Although the crusades contributed to the decline of the Dar al-Islam, its principal Christians swear that they will not bear weapons, ride horses, or build houses
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Chapter Twenty – f ive The Crisis of the Dar al – Islam, through the Wars of Timur the Lame While Christians and Judaeans were grimly coexisting in Catholic Europe s Dark Age, followers of all three Abrahamic faiths were faring much better in the Dar al – Islam. From several perspectives the tenth and eleventh centuries were the high – point of the Muslim world. Arabic learning and literature were flourishing, while Persian – speak ing Muslims were creating their own literary culture. The material circumstances of the Middle East and North Africa were better than those in Orthodox Christendom and far above those of Catholic Europe. Politically and militarily the Muslims fortunes were not quite what they had been during the califate of Harun al – Rashid, before their empire had begun to break apart. Nevertheless, the regional amirs cooperated sufficiently that the lands that they governed were secure. The relative positions of Cat holic Europe and the Dar al – Islam began to change with the crusades. Although the crusades contributed to the decline of the Dar al – Islam, its principal cause was the devastation wrought by Mongolian raiders and conquerors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The crusades were, however, of fundamental importance for the rise of Catholic Europe. Before reviewing the history of the crusades we must look at the worsening relations between Muslims and Christians in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Pact of Umar It may have been in the ninth century that the so – called Pact of Umar began to take shape. The earliest references to the pact date from the tenth or eleventh century, and during the later Abbasid period it became increasingly imp ortant in Muslim law. To give it a respectable pedigree the pact was apparently retrojected to the califate of Umar. 1 It assumes, however, the conditions of a time much later than the 630s (it assumes, for example, the availability of the published Quran in Christian lands), and reflects Muslim attempts to discourage Christianity that are incongruent with seventh – century realities. The main concern of the rightly guided calif s and of the Umayyads had been to maximize the jizya , and they therefore preferred that the Dhimmis remain in their own religious traditions. Under the Abbasids everyone – Christians, Judaeans and Muslims – paid a land tax, and this became the chief sour ce of revenue. As the poll – tax on the people of the book lost some of its importance, the Abbasid califs could with little fiscal sacrifice permit (although they hardly encouraged) widespread conversion of Christians to the Muslim faith. We have seen (at the end of Chapter 22 ) that in the cities of the Levant the conversion of Christians to Islam occurred mainly in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. Late in the Umayyad period well over ninety per cent of the population in Palestine and Syria w as evidently still Christian, but it seems that by the tenth century only half of the population was Christian and that by the fourteenth century only one out of ten Syrians was a Christian (approximately the same proportion as that reflected in Syrian cen suses at the beginning of the twentieth century). 2 As the population turned toward Islam it was not uncommon for a church to be transferred from a Christian congregation to Muslims and converted into a mosque.
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As Islam began to be se en as a universal religion, the Pact of Umar emerged to discourage Christianity (and perhaps Judaism, although evidence on that score is lacking). In the pact Christians acknowledge that they will receive protection from the Muslim rulers only on cond ition that they neither attempt to convert any Muslim to Christianity nor prevent a Christian from being converted to Islam. In addition, in the pact the Christians of Syria promise not to build new churches and monasteries or to repair old ones, not to ring bells at their churches or make loud wailing at funerals, and not to display their Christianity openly by wearing crosses or cutting their hair in a monk s tonsure. From things Muslim and Arabic the Christians agree to keep their distance: dressing in the Arabian fashion, teaching their children the Quran, or even (this was unenforceable and disregarded) using the Arabic language. Furthermore, the Christians swear that they will not bear weapons, ride horses, or build houses that overtop those of t he Muslims. Seated Christians will rise and give their places to Muslims who wish to sit down. And it is agreed that any Christian who strikes a Muslim forfeits all of his rights as a dhimma and may therefore be killed with impunity. Had such condition s been announced in the 630s or 640s the enormous Christian population of the Levant and Egypt would have resisted Umar s troops instead of welcoming them, and Umar