domain. Finally, while practical considerations had initially driven the shift to a more tolerant approach, many of the crusaders who remained in Outremer, and, especially, those born there, came to genuinely embrace the multicultural cosmopolitanism of the region. They learned new languages, adopted regional forms of dress and food, often developed a sincere appreciation for other cultures, and, in many cases, formed genuine bonds with non-Catholics. One Muslim writer, Usama ibn Munqidh (1095-1188) claimed that he could tell at a glance if a Frank was a new arrival in the region based on whether that person had adopted local forms of dress, and he noted approvingly “that ‘there are some Franks who have settled in our land and taken to living like Muslims.’” Thus, within just a few short years, the Franks who had remained in the Holy Land had all but completely abandoned the intolerance and zeal that had driven them to crusade in favor of a pragmatism that, ironically, played no small part in ensuring the success of the Crusader States during the early twelfth century.

Zengi

The states of Outremer also benefited from the fact that the response to the Crusades was initially muted. During the first third of the twelfth century, Muslim rulers made no effort whatsoever either to mount a meaningful counterattack or to organize a collective defense against the Franks. What accounted for their apparent complacency? Why did they not band together against the crusaders? To a substantial degree, the absence of a concerted Muslim response to the Crusades was a function of the same political and social fracturing that had facilitated the success of the First Crusade. Far more focused on gaining advantage against each other than on responding to the newcomers, the Turkic leaders of the principalities that adjoined Outremer generally paid little attention to the Crusader States save when they sought to enlist the Christians against their Muslim rivals.

There were, however, some who correctly grasped the intent of the crusaders. Most notably, a number of educated, urban Arab legal scholars had deduced the Franks’ goals from the start and had responded by reviving the concept of jihad to defend the Dar al-Islam. However, they lacked a relationship with or influence over the newly arrived and far-less sophisticated Turkic ruling class. Accordingly, despite their vigorous efforts, they were unsuccessful in persuading the local princes to put down their differences and join together to form a common front against the Franks.

Only with the emergence of the powerful Turkic ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, Zengi, (r. 1127-1146), would a coherent Muslim response to the Crusades begin to take shape. A shrewd leader, Zengi rose to prominence thanks to his conquest of the County of Edessa in 1144. His intentions in attacking Edessa are difficult to discern. On the one hand, his close relationship with the ulema and adoption of their language of jihad suggest that he had religious motives. On the other, evidence indicating that he acted because Edessa’s Frankish ruler had supported a rival Turkic dynasty against him suggests that his motives were more practical than ideological. Regardless, the results of his victory were the same: thereafter, Zengi was able to credibly present himself as Islam’s champion against the crusaders, a claim that won him growing support and legitimacy in the Muslim world.

While the fall of Edessa drew cheers in the Muslim world, it sent shockwaves through Outremer and Christian Europe alike. This response was merited. As we have seen, the Crusader States’ foreign policy had relied on a divide-and-conquer strategy designed to prevent the emergence of a powerful, unified Muslim state adjacent to Outremer. Zengi’s principality was as yet too small to constitute such a danger, but, as Frankish leaders grasped, his acquisition of the territory might give him sufficient power to assume control over the rest of Syria and thus upset the balance of power on which Outremer’s security rested.

Accordingly, Pope Eugenius III (r. 1145-1153) responded to Zengi’s victory in by calling for another armed pilgrimage in 1145, later known as the Second Crusade (1145- 1149). aimed at retaking Edessa. The response to his request for volunteers was substantial. Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III of Germany (r. 1138-1152) and King Louis VII (r. 1137-1180) of France both raised large armies and marched toward the Holy Land via Constantinople. Other groups of crusaders departed later via ship; en route, some of them helped King Alfonso I (r. 1139-1185) of Portugal conquer Lisbon from Spanish Muslims. Those who traveled by sea arrived in Outremer without difficulty; in contrast, those who took the overland route suffered crushing defeats at the hands of the Turks while trying to cross Anatolia. As a result, by the time Conrad III and Louis VII’s battered columns joined those Franks who had traveled by ship to Outremer, the assembled troops of the Second Crusade lacked the strength to attack the powerful state that Zengi had assembled and thus could not recover Edessa.

Not wanting to return to Europe in defeat, they decided to abandon the original goal of the Second Crusade in favor of a new objective: the conquest of the less-well defended city of Damascus. It may have been a more realistic goal for the depleted forces of the Second Crusade, but the city’s capture still proved to be well beyond the capacity of the assembled knights. Indeed, the effort to besiege Damascus ended in a humiliating retreat after only four days when the Franks realized that their army was in danger of being destroyed by superior Muslim forces. Thus, despite the commitment of substantial resources and the raising of significant armies, the Second Crusade ended in embarrassment and abject failure, unable either to retake Edessa or to shore up the Crusader States in any meaningful way.

