90 Paul E. Chevedden The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade: A New (Old) Paradigm for Understanding the Crusades Pa u l E . C h e ve d d e n (UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) A Novemcentennial Last year marked the 900th anniversary of the debut of the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. 900 years ago, not long after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, a Muslim jurist in nearby Damascus formulated an encompassing theory of the Crusade that came to enjoy canonical status in the Islamic historiographical tradition. His idea of the Crusade was the first conceptual paradigm ever advanced to explain the crusading movement, and his schema served as a model for later historians in the Middle East who examined the Christian jihad. His panoramic overview of the Crusade is historically accurate and in fundamental agreement with papal documents. Furthermore, his clear and precise vision of the Crusade is capable of guiding future research in the field of Crusade studies. Despite these noteworthy facts, the novemcentennial of the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade was not accompanied by widespread academic congresses or celebrations last year. The city of Damascus, where this interpretation was first presented, did not commemorate this significant intellectual achievement. In fact, there were no remembrances at all last year for the emergence of the very first scholarly conceptualization of the Crusade. The reason is simple. The Islamic interpretation of the Crusade remains unknown. Why this is so is a bit of a puzzle. No cryptographer or symbologist is needed to unravel the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. It is embedded in no secret code. The sources from which this interpretation can be reconstructed are widely known and readily accessible to scholars. A good number of the relevant Arabic texts have been translated into Western languages and have been available to researchers and to the general public for decades. Scholars – both in the West and in the Islamic world – have examined these texts repeatedly, yet they have brushed Der Islam Bd. 83, S. 90–136 © Walter de Gruyter 2006 ISSN 0021-1818 DOI 10.1515/ISLAM.2006.004 The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 91 aside the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade as irrelevant – of no significance for understanding the actual phenomenon of crusading. Conceptual blinders have successfully prevented scholars from recognizing the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade for what it is: a coherent and historically verifiable explanation of the Crusade. More than 40 years ago Francesco Gabrieli observed that Crusade historians untrained in Middle Eastern languages exploited Islamic sources, as far as they could, when these sources were available to them in translation, but they treated them “as a purely technical tool of verification, without arriving at a deeper insight into the spirit of their authors, and into the Muslim vision and interpretation of events”.1 Little has changed since Gabrieli wrote these words. Today, Islamic sources for the Crusades are being exploited, not to elucidate and substantiate an interpretation of the Crusade that is actually found in them, but to prop up a traditionalist view of the Crusade, one grounded in a nineteenth-century framework of analysis that has largely been discarded by historians.2 Studies of the Crusades are particularly prone to tunnel vision. More often than not the Crusades are taken out of their historical context and are viewed not as a response to ongoing circumstances, but as the cause of a new set of circumstances. The Crusades are frequently depicted as 1) Francesco Gabrieli, “The Arabic Historiography of the Crusades”, in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and Peter Malcolm Holt (London, 1962), 101. Gabrieli’s remarks are echoed by Robert Irwin: “On the whole, the [Middle Eastern] chronicles have been used merely to provide information to confirm or supplement the western materials. There has been little attempt to, as it were, get inside those sources and recreate the Einfühlung of the Muslim counter-crusade” (Robert Irwin, “Orientalism and the Early Development of Crusader Studies”, in The Experience of Crusading, II: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips [Cambridge, 2003], 229). As will be made clear below, getting inside Middle Eastern historical sources is not simply a problem for those untrained in Middle Eastern languages. It is a problem for distinguished Arabists, such as Gabrieli, as well as for those scholars whose native language is Arabic (or Persian or Turkish). 2) See especially Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (New York, 2000). The legacy of the nineteenth century in Crusade studies can be seen in the “Great Man” theory of history, with Pope Urban II as the founding father of the Crusade, in the tradition of German intellectual history or Geistesgeschichte, which promotes the role of ideas as the motive force behind historical events, and in the portrayal of the politics of crusading as an affair of elites, with a corresponding neglect of non-elites. 92 Paul E. Chevedden the start of a new development, not the culmination of a historical encounter between two Mediterranean societies. The Crusades are often seen as the cause, not the effect of the struggle between Islam and Christendom and in this way history is turned on its head: the effect is made into the cause, and the result of a protracted conflict is promoted as the paradigm for the entire complex of relations between Islam and Christendom over many centuries. Thus, a recent study of the “First” Crusade argues that this expedition produced a desperate clash between the civilizations of Islam and Christendom, igniting hostility and enmity that would last for centuries: “The lines of religious discord hardened; Christendom and Islam had been set on the path to enduring conflict”.3 The reluctance to view crusading as part of a much wider phenomenon has many causes, but Eurocentrism and the privileging of Latinate sources are two chief culprits. Islamic sources, meanwhile, have been used exclusively to verify an interpretation of the Crusades put forward by Western historians. It is time that Islamic sources for the Crusades are taken seriously. “Islamic Perspective” or “Islamic Perspectives” A recent book does, in fact, attempt to take Islamic sources for the Crusades seriously. It purports to present “Islamic perspectives” on the Crusades.4 Keeping up with scholarly fashions, “multiple perspectives” are now in vogue. The prevailing assumption is that “Islamic” perspectives are different from “Western” perspectives and that these perspectives are numerous and various. The term “Islamic perspectives” implies that the Muslim world during the Middle Ages was filled with many minds – not with one mind only – each with its own perception of the Crusade. Although this was certainly true, it is also trivial. The notion of multiple perspectives ignores the underlying reality that there was one predominant view of the Crusade shared by both Muslims and Christians. Contemporary witnesses – Christian and Muslim – were conscious of the political transformations taking place in the Mediterranean world during the eleventh century. By the end of the century, no one who looked around 3) Thomas S. Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History (New York, 2004), ix, 339. So that the reader will not miss the point that the clash between Islam and the West began with the Crusades, the jacket of the American edition of this book carries the subtitle, The Roots of the Conflict Between Christianity and Islam. 4) Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 93 the shores of the Middle Sea could be blind to the shifting balance of Mediterranean power.5 At the beginning of the eleventh century three great powers dominated the Mediterranean world: the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia, the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa and Syria, and the Umayyad caliphate in al-Andalus. By the end of the eleventh century these powers had either disappeared or had begun to disappear by degrees. The great Mediterranean powers at the turn of the millennium were submerged by two major events of world-historical importance that transformed the new millennium: the movement of western European peoples that culminated in “the greatest upsurge of expansive energy that human history has ever seen”6 and the movement of Turkic peoples that created a vast Turkoman sphere stretching from the borders of China to the Balkans and led to the formation of the great Islamic empires of the Saljuqs, Mamluks, Timurids, Safavids, Mughals, and Ottomans, all with Turkic roots. These events were far from being the only influences at work, but they proved decisive enough to constitute a turning point in the history of the Mediterranean – and for that matter, of the whole world. During the first century of the second millennium these events produced a dramatic shift in the power relationship between Islam and Latin Christendom and a dramatic shift in the power relationships within the Islamic world. In the western Mediterranean, these changes generated the Crusade. In the eastern Mediterranean, these changes brought about the Saljuq conquest of the Mashriq, which put an end to the Shi
i bid for political supremacy over the umma Muhammadiya. Soon events along the Tigris would become inextricably interlocked with events along the Tagus. In 1071, the Saljuq victory over the Byzantines at Manzikert left the Eastern Empire in peril and the eastern wall of Christendom permanently breached. As Byzantium was reduced to a mere rump of its former self, survival and recovery depended upon rescue efforts from the Latin West. The Crusade, which had first turned to the Islamic south, now turned to the Islamic east. By the time the eleventh century drew to a close, the action and counteraction of jihad and anti-jihad, or Crusade, and Crusade and counter-Crusade, or jihad, had already been established. The Castilian conquest of Toledo in 1085 had provoked a vigorous Almoravid counter-Crusade that turned the tide of the Christian advance, and Saljuq aggression had been answered by the “First” Crusade. 5) The classic statement of this development remains Archibald R. Lewis, Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterranean, A. D. 500–1100 (Princeton, 1951). 6) Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, 1957), 38. 94 Paul E. Chevedden With the onset of the twelfth century, Muslim scholars were able to assess the crusading enterprise in its full Mediterranean-wide dimensions. Muslim Historians Interpret the Crusade Muslims throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond were aware of the political shift taking place in the eleventh century and the general nature of the Crusade. Recognizing the obvious congruencies between the Islamic version of holy war and the Christian version, Muslim authors had no reluctance calling the Crusade a jihad. By designating the Crusade a jihad, Muslim authors indicated that crusading was regarded as being sanctioned by God and inspired by a common Christian cause. In 1105,
Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami, a legal scholar and preacher at the Great Mosque of Damascus, offered his account of the crusading movement in his book Kitab al-jihad (“The Book of Holy War”). He describes it as a Christian jihad that had begun in Sicily, then spread to Spain, and finally advanced on Syria: A host [of Franks] swooped down upon the island of Sicily at a time of division and dissention, and likewise they took possession of town after town in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus). When reports mutually confirmed the condition of this country (Syria) – namely, the disagreements of its lords, the discord of its leading men, coupled with its disorder and disarray – they acted upon their decision to set out for it (Syria) and Jerusalem was the chief object of their desires … They (the Franks) continued zealously in the holy war (jihad) against the Muslims … until they made themselves rulers of lands beyond their wildest dreams.7 This depiction of a Mediterranean-wide struggle that started in the western Mediterranean basin and finally encompassed the eastern Mediterranean basin was the prevailing view presented in Islamic historical writing of that general war between Islam and Christendom that became known as the Crusades. Even historical works that are localized and chronologically limited, such as al-
Azimi’s Ta#rikh Halab (“The History of Aleppo”), written around 1160, reflect this view. Although focused on events in 7)
Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami, Kitab al-jihad, in Emmanuel Sivan, “La genèse de la contre-croisade: un traité damasquin de dévut de XIIe siècle, Journal asiatique 254 (1966), 207 (Arabic text, 206–14; French trans., 214–22); Peter Malcolm Holt, The Age of the Crusades: The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517 (London, 1986), 27; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 32, 69, 71–74, 105–109, 165. All translations from the Arabic in the text of this article are my own. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 95 Syria, this chronicle nonetheless sees the emergence of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Latin principalities of Syria as tied to a wider movement of Christian reconquest and, for that reason, draws attention to events in the western Mediterranean: [In 478/1085] the Franks (al-firanj) gained mastery over al-Andalus. The ruler of Toledo8 sought aid from the Almoravids (al-mulaththama), so [the Almoravids] engaged the Franks in battle in al-Andalus9 and vanquished them. They constructed minarets from the [severed] heads [of the Frankish dead] and made the call to prayer from them. Then [the Almoravids] returned to their country without recovering a single garrison town.10 The spark that ignited the “First” Crusade, according to al-
Azimi, was set off in 486/1093–94 when Christian pilgrims were prevented from traveling to Jerusalem: The inhabitants of the coastal regions [of Syria-Palestine] prevented the Latin (al-firanj) and Byzantine pilgrims from going to Jerusalem. Those that returned home safely to their countries (mimman salima minhum ila biladihim) spread the news of what had happened. As a result, they (i. e., the Latin Christians) made preparations for the expedition (that came to be known as the “First” Crusade).11 Islamic sources viewed the different strands of western European expansion in the Mediterranean world as all of a piece, just as the papacy viewed Islamic movements in this region as all of a piece. This depiction 8) So in MS for “the ruler of Seville”. The battle, which took place on 23 October 1086, is known to Muslim historians as al-Zallaqa, or Yawm
Aruba/al-
Aruba, and to Christian historians as Sagrajas. 10) Muhammad ibn
Ali al-
Azimi, Ta#rikh Halab, ed. Ibrahim Za
rur (Damascus, 1984), 353; idem, Azimî tarihi (Selçuklular dönemiyle ilgili bölümler, H. 430–538), ed. Ali Sevim (Ankara, 1988), 20; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 51. 11) Al-
