I’ve written about the use of spices and sauces in preparing medieval meat dishes. Recipes of the time were quite vague, assuming a common training base and palate for cooks. Here, modern chefs try to work out what medieval recipes may have intended.
The Crusaders did not yet have a good port, since Antioch was actually inland a bit on the Orontes River. The ports in this area had all been fortified by Greek or Roman founders, so they had serious walls and other defenses. It took years for the Latins to conquer Tyre and Sidon, and they never captured Ascalon. They could use ports like Jaffa and Haifa, but at first they didn’t control them. Most of the ports readily made contracts with the Crusaders to pay tribute, to keep out of trouble. (It was on a friendly visit to the Muslim governor of Caesarea that King Godfrey had suddenly sickened and died.)
King Baldwin I’s forces were at an all-time low. His chaplain, Fulcher, noted that he had about 300 knights at this time. Most of the territory around the isolated Crusader outposts was hostile. On a hunting expedition, Baldwin was injured nearly to death by a small Muslim raiding party. It was just too dangerous for Franks to settle in and think of the “Kingdom of Jerusalem” as theirs.
Then some ships arrived from Genoa. A Genoese commander whose ships had been dismantled to make siege towers in Jerusalem had sent word home for more sailors and boats. The arrival of the fresh recruits put Genoese commander back in business as a power broker. Baldwin I made a deal to split the loot for any ports they would conquer by working together.
The small port of Arsuf surrendered within three days, and it was rewarded with generous terms. This was a typical practice of the time, meant to be the “good cop” side of the attackers’ public face. The ruler who surrendered might stay on as part of the administration, and the people’s lives would be relatively undisturbed. But the act only worked when the “bad cop” was shocking even in a time when death was a commonplace.
The next big target was Caesarea, a magnificent port built by the Romans but somewhat gone to seed under Arab use. Its walls were three meters thick, and it had inner walls from even older fortifications. In Herod’s time, it had a palace, temples, an aqueduct and a huge amphitheater, as well as massive governmental office buildings. The Byzantines had filled in some of the harbor to build more city out into the water. Arab Caesarea was a Fatimid-ruled city, like Jerusalem (as opposed to being ruled by a Turkish warlord). The city refused to surrender, since it seemed likely that a Fatimid army could rescue them.
On land, Crusaders used mangonels, a type of catapult, to bombard the city’s wall and rooftops. The Genoese ships blockaded at sea. After three weeks, the city surrendered, but this type of surrender was not rewarded with restraint. Caesarea had to pay for its resistance and the cost of three weeks’ siege. Franks, Normans and Genoese rushed into the city and began looting and killing. The men were killed, the women and children enslaved. Chroniclers wrote about rivers of blood and stinking piles of bodies in the streets.
The wealth of the city was divided among the attackers, who all went home rich. The Genoese recorded that they also found a thousand merchants hiding in the mosque and agreed to let them go in exchange for ransom. They knew their priorities!
The Genoese also found a fancy hexagonal cup made of Egyptian green glass. Perhaps because glassmaking was relatively primitive in Europe, the finders believed the cup was carved from a single emerald that had magic properties. The legend grew: the cup was a gift to Solomon from the Queen of Sheba, and it had then become the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper. They took it home, where it is still housed in honor in a cathedral. Unfortunately, it was later taken by Napoleon, and the glass was broken by the time the French returned it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Chalice#/media/File:Sacro_Catino_Graal.jpg
The next big port at hand was Acra, or Acre. The good cop stopped in for a confidential chat with its Fatimid governors. You may not believe it, but Acre just surrendered. True story.
The next entry begins at a later date in this archive: May 6, 2017.
In 1100, Bohemund Prince of Antioch was called on to fulfill his feudal vows and help protect a northern part of Armenian Cilicia. A tribe of Turks called the Danishmends (after their leader, whose name “Danishmend” in Persian means “wise man”) who lived north of the Armenians were pushing southward. They were attacking the town of Melitene, ruled by an Armenian named Gabriel. We know Gabriel was part of the Armenian-Crusader network because in 1101, the new Count Baldwin II of Edessa married his daughter Morphia. But for now, Gabriel and Morphia were in danger.
Bohemund left Antioch in the hands of his nephew, Tancred Prince of Galilee, and collected knights with his cousin, Richard of Salerno. Bohemund, Tancred, and Richard were all Normans whose fathers had conquered and settled in Sicily and southern Italy. It’s said that Richard and Tancred could speak some Arabic, certainly a plus in ruling Antioch.
The Danishmend ruler Ghazi had met the Crusaders once before, while they were crossing Anatolia. He didn’t intend to lose this time. His men ambushed the Normans as they went north across unfamiliar ground, and many Crusaders were killed. Bohemund and his cousin Richard, though, were captured alive. Ghazi personally kept Bohemund for ransom, but he sold Richard to Emperor Alexios I Comnenos. Now two Crusader enemies had valuable hostages.
