The sultans did not agree among themselves, Ibn al-Athīr wrote in a masterpiece of understatement, and it was for this reason that the Franj were able to seize control of the country.
Part Two
Occupation
(1100 — 1128)
Every time the Franj took one fortress, they would attack another. Their power mounted relentlessly until they occupied all of Syria and exiled the Muslims of that country.
FAKHR AL-MULK IBN ‘AMMĀR
Ruler of Tripoli
4
Tripoli’s Two Thousand Days
After so many successive defeats, such great disappointment and humiliation, three pieces of unexpected news that reached Damascus in the summer of 1100 aroused considerable hope, not only among the religious militants now grouped around the qāḍī al-Ḥarawi, but also in the souks. Here, under the arcades of Law Street, seated in the shadows of the creeping vines, the merchants of raw silk, gilded brocades, damask linen, and inlaid furniture passed the word from one booth to the next, over the heads of passers-by, excitedly hailing the coming of an auspicious day.
The first rumour, at the beginning of July, was soon confirmed: old Saint-Gilles, who had never concealed his designs on Tripoli, Homs, and all of central Syria, had suddenly left for Constantinople after a dispute with the other Frankish commanders. The word was that he would never return.
A second piece of news, even more extraordinary, came at the end of July. In a matter of moments it spread from mosque to mosque, alleyway to alleyway. While he was besieging the city of Acre, Godfrey, ruler of Jerusalem, was struck by an arrow, which killed him, Ibn al-Qalānisi relates. There was also talk that poisoned fruit had been offered to the Frankish chief by a Palestinian notable. Some believed that he had died a natural death in an epidemic. But it was the version reported by the Damascene chronicler that found favour with the public: Godfrey was believed to have fallen under the blows of the defenders of Acre. Did not such a victory, coming a year after the fall of Jerusalem, suggest that the tide was beginning to turn?
This impression seemed confirmed a few days later when it was learned that Bohemond, the most formidable of the Franj, had just been captured. It was Danishmend ‘the Wise’ who had bested him. Just as he had done three years earlier before the battle of Nicaea, the Turkish chief had encircled the Armenian city of Malaṭya. Upon hearing the news, says Ibn al-Qalānisi, Bohemond, king of the Franj and ruler of Antioch, assembled his men and marched out against the Muslim army. A reckless undertaking it was too, for to reach the besieged city the Frankish commander had to ride for a week through mountainous countryside firmly in the hands of the Turks. Informed of his approach, Danishmend laid an ambush. Bohemond and the five hundred knights accompanying him were met with a barrage of arrows that rained down upon them in a pathway so narrow that they could not form up into ranks. God granted victory to the Muslims, who killed a great number of Franj. Bohemond and several of his companions were captured. They were led in chains to Niksar, in northern Anatolia.
The successive elimination of Saint-Gilles, Godfrey, and Bohemond, the three principal architects of the Frankish invasion, seemed to everyone a sign from heaven. Those who had been amazed by the apparent invincibility of the Occidentals took heart. Was it not the moment to deal them a decisive blow? One man, in any event, longed to do so, and that was Duqāq.
Let there be no mistake: the young king of Damascus was no zealous defender of Islam. Had he not amply demonstrated, during the battle of Antioch, that he was prepared to betray his own people to further his local ambitions? Moreover, it was not until the spring of 1100 that the Seljuk suddenly found it necessary to wage a holy war against the infidels. One of his vassals, a bedouin chief from the Golan Heights, had complained of repeated incursions by Franj from Jerusalem, who were pillaging harvests and pilfering livestock, and Duqāq decided to intimidate them. One day in May, as Godfrey and his right-hand man Tancred, a nephew of Bohemond, were returning with their men from a particularly fruitful raid, they were attacked by the army of Damascus. Weighed down by their booty, the Franj were unable to fight back. Instead they fled, leaving several dead behind. Tancred himself barely escaped.