Azimi, Ta#rikh, 356; idem, Azimî tarihi, 23. Both Moshe Gil and Carole Hillenbrand translate the clause mimman salima minhum as “those who survived” and suggest that an attack or massacre had taken place (Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099 [Cambridge, 1992], 488–89; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 50–51). Hadia Dajani-Shakeel alludes to no massacre and understands the passage to mean that “the pilgrims who returned safely to their countries spread the news about the obstruction of their pilgrimage” (Hadia Dajani-Shakeel, “A Reassessment of Some Medieval and Modern Perceptions of the Counter-Crusade”, in The Jihad and Its Times, ed. Hadia Dajani-Shakeel and Ronald A. Messier [Ann Arbor, 1991], 48). 9) 96 Paul E. Chevedden of reality should not be taken as a literary topos designed merely to reduce a complex tangle of events to a single main drama. This depiction of reality reflects the very structure of society in the Mediterranean world. The Dar al-Islam – the society of Muslim peoples – was a religiously based society, just as was Christendom – the society of Christian peoples (populus christianus). When grave political threats arose that endangered the realms of Islam, the nature of the political threat and the response to it were cast in a religious light. More importantly, this depiction of reality correctly conveys the papal view of the crusading enterprise as a Mediterranean-wide campaign to “spread greatly the Church of God into Muslim territories”.12 Thus, the universal historians Ibn al-Athir (1160–1233) and al-Nuwayri (1279–1332?) consider the Crusade to be a general Christian offensive against Islam that had three main fronts: Sicily, Spain, and Syria. It is Ibn al-Athir who elevated this interpretation of the Crusade to canonical status in Arabic historiography in his monumental work, al-Kamil fi l-ta#rikh (“The Consummate History”). His account reads: The first appearance of the power of the Franks and the extension of their rule – namely, attacks directed against Islamic territory and the conquest of some of these lands – occurred in 478/1085, when they took Toledo and other cities in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus), as previously mentioned. Then in 484/1091 they attacked and conquered the island of Sicily, as I have also described; from there they extended their reach as far as the coast of North Africa, where they captured some places. The conquests [in North Africa] were won back, but they took possession of other lands, as you will see. 12) “In Saracenorum finibus ecclesiam Dei plurimum dilatavit”: Urban to Count Roger of Sicily, 1098, “Epistolae et privilegia”, PL 151, 506C, recounting Roger’s conquest of Sicily; trans. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, 1986), 18. In 1099, Urban described crusading activities that had begun in Sicily in 1061 as having spread across the Mediterranean world: “quod nostris temporibus ecclesia propagatur, Sarracenorum dominatio diminuitur, antiquus episcopalium sedium honor, prestante Domino, restauratur” (In our time the Church has been enlarged, the domination of the Muslims has been reduced, the ancient honour of episcopal sees has been, by the gift of God, restored): Urban to Bishop Pons of Barbastro, 1099; Paul F. Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien: Vorarbeiten zur Hispania Pontificia, I: Katalanien, pt. 2: Urkunden und Regesten (Berlin, 1926), 298 no. 31; Antonio Durán Gudiol, La Iglesia de Aragón durante los reinados de Sancho Ramírez y Pedro I (1062?–1104) (Rome, 1962), 154; trans. Riley-Smith, First Crusade, 18. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 97 In 490/1097 they attacked Syria, and this is how it all came about: Baldwin, their king,13 a relative of Roger the Frank,14 who had conquered Sicily,15 after having amassed a sizable force, sent a message to Roger saying: “I have assembled a large army and am now on my way to you, and from your land I shall conqueror North Africa and thereby become your neighbor”. Roger gathered his companions and consulted them about this matter. “By the Gospel”, they declared, “this project is excellent for us and for them because these territories will then become Christian”. Then Roger raised his leg and let fly a loud fart and said: “By my religion, a good fart is better than your advice!” They asked him for an explanation, and he replied: “Look, if they come to me, I shall have to supply them with vast quantities of provisions and ships to transport them to North Africa, as well as some of my own troops. Then, if they conqueror this territory, it will be theirs, and it will be from Sicily that they will require provisioning, and I will lose my annual profit from the harvest. And if they fail, they will return here and cause me much trouble. In addition, Tamim will say, ‘you have deceived me and violated our treaty’,16 and friendly relations and communications currently existing 13) Presumably this is Baldwin of Bouillon. If so, Ibn al-Athir incorrectly identifies him as a king and relative of Count Roger I of Sicily. Baldwin of Bouillon was the brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, the first king of Jerusalem (1099–1100). He succeeded his brother on the throne (1100–18), but at the time of the “First” Crusade he was neither a king nor a leader of Crusader forces. Peter Malcolm Holt’s suggestion for why “Baldwin” was designated by Ibn al-Athir as the leader of the “First” Crusade has merit: “Since [Baldwin of Bouillon] was followed in due course by four other Baldwins, the name may have seemed almost like a regal or dynastic title to the Arabic chronicler”. (Peter Malcolm Holt, The Crusader States and Their Neighbours, 1098–1291 [Harlow, 2004], 19). 14) Roger I, Count of Sicily (d. 1101), was the youngest son of Tancred de Hauteville and the Norman conqueror of Sicily in conjunction with his brother Robert Guiscard, the Norman Duke of Apulia (1059–85). 15) February 1091 marked the completion of the conquest (Graham A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest [Harlow, 2000], 172). 16) This is Tamim b. al-Mu
izz, the Zirid ruler of Tunisia (1062–1108), whose peace treaty with Roger was concluded at some point prior to 1087 (Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius, ed. Ernesto Pontieri [Bologna, 1927–28], IV.3, 86–87; trans. Kenneth Baxter Wolf as The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of his Brother Duke Robert Guiscard [Ann Arbor, 2005], 179; Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, 172; Hubert Houben, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West [Cambridge, 2002], 17–18). The treaty between Roger and Tamim aided Roger’s conquest of Islamic Sicily since it effectively cut off all external assistance coming to Sicily from North Africa. It also helped to protect Tamim’s territories. In 1087, 98 Paul E. Chevedden between us will be broken. Besides all this, North Africa will stay where it is, and when we are strong enough, we will conqueror it ourselves”. So he summoned Baldwin’s messenger and said to him: “If you want to make holy war (jihad) against the Muslims, it would be better for you to conquer Jerusalem and deliver it from their hands and thereby win great glory. As for North Africa, I am bound to its people by oaths and treaties”. So the Franks made their preparations and set out to attack Syria.17 Ibn al-Athir traces the roots of crusading to Latin expansion in the western Mediterranean basin; he even attributes the “First” Crusade to an idea hatched by Islam’s foremost political opponent of the day, Count Roger, the conqueror of Islamic Sicily. The Crusade is viewed as belonging to the same world that produced the conquest of Sicily, the Castilian incursion into al-Andalus, and Latin attempts to dominate North Africa. The story he relates is most probably connected with Roger’s refusal to join Pisa and Genoa in a combined assault on the Tunisian port of Mahdiya in 1087,18 but although the facts are transposed to suit the “First” Crusade, there are some vital lessons to be derived from this account. It shows remarkable insight into the essence of crusading. There was nothing in the nature of crusading that precluded, either in theory or in practice, treaty or clientage relations with Islamic powers, or that seriously hindered Christian states from joining alliances – even with Muslims – against their political and territorial rivals within Christendom. Nothing in crusading interrupted the “diplomatic dance” in which Islamic and European powers were engaged. These powers “lived by a web of pacts, truces, and alliances, not only among their own religio-ethnic group but frequently also with the countervailing ‘infidel’ powers around them”.19 Likewise, Roger refused to join the combined Genoese-Pisan assault on the Tunisian port of Mahdiya. See n. 18 below and text. 17)
Izz al-Din Abu al-Hasan
Ali ibn Muhammad Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi l-ta#rikh (Beirut, 1965), X, 272–73; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 52; Houben, Roger II of Sicily, 17–18; Holt, Crusader States and Their Neighbours, 18–19. An English translation of this passage was first published in Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. from the Arabic sources by Francesco Gabrieli; trans. from the Italian by E. J. Costello (London, 1969), 3–4. 18) See n. 16 above and text, as well as H. E. J. Cowdrey, “The Mahdia Campaign of 1087”, English Historical Review 92 (1977), 1–29; Max Seidel, “Dombau, Kreuzzugsidee und Expansionspolitik. Zur Ikonographie der Pisaner Kathedralbauten”, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 11 (1977), 340–69. 19) Robert I. Burns and Paul E. Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures: Bilingual Surrender Treaties in Muslim-Crusader Spain under James the Conqueror (Leiden, 1999), 213. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 99 nothing in the nature of jihad barred alliances between Christians and Muslims, or even alliances with Christian powers against Islamic states. Neither jihad nor Crusade functioned autonomously, unrelated to political, social, and military circumstances.20 Christendom’s greatest champion, Count Roger, could become the good ally of the Zirid ruler of Tunisia with no hint of impropriety or bewilderment. Ibn al-Athir’s tale of “the fart heard round the Mediterranean” is obviously designed to ridicule and denigrate the Europeans, but it does provide an understanding into the inner character of the Crusade. To appreciate the complex historical processes that made up crusading, it is essential to ponder the Muslim vision and interpretation of events. Even when this interpretation is hopelessly flawed, as is the case with Ibn al-Athir’s account of the “First” Crusade, there are underlying truths embedded in the narrative. In the early fourteenth century, al-Nuwayri expounded his own version of the Crusade in his colossal Nihayat al-arab fi funun al-adab (“The Ultimate Aim in Letters and Literature”), which follows closely that of Ibn al-Athir: The appearance of the Franks and their expansion and penetration into the realms of Islam began in the year 478/1085. This occurred in al-Andalus when its rulers broke up the land [into petty principalities] after [the collapse of] the Umayyads, and each region fell into the hands of [an independent] kinglet. Each ruler scorned the idea of submitting to another ruler and being subject to someone else’s authority. They were similar to the rulers of the successor states of Alexander’s empire (muluk al-tawa#if) in Persian times. Each ruler was incapable of offering resistance to the neighboring ruler or of directing [an attack] against the Franks. This situation brought about a deterioration of conditions, and the enemies [of the faith] conquered Islamic territory. The first place they captured was the city of Toledo in alAndalus, as we have mentioned under the year 478/1085. Then they took pos20) Robert I. Burns, “The Many Crusades of Valencia’s Conquest (1225– 1280): A Historiographical Labyrinth”, in: On the Social Origins of Medieval Institutions: Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan, ed. Donald J. Kagay and Theresa M. Vann (Leiden, 1998), 167–77. Others disagree with this position. Tomaš Mastnak, for example, presents crusading as “a totalizing religious war”, “a total war”, and a “totalized struggle against Islam”, having “a clean-cut religious motivation”. Any Christian conflict with Islam that does not obtain its total of religious elements is deemed by Mastnak to be “absent of religiously based exclusivism” and classified as a secular war (Tomaš Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order [Berkeley, 2002], 70, 71, 85–88, 106, 107, 113, 121, 183, 184). 100 Paul E. Chevedden session of the island of Sicily in 484/1091, and they invaded the North African coast where they took possession of a portion of it before withdrawing, as we have previously mentioned.21 Syriac Historians Interpret the Crusade The Islamic interpretation of the Crusade influenced the Syriac historical tradition, as exhibited in the Syriac and Arabic chronicles of Abu l-Faraj Gregorius Bar Hebraeus (1226–86). In his great Syriac chronicle entitled Maktbanut zabne (derived from Greek chronographia), Bar Hebraeus states that the Christian advance against Islam began in the western Mediterranean, when the Franks first seized territory in al-Andalus: When the Turks were ruling over Syria and Palestine, and all the [other] countries they made the Christians who were coming to pray in Jerusalem to suffer very many serious evils, and especially those who were coming from Rome and other countries of Italy. Then the Franks became filled with rage, and they collected troops and went forth first of all to Spain, and they took possession of the cities there and they shed much blood in them.22 Like al-
Azimi, Bar Hebraeus sees the Crusade as a Latin response to the suffering endured by Christian pilgrims in Syria-Palestine. This interpretation is also found in the great twelfth-century historical chronicle written by the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch Michael the Syrian (1126–1199), from which Bar Hebraeus doubtless derived his own account of the “First” Crusade found in his Chronicon syriacum. Michael’s account reads: 21) Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn
Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwayri, Nihayat al-arab fi funun al-adab, XXVIII, ed. Muhammad Muhammad Amin and Muhammad Hilmi Muhammad Ahmad (Cairo, 1992), 248; Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 54. 22) Abu l-Faraj Gregorius Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography of Gregory Abu#l Faraj, I: Engl. Translation, trans. Ernest A. Wallis Budge (London, 1932), 234. My analysis of the account of the “First” Crusade in the Syriac and Arabic chronicles of Bar Hebraeus is heavily indebted to the excellent study by Herman Teule, “The Crusaders in Barhebraeus’ Syriac and Arabic Chronicles”, in East and West in the Crusader States: Context, Contacts, Confrontations: Acta of the Congress held at Hernen Castle in May 1993, ed. Krijnie Ciggaar, Adelbert Davids, and Herman Teule (Leuven, 1996), 39–49. See also Matti Moosa, “The Crusades: An Eastern Perspective, with Emphasis on Syriac Sources”, Muslim World 93 (2003), 249–89. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 101 As the Turks were ruling the lands of Syria and Palestine, they inflicted injuries on Christians who went to pray in Jerusalem, beat them, pillaged them, levied the poll tax at the gate of the town and also at Golgotha and the [Holy] Sepulchre; and in addition, every time they saw a caravan of Christians, particularly of those [who were coming] from Rome and the lands of Italy, they made every effort to cause their death in diverse ways. And when countless people had perished as a result, the kings and counts were seized with [religious] zeal and left Rome; troops from all these countries joined them, and they came by sea to Constantinople.23 Bar Hebraeus’s Syriac account provides one curious element not included in Michael’s history: he links attempts by the Latin West to curb the oppression suffered by Christian pilgrims in the East to a Latin offensive that began in Spain. Or, conversely, he explains a Latin military resurgence that began in the West by relating it to concerns about Christians in the East. There may be a solid causal connection between the two phenomena, but Bar Hebraeus does not make a case for it, let alone a convincing one. Two distinct interpretations of the “First” Crusade sit uncomfortably alongside one another in the Chronicon syriacum, and Bar Hebraeus makes no attempt to graft the two together into a coherent narrative. Bar Hebraeus appears to have fused two variant interpretations of the Crusade in his Syriac chronicle: one taken directly from Michael the Syrian that links hardships suffered by Latin pilgrims in the East to a Latin military expedition to the East, and the other derived from an Arabic historiographical tradition that connects the “First” Crusade to a general Christian offensive against Islam that began in the western Mediterranean. In writing his Syriac chronicle, Bar Hebraeus engaged in source criticism and checked different versions of the same event. He is known to have examined information in Michael’s history with that found in Arabic sources, and in one instance he consulted five different Arabic chronicles. To construct his account of the “First” Crusade, Bar Hebraeus obviously made use of Michael’s version of events, but he also incorporated the prevailing view of the Crusade presented in Islamic sources. He made no at- 23) Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’Antioche (1166–1199), ed. and trans. Jean-Baptiste Chabot, (Paris, 1899–1910), III, 182; trans. Bat Ye#or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Seventh-Twentieth Century, trans. Miriam Kochan and David Littman (Madison, 1996), 292–93; Teule, “Crusaders in Barhebraeus’ Syriac and Arabic Chronicles”, 44–49; Moosa, “The Crusades: An Eastern Perspective”, 254–55. 