THE FATIMIDS
In 905 a certain Abu Abdullah, a pre-cursor of Hassan Sabbah but perhaps not as bad, preached from what is now Tunisia an extremist and therefore heretical by even Shia standards a doctrine which taught that seven Alid imams were the full number of those entitled to rule but were prevented. Soon however al Mahdi or the Saviour was to come to put the record straight and cure all the evils and avenge all the crimes that were committed by the impious. He won great following among the mainly illiterate and militant Berbers and with their help was able to overthrow the then ruling Aghlabid dynasty and establish himself in Qairwan, a former Umarid garrison city turned a veritable city in Tunisia. To make his promise credible to his aroused and impatient subjects who clamoured to see the Mahdi he imported a certain Ubaidullah b. Muhammad and saying that he was the expected Mahdi. He installed him on the throne (909). This Ubaidullah claimed descent from Fatima RA the daughter of the Prophet sws as if Ali RA wasn’t important or as if the Prophet had other descendants from other daughters and such a distinction was necessary. The original liar Abu Abdullah however could not enjoy the fruits of his services to the new lucky man. The latter, like Saffah dispathching Abu Muslim before, soon put Abu Abdullah and his many ‘creditors’ to the sword not to have any creditors around to harass him by their demands, proving the hadith of the Prophet sws that “One who helps a wrongdoer perishes in his hands”.
Thanks to their fanatical zeal and conspiratorial skills the Fatimids wrestled Egypt from the Ikhshidids and proved such brilliant rulers that Egypt and appended lands like Libya and Tunisia and the later additions Syria, Arabia and Yemen saw prosperity and urban, economic and cultural development hardly matched by any rule before except perhaps and relative to age it saw under great pharaohs and the (Greek) Ptolemaic dynasty (Cleopatra being their last).
In fact the civil, urban and economic improvements in North Africa by muslims did not begin with the Fatimids. From the day Amr ibn As came to rule Egypt in the name of the Islamic khilafa Egypt, already rich and sophisticated from time immemorial began another stage of ascendancy. All muslim governors and sultans knew Egypt’s worth and invested heavily in its and its environs’ futher development. The Nile’s watering canals were repeatedly improved and areas watered enlarged. Before the Suez canal, muslims connected the Meditrerranean with the Red Sea by digging a canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. The country was simply to rewarding not to hold and develop more and the population too used to expect anything less. Egypt was the granary of the Mediterranean world which since all living memory suffered from frequent draughts. The Nile and to a lesser extent the Tigris and Euphrates guaranteed some relief in the case of such draughts, as these rivers proved steady sources of profuse fresh water which could reach the sea no matter how heavily drawn from upstream.
Fatimids also claimed the khilafa and took on fancy titles on ascension like their Abbasid rivals had began assuming. In 969 their al Muizz founded Cairo on the site where Amr ibn As had built Fustat before. ‘Khalifa followed ‘khalifa’ as Al Muizz’s son al Aziz and then al Hakim succeded to the throne. Like in Spain, Jews whether converted or not became favoured in rising to positions of civil power, as the brilliant vizier of al Aziz, namely Yaqub ibn Qillis who proved almost to be the Nizam al Mulk of Egypt except of course in piety, for that wasn’t the top concern of the Fatimids. For his part al Hakim (ruled 996- 1021) was so overwhelmed with power and indulged so much in his coarser lusts that he went mad like the Roman emperor Caligula before him, declaring himself as God and demanding being worshipped. He amused himself by bizarre and cruel entertainments like covering ponds with such vegetation that they looked like orchards.
However he also stuck sharp pikes on the concealed floor. He asked his distinguished visitors who knew nothing about the traps so prepared to run across the ‘orchard’ as fast as possible. He and his cronies then watched the poor unsuspecting victim be impaled and laughed their heads off in amusement. Increasingly alienating the orthodox muslims more by his antics and blasphemies he was eventually assassinated aged 36. But his mischief did not end. His cronies denied that he was killed, they said their god incarnate went into occultation and his return to save the world as al Mahdi was expected at the end of the time. As such he remained the god and the expected saviour for many extremists and chiefly the Druze. Here we have another incarnation of the ancient mystical theory of human formed gods dying and coming at the end of the time as saviours. Apparently many Mediterranean races never grew out of this ancient archetypal mold and even Islam had to be invaded, albeit marginally, by this ancient cultural virus.
Fatimid power reached its zenith under al Muntansir (1036- 94) who however debauched himself even more then al Hakim. As other Fatimid ‘khlaifas’ he also depended mainly on Turkish troops, especially at command level. This proved his Achilles heel. Although he, like his predecessors used and corrupted them with lavish gifts and other pamperings even to them his excesses proved too much once in a while and in 1067 they rebelled, raided and nearly ruined his palace and plundered his treasures thoroughly. This brought to an end the illusion that the formidable Faimids were not as vulnerable as they looked after all.