Nur ad-Din

Meanwhile, a new leader had emerged to take charge of the struggle against the Franks. After an enslaved person murdered Zengi in 1146, his son, Nur ad-Din (r. 1146- 1174), inherited the now-expanded principality of Aleppo. He proved to be an even more determined and effective opponent of the crusaders than his father had been. To the delight of the religious scholars, he had opened his reign by going to war with Antioch and had followed by decisively defeating a crusader army in 1149. Continued success in the 1150s further strengthened his position. Most notably, his seizure of the strategic city of Damascus in 1154 unified Muslim Syria under his control and demonstrated that he had both the will to wage a jihad against the Crusader States and the resources to sustain such a campaign. Accordingly, recruits flocked to his banner, especially after he declared that his central goal was the reconquest of Jerusalem.

Nur ad-Din’s victory at Damascus greatly alarmed the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin III (r. 1143-1163). As we have seen, the rulers of the Crusader States had long believed that they would be in mortal peril if a powerful Muslim leader managed to unify Syria. Now, with Zengi’s acquisition of Edessa and, especially, Nur ad-Din’s capture of Damascus the Franks appeared to face the very situation that they had worked so hard to prevent. Fortunately for Baldwin III and the other Frankish leaders, they were not alone in expressing alarm about the emergence of a formidable Muslim state in Syria. Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (r. 1143-1180) shared their concerns and agreed to work with them to contain Nur ad-Din. As a result, the Muslim leader was unable to mount an effective attack against the Crusader States in the 1150s.

Nur ad-Din did not accept this diplomatic setback passively. Instead, he sought to offset it by building up his strength elsewhere in the region. The once-powerful Fatimid state appeared to offer the best opportunity for him to do so. By the 1160s, Fatimid Egypt had come to have a peculiar mix of strengths and weaknesses that made it a tempting target. On the one hand, its economy produced substantial tax revenue thanks to its dominance of the lucrative trade with India and to the Fatimids’ investment in its irrigation systems. On the other, worsening factionalism in the governing class and a succession of child caliphs had combined to progressively loosen the Fatimid Dynasty’s grip on the province.

Eager to strengthen his state in the face of the Byzantine-crusader alliance, Nur ad-Din began to probe for ways in which he could exploit the political divisions in Cairo to his advantage. He got his chance in 1163. That year, the recently deposed Fatimid vizier Shawar offered Nur ad-Din one-third of Egypt’s tax revenue in exchange for helping him return to power. The Turkic leader pounced at the opportunity. He ordered one of his subordinates, the Kurdish general Shirkuh to march his army into Egypt and help restore Shawar to the vizirate. Unfortunately for Nur ad-Din his bid to assume a dominant position in Egypt failed thanks to the prompt actions of Baldwin III’s successor, Amalric (r. 1163-1174). Well aware of the danger that Nur ad- Din’s move posed to his kingdom, he intervened in Egypt and helped to defeat Shirkuh’s expeditionary force. Amalric’s victory proved short lived, however. A subsequent intervention by Shirkuh in Egypt in 1169 not only succeeded but did so beyond Nur ad- Din’s wildest dreams. Rather than merely gaining control over part of the province or a share of its tax revenue as had been the goal in 1163, Shirkuh managed to secure for his Turkic lord the entirety of Egypt. It was a major coup. With Egypt added to Syria, Nur ad-Din now had more than adequate tax revenues and resources to defeat the Franks.

Salah ad-Din

Ultimately, however, Nur ad-Din was not the ruler who would lead the attack on the Crusader States. Instead, leadership of the jihad against Outremer would fall to Shirkuh’s nephew and lieutenant: Salah ad-Din (r. 1174-1193). Known as Saladin in the West, this ambitious and capable upstart spent most of the early part of his reign engaged in high-stakes political maneuvering, initially to gain ascendancy in Egypt and then to assume control of Nur ad-Din’s empire. His ascent was rapid. He first established himself as a significant political figure when he succeeded his deceased uncle as Nur ad-Din’s chief subordinate in Cairo in 1169; two years later, he consolidated his position in Egypt by abolishing the Fatimid Caliphate. To this point, his moves had been careful, incremental ones designed to enhance his power without alarming Nur ad-Din. In 1174, however, fortune provided him with the chance to reach for the brass ring. Nur ad-Din’s death that year and the accession of his eleven-year-old son created a political vacuum that Salah ad-Din believed he could exploit to take power. Moving aggressively, he travelled to Damascus where he married Nur ad-Din’s widow, a common medieval political ploy, and assumed the role of regent. He followed by solidifying his control of Syria and, more importantly, by formally displacing Nur ad-Din’s son as ruler, establishing, in the process, the Ayyubid Dynasty (1171- 1260).