102 Paul E. Chevedden tempt, however, to reconcile the discrepancies between the two accounts. When he wrote the Arabic counterpart to his Syriac history, Ta#rikh mukhtasar al-duwal (“A Short History of the Dynasties”), Bar Hebraeus relied heavily on Ibn al-Athir’s al-Kamil fi#l-ta#rikh, especially in his account of the “First” Crusade. In his retelling of the event, Bar Hebraeus abandons completely the explanation offered by Michael the Syrian and instead adopts the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade as transmitted by Ibn al-Athir: In 491/1098, Baldwin, king of the Franks, gathered a great army and attacked Syria and took Antioch. Before this the Franks had conquered Toledo from Islamic Spain (al-Andalus) and other cities. Then they attacked and conquered the island of Sicily and turned their attention to the North African coast where they made some conquests.24 Islamic sources define the Crusade as a Frankish holy war (jihad) against Islam that began in the western Mediterranean basin and finally enveloped the whole Mediterranean world. These sources implicitly recognize that events in Sicily, Spain, and Syria share a common character. The Norman war in Sicily, the Catalan and Castilian advances southward into al-Andalus, and the “First” Crusade were part of the same general phenomenon: a Mediterranean-wide surge of the Latin West against Islamic powers. Modern Scholarship and the Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade “Extraordinarily Far-Sighted and Illuminating …” How has modern scholarship regarded the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade? To begin with, the Islamic view of the Crusade has not been recognized for what it is: a historically accurate description of the Crusade – at least in broad general outline – that found wide acceptance in the Muslim historiographical tradition. When it is considered at all, it is treated as merely a subjective impression of the Crusade, hailed for its 24) Abu l-Faraj Gregorius Bar Hebraeus, Ta#rikh mukhtasar al-duwal, ed. Antun Salihani (Beirut, 1890), 341. Herman Teule wrongly states that Bar Hebraeus’s account of the “First” Crusade in the Mukhtasar includes “the story of the long detour via Spain” and that this tale is “not mentioned in the Chronicon Syriacum”. On the contrary, the Spanish “detour” is found only in the Chronicon syriacum; the Mukhtasar makes no mention of it (Teule, “Crusaders in Barhebraeus’ Syriac and Arabic Chronicles”, 45, 47). The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 103 wider framework of historical vision, but essentially incompatible with how crusading actually emerged and developed. There is a paradox here. When the views of the Crusade expressed by al-Sulami and Ibn al-Athir are assessed as to their correspondence to historical reality, they receive very high marks indeed. But when these same views are assessed as to their correspondence to crusading reality, they receive very low marks. Peter Malcolm Holt commends al-Sulami for giving “his view of the Frankish advance, not only in his own country [Syria] but also in Sicily and Spain”.25 He points out that al-Sulami “does not see the Crusade and the consequent losses of Muslim territory in isolation, but views them as part of a wider Frankish assault upon Islam as witnessed by the conquest of Sicily and of many towns in Spain”.26 Likewise, Robert Irwin correctly notes that al-Sulami was “aware of conflicts between Christianity and Islam which were going on in Spain, Sicily, and North Africa”, and describes “his readiness to see the crusade within the broader context of a struggle between the two religions, extending all the way across the Mediterranean”, which “was later to be closely echoed in a chronicle written by the thirteenth-century Mosuli historian Ibn alAthir”.27 Carole Hillenbrand praises al-Sulami for “an extraordinarily farsighted and illuminating work (Kitab al-jihad) showing an understanding, probably unique at this early stage of the Crusades, of what the Franks were planning to do and of how the Muslims should respond”. She acknowledges that “al-Sulami has a wide view of the Crusader enterprise, seeing the whole sweep of the western European Christian advances southwards”. Hillenbrand applauds al-Sulami for discerning “the Franks’ aims all too clearly” and for grasping with acute perception “that the Franks have further expansionist aims which must be stopped at all costs by Muslim reunification”. She credits al-Sulami with “penetrating insights into the military and political vulnerability of the Franks”, and even attributes a “prophetic statement” to al-Sulami who has the wisdom to foresee “what would happen later in the century when Nur al-Din and Saladin worked towards the encirclement of the Crusader state of Jerusalem and in particular the unification of Syria and Egypt, divided politically and ideologically since the tenth century”.28 Niall 25) Holt, Age of the Crusades, 27. Holt, Crusader States and Their Neighbours, 17. 27) Robert Irwin, “Islam and the Crusades, 1096–1699”, in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), 226. 28) Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 71–73. 26) 104 Paul E. Chevedden Christie and Deborah Gerish affirm “al-Sulami’s accurate assessment of Frankish purposes” but do not indicate what al-Sulami believed their intentions were, other than fighting a holy war against Mulsims.29 Hadia Dajani-Shakeel has made the most perceptive comments about al-Sulami. Countering the thesis advanced by a number of Western scholars that Muslims lacked interest in the Crusade or were unaware of the nature and purpose of the enterprise, she asserts that Muslim intellectuals “were aware of the nature and motives of their enemies (i. e. the Crusaders)”. Commenting on al-Sulami’s description of the Christian jihad as an offensive that began in the Muslim West and spread to the Muslim East, she remarks that al-Sulami “seems to have known that the Normans and the Franks, who were involved in the Crusades against al-Andalus and Sicily, were also involved in the Crusade against the Muslim East”. Such information could easily have been acquired, she indicates, through diplomatic channels, through the normal transit of Muslim scholars from the Muslim West to the Muslim East, and through the flow Muslim refugees from Sicily and Spain eastward. Dajani-Shakeel sums up al-Sulami’s view of the Crusade in these words: Al-Sulami defined the Crusade as an invasion by Western nations, which started with the conquest of Sicily and parts of al-Andalus … This definition of the Crusades by al-Sulami appears to have escaped many modern historians, who allege that the Muslims underestimated the nature and motives of the Crusade in the twelfth century. The new understanding that al-Sulami brings to the Crusade does not tempt Dajani-Shakeel to re-evaluate the conventional interpretation of the Crusade. Her primary concern is “to redefine the Muslim perception of the Crusades” in order to counter “some contemporary misconceptions regarding the Muslims’ ignorance of the true identity or background of their enemies (i. e. the Crusaders)”. Although she credits al-Sulami and Ibn alAthir with having “linked the invasion of the Muslim East with that of the Muslim West” and demonstrates that Muslim intellectuals, such as Ibn alAthir, had “more knowledge and insight” into the Crusade than Western scholars have indicated, she does not attempt to redefine the Crusade in light of the “knowledge and insight” provided by Islamic sources.30 29) Niall Christie and Deborah Gerish, “Parallel Preachings: Urban II and al-Sulami”, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 15 (2003), 139–48. 30) Dajani-Shakeel, “Reassessment”, 42, 45–48; idem, “Some Medieval Accounts of Salah al-Din’s Recovery of Jerusalem (Al-Quds)”, in Studia Palaestina: Studies in Honour of Constantine K. Zurayk, ed. Hisham Nashabe (Beirut, 1988), 102–103. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 105 Ibn al-Athir has received every bit as much praise as al-Sulami for his penetrating historical vision. Dajani-Shakeel describes his notion of the Crusade as “a systematic Latin-Christian invasion of Muslim lands, which started in al-Andalus, Sicily, and North Africa and then moved to the East”. She shows that “he was certainly not unaware of the nature of the enemies (i. e. the Crusaders) and their settlements”.31 Bernard Lewis calls Ibn al-Athir “a man of genius” for being “able to detect a connection between the reconquest in Spain and Sicily and the arrival of the Crusaders in the Levant”.32 Donald Richards extols Ibn al-Athir for “taking a wider view of historical processes, for example, the ‘global’ threat of the Franks to the interests of Islam in Spain, Sicily and the Levant”.33 Hubert Houben affirms that Ibn al-Athir “saw a connection between the Reconquista in Spain, the Norman conquest of Sicily and the First Crusade”.34 Alex Metcalfe notes that Ibn al-Athir “links the ‘Frankish’ capture [of] Toledo (1085) with the first appearance of the Normans in Sicily (1091) and the Crusader’s (sic) siege of Antioch (1097–98)”, but he warns against such a view because “modern thought usually separates these [episodes], regarding them as an associated series of events”.35 Modern scholars extract certain details from Islamic sources regarding the Crusade and esteem these details as “extraordinarily far-sighted and illuminating”, abounding in “penetrating insights”, and offering “a wider view of historical processes”, while they fail to discern the incisive vision provided by these sources into the nature and character of the Crusade. The very insights that Muslim authors provide are regarded as a form of myopia and intellectual short-sightedness. Modern scholars are so sure that they have a better understanding of the Crusade than contemporary Muslim scholars that they fault Muslim authors for failing to 31) Dajani-Shakeel, “Reassessment”, 47. Bernard Lewis, “Reflections on Islamic Historiography”, in Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (Oxford, 2004), 411. See also Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York, 2001), 23, where Ibn al-Athir is commended for viewing the Crusades “in a larger perspective”. 33)
Izz al-Din Abu l-Hasan
Ali ibn Muhammad Ibn al-Athir, The Annals of the Saljuq Turks: Selections from al-Kamil fi#l-ta#rikh of
Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir, trans. Donald S. Richards (London, 2002), 5. 34) Houben, Roger II of Sicily, 17. 35) Alex Metcalfe, Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily: Arabic Speakers and the End of Islam (London, 2003), 9 n. 33. 32) 106 Paul E. Chevedden arrive at an understanding of the Crusade that is compatible with their own. Gabrieli, for example, chastises Ibn al-Athir for being unable to confine his notion of the Crusade to the eastern Mediterranean: Even the well-known passage of Ibn al-Athir, where he compares the First Crusade with the Christian offensives in Spain and Sicily, although it shows the breadth of the Mesopotamian historian’s vision, proves to us that he did not perceive what distinguished the Crusades from the other wars between Christians and Islam in the Middle Ages, nor realize the special characteristics of the Latin settlement in the Levant.36 The abstract conceptual framework that guides Gabrieli’s understanding of the Crusade cannot accommodate Ibn al-Athir’s historical vision of the crusading enterprise. What could Crusade possibly mean in the absence of a distinction between the Christian offensives in Spain and Sicily and the Christian offensive in Syria? What could Crusade possibly signify in the absence of the special characteristics of the Latin settlement in the Levant? Gabrieli cannot attain a clear and distinct apprehension of what Ibn al-Athir is telling him about crusading without forming a judgment regarding his views. This renders him unable to perceive the idea of Crusade put forward by the Mesopotamian historian. The assimilation of Ibn al-Athir’s views would require Gabrieli to re-evaluate his own time-honored theory of the Crusade, as well as the historical record, which he is unwilling to do because he is convinced that his theory is the correct one. Even to suspend his own theory from consideration for the briefest of moments to consider what Ibn al-Athir is saying lies beyond Gabrieli’s ability. Certain preconceived ideas will have to be set aside before Ibn al-Athir’s image of crusading can come into view. The Crusade has been dismembered by Western scholars, broken down into pieces, so that the whole cannot be seen. A re-assemblage of the dismembered parts that compose the Crusade must be undertaken before the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade can be grasped. … but of no Relevance to the Crusade Modern scholarship exhibits an ambivalent attitude towards the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. This interpretation is full of “penetrating insights”, yet misguided. Whatever correspondence there is to historical reality in the works of al-Sulami and Ibn al-Athir, such a correlation has no bearing on the actual reality of crusading as it was under36) Gabrieli, “Arabic Historiography of the Crusades”, 98. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 107 stood in the Latin West. The insights of al-Sulami and Ibn al-Athir into the fundamental character of the Crusade have not been valued as being a source of sound information. Scholars cannot help praising Muslim authors for their perceptive powers, but, on the other hand, they are not about to recommend that their “extraordinarily far-sighted and illuminating” views be adopted as the basis for a new understanding of the Crusade. Substituting the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade for the conventional interpretation of the Crusade would be unthinkable. Al-Sulami, Ibn al-Athir, and other Muslim thinkers presented the Crusade as a threepronged offensive by the Latin West against Islam that encompassed Sicily, Spain, and Syria. Not only did they give coherent meaning to a range of events but they also accurately depicted these events as being inspired by a common Christian cause. Yet Muslim attempts at explaining the Crusade are regarded as no more than interesting oddities that cannot be admitted as being essential to what real crusading was all about. Michael Brett, for example, does not adopt the self-understanding of medieval Christians and Muslims regarding the nature of the Crusade. When the medieval evidence tells him that the Latin counteroffensive against Islam was inspired by a common Christian cause, he rejects such a notion. He sees instead the opposite of what the evidence is telling him. Christian encroachment on Muslim territories, he contends, was “peculiar to each country” and “not inspired by a common Christian cause”.37 One reason why Western scholars have failed to appreciate the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade lies in the nature of the sources that they have used to reconstruct the crusading enterprise. Muslim authors experienced the Crusade whole; the papacy experienced the Crusade whole; but Crusaders themselves and the Latin chroniclers did not. With rare exception, the complex whole of the Crusade could not be seen by the participants and the chroniclers.38 Latin authors zoomed in on particular 37) Michael Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Fourth Century of the Hijra, Tenth Century CE (Leiden, 2001), 432. 38) A rare exception among the Latin chroniclers of the “First” Crusade is William of Malmesbury, who viewed the Jerusalem expedition as “an important element in a process of world significance, by which pan-European military action recovered territory previously occupied by Islam, thus achieving a new balance of power” (Rod Thomson, “William of Malmesbury, Historian of Crusade”, Reading Medieval Studies 23 [1997], 129). See William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: the History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors; completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998–99). 108 Paul E. Chevedden campaigns and a handful of individuals. The result was a vignette or a series of vignettes, not a full picture. Muslim authors, like al-Sulami and Ibn al-Athir, could see the full picture: a Christian counteroffensive against Islam on many fronts. The papacy shared this perspective. The resounding success of the “First” Crusade blinded Latin authors to the fact of earlier Crusades. The “First” Crusade, quite obviously, had overshadowed all previous campaigns against Islam. Latin chroniclers were keen to emphasize the fundamental significance of this episode in history. But in doing so, they overlooked the hard road that crusading had taken to achieve this momentous success. Modern scholars viewing the historical record have discounted that very long and hard road as a distortion of true crusading, which can only find its essential core in the so-called “First” Crusade. When once the a priori presumption in favor of the “First” Crusade as the “Big Bang” of the crusading movement is abandoned, the full picture of the Crusade will begin to emerge. As this picture forms, the cloud of discredit hanging over Muslim authors will be lifted. It is not generally recognized that medieval Muslim scholars enjoyed a distinct advantage over modern scholars when it came to interpreting the Crusade: they did not come to the subject with a preconceived idea about what the Crusade ought to be. Undeterred by the accidents of crusading (e. g. the ecclesiastical apparatus of cross, vow, and indulgence), Muslim authors were able to discern the essence of crusading: a Mediterranean-wide war against Islam by the Latin West. Muslim authors accurately recorded the patriotic sentiment that inspired the Crusade: a desire to recover lands that had “originally belonged to the Christians” but had been conquered by Islam and subjected to Islamic rule.39 United by 39) In an encounter with the Mozarab count Sisnando Davídiz, who served under both Fernando I, king of León-Castile (1016–18?–1065), and his son Alfonso VI (1065–1109),