Having Bohemund, a leading prince, captured alive by barbarians was humiliating, and it also signaled to the surrounding Turkish emirs and beys that if they were a bit more clever, they too could win battles with the Franks. The Crusaders seemed invincible when they first arrived, but now their numbers were badly reduced. The hostage-taking also tested the unity and resources of the Crusaders. If they couldn’t come up with the sum that Ghazi and Alexios were demanding, just how rich were they? And if they didn’t have the unified will to ransom some of their top commanders, how much of a “state” were they? If they were as disunified as the Turkish rulers, they could be picked off one by one, or tempted into alliances against each other.
Bohemund and Richard were finally ransomed and released in 1103, but for the next set of stories, they should be considered sidelined. Bohemund might have been held in a yurt, for all we know; I like to picture him there. Did he learn some Turkish over the course of three years? I hope so. And while they were both released, it didn’t end happily for Gabriel, Baldwin II’s father-in-law. He was killed by the Danishmends while trying to negotiate the ransom payments.
This series picks up with an entry for May 6, 2017, titled “Two Horrific Battles.”
With Jerusalem conquered and slowly being cleaned up from the stench and disease of rotting body parts, the big question was who should become its ruler.
The Princes’ Crusade set out with a number of ambitious aristocrats, but by three years later, the ranks had thinned. The Duke of Normandy, Count of Flanders and Count of Boulogne all seemed content with their original lands and titles back home, and the French King’s brother had gone home. There were five remaining noblemen, and two had already seized territory as Count of Edessa and Prince of Antioch.
So the last three contenders were Raymond Count of Toulouse, who had a lovely patrimony back in southern France but was determined to become the ruler of something in the Holy Land; Godfrey of Bouillon—brother to Count of Edessa and Count of Boulogne, himself (insecurely) Duke of Lorraine but definitely still in the hunt for more titles; and Tancred, nephew of the new Prince of Antioch and grandson of the Norman who conquered southern Italy.
Tancred was hotly ambitious but lower in status, so he didn’t really have a chance at Jerusalem. Jerusalem was considered to be the center of the world; it was also where Christ would return. It was even the principle city of the region in secular terms, since Tel Aviv didn’t exist and Jaffa was just a small port. But overall, it was the Holy City, center of the world.
On July 22, they held a council at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Raymond of Toulouse stated that he could not be King in a city where Jesus had worn a crown of thorns. It is almost certain that he hoped the other princes would insist on electing him anyway; Bohemund had pulled a similar stunt at Antioch, allowing them to reject him and then come back in a panic and “force” to him lead. But instead, Godfrey of Bouillon quickly agreed that it would be a really impious act to be king in the city where etc., so he offered to be an uncrowned ruler. The others in the council just as quickly accepted his offer.
Raymond felt that the council had been rigged by the other Normans. This time, the breach between the disappointed prince and the successful one could not be bridged. Raymond pulled his forces away from Jerusalem and began to act independently. When Raymond’s army did not coordinate with the others, their forces were cut in half. They had already left knights behind in Cilicia, Edessa, and Antioch. The remaining knights had to guard Jerusalem and be prepared to assault other Muslim-held cities, which meant every town except the Antioch and Jerusalem: Jaffa, Ascalon, Acre, Tyre, Sidon… There were just not enough boots on the ground.
The council had to determine more feudal hierarchy, creating and assigning titles. Tancred was made Prince of Galilee, so that he was responsible for holding the land between Antioch and Jerusalem. Other knights were made Counts of Haifa, Nazareth, and Beirut, assigned to be vassals to Tancred. Even smaller towns and regions were assigned to be under them. In this way, the Crusaders could divide governing, taxation, and defense as efficiently as they knew how.
We usually remember Godfrey as King Godfrey of Jerusalem, even though he turned down the title and remained, officially, only a Duke (“dux”). He acted as a king, trying to mediate disputes and use the collective knights and infantry to extend their territory. His first challenge came quickly as the Fatimids rode in force to take back Jerusalem. Jerusalem was captured on July 15, and by August 10, Godfrey was leading the troops southward to meet the Fatimids in the desert.
During those few short weeks, a monk had discovered a fragment of the True Cross. Our modern minds find this very hard to believe; but it only matters to the story that everyone at the time believed it. The True Cross came to have its own cult, in a sense, people whose faith largely centered around knowing that the relic was here and could be carried with the troops or in procession to church before a battle. In this case, both the True Cross and the Holy Lance of Antioch were carried by priests in front with the Crusade’s leaders. Reluctantly, Raymond of Toulouse came too.
Al-Afdal led the Fatimid army himself, and although numbers are uncertain, he probably had twice as many men as the Latins. His intent was a siege of Jerusalem, but the Crusaders met him outside Ascalon (modern Ashkelon). It’s hard to believe, but the Crusaders found the Fatimids and prepared an attack before Fatimid scouts had alerted al-Afdal. They forced a battle in the open fields, and in this first Battle of Ascalon, the Crusaders won relatively easily and very decisively. When al-Afdal fled, he left behind a lot of plunder for the knights to carry away. Ascalon itself refused to surrender, and the Crusaders had no will to batter it down.