Salah ad-Din had long expressed a desire to lead a jihad against the Crusader States; with his territory now all-but surrounding Outremer, he was finally in a position to do so. Accordingly he invaded the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187 with a huge army. Taking advantage of dissension among the Franks, he skillfully maneuvered the poorly-led crusaders into a position near the Sea of Galilee that lacked water. With the Franks suffering heat stroke and severe dehydration, the ensuing battle was a complete rout. Salah ad-Din’s troops slaughtered thousands of crusaders, put the survivors to flight, and, worst of all in the eyes of the Christians, took possession of the True Cross. Quickly exploiting his victory, he followed by seizing Jerusalem and nearly the entirety of Outremer from the demoralized Franks. It was a dark day for the crusaders. Having been reduced to the ports of Tyre, Antioch, and Tripoli, Outremer was teetering on the brink of extinction.

The impending failure of the Crusader States and, especially, the loss of Jerusalem stunned and dismayed Europe. The news was so troubling, in fact, that Pope Urban III (r. 1185-1187) reputedly died of shock when told of the city’s fall. However, the Church was not yet ready to give up the dream of a Christian-controlled Jerusalem. Instead, barely a week after Urban III’s death, his successor called on Europe’s kings to mount another crusade aimed at regaining control of the city. The response was tremendous. In 1190, French King Philip II (r. 1180-1223) and English monarch Richard the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) both raised large armies and set out by sea for the Holy Land; concurrently, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa (r. 1155-1190), marched overland with an even-larger force. Massive in scale and enjoying the support of innovative new financial mechanisms such as the Saladin Tithe, the Third Crusade appeared to be unstoppable.

Unfortunately for the Franks, it proved to be anything but. The problems started when Frederick Barbarossa drowned while crossing a river in Asia Minor. Absent his commanding presence, his demoralized army disintegrated. Meanwhile, though Richard and Philip II both arrived in the Middle East in 1191 without difficulty, they soon had a falling out stemming from Philip II’s envy of Richard’s popularity, a jealousy enhanced by the fact that Richard, though technically Philip II’s vassal, was considerably more powerful than his liege lord. It also didn’t help that Richard had broken off an engagement with Phillip’s sister. In response, the French king abandoned the field in a pique and returned to France with the bulk of his army. As a result, the Third Crusade appeared doomed to failure.

Despite seeing many of the crusaders return to France, Richard remained undaunted. A skilled and charismatic commander, he rallied his remaining troops and went on a successful offensive. Under his careful direction, his army retook the key port cities of Acre and Jaffa after which it savaged Salah ad-Din’s army at Arsuf. For a time, as a result, Richard appeared poised to retake Jerusalem. Unfortunately for him, the victory at Arsuf marked the high point of his campaign. Thereafter, the two sides’ asymmetric strengths produced a stalemate. Richard’s superior generalship could not fully offset Salah ad-Din’s larger army, while Salah ad-Din’s bigger force could not entirely overcome the king’s tactical gifts.

Complicating matters was the fact that both leaders had other pressing issues that they needed to address. Concerned that Philip II was exploiting his absence to weaken his position back home, Richard was eager to return to England as soon as possible; Salah ad-Din, for his part, had watched the prestige he had acquired by taking Jerusalem in 1187 evaporate as a result of Richard’s success against him. In 1192, as a result, the two men came to an agreement formalized in the Treaty of Ramla. By its terms, Richard recognized Muslim control of Jerusalem; in exchange, Salah ad-Din ceded the coastal strip from Jaffa to Antioch to the crusaders and agreed to grant Christian pilgrims free entry into Jerusalem.

Later Crusades

Richard had achieved a great deal, but his failure to regain control of Jerusalem left many Europeans feeling that the Third Crusade was a failure. Among them was the new pope, Innocent III (r. 1198-1216). Dismayed by the inability of the Third Crusade to retake the Holy City, he called for a new campaign, the Fourth Crusade, shortly after he acceded to the papacy. Launched with great fanfare, it not only failed to regain Jerusalem, but never even made it to the Holy Land. Instead, sniffing opportunity in the Byzantine Empire, the crusaders became involved in a complicated succession dispute in Constantinople in 1203 that ended the following year when they assaulted the city and established it as the capital of a new, Frankish-ruled state called the Latin Empire. The new empire had a short and rocky life. Its Eastern Orthodox subjects bitterly resisted both Western rule and the imposition of Catholic doctrines and rites, and its rulers never controlled more than a small part of Byzantine territory.

As a result, under the direction of the Palaeologus Dynasty, the Byzantine army was able to redeem Constantinople in 1261. For a time, it seemed that the empire might achieve yet another recovery. By this point, however, Byzantium’s many problems were well beyond the capacity of its leaders to solve given the empire’s limited resources. Shorn of much of its territory and surrounded by predatory enemies eager to exploit its weaknesses, it thereafter survived as little more than a shell of its former self, until, as we shall see in Chapter Six, the cannon-equipped Ottoman Turks finally administered the coup de grace in 1453.

