The Jerusalem Family and Saladin, 1177-1187

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Ruth

The rulers of the Crusader kingdoms are difficult to track through this period without careful focus, although they helped by reliably naming the heir of Tripoli “Raymond,” of Antioch “Bohemund,” and of Jerusalem “Baldwin.” Lifespans were short, due not only to battle dangers, but also to diseases like malaria that were rampant in the Near East. The women who survived disease and childbirth were married to two and three men, since they also carried inheritance rights that needed to be protected. Few of the girls married by choice; husbands were imported from Europe, bringing fresh strength, money, and feudal ties to powerful kings.

In 1177, the current King Baldwin was a teenager with leprosy. He had been trained as a knight, so he had fighting skills as long as he could fend off the progressive crippling symptoms. He fought left-handed, guiding his horse with only his knees, since his right arm had become crippled first. Doomed to die painfully in any case, he was a bold fighter who tried to challenge Saladin’s gradual encirclement of his kingdom. In his most notable battle of November 1177, he was trapped with some Templars in Ascalon while Saladin’s army raided southern Palestine. Then he decided to sally out and attack; it was such an unexpected move that Saladin’s army, reduced by sending out raiding parties, could not regroup when they were suddenly attacked while crossing a river. Both Baldwin and Saladin survived, but Saladin recalled it as his most frightening defeat.

Baldwin had a sister Sibylla and a much younger half-sister Isabella (whose grandfather was the Byzantine Emperor). Both girls were fated to be married as young as possible, since it was unclear if Baldwin would live long, and leprosy made him infertile.

In 1177, Sibylla was a teenage pregnant widow. Luckily she at least had a boy (named Baldwin), but now they had to start over. Everyone argued about what to do with her next. They wanted another wealthy European knight, like the first one (cousin to King of France), but matches kept falling through, probably sabotaged by political factions. Finally, young Baldwin chose the newly-arrived brother of his Constable. He was not as high-ranking as they’d have liked, but was vassal to the King of England and a skilled knight. So Guy of Lusignan entered the family in 1180. Guy and Sibylla had two daughters, but so far, little Baldwin V looked healthy.

Baldwin the Leper King came to detest Guy of Lusignan. He realized that they had brought into the family a wily schemer, but the schemer stayed one step ahead of Baldwin. As Regent for Baldwin when he had become blind, Guy permitted things Baldwin opposed, for example…and not a minor example…Guy allowed a powerful knight named Raynald de Chatillon to rob Arab caravans traveling through Outrejourdain (basically, the “West Bank”). The Jerusalem kingdom received a fair amount of tax money through its castles that guarded the caravan routes, but Guy and his friend double-dipped by also robbing those they should have guarded. Jerusalem had a truce with Saladin at the time, but Raynald claimed it didn’t apply to him.

The Leper King, now blind and clearly dying, had his nephew Baldwin V crowned, with Raymond of Tripoli appointed as regent. He wanted to bar Guy from making Sibylla the Queen, so he stipulated that only the European kings could choose which of his sisters should inherit in the event of the little boy’s death. Then he died. Sadly, the little boy died the following year, the last Baldwin. Of course, faced with uncertainty, the High Council recognized Sibylla as Queen, and she immediately crowned her husband as King Guy. Little sister Isabella had been married off to a local lord, but he too swore allegiance to Sibylla and Guy.

The Muslim caravan owners complained to Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Emir of Damascus, about the robberies committed by Crusader knights. They had put in a claim for compensation from Jerusalem (due to the truce), but Raynald and Guy refused it. Some legends say that Saladin’s sister had been traveling with the caravans and was also injured. Up to now, Saladin had had his own battles with Baldwin’s knights, winning some and losing some, but always turning back to his Muslim rivals. Now with his sights set on winning the Caliph’s approval, Saladin turned his full energies to the Holy Land.

The Countess of Tripoli was at Tiberias, by the Sea of Galilee, when Saladin’s forces besieged it. The Count of Tripoli had a truce with Saladin (almost an alliance, so much did he hate King Guy), but reluctantly, he broke this off and sided with the other Crusaders. Once again, the united knights of Tripoli, Antioch and Jerusalem, with the Hospitallers and Templars, acted as a single Crusader army. They rode to Tiberias with the largest army they could muster, to meet Saladin’s force.

The Battle of Hattin, near Tiberias, was a complete disaster. The Christians lost the battle worse than they ever imagined. Saladin’s army even captured the relic of the True Cross! Both King Guy and little Isabella’s husband were captured, as was the scoundrel Raynald who had started the trouble. A small group of lords, including the Count of Tripoli, had escaped from the battle by making a charge at some Arab forces who just moved aside to let them pass.

Saladin executed Raynald but spared Guy and the other nobles, taking them to Damascus to await ransom. However, he had a mass execution of the captured (and locally hated) Hospitaller and Templar knights, and he sold into slavery the lower-ranking knights who would not bring in a good ransom. Saladin could now mop up the remaining Crusader fortresses and towns left essentially undefended.