would have had an altogether more difficult time creating the great empire for which he is famous. By the ninth or tenth century, contrarily, Christians were in no position to assert their prerogatives and in some cities of the Dar al – Islam Muslims were eager to lower the profile of Christianity. Toward that objective efforts were here and the re made to discourage Christianity, and the Pact of Umar gave these efforts a specious legitimacy: it pretended that long ago the Christians themselves had drawn up the pact for Umar s approval and had promised to abide by it. The destruction of the Ch urch of the Holy Sepulchre In 1009 the Fatimid calif of Egypt, al – Hakim (Abu Ali Mansur, ruled 996 – 1021), ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was the grandest of the Christian churches in Jerusalem. It was also the goal of many pilgrims, who came yearly to Jerusalem to observe the holy days of Good Friday and Easter at the site of those events. Al – Hakim s act of destruction was contrary to the protection that Muslim rulers – including the Fatimids – had given to the site for almost four hundred years, but it fit in very well with al – Hakim s campaign against Christianity (he campaigned as well against Judaism and Sunni Islam). Although al – Hakim s Fatimid successors regained the trust of their many Christian subjects, the burning of the church aggrieved Christians throughout both the Byzantine empire and Latin Christendom. Eventually it provided much emotional encouragement for the crusaders to recover Jerusalem and restore the church. The Almoravids in Spain In some la nds the disabilities imposed by or reflected in the Pact of Umar do seem to have encouraged conversion to Islam. In Egypt it was evidently in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that most people in the countryside became Muslim, in an essentially volunta ry manner. In Spain, however, a more coercive push toward Islamization began late in the eleventh century,
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as a response to aggression by the adjacent Christian kingdoms, and this compulsory conversion backfired. How all of this came about needs to be stu died in some detail. The last of the Umayyad califs in Cordoba, Hisham III, was overthrown by the Cordobans in 1031. Although the ideology of a Spanish califate survived for another fifty – five years, 3 in practical te rms the califate was replaced by a cluster of small Muslim kingdoms, each kingdom – or taifa – being ruled by an amir. The most important of these taifas were Zaragoza, Toledo, Sevilla and Granada. On religious matters the amirs were as tolerant as had b een the Umayyads, and the taifas were therefore pluralist states: although Muslims enjoyed the highest prestige, the amirs Jewish and Christian subjects were protected and more or less content. The Jewish population in Spain was large, and by the eleven th century more Judaeans may have been living in Spain than in all the rest of Europe. Christians in the Muslim part of Spain were not so numerous, but were under few constraints and had developed their own Mozarabic tradition. 4 Mozarabic was a language, or a group of closely related dialects, descended from Latin and so cognate with Spanish and Portuguese. It was written, however, not with Roman letters but with the Arabic alphabet. In most of the churches in Muslim Spain the liturgy was performed in a Mozarabic dialect and according to the Mozarabic rite. In the far north of Spain, in and near the Pyrenees mountains, were the Christian kingdoms. These were (from west to east) Le ó n, Castile, Pamplona (Navarre), Aragon, and the county of Barcelona. In these kingdoms the population was overwhelmingly Christian, with o nly small Jewish minorities attached to the larger cities. Linguistically the kingdoms were diverse, with as many Basque and Romance dialects as there were mountain valleys. The one language that all had in common was Latin, the dead language of the Cath olic church, and the Basque language did not become a rallying flag for nationalists until the nineteenth century. So long as the Umayyad califate ruled southern and central Spain, the Christian kingdoms in the far north were not expansionist. After 10 31, however, the Christian rulers began to exploit the relative weakness of the Muslim taifas, and to encroach upon the closest of them. Most spectacularly, in 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile defeated the amir of Toledo and annexed his realm. Almost ten thous and square miles of central Spain were suddenly shifted from Muslim to Christian control. To counter the threat from Alfonso other amirs called in a large force of Moroccan Almor vids. The Arabic word al – mur bit is usually translated as ascetic warrior or warrior monk, and it denotes the puritanism, asceticism, and aggressiveness of these men. The Almoravids could also be described as those who band together for the defense of the faith. 5 In the tenth and early eleventh c entury many Berber tribesmen in Morocco had been nominal Muslims, but knew little of the Quran and were unfamiliar with shar ah . A tribal chief, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, went on a hajj to Mecca ca. 1040, and there learned what devout Muslims were supposed to d o and how they were supposed to live. When Yahya returned to Morocco he brought with him a scholar – teacher, in order to instruct the Berbers on Muslim law. Initially the tribesmen refused to listen and Yahya had to withdraw to a monastic retreat, where h e and his followers could practice an intense and ascetic Islam. Over the next several decades, by their puritanical example and their military prowess the warrior monks persuaded thousands of