Meanwhile, the Western Europeans continued to mount crusades over the course of the thirteenth century. However, none of them could match the success of the First Crusade,. Indeed, with the exception of the Sixth Crusade in the 1220s, which, through a diplomatic agreement, briefly retook Jerusalem, all of them were abject failures. Largely focusing on Egypt, the soldiers of these later crusades found themselves consistently outmaneuvered and defeated by larger and better-led Ayyubid forces. Still, despite those failed efforts, the Crusader States themselves endured. Relying more on savvy diplomacy and the lure of trade than on force of arms, the Franks managed for the time being to retain control of all of the territory that Richard had recaptured.

The Mongols

At about the same time as the Fourth Crusade a vastly more dangerous threat to the Muslim world, the Mongol Empire, was quietly emerging northeast of China. The Mongols were a loose confederation of nomadic tribes that had long lived on the northern steppes of Asia. There, they herded livestock, raided the wealthy Chinese Empire of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), and warred with similar nomadic groups. Like the other peoples of the region, the Mongols were militarily far more powerful than their relatively modest numbers would suggest. Toughened by the hard life of the Eurasian Steppe and well-practiced in sophisticated battle tactics as a result of the constant wars they fought with other nomads, they possessed a latent power constrained only by the fact that they remained divided among themselves into a number of competing tribes. Even when one tribe gained dominance over the others the situation would not long out last the death of its leader, as the leader’s companions and relatives would fight over who would lead next and in the process the conquered territories would once again splinter off.

However, their disunity ended in 1206. That year, a powerful young war leader named Temujin (c. 1162-1227) succeeded in bringing all of the Mongol tribes together under his leadership. Taking the title Chinggis Khan, meaning Universal Leader, he followed by embarking on a remarkable, and brutal, campaign of conquest. As the Great Khan, he first defeated nearby nomadic rivals such as the Tatars and the Tanguts and followed by incorporating them into his empire. He then wrested control of northern China from other nomadic groups that had long dominated that region. Spreading rapidly westward, his empire soon reached the frontier of Khwarazmia, the easternmost Muslim state in Central Asia.

Chinggis Khan initially had no hostile intentions toward the Muslim world. He viewed his new border with Khwarazmia not as a jumping off point for conquests, but rather as a valuable link to the Middle East’s vibrant economy. Toward that end, he sent a caravan of merchants laden with eastern luxury goods on a trade mission into Khwarazmia in 1218 with instructions to negotiate a commercial agreement with its ruler, Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad (r. 1200-1220). Muhammad was not receptive to Chinggis Khan’s commercial initiative, however. Eager to demonstrate his toughness, he responded by ordering his soldiers to plunder the caravan and to kill its 450 merchants. Worse, when Temujin sent three envoys to demand restitution, Shah Muhammad ordered one beheaded and the others shorn of their beards, a serious and calculated insult in the culture of medieval Central Asia.

This act enraged Chinggis Khan and led him to initiate the first phase of what would be a decades-long Mongol war with the Muslim world. Raising a huge force, he invaded Khwarazmia in 1219, defeated its army, and put Shah Muhammad to flight. Over the next few years, the vengeance-minded Mongols brutally sacked the cities of Balkh, Merv, Samarkand, and Nishapur as they pressed westward into the Islamic heartland. While we can reject the exaggerated claims of contemporary Muslim writers, the Mongols most certainly did not kill 1,750,000 people at Nishapur, the evidence is equally clear that they waged this war in a peculiarly ruthless and brutal fashion.

Temujin’s death in 1227 led to a brief pause in the Mongol onslaught, but, by the early 1230s, they were back on the offensive. Having conquered Muslim Central Asia, they now focused on adding Iran to the great khan’s empire. There, Mongol armies slaughtered huge numbers of people, destroyed cities, and even deliberately destroyed many of the qanat, the ancient, underground canals on which Iranian agricultural prosperity depended. The Mongols followed in 1243 by attacking Asia Minor, where they shattered the last significant Seljuq principality, the Sultanate of Rum. With that defeat, hope ebbed in the Islamic world that Muslim soldiers could ever check the Mongols. Just when the situation appeared grimmest, however, the Muslim Middle East caught a break: a succession dispute halted the onslaught and gave the Muslims a few years of desperately needed breathing space. As we shall see, that respite would prove pivotal.

With the succession finally sorted out in 1251, Mongke Khan (r. 1251-1259), the new Great Khan of the Mongols, moved to restart the conquests. He began by dividing his empire into four semiautonomous khanates that he distributed among his brothers. He gave the southwestern most one, the Ilkhanate, to his brother Hulegu (r. 1256- 1265), along with instructions to complete the conquest of the Muslim world. Taking one-fifth of the Mongol army with him, Hulegu quickly set to work. He began in 1256 by reducing the Assassins’ heretofore impregnable Alamut Castle, thus destroying their peculiar, non-contiguous state. He followed in 1258 by marching his army to Baghdad, where he hoped to compel al-Musta‘sim (r. 1242-1258), the thirty-seventh and final Abbasid caliph, to surrender. When the latter refused to yield, Hulegu ordered his soldiers to storm the city. Possessing sophisticated siege equipment, they easily overwhelmed the defenders and took possession of Baghdad. They followed by sacking the city with a brutality that was peculiar even by the standards of the day. Mongol soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people, razed buildings of inestimable beauty and historical significance, and destroyed the priceless contents of the city’s many libraries by pitching books into the Tigris River. Some contemporary authors claimed so many books were thrown in the Tigris that its water ran black with ink. The Mongols also did enormous damage to the irrigation system of central Iraq, ensuring that the city would lack adequate food supplies to recover.