Abd Allah ibn Buluggin, the last Zirid ruler of Granada (r. 1073–90), recalls what the Christian wazir told him “face to face”: “Al-Andalus originally belonged to the Christians. Then they were defeated by the Arabs and driven to the most inhospitable region, Galicia. Now that they are strong and capable, the Christians desire to recover what they have lost by force”:
Abd Allah ibn Buluggin al-Ziri, Kitab al-Tibyan li-l-amir
Abd Allah ibn Buluggin akhir umara# Bani Ziri bi-Gharnata, ed. Amin Tawfiq al-Tibi (Rabat, 1995), 100; trans. Amin T. Tibi as The Tibyan: Memoirs of
Abd Allah ibn Buluggin, Last Zirid Amir of Granada (Leiden, 1986), 90. Ibn Idhari’s fourteenth-century chronicle records the remarks made by Fernando I to an embassy from Toledo soon after his accession to the throne. His words sound the same theme as the statement of Count Sisnando Davídiz: “We seek only our own lands which you conquered from us in times past The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 109 the common bond of religion and mutual promises (the crusading vow), Western Crusaders joined together in a common cause to undo Islamic occupation of Christian territories and rebuild a subjugated Church. While neglecting or distorting many features of crusading, Muslim authors nonetheless were able to perceive the general nature and the scope of the enterprise. Modern assumptions and biases cloud our view of the historical evidence. In so far as crusading is viewed as the outcome of Urban’s call, medieval Muslim thinkers cannot be credited with having provided an explanation of the Crusade that is objectively true. And, in so far as modern scholars cannot discard the “Jerusalem First” theory of the Crusades, they cannot recognize what the historical evidence is telling them about crusading, nor can they bring themselves to accept the understanding of medieval peoples – Muslim and Christian – regarding the nature of the Crusade. No magic key is required to unlock the evidence, however. The task of reconstructing the origins of crusading from the existing primary sources is not a complex one. The door to understanding the Crusade has been wide open for generations. All that is needed is an ability to listen to what the evidence is saying, regardless of its origin. Western Scholarship and the Rejection of “the Other” Modern scholarship, whether in the West or in the Muslim world, passes over the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade as irrelevant. Why? For Western scholarship, the vision of the whole crusading movement has been skewed by the fact that the expedition that set out for Jerusalem in 1096 came to be known as the “First” Crusade. Most Western scholars contend that the crusading movement started with a campaign that captured Jerusalem, and many scholars contend that a true Crusade must at the beginning of your history. Now you have dwelled in them for the time allotted to you and we have become victorious over you as a result of your own wickedness. So go to your own side of the straits (of Gibraltar) and leave our lands to us, for no good will come to you from dwelling here with us after today. For we shall not hold back from you until God decides between us”: Abu l-
Abbas Ahmad b. Muhammad Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi, al-Bayan al-mughrib fi akhbar al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, ed. Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane au XIème siècle, III (Paris, 1930), 282; trans. David Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings: Politics and Society in Islamic Spain, 1002–1086 (Princeton, 1985), 250. 110 Paul E. Chevedden have Jerusalem as its military and spiritual goal. Little heed is paid to the fact that the very pope who launched the so-called “First” Crusade, Pope Urban II (1088–99), did not consider the venture to be a new creation or the first enterprise of its kind. Urban adopted and applied the apparatus related to crusading in Sicily and Spain to the Jerusalem Crusade and carried out a plan originally put forward by his predecessor, Pope Gregory VII (1073–85).40 In the words of the noted Islamic scholar Claude Cahen, “Urban II’s eastern projects were linked with his western projects in that they were both anti-Moslem wars, and … [the eastern pro- 40) Urban’s biographer in the Liber pontificalis claims that Urban’s Jerusalem Crusade carried out an idea originally put forward by Pope Gregory VII. See Liber pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne and Cyrille Vogel (Paris, 1886–1957), II, 293: “Audierat iste praeclarus et devotus pontifex predecessorem suum Gregorium papam praedicasse ultramontanis Iherosoliamam pro defensione Christianae fidei pergere et Domini sepulcrum manibus inimicorum liberare, quod facere minime potuit, quia persecutio Heinrici regis nimium eum undique urguebat. Quod vero praedecessor eius facere non valuit, iste a Deo electus et praeclarus pontifex Dei gratia fretus implevit”. For a discussion of Pope Gregory’s crusading plans of 1074, see Carl Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart, 1935), 146–53, 186–99, 288–91, 299–301, 305, 308–309, 313–15, 324–25; trans. Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart as The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, foreword and additional notes by Marshall W. Baldwin (Princeton, 1977), 161–69, 202–16, 311–13, 322–25, 330, 333–34, 340–42, 353–54; Alfons Becker, Papst Urban II (1088–1099) (Stuttgart, 1964–88), II, 294–300; James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, 1969), 26–27; E. O. Blake, “The Formation of the ‘Crusade Idea’”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21 (1970), 14–17; Ian S. Robinson, “Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ”, History 58 (1973), 169–92; idem, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990), 325; H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Gregory VII’s ‘Crusading’ Plans of 1074”, in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans Eberhard Mayer, and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem, 1982), 27–40; idem, “The Gregorian Papacy, Byzantium and the First Crusade”, in Byzantium and the West, c. 850–c. 1200, ed. James Howard-Johnston (Amsterdam, 1988 [= Byzantinische Forschungen 13 (1988)]), 145–64; idem, “The Papacy and the Origins of Crusading”, Medieval History 1 (1991), 48–60; idem, “Pope Gregory VII and the Bearing of Arms”, in Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Rudolf Hiestand (Aldershot, 1997), 21–35; idem, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford, 1998), 484–85, 652–54; Jonathan Riley-Smith, “The First Crusade and St. Peter”, Outremer, 41–63; Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, 194–201. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 111 ject] envisaged extending to Palestine what had been begun in Sicily and Spain …”41 Urban described the “First” Crusade as an expedition of “knights who are making for Jerusalem with the good intention of liberating Christianity” so that “they might be able to restrain the savagery of the Saracens by their arms and restore the Christians to their former freedom”.42 41) Claude Cahen, “An Introduction to the First Crusade”, Past and Present 6 (1954), 24–25; idem, Orient et Occident au temps des Croisades (Paris, 1983), 58: “Ce qui avait été commencé en Sicile et Espagne devait être étendu à la Palestine”. In 1950, Augustin Fliche had reached a similar conclusion, declaring, “c’est en Occident que la croisade a dévuté, dès le pontificat d’Alexandre II” (Augustin Fliche, La réforme grégorienne et la reconquête chrétienne [1057–1123] [Paris, 1950], 52). Alfons Becker acknowledges that a movement of reconquest that was already underway in the western and central Mediterranean was expanded by Urban to include the eastern Mediterranean (the Christian East), but he maintains that only at Clermont did the reconquest become a Crusade. The ultimate objective of the military campaign announced at Clermont (i. e. Jerusalem), according to Becker, gave a new character to the Christian movement of reconquest. To the concept of a holy war willed by God was added the idea of pilgrimage, which transformed a reconquest into a Crusade. Becker provides ample direct evidence to support his first proposition – that Urban expanded a movement of reconquest that had already begun. Yet he presents no evidence to substantiate his second proposition – that the iter Hierosolymitanum was different in its essential nature from the movement of Christian reconquest in Sicily and Spain. Nor does he present any evidence that would support the theory that Pope Urban considered the eastern phase of this reconquest movement to be any different from the western phase. The iter Hierosolymitanum was in Urban’s mind equivalent to the iter hispanicum, and Becker himself draws attention to this fact when he quotes from Urban’s letter of 1098 to Bishop Pedro of Huesca: “[Deus] nostris siquidem diebus in Asia Turcos, in Europa Mauros christianorum viribus debellavit et urbes quondam famosas religionis sue cultui … restituit” (Alfons Becker, “Urbain II et l’Orient”, in Il Concilio di Bari del 1098: Atti del Convegno Storico Internazionale e celebrazioni del IX Centenario del Concilio, ed. Salvatore Palese and Giancarlo Locatelli [Bari, 1999], 123–44; see n. 44 below). 42) “Audiuimus quosdom uestrum cum militibus, qui Ierusalem liberandae christianitatis gratia tendunt … nos enim ad hanc expeditionem militum animos instigavimus, qui armis suis Saracenorum feritatem declinare et christianorum [read christianos or christianorum (ecclesias)] possint libertati pristinae restituere …”: Urban’s letter to the monks of Vallombrosa, 7 October 1096; Wilhelm Wiederhold, “Papsturkunden in Florenz”, Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse (1901), 313, no. 6; trans. Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 310; Eng. trans. 336; Louise Riley-Smith and Jon- 112 Paul E. Chevedden He presented the Jerusalem Crusade as a campaign “to aid the churches in Asia and to liberate their brothers from the tyranny of the Saracens”, but he viewed it as part of a wider movement “to liberate Christians from Saracens” throughout the Mediterranean, “for it is no good to liberate Christians from Saracens in one place (i. e. in Asia) only to deliver Christians to Saracen tyranny and oppression in another place (i.e. in Spain)”.43 athan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (London, 1981), 39; Edward Peters, ed., The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1998), 44–45. This passage may be read as “we were stimulating the minds of knights to go on this expedition, since they might be able to restrain the savagery of the Saracens by their arms and restore the Christian Churches to their former freedom”. See Janus Møller Jensen, “Peregrinatio sive expeditio: Why the First Crusade was not a Pilgrimage”, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 15 (2003), 121, which follows the edition of this text in Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. Rudolf Hiestand (Göttingen, 1985), 89 no. 2: “qui armis suis Saracenorum feritatem declinare et christianorum <ecclesias> possint libertati pristinae restituere.” According to Robert Somerville, the Crusade described by Urban in this passage is intended neither to “restore the Christians to their former freedom”, nor to “restore the Christian churches to their former freedom”, but to “restore (Jerusalem) to pristine Christian freedom” (Robert Somerville, “The Council of Clermont and the First Crusade”, Studia Gratiana 20 [1976], 330). Somerville’s error stems from his failure to understand the crusading decree of the Council of Clermont, which he assumes designates an enterprise that is local in its focus, with the city of Jerusalem as its sole objective. 43) “Si ergo ceterarum prouinciarum milites Asiane ecclesie subuenire unanimiter proposuere et fratres suos ab Saracenorum tyrannide liberare, ita et uos unanimiter uicine ecclesie contra Saracenorum incursus patientius succurrere nostris exortationibus laborate. In qua uidelicet expeditione si quis pro Dei et fratrum suorum dilectione occubuerit, peccatorum profecto suorum indulgentiam et eterne uite consortium inuenturum se ex clementissima Dei nostri miseratione non dubitet. Si quis ergo uestrum in Asiam ire deliberauerit, hic deuotionis sue desiderium studeat consummare. Neque enim uirtutis est alibi a Saracenis christianos eruere, alibi christianos Saracenorum tyrannidi oppressionique exponere” (If, therefore, the warriors of other provinces unanimously propose to aid the churches in Asia and to liberate their brothers from the tyranny of the Saracens, so also should you, at our earnest request, collectively strive to help with continuous efforts the neighboring churches suffering from the incursions of the Saracens. If anyone should die for God and for the love of his brethren in that expedition, he should not doubt that by the mercy of our most clement God he will truly receive indulgence of his sins and participation in life eternal. If anyone of you, therefore, plans to go to Asia, let him try to fulfill the desire of his devotion here. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 113 Urban portrayed the Crusade as a Mediterranean-wide struggle against Islam that was directed against “the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe” for the purpose of “restor[ing] to Christian worship cities that were once celebrated”.44 This broader view of the Crusade is confirmed by For it is no good to liberate Christians from Saracens in one place [i. e. in Asia] only to deliver Christians to Saracen tyranny and oppression in another place [i. e. in Spain]): Urban’s letter to the counts of Besalú, Ampurias, Roussillon, and Cerdanya and their knights, c. July 1096; Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien, I, pt. 2, 287–88, no. 23; trans. based on Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, 2003), 33, with additions and amendments made by author. See also Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 294–95; Engl. trans., 317; RileySmith and Riley-Smith, Crusades: Idea and Reality, 40; Peters, First Crusade, 45–46; José Goni Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada en España (Vitoria, 1958), 60–61; Norman Housley, “Jerusalem and the Development of the Crusade Idea, 1099–1128”, in The Horns of Hattin, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1992), 32–33. Kehr assumed that this undated Crusade bull dealt with preparations for the first attacks on Tarragona and dated it between 1089 and 1091 (Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien, I, pt. 2, 287, no. 23). Erdmann recognized that it referred unmistakably to the Council of Clermont and the departure of knights on the “First” Crusade and fixed its date between 1096 and 1099 (Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 294 n. 37; Engl. trans., 317 n. 37). Lawrence McCrank suggests that it was most likely issued in 1096 when Urban made his tour of southern France and met with Archbishop Berenguer at Nîmes and Saint-Gilles in July of 1096 (Lawrence J. McCrank, “Restoration and Reconquest in Medieval Catalonia: The Church and Principality of Tarragona, 971–1177” [Ph. D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974], 284–85 n. 51). 