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Berber tribesmen to become Almoravids. In the 1070s the Almoravids, under the leadership of Y suf ibn Tashfin, made themselves masters of Morocco. These were the allies whom the Andalusian amirs called upon to assist them against encroachment by the Christian kings of northern Spain. Quick to accept the inv itation, Y suf ibn Tashfin brought a large Almoravid force across the Straits of Gibraltar. In 1086 Yusuf, who called himself Amir of the Believers, defeated Alfonso VI of Castile, halting the latter s expansion toward the south. Dismissing his Andalus ian employers after his victory, Yusuf ruled over both Morocco and most of the territory that had once belonged to the Spanish Umayyads. His was an authority more hostile to non – Muslims than any previous one, 6 because the Almora vids believed that the forceful conversion of infidels to Islam was pleasing to God. Instead of Islamizing Spain, however, the new militancy gave the Christian rulers in northern Spain added reason to make designs on the lands to the south: they would l iberate the Christians of Andalusia from Muslim repression. Thus began the Christians Reconquista of Spain. The hostility toward the Moors that permeates the Spanish epic El Cid does not reflect the realities of the mid – eleventh century, when as a me rcenary the real El Cid – Rodrigo Diaz – fought for both Christian and Muslim employers. Instead, it reflects the much more rancorous and polarized Almoravid period, when the long war between Christian Spain and Muslim Spain had gotten under way. 7 More generally, the militancy of the Almoravids also contributed to the anti – Muslim emotions that wer e rising in European Christendom at the end of the eleventh century. The Norman conquests in southern Italy and Sicily The Norman conquests in southern Italy and Sicily were not religiously motivated, but they did contribute to the crusading spirit. N ormans were ambitious adventurers in the eleventh century, and were regarded as exceptional warriors. As is well known, in 1066 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, pressed his weak claim to the English throne by taking an army of eight or nine thousa nd men across the English Channel and defeating Harold II at the Battle of Hastings. Early in the eleventh century Norman mercenaries had begun hiring out to southern Italian employers, usually Lombard nobles but occasionally the Byzantine catepan (gover nor). Normans were among the troops that the Catepan, George Maniakes, took with him to Sicily in 1038 – 40, in his attempt to take the island back from its Muslim rulers. At about that same time William the Iron Arm and Drogo, two of the older sons of Ta ncred of Hauteville in Normandy, began their mercenary service in Apulia. They joined hands with Lombard nobles in expelling the Greek garrisons from strongholds in Apulia and Calabria, effectively ending the period of Byzantine control of southern Italy. A dozen Norman leaders set themselves up as local rulers in some of the most desirable places, but maintained a loose alliance among themselves. Ca. 1050 Drogo was named Count of the Normans in all Apulia and Calabria. Having conquered most of Cal abria, in 1060 the Normans crossed the Straits of Messina to try their luck in Sicily. At the time the island was divided among three Muslim amirs. One
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of the amirs thought to improve his situation against his rivals by inviting a Norman force to assist him. This was the beginning of the end of the long Muslim chapter in Sicilian history. The Norman allies of the short – sighted amir were Robert Guiscard ( the cunning ) and Roger, two of the younger sons of Tancred of Hauteville. According to Anna Comn ena, Robert Guiscard was very tall, powerfully built, and had a terrible battle – cry. Although as a young man Robert was said to have left Normandy with only three dozen followers, he and Roger had by 1060 parlayed the small band into a small army and were eager for more adventures. Having easily taken Messina after a night – time crossing of the straits, the Norman brothers extended their control to all of northeastern Sicily. Robert returned to the mainland to live out his days as the Duke of Apulia and Calabria. Roger remained in Sicily and from 1071 until his death in 1101 was known as Count of the Normans in Sicily. He took the great city of Palermo in 1072, and by 1091 – with the