In revenge, he organized a reprisal raid on the outskirts of the Syrian metropolis itself. Orchards were devastated, villages plundered and burned. Taken unawares by the scope and rapidity of the riposte, Duqāq did not dare intervene. With his customary versatility, and now bitterly regretting his Golan operation, he even proposed to pay Tancred a tidy sum if he would agree to withdraw his men. This offer only hardened the determination of the Frankish prince. Believing, quite logically, that the king was now at bay, he sent him a six-man delegation, which called upon him to convert to Christianity or hand over Damascus. Nothing less. Offended by the arrogance of this demand, the Seijuk ordered the arrest of the emissaries. Spluttering with rage, he in turn enjoined them to embrace Islam. One of them agreed. The other five were immediately beheaded.
As soon as he heard the news, Godfrey rushed to join Tancred. With all the men at their command, they threw themselves into ten days of systematic destruction of the environs of the Syrian metropolis. The rich plain of Ghūṭa, which rings Damascus as a halo rings the moon, as Ibn Jubayr put it, became a scene of desolation. Duqāq did not budge. Barricaded in his palace in Damascus, he waited for the storm to pass—especially since his Golan vassal had now rejected his suzerainty and would henceforth pay his annual tribute to the masters of Jerusalem. Even more serious, the people of the Syrian metropolis were beginning to complain about their leaders’ inability to protect the city. They grumbled about all the Turkish soldiers who strutted like peacocks through the souks but disappeared the moment an enemy appeared at the city gates. Duqāq now had a single obsession: he wanted revenge, and as quickly as possible, if only to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of his own subjects.
In these circumstances, one may well imagine the Seljuk’s immense joy at hearing of the death of Godfrey, although three months earlier he would hardly have cared less. The capture of Bohemond just a few days later emboldened him to undertake some spectacular action.
His opportunity came in October. When Godfrey was killed, writes Ibn al-Qalānisi, his brother Count Baldwin, master of Edessa, set out for Jerusalem with five hundred knights and foot-soldiers. At the news of his passage, Duqāq assembled his troops and marched out against him. He met him near the coastal locality of Beirut. Baldwin was visibly striving to succeed Godfrey. He was a knight known for his brutality and lack of scruples, as the murder of his ‘adoptive parents’ in Edessa had shown. But he was also a courageous and crafty warrior whose presence in Jerusalem would constitute a permanent threat to Damascus and indeed to all of Muslim Syria. To kill or capture him at this critical moment would leave the invading army leaderless and challenge the very presence of the Franj in the Orient. If the date of the attack was well chosen, the site was no less ideal.
Baldwin was moving down from the north, along the Mediterranean coast, and was expected to reach Beirut around 24 October. Before that, he would have to cross Nahr al-Kalb, the old Fatimid frontier. Near the mouth of the River of the Dog the route narrowed, skirting cliffs and steep hills. An ideal spot for an ambush, it was here that Duqāq had decided to wait for the Franj, deploying his men in the grottoes and wooded slopes. His scouts supplied regular reports of the enemy’s advance.
Nahr al-Kalb had been the bane of conquerors since remote antiquity. Whenever one of them managed to get through the pass unscathed, his pride would be such that he would chisel an account of his exploit into the walls of the cliff. Vestiges of several of these boasts could still be admired back in Duqāq’s time, from the hieroglyphs of the Pharaoh Ramses II and cuneiform characters of the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar to the Latin eulogies that Septimius Severus, the Roman emperor of Syrian origin, had addressed to his valiant Gallic legionnaires. But apart from the handful of victors, how many warriors had seen their dreams shattered without trace on these
rocks! The king of Damascus had no doubt whatever that ‘the accursed Baldwin’ would soon be added to that cohort of the vanquished. Duqāq had every reason for optimism. His troops outnumbered those of the Frankish commander by six or seven to one, and most important of all, the element of surprise was on his side. He would not only avenge the affront he had suffered, but would resume his pre-eminent place among the princes of Syria. Once again he would exercise the authority that had been undermined by the irruption of the Franj.
No one was more aware of the stakes of the battle than the new ruler of Tripoli, the qāḍī Fakhr al-Mulk, who had succeeded his brother Jalāl al-Mulk one year earlier. He had more than one reason to fear Baldwin’s defeat, for the ruler of Damascus had coveted his city even before the arrival of the Occidentals, and if Duqāq was able to portray himself as the champion of Islam and the liberator of Syrian land, it would then be necessary to recognize his suzerainty and submit to his whims.