Most of the leading knights now went home. They had vowed to go to Jerusalem, and they’d done it. The only leaders who stayed behind were the ones primarily interested in the new feudal structure of this hot, dry place: Tancred Prince of Galilee, Godfrey of Jerusalem, Bohemund Prince of Antioch, and Baldwin Count of Edessa. Many more unsung knights also went home, leaving a very small force to guard Jerusalem. Over the next year, a fresh wave of pilgrim knights helped build it up again, but from this time, Godfrey began finding his men often outnumbered.
Godfrey spent most of his time away from the city, staging battles and sieges of all the nearby coastal towns still ruled by Fatimid Muslims. But in June 1100, he became ill outside Caesarea and died.
Godfrey’s only heir was his younger brother in Edessa. So Baldwin left Edessa with his Armenian wife Arda, and came to Jerusalem. This time, he accepted a real coronation. On Christmas Day, 1100, he was crowned in Bethlehem.
A distant cousin of Godfrey and Baldwin, the younger Baldwin of Bourg, inherited the County of Edessa. He had been the older Baldwin’s right hand man, so he was well prepared to take over. He married a local girl, and soon after, new Crusaders arrived and included his best friend from home, Joscelin of Courtenay. Edessa’s power shifted from Count Baldwin and Sir Baldwin, to Count Baldwin II and Sir Joscelin. Count Baldwin II and the new King Baldwin of Jerusalem are both major players in the story going forward.
The Crusaders besieged Jerusalem on June 7, 1099, exactly a year after their siege of Antioch. Between Antioch and Jerusalem, they had passed by Fatimid-ruled cities but these governors had permitted them to go without opposition. The Fatimids abandoned Jaffa on the coast and concentrated all defenses inside Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is situated on a hilly plateau on the eastern edge of the Great Rift Valley’s last rift. King David had captured it because of its location; it was a natural stronghold, unlike coastal Jaffa. Attackers always wanted to find some point looking down on the city, and it was difficult with Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives and Mount Zion were both just outside the city walls, but some other approaches to the city were impassible. The princes grouped in roughly three forces under Raymond, Godfrey, and Tancred the nephew of Bohemond, who had risen in status during the Crusade. Tancred was intent on becoming a prince in the Holy Land; he wanted to do what Bohemond had done in Antioch, becoming the personal conqueror and subsequent ruler. The Duke of Normandy and Count of Flanders were content to be part of Tancred’s forces, although they may not have viewed it quite like that.
The army needed siege engines, but they were in a land without good timber. They solved the problem by purchasing some Genoese ships docked at Jaffa. The ships, dismantled, provided them enough timber to make three wheeled siege engines, ladders and some catapults. The siege engines were built on the plain and then reassembled on the hilltops near city walls.
As they prepared and planned for the big assault, a priest had a vision from Adhemar Le Puy, the Papal Legate who died of typhus a few months earlier at Antioch. He suggested that the Crusaders should imitate Joshua by marching around Jerusalem. The men fasted for three days and then walked barefoot around the city. At nightfall on July 13, 1099, they began the attack.
While catapults hurled missiles from both sides of the city walls, the Crusaders filled in defensive ditches meant to keep out wheeled siege engines. The first siege tower went up against the wall on Mount Zion, but the Egyptian forces defended the wall fiercely. Godfrey of Bouillon suddenly noticed in the pre-dawn light that the north-eastern gate was not well defended. While Raymond’s men kept up the attack on Mount Zion, other forces rushed siege engines to this new point. At dawn, both attacks were pressed simultaneously. The Fatimid forces were not able to keep up both defenses, and by mid-day, Godfrey crossed from his siege engine to the top of the wall. The first men into the city flung open the gate that’s now where the Damascus Gate is located. (The city walls from 1099 were destroyed completely in 1244, and later rebuilt in 1538, so old as the current gates are, they are not the same ones that Godfrey flung open.)
Tancred’s men rushed in, cheering. On Mount Zion, the men of Provence heard the cheering and raced to enter the city lest the Normans get all the spoils. Within a few days, all of the city’s residents and defenders were dead. This may not be truly accurate; chroniclers of the conquest of Jerusalem were eager to magnify the slaughter, writing like fans of a winning Superbowl team. But from what historians can tell, it was probably true enough.
Tancred aspired to rule Jerusalem. He wanted to be in control of the city’s sacking; as part of this, he wanted to spare a small group of Fatimid defenders. When he discovered about 300 men (many North Africans) crowding onto the roof of Al-Aqsa Mosque, he posted his banner there, placing them under his protection. They remained there overnight, as massive slaughter went on all around them. Thousands of Muslim clerics, families with small children, and groups of Jews were killed. Some Jews hid in a synagogue, which the Crusaders burned down. But in the morning, men under Raymond of Toulouse climbed onto Al-Aqsa, took down Tancred’s banner, and slew the men there. Raymond was not going to allow Tancred that sort of sovereignty.