fall of Noto, at the southeastern tip of the island – Roger ruled al l of Sicily. The Norman conquest of Sicily was undertaken not at all for religious reasons, but out of sheer political ambition. Nevertheless, the conquest had religious repercussions, despite the fact that Roger was religiously tolerant and made no e ffort to convert the considerable Muslim population of Sicily to Christianity. The Norman conquest of Sicily occurred at the same time that the Almoravids, militant Muslims, were establishing themselves in Spain and that Seljuk Turkish warlords were takin g over much of Anatolia from the Byzantines. The Norman achievement therefore helped to balance, so far as northern Europeans were concerned, the distressing news from Spain and Anatolia, and suggested that Muslim political and military power was more vul nerable than might otherwise have been supposed. The Seljuks, and a Turkish – Persian culture (999 – 1220) Because of their centuries – long contacts with the Dar al – Islam, and especially because they had furnished large numbers of mamluk horsemen to the califs and to the Samanid amirs, by ca. 1000 many of the Turkish – speaking nomads of central Asia had been converted to Islam. The mamluk soldiers rose to be captains, commanders, king – makers, and finally rulers. One of the first such rul ers was Mahmud of Ghazna (now in Afghanistan), who in 999 toppled the Samanids and launched a short – lived Ghaznavid empire over most of Iran and much of central Asia. Because Turkish was not yet a written language, Mahmud and his successors employed Persi an scribes and scholars in their court at Ghazna. The Ghaznavids were also generous patrons of Persian culture, supporting the epic poet Ferdowsi, the polymath and philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and several less notable writers. Just as Persianate but more durable than the Ghaznavids were the Seljuks, a dynasty descended from an Oghuz Turkish warrior and leader named Seljuk. The grandson of Seljuk, Toghrul Beg (the honorific beg was the Turkish word for chief ) commanded the loyalty of several thousa nd Oghuz horsemen and with them began raiding Ghaznavid cities. The Ghaznavid ruler forced a showdown, which came late in May of 1040 at an arid place called Dandanaqan (between the oasis – cities of Merv and Sarakhs, in eastern Turkmenistan). Because his own men were badly outnumbered, Toghrul Beg turned the size of the Ghaznavid army
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against it: for days he kept it from replenishing its water supplies, and he then attacked and destroyed it. The victory put most of Iran under Toghrul s control. Not cont ent with Iran, he added Iraq to his domain. In 1055 he made himself master of Baghdad. Although Toghrul Beg declared himself a servant of the Abbasid califate, the calif at the same time recognized Toghrul as the sultan (ruler) of Iraq and Iran. The Tur kish warlord was pleased with that title, and its distinction grew along with the territory ruled by the Seljuks. Seljuk sultans ruled Iran for more than a hundred years, but by the end of the twelfth century they had lost it to another Oghuz Turkish dyn asty. These were the Khwarezmian shahs (Khwarezm was the relatively arable territory along the Amu Darya river, which flowed from the Himalayas westward to the now – depleted Aral Sea). Like their Ghaznavid predecessors, both the Seljuks and the Khwarezmia n shahs were energetic patrons of Persian culture. Umar bin Ibrahim Khayyam (1048 – 1131) lived and taught in Neyshapur, in northeastern Iran. He was supported by the Seljuk sultan Malikshah, who made his capital at Isfahan, in western Iran. During his li fetime Khayyam was celebrated for many books that he wrote on mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. All of these books he wrote in Arabic, the language of scholarship. Somewhat incidentally Khayyam also wrote a small volume of poetic quatrains – the Rub aiyat – in his native Persian language. Thanks to Edward FitzGerald s English translation of the Rubaiyat in 1859, Omar Khayyam has come to be relatively well known in the English – speaking world. A later Persian poet at Neyshapur was Far d ad – D n At t r, who died ca. 1220, probably in the Mongolian sacking of Neyshapur. Attar began as a pharmacist but became a wandering Sufi. His allegorical poem, the Mantiq ut – tayr (usually translated as Conference of the Birds ), extolled the Sufi way. Although not widely known in Attar s own lifetime, the Mantiq ut – tayr eventually became one of the most important pieces of Sufic literature. 