Perhaps most distressing to educated urban Muslims, Hulegu also ordered al- Musta’sim and his sons killed. Accounts differ as to how they were murdered, but a consensus of historians now agree that the Mongols most likely first wrapped them in carpets and then had horses trample them to death so as to avoid defiling the earth with royal blood. Regardless of the specifics, al-Musta’sim’s execution sent shockwaves through the umma. Though the Abbasids had not exercised real power outside of Iraq for centuries, the dynasty nonetheless remained a powerful symbol of Muslim unity and power. Though, as we shall see, a branch of the Abbasid dynasty was re-established in Cairo as puppets under the rule of the Mamluk Sultanate, the end of the ruling house in Baghdad that had held the caliphate since 750 marked a distressing watershed for a Muslim world that increasingly felt it had lost its way.

Mamluks

Hulegu next set his sights on the only remaining independent Muslim state of any consequence: Egypt. Though vastly weaker than the Ilkhanate, Egypt was prepared to put up a vigorous resistance thanks to a recent change in leadership. In 1250, Turkish slave soldiers called Mamluks, a term that means, literally, “property” or “owned men,” had taken advantage of instability in the Ayyubid court to seize power and establish the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517). Disciplined and well organized, they formed a powerful army that promised to valiantly resist the Mongols. Still, they faced long odds. Indeed, the sheer size of Hulegu’s horde and its extensive battle experience suggested that the Mamluks would almost certainly go down in defeat as the two armies prepared for battle near Ayn Jalut in Palestine in 1260.

Ayn Jalut

Fortunately for the Mamluks, two factors combined to give them a shot at defeating the Mongols. First, not long before the battle, news had reached Hulegu that Mongke Khan had died. Eager to take part in the deliberations at the kurultai, the meeting at which the Mongol chiefs would choose the next Great Khan, he returned to the capital of Karakorum with most of his troops. The Mongol army that continued toward Egypt thus only numbered about 10,000 fighters, still powerful, but a fraction of the force that had destroyed the caliphate in 1258. Second, Baybars (r. 1260-1277), the commander of the Mamluk army, was a peculiarly adept tactician and possessed an intimate familiarity with the region in which the battle was fought. The combination of relatively even numbers and strong leadership proved enough to tip the balance. In the ensuing Battle of Ayn Jalut, the Mamluks scored a decisive victory and Egypt was kept safe from the Mongols.

The results of the battle were enormously significant. First, and most obviously, it gave the victors time to consolidate and strengthen their regime. As a result, the Mamluk state would never again be as vulnerable to a Mongol attack as it had been on the eve of the Battle of Ayn Jalut. Second, and far more important, Baybars’ victory ensured that independent Islamic rule would survive at a time when its future seemed very much in doubt.

The impact of the battle on Egypt’s political structure was also far reaching. Just two months after the victory, Baybars and a group of co-conspirators arranged to have the reigning sultan, Qutuz (r. 1259-1260), assassinated. Not long thereafter, Baybars managed to navigate his way through the treacherous waters of Mamluk factional politics to succeed Qutuz as the new sultan. It was a bold move for the victor of Ayn Jalut, but, ironically, it was also one that put him in a precarious position: if he did not quickly find some way to legitimate his rule, he would very likely find himself facing the same fate as his predecessor. In a stroke of good fortune, the arrival of an Abbasid prince, Abu al-‘Abbas Ahmad, in Cairo in 1262 afforded him the opportunity to do so. In an elaborate ceremony, Baybars had Ahmad proclaimed Caliph al-Hakim I (r. 1262- 1302); in exchange, the newly installed caliph urged Muslims in Egypt to acknowledge Baybars’s rule as sultan, and thus accorded him the legitimacy he needed.

In this way, the caliphate that the Mongols had destroyed in 1258 was resurrected in Cairo in 1262. Its rebirth was a symbolically significant event for Muslims, one that upheld the idea that the Islamic world remained united under a single, universal ruler. In reality, however, nothing substantive had happened as a result of al-Hakim I’s accession. The line of Abbasid caliphs who reigned in Cairo were powerless figures who lacked a court or even a retinue. Indeed, they continued to hold office only because the Mamluks saw utility in retaining the position. Lacking even the pretense of power, they were figureheads of the feeblest sort, a dynasty whose authority and responsibilities never rose above the ceremonial.