 

 

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Saladin builds an empire, 1171-1187

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Ruth

 

When Saladin became Vizier of Egypt, he was technically the agent of at least two higher powers. One was Nur ad-Din, the ruler of Aleppo, Mosul and Damascus; the other was, of course, the Sunni Caliph in Baghdad, who wasn’t very powerful by now. It didn’t take long for Saladin to make Nur ad-Din pretty concerned about his independence. Once you’re effectively the Sultan of Egypt, why should you be at the beck and call of some Emir of Mosul? right?

So Nur ad-Din would command, Saladin would sorta cooperate. Saladin sent him gifts from the conquests, and he joined in one military operation—almost. It looked like there would be a showdown between the ad-Dins; the Crusaders would have loved making popcorn and working out where to fit their interests in. But then suddenly Nur ad-Din died, and he left a child heir. Now what?

Nur ad-Din’s father Zengi had appointed various relatives to ruling posts all over Syria and Iraq, and they were all still working together. It was in their family interests to support the little boy, al-Salih. Saladin needed their cooperation unless he planned to just outright conquer their cities, so at first, he sent condolences and support for al-Salih. But he didn’t *do* anything supportive. He was busy in Egypt…

First, Saladin had to build up his own family ruling network. Nobody could make it for long without a sort of mafia like this. Saladin had (at least) four brothers who were all capable generals: Turanshah, Tuktegin, Ahmed and Taj Buri. Turanshah immediately became Saladin’s right hand, fighting an invading force of Nubians while Saladin tried to shore up loyalty in Cairo.

Turanshah took an Egyptian army to Yemen in 1174. He conquered its key port city of Aden and became the Emir of Yemen. That was the first in a string of Emirships for Turanshah, who was also the Governor of Upper (Southern) Egypt and had received tribute from Nubia. Brother Ahmed became known as al-Adil and was Saladin’s substitute ruler in Cairo when he had to leave. Eventually, he became Sultan himself (but that’s some years off). When Saladin eventually fought Crusaders, al-Adil handled many of the field operations and negotiations. The other brothers were field commanders, and Saladin’s sons began to get old enough to join them.

Saladin put a lot of energy into Egypt. His political infrastructure included a theological school for Malikis, the type of Sunni theology now dominant in Africa. This was smart, as it surely opened up embassy ties for previously isolated Shi’ite Egypt.

But that troublesome question of Syria, and the child heir, still persisted…was Saladin the boy’s subordinate, or was his power base grown to where Saladin should be master of Syria too?

Saladin had a propaganda problem in conquering Syria. Technically, there was a Caliph in Baghdad whose name featured in Friday prayers, and Nur ad-Din’s child should have been Saladin’s feudal lord as well. Saladin could only take power legally if he was preventing anarchy, if he was each time arriving in a Muslim city at the “request” of its ruler or to rescue it from revolt or Crusader attack. Feigning Crusader attack, he conquered Homs; then Nur ad-Din’s remaining relatives rose up against him, and in clean battle he conquered most of Syria’s cities. The remaining cities negotiated to recognize him as King (Arabic Malik) of Syria. He even married Nur ad-Din’s widow.

During the Syrian campaign, Saladin survived several ferocious Assassin attacks. In each case, his guards and Saladin himself were just quick enough to get out of the way of the knives. In the second instance, Saladin did end up lightly wounded and very shaken by how close a call it was.

With the Malik of Syria deal made, he turned his army to besiege the nearest Nizari fortress in the Syrian mountains. The strongest Nizari fortress was Alamut in Persia, but this Syrian one was its local equivalent. Its ruler became known in the 3rd Crusade as “the Old Man of the Mountain.” Crusaders were astonished at his guards’ fanatic devotion, sacrificing their lives for nothing at his whim and without hesitation. It proved impossible to conquer this fortress, as previous besiegers could have told Saladin.

There are different legends of what happened. One says the Old Man himself snuck into Saladin’s tent, leaving behind a threatening note. Another says an Assassin messenger spoke to Saladin with only two bodyguards present, and shocked the king by proving that those trusted bodyguards were actually loyal Assassins! The Nizari message was clear: we can get you whenever we choose.

But the Old Man of the Mountain and Saladin reached an understanding such that Assassin attacks on him stopped, and his forces withdrew. This neutralized or even harnessed the most powerful force for chaos in the region. Later, Saladin gained the cooperation of the other breakaway fortress group in Syria, the Druze. Apparently, the Knights Templar and Hospitaller had been so harsh in their actions against local people that these radical, solitary groups felt it was better to join the reigning Sunni power when it had a chance at driving the Crusaders into the sea.

Saladin’s growing power was a direct threat to the Crusader kingdoms. The Crusaders had only achieved limited success in a time when Baghdad, the Turks to the north, and the Fatimids to the south were not united. Now surely Saladin would force them out unless they could move to limit his power. They tried; Amalric’s son Baldwin IV defended Ascalon and attacked Damascus, but while the Crusaders were still too strong to be driven out, Saladin was too strong for them to win. In 1179 the Crusaders built a fortress by the Jordan River, but Saladin fought a tough battle against the Templar knights to capture it. In 1180, both sides backed off from open war and concluded a truce.