8 Much more celebrated in his own time was Jal l ad – D n Muhammad Balkh (1207 – 1273), often called R m . Rumi was a mystic and poet from Balkh (now in Tajikistan), but was driven from there by the Mongolians and finished hi s life in Rum (Anatolia). He spoke and wrote in Persian. His immense poems, twice as long as the Iliad and Odyssey combined, are among the great classics of Persian literature. Buried at Konya, he is regarded as a saint by the Mawlaw yah (Mevlevi) brotherhood of Sufi mystics. The order was founded by his disciples soon after his death. Another Persian Sufi poet who saw the end of Iran s Seljuk and Khwarezmian period was Mosleh al – Din Saadi Shirazi, ca. 1210 – 1290. He was a witness to the disasters wrought by the Mongolians, and some of his stories relate the sufferings of ordinary people whom he had met in his extensive travels. In the 1250s he composed his greatest works: the Bustan ( Orchard) in poetry, and the Golestan ( Rose Garden ) in a mix ture of prose and poetry. The Seljuk conquest of Anatolia and the Levant When Toghrul died in 1063, his powers as sultan were passed to his nephew, Alp Arslan, who directed his Turkish horsemen s energies against the Byzantine empire in general an d against Armenia in particular. Armenia fell to the invaders in 1064. Seven years later the Byzantine emperor, Romanus IV Diogenes, assembled a huge army and attempted to regain Armenia. But on August 19 of 1071 the Turkish cavalry surprised Romanus f orces at
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was slain. The epic s Saracens are enormously wealthy, with caravans of camels or mules laden with gold, but they are also pagans ( paien ) who care nothing for God ( Deu ). Their ma ster is Mahumet and they worship various gods, the most important being Apollin. Although in the Chanson Roland and his staunch comrade Oliver are both killed by the Saracens, the epic ends triumphantly, with Charlemagne taking the city of Saragossa and o rdering the forcible conversion to Christianity of the city s 100,000 Saracens and Jews: If any Charles with contradiction meet, Then hanged or burned or slaughtered shall he be. Five score thousand and more are thus redeemed, Very Christians. 13 Urban seems to have envisaged an expedition led by the lords temporal of Catholic Christendom, each lord bringing with him a retinue of trained and disciplined soldiers. The nobles, however, we re not so easily persuaded to participate. The first to respond were peasants, who had only a vague idea where and how far away Jerusalem was. Urban had promised that anyone who died in the service of Christ would be a martyr, with all sins forgiven, a w aiver from Purgatory, and direct entry into Heaven, and for many of the poor this prospect was much more appealing than was the tilling of the soil. Typically, the peasants – men, women, and even children – were stirred into action by the harangues of iti nerant preachers. Peter the Hermit began attracting followers among the peasantry in Flanders, and as he progressed up the Rhine valley his motley retinue quickly swelled into five figures. Another leader in the so – called People s Crusade was Emich of Le iningen, whose followers plundered as they progressed and were therefore resisted by the cities along their route. Although Emich s retinue got no further than Hungary, Peter s much larger horde reached Constantinople late in 1096. The Byzantine emperor , Alexius Comnenus, wasted no time in ferrying his unwanted guests across the Bosporus into Seljuk territory, and shortly thereafter they were met by the army of the Sultan of Rum. At Xerigordon, a fortress near Nicaea, the inexperienced crusaders were virtually annihilated by the sultan s professional troops. Although the goal of the First Crusade was to save Constantinople from the Seljuks and to take Jerusalem from the Muslims, the crusade – and the rhetoric that preceded it – was more bro adly a militarizing of Christians against non – Christians. The vanguard of the People s Crusade, especially those pilgrims led by Emich of Leiningen, first targeted the Jews, who for centuries had been living in the cities of the Rhineland. Hundreds if not thousands of Jewish inhabitants of Cologne, Metz, Mainz, and other cities resisted the forcible baptism that the mobs demanded, and were thereupon slaughtered and their property seized. The Christian perpetrators of the massacres understood themselve s to be doing the will of God, and the Jewish victims likewise assumed that their fate was the will of God. 14 Although some bishops and other Christian authorities tried to prevent the peasant mobs from entering the citi es, they were easily swept aside. The atrocities in 1096 were the first of western Europe s anti – Jewish pogroms. The military phase of the First Crusade did not begin until late in 1096, when the nobles and their retinues left for the east. At the cor e of the force were men from Lorraine, led by their duke, Godfrey – or Godefroy – of Boulogne (assisted by his brother, Baldwin). Count Raymond
