The initial target was Tripoli. Saint-Gilles had camped on the outskirts of the city back in 1103, and had ordered the construction of a fortress which the citizens still knew by his name. The well-preserved ‘Qal‘at Saint-Gilles’ is still visible in the twentieth century, in the centre of the modern city of Tripoli. At the time of the arrival of the Franj, however, the city extended no further than the Minā’ quarter, the port, which lay at the end of a peninsula access to which was controlled by this famous fortress. No caravan could reach or leave Tripoli without being intercepted by Saint-Gilles’s men.
The qāḍī Fakhr al-Mulk wanted at all costs to destroy this citadel, which threatened to strangle his capital. Night after night his soldiers attempted daring raids, stabbing a guard or damaging a wall under construction, but it was in September 1104 that the most spectacular operation was mounted. The entire garrison of Tripoli effected a sortie en masse, led by the qāḍī himself. Several Frankish warriors were massacred and a wing of the fortress was burned. Saint-Gilles himself was caught by surprise atop one of the flaming roofs. Suffering from severe burns, he died five months later, in terrible agony. As he lay dying, he asked to see emissaries from Fakhr al-Mulk and proposed a deal: the Tripolitanians would stop their assault on the citadel, and in exchange the Frankish chief would promise never again to interfere with the flow of travellers and goods. The qāḍī agreed.
It was a strange compromise. Is not the aim of a siege precisely to prevent the circulation of people and foodstuff? And yet, one has the impression that besiegers and besieged had established something approaching normal relations. The port of Tripoli suddenly enjoyed a spurt of activity, as caravans came and went after paying a tax to the Franj, and Tripolitanian notables crossed enemy lines with safe-conduct passes. In fact, however, the belligerents were simply waiting each other out. The Franj anticipated the arrival of a Christian fleet, from Genoa or Constantinople, which would enable them to assault the besieged city. The Tripolitanians, not unaware of this, were expecting a Muslim army to speed to their rescue. The most effective support should logically have come from Egypt, for the Fatimid caliphate was a great maritime power whose intervention would suffice to discourage the Franj. But once again, relations between the lords of Tripoli and Cairo were disastrous. Al-Afḍal’s father had been a slave in the qāḍī’s household, and it seems that he had been on very bad terms with his masters. The vizier had never concealed his rancour and his desire to humiliate Fakhr al-Mulk, who for his part would have preferred to abandon his city to Saint-Gilles rather than place his fate in the hands of al-Afḍal. The qāḍī could rely on no ally in Syria either. He had to seek help elsewhere.
When news of the Ḥarrān victory reached him in June 1104, he immediately dispatched a message to the emir Sokman begging him to complete his triumph by driving the Franj from Tripoli. He sweetened his request with a gift of a great quantity of gold, and also promised to cover all the expedition’s expenses. The victor of Ḥarrān was tempted. Assembling a powerful army, he set out for Syria. But when he was less than four days’ march from Tripoli, he was halted by an attack of angina. His troops dispersed. The morale of the qāḍī and his subjects collapsed.
Nevertheless, in 1105 a ray of hope appeared. Sultan Barkiyaruq had just died of tuberculosis, which put an end to the interminable fratricidal warfare that had paralysed the Seljuk empire since the beginning of the Frankish invasion. Henceforth Iraq, Syria, and western Persia were supposed to have but a single master, ‘the sultan, saviour of the world and of religion, Muḥammad Ibn Malikshāh’. This 24-year-old Seljuk sultan’s title was taken literally by the Tripolitanians. Fakhr al-Mulk sent the sultan message after message, and received endless promises in return. But there was no sign of any rescuing army.
In the meantime, the blockade of the city was tightened. Saint-Gilles was replaced by one of his cousins, ‘al-Cerdani’, the count of Cerdagne, who stepped up the pressure on the besieged. It was increasingly difficult to get food through overland. The prices of foodstuffs within the city spiralled dizzyingly: a pound of dates was sold for a gold dinar, a coin that would normally suffice to feed an entire family for several weeks. Many citizens sought to emigrate to Tyre, Homs, or Damascus. Hunger led to betrayals. One day some Tripolitanian notables sought out al-Cerdani and, in exchange for his favours, revealed how the city was still managing to receive some provisions. Fakhr al-Mulk then offered his adversary a fabulous sum if he would deliver the traitors. But the count refused. The next morning the notables were found inside the enemy camp itself; their throats had been cut.