A truce with the Crusaders allowed Saladin to build up his Cairo power base better. He rebuilt walls and bridges and founded more schools. His political base in the city became secure. He skirmished with Bedouins who were pirates in the Red Sea and rogue traders, sometimes acting as paid guides to Crusader armies.

In 1182, the extended family of Nur ad-Din and Zengi, still rulers of various cities, revolted against him. Saladin prepared to take half the Egyptian Army north to reconquer Syria; he would remain away from Cairo for the rest of his life.

Most Syrian cities capitulated again to negotiation and threat, without a bloodbath. He besieged Mosul, but he had to be careful since the legal supreme ruler was still the Caliph of Baghdad, nearby. Saladin was not willing to overthrow the Caliph (who had religious authority). Instead, after a period of small battles and shifting alliances, he promised the Caliph that he would conquer territory for him, in exchange for Mosul.

Saladin set out to fulfill his promise. Chief among his targets was Jerusalem, the idea of which was waved like a banner. Jerusalem became the ideal of Muslim redemption; it was deemed the third holy city after Mecca and Medina. When it was a Muslim holding, it had not been considered that way, it had mostly been important to Jews and Christian pilgrims. But now, used as a rallying cry for Saladin’s rise to top leadership, its importance grew.

 

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Christendom attacks Saladin 1.0, 1169

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Ruth

In 1169, Nur ad-Din’s agent Saladin became Vizier to the last Fatimid Caliph in Cairo. There was one armed revolt in protest, but Saladin had already been diligently executing possible rebel commanders, so it didn’t last long. Saladin then inherited the vast Fatimid Army, which included black African regiments, as well as North Africans and conscripted Egyptians. With this army, he set out to extend Egyptian power. By this time, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem had gradually pushed its power into the southern desert, from Gaza to the Red Sea.

Saladin’s first challenge was an alliance between Emperor Manuel Komnenos and King Amalric of Jerusalem; they married each other’s cousins and planned to invade Egypt.  King Amalric was the second son of Melisende and Fulk, born after Fulk’s palace-coup defeat briefly healed the marriage. Brother Baldwin III died childless, but Amalric had married young to a Norman heiress and had three children already. When Amalric became King, he was forced to divorce his wife for reasons that are unclear, but the three children were happily accepted as a downstream source of heirs. Amalric was more of a scholar than a warrior, but still he made a strong king, and when he made an alliance with the Emperor, things looked good for Jerusalem’s power to rise.

Manuel and Amalric seemed to be counting on Egypt to put up little defense. They probably knew about the infighting among viziers and generals. In 1168, Amalric and the Hospitaller Knights rode into Egypt and seized the fort of Bilbeis, north of Cairo. They marched straight at Cairo just before Saladin became Vizier; his predecessor offered a huge sum of gold to Amalric to go home. That’s how low Fatimid Egypt’s power had sunk.

Then Saladin happened.

In 1169, twenty Byzantine war ships, 150 galleys, and a flotilla of support craft sailed to Damietta, the nearest Egyptian port city. Some of the ships were personnel carriers who brought a large land army with knights to land at Damietta. Amalric settled into a siege of its fortress, but he would have needed to act with speed and force—and he didn’t. The besiegers ran out of supplies while the new Vizier Saladin put down the revolt and took control of the army. Then he turned north to Damietta.

In disarray, Amalric had to withdraw and sign a truce with Saladin. Saladin followed up quickly by invading Eilat, a port city on the Red Sea. (It marks the base of the sharp south-pointing triangle on a map of Israel.) Eilat had been the Crusaders’ one Red Sea port; now gone. He also seized Gaza, then a Crusader southern outpost. Gaza had a garrison of Templars, the most aggressive knights, but Saladin feinted an attack elsewhere to draw them off.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem felt seriously threatened. It was obviously a terrible thing to have an agent of Nur ad-Din now ruling Egypt; Crusader strategy had been based on playing Turks and Egyptians off each other. Briefly, it appeared that perhaps Saladin had rebelled against Nur ad-Din and there might be a “Clash of the ad-Dins” for the Franks to profit from. Then Nur ad-Din died. Sultan Saladin ruled unopposed.

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Sultan Saladin ends Shi’ite rule in Cairo, 1171

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Ruth

Saladin and Richard the Lion-Heart are the most famous names of the Crusades, and finally we’re getting to their stories. We met Richard via his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine; now we meet Saladin through Zengi’s successor Nur ad-Din. First, why were so many of these leaders named Something ad-Din? This name is a Laqab, a descriptive surname parallel to “the Lion-Heart” or “the Good.” Din means Faith in Arabic; Nur ad-Din was the Light of the Faith, while Salah ad-Din was the Righteous of the Faith. Their given name, used at home by Mom, is usually forgotten (Saladin’s childhood name was Yusuf).