Mamluk Government and Economy

As we have seen, the use of slave soldiers had been commonplace in the Muslim world since al-Mutasim had first introduced the practice in the ninth century. It was under the Mamluk regime, however, that the arrangement reached its height. Superficially, the Egyptian system was similar to that of earlier dynasties that had relied on enslaved troops. Like those states, the Mamluk government replenished the ranks of its army by purchasing Circassian or Turkish adolescents who had grown up in the harsh environment of the Eurasian Steppe. It then raised and educated them in barracks until they were ready to serve the regime. Here, however, the Mamluk system differed from earlier practices. While previous dynasties had restricted the use of slaves in state service to the army and had reserved the administration of government to free- born subjects, Mamluk Egypt instead relied upon enslaved people, and only enslaved people, to staff both its military and its bureaucracy. Even the children of the Mamluks were barred from joining the ruling class. Thus, the Mamluk system was a unique one in which nominally enslaved people rather than free-born ones controlled the government. It was also one that proved durable and effective, and that was, by the standards of the day, unusually meritocratic.

The Mamluk approach to the financing of government was considerably less innovative, however. Like earlier Muslim states such as the Buyid Dynasty, the Mamluks ruled through a decentralized, semi-feudal system based on iqta land grants. According to this arrangement, soldiers received the right to collect taxes over a defined territory; in exchange, they were obligated to provide military service to the state. To ensure a degree of control over what was an intrinsically decentralized system, the Mamluk government periodically redistributed or revoked iqtas. Initially, this practice proved reasonably effective at funding the military and government. As it had under the Buyids, however, the iqta system also imposed steep costs on Egypt’s economy. The problem was one of incentives. Aware that they would receive tax revenue from a given land grant for only a brief period, iqta holders focused on squeezing as much wealth out of their peasant farmers as they could rather than on developing the infrastructure that would foster long-term growth. As a result, over time, Egypt’s once bountiful agricultural sector, the heart of its economy, began to stagnate.

Islamic Political Recovery and the End of the Crusades

The Muslim political revival that began with the victory at Ayn Jalut was not confined to Egypt, but instead occurred throughout the Middle East. As we shall see in Chapter Six, new Muslim polities would emerge out of the wreckage of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Sultanate of Rum over the next few decades. Islamic rule even returned to the territory ruled by the Mongol Ilkhanid Dynasty. The religion’s revival there began in 1295 when, for reasons of political expediency, the new khan, Mahmoud Ghazan (r. 1295-1304), decided to abandon Buddhism in favor of Islam when he assumed the throne. Encouraged by the khan’s conversion, nearly all of the Ilkhanid Mongols followed suit over the next decade. As a result, by the time of Ghazan’s death, the Ilkhanate had completed a remarkable and shockingly fast transformation from existential threat to Islamic rule into what was, for all practical purposes, just another Muslim state.

By that point, meanwhile, Muslim principalities no longer needed to concern themselves with the Franks. Shortly after Ayn Jalut, Baybars launched a sustained effort aimed at eradicating the Crusader States. Planned and executed with great care, the campaign against the Franks bore quick results. The Mamluks took Haifa by storm in 1266, brutally sacked Antioch in 1268, and successfully assaulted Tripoli in 1289. In each case, they destroyed the port to prevent the Franks from using it to support future Crusades. The coup de grace came in 1291. That year, the Mamluks succeeded in breeching the mighty walls of Acre, the lone remaining crusader city. Thus, after nearly two centuries, Western Christian control of territory in the Levant had come to an end. The Crusades were over.

Legacy of the Crusades

How did two centuries of Christian control of the Levant affect the people involved? Put another way, what were the lasting consequences of the Crusades? In a word, their impact was complex, affecting Europe and the Middle East in very different ways in the short term while, in the long term, powerfully, if ahistorically, shaping present-day perceptions of relations between the Middle East and the West.

The consequences of the Crusades for the Middle East and the West differed substantially. Unsurprisingly, they had a largely positive short-term impact on Western Europe. Indeed, many groups profited from the Crusades. Among them were the merchants of the Italian city-states, who not only grew rich supplying Outremer but, ironically, also developed valuable new trade connections with Muslim states thanks to the Western presence in the Levant. As a result, even after the fall of Acre, they continued to prosper by supplying Europe with the imported eastern products and goods that Europeans had first encountered as a result of the Crusades. Monarchs also benefited. Taking advantage of the new authority and tax revenue that they had acquired to support crusading, a number of dynasties initiated multi-century-long campaigns to consolidate power that resulted in the emergence of the first genuinely centralized states in Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. Finally, the Crusades dramatically boosted the power of the Church. For a time, in fact, the Crusades turned the papacy into the most powerful political institution in Western Europe.

In contrast, the Crusades produced little lasting political, economic, or cultural change in the Muslim Middle East and quickly faded from collective memory. While this situation may seem surprising today, it reflects the fact that the Crusades had at best a relatively marginal impact on the people of the region. The Franks never managed to seize any of the region’s leading cities, did not alter the social structure of the peoples they controlled, and remained confined to a small, albeit religiously significant, strip of land. The limits of their influence on the Middle East are particularly clear when contrasted to the enormous impact of the Mongol irruption. While the Ilkhanate destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate, demolished the irrigation systems on which Iraq’s agricultural productivity depended, and contributed to the intellectual and spiritual retrenchment of the Muslim world, the crusaders main legacy was a series of imposing castles like Cracs des Chevaliers and, more significantly, a grievously weakened Byzantine Empire.