After al Muntasir’s death his army went into anarchy and the Faitimid rule weakened rapidly. Almost all terriotories revolted, Syria, Arabia, and all north Africa outside Egypt seceded. At last Salahuddin Ayyubi, one of the most pious and exemplary of muslim sultans, put an end to the Fatimids in 1171 from where on he went on to put an end to the Crusaders as well.
Among the legacies of Fatimids is the foundation of al Azhar Universtiy (Jami’ al Azhar) which however initially taught Ismaili doctrines as everywhere in Faitimid dominions. Sunni creed was suppressed throughout their rule while Jews and Christians were lavishly patronized and raised to high offices and Christian shrines and churches promoted. None worked however and when Salahuddin recovered Egypt from Fatimids he found most Egyptians as Sunni as ever.
9. THE TWO PESTILENCES – 1. THE CRUSADERS
THE TWO PESTILENCES
A careful and insightful study of history always shows to the spiritually aware student that the Creator is right in admonishing races who prefer worldly success to the spiritual are spoilt by their success, preferring the almost unlimited and irresponsible indulgence of their senses to improving the lot of their less privileged fellow men and instead, exploiting the latter even more.
All civilizations, including the Islamic went down this condemned road and paid the price. Chief among these terrible prices is invasion by a rougher and hungrier race seeing its opportunity in the weakened morals and complacent sense of security of the spoilt race (I am using the word ‘race’ loosely just to mean a politically self-organized group living independently. It may really be a race like the Mongol or a commonwealth of races like the population of an empire).
Before the Islamic, both the Persian and Roman empires went to this pestilential experience and were increasingly humiliated by it- humiliated for many centuries.
Islam for its part first suffered from an internal pestilence if we may call it so. It was hijacked by its less enlightened elements who excluded from power the more enlightened. The former, variously encouraging or infecting their subjects with their own worldliness made true piety a persecuted minority affair while a more general impiety triumphantly busied itself with more conquest for more profit until the inevitable in-fighting began to destroy the initial unity of unholy purpose and invited a coup by another gang of self-seekers.
Since we saw these in the form of the Umayyad and the Abbasid dynasties and the later dissolutions catalysed by warlordism all across Islam, we shall now study the two external pestilences, namely the Crusader and the Mongol invasions.
THE CRUSADES (1095- 1291)
From towards the close of the 11th century to nearly the end of the 13th, that is to say almost two centuries Islam was from the Western Europe.
The two contesting worlds could not be more different except in being faith-based. On the one side we have Islam- extremely advanced, sophisticated, prosperous and in general a much juster and far more enlightened world, despite any impieties and cruelties current among its ruling elites and their rivals out in the cold working towards wrestling the power from the happily installed. We may more than say that, relative to the age, the roles of the Islamic East and the Christian West were reversed, only too thoroughly so.
The West had the worst of both worlds- The Greco-Roman lights were out and barbarian darkness was in. Vandals, Vikings and Goths, Franks and Teutons had not only demolished the Roman Empire but barbarised Christianity into a complex of semi-pagan superstitions and atrocious persecutive and punitive practices which would last at last almost fifteen centuries before they could be exposed as superstitions and barbarities by the Islam-influenced enlightenments. Extremely unjust and oppressive inequalities were the norm in the West and the overwhelming majority of its people was at the mercy of their secular as well as spiritual princes (lords and high clergy) and in cities also the mercantile middle class. The lot of most was serfdom and an abject lack of any education or opportunity to advance in life. From king down to pauper and the serf, manners were coarse, habits filthy in the extreme and loosenes of both social and sexual morals incredible.
Late into the 17th century taking a bath or changing clothes were not the norm even for the kings. Houses and even palaces had neither bathrooms nor toilets. For lack of sanitation most skilful operations by most brilliant surgeons ended with the death of the patient due to infection from the hands of the surgeon himself- who proceeded straight from a cadaver dissection to an operation like a butcher using the same knives and saws when dealing with different orders from customers. In Islam boiling or fire-cleaning surgicial instruments and treating hands and wounds with alcohol were long established. In fact we shall see the differences between civilized standards of the two worlds more in the course of the story to follow.
THE FIRST CRUSADE
We must first deal with the causes of the first Crusade which may also be regarded as the basic causes of all the others.