During the Second Crusade period, Zengi’s son Nur ad-Din ruled Aleppo and Edessa. He married the princess of Damascus, Ismat ad-Din (Purity of the Faith) Khatun (“princess” in Turkic). Damascus hovered between alliances with Turks and Crusaders, depending who seemed stronger, but eventually its ruler died and Nur ad-Din absorbed it. He appointed the former Governor of Tikrit Ayyub  to be its ruler under his authority. Ayyub’s brother was one of Nur ad-Din’s field generals.

All we can say about Ayyub’s family background is that it’s the same mix that produced Nur ad-Din: Turkic, Kurdish, Arab, probably intermarried until it didn’t matter. Their tribal name is in Kurdish, but it means “nomads,” so the root ancestry could be the Arabs who brought herds of goats to the valley of the Tigris River, back in the 8th century. Ayyub is “Job” in Arabic, while his brother always went by a Kurdish name.

Ayyub’s son Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub went into active military service. Nur ad-Din was ambitious to extend his father Zengi’s project: unifying the former Caliphate by conquest, including the jewel in the crown: Egypt. Remember Cairo was built by Shi’ites who aggressively sent missionaries into Persian and Arab lands to agitate against Turkish rule (since Turks were by no possible pretense descended from Mohammed’s tribe).

So Nur ad-Din sent General Shirkuh (“Mountain Lion” in Kurdish) and his nephew Salah ad-Din down to Egypt. The Fatimid dynasty was so weakened that the teenage Caliph had no real control, and the viziers were playing out power games. One vizier thought allying with Nur ad-Din would return him to power, and it did, but Shirkuh and nephew Saladin stayed on in Cairo. Saladin actually befriended the weak Caliph and, ultimately, Saladin was appointed Vizier to the Ismaili Shi’ite Caliph!

When the Caliph died in 1171, Saladin saw no reason to continue the charade. He abolished the office and appointed himself Sultan. For Egypt, it was just another regime change; most Egyptians were still Christians, and the Muslims were still mostly Sunni. The big question was whether Saladin’s new dynasty would rule well or not. Saladin’s descendants are known as the Ayyubids, not the Saladinids, because “ibn Ayyub” was in both his name and his son’s. Arab/Egyptian tradition names each individual as Himself son of Father son of Grandfather (the Town/Region Resident).

I have a whole small book about Egyptian Christians under Ayyubid rule! As soon as I get the Third Crusade out of the way, we’ll talk about it!

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Prester John’s Letter, 1165

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Ruth

“Prester John” was the unlikely name of a legendary Christian king somewhere far in the East. From century to century, people kept hearing and passing on rumors of his wealth and piety. A medieval Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was thought to be the West’s only hope as the Turks and Mongols closed in.

There was a longstanding tradition that colonies of long-lost forgotten Christians were in India. Some said the Magi had gone back to Persia and India after seeing Jesus in Bethlehem, and that belief began there. There’s a firmer tradition that Jesus’ disciple Thomas sailed to the east, including a set of Jewish colonies on the southwest coast of India. The churches there all remember St. Thomas as their founder, and some accounts recall the names of his first converts among the Brahmins. Their liturgy has always been in Syriac, rather than Greek or Latin. They may be the original core of the legend of a lost Christian nation in the east.

In the 400s, followers of Bishop Nestorius left Constantinople after the Council of Chalcedon declared their ideas to be heresy. Like Thomas, they went eastward. Christians in Persia wanted to be separate from the Roman-Byzantine church because they were being accused of disloyalty in Persia. When Nestorian priests came as banned refugees, they were welcomed. From Persia, Nestorian missionaries went further east, including south to the coastal Indian churches. Further, we know that in Genghis Khan’s time, some of his neighbor tribes were Nestorian Christians. All of the Great Khan’s sons married Christians!

But the stories of the lost King Prester John began before the time of Genghis Khan and persisted long after. “Prester” seems to be a corruption of Presbyter, or Elder. He was a king, but he was also a bishop and, additionally, a descendant of the Magi.

Bishop Otto of Friesing, who accompanied Conrad of Germany on the Second Crusade, believed that Prester John almost joined them. As King of India, he had beaten the Muslim Persians solidly just before the Crusade began. His army came as far as the Tigris River to help win back Edessa, but there he met with an unexpected check. Otto says that someone told him the river would freeze so that his army could ride across it. Prester John’s army went north to find the ice, but the Tigris never freezes over. They waited until another summer had passed and winter came again, but there was still no ice. His army gradually drifted away, and Prester John had to turn for home without ever seeing Jerusalem. What a near miss! He could have saved the whole Crusade from failure!

In 1165 a letter that Prester John supposedly sent to Emperor Manuel Comnenos began circulating around Europe. It was copied and recopied. They took it seriously enough that in 1177, the Pope sent a messenger eastward to find Prester John and give him a reply letter. The messenger never came back.