Perversely, however, while the Crusades themselves were of only limited significance, popular understandings of them continue to exert a powerful influence. Based on the ahistorical works of nineteenth-century European writers rather than on the Crusades themselves, these views are at best a caricature of the events they purport to describe. Nonetheless, they long ago attained the status of conventional wisdom, continuing to detrimentally influence modern perceptions of relations between the Muslim Middle East and the West and to fuel belief in the notion that the two cultures are locked in a millennia-long civilizational conflict.

Modern Western historical memories of the Crusades originated largely with the ideas of two influential, early-nineteenth century writers: Joseph-Francois Michaud (1767-1839) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). An ardent French nationalist and proponent of imperialism, Michaud published an influential six-volume history of the Crusades, Histoires des Croisades, between 1812 and 1822. Removing the Crusades from their medieval context and stripping them of their penitential character, he recast them as glorious ventures in which brave French knights enthusiastically spread the virtues of France’s superior culture to the people of the Middle East. Michaud thus transformed the Crusades into an anachronistic, proto-imperialist venture, in the process providing contemporary imperialists with the rhetorical ammunition needed to justify the acquisition of new colonies. Scott approached the Crusades in a very different but equally inaccurate way. A popular novelist, he wrote a series of books set during the time of the Crusades in which he developed two influential themes. First, he cast the Franks as brave but ignorant and uncultured louts who blundered violently into a peaceful and sophisticated Muslim world. Second, he described the Muslims, above all, Salah ad-Din, as people of vastly greater sophistication and culture than their crude and boorish European contemporaries.

To the lament of many modern scholars, Michaud’s celebratory construction and Scott’s more condemnatory one would establish the basis for contemporary Western historical memories of the Crusades. Michaud’s positive interpretation cut multiple ways. On the one hand, it gave colonialists a language that they could use to justify imperialism; on the other, his positive account of the Frankish invasion of the Holy Land spurred neo-Marxist scholars to subsequently develop a highly critical, if also off base, interpretation of the Crusades as proto-imperialist undertakings. Meanwhile, popular portrayals of the Crusades such as Ridley Scott’s film Kingdom of Heaven (2005), which sharply contrasts violent, ignorant Franks with urbane and cultured Muslims, reflect the enduring legacy of Sir Walter Scott’s critical interpretation of crusading.

Ironically, contemporary understandings of the Crusades in the Middle East stem largely from the same sources. Prior to the late-nineteenth century, the Crusades were almost-completely forgotten in the Middle East. With the Franks long-since defeated and with the Ottoman Empire having shifted the border between the Christian and Muslim worlds deep into Central Europe there was little reason to pay attention to them; as a result, popular memories of the Frankish incursions faded rapidly in the Middle East. Beginning in the late-nineteenth century, however, the West reacquainted Muslims with the Crusades and, in the process, exposed them to the interpretations of Michaud and Scott that had come to predominate in Europe. The pivotal moment came at the very end of the nineteenth century. Inspired by Scott’s books, Kaiser Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918) solemnly laid a wreath at Salah ad-Din’s tomb in Damascus in 1898, an act that many scholars argue reintroduced the Kurdish leader to a Muslim world that had all-but completely forgotten him.

Exposed to Western constructions of the Crusades and to surging Western imperialism, Muslim thinkers soon synthesized Scott and Michaud’s interpretations to form a new, critical understanding of the Crusades. It described the growing Western position in the Middle East in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries not as a product of the modern era, but instead as a continuation of the Crusades of the Middle Ages by the crusaders’ equally violent descendants. Lent credence by the inaccurate assumption that this interpretation had been Muslim conventional wisdom dating to the thirteenth century rather than a recent construct imported from Europe, this new interpretation soon became pervasive in the Middle East. It remains widespread today and has found particular appeal among anti-imperialist Arab nationalists. As one writer declared in the 1930s, “the west is still waging crusading wars against Islam under the guise of political and economic imperialism.” More recently, jihadis have drawn similar conclusions. Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the so-called Godfather of Jihad, declared that “Western blood carries the spirit of the crusades within itself,” for instance, while Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) maintained that conflict between the West and the Muslim world in the early twenty-first century was merely the latest skirmish in a far-older civilizational conflict.

Thus, to the consternation of many scholars, the Muslim Middle East and the West alike frame relations today on the basis of inaccurate and ahistorical conceptions. Rather than locating the Crusades in the medieval culture to which they belonged, people instead cling to anachronistic constructions based on nineteenth-century polemics. At times, these “mythic memories,” lead some to create ideas that are parallel to the past as when Islamists describe Israel as a latter-day Crusader State. At others, they fuel talk of a clash of civilizations, an idea that could prove dangerously self-fulfilling if it gains sufficient traction. More prosaically, historical memories rooted in the writings of Michaud and Scott impel people in both the West and the Muslim world to conclude incorrectly that contemporary conflicts between them lay rooted in a deep and unchangeable past, and thus fail to see that the origins of those issues lie firmly in the malleable present.