Despite this exploit, the situation in Tripoli continued to deteriorate. There was still no sign of rescue, and persistent rumours suggested the imminent approach of a Frankish fleet. In despair, Fakhr al-Mulk decided to go in person to Baghdad to plead his cause before the sultan Muḥammad and the caliph al-Mustaẓhir Billāh. In his absence, one of his cousins was entrusted with the interim government of the city, and the troops were given six months’ pay in advance. A large escort had been prepared, five hundred cavalry and foot-soldiers, plus many servants bearing gifts of every description: engraved swords, thoroughbred horses, brocaded robes of honour, as well as various products of the goldsmiths’ craft, Tripoli’s speciality. Thus it was that towards the end of March 1108 Fakhr al-Mulk left the city with his long cortège. He left Tripoli by land, reports Ibn al-Qalānisi unambiguously, the only chronicler who actually lived through these events, thus suggesting that the qāḍī obtained permission from the Franj to pass through their lines in order to go and preach holy war against them! Given the curious relations between the besiegers and the besieged, that is not impossible. But it seems more plausible that the qādī reached Beirut by boat and only then took the land route.
However that may be, Fakhr al-Mulk stopped first in Damascus. The ruler of Tripoli had a marked aversion for Duqāq, but the inept Seljuk king had died some time earlier, probably poisoned, and the city was now in the hands of his tutor, the atabeg Tughtigin, a lame former slave whose ambiguous relations with the Franj were to dominate the Syrian political scene for more than twenty years. Ambitious, wily, and unscrupulous, this Turkish officer, like Fakhr al-Mulk himself, was a mature and realistic man. In contrast with the vindictive stance adopted by Duqāq, Tughtigin received the master of Tripoli warmly, held a great banquet in his honour, and even invited him to his own private bath. The qāḍī appreciated these attentions, but preferred to be lodged outside the walls—confidence has its limits!
In Baghdad his reception was even more sumptuous. So great was Tripoli’s prestige in the Muslim world that the qāḍī was treated as a powerful monarch. Sultan Muḥammad took him across the Tigris in his own boat. The officers of protocol led the master of Tripoli through a floating salon to where had been placed a brocade cushion on which the sultan usually sat. Fakhr al-Mulk settled himself next to it, in the place usually allotted to visitors, but the dignitaries rushed forward and took him by the arm: the monarch had personally insisted that his guest be seated on his own cushion. The qāḍī was welcomed in one palace after another, and was asked many questions by the sultan, the caliph, and their collaborators. They wanted to know everything about the siege, and all Baghdad praised Fakhr al-Mulk’s bravery in the jihād against the Franj.
But when it finally came to political matters, and Fakhr al-Mulk asked Muḥammad to send an army to lift the siege of Tripoli, the sultan, Ibn al-Qalānisi spitefully reports, ordered several of his principal emirs to go with Fakhr al-Mulk to help repel those who were besieging the city. He instructed the expeditionary force to stop briefly in Mosul to take the city from Jawali, and told them to head for Tripoli once that was done.
Fakhr al-Mulk was devastated. The situation in Mosul was so muddled that it would take years to sort out. Moreover, the city was situated north of Baghdad, whereas Tripoli lay due west. If the army made such a detour, it would never arrive in time to save his capital, which, he insisted, was liable to collapse any
day now. But the sultan would not hear of it. The interests of the Seljuk empire required that the problem of Mosul be given priority. The qāḍī tried everything, even buying some of the sultan’s counsellors at inflated prices, but in vain: the army would go first to Mosul. When Fakhr al-Mulk set out to return to Tripoli after a four-month stay in Baghdad, he left without any ceremony. He was now convinced that he would no longer be able to hold his city. What he did not know was that he had already lost it.