The much-copied letter tells us that Prester John, King of India, has 72 kings who pay tribute to him. Most of them are pagan, he says, but there are also ten tribes of Israel (the Lost Tribes found!). He provides a list of the amazing animals that live in India, starting with elephants and dromedaries, but quickly passing to crocodiles, red and white lions, white bears, silent grasshoppers, gryphons, pygmies, giants, and one-eyed and horned men. (I’m most curious about those silent grasshoppers.)

In one area of Prester John’s India, no venomous animals can live, while in another, a river coming from Paradise washes gemstones up on its shores. But in the region where pepper trees grow, the snake infestation is so severe that the only way to harvest the pepper is to burn down the forest. That way, the only snakes that survive are the ones who hid in caves, but the rest are piled into big heaps by the harvesters, who are now free to pick the pepper.

The rest of the letter goes on in that way: every legend of the far-off lands makes its way into the list. There are rivers flowing with gemstones (probably pearls), and local children learn to stay underwater for a long time to find them. There are worms called salamanders, who live in fire, and from them, women spin silk. The people live in unimaginable wealth and moral virtue. On and on. There’s just one problem, it turns out: they don’t have many good horses. Other than that, it’s pure Paradise. (Imagine being short on the one thing Europe had lots of! What a marketing pitch!)

As long as that letter circulated, Europeans were sure that Prester John’s army would show up soon. He would sack Baghdad and bring his army from the east, and then finally the Crusades would be successful.

In 1221, a Fifth Crusader brought back word that Prester John’s grandson King David had defeated the Muslims and was on his way. That rumor didn’t pan out; it was actually the Mongols who were on their way, and they did not at all intend to rebuild Jerusalem. In 1306, Ethiopians visited Europe, and rumor spread that finally, at last, Prester John’s kingdom had been located. It was just in Africa, not India.

So for several centuries, Europeans continued to believe that Prester John ruled in Africa, and in some legends, his kingdom was not only Christian but specifically white. Explorers might any day come around the corner of a mountain and find a native white tribe with churches! When the legend finally died out as supposed fact, it lived on in myth. Shakespeare mentions Prester John, and John Buchan wrote an adventure novel about him in the 20th century. His legend was useful for feeling better about colonizing Africa. What was Rhodesia but a sort of modern-day Prester John’s kingdom?

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Baldwin II’s daughter Hodierna of Tripoli, 1137

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Ruth

Note: this one should have been posted before the Second Crusade entries.

Hodierna, Baldwin’s third daughter, didn’t marry until she was about 25 (in 1137). It’s not clear why she stayed home so long when her sister Alice was married off at 16. It may have just been a lack of opportunity; no Prince Bohemund was on the horizon, and they didn’t want her to “marry down.” Hodierna’s husband Raymond II of Tripoli, who was in some ways the boy next door, was only 20.

Raymond II didn’t know what to do with the strong-willed, independent wife he had taken on. They say he tried keeping her in seclusion, but rumors still spread that her first baby was not fathered by Raymond. There were no serious questions raised when a boy was born, since he was a badly-needed heir, but the rumors about little Melisende persisted for years.

There’s an odd assassination episode during the Second Crusade, with Hodierna’s name mixed in. The youngest son of First Crusader Raymond of Toulouse came as a commander, but he died suddenly at Caesarea.  The circumstances of the young Count’s death in 1148 must have been highly suspicious. At the time, people said he had been poisoned. It’s interesting that when Baldwin I died at Muslim-held Caesarea, they didn’t take seriously the notion that he’d been poisoned. But this time, rumors spread that a woman had been behind the poisoning. Some said Queen Melisende of Jerusalem had arranged it at the request of Hodierna.

The Tripoli marriage seems to have been difficult straight through. By 1152, the couple had separated. Hodierna’s sister Queen Melisende came to Tripoli as mediator, but in the end, everyone agreed that it would be best if Hodierna and her daughter just went to Jerusalem for a while. After they were gone, assassins killed Raymond II. Historians seem to think that they were probably Nizari Ismaili agents who targeted a Christian ruler (not their usual) because he had given so much land and money to the Order of the Hospital knights, including the Krak des Chevaliers.

Hodierna went back to Tripoli to help her young son Raymond III rule until he was declared an adult at age 15, a few years later. Unlike her sister Alice, she didn’t try to wrest power from him. But in 1160, she suffered a great humiliation. The Byzantine Emperor made a tentative plan to marry her daughter Melisende, and Tripoli began taxing and gathering to give her a good dowry. While they were doing this, however, those old rumors about Hodierna’s lovers came to the Emperor’s ears. He began stalling until a year had passed, and next thing they knew, he had quietly married Alice’s granddaughter Maria, instead.

Raymond III took revenge by plundering Cyprus, then a Byzantine stronghold. But there was no real way to fix what had just happened. Melisende’s dowry collection stopped, and she quietly entered a convent. Hodierna lived long enough to sit at her oldest sister’s deathbed, then she too passed away in 1164. It doesn’t look like she had any grandchildren, so her line ended. Her older sisters’ descendants, though, more than pulled their weight in the “colorful independence” category.