The Historical Debate

Historians do not merely take issue with popular understandings of the Crusades but also engage in vigorous debates among themselves over how the subject should be understood. The fact that the field continues to contest the meaning, origins, and consequences of the Crusades is hardly surprising given their importance to Europe’s internal development and their enduring significance in shaping popular perceptions of modern-day relations between the Middle East and the West. Two issues in particular have long animated historians of the Crusades: explaining what caused Europeans to launch them and assessing whether the Muslim leaders who fought against the Franks did so out of genuine religious conviction or out of a more cynical desire to win support against their rivals.

For much of the mid-twentieth century, most specialists argued that the Crusades were the product of economic forces. Writing often from a neo-Marxist perspective, they contended that class conflict and greed rather than idealism or devotion impelled people to go on crusade. For example, the French historian Georges Duby argued that crusading had its origins in the growing popularity of primogeniture among the nobility of eleventh-century Europe. In his view, the shift to that practice resulted in the creation of a class of disgruntled, landless younger sons whose unmet aspirations produced dissension and instability. The Crusades were a solution to this problem. They exported these unhappy and potentially dangerous young men to a place where they could acquire wealth and, more importantly, ensuring in the process continued stability in Europe. This has proven to be a false argument, as much of the leadership of the early Crusades were not these second sons, but in fact, while not kings, were still some of the most powerful men in Europe at the time. Other historians have cast the Crusades as proto-imperialist expeditions clothed in false piety that succeeded in enriching Europe at the expense of the Middle East. Amin Maalouf, for instance, has argued that the Crusades marked a watershed moment for both the West and the Muslim world. For Europe, they were successful colonialist ventures that initiated a sustained period of growth; for the Middle East, in contrast, they marked the point at which the economy and culture began to stagnate.

Few historians today continue to argue that economic forces produced the Crusades. Drawing on new evidence that has shown that crusading was enormously expensive and that European nobles had to finance their participation by selling properties or mortgaging them at high interest rates, scholars now largely agree that people went on crusade out of a genuine and deeply felt sense of piety rather than out of a desire to get rich. In similar fashion, historians now largely reject the view that the Crusades simultaneously enriched Europe and impoverished the Middle East. In recent years, in fact, many scholars have flipped that interpretation on its head, arguing that not only did the Crusades drain the resources of Europe, but that the economy of the Middle East continued to thrive long after the demise of Outremer.

Scholars have engaged in a parallel debate regarding the depth of Zengi, Nur ad- Din, and Salah ad-Din’s dedication to eradicating Outremer. Most modern scholars are skeptical that the destruction of the Crusader States was the primary objective of leaders like Zengi. Indeed, many who study the Crusades now contend that, jihadi rhetoric aside, the apparent hostility of those leaders to the Franks reflected more a desire to burnish their credentials in the Muslim world than a deep-seated commitment to holy war against the Crusader States. Noting that those leaders spent far more time warring with rival Turkish princes than fighting the Christians, for instance, the scholars Malcolm Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson argue that Zengi and Nur ad-Din had little commitment to driving the crusaders out of the region and used jihadi rhetoric largely to win support for their personal and dynastic goals. In Lyons and Jackson’s eyes, even Salah ad-Din’s reconquest of Jerusalem reflected such objectives. They maintain that while his capture of the city certainly contributed to the weakening of the Crusader States, it was aimed more at securing popular support for his campaigns against his Muslim rivals than at winning a holy war against the Franks.

Other scholars disagree with this line of reasoning. Challenging it directly, they argue that a leader’s public utterances carried great weight in the medieval Middle East and thus reveal that individual’s goals. While not denying that Salah ad-Din likely sought to expand his principality at the expense of his Muslim rivals, for example, the historian Carol Hillenbrand contends that his public embrace of jihad against the Crusader States was ultimately of far-greater significance than his personal and dynastic ambitions.

Conclusion

With the end of the Crusades and, more importantly, the conversion of the Ilkhanid Mongols, the existential crisis that the Muslim Middle East had faced in the thirteenth century came to an end. What followed, however, was anything but an era of stability. The near-simultaneous fracturing of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, collapse of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum in 1243, and outright destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 produced a massive power vacuum in the Middle East that neither the Mamluks nor the Ilkhanid Dynasty, which itself fell apart in 1335, could fill. Instead, it would be a new state, the Ottoman Empire, established in western Anatolia by an obscure Turkish lord named Osman (r. 1299-1326) that would emerge to fill the political void. It is to the establishment of this new empire, and to the creation of a similar state in Iran, the Safavid Empire, that we shall now turn.