How Palestine was liberated: The context and the background
Figures and legends don’t tell the whole story
There is no Muslim leader throughout history after the Rashidun Caliphs that is more renowned and celebrated till this day than Salaah ud-Deen (known in the West by his Latinized name Saladin). But, while the great commander and the founder of the Ayyubid Dynasty was famous for liberating Jerusalem nearly a hundred years after the horrific massacre of the Holy City, the struggle for Jerusalem’s liberation did not begin with his command, nor did the liberation of Palestine and the rest of the Levant end with his death. Several brave leaders fought against enemies from within and from without to pave the way to that liberation, and it would take another century before the Crusaders were finally and completely repelled from the region.
In this series, I’ll briefly examine the events that paved the way to the liberation of Jerusalem, and the long struggle from that moment to the liberation of the entire Levant. But first, the context.
An Ummah at war with itself
The Crusades came at a time of tense inner conflict in the Muslim world. The Abbasid Caliphate had been reduced to a mere symbol of legitimacy for the Seljuk Empire that saved it from collapse. The Fatimids had just survived through a phase of incompetent and corrupt leaders that created some of the most dire conditions Egypt had ever experienced. And opportunistic and ambitious emirs sought to carve their own micro-emirates wherever the Seljuks and the Fatimids lacked a strong grip.
A mad king and a pretext
Earlier, the Shiite Fatimid ruler al-Mansur, known by his regal name Al-Hakim bi Amr-Allah (translated to: He who rules by God’s order), ordered the demolition of numerous churches and synagogues under his reign, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He has been known since his reign as a mad king, as he often issued strange and erratic edicts that ranged from prohibiting some types of food that were Islamically permissible at one point, to forbidding merchants from opening their stalls in the daytime at another.
The demolition of these churches took place in 1009, nine decades before the Crusaders would arrive at the walls of Jerusalem.
Following the death of al-Mansur, his son and successor, Ali ibn al-Hakim, entered into a series of negotiations with the Byzantines. Ali agreed to allow the rebuilding of the Church and, in turn, the Byzantines allowed the reopening of the sole mosque that existed in Constantinople at the time. The restoration was completed in 1048.
Forty-seven years later, despite the restoration of the churches in the region, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade.
“For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches, and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it. All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.”
A foreign invasion
Tens of thousands of Europeans answered the call, rich nobles and poor peasants alike; some for religious zeal, some for adventure, and others to carve their own legacy and princedoms.
They marched on to the Holy Land, sacking and capturing cities along the way, massacring the populations within them indiscriminately, killing Christians, Jews, and Muslims, Arabs, Turks, and other ethnicities who found a home in the Levant and southern Anatolia.
In 1099, they captured Jerusalem and butchered its inhabitants.
“Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are normally chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it be enough to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies … This day will be famous in all future ages … it marks the justification of all Christianity and the humiliation of paganism.”
“And the Franj killed more than 70,000 in the Aqsa Mosque, including many Muslim imams, scholars, [devout] worshippers, and ascetics who had left their homelands and lived by that Holy Place . . . and they took spoils the amount of which cannot be counted.”
The Complete History by ibn Al-Atheer
The survivors of the atrocities that were inflicted on the lands occupied by the Crusaders traveled to Baghdad to implore Muslim rulers to take back these lands and save the rest of the Muslim world from the fate they had witnessed.
Greed over duty
It would have been expected, as many expect today, that the Muslim rulers would put aside their petty squabbles and disputes and unite to repel this smaller force that had just taken Islam’s third holiest mosque and massacred tens of thousands.
Instead, the civil strife among the sultans and emirs continued for decades onward, only to take temporary pauses when the threat grew larger, and return to their squabbles again.