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of Toulouse brought another large contingent, as did Bohemund of Tarentum. The crusaders crossed into Asia fro m Constantinople in March of 1097, and with Byzantine assistance took Nicaea. This was followed by a crusader victory on July 1, 1097, at Dorylaeum, possibly at the site of the Turkish city of Eski ehir. Driven from Nicaea and western Anatolia, Sultan Ki lij Arslan was forced to move his residence to Konya (ancient Iconium). By late 1097 the crusaders had made their way to Syria, which was riven by discord between two sons of Tutush, who had been the Seljuk amir of Damascus from 1079 until his death in 1 095. The crusaders began a long siege of Antioch, which finally fell to them in the summer of 1098. Energized by the discovery there of the Holy Lance, which had pierced the side of Jesus, the crusaders left Antioch early in 1099 and besieged Jerusalem. 15 In July of 1099 they entered and sacked Jerusalem, slaughtering its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. It was the bloodiest day for the Holy City since Titus legions had devastated it in August of 70. Catholic opposition to Orthodox Christian ity Although the crusaders marched against the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem and the rest of the Levant, they were also alert to opportunities for advancing Catholicism at the expense of Orthodox Christianity. The ancient patriarchates of Antioch and Jerus alem had always been connected to Constantinople, even after Antioch and Jerusalem had fallen under the rule of Muslim califs. The patriarchs of the two cities were just as staunch as their colleague in Constantinople in denying that the pope in Rome had authority over the entire Christian Church. This of course angered the crusaders, who proceeded to install their own Catholic bishops as patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem. Thus the First Crusade, which Pope Urban had called in order to deliver Byzantin e Christianity from the rule of the Turkish Seljuks, made very clear how divided Catholic and Orthodox Christianity had become. The later crusades Exploiting their victories in 1098 and 1099, the crusaders established themselves as rulers of small princ ipalities in the Middle East. The most important of the crusader kingdoms was the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (where Godfrey of Boulogne took the title, Advocatus of the Holy Sepulcher ). Godfrey s brother Baldwin set himself up as ruler of Edessa, in no rth – central Syria, and other leaders established themselves at Antioch, Acco, Tripoli, and on Cyprus. The first of the crusader states to be retaken by Seljuk chiefs ( atabegs ) was the County of Edessa. Almost from the outset the Seljuk atabeg of Mosul began dueling with the crusaders at Edessa, and it was during these conflicts in northern Syria that the Christian cathedral at Aleppo was appropriated and made into a mosque (1124). In the early 1140s the Seljuks won a decisive victory over the crusaders and annexed Edessa. This insult to Catholic Christendom inspired the Second Crusade, which was announced by Pope Eugene III at the end of 1145. Initially the Catholic kings showed little enthusiasm for another crusade, but in spring of 1146 the venture was powerfully urged by Bernard of Clairvaux (St. Bernard). Although the kings of both France and Germany participated in the Second Crusade, they proceeded separately and in 1147 and 1148 were separately defeated, shortly after crossing into Asia from Co nstantinople. What was
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left of the German and French forces abandoned the idea of recovering Edessa and instead made their way to Jerusalem. Like the First Crusade, the second inspired much violence against Jewish communities in Germany. The crusade was also paralleled by an offensive against the pagan Wendish (Slavic) population along the Baltic: the heathen were given the choice of conversion or death. The main Muslim counteroffensive against the crusader states occurred toward the end of the twelft h century, and was led by Saladin (Salah al – Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub). A Kurdish general of uncommon ability and gallantry, Saladin s career began in earnest in 1174, when he took over Egypt from the Fatimids and founded his own Ayyubid dynasty. Saladin was a Sunni Muslim, and was therefore more to the liking of most Egyptian Muslims than were the Shiite Fatimids. After adding much of Syria to his realm he took on the crusader kingdoms of the Levant. Jerusalem fell to Saladin in October of 1187, and that spe ctacular victory brought on the Third Crusade (1189 – 92), led by Richard I ( the Lion – heart ) of England, Philip II of France, and Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Third Crusade was more successful than the second: although a treaty drawn up in 1192 by Saladin and Richard confirmed Saladin as the ruler of Jerusalem, it also guaranteed the safe passage of Christian pilgrims (unarmed) to the city s holy sites. From the standpoint of Christendom the worst of the crusades was the fourth. Li ke its predecessor, this crusade was declared (in 1198, by Pope Innocent III) in order to re – establish Christian control of Jerusalem. The leader of the Fourth Crusade was Boniface of Montferrat (Monferrato, in the Italian piedmont of the Alps). Bonifac e s strategy for recovering Jerusalem was first to conquer Ayyubid Egypt, which upon the death of Saladin had been ruled by his younger brother, Saphadin. For so great an expedition a large fleet was required, which the Venetians agreed to build. Because the