He was told the sad news when he arrived in Damascus in August 1108. Demoralized by his long absence, the notables of Tripoli had decided to entrust the city to the ruler of Egypt, who promised to defend it against the Franj. Al-Afḍal sent his vassals food, as well as a governor to take charge of the city’s affairs; his first mission was to arrest the family of Fakhr al-Mulk and his supporters, to seize his treasury, furniture, and personal property, and to send them all to Egypt by ship.
While the vizier was thus persecuting the unfortunate qāḍī, the Franj were preparing the final assault on Tripoli. One after the other, their commanders had arrived at the walls of the besieged city. King Baldwin of Jerusalem, their supreme commander, was there. Baldwin of Edessa and Tancred of Antioch, who had been reconciled for the occasion, were both there, as were two counts from the family of Saint-Gilles, who had just arrived from his country with dozens of Genoese vessels. Both coveted Tripoli, but the king of Jerusalem ordered them to halt their quarrels. Ibn Saint-Gilles would await the end of the battle to have his rival assassinated.
In March 1109 everything seemed ready for a concerted attack by land and sea. The terrified Tripolitanians observed all these preparations, but did not lose hope. Had not al-Afḍal promised to send a fleet more powerful than any they had ever seen, with enough food, fighters, and matériel to hold out for a year?
The Tripolitanians had no doubt that the Genoese vessels would flee the moment the Fatimid fleet sailed into view. Let it only arrive in time!
At the beginning of the summer, Ibn al-Qalānisi says, the Franj launched an attack on Tripoli with all their forces, driving their mobile towers toward the city walls. When the people of the city saw what violent assaults they would have to face, they lost heart, for they understood that their defeat was inevitable. Food supplies were exhausted, and the Egyptian fleet was nowhere in sight. The winds were blowing against them, for such was the will of God, who determines what things will come to pass. The Franj redoubled their efforts and took the city by storm, on 12 July 1109. After two thousand days of resistance, the city of goldsmiths and libraries, of intrepid seamen and learned qāḍīs, was sacked by the warriors of the West. The hundred thousand volumes of the Dār al-‘Ilm were pillaged and burned, so that ‘impious’ books would be destroyed. According to the chronicler of Damascus, the Franj decided that one third of the city would go to the Genoese, the other two-thirds to the son of Saint-Gilles. All that King Baldwin desired was set aside for him. Most of the inhabitants were sold into slavery, the rest were despoiled of their property and expelled. Many headed for the port of Tyre. Fakhr al-Mulk ended his life in the vicinity of Damascus.
And the Egyptian fleet? It arrived in Tyre eight days after the fall of Tripoli, Ibn al-Qalānisi relates, when all had been lost, because of the divine punishment that had struck the inhabitants.
The Franj selected Beirut as their second target. Lying next to the Lebanese mountains, the city was ringed by pine forests, in particular in the suburbs of Mazrat al-‘Arab and Ra’s al-Nabah. There the invaders would find the wood they needed to construct the instruments of siege. Beirut had none of the splendour of Tripoli, and its modest villas could not easily be compared to the Roman palaces whose marble ruins were still scattered across the grounds of ancient Berytus. But because of its port, it was a relatively prosperous city, situated on the rocky slope where, according to tradition, St George had slain the dragon. Coveted by the Damascenes, held negligently by the Egyptians, Beirut finally had to confront the Franj on its own, beginning in February 1110. Its five thousand inhabitants fought with an ardour born of despair, as they destroyed the siege towers one after another. Never before or since did the Franj face such a harsh battle, Ibn al-Qalānisi exclaimed. The invaders were unforgiving. On 13 May, when the city was taken, they threw themselves into a blind massacre. To set an example.
The lesson was well learned. The following summer, a certain Frankish king (the Damascene chronicler may be forgiven for failing to recognize Sigurd, the sovereign of distant Norway) arrived by sea with more than sixty vessels packed with fighters intent on making their pilgrimage and waging war in the lands of Islam. They headed towards Jerusalem, Baldwin joined them, and together they laid siege, by land and sea, to the port of Saida, the ancient Phoenician city of Sidon. The walls of this city, destroyed and rebuilt more than once in the course of history, are impressive even today, their enormous blocks of stone lashed relentlessly by the Mediterranean. But the inhabitants, who had shown great courage at the beginning of the Frankish invasion, no longer had the heart to fight, since, according to Ibn al-Qalānisi, they feared that they would suffer the same fate as Beirut. They therefore sent their qāḍī with a delegation of notables to ask Baldwin to spare their lives. He accepted their request. The city capitulated on 4 December 1110. This time there was no massacre, but a massive exodus to Tyre and Damascus, which were already bulging with refugees.