44) “Quia post multa annorum curricula nostris potissimum temporibus christiani populi pressuras releuare, fidem exaltare dignatus est. Nostris siquidem diebus in Asia Turcos, in Europa Mauros christianorum uiribus debellavit, et urbes quondam famosas religionis sue cultui gratia propensiore restituit”: Urban to Bishop Pedro of Huesca, 11 May 1098, “Epistolae et privilegia”, PL 151, 504; Durán Gudiol, Iglesia de Aragón, 193 no. 20. This letter is very important for determining what the pope thought the Crusade to be. Referring to the victories at Nicaea and Dorylaeum, as well as in Spain, the pope states: “In our days God had eased the sufferings of the Christian peoples and allowed the faith to triumph. By means of the Christian forces He has conquered the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe, and restored to Christian worship cities that were once celebrated” (trans. Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 296; Engl. trans., 319). For Erdmann, this passage indicates that the pope “considered the two wars as parallel undertakings” (ibid.). Urban’s vision of the crusading movement was of a Mediterranean-wide struggle against Islam. He had expressed this idea earlier in his letter to a number of Catalan counts and their knights, dating from c. July 1096, when he spoke of the Crusade as a two-front war: in the eastern Mediterranean and in the western Medi- 114 Paul E. Chevedden papal documents and corroborated by Islamic sources, but it has not gained the support of modern scholars. Modern scholars start from an axiomatically accepted premise – the “Jerusalem First” theory of the Crusades – and order the facts to support this premise. Urban’s position as founding father of crusading has generated immense confusion among those who seek to understand how the Crusade originated and developed. Historians have studied Urban and have achieved a greater understanding of the man and his times in which he lived without questioning the assumption that his summons to Crusade must be seen as the key to the emergence of the crusading movement.45 Generations of historians have been misled into producing accounts of the Crusade that view it as resulting from Urban’s appeal at Clermont in 1095.46 If crusading is to be explained solely in terms of Urban’s call, then it is inevitable that one will project that idea onto the historical reconstruction of the Crusades. Thus, historians have dutifully picked out those aspects of crusading that could be seen as having value for the development of the “First” Crusade and have produced a retrospective terranean (see n. 43 above and text). Urban’s view of the Crusade is directly related to his vision of Christian history, which, according to Becker, follows a fourfold schema. For a discussion of Urban’s schema of Christian history and how it relates to crusading, see Becker, Papst Urban II, II, 352–62, 374–76, 398–99; H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Urban II and the Idea of the Crusade”, Studi medievali 36 (1995), 723; Jean Flori, “Réforme, reconquista, croisade (l’idée de reconquête dans la correspondance pontificale d’Alexandre II à Urbain II)”, in Jean Flori, Croisade et chevalerie: XIe–XIIe siècles (Brussels, 1998), 73–74. 45) See especially Becker, Papst Urban II. 46) Recent general studies on the Crusades all adhere to the “Jerusalem First” theory of the Crusades: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven, 1987); Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades, trans. John Gillingham, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1988); Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995); idem, The Oxford History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1999); Bernard Hamilton, The Crusades (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1998); Thomas F. Madden, A Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, Md., 1999); idem, The New Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, Md., 2005); Jean Richard, The Crusades, c. 1071–c. 1291, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1999); Jonathan P. Phillips, The Crusades, 1095–1197 (Harlow, 2002); Norman Housley, The Crusaders (Stroud, 2003); Thomas F. Madden, ed., The Crusades: The Illustrated History (Ann Arbor, 2004); Asbridge, First Crusade; Christopher Tyerman, Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades (Oxford, 2004); Helen Nicholson, The Crusades (Westport, 2004); Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow, 2004). The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 115 reading of history that deduces causes from results. Events that do not fit into the “Jerusalem First” theory of the Crusades are ignored, distorted, or manipulated so that they do not fit. The so-called “pre-Crusade” period is manipulated to show that expeditions prior to the “First” Crusade were groping their way toward Crusade but were unable to achieve the significant breakthrough that would usher in crusading.47 It is all too easy for historians unfamiliar with the range of crusading expeditions of the second half of the eleventh century to be misled into thinking that the “First” Crusade was the first event of its kind. This is due to the fact that scholars remain trapped by an inability to explore certain avenues (Crusades prior to 1095) and to focus seriously on the direct evidence.48 When the direct evidence is properly evaluated (e. g. Crusade bulls prior to 1095, conciliar legislation, papal correspondence, etc.), it can be clearly established that no discrepancy exists between the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade and the Christian interpretation: the two interpretations are mirror images each of the other.49 47) See below, nn. 64–71, 90, and text. A current trend in Crusade scholarship is to focus attention away from the direct evidence and to concentrate on the indirect evidence. This is done under the pretext of focusing attention on the reception, rather than on the origin, of crusading. This line of approach, advanced by Marcus G. Bull in Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993) and by Jonathan Riley-Smith in The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge 1997), is a curious amalgam of the old and the new. It contains a relic of the old idealist concept of Crusade as a “species” of pilgrimage, but, in a deliberate attempt to appear modern, emphasis is placed on the Crusaders and their motivations, rather than on Pope Urban and his Crusade appeal. This line of approach is fraught with pitfalls. Only by first mastering the direct evidence pertaining to the Crusade will it be possible to make sense of the indirect evidence. Although Bull and Riley-Smith purport to draw attention away from the perspective of Urban’s call (a view from above) and to focus attention upon the manner in which members of society responded to the Crusade (a view from below), they are inevitably drawn back to Urban’s call because they frame the responses of the participants in the context of their interpretation of Urban’s call. A focus on the response to Urban’s call is premature. Only by first fleshing out Urban’s intention and his role in the launching of the “First” Crusade will it be possible to establish the relationship between him and his contemporaries. 49) See my forthcoming book, The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade, which uses Islamic sources as the basis for a reinterpretation of crusading. 48) 116 Paul E. Chevedden Islamic Scholarship and the Rejection of “The Self” Unfortunately, scholarship in the Islamic world does not offer an alternative approach to the study of the Crusades. One of the finest studies on the Crusades in Arabic remains al-Hurub al-Salibiyin wa-atharuha fi l-adab al-
arabi fi Misr wa-l-Sham (“The Crusades and Their Impact on Arabic Literature in Egypt and Syria”) by Muhammad Sayyid al-Kilani, first published in 1949. It begins with Ibn al-Athir’s famous passage of the fart heard round the Mediterranean only to discredit it with these remarks: “Perhaps this great historian stands alone in having heard that great fart!”50 An examination of major studies on the Crusades written in Arabic over the past century indicates that the discussion of the subject is conducted within the framework of analysis laid down by Western scholars.51 Arabic historical works on the Crusades do not pay heed to the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. Like their Western counterparts, Arab historians systematically ignore the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. Instead of deriving an interpretation of the Crusade that is found in Islamic historical sources, Arab historians bolster a view of the Crusades formulated by Western scholars. In her assessment of recent 50) Muhammad Sayyid al-Kilani, al-Hurub al-Salibiyin wa-atharuha fi l-adab al-
arabi fi Misr wa-al-Sham (Cairo, 1949), 10. 51) See, for example, Sayyid
Ali al-Hariri, al-Hurub al-salibiya: asbabuha, hamlatuha, nata#ijuha, ed.
Isam Muhammad Shibaru (Beirut 1988; first published in Cairo in 1899 as al-Akhbar al-saniya fi l-hurub al-salibiya); Rafiq alTamimi, al-Hurub al-salibiya: ahdath wa-asahh ma kutiba bi-l-lugha al-
Arabiya fi l-hurub al-salibiya, wa-fihi wasf daqiq li-l-waqa#i
al-kurba wa-tarajim wafiya liashhar al-quwwad min muslimin wa-salibiyin (Jerusalem, 1945); Hamid Ghunaym Abu Sa
id, al-Jabha al-Islamiya fi l-hurub al-salibiya (Cairo, 1971–74); Sa
id
Abd al-Fattah
Ashur, al-Haraka al-salibiya: Safha mushriqa fi ta#rikh aljihad al-
arabi fi l-
usur al-wusta (Cairo, 1971); idem, al-Haraka al-salibiya: Safha mushriqa fi ta#rikh al-jihad al-islami fi l-
usur al-wusta (Cairo, 1986); Fayid Hammad Muhammad
Ashur, al-Jihad al-islami didda al-salibiyin fi l-
asr al-ayyubi (Cairo, 1983); idem, al-Jihad al-islami didda al-salibiyin wa-l-mughul fi l-
asr al-mamluki (Tripoli, 1995); Muhammad al-
Arusi al-Matwi, al-Hurub al-salibiya fi l-mashriq wa-l-maghrib (Beirut, 1982); Suhayl Zakkar, al-Hurub al-salibiya: al-hamlatan al-ula wa-l-thaniya hasb riwayat shuhud
ayan, kutibat aslan bi-l-ighriqiya, wa-l-siryaniya, wa-l-
arabiya wa-l-latiniya (Damascus, 1984); Muhammad Mu#nis Ahmad
Awad, al-Hurub al-salibiya: al-
alaqat bayna l-sharq wa-l-gharb fi l-qarnayn 12–13 M. / 6–7 H. (al-Haram, 1999–2000); As
ad Mahmud Hawmad, Ta#rikh al-jihad li-tard al-ghuzah al-salibiyin (Damascus, 2002). The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 117 Arab scholarship on the Crusades, Carole Hillenbrand complains that it is divided into two camps: (1) scholarship that is polemical in nature, with a heavy dose of “moralising and an explicit political agenda”, and (2) scholarship that is heavily reliant on “European” works and follows a Western approach to the topic. She finds it paradoxical “that precisely those historians whose native language is Arabic have done very little indeed to provide a properly documented counterweight, based on Arabic materials, of the accounts of the Crusades produced by modern historians of the medieval West”.52 In an age that has witnessed an explosion of research on “the Other” that purportedly seeks to understand “the Other” on its own terms rather than on terms derived from the West, Crusade scholarship has remained immune to this trend. Western scholars are content to understand the Crusade through the prism of outmoded theories. Arab scholars, who might otherwise offer a needed alternative to this approach, are content to warm over Western scholarship on the Crusade and present it in a way that conforms to present-day political aspirations. In doing so, Arab scholars have succeeded in collapsing the past into the present, thereby alienating the modern Arab world from its own history. The Crusading Matrix: the Muslim West and the Latin West The Islamic interpretation of the Crusade focuses attention on the relations between the Muslim West and the Latin West and traces the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the western Mediterranean. Scholarship on the Crusade has traditionally focused attention on the relations between the Muslim East and the Latin West and has traced the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean. Given the enormous distance separating the Latin West and the Muslim East, modern scholarship on the Crusade has always found it somewhat bizarre that such a conflict ever came about in the first place. Tomaš Mastnak, for example, views the Latin West as living in majestic profusion up till the very moment of the Crusades – isolated and aloof and remote from the world of Islam – and portrays crusading as “an unpro- 52) Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 4–5. See also Emmanuel Sivan, “Modern Arab Historiography of the Crusades”, in Emmanuel Sivan, Interpretations of Islam: Past and Present (Princeton, 1985), 3–43. 118 Paul E. Chevedden voked military offensive far beyond western Christian borders”. Likewise, Byzantine historian Aristeides Papadakis characterizes the Crusade as “Latin Christendom’s unprovoked offensive against medieval Islam”. In a similar vein, Richard Bulliet presents the Crusade as “a movement that brought Islam and Latin Christendom into contact”, as if the Islamic invasion of Latin Christendom in the seventh and eighth centuries had failed to do so.53 How did such an interpretation of the Crusade – one that is so much at variance with the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade – ever emerge? A Conceptual Straitjacket In the nineteenth century, scholars who examined the Crusade studied both crusading and the Latin East. Naturally, their interest in the Crusade was focused strongly on what took place in the eastern Mediterranean, and, consequently, they attempted to explain a movement that began in the western Mediterranean by investigating what happened in the eastern Mediterranean. By adopting such an approach, and in particular by numbering crusading expeditions so that only those expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean counted as Crusades (with one exception made for King Louis IX’s North African “detour”), they placed the study of the crusading movement in a conceptual straitjacket. This straitjacket was regarded as exceptionally comfortable because the vast majority of scholars who perceived themselves to be working in the field of Crusade history, like their nineteenth-century counterparts, still continued to study both the Crusades and the Latin East. With the establishment of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East in 1980 (the sole international association of scholars devoted to the study of the Crusades), the bias towards the Latin East in Crusade scholarship was institutionalized. Scholars could not perceive that the intellectual focus of this organization was inherently unsound and fundamentally at odds with the historical evidence pertaining to the Crusade. Those advancing the “Jerusalem First” theory of the Crusade with its lopsided focus on the Latin East recognized their paradigm as the only 53) Mastnak, Crusading Peace, 119; Aristeides Papadakis (in collaboration with John Meyendorff), The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church, 1071–1453 A. D. (Crestwood, 1994), 69; Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (New York, 2004), 30. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 119 approach to the study of the Crusade. To the detriment of scholarship, this theory now reigns supreme with an institutional base that ensures its primacy.54 The Lessons of Bar Hebraeus The contemporary straitjacketing of Crusade studies is not conducive to the advancement of knowledge. In the thirteenth century, Bar Hebraeus faced a similar predicament when he attempted to provide a coherent account of the Crusade. In his Chronicon syriacum he struggled with two irreconcilable interpretations of the Crusade. Both of these interpretations can be found in the Muslim historiographical tradition. One interpretation focused attention on the relations between the Muslim East and the Latin West and traced the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean (al-