Fakhr al-Mulk was bothered by no scruples in seeking to avert this. When he learned that Baldwin was approaching Tripoli on his way to Beirut and then Jerusalem, he had wine, honey, bread, and meat sent to him, as well as lavish gifts of gold and silver. He also dispatched a messenger who insisted on seeing Baldwin in private and informed him of the ambush planned by Duqāq. He provided him with much detailed information about the disposition of the Damascene troops and offered him advice as to the best tactics for countering the ambush. The Frankish chief thanked the qāḍī for his collaboration, as precious as it was unexpected, and then set out again for Nahr al-Kalb.
The unsuspecting Duqāq was preparing to swoop down upon the Franj as soon as they had entered the narrow coastal strip that his archers were keeping in their sights. In fact, the Franj made their appearance on the side adjacent to the town of Jūnīya and advanced with apparent nonchalance. A few more steps and they would be caught in the trap. But suddenly they halted, and then slowly began to retreat. Nothing had yet been decided, but Duqāq was disconcerted when he saw the enemy avoid his trap. Harassed by his emirs, he finally ordered his archers to unleash a few salvoes of arrows, but without daring to send his cavalry against the Franj. As night fell, the morale of the Muslim troops sank. Arabs and Turks hurled mutual accusations of cowardice and scuffles broke out. The next morning, after a brief confrontation, the Damascene troops withdrew to the Lebanese mountains, while the Franj calmly continued on their way to Palestine.
The qāḍī of Tripoli had deliberately decided to save Baldwin, believing that the main threat to his city came from Duqāq, who had himself acted in just this way against Karbūqa two years before. At the decisive moment, each of them felt that the Frankish presence was the lesser evil. But the evil was to spread swiftly. Three weeks after the abortive ambush of Nahr al-Kalb, Baldwin proclaimed himself king of Jerusalem and initiated a programme of organization and conquest designed to consolidate the gains of the invasion. Nearly a century later, when Ibn al-Athīr tried to comprehend what had induced the Franj to come to the East, he attributed the initiative to King Baldwin, ‘al-Bardawīl’, whom he considered a sort of commander of the Occident. He was not far wrong, for although this knight was only one of the many leaders responsible for the invasion, the Mosul historian was correct in calling him the principal architect of the occupation. Given the incorrigible fragmentation of the Arab world, the Frankish states—with their determination, warlike qualities, and relative solidarity—appeared as a genuine regional power.
The Muslims nevertheless still held a powerful trump card: the extreme numerical weakness of their enemies. Most of the Franj had headed back to their own countries after the fall of Jerusalem. When he acceded to the throne, Baldwin could count on no more than several hundred knights. This apparent weakness was eliminated, however, when it was learned in the spring of 1101 that new Frankish armies far more numerous than any of those yet seen were being assembled in Constantinople.
The first to become alarmed were Kilij Arslan and Danishmend, who had not forgotten the previous passage of the Franj through Asia Minor. They immediately decided to unite their forces in an attempt to bar the route of the new invasion. The Turks no longer dared to venture into the vicinity of Nicaea and Dorylaeum, now firmly in the hands of the Rūm. They preferred to attempt a new ambush much further away, in south-eastern Anatolia. Kilij Arslan, who had gained in age and experience, had all the water sources poisoned along the route that had been taken by the previous expedition.