In a last sweep of the city, knights killed the inhabitants of houses they liked and marked the houses with their arms. There were some survivors who got ransomed by the Fatimids, and some survivors who were forced to clean up and bury the dead. But to a great extent, the city was left deserted. Simon Sebag Montefiore, in his book about Jerusalem, says that the Crusaders had to go outside the city into the eastern countryside and find local Christian peasants to move in. These, he said, became the medieval Arab population. Jews did not come back into the city until Saladin retook it in 1187.
Jerusalem had not been conquered in such a devastating way since 70 AD. When the original Muslim conquest took place, its leaders were interested in mostly leaving city economies intact so that they could tax them. The Crusaders’ victory was ideological. Their vision of Jerusalem did not include Muslims or Jews; their idea of diversity meant Armenian Christians, Latin Christians, and Greek Christians. It was part of the hardening of ideology in this period; it set a bloody precedent.
With Armenian Cilician somewhat relieved of Turkish presence, the region of Armenian Edessa established as a Norman-ruled Christian “county”, and Bohemund acting as Prince of Antioch, the next step had to be Jerusalem. Many of the knights had sworn not to go home until they had captured Jerusalem. They may have envisioned a much faster campaign; they had now been away from home for several years, and they had not yet seen the Holy City. Many of them were impatient to get to this final stage so that, if they survived, they would be free to leave.
When the Princes set out in 1096, Jerusalem was governed by Ilghazi, a Seljuk Turk. However, by the time they captured Antioch in 1098, the half-Armenian Vizier of Fatimid Egypt controlled the southern territory. In some respects, the Muslim Empire was in a civil war. While we look back and blur Turks, Persians, Arabs and North Africans, at the time these divisions were distinct. Turks were adopting and co-opting Persian culture and the Arabic religion; but they were still invaders. The North African and Arab culture of Fatimid Egypt looked on the Turkish invasion with horror.
During the siege of Antioch, the Fatimids sent messengers to the European princes. They suggested forming an alliance against the Turks. Similar alliances had been made between Muslim rulers and portions of the Byzantine Empire, so it seemed plausible to the Egyptians that the Franks would agree. Dividing the land along a Maginot Line, the Egyptians would control the territory south of Antioch, while helping the Franks fight the Turks in Damascus and Aleppo. It was a good strategic plan and would have resulted in a Crusader kingdom firmly planted in Lebanon and Syria.
However, times had changed. The Crusaders were driven by ideology as much as by greed for a new kingdom in the spice-rich East. They did not view the Fatimids as potential allies against the Turks; the Fatimids were just more Saracens. The same shift was also going on in Spain, where pragmatic Arab city governors invited North African extremists to be their allies since the Christian kings were uniting across lines of religion, not strategy. The Crusaders did not distinguish between past Fatimids (like the mad Caliph who destroyed churches) and present ones (who permitted rebuilding). Their grasp of Muslim history and ethnic groups was as weak as the Turks’ grasp of European affairs. So to the Fatimids’ astonishment, their embassy was treated politely but firmly refused. The Crusaders intended to capture Jerusalem; they preferred to fight the Fatimid Mamluk armies than to ally with them.
The Fatimid governor began to fortify the city, preparing for an assault. Like other ancient cities, Jerusalem was walled. It had been besieged many times in the past; there were cisterns and underground tunnels to bring in water. When the European army finally approached, the Fatimid governor expelled all Christians (Armenians, Syrians, Greeks) from the city and poisoned wells in the countryside.
But the Europeans did not march on Jerusalem right away. As they recovered from the grueling siege of Antioch, they were struck with troubles. Predictably, there was a typhoid outbreak. Adhemar, the Papal Legate (one of the few educated leaders), died. Bohemund was busy getting his new city under control and cleaned up, but he still tried to compete for even more leadership and power.
Raymond of Toulouse, the highest-ranking remaining Prince, led a side expedition to capture a Syrian city and fortress just to the south. By the time their full force was set up as a siege, winter was coming. They built a siege tower and had the city in their hands by the start of 1099. This siege of Ma’arat is infamous not for any brilliant warcraft, but for reports of cannibalism after the city fell. Ever since the siege of Antioch, the lower-ranking soldiers had been going hungry, but they kept pressing on. Now some of them may have roasted or boiled dead Ma’arat residents. If so, it was a nadir of morale; cannibalism was absolutely considered a sin.
Eventually, Raymond of Toulouse got the remaining princes to swear fealty to him as feudal lord, and they began the official march on Jerusalem. They marched south during May 1099 and arrived at the Holy City in early June. The wells around the city, of course, were poisoned and all farm produce (such as there is at that time of year) was inside the city. Once again, they faced siege conditions as the besiegers.
Antioch had been the regional capital of Roman Palestine. It was a walled city, with the Orontes River dividing it into two parts connected by bridges. Each bridge had a tower and could be defended; there was also a separate walled citadel (a sort of inner city) on its own hilltop. The outer wall encircled a fairly large area, with a number of gates, each defensible. The river valley had made a broad plain around Antioch, which was both good and bad for defense. Attackers could easily set up siege camps in the plain, but on the other hand, everything they did was visible to the defenders.