Azimi). The other interpretation focused attention on the relations between the Muslim West and the Latin West and traced the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the western Mediterranean (al-Sulami and Ibn al-Athir). His attempt at resolving the “clash of interpretations” in his Chronicon syriacum was not successful. He settled for an account of the Crusade that focused attention on the relations between the Muslim East and the Latin West and traced the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and western Christendom that broke out in the western Mediterranean over a problem related to evils suffered by Christians in the eastern Mediterranean. Bar Hebraeus was clearly not satisfied with his first attempt at providing a coherent account of the Crusade. His efforts to resolve the problem of irreconcilable facts in the historical sources had produced other irreconcilable facts. The problem of too many irreconcilable facts did pre- 54) The official website of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (SSCLE) promotes the “Jerusalem First” interpretation of the Crusade with its focus on the Latin East: “Chronology of the Crusades”, http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/mmarkowski/sscle/ssclechr.html (accessed 4 July 2005). This international academic society with an acknowledged bias towards the Latin East claims to be “pluralistic” in its approach to the study of the Crusades, while it maintains a hierarchical scale of crusading wars. Its so-called “pluralist approach” is in fact a “monist approach” (see n. 82 below). On the idiosyncratic use of the term “pluralistic” by SSCLE, see the “Editors’ Statement” in the first volume of the SSCLE journal, Crusades 1 (2002): ix–x. 120 Paul E. Chevedden cipitate a state of crisis for Bar Hebraeus, and he admirably demonstrated his ability to resolve the conundrum caused by the conflicting evidence. After pondering the evidence, he recognized that Muslim historiography had already resolved the state of crisis over the “clash of interpretations” pertaining to the Crusade. Muslim scholars had introduced a successful theory explaining the Crusade that had already achieved the status of a paradigm in the Islamic historiographical tradition. This theory focused attention on the relations between the Muslim West and the Latin West and traced the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the western Mediterranean. Bar Hebraeus was convinced of the superiority of this theory and adopted it in his revised account of the Crusade found in his Mukhtasar. In adopting the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade, Bar Hebraeus raised this theory beyond the confines of Muslim historiography and made it part of the main historiographical tradition of the Middle East. Muslim scholars had blazed the trail to a new Crusade paradigm by producing a coherent account of crusading that focused attention on the relations between the Muslim West and the Latin West. Instead of explaining the Crusade as a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean, Islamic history and historiography explained the Crusade as a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the western Mediterranean. Western scholars have something to learn from the historiographical tradition of the Middle East. An explanation of the Crusade that focuses attention on the relations between the Muslim East and the Latin West and that traces the Crusade to a struggle between Islam and Western Christendom that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean is riddled with irreconcilable facts. Historians of the Middle East – Muslim and Christian – came to this realization in the Middle Ages. Western scholars have yet to grasp what Middle Eastern historians recognized centuries ago. For Bar Hebraeus, irreconcilable facts in the historical evidence produced a state of crisis. At first he attempted to resolve the crisis by employing a simple patchwork solution. He wove together two irreconcilable accounts of the Crusade into a single narrative, and, without making any effort to establish a causal connection between the events in the two accounts, he maintained that the events were nonetheless linked in some way (Chronicon syriacum). This ad hoc solution proved unsuccessful; it produced more problems than it solved. After carefully weighing the evidence again as he was writing his Mukhtasar, Bar Hebraeus came to the realization that Muslim scholars had already come up with a solution to the crisis in Crusade historiography by introducing a new Crusade para- The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 121 digm. This paradigm successfully dealt with the irreconcilable facts that had plagued other explanations of the Crusade and offered a coherent account of the crusading enterprise. Bar Hebraeus broke the deadlock in understanding the Crusade by adopting the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. The current impasse into which Crusade history seems to have fallen can be overcome in exactly the same way that Bar Hebraeus resolved his own historiographical crisis. The lessons of Bar Hebraeus are clear. Ad hoc modifications to the existing “Jerusalem First” paradigm will not work; the only way to end the current stalemate in Crusade studies is to adopt the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade. There are compelling reasons for considering the adoption of the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade, but none of the preconditions for the adoption of an alternate paradigm have yet been met. A crisis-provoking problem that would goad scholars into searching for a new paradigm has not emerged in the field of Crusade studies.55 Yet a crisis-provoking problem may not be necessary to facilitate the adoption of this paradigm. First of all, the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade is not a new paradigm. It is an old paradigm. In fact, it is the oldest paradigm ever proposed to explain the Crusade. Second, this paradigm is already part of the historiography of the Crusade. Third, Carl Erdmann presented this paradigm in rudimentary form 70 years ago in the most influential book ever published on the Crusade, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (“The Origin of the Idea of Crusade”).56 This may come as some surprise to Crusade historians. This surprise stems from the fact that “the historiography [of the Crusade]”, as Giles Constable points out, “has received comparatively little attention from scholars”.57 Once Erdmann’s position on the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade is made known, resistance to this paradigm will begin to break down, and a 900-year-old interpretation of the Crusade will begin to find acceptance. 55) On the role of crises in making scholars receptive to alternative theories, see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1996), 67–76, 80, 82, 84–86, 89, 154, 158, 181. 56) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke; Engl. trans. 57) Giles Constable, “The Historiography of the Crusades”, in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington, DC, 2001), 1–2. 122 Paul E. Chevedden Carl Erdmann and the Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade The “Power of Negativity” Long before the publication of Erdmann’s seminal study, crusading had been presented as the “absolute fusion of the religion of peace with barbarous warfare”.58 Crusading was portrayed, not as the outgrowth of the historically rooted values and norms of the community of Christian peoples (populus christianus), but as the end product of the rejection of these values and norms. A clash between the peace-making and war-making tendencies in Latin Christianity – between consent and opposition to violence in the Latin Church – was thought to have produced the Crusade. The Crusade, according to this view, had decisively resolved the conflict arising over the question of violence in favor of violence.59 A scenario was 58) Henry Hart Milman, History of Latin Christianity: Including That of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicolas V (London, 1864), IV, 206. 59) Recent scholarship, as John Gilchrist points out, rejects Erdmann’s idea that there was a sharp break with the past on the part of the reform popes from an anti-war to a pro-war stance (John Gilchrist, “The Papacy and War against the ‘Saracens’, 795–1216”, International History Review 10 [1988], 174–97). In fact, the early history of conflict between western Christendom and Islamic powers may be described as the fairly harmonious flowing together of the various currents of thought that later made up crusading ideology. There is a marked continuity in the ideology of war in the crusading era with the preceding period of late antiquity, as a host of studies demonstrate: John M. WallaceHadrill, “War and Peace in the Early Middle Ages”, in J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 19–38; Friedrich E. Prinz, “King, Clergy and War at the Time of the Carolingians”, in Saints, Scholars, and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. Margot H. King and Wesley M. Stevens (Collegeville, 1979), II, 301–29; Janet L. Nelson, “The Church’s Military Service in the Ninth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View?”, in The Church and War: Papers Read at the Twenty-First Summer Meeting and the Twenty-Second Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Historical Society, ed. W. J. Sheils (Oxford, 1983), 15–30; Graham A. Loud, “The Church, Warfare and Military Obligation in Norman Italy”, in The Church and War, 31–45; Michael McCormick, “The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies, and the Carolingian Monarchy”, Viator 15 (1984), 1–23; idem, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986); idem, “A New Ninth-Century Witness to the Carolingian Mass against the Pagans”, Revue Bénédictine 97 (1987), 68–86; Simon Coupland, “The Rod of God’s Wrath or the People of God’s Wrath? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (October, 1991), The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 123 needed to specify how this alleged development had taken place. Erdmann proposes a dialectical scenario. The transition from abhorrence of violence to the embrace of violence was achieved by the Church through the merger of holy war and the peaceful pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. To support such a thesis, Erdmann employs the dialectical “power of negation” as a deus ex machina, which ensures that the mutually antagonistic forces of war and peace, embodied in holy war and pilgrimage, do not destroy one another but instead blend together smoothly to create a new essence – crusading.60 The militarization of Latin Christianity was thus the direct product of the synthesis of war and pilgrimage. Even though Erdmann promotes an interpretation of the Crusade as an event that occurred in response to forces internal to the Latin West, not in response to external forces, much of his book adopts an evolutionary approach to the study of the Crusade that does focus on external factors, such as the ongoing conflict between Islam and Christendom. Emphasis is placed on the idea of Christian knighthood and the concept of Christian holy war against the infidel in the development of the Crusade. Erdmann is clearly divided regarding how crusading came about – gradually or rapidly. For nine chapters, he seems intent upon constructing a gradualist model of the Crusade, while making a serious effort to study the Crusade as an enterprise embedded in wider events and historical processes. Then Chapter Ten brings the book to a climax with a sudden about-face. Here Erdmann claims that the Crusade possessed a unique characteristic – “war-pilgrimage”. The Jerusalem Crusade was markedly different from all previous papally sanctioned campaigns against the Muslims because it was a combination of war and pilgrimage. This expedition occurred, not in response to external forces (e. g. the Saljuq conquests and the threat to Christendom), but through the action of forces internal to the Latin West, predisposing these forces to act in a particular way – directed toward the development of the “First” Crusade. The 535–54; John R. E. Bliese, “St. Cuthbert and War”, Journal of Medieval History 24 (1998), 215–41; John France, “Holy War and Holy Men: Erdmann and the Lives of the Saints”, in The Experience of Crusading, I: Western Approaches, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambridge, 2003), 193–208. 60) The “power of negativity” has much to answer for. The radical merger of conflicting values produced not the least inconcinnity or discord, but instead created harmony and concord around a movement that was, it is alleged, utterly incompatibility with all Christian ethical and moral standards of the past. 124 Paul E. Chevedden “mechanism” of change that brought about the Crusade was an abrupt mutation – “the unification of holy war with pilgrimage”. The gradualism of nine chapters is eclipsed in Chapter Ten by a sudden transformation, or saltation, that is introduced to trigger the Crusade, thereby preserving the importance of Urban’s role in generating the Crusade. The development of the Crusade would thus not be predictable on the basis of a gradual trend in history, since it could not have occurred without the crucial fusion of war and pilgrimage. Those expeditions that had not developed to the level of a synthesis of war and pilgrimage could only be recognized as crusading failures. The Jerusalem Crusade was the first crusading success because it embodied “the unification of holy war with pilgrimage, something that Urban first brought about”.61 Chapter Ten left Erdmann’s thesis dominated by a view of the Crusade as an essentially discontinuous event, yet the chapter concludes with an attempt to straddle the divide between continuity and discontinuity: “The breakthrough of the knightly movement in the First Crusade displays the characteristic combination of continuity and revolution that is proper to the great events of universal history”.62 Erdmann makes a concerted effort to accommodate his saltationist theory of “war-pilgrimage” with a gradualist theory that views the militarization of the Church as “an evolution, but never a leap or a new beginning”, whereby the Crusade emerged “from the genuine evolution of holy war, Christian knighthood, and the general crusading idea” (i. e. the idea of Christian holy war against the infidel).63 In fact, one might even characterize his scenario for the linking of war and pilgrimage as a hybrid one: evolutionary martial tendencies in Latin Christianity reached a threshold of development until the fundamental breakthrough of Urban occurred – “war-pilgrimage”. Yet to do so would be a mistake. The holy wars of the period immediately preceding the “First” Crusade, which have been identified as “pre-Crusades”,64 “proto61) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 319; Engl. trans., 348. Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 325; Engl. trans., 354. 63) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 317, 320; Engl. trans., 345, 348. 64) For “pre-crusading”, see Augustin Fliche, L’Europe occidentale de 888 à 1125 (Paris, 1930), 550–51; Paul Rousset, Les origines et les caractères de la premiere croisade (Geneva, 1945), 27–42; Joseph Calmette, Le monde féodal, (Paris, 1951), 360; Albrecht Noth, Heiliger Krieg und Heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum. Beiträge zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Bonn, 1966), 100 (“Vorkreuzzug”), 120 (“[Vor-] Kreuzzug”); Huguette Taviani- Carozzi, La terreur du monde: Robert Guiscard et al conquéte normande en Italie, mythe et histoire (Paris, 1996), 378; Bull, Knightly Piety, 113; Flori, “Réforme, reconquista, croisade”, 51, 54. 