In May 1101 the sultan learned that nearly a hundred thousand men had crossed the Bosporus under the command of Saint-Gilles, who had been living in Byzantium for the past year. He tried to follow their movements step by step in order to decide when to surprise them. Their first port of call was thought to be Nicaea. But curiously, the scouts posted near the sultan’s former capital saw no sign of their arrival. No news about them was heard from the Sea of Marmara, nor even from Constantinople. Kilij Arslan got word of them only at the end of June, when they suddenly appeared before the walls of another of his cities, Ankara, in the middle of Anatolia, right in Turkish territory, a place where no one had ever expected an attack. The Franj took the city even before Kilij Arslan could arrive. Kilij Arslan felt that he had been transported four years back in time, to the fall of Nicaea. But this was not the time for lamentation, for the Occidentals were now threatening the very heart of his domain. He decided to lay an ambush for them as soon as they left Ankara to resume their march south. This turned out to be a further mistake. Turning their backs on Syria, the invaders resolutely headed north-east, toward Niksar, the powerful citadel in which Danishmend was holding Bohemond. So that was it! The Franj were trying to rescue the former ruler of Antioch!
With disbelief, the sultan and his allies began to understand the curious itinerary of the invaders. In one sense they felt reassured, for they could now choose the site of the ambush. They settled on the village of Merzifun, which the Occidentals, stupefied by the leaden sun, reached early in August. Their army was hardly impressive. A few hundred knights advanced heavily, weighed down by their burning armour; behind them came a motley crowd including more women and children than genuine fighters. The Franj gave way as soon as the first wave of Turkish cavalry swooped down. It was not a battle, but a slaughter, which continued the entire day. As night fell, Saint-Gilles fled with his aides, without even informing the bulk of the army. The survivors were finished off the next day. Thousands of young women were captured and would stock the harems of Asia.
Barely was the Merzifun massacre over when messengers arrived to warn Kilij Arslan: a fresh Frankish expedition was already advancing through Asia Minor. This time there was nothing unusual about their itinerary. The warriors of the cross had taken the southern route, and not until they had been on the road for several days did they realize their mistake. At the end of August, when the sultan arrived with his cavalry, the Franj were racked by thirst, already in their death agony. They were decimated without offering any resistance.
It was not over yet. Just one week later, a third Frankish expedition followed the second, along the same route. Knights, foot-soldiers, women, and children arrived, in a state of almost complete dehydration, near the city of Heraclea. When they glimpsed a glistening body of water, they hurled themselves toward it in complete disarray. Kilij Arslan was waiting for them on the banks.
The Franj never fully recovered from this triple massacre. Given their expansionist objectives during these decisive years, such a large number of new arrivals, whether combatants or not, would likely have enabled them to colonize the entire Arab East before the region had time to pull itself together. Yet it was precisely the shortage of men caused by their losses that was responsible for the most lasting and spectacular achievement of the Franj in Arab lands: the construction of fortresses. To mitigate their numerical weakness they built fortresses which were so well protected that a handful of defenders could hold off a multitude of attackers. Despite the handicap of numbers, however, for many years the Franj com
manded a weapon even more formidable than their fortresses, and that was the torpor of the Arab world. There is no better illustration of this state of affairs than Ibn al-Athīr’s description of the extraordinary battle that unfolded before Tripoli at the beginning of April 1102.
Saint-Gilles, may God curse his name, returned to Syria after having been crushed by Kilij Arslan. He had only three hundred men left. Fakhr al-Mulk, the lord of Tripoli, sent word to King Duqāq and to the governor of Homs: ‘Now is the time to finish off Saint-Gilles for ever, for he has so few troops!’ Duqāq dispatched two thousand men, and the governor of Homs came in person. The troops of Tripoli joined them before the gates of the city, and together they marched into battle against Saint-Gilles. The latter threw a hundred of his soldiers against the Tripolitanians, a hundred against the Damascenes, and fifty against the troops of Homs; he kept fifty behind with him. At the mere sight of the enemy, the troops of Homs fled, and the Damascenes soon followed. Only the Tripolitanians held their ground, and when he saw this, Saint-Gilles attacked them with his two hundred other soldiers, defeating them and killing seven thousand of them.
Three hundred Franj triumphing over several thousand Muslims? But the unlikely account of the Arab historian seems to match the facts. The most probable explanation is that Duqāq wanted to make the qāḍī of Tripoli pay for the attitude he had taken during the Nahr al-Kalb ambush. At that time, Fakhr al-Mulk’s betrayal had prevented the elimination of the founder of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The revenge of the king of Damascus was to permit the creation of a fourth Frankish state: the county of Tripoli.