crusaders were unable to pay the Doge of Venice what they owed him, it was decided (against the protests of Innocent III) that before attacking Egypt the crusaders should seize various Byzantine possessions and so obtain the money they needed. An add itional source of funds would come from returning an exiled prince to Constantinople and making him emperor. In 1202 the crusaders fleet set sail. After a long siege the crusaders entered Constantinople in April of 1204. They sacked the city, hauling of f the treasures that had been accumulating since Constantine made the city his capital. Now in charge, the crusaders set up their Latin empire as a successor to the Byzantine empire, with Baldwin of Flanders as the first Latin emperor (Baldwin was soon succeeded by his younger brother, Henry). The crusaders also set up a Catholic patriarch of Constantinople: this was the Venetian, Tommaso Morosini, reviled by the Orthodox Christians as an anti – patriarch. The Latin patriarchate continued off and on at Co nstantinople until 1261, when the city was re – taken from the Latins by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos. Many of the best parts of Greece were taken over by Franks and Venetians. The Venetians, with their great sea power, generally took control of the most productive islands of the Aegean. Immediately after the sack of Constantinople a company of Frankish knights installed themselves in the Peloponnesos and called their state the Prin cipality of Achaea. At the same time, a Burgundian set himself up in Athens. The Byzantines, of course, refused to recognize the Catholic Latins as anything but interlopers, and the Laskarids set up a rump Byzantine state at
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Nicaea. Another legitimate and Orthodox Byzantine state was set up in Epirus. The Latin empire in Constantinople itself held together only until 1261, when Michael VIII Palaeologus led Nicaean troops back into the city. In Greece the Latin occupiers were not so easily dislodged, and the Duchy of Athens lasted more or less until the fifteenth century, when it succumbed to the Ottoman empire. Two more crusades, between 1217 and 1229, were called by the popes in order to recover Jerusalem. The Fifth was an utter failure, most of t he crusaders dying in Egypt, while the Sixth (1228 – 29) was a mixed success. Without papal endorsement Frederick II ( Stupor mundi ) led his crusaders into Jerusalem and was recognized by the sultan of Egypt as the ruler of Jerusalem. Frederick agreed, howe ver, to let the Dome of the Rock and the al – Aqsa mosque remain in Muslim hands and to allow unarmed Muslim pilgrims to enter the city. 16 The Islamization and Turkicizing of Anatolia During the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries what had been Anatolia – in which the language was Greek and the religion was Chri stianity – became largely a Turkish – speaking and Muslim land. Several hundred thousand Turkish – speaking nomads from east of the Caspian flooded into Anatolia. 17 The transformation of Anatolia was due equally to the Islamization of the native Anatol ians. The Seljuk Sultans of Rum implemented the conversion, often in ruthless fashion. As noted above, the First Crusade passed through western Anatolia, the crusaders marching overland from Constantinople to Antioch. To what extent the Islamization o f Anatolia was hastened by that episode is unknown, but the Seljuk warlords must have perceived that future crusaders would find passage through a predominantly Muslim land much more difficult than was the march in 1097. In any case, the transformation of Anatolia occurred in the aftermath of the early crusades. The Anatolians conversion to Islam evidently preceded their adoption of the Turkish language. Islamization was in part the result of missionary work by Turkish Sufi initiates, or dervishes. Having no property, the Sufi dervish wandered as he begged his bread and sought union with God. In Anatolia the Turkish dervishes went from one Christian village to another and made a vivid impression with their poverty and austerity. As mentioned above, it was to Konya (Iconium) that Rumi and his followers fled from the Mongolian menace, and there established the Mehlevi tariqa: the order of dervishes who sought a religious trance with their whirling dances. At about the same time the teachings of Haci Bekta Veli gave rise to another order of Sufi dervishes in Cappadocia. More often, however, the Islamization of Anatolia was not simply a matter of voluntary conversion by the formerly Christian population. As summarized by Sidney Fisher and William Oc hsenwald, the project was often carried through with violence or intimidation: Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and on into the fourteenth, pressure was exerted on every aspect of Christian life and society. Decisive victories for Muslim a rmies, continual marches across the land by soldiers, sacking of cities, and scorched – earth policies generated massacres, flight, enslavement, plague, and famine.
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