62) The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 125 Crusades”,65 “premature Crusades”,66 “quasi-Crusades”,67 “demi-Crusades”,68 “near Crusades”,69 “ersatz Crusades”,70 and the self-contradictory “Crusade before the Crusades” (una cruzada antes de las cruzadas),71 ultimately give no real indication of the formative stages of Crusade because they lack the essential ingredient that would make them a true Crusade (war + pilgrimage). The doctrine of “war-pilgrimage” maintains that the primordial element of Crusade is “the unification of holy war with pilgrimage”. Without the ingredient encapsulating the essence of crusading – “war-pilgrimage” – there could be no Crusade, not even the hint of a Crusade. The fusion of war and pilgrimage forms the basic principle of the Crusade, and the formative stages of Crusade begin with the coming together of these two indispensable components.72 Erdmann’s attempt at a hybrid solution was not successful. Eventually the gradualist elements in his thesis came face to face with the obvious discontinuity of the “war-pilgrimage” paradigm – a problem that Erdmann had never fully resolved. Without a conceptual revolution, there would have been no fusion of war and pilgrimage and hence no Crusade. Crusade was a product of a deliberate effort to join war and pilgrimage, not the outcome of a gradual intensification of conflict between two 65) For “proto-crusading”, see Charles Julian Bishko, “The Spanish and Portuguese Reconquest, 1095–1492”, in History of the Crusades, III: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Harry W. Hazard (Madison, 1975), 403; Deno J. Geanakoplos, Medieval Western Civilization and the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Interaction of Three Cultures (Lexington, 1979), 277; Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198, 324–25; Bull, Knightly Piety, 71, 75, 76, 80, 81, 96, 110. 66) Flori, “Réforme, reconquista, croisade”, 57 (croisade prématurée). 67) For “quasi-crusading”, see Bull, Knightly Piety, 71, 85. 68) For “demi-crusading”, see Rousset, Origines, 27. 69) For “near-crusading” or “presques-croisades”, see Rousset, Origines, 27. 70) For “ersatz crusading”, see Geoffrey Regan, First Crusader: Byzantium’s Holy Wars (Stroud, 2001), 192, 194, 221. The German loan word ersatz does not convey the same meaning in English as it does in German. Its literal German meaning of “compensation” or “replacement” takes on a pejorative meaning in English and refers to “an inferior substitute for the genuine article”. The use of the terms “ersatz Crusade” and “ersatz crusading” implies that true Crusades have yet to appear. 71) Ramón Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid (Madrid, 1929), I, 163. 72) Because the formative stage of Crusade must comprise the fusion of war and pilgrimage, Jean Flori, a self-avowed Erdmannist, rejects the whole notion of “pre-crusading” (Jean Flori, “Pour une redéfinition de la croisade”, Cahiers de civilisation medievale 47 [2004], 329–50). 126 Paul E. Chevedden Mediterranean societies that reached a crescendo in the eleventh century due to the recovery of the Latin West. The mortal wound that proved fatal to Erdmann’s saltatory thesis was its unresolved tension between Crusade as a marked continuity with the past and Crusade as a sudden break with the past. This dilemma left Erdmann’s thesis plagued by inconsistencies. Erdmann’s Facts and Erdmann’s Thesis Any close reading of Erdmann reveals that he shows not only a profound disregard for the facts of medieval history but also a profound disregard for the facts of medieval history as he had established them. He identifies many conflicts between Christians and Muslims prior to the “First” Crusade as Crusades, or as campaigns “conducted entirely as a crusade” or having a “crusading character”, yet these wars are treated as a “lower” form of crusading because they lacked the essential ingredient that would make them “true” Crusades – “war-pilgrimage”. According to Erdmann, “the outlines of the crusading idea are discernible” in the naval expedition of Genoa and Pisa against Sardinia in 1016, which had the blessing of Pope Benedict VIII (1012–24).73 “Fighting the Moslems along the Italian coast”, he declares, had become such “a habitual occupation” that it was “automatically associated with the idea of crusade”.74 During the 1060s, Erdmann asserts, “the idea of crusade reached a high point of evolution”.75 In the Norman conquest of Sicily (1061–91), “the crusading character of the fighting clearly emerges”, he claims, and this war, he concludes, “resembled a crusade to a degree unprecedented by any earlier aggression upon heathens that we know of”. “The Norman historians”, he emphasizes, “represent the Sicilian undertaking as a crusade from the first”. The aim of the Sicilian Crusade, as these historians depict it, was that the Christians inhabiting the island should cease to live in servitude, that Christianity should govern there, and that Christian observance should be restored to fitting splendor. That the land had formerly been Christian, and that the Moslems were themselves violent intruders, were particularly emphasized. The motivation, therefore, did not differ in essentials from that of the First Crusade, and its significance should be similarly judged.76 73) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 102; Engl. trans., 112. Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 103; Engl. trans., 114. 75) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 210; Engl. trans., 228. 76) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 121–23; Engl. trans., 133–36. 74) The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 127 For Erdmann, the reasons for the Sicilian Crusade were the same as the reasons for the “First” Crusade, and its importance was much the same as well. He recognizes no essential difference between the Sicilian Crusade and the “First” Crusade. Turning to Spain, Erdmann finds crusading everywhere. He not only singles out specific expeditions as Crusades (e. g. “Barbastrokreuzzug”) but he also affirms the crusading character of the whole Muslim-Christian conflict in Spain and refers to the Christian side of the struggle as a series of “Spanish Crusades” (“Spanienkreuzzuges”). Erdmann calls the Barbastro expedition “the Spanish crusade of 1064” (“Spanienkreuzzug von 1064”) and states that the papacy was a “participant in this crusade” with a “papal crusading indulgence” offered to the participants and with the “commander of the Roman cavalry” (Ar. qa#id khayl ruma) as “the leader of the foreign crusaders”. Erdmann claims that the Barbastro Crusade was followed up “in the next decades by a series of similar undertakings”. Such enterprises included a French expedition in 1073 under the leadership of Count Ebles de Roucy, as well as the campaigns of “Hugh I of Burgundy and William VI [of Poitou (VIII)] of Aquitaine in support of the king of Aragon”. Following the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI (1065–1109) in 1085, Erdmann states that “bands of crusaders” took the field against the great Almoravid counter-Crusade at the battle of Zallaqa in 1086. “The severe defeat suffered there by the Christians”, Erdmann declares, “brought new stimulus to the idea of a Spanish crusade” (“Spanienkreuzzuges”), and during the following year “substantial contingents of knights reached Spain from various parts of France under high-placed leadership” that counted among its members Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse, who “was first to respond to the papal appeal when the First Crusade was proclaimed”. Genoa and Pisa “entered the Spanish war in 1092, by joining Alfonso VI of Castile in a combined attack on Valencia”. After being turned away at Valencia, they struck Tortosa, but without success. Those that took up the struggle against Islam in Spain, Erdmann notes, attributed to this conflict “the crusading character it had had in the Barbastro campaign”. Six years prior to the call for the “First” Crusade, Pope Urban granted the same spiritual benefits that would be gained by making a pilgrimage – either “to Jerusalem or some other place” – to whoever “in the spirit of penance and piety … turn[ed] all the costs and efforts of such a [pilgrimage] journey toward the restoration of the church at Tarragona”, destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Spain in 711–14. Urban’s appeal to reestablish the archbishopric of Tarragona, “for penance and the forgiveness of sins”, had a “direct relationship”, Erdmann asserts, “to the later (sic!) crusad- 128 Paul E. Chevedden ing indulgence”. Those that answered the Clermont crusading summons received the same crusading benefits as those engaged in the Spanish Crusades. Observing the similarities between the two theaters of operation, Erdmann maintains that Urban “considered the two wars as parallel undertakings, forming a unit from the spiritual standpoint but separate as campaigns”.77 The “First” Crusade was not “a leap or a new beginning”. “Urban’s idea of crusade had been present in Gregory VII”, Erdmann argues, and Gregory VII’s aborted Eastern Crusade of 1074, he insists, “was a crusade”.78 Erdmann also maintains that the Mahdiya campaign of 1087, which “took place simultaneously with the attempted counterattack against the advance of the African Almoravids upon the Iberian peninsula”, was “conducted entirely as a crusade”.79 There was indeed a “whole lot a crusadin’ goin’ on” prior to the “First” Crusade, yet Crusade dare not speak its name because the doctrine of “war-pilgrimage” requires that crusading evolve along a path that joins war with pilgrimage. Although Erdmann makes scarcely any effort to underpin his distinguishing criterion for Crusade – “war-pilgrimage” – with historical fact,80 this is not true for crusading operations 77) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 124–27, 140–41, 199, 267–70, 272, 292–96; Engl. trans., 136–40, 155–56; 216, 288–90, 293, 314–19. 78) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 152, 309; Engl. trans., 168, 334. 79) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 272; Engl. trans., 293. 80) At Clermont, Erdmann claims, “the much more impressive possibility arose of declaring the new war to be an actual pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher”, and, accordingly, “the idea of the armed pilgrimage was proclaimed for the first time at Clermont” (Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 307; Engl. trans., 331). No such proclamation was ever made, despite the assertions of Jonathan Riley-Smith and Karen Armstrong to the contrary (Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 77; Karen Armstrong, Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World, 2nd ed. [New York, 2001], 59, 67). To support his contention that it was, Erdmann refers to “a series of sources [that] summarily define the crusade as ‘traveling in arms to Jerusalem’” (Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 307 n. 78; Engl. trans., 331 n. 78). The condition of “traveling in arms to Jerusalem” was necessitated by the fact that knights had undertaken a military expedition to Jerusalem, not because a pope had declared a war to be a pilgrimage, or had taken “the novel step of associating his own summons to a military enterprise with the idea of a pilgrimage” (H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade”, History 55 [1970], 178). Generations of Crusade historians have fallen into the trap of assuming that because one could postulate, or even demonstrate, that there was a link between Crusade and pilgrimage, this must somehow indicate that the Crusade resulted from this linkage. The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 129 in Sicily, Spain, and North Africa prior to 1095. Erdmann does not hesitate to affirm the crusading nature of these enterprises and produce the historical evidence to support this opinion. Erdmann’s radical claims for “war-pilgrimage” in Chapter Ten undermine his earlier findings and make the inception of the Crusade a matter of uncertainty. For Sicily, Spain, and North Africa, an expedition could be a Crusade and at the same time not be a Crusade. The “First” Crusade was ensnared in similar ambiguity. It could be both the First Crusade and at the same time not be the First Crusade. Erdmann’s thesis was at war with the evidence. Moreover, it was at war with the very evidence that Erdmann had presented. His thesis went against his facts, and no amount of argument could establish coherence between his facts and his thesis. Without affinity between Erdmann’s facts and his thesis, his theory of the Crusade could not be accepted. Crusade historians after Erdmann were in a quandary. They found it impossible to make Erdmann’s gradualism compatible with a thesis that laid so much stress on discontinuity. Yet no serious attempt was ever made to reconcile Erdmann’s gradualism with discontinuity. Instead, a way was found to make his thesis plausible in terms of internal coherence without subjecting Erdmann’s facts or his thesis to analysis or synthesis.81 Erdmann’s thesis could be salvaged by rejecting Erdmann’s gradualism. A broad range of neo-Erdmannist interpreters of the Crusade rose to the challenge. The end result was the abandonment of any attempt to reconstruct an evolutionary history of the Crusade.82 81) John Gilchrist finds that “Erdmann’s book was widely reviewed but not over-critically”, and that his thesis was not subjected to “any critical analysis of its theoretical foundations” (John Gilchrist, “The Erdmann Thesis and Canon Law”, in Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R. C. Smail, ed. Peter W. Edbury [Cardiff, 1985], 37). 82) The two leading schools of Crusade scholarship, inappropriately and misleadingly named “traditionalist” and “pluralist”, both adhere to a saltatory account of the Crusade, with the saltatory element of “war-pilgrimage” deemed essential to the enterprise. Various champions have arisen to explain and defend these schools of thought. Today, the leading champion of the “traditionalist” school is Jean Flori whose recent manifesto defines the Crusade as “une guerre sainte ayant pour objectif la récupération des Lieux saints de Jérusalem par les chrétiens” (Flori, “Pour une redéfinition de la croisade”, 349). Flori’s counterpart in the “pluralist” camp is Jonathan Riley-Smith. In his various statements of the “pluralistic” hypothesis, Riley-Smith recognizes that the Crusade diverged into distinct theaters of operation (the eastern Mediterranean, Spain, North 130 Paul E. Chevedden Ultra-Erdmannism The rejection of Erdmann’s gradualism produced a view of the Crusade ultimately derived from Carl Erdmann but stripped of his most Africa, the Baltic, the Balkans, Italy, southern France, and the Atlantic), targeted a manifold number of groups (Muslims, as well as Mongols, orthodox Christians, schismatics, heretics, pagans, and political opponents of the papacy), and lasted for seven hundred years, yet all Crusades must always be copies of an underlying type – the Holy Land Crusade – because all Crusades are regarded as having descended from a common ancestor – the “First” Crusade. The idea that all Crusades descended from a common ancestor (monogenism) is a form of monism, not pluralism. Here resides a major conceptual problem for the “pluralist” school: the proof of common ancestry is shared characteristics, yet the leading advocate of the “pluralist” position acknowledges that the common ancestor of all Crusades possessed a unique characteristic that made it “special”. In Riley-Smith’s words, “Jerusalem was special”, and the Jerusalem Crusade provided the “scale” against which others Crusades were measured. Once the Holy Land Crusade was elevated as the absolute “standard” by which all Crusades were to be measured, it became obvious that the non-Holy Land Crusades could not measure up. However hard they tried to match the Holy Land Crusade, all of the non-Holy Land Crusades fell short. The proposition that all Crusades had diverged from a common ancestor of crusading came up against the assumption that something very special had happened to make the Holy Land Crusade “special”, and this “special” quality was not transferable to other Crusades. The unique characteristic that made the Holy Land Crusade special – pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher – created a gulf between it and all other Crusades, and that gulf could only be shattered if all Crusades shared the same characteristics. The “pluralists” could not break down the gulf between the Holy Land Crusade and the non-Holy Land Crusades because to do so would jeopardize the “special” status of the Holy Land Crusade. As a result, the alleged gulf between Crusades remained. The prospect that common descent might not be the source of the similarities between Crusades was never considered. For background on how the terms “traditionalist” and “pluralist” came to designate two versions of ultra-Erdmannism, see Norman Housley, with Marcus Bull, “Jonathan RileySmith, the Crusades and the Military Orders: An Appreciation”, in The Experience of Crusading, I, 1–10. Affirmations of the “pluralistic” hypothesis are found in Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? (London, 1977); Riley-Smith and Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality; Riley-Smith, First Crusade; Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Atlas of the Crusades (New York, 1991); RileySmith, Crusades: A Short History; idem, “History, the Crusades and the Latin East, 1095–1204: A Personal View”, in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden, 1993), 1–17; idem, “The Crusading Movement and Historians”, in Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, 1–12; idem, First Crusaders; idem, What Were the Crusades? 