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Queen Eleanor of the 2nd Crusade

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Ruth

If you singled out just one person to stand for the Second Crusade, it should be Queen Eleanor. She was the grand-daughter of Duke William of Aquitaine, the troubadour who just barely survived the First Crusade. William had gone home to his unhappy wife Philippa and flamboyant mistress “Dangereuse,” but eventually this family rift had been healed by a marriage between Philippa’s son and Dangereuse’s daughter (an aristocrat in her own right).

Eleanor was this couple’s oldest child, and in Aquitaine, girls could inherit. She grew up in a very wealthy and musical household and was already the subject of troubadour admiration in her early teens. In 1137, both her father and the King of France died. At age 15, Duchess Eleanor married 17 year old King Louis VII. Annexing Aquitaine was one of the major goals of every French king, so marrying a reigning heiress was a great coup.

However, it didn’t work out that way at all. First, Eleanor gave birth to two girls. While a girl could rule Aquitaine, she could not rule France. If one of those girls inherited, it would mean marrying her to, say, a King of Germany, and that would add up to France’s being annexed. This was not acceptable. Louis and Eleanor could have kept trying for a boy, but their marriage fell apart dramatically right in the middle of the Crusade.

When Louis vowed to take up the Cross, Eleanor decided to ride along. She brought her ladies in waiting, and some stories say they designed a sort of uniform dress with a cross. Although she did not intend to fight, she led a contingent of knights from Aquitaine. One of this period’s historians, William of Tyre, claimed that the presence of so many feminine non-combatants was a key factor in the battle loss when King Louis was nearly killed. The breaking point, though, was still to come.

A few years before (1136), her father’s younger brother Raymond had been the stealth bridegroom of little Constance of Antioch (to the great disappointment of Princess Alice, the child’s mother). So when Louis and Eleanor arrived in Antioch in 1148, Raymond was delighted to see his niece Eleanor. They shared dialect, culture, education, and taste. We have no record of Princess Constance’s attitude toward how much time uncle and niece spent together, but we do know King Louis was very disturbed.

Some accounts speculate that he thought there was an incestuous affair going on, but on balance it seems unlikely. It’s more likely that Eleanor had already been proving too outgoing, domineering, and condescending for Louis. The pilgrimage must have created many points of friction. I’m sure Eleanor wasn’t impressed by Louis’s military losses. When she began snubbing his company in favor of singing songs with her uncle, they had to face the truth that they could no longer stand each other. Baby Alix’s birth was just the last straw.

Eleanor’s two little girls stayed in France when she went home to Aquitaine. Marie and Alix were both famous beauties who married two very wealthy brothers, the Counts of Champagne and Blois. Marie made a name for herself in the literature of troubadours and courtly love; she is sometimes called “Marie of France.”

But Eleanor is the one who really made history. Only eight weeks after she arrived home in Aquitaine, she got married a second time. There are a number of ironies in this. First, her French marriage annulment was granted because they were related within four degrees, but her new husband was related to her within three degrees. Second, her new husband was a direct rival of her first. (Take that, ex!) She married the teenage Duke of Normandy, great-grandson of the Conqueror. Henry was also the Count of Anjou, Maine, and Nantes. On marrying Eleanor, he became Duke of Aquitaine. Third, he was actually a teenager while she was now 30.

England had been in a political crisis, caught between rival claims among the Conqueror’s heirs. The son of Faint-Hearted Crusader Stephen of Blois was currently King Stephen when Eleanor remarried, but a recent peace treaty to end civil war had stipulated that her new husband Henry was Stephen’s heir. And within a short time, Stephen died. Eleanor’s young husband was King Henry II of England.

It’s a rare feat to have been Queen of both France and England, in addition to being a Crusader. But Eleanor’s claims to history’s notice were just beginning: she had eight children between 1153 and 1166. Her most famous son was Richard the Lion-Hearted, leader of the Third Crusade. Therefore, her most infamous son was also King John, known to all Disney-watching children as the pathetic lion who couldn’t keep his crown on straight. Her three daughters married into top-tier royalty and gave birth to future kings, queens, and a Holy Roman Emperor. Her husband, Henry II, was the king who appointed his best friend to be Archbishop Thomas a Becket and ended up with a martyr.

Queen Eleanor’s marriage to Henry II did not go smoothly. Around the time of John’s birth, Henry II had a passionate (and public) love affair with a woman named Rosamund Clifford. Eleanor moved back to Aquitaine, though without dissolving the legal marriage. This next stage, living as a separated wife with young children, seems to be when she gained the most fame as a patroness of music and literature, the Queen of Courtly Love. It seems likely that daughters Marie and Alix visited and got to know their mother during these years.

The oldest son Henry had been crowned co-king with his father, to avoid another succession dispute. He stayed behind in England, while it appears the others went to Normandy and Aquitaine. He had married the French princess who was half-sister to his half-sisters (but no blood relation to himself).

