How Palestine was liberated: Hope amid the humiliating loss
Corruption and greed among the ruling elite in the Muslim world is nothing new. While Jerusalem, Palestine, and portions of the Levant were occupied following the slaughter of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 1099, sultans and emirs continued to live extravagant lifestyles and focused on their own immediate interests and goals.
After all, this was the same leadership that enabled foreign invaders to carve out a whole kingdom before their eyes with no significant resistance to account for. These were the same leaders who returned to their petty squabbles when Jerusalem fell, rather than rally around a most noble and critical goal: Liberation.
A plea, help, treachery, and failure
In his book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Amin Maalouf quotes Damascene chronicler Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamzah ibn al-Asad Ibn al-Qalanisi as having said,
“The princess, sister of Sultan Muhammad [of the Seljuk Empire] and wife of the caliph [Al-Mustazhir Billah Abu’l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abdallah al-Muqtadi of the Abbasid Caliphate], arrived in Baghdad from Isfahan with a magnificent retinue; there were precious stones, sumptuous robes, all sorts of saddlery and beasts of burden, servants, slaves of both sexes, attendants, and many other things that would defy estimation and enumeration.”
This unbashful display of opulence, just 12 years after the loss of the Holy City and the sequence of defeats the Muslim world faced, coincided with the arrival of the Shia qadi (judge) and chief of Aleppo Abu’l-Faḍl ibn al-Khashshab and many Aleppan figures in Baghdad, as well, in 1111 CE.
“They forced the preacher [at the mosque] to descend from the pulpit, which they smashed. They then began to cry out, to bewail the evils that had befallen Islam because of the Franj [Crusaders], who were killing men and enslaving women and children. Since they were preventing the faithful from saying their prayers, the officials present made various promises, in the name of the sultan, in an effort to pacify them: armies would be sent to defend Islam against the Franj and all the infidels.”
The severely contrasting scenes in the same place resulted in riots and unrest that disrupted the princess’s royal entrance.
“The joy and security of the royal arrival were disrupted,” Ibn al-Qalanisi continues. “The caliph al-Mustazhir Billah manifested considerable discontent. He wanted to prosecute those responsible for the incident, and to punish them severely.”
The Abbasid Caliphate at the time was no more than a symbol of legitimacy for the Seljuks, who had saved them and Sunni Islam from the advance of the Shia Fatimids prior to the arrival of the Crusaders. As such, the final say went to the princess’s brother, Seljuk Sultan Abu Shuja Ghiyath al-Dunya wa’l-Din Muhammad I ibn Malik-Shah.
“But the sultan prevented him from doing so, pardoned the actions of these people, and ordered the emirs and military officers to return to their provinces to prepare a jihad against the infidels, the enemies of God.”
This ended up becoming a failed endeavor.
Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Komnenos was growing weary of the Crusaders for their refusal to abide by the Treaty of Devol which promised that Antioch would become a vassal state of the Byzantines. Alexius sent messages to the Muslims of the region to join forces and expel the Crusaders from the region.
When the Seljuk Sultan prepared his forces and headed for Syria for reinforcements and supplies, the emirs of the region feared for their own reign and believed that Muhammad I intended to oust them from their positions and take their cities and holdings for himself.
Rather than join forces with the Sultan and the Byzantines, who now shared a common cause, and end the foreign occupation of their lands, the emirs shut their city gates to the Seljuk army, assassinated one of the Sultan’s generals, and joined forces with King Baldwin of Jerusalem.
“Baldwin of Jerusalem and Tughtigin of Damascus stood side by side, supported not only by their own troops,” Amin Maalouf states in his book, “but also by those of Antioch, Aleppo, and Tripoli. The princes of Syria, Muslims and Franj alike, felt equally threatened by the sultan, and they had decided to join forces. Within several months, the Seljuk army was forced shamefully to withdraw.”
Sinai for the taking
A series of Crusader victories following this humiliation would further weaken Muslim morale. According to Amin Maalouf,
“The arrogance of the Franj had indeed come to border on the absurd. At the beginning of March 1118 King Baldwin had sought to invade Egypt with exactly 216 knights and 400 foot-soldiers. He crossed Sinai at the head of his meager forces, occupied the city of al-Farama without meeting any resistance, and went as far as the banks of the Nile.”
This stunning and sweeping victory of a small expeditionary force 616-men-strong amid a sea of enemies crushed the morale of Muslims throughout the region, and likely had the effect of projecting the Crusaders as a legendary formidable force that will never be matched.
Aleppo: A beacon of hope
After the assassination of the governor of Aleppo in 1117, the Aleppan qadi Ibn al-Khashshab called on the commander and governor of Mardin, Najm ad-Din Ilghazi ibn Artuq, to rule Aleppo and repel the advancement of Roger of Salerno, the Regent of Antioch. Ilghazi answered the call.
Two years later, he met Roger near Sarmada at the Battle of the Field of Blood.
“The Turkomen met up with him [Ilghazi] from every side in great and abundant numbers and visible strength, as lions seeking their prey,” al-Qalanisi wrote. “And news arrived of the emergence of Roger, Lord of Antioch, out of Antioch with those he gathered and rallied . . . so that their number exceeded 20,000 knights and footmen . . . And the two groups got closer until the Muslims attacked them and surrounded them from all sides, striking them with swords and pelting them with arrows . . . Not an hour passed from the morning of Saturday, the seventh of the month of Rabi` al-Awwal 513 [Hijri], except that the the Franj were lying flat on the ground — their knights and footmen, their horses and their weapons — so that no one escaped from them to tell the news, and their leader, Roger, was found dead among the dead.”
This victory boosted Muslim morale after the disgrace they faced in the Sinai and Egypt and the treachery of the emirs of Syria. But this victory would be short-lived. A few years later, Ilghazi died.
The Venetians would support King Baldwin II of Jerusalem with an expedition of their own: The Venetian Crusade. In 1124, after a four-month siege, the coastal city of Tyre would be the last city to fall to the Crusaders.
Four years later, Aleppo, the same city where a new sense of hope was born after repelling a major Crusader advance, would become the stronghold from which a new dynasty would launch a new era of hope and pave the way to the liberation of Jerusalem.
This, too, shall pass
The stunning victories for the Crusaders and the disgraceful defeats the Muslim world faced were a symptom of ailments that had a cure.
The constant infighting between emirs and sultans over small pieces of land and influence, fueled by greed and blind personal ambitions at the expense of the people, their lands, and the advancement of knowledge, learning, and the faith, was a plague on the Muslim Ummah. And as the symptoms began to appear on the surface in the form of foreign invasions that humiliated leaders who were drowning in opulent wealth, the infighting continued. And, in some cases, the leaders would seek aid from this new hostile neighbor against attempts to solve the problem, all to protect their interests from a perceived threat.
That would all eventually change, as new breed of leaders would resolve to eradicate the greed and self-interest that allowed the plague to fester.