3rd ed. (San Francisco, 2002). The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 131 valuable observations and conclusions. This view, which may be termed “ultra-Erdmannism”, regards the Crusade, even more radically than Erdmann ever imagined, as a wholly autonomous product of the intellect and the outcome of an intellectual mutation caused by a fallacious idea that emerged in a single revolutionary upheaval. The fallacious idea is “war-pilgrimage” – “a bastard politico-theological theory”83 – and the revolutionary upheaval is the great tumult caused by the radical conjunction of irreconcilable ideas – war and pilgrimage – that were joined together by Pope Urban II. Ultra-Erdmannism depicts the Crusade as “a truly revolutionary event, because the pope presented the faithful with an idea (“war-pilgrimage”) that had been unprecedented in Christian thought”.84 European society, at least at the level of its elites, was massively won over by the abstract idea of “war-pilgrimage” that was all the more incompatible with the values of existing society because it arose in opposition to the religious values of the day and triumphed precisely because European intellectuals were seized by mental paralysis: “It is amazing that no protests from senior churchmen are recorded, even though figures like Ivo of Chartres and Anselm of Canterbury, who was at Hugh of Lyon’s synod at Anse, may well have had doubts”.85 Deprived of “criticism of so radical an initiative” as the association of war and pilgrimage, the new bellicose ideology took root in the consciousness of an “emergent nobility of moderate status” because prior social and religious conditioning had “predisposed” this armsbearing class “to react positively to an appeal of this sort”. Monastic reform movements, the institution of pilgrimage to atone for sin, and the clerical condemnation of lay violence had religiously sensitized this class to crusading ideology. A prevailing social ethos of kinship solidarity among the armsbearers consolidated support for the Crusade and advanced the crusading movement through successive expeditions.86 Propelled by its initial upheaval, crusading continued willy-nilly for the next seven centuries. Only in modern times have intellectuals been able to accomplish what their medieval counterparts could not: give the coup de grâce to the crusading movement by exposing it as a grotesque misunderstanding of Christian teaching. Thus did Crusade historians bring about the final extinction of that new species of war- 83) Robinson, “Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ”, 183. Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 189. 85) Ibid., 77. 86) Ibid., 1, 6, 83–85, 97, 189–91. 84) 132 Paul E. Chevedden fare sparked by the “radical” and “revolutionary” idea of “war-pilgrimage”.87 Ultra-Erdmannism had resolved the contradictions and ambiguities of Erdmann’s thesis, but it did so at a price. In rejecting the developmental component of his thesis, ultra-Erdmannism had rejected his most important insights. What scholars had not realized was that Erdmann’s gradualism had pioneered a totally new way of interpreting the Crusade, but he was unable to sustain the implications of his insights and present them in a coherent thesis due to his idealist leanings. Whenever Erdmann allows the facts to speak for themselves, instead of trying to fit the facts into a preconceived theoretical framework, he brings insight and understanding to the study of the Crusade. But scholars were too mesmerized by Erdmann’s conceptualizing framework to recognize this. His contemporaries and successors proved incapable of perceiving what was truly original about his approach to the study of the Crusade. Neither his supporters nor his opponents recognized the novelty of identifying the so-called “pre-Crusades” in Sicily, Spain, and North Africa as genuine Crusades. For his supporters, as well as his opponents, Erdmann had betrayed the spirit of his own theory. His supporters and opponents did not see that he was pointing the way to a new interpretation of the Crusade. Nor did they see that he was pointing the way to an interpretation of the Crusade that is 900 years old. All that was needed was for Crusade historians to follow the historical path that Erdmann had sketched, instead of following the idealist elements of his thesis. This proved to be easier said than done. Only by stressing those aspects of Erdmann’s thesis that he had suppressed could a historical interpretation of the Crusade be achieved. Crusade historians in the postErdmannian era have shown even less interest in the historical processes that produced the Crusade than Erdmann. Today’s Crusade interpreters promote a continuation of his thesis in a new, but cruder, guise. It is a truncated Erdmann that is promoted – an Erdmann divested of all of his worthwhile insights. Erdmann’s most important contribution – the historical component of his thesis – has not aroused the interest of Crusade scholarship. Now the Islamic interpretation of the Crusade emerges as a way to rescue his insights by incorporating them into a coherent and historically verifiable explanation of the Crusade. 87) The “radical” and “revolutionary” nature of Crusade is one of the pillars of ultra-Erdmannism (Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 39, 48, 52, 77, 189). The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 133 Erdmann and al-Sulami: a New Synthesis Erdmann, like al-Sulami, recognizes the war against Islam in Sicily as a Crusade. He maintains that “the Norman-Papal alliance of 1059 was crucial to the development of the idea of crusade”.88 The political agenda was set in 1059, long before it would be fully worked out in theory or in practice: Sicily was to be liberated and the Church was to be restored. The key political issue in the crusading movement had been introduced in 1059 at the Council of Melfi. On the surface it pertained to the jurisdiction of Islam over Sicily, with the Normans given the nod. Yet the bigger issue was the jurisdiction over Christendom. And on this issue there was agreement: Christendom was to be free. This new principle of independence was to have far-reaching consequences. In 1059, the first concrete steps were taken to establish a body politic committed to the public freedom of the Church (libertas ecclesiae), both from secular control by emperors, kings, and feudal lords and from external domination by Islamic powers. The new political community of Western Christendom under papal leadership, as yet in embryo, made its first stirrings at Melfi in 1059 with the oath of Robert Guiscard to Pope Nicholas II (1058–61), which gave the stamp of legitimacy to the return of Christian rule to Sicily.89 88) Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 123; Engl. trans., 136. At the Council of Melfi, Robert Guiscard swore “fealty” to the pope and received in return authorization that granted him legitimacy to the rights of jurisdiction over Islamic Sicily as a “vassal” of the Holy See. This oath conferred legitimacy on the return of Christian rule to Sicily; it approved Robert Guiscard as the rightful ruler of Sicily; and, it placed Sicily under papal protection as part of “the lands of St Peter”. The text of the oath is published in Le Liber Censuum de l’Eglise Romaine, ed. Paul Fabre and Louis Duchesne (Paris, 1889–1952), I, 422, with English translations in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050– 1300: With Selected Documents (Toronto, 1988), 44, and Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, 188–89. For analysis of the oath, see Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 121; Engl. trans., 133; Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, 186–94; and Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 411–12. The Norman-papal alliance of 1059 laid the foundations for a new form of government in the Latin West: a “federal” Christendom, “ruled jointly by a single unified ecclesiastical hierarchy and a multiplicity of secular polities” (Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition [Cambridge, 2003], 127). This “federated” Christendom was the first European Union, a confederation of sovereign political societies within an overarching ecclesiastical unity, and the international enterprises of this union were the Crusades. Hugh Kennedy’s observation that 89) 134 Paul E. Chevedden From the first moment that the recovery of the lost lands of Christendom became a stated objective of a newly emancipated papacy, efforts to achieve this political purpose were put into effect and crusading was born. The principle engine of the Crusade was not an intellectual or ideological breakthrough – the union of war and pilgrimage – but a political and organizational breakthrough – the rise of the first pan-European government. As an entirely new paradigm of politics emerged, the “independence principle” became the catalyst for a revived Europe, and an expanding society recrystallized ideologically around the recovery of the Church. The Sicily example proved contagious and established a model to be followed elsewhere. There were other Sicilies to be reclaimed and other budding rulers like the Normans with an eye on expanding their realms, who needed little urging to swing into action and raise the crusading banner. The Norman war against Islam in Sicily soon led to something larger. In 1064, crusading expanded its reach to Spain. An Aragonesepapal alliance initiated a Franco-Catalan Crusade that was spearheaded by a papal army of Italo-Norman knights led by the Norman adventurer Robert Crispin. This Crusade captured Barbastro, an important border stronghold guarding Islamic Zaragoza and the Ebro plain.90 Other cam“the ties binding the Muslim world together went deeper than the links of Latinate culture and Roman Christianity” takes no account of the first pan-European government and the international enterprises of this government (Hugh Kennedy, “The Decline and Fall of the First Muslim Empire”, Der Islam 81 [2004], 28). 90) Amatus of Montecassino identifies the leader of the Barbastro Crusade as Robert Crispin (Amato di Monte Cassino, Storia de’ Normanni di Amato di Montecassino volgarizzata in antico francese, ed. Vicenzo de Bartholomaeis [Rome, 1935], I.5, 13–14; trans. Prescott N. Dunbar as The History of the Normans, rev. Graham A. Loud [Woodbridge, 2004], 46–47). Ibn Hayyan (987 or 8–1076), who provides the most detailed account of the Barbastro Crusade, identifies its leader both as “the commander-in-chief” (akbar ru#asa#) and as “the commander of the papal mounted army” (qa#id khayl ruma). This last designation translates the Latin title princeps Romanae militiae (“the commander of the papal army”). The forces that Robert Crispin led are identified as the “army of the Normans” (jaysh al-Urdamaniyun) and the “mounted army of the Christians” (khayl al-nasara). See
Ali Ibn Bassam al-Shantarini, al-Dhakhira fi mahasin ahl al-jazira, ed. Ihsan
Abbas, (Beirut, 1975–79), I, pt. 3, 181, 182, 185, which preserves Ibn Hayyan’s account of the siege. Al-Bakri (1040–94) identifies the leader of the Barbastro Crusade by name as Albiyutbin, which joins together a garbled form of the Norman leader’s given name, Robert (Albiyut), and the last syllable of his surname, Crispin (-bin, for “-pin”). The recent edition of al-Bakri’s Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade 135 paigns to “spread greatly the Church of God into Muslim territories” followed. A decade after the Barbastro Crusade the eastern Mediterranean was targeted, as Pope Gregory VII sought to mount a rescue of the Byzantine Empire and retake Jerusalem. In 1099, Gregory’s crusading vision was realized with the conquest of Jerusalem. From Damascus, al-Sulami saw these events as interrelated, as part of a wider movement aimed at the heart of Islam that had three main theaters of operation – Sicily, Spain, and Syria. From Rome, Urban II portrayed these events as being part of a Mediterranean-wide struggle aimed at recovering from Islam the lost lands of Christendom. The view from Damascus and the view from Rome were not contradictory but compleby A. P. Van Leeuwen and André Ferré incorrectly transcribes Albiyutbin as Albiyutin (Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik, ed. A. P. Van Leeuwen and André Ferré (Tunis, 1992), II, 910. This name is correctly transcribed in Abu
Ubayd
Abd Allah ibn
Abd al-
Aziz al-Bakri, Jughrafiyat al-Andalus wa-Urubba, min Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik, ed.
Abd al-Rahman
Ali al-Hajji (Beirut, 1968), 93; trans. Charles Melville and Ahmad Ubaydli, “The Crusade against Barbastro (456/1064)”, in Christians and Moors in Spain, III: Arabic Sources (711–1501) (Warminster, 1992), 70–71. The account of the siege of Barbastro by al-Himyari, found in his Kitab al-Rawd al-mi
tar fi khabar al-aqtar, transcribes only Robert Crispin’s given name. It is rendered as Albiyutush, which is a garbled version of the Latin form of his name, “Robertus” (Muhammad b.
Abd Allah alHimyari, La péninsule Ibérique au Moyen-Âge d’apès le Kitab ar-Rawd al-mi
tar fi äabar al-aktar d#Ibn
Abd al-Mun
im al-Himyari, ed. Évariste Lévi-Provençal [Leiden, 1938], 40). More than a century ago, Reinhart Dozy accurately translated and interpreted Ibn Hayyan’s text and brought papal participation in the Barbastro Crusade to the surface (Reinhart Dozy, Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne pendant le moyen âge, 3rd ed. [Leiden, 1881], II, 335–53). Seeking to erase papal involvement from the history of the Barbastro Crusade, a host of scholars subsequent to Dozy, most with no knowledge of Arabic, have misrepresented Ibn Hayyan’s text in order to discount this expedition as part of the crusading enterprise (Michel Villey, La croisade: Essai sur la formation d’une théorie juridique [Paris, 1942], 69; Pierre-François David, Études historiques sur la Galice et le Portugal du VIe au XIIe siècle [Lisbon, 1947], 371; Marcelin Defourneaux, Le Français en Espagne aux XIe et XIIe siècles [Paris, 1949], 131–35; Noth, Heiliger Krieg und Heiliger Kampf, 109–20; Alberto Ferreiro, “The Siege of Barbastro, 1064–65: A Reassessment”, Journal of Medieval History 9 [1983], 129–44; Jean Flori, La Guerre sainte: La formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident chrétien [Paris, 2001], 278). Recent analysis of the Barbastro Crusade relies upon a correct interpretation of Ibn Hayyan’s text: Manuela Marín, “Crusaders in the Muslim West: The View of Arab Writers”, Maghreb Review [Majallat alMaghrib] 17 [1992]: 95–102; O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 24–27). 136 Paul E. Chevedden mentary. It was this understanding of the Crusade towards which Erdmann had pointed 70 years ago. His historical vision offers a new approach to the study of the Crusade that is similar to the one advanced by al-Sulami 900 years ago. The potential value of Erdmann’s historical contribution can now be realized. Erdmann did not betray the spirit of his own theory but instead laid the groundwork for a new conceptualization of the Crusade. This new conceptualization of the Crusade is in fact an old conceptualization of the Crusade, first pioneered by Muslim scholars. As T. S. Eliot so eloquently points out, We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.91 91) T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” (the last of his Four Quartets).