Suddenly, Henry the Young King went to Paris and launched a revolt against his father, who was not sharing enough power. His brothers Geoffrey and Richard joined him, and soon after, Eleanor herself left Aquitaine and headed north. She disguised herself, riding as a private person, not riding in her royal litter or cavalcade.  She was not as lucky as her sons, though; English authorities arrested her in Normandy, and she spent the rest of her estranged husband’s life in various cold, dark castles around England.

Sons Henry and Geoffrey both died before 1189, when King Henry II himself passed away. Richard became king. By then, the drums were beating for another Crusade. Eleanor did not dream of going this time; she stayed in England to help John as regent when Richard left. Richard used England only as a tax base and spent the rest of his life abroad, either crusading or in captivity.

Eleanor lived very long for her era; she died in 1204 at age 82. In her last years, she supported John’s inheritance of the crown against Geoffrey’s surviving son, and ended up imprisoned again for a bit. She also took on a diplomatic mission for John to choose one of his Castilian nieces to marry King Louis’s heir Philip II. She ended up captured and imprisoned on that journey, too. Worn out, she entered a monastery in Anjou, where she is buried next to Henry II and her son Richard. Anjou was the family burial place, but by the time John died it was no longer his territory, so he was buried in England instead of by his mother.

 

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Second Crusade: the kings, 1147-8

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Ruth

The Second Crusade consisted mainly of a huge expeditionary force led by the French King Louis VII and the German King Conrad III. Its story is one of great initial promise and high theater, ending in disappointment and disaster. It was also was the first time that reigning monarchs went on Crusade.

Pope Eugene III came to Paris, where Louis staged a dramatic Mass at the Cathedral of St. Denis. Louis prostrated himself on the floor before the Saint, committing himself to holy war, then immediately set out. Louis was not really a warrior; he had been the second son, devoted to the church. In his short reign, he had already been forced to lead knights against rebels, but he came away from that experience with a deep sense of guilt. (Not all imaginary: he had burnt down a church with a thousand people sheltered inside.) His chief purpose was pilgrimage, and his appointed regent was the Abbot who had mentored him, rather than a nobleman or relative. Normally, the regent would be the Queen, but in this case, his wife chose to come along on the adventure.

The German army set out first, with a time lag to allow the countryside to recover from provisioning them before the French army passed through. In this way, both came to Constantinople and set out across Anatolia. Emperor Manuel was on bad terms with the Germans, good terms with the French. Cooperation wasn’t very good. In any case, both the German and French armies were decimated by Turkish attacks as they crossed the plateau. In one assault, King Louis had to climb a rock or cliff, holding onto tree roots while using his sword as rear guard. Both kings arrived in Antioch alive, but their armies were very badly reduced.

The obvious next step was to proceed to Edessa, since its capture by Turks was the casus belli. But they didn’t. King Louis wanted to see Jerusalem first, and there, the high council met and chose to attack…Damascus. This was foolish in both political and military terms. It was a miserable failure, as well. The allied forces of Zengi’s son Nur ad-Din and the ruler of Damascus pushed back the remnants of the Crusader forces. Had they attacked Edessa, Damascus probably would have sat out the fight. And that’s the crucial point: this was the first time Europeans faced a united Turkish force. They underestimated how much difference it would make.

The Crusader lords criticized how the European kings had bungled the siege, while the Europeans said the Crusaders had given up too quickly. When King Conrad went down to Ascalon to have a try at that old target, the other kings did not join him. Bitter, Conrad set out for home, leaving many captured noblemen to be ransomed by their families as possible. King Louis and Queen Eleanor went home in separate ships and soon after, they divorced (via an annulment of the “oops I guess we were cousins” kind). Bernard of Clairvaux felt terrible about having encouraged this mess in the first place; among his writings is a formal apology to the Pope.

Edessa never recovered; Nur ad-Din massacred the Christian population of the city, leaving it largely empty. It dwindled in economic importance and eventually became a ruin.

 

 

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Second Crusade: Towns and Merchants, 1147

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Ruth

Although Pope Eugenius and Bernard of Clairvaux intended their persuasion to influence kings and counts, many other people heard these arguments and began making drastic changes in their lives, freeing themselves to go and give personal help. But this time, the popular Crusade was well organized and did not end in disaster.

To some extent, that’s because all during this period, the power and self-governing wisdom of towns was constantly growing. Towns began in the early medieval years as land set apart from the usual labor contributions that a baron or count expected. The people living on this chartered plot still owed something, but they could give it in cash, as taxes, not as actual days of the week when they must plow fields or dig ditches. Craftsmen flocked to the new towns and organized guilds, and the guilds elected leaders to create a town council. The council elected a Major as executive, or as it’s come to us in English, a mayor. Every few decades, the towns’ governance grew more detailed and stronger. I speculate that there were important changes between 1095 and 1145, and that this is part of why the popular Crusade now actually worked.