When the Crusaders’ army came to Antioch in 1097, the Muslim empire at last saw the seriousness of the invasion. At this late stage, they tried to make a concerted defense. Antioch, like the other nearby cities, had been ignoring Baghdad’s central rule since the last powerful vizier was assassinated. Now under siege, the governor of Antioch sent messengers to ask for help. Baghdad was still disorganized. Kerbogha, the Atabeg of Mosul, began to organize a large army drawn from all over Central Asia. If he could raise the siege of Antioch, it would be a first step toward making *himself* the new central power.
As large as the European army was, it was not large enough to complete a blockade of the city. Each of the princes stationed himself at one of the gates, but a few gates could still be used so that Antioch did not quickly run out of provisions. The Crusaders, on the other hand, found themselves functionally besieged in the river valley. Their Armenian allies in Edessa and Cilicia sent what help they were able to. But Radwan and Daquq were able to keep most local provisions from them. As the siege dragged on from October into December, the Crusaders were forced to send an army out into the Muslim-ruled countryside to attack some smaller towns and get provisions.
Bohemund, the son of Robert Guiscard, Norman conqueror of Sicily, offered to lead the food expedition. It didn’t go well, because Daquq of Damascus counter-attacked. Bohemund got back to Antioch safely and even with enhanced status, but they were no better off concerning food. People began to desert the Crusade in January, and by February, it was getting desperate. Radwan of Aleppo now attacked to lift the siege, but the starving Crusaders managed to hold on.
By May, there were two significant developments. From the east, Kerbogha marched from Mosul to Aleppo with a large army made of Turks, Persians, Arabs and other ethnic factions. He was confident that his army could easily defeat the Franks, starting with Edessa. What he didn’t realize is that the Normans had learned Turkish war tactics and now used specific strategies to counter them. The Turks liked to surround an enemy; the Normans would dispose their troops precisely to block being surrounded. The Turks were better archers than swordsmen; the Normans would force close combat. Kerbogha was not able to take Edessa back from Baldwin, but his confidence was not shaken and he marched toward Antioch.
The second key event: in Antioch, Bohemund started secret communication with an ethnic Armenian named Firouz, who oversaw the defense of some of the towers. Firouz knew that a Crusader was now ruler in Edessa and that his countrymen were supporting the Europeans. Firouz agreed to leave his towers undefended if and only if Bohemund himself attacked them, personally. He didn’t trust the others.
Bohemund didn’t tell his fellow princes about his secret, but instead he casually suggested that they elect a leader who would then rule Antioch. Once he was put in command, he sent his troops–at night—straight at Firouz’s towers. They put ladders to the walls, but there was no defense. They climbed up and attacked. Firouz’s brother was killed, perhaps in the confusion, but at last Bohemund came over the wall personally and made sure that Firouz survived. His men opened the gates, and the other Crusaders ran in.
The sacking of Antioch was done with no mercy and lots of time pressure, because the army from Mosul was coming closer. The Crusaders would now be manning the wall of Antioch themselves, as defenders. Anyone spared was someone who would need food, and after six months of siege, the city’s rations were getting short. So for two days, they investigated food storage and defenses, killing anyone they found and tossing bodies in the street. The Armenian quarter was supposed to be spared in Firouz’s deal, but some Franks knifed any “foreigners” they found.
On the third day, Kerbogha’s vast army arrived. The Crusaders were now besieged within Antioch, restricted to the supplies that Antioch had been able to spare. Worse yet, the hilltop citadel inside Antioch was untouched, still held by Muslims. If at any time Kerbogha’s army seemed to be on the brink of winning, the Muslims inside the citadel could break out and start killing Crusaders.
The reserve of the Crusader army back in Tarsus heard of this difficult situation from deserters and other travelers. Their leader Stephen of Blois had made a vow to go all the way to Jerusalem, but when he heard of the desperate position in Antioch, he broke his vow and retreated. He recrossed Anatolia to Constantinople, and along the way, he met the Byzantine Emperor with an army.
What happened next was pivotal in the long-term results of the First Crusade. Stephen of Blois told the Emperor it was hopeless to ride to Antioch to assist the now-defenders. Alexios Komnenos listened to their persuasion and did not go. Not only was Stephen of Blois breaking his Crusade vow, but the Emperor was now breaking the vow made when he got the Crusade princes to swear fealty to him. Fealty was a two-way street. Submission by the lower prince was not more important than the duty of the higher prince to come to his vassal’s aid. To the extent that the Crusader princes actually meant their fealty vows, they now felt keenly the Emperor’s failure. In their eyes, the contract was void. They may never have known the role of Stephen, their fellow prince. All they knew was that the Emperor failed to come.
The Crusaders in Antioch were on their own during twenty long, terrifying days of siege by a massive army, on unfamiliar ground, with dwindling food and already half-starved soldiers.