In the space of eighteen months three of the most renowned cities of the Arab world—Tripoli, Beirut, and Saida—had been taken and sacked, their inhabitants massacred or deported, their emirs, qāḍīs, and experts on religious law killed or forced into exile, their mosques profaned. Could any power now prevent the Franj from pressing on to Tyre, Aleppo, Damascus, Cairo, Mosul, or—why not?—even Baghdad? Did any will to resist remain? Among the Muslim leaders, probably not. But among the population of the most seriously threatened cities, the relentless holy war waged for the past thirteen years by the pilgrim-fighters of the West was beginning to have its effect: the idea of jihād, which had long been no more than a slogan used to enliven official speeches, was being reasserted. Groups of refugees, poets, and even men of religion were now preaching it anew.
It was one of these religious figures—‘Abdu Faḍl Ibn al-Khashāb, a qāḍī of Aleppo, small of stature but loud of voice—who resolved, by sheer tenacity and strength of character, to waken the sleeping giant of the Arab world. His first public initiative was to rekindle, twelve years on, the scandal that al-Ḥarawi had aroused in the streets of Baghdad. This time, however, there would be a genuine riot.
5
Turban-Clad Resistance
On Friday 17 February 1111, the qāḍī Ibn al-Khashāb burst into the sultan’s mosque in Baghdad accompanied by a large group of Aleppans, among them a Hashemite sharīf (a descendant of the Prophet) and a number of Sufi ascetics, imāms, and merchants. Ibn al-Qalānisi describes what happened next.
They forced the preacher 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, 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.
But these fine words were not enough to soothe the rebels. The following Friday, they restaged their demonstration, this time in the mosque of the caliph. When guards tried to bar their way, they quickly thrust them aside, smashed the wooden minbar, which was adorned with carved arabesques and verses of the Koran, and hurled insults at the prince of the faithful himself. Baghdad was plunged into the greatest confusion.
At the same moment, relates the Damascene chronicler in a disingenuously naive tone, the princess, sister of Sultan Muḥammad and wife of the caliph, 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. Her arrival coincided with the scenes described above. The joy and security of the royal arrival were disrupted. The caliph al-Mustaẓhir Billāh manifested considerable discontent. He wanted to prosecute those responsible for the incident, and to punish them severely. 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 jihād against the infidels, the enemies of God.
If the worthy al-Mustaẓhir was thus moved to anger, it was not only because of the disagreeable effects of the turmoil on his young wife, but also because of the terrifying slogan that had been shouted so deafeningly in the streets of the capital: ‘The king of the Rūm is a better Muslim than the prince of the faithful!’ For he was well aware that this was no gratuitous accusation. The demonstrators, led by Ibn al-Khashāb, were alluding to a message received a few weeks earlier by the caliph’s dīwān. It came from the emperor Alexius Comnenus and insistently called upon the Muslims to unite with the Rūm to struggle against the Franj and expel them from our lands.
If the powerful master of Constantinople and the humble qāḍī of Aleppo seemed to have made common cause in their initiatives in Baghdad, it was because they both felt that they had been humiliated by the same man: Tancred. When Byzantine ambassadors were sent to remind Tancred that the knights of the West had promised to restore Antioch to the basileus and that thirteen years after the fall of the city they had yet to do so, the ‘mir’ of the Franks had insolently shown them the door. As for the Aleppans, Tancred had recently imposed a particularly discreditable treaty upon them: they were to pay him an annual tribute of twenty thousand dinars, hand over two important fortresses in the immediate vicinity of their city, and give him, as a gift and sign of allegiance, their ten finest horses. Riḍwān, fearful as ever, dared not refuse. But the streets of his capital had been seething ever since the terms of the treaty had been revealed.