Towns all over Northern Europe, crossing many feudal and national boundaries, agreed on a time and place to meet: the first weeks of May, in Dartmouth, England. There, the regional leaders (guild leaders, landowners, and merchants) made an agreement. Each ship would be viewed as a parish, with a priest and regular church services. For each group of ships, a judge was appointed to settle disputes; they were not to tolerate brawling, since this was a pilgrimage. Important decisions would be made by a council of all the regional leaders. Every participant swore an oath to follow this plan.

Also during this 50-year period, they were building larger and deeper-keeled cargo ships in the North Sea. The merchants who helped organize ships for the pilgrims probably chose cogs, which were shorter and more barrel-shaped than the war-ships that we see depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. It may be that just in the years since Prince Sigurd set out on pilgrimage by ship, the average sea-going vessel had more cargo capacity and less need to stop so frequently.

Because the voyage was planned in such a decentralized way, there’s no master list or record of who went, or why. Most of what we know comes from a history written in Lisbon, Portugal, because the fleet arrived just in time to assist local Christians to complete their reconquest of Lisbon. It wasn’t a big event in English or Flemish history, but it was huge for Lisbon.

A spate of bad Atlantic weather forced the flotilla to slow down and stop. King Alfonso of Leon and Castile sent men to persuade them to help with the siege, instead of passing on. The Pope had recently announced that fighting the Moors in Spain was just as valid as going all the way to the Holy Land. And so the townsmen agreed to anchor their ships and help with the siege. They would be paid with treasure taken from the Moors when the city was captured, with King Alfonso remaining in control of political decisions.

It took four months to bring Lisbon to the point of surrender, and at that point, all or most of the Muslim residents left as refugees to other taifa cities. Some of the pilgrim sailors chose to stay on in Lisbon, rewarded with land or houses. Lisbon’s account suggests that most of them stayed, so it must have been a significant number, who became an important piece of the city’s new Christian identity.

One Mediterranean account suggests that some of them continued to the Holy Land, but we know nothing about how they fared there. Kings usually traveled with chroniclers, but these townsmen and merchants didn’t think of it. Paper technology was still on its way to Europe; after paper was widely available, common people kept records too (which is why we know so much about the Black Death). But in this time, no.

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Fatimid dynasty splits and decays, 1101-1140

Posted on June 14, 2017 by Ruth

The Fatimid dynasty always tried to combine pragmatic secular rule with idealistic religion. The Caliph/Imam was not only the war leader and ruler, he was also the holiest descendant of Ismail.

We’ve already seen one major split among Ismaili fanatics, when the Vizier Afdal promoted younger brother Musta’ali over heir apparent Nizar. During the 12th century, the Nizari Ismailis were mostly in Persia, trying to rebel against Baghdad’s Turkish rule. These Nizaris even took the radical step of composing their holy writings in Persian, not in Arabic.

But in 1132, another split began.

Most Muslims in Egypt accepted Musta’ali’s rule pragmatically, but some believed fervently that the choice of Musta’ali had also been idealistic and holy. When this Imam died, his son al-Amir became Imam after him, so all was still well. In 1130, the birth of an heir-apparent son named Tayyib was celebrated in Cairo. But in 1132, the Caliph-Imam was assassinated. The heir, Tayyib, was no more than two years old.

Hafiz, a half-brother to the dead Caliph, became Regent for baby Tayyib. This kind of plan usually worked out badly in those times. Within a short time, Hafiz declared himself Caliph-Imam, since he too was a son of the previous one. Vizier Afdal and everyone who had charge of baby Tayyib were suddenly assassinated. The Nizari Assassins were a convenient scapegoat, but it’s just as likely that Hafiz merely paid his own killing team. Tayyib vanished from history, first with a legend of being hidden like Moses in a basket, carried to a mosque for safe-keeping. Then, since he was the true Imam even at this young age, he went into “occultation,” the hidden state where true Imams await their future revealing.

Ismailis in Yemen never accepted Hafiz; they were partisans of Tayyib. This was the next big split among Shi’ites: Tayyibi and Hafizi. Hafizi partisans didn’t have a long run, though; the descendants of Hafiz definitely died out, without occultation or mystery, within a few generations. Remaining Hafizi believers made amends to the Tayyibis and just joined them. There is still a Tayyibi Ismaili Shi’ite sect in Yemen.

During the last years of the Hafizis in Cairo, their Vizier tried to solve the three-way power problem by allying with the Crusader Kingdoms against the growing power of Zengi and his heirs. It was the last stand for Arab rule. Turks and Kurds now held Baghdad, Damascus, and much of Persia; they were taking more and more of Anatolia. However much the last Hafizis might be rejected by Tayyibis and Nizaris, they were undisputed as descendants of Ismail, who was a descendant of Mohammed. If these last Fatimids, fractured by idealistic splits, could not hold onto power against the Turks and Kurds, Arab aristocracy was basically over.

Spoiler: As we know, Arab political power only revived in the 20th century, after the First World War, fittingly by means of another “Crusader” alliance. By then, Turkish power had gone through its own cycles of division and decay.

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