The first cause was the sense of strangulation the West, as seen from Italy its most advanced and prosperous part. Islam was so successful that it had not only conquered and largely converted all lands to the east and south of the Mediterranean, that inner sea of extremely important communications and flow of economic life blood around which almost all great civilizations of the antique times had flourished. Italians, as inheritors of both the classical Greeks and Romans and once dominators of the Mediterraean trade found that, thanks to muslims occupation of Spain as well as all Mediterranean islands from Cyprus to Sicily and Sardinia could not almost leave port let alone sail in and trade around in the Mediterranean, without paying muslims that is to say. And actually muslim ships almost monopolized both. So Italians and their Western neighbours needed to break through this encirclement and obstruction. They had to hit back somehow some way. And the main public motivator being religion they had to use it to start the hostilities.
The second consideration was the constant erosion of the Byzantine power which was the greatest Christian power and the eastern wall of defence for Europe against the East. Seljouk turks were dangerously fast eating into its territory and equally alarmingly causing mass conversion to Islam among their new subjects, thereby converting the same from defenders of Christianity to defenders of Islam. Turks had to be stopped and driven back.
Thirdly Western pilgrims visting Jerusalem brought home news about the difficulties and indignities muslim owners of the place caused to them as if any muslim could set foot on any Western Christian land and not be torn to pieces instantly. Muslims were more hated and detested by the Westrerners even than the jews, because they were more feared. In fact half of Christian soul was manufactured from the hatred and detestation of Islam and no lies and provocations were spared to fan the flames of the same blazing to maximum temperature. The effects of this greatest of historical phobias anywhere anythime are still with us today, helped also by some modern muslims. Accirdingly it is almost certain that at least a great part of the pilgrims complaints was caused by this extreme phobia which interpreted even compliments as insults in disguise and charity as attempts at poisoning. A hostile mind misses no opportunity to vindicate itself by any means.
But one particular incident had to pull the trigger to explode the whole psychological powderkeg. As usual it came from the most despicable tumor in the flesh of Islam- the Fatimid heretics. As rulers of Syria, Palestine and Egypt initially the Fatimids had wisely continued to tolarate as well as cultivate their Christian subjects as in the rest of Islam simply because it meant both political and economic sense. But when the mad ‘khalifa’ al Hakim became even madder he destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as if he could find no better thing to do. Perhaps he was jealous of the Christ as a rival ‘god’ to himself. But to their great credit muslims helped local Christians substantially to rebuild it and far bigger and magnificent than before. The destruction registered with the Western Christians but not the reconstruction.
So the Western jealous resentment of Islam began to reach higher and higher peaks. Ideas and plans about going and rescuing the Holy Land from the ‘Mahound or Mahometan infidels’ began to be aired and circulated and the impoverished lords of Christendom were further aroused by the descriptions of the fabulous riches of the East to be plundered. Some popes pondered over a Crusade but it fell to Pope Urban to start the ball rolling. Holding meetings with various parts of Christendom at various places, most notably the Council of Piacenza in 1095 he gradually persuaded various kings and mobilized both the nobles and the populace, deploying hermits or some hermits deploying themselves to agitate all Christians toward joining a mass army of Crusaders against Islam. At Clermont, France this French pope brought his agitation to its climax until the sea of the great crows began to shout in a greart frenzy: Dieu li volt, i.e ‘God wills it’. Urban then ordered mobilization and prescribed the wearing of the cross upon the breast of all costumes of war. Mobilization spread and from all points of Western Christendom kings and knights rode out wearing crosses on their fronts, on the covers on their hats or helmets, on their horses’ coverings, on their shields and swords. Anyone who wished from the populace also joined and the numbers swelled into about a million (at a time when Western Europe as a whole had a population of perhaps no more than 15 million.
One particular host (or horde) left from France under a certain Peter the Hermit who since then has been one of the legendary figures of the First Crusade. All in all the great majority of these intending warriors were total barbarians and imbeciles among whom women, children, beggars, thieves and prostitutes rubbed shoulders and the chorus of exhortations to war and insults to the Prophet of Islam (sallalahu alaihi wa sellem) in particular. But being who they were these hordes soon broke into plundering and laying to waste the very Christian towns and villages they were crossing through, particularly seeking out nd destroying any pockets of jews but all the same not sparing any Christians whose person or belongings could satisfy any of their momentary lusts or whims. Murder, massacre, rape, plunder and wanton destruction for destruction’s sake swept through Europe on the way to the east and any town which refused to allow them in and relied on their walls was invested and eventually stormed and all inside massacred. Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria… went up in flames. Perhaps neither Genghis Khan or Attila has done or could do a better job of barbaric invasion and destruction than the hordes of the First Crusade with the added distinction of victimizing their own kind first- Christian first invaded and savaged Christian on a scale not seen before or after! Which must be perhaps the most eloquent intimation of the degree of barbarity of Western Europe less than a thousand year ago.
