The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative
This article discusses the reports on the conquest of Jerusalem in 492/1099 in Arabic chronicles. It argues that the reports on this event developed in three distinct and very diverse regional traditions in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. On the basis of the early Egyptian and Syrian evidence, it is highly unlikely that the conquest of Jerusalem was accompanied by a large-scale massacre of the entire population. This evidence shows furthermore that contemporaries did not see the fall of the town as a momentous event. The later Iraqi tradition, by contrast, introduced not only a new dimension to the massacre of the town’s inhabitants, but developed two further narrative strands which were largely unknown to earlier reports: the plundering of the Dome of the Rock and the subsequent delegation to Baghdad. The development of these strands must be seen within the political and intellectual setting of Baghdad, most importantly the conflict between Sultanate and Caliphate and the profile of the Hanbalite traditionalist milieu of the city. Ibn al-Athir’s famous report from the early seventh/thirteenth century almost exclusively goes back to this Iraqi strand and was an “Islamic narrative” in that it sidelined all previous regional traditions and reframed the conquest as a momentous event in terms of eschatology, martyrdom and divine intervention. This development of the Arabic reports on the fall of Jerusalem reflects the broader transformation of how relationships with crusaders and Franks were conceptualized from a pre-jihādī landscape to one where jihād propaganda moved to the centre of political discourse. In 2004 this journal published Benjamin Kedar’s seminal article on the Jerusalem massacre in the Western historiography of the crusades. His article discussed reports ranging from eyewitness accounts to modern studies and tried to establish along the way a historically accurate picture of the events. On the basis of the medieval Latin (and also to some extent the Arabic) sources, Kedar concluded that “the massacre in Jerusalem was considerably more extensive than in other towns.”1 I thank Bernard Hamilton and the anonymous readers for their insightful and very detailed comments on this article. The argument has greatly benefited from discussions with students in the course “The Middle East in the Period of the Crusades” at SOAS (University of London) over the last years. Further helpful comments came from participants in the “Crusades and The Latin East” seminar (Institute of Historical Research, London) where a version of this paper was presented in March 2013. 1 Benjamin Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades 3 (2004): 15–75, here 74.
The Count of Saint-Gilles and the Saints of the Apocalypse: Occitanian Piety and Culture in the Time of the First Crusade
This dissertation examines Raymond of Saint-Gilles’ regional affiliation in Occitania (modern southern France) and the effect of that identity on his conduct of the First Crusade. Crusade historiography has not paid much attention to regional difference, but Raymond’s case shows that Occitanians approached crusading in a fundamentally different manner from other crusaders. They placed apocalyptic eschatology in the forefront of the First Crusade and portraying the First Crusade as bringing about the New Jerusalem. To be Occitanian was not merely to be a speaker of Occitan. It was to be part of a Mediterranean culture, halfway between classical Roman and medieval Frank, with a religious culture influenced by Greek saints, Egyptian monasticism, an intellectually and culturally vigorous Jewish population, and repeated Arab invasions and pirate raids. It was also to be imbued with romanitas, a close connection to Rome, to both the Papacy and the material, legal, and cultural legacy of the Roman Empire. At the same time, Raymond was not the only important figure to go on the First Crusade from Occitania. The papal legate, Adhemar of Le Puy, came from the Auvergne, a radically different region where the reaction to the collapse of the Carolingian empire led to a region ruled by the clergy, supported by idol-like statues of saints and organized through the Peace of God. These two disparate identities came together in the First Crusade, a Gregorian Reformist venture conceived and organized with Occitanian leadership. This team, the new Moses and Aaron of the crusaders, effectively followed papal policy in the early stages of the crusade. With the traumatic siege of Antioch and the “discovery” of the Holy Lance, however, a radical shift in the crusade occurred, following the eschatological visions of a handful of Occitanian priests. Though the Kingdom of God did not, in the end, appear, the apocalyptic eschatology that the Occitanians brought with them on the First Crusade led to Raymond of Saint-Gilles refusing the crown of Jerusalem, preferring to leave empty-handed than risk becoming the Antichrist.
Knights and Peasants
THE ERA of Norse, Moslem, and Magyar invasions brought to an end the period of transition between Roman and mediaeval civilization in Western Europe. The ruins of Charlemagne’s empire served as the seedbed for mediaeval institutions. The purpose of the next three chapters is to trace the development of these institutions during the tenth, eleventh, and early twelfth centuries. We shall try to see how the men and women of this period cared for their souls, their bodies, and their minds—how they prayed, worked, played, and thought. We shall also examine the political institutions, both lay and ecclesiastical, that governed their lives. This first chapter will be devoted to a study of the basic economic and social institutions on which mediaeval civilization rested, and how men lived in the environment they created. It will be a tale of peasants and knights and their ways of life.