The odds were heavily against the Europeans. The way they rescued themselves is a lesson in how important morale is during a battle. If you think you’re winning, just maybe you will. A monk named Peter Bartholomew had a vision of St. Andrew telling him that the Holy Lance (which had pierced Jesus’ side) was buried in Antioch. The princes were skeptical, but Raymond of Toulouse decided to back the monk up and start looking for the lance. They excavated inside the cathedral, then Peter Bartholomew himself went into the pit and brought up a spear point.
The news of this miracle surged through the city. In the next five days, the princes had to make a key decision: to surrender, negotiate or attempt a sortie. They sent Peter the Hermit (who had not only survived his followers’ previous disaster and was still around, but also spoke Arabic!) to talk to Kerbogha, but the terms were not acceptable. Peter and others brought back another interesting piece of news: Kerbogha’s alliance was starting to crack up. This made the princes’ decision. The knights and foot soldiers were only told that Holy Lance’s discovery had saved the day! Deus Vult! Morale surged; men began to mend their weapons and brush their surviving horses.
In reality, Kerbogha and Bohemund were both using Antioch as a springboard to power. The Crusaders knew that if Bohemund succeeded in saving their possession of Antioch, he would become the regional king. Although some of the princes grumbled, they were not really determined to vie against Bohemund, who was an excellent general. By contrast, Kerbogha was surrounded by Turkish, Persian, Arab and Kurdish war leaders who took strong exception to assisting him in becoming the next regional strongman. Radwan and Daquq wanted to push out the invaders, but Kerbogha’s power bid was actually a greater threat.
It all came together on June 28, 1098. Six starving divisions of Crusaders suddenly flung open the city gates and attacked the Turkish camp. Their leaders were Bohemund, Adhemar the Papal Legate, Hugh of Vermandois (brother of France’s king), Godfrey of Bouillon (whose brother was now Count of Edessa), Robert Duke of Normandy, Tancred who was Bohemund’s nephew, and Robert Count of Flanders. One of the knights carried the Holy Lance at the head of their charge.
Simultaneously, many of the Turkish governors and commanders deserted, moving their men quickly from the camp back through the hills away from Antioch. Kerbogha, leading a shrinking and demoralized army, fled from the battle field. Seeing the crushing defeat from the hilltop, the last Muslims in the inner citadel of Antioch surrendered to Bohemund personally.
Bohemund was the undisputed victor of Antioch, and it was now settled that whatever rank (county? princedom? kingdom?) they decided Antioch should have in their new feudal organization, he would be its prince. His nephew, Tancred, also rose in status. Hugh Vermandois, one of the royal rivals for power, began a journey back to Constantinople and never returned. So did the two Count Roberts. The chief rivals left for Bohemund and Tancred were Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon, who appeared willing to stay on for Season Two of The First Crusade.
When the Princes’ Crusade arrived in Armenian Cilicia, the Armenian Prince of Cilicia welcomed them with enthusiasm.
Until a few decades earlier, Armenia’s capital city was Ani, now a ruin near the borders of Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. Ani was conquered by the Byzantines in 1045, and its king invited to come live in Constantinople. When he arrived, he was told to sign abdication papers in exchange for a fief in Cappadocia, on the prairie plateau. The Emperor began resettling Armenians in Cappadocia and Cilicia, sending others to live in Ani. So apparently the forced relocations of Armenians go back pretty far. By the time the Seljuks sacked Ani in 1064, it was just another frontier Byzantine city.
An Armenian nobleman named Roupen (the Bible name Reuben?) fled from Cappadocia’s plains into the nearby Taurus Mountains after the king was executed (well, the king had murdered a bishop). Seizing the Cilician Gates, Roupen declared Cilicia an independent Armenian princedom. He was still alive but an old man when the Crusaders arrived at the Cilician Gates; his son Prince Constantine was acting head of state.
Had the Crusaders signaled that they were rock-solid with the Emperor, their reception might have been different. But as it was, they were only weakly allied, which suited Prince Constantine. Within the first weeks of their arrival, some Crusaders led by a minor Norman prince named Tancred routed Turks out of Cilician towns like Tarsus, allowing the Armenians to use the mountains as a secure border again. (They were able to hold onto Cilicia until the 14th century, which is pretty good.)
It’s not clear to me how Constantine was related to the inland city of Edessa. The conquering Turks had appointed an Armenian nobleman (who may or may not have been related to him) as governor. As you know, Sultan Tutush had died a few years back and his sons were plunging the region into war, Damascus vs. Aleppo. Edessa was certain to be drawn in, since old governor Thoros was technically part of the Turkish power structure. Edessa was “Armenian” in that the westward refugee drift had filled the city with Armenians and it was on the border of their traditional kingdom. But it was Turkish by politics, and Byzantine by older history.
Governor Thoros had no male heir. Prince Constantine formed a simple plan with the youngest of the three Boulogne brothers. Baldwin, who led his own knights, rode into Edessa before the Turks got wind of anything, and Thoros adopted him as his legal heir. (The Turks saw governorship as heritable.) Baldwin, a widower, then married his daughter Arda. It wasn’t many weeks until Thoros died—well, he was assassinated. We don’t know if discontented Armenians killed the collaborator, or if Baldwin chose not to wait for his inheritance. Either way, Baldwin declared Edessa independent of both Turkish “Rum” and Byzantium in 1098.
Just like that, the Crusaders had established their first state. Edessa was a rich farming county, and its influence could spread as Baldwin and the Armenians grew stronger. When it merged with the coastal territories the Crusaders would win, they’d have a viable state. As Count of Edessa, incidentally, Baldwin was now the feudal equal of his brothers, who were a Count and a Duke. The Boulogne brothers are a refreshing note in history, actually, because they were steadily loyal to each other and inspired loyalty in others. Within a few decades, this loyalty would make Baldwin the most famous and important of the first Crusaders.
There was a third Armenian ruler in the Holy Land during this time, and it’s not someone we’d expect: it was the Grand Vizier of Fatimid Egypt! His father was an Armenian boy captured/bought as a Mamluk, trained rigorously and promoted into military and governing levels until he became the Grand Vizier under Caliph al-Mutansir. His son, born while he was governing Acre in the Holy Land, became Vizier after him. Of course, this Vizier was a fervent Muslim and knew nothing of Armenian culture, even if he was half Armenian. Still, it’s interesting to note just how many levers of power at this point were held by Armenians!
And al-Afdal’s power was immense. We’ve already seen that when al-Mutansir died, the Vizier chose to crown the much younger son Mustaali instead of the older one, Nizar. Mustaali was Caliph and Imam in spite of the Nizari opposition, but clearly, the Mamluk Vizier who chose him had the real power. Mamluks were no longer slaves except in origin; they soon became outright rulers in Egypt (but not quite yet).
To the Fatimid Caliphs and their Viziers, the Turkish invasion infused the worn-out Sunni party with alarming new vigor. Turkish Sultans were fiercely Sunni; they executed Ismaili missionaries (except for the ones holed up in Alamut) and kept advancing through the Muslim heartland: Damascus, Antioch, Jerusalem… When the Turks’ Persian Vizier was murdered by a Nizari assassin, the Fatimids rejoiced. As Radwan and Daquq fought each other to become the next regional Emir, the Fatimids decided to move.
Quite independently of the Crusaders, Vizier al-Afdal led Egyptian Mamluk troops north into the Holy Land. In 1097, he captured Tyre (part of Tripoli) in Lebanon. In 1098, he took Jerusalem from Ilghazi, one of those feuding petty Turkish lords. The rest of the land, south to Egypt, was posted with Mamluk units. The Turkish advance into the Holy Land stopped permanently. Between Cilicia, Edessa, and Fatimid Egypt, could Armenians sweep the Turks entirely from the map? (spoiler: No.)
Names and borders in the area now known as Turkey have changed so many times that it’s difficult at first to understand the region that the Crusaders were approaching. The few educated priests among them probably knew the New Testament names of some of these places. The writings of Paul and Jesus’ disciples used Romanized version of Greek colonies.
After leaving Nicaea, the Crusaders crossed the Roman province of Galatia, which included cities to whom Paul had addressed his Letter to the Galatians. Galatia was a very wide plateau, averaging 1000 feet above sea level, so at first they followed a steep road from Lake Ascanius up into the plateau. In modern times, Ankara is in the center of this plateau.
The plateau ends in the east by going up into the higher mountains or, right at the coast, going sharply down again to sea level. There was one much-used pass that led down to the wide coastal plain of Cilicia; it has always been called the Cilician Gates. Two huge boulders act as gateposts to a narrow pass that’s only wide enough for a modern road. Modern Turks call it the Gulek Pass (picture). Invading armies must go through the pass in a long line, though not quite single-file. Since ancient times, the pass has been guarded by a fortress.
Look at this topographic map of Turkey. The modern town of Adana is located in the middle of the Cilician coast plain, and just to the left, you may notice white higher elevations with a break in the middle. That’s the pass. Apostle Paul’s home town of Tarsus was in Cilicia, near modern Adana. When the Crusaders went through the Cilician Gates, they were now in the Holy Land, in their minds.
Go back to the topo map of Turkey, and look way to the east, to Armenia. Right at the border is the mountain marked Ararat. It’s in this mountain range that Noah was said to land in the Ark. A very ancient indigenous nation, the Armenians, claimed that their founding ancestor was Noah’s great-grandson Hayk. They believed that while other descendants drifted away, the family of Hayk remained in the foothills of Ararat, spreading down into the plateau toward the Mediterranean. Their capital city, in the early Middle Ages, was just east of modern Gaziantep. It was called Edessa in Greek; its original name appears to have been something like Urhay, and in modern Turkey it’s called Urfa or Sanliurfa. At the height of Armenian power, they ruled from Cilicia (the fortress at the pass was Armenian) through the mountains, over to the shores of the Caspian Sea.
The Armenians did not have a port, originally, so they allied and cooperated with whoever lived in the nearest Mediterranean cities. Greek settlements ringed the Mediterranean coast, so the nearest port towns were Tarsus, Antioch, Latakia and Tripoli. Latakia and Tripoli were further down into modern Lebanon, but Antioch is still on the topo map of Turkey. It’s called Antakya in Turkish, but if you look for it on Google Maps, try Hatay, which is also the name of the province. It’s just south of Iskendurun.
Antioch was a major Roman port and it had become a center of Syrian Orthodox Christianity. It was located on the Orontes River, which winds very slowly through Syria and forms part of a very squiggly, oxbowed border between Syria and Turkey. The Orontes River was unusual for the region because it flowed from south to north; although it was merely following its course downhill, local people had generalized that rivers flowed north to south—except for this one. The river was not very useful for travel, but it formed a lake at Antioch (now drained) and created a wide floodplain for farming and foot travel. So a great deal of ancient settlement was along the Orontes River.
Armenia’s traditional close ties to Antioch led to its being one of the first non-Greek nations to accept the new doctrine of Jesus. Although Armenia was integrated with its Greek and Aramaic neighbors to some extent, its unique language and culture also kept it isolated. Armenians developed their own church traditions and were not part of the Greek Orthodox network. (Here is a video of Armenian music to accompany the Lord’s Prayer. “Hayr Mer” means “Father Our.” Hayr is a cognate of Latin Pater.)
Going back to the green triangle of Cilicia (modern Adana), this region had changed a great deal just before the Crusade. The Seljuk Turks entered Byzantine Anatolia only after stampeding across Armenia. Armenian refugees crowded up into the mountains (where modern Armenia is located) and down into Cilicia, where they could expect some Byzantine protection. So Cilicia had become an Armenian enclave; later it was even its own “Kingdom of Armenia in Cilicia,” but at this time it was still a frightened refugee population. Several Cilician cities, including Tarsus, had already fallen to the Turks.
A few cities dominated the region in 1097:
–Edessa, still the Armenian capital;
–Antioch, still an active port;
–Aleppo, called in Paul’s time Berea, terminus of the Silk Road travel;
–Damascus, the ancient capital of Arameans and Syrian Christians, but now a regional Muslim seat of government;
–Tripoli, the Greek name for the tri-city zone of Tyre, Sidon and Arados, and traditionally a ship-building powerhouse due to the good timber in Lebanon;
and Jerusalem. Because it was holy.
Armenian Edessa was still independent of Turkish rule, though its sovereignty was shrunken to just the zone near the city. Antioch, Aleppo, Damascus, Tripoli and Jerusalem were all part of the Muslim Empire, but at this time they were led by warring Turkish governors. This is the land that the Crusaders now entered by the Cilician gates, climbing down from 1000 feet to sea level.
When the Byzantines and Crusaders besieged Nicaea, the Seljuk Turks saw that they were a serious invasion force. Kilij Arslan was fighting another tribe of invading Turks to the east. He had only just declared independence for “Rum,” that is, the former Roman lands of Anatolia, and he had to battle back invading tribes who saw opportunity in chaos. For the remainder of the time that the Europeans were in his territory, the Sultan focused on trying to stop them. He wasn’t able to.
Remember that not long before this, an Ismaili assassin dressed as a dervish asking alms had killed the Grand Vizier on his way from Isfahan to Baghdad. The Grand Vizier was a well-educated Persian who understood governance strategy better than the Turkish Sultans whom he served. Until now, Baghdad had been enough of a central government that an invasion would have provoked a concerted defense. But after one Sultan died with only a child as heir and then the savvy Grand Vizier was murdered, Baghdad lost all control of its provinces. Not only was it no longer in control of North Africa or Egypt; it lost control of Syria and many Persian cities. Many Turkish city governors were at war, attempting to seize more power. So at this exact point in history, the Muslim lands were too fractured and recently-invaded to make a unified defense.
As the Crusaders marched across Anatolia, from Nicaea to the coast near Syria, they broke into two armies: French and Norman. The Normans were about a day’s march ahead of the French when Kilij Arslan brought down his main army to stop them. The Sultan did not realize that the French army was as large as it was, or else he thought it was farther away. As the Normans defended their camp, the vanguard of the French army arrived. Arslan had to withdraw from a battle where he was clearly outnumbered.
The European forces stayed near each other from then on, and he did not attack them. However, Turks went in advance to destroy and burn everything along the road. By the time they reached the coast of the Mediterranean, some of the Crusaders were starving. They lost a lot of horses in the heat.
If the regional Turks could have joined the Sultan of Rum to attack the Crusaders at that time, they might have won easily. But even as the Europeans approached, the Turkish governors of Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem were allying against each other and preparing to march on each other’s territory. At the center of this drama was a pair of brothers who had turned against each other and were battling for supremacy. Without a powerful central government to force them into unity, they only turned to meet the Europeans as small local armies, city by city.
The bad summer march through burnt farmlands brought the first year of the Crusade to a close. Joint leadership could not last beyond that first year. The Papal Legate could not enforce his nominal leadership, and the four leading French and Norman princes jockeyed for power. None of them was clearly strong enough to take control. As they reached the edges of Bible lands (cities that Paul had visited), one of the Boulogne brothers set off on his own.