If one additionally remembers the barbarities committed by the Nazi and the Soviet regimes only yesterday it seems that the much vaunted Western civilazation is still too superficial and without a firm enough skeleton to prevent its lapse back into barbarism. Its phobia of Islam continues for one thing and its perennial hedonism remains undiminished. This is a very sad, regretting observation and is not meant, God knows, to return insult to Islam with insult.
When these incredibly wild and shabby hordes began to arrive the gates of Constantinople the emperor Elexius already knew what they had been up to and therefore capable of doing to his capital. He fed them outside without allowing them in and when challenged by the Frankish lords in command (for the First Crusade was mostly French-staffed and joined) he had to use all his diplomatic skills to persuade them that he bore no ill-will but wanted to see them go off after the ‘Turks’ and achieve their sacred mission as soon as possible.
From this French domination of the Firsrt Crusade muslims came to know all Europeans as ‘Franks’ and their constant plague the syphilis as ‘frenghi’. Prostitutes were constant integral part of all Christian armies including the papal and served the soldiers and the commanders alike during the scarce periods between victories when mass rape of the vanquished often followed by massacre gave these same prostitutes a rest. Exactly the same fate awaited even when the vanquished were Christians. So it was these ‘sex-shy Christians’ who blamed muslims taking as prisoners the women of the vanquished and using some as concubines who could only bear for them freemen. Which muslims could not make prisoners of neither other muslims nor non-muslims who submitted without fighting. Even Hajjaj did not dare to break such laws of Islam. In fact the barbarities committed by the Europeans until recently have no parallel in Islam when scale and level are considered.
Among the Frankish lords Duke Godfrey de Bouillon, Count Bohemund de Taranto and his nephew Tancred de Hauteville were both the leaders and later stars of this crusade as we shall see. All were formidable knights and full of royal talents. Added to these was Raymond the count of Toulouse, a veteran of the wars against the muslims of Spain. He was too old to fight but joined all the same and lavished his wealth for the equipment of the Crusaders.
Before we join the Crusaders on their way east from Constantinople we may also look at the Byzantine Christians. These eastern Christians were quite unlike their Western brethren. They shared a lot of Eastern culture and refinements. Firstly regularly washed, dressed and groomed well and were tolerant of both jews and muslims who lived among them. So their shock of seeing the uncouth and unkempt barbarians from the West they were as shocked and disgusted as their Muslim neighbours.
To steer a safe course the emperor bought of the Crusader lords with lavish gifts and compliments and additionally dazzled with his splendour the lords accepted his supremacy and pledged their allegiance. He prodded them first to take back Nicaea from Turks which they quickly did, for the sultan Kilich Arslan was away and his garrison in Nicaea was largely outnumbered by the Crusaders. Only the emperors newly recognized authority prevented the Crusaders from massacring the inhabitants. They went on complaining that Alexius was a traitor- though he had satisfied their greed from his own coffers. From there they crossed whole Anatolia fighting of ambushes by Kilich Arslan’s guerrillas and putting to sword and at times eating anybody they captured. For food and water was hard to get. It was summer, very dry and hot. They were as perishable as Turks they were devastating, almost half were lost to wars and hunger.
After crossing the Taurus mountains the Crusaders split. One part advanced towards and captured the Muslim held Antioch while while Tancred and Godfreys’s brother Baldwin, with a smaller force went east and captured Edessa from its Armenians and Godfrey’s brother Baldwin became their king by first endearing himself to the native king and then killing him. In general muslim cities fell to the Crusaders because each was a separate statelet hostile to others and valorous only in inter-muslim warfare. An army under Kerbogha king of Mossul ran to the rescue of Antioch but was defeated by the Crusaders under Bohemund. Bohemund then became the ruler of Antioch. After resting for several months he proceeded to Jerusaelm and after a bloody siege a mere 12,000 surviving Crusaders forced the city to unconditional surrender and slaughtered all inside indiscriminately, Muslim, Christian and Jew and founded the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099).
No Turks came to the rescue because the Fatimids had recently disbanded their Turkish elite troops. Godfrey de Bouillon was made the ruler and expelling the Greek church imposed the Latin rites in the city. A year later Godfrey died and was replaced by Balwin I who took the title of king officially. Next came king Fulk who conquered the whole Syria and Palestine, except isolated cities Aleppo, Damascus and Emesa. They made serfs of both Muslims and Christian owners of land thereby imposing the feudal system of Europe on the East. Christian chivalric and religious orders poured in from the West, notably the Knigths Hospitaliers who combined monkish charity with chivalric valour. Another similar organization was the Knights Templars who set up headquarters near the site of Solomon’s Temple. However such pious orders hated each other mortally in true Christian sectarian fashion and subverted each other even at the cost of secretly allying themselves with muslims. But in battles against Muslims they proved themselves most heroic and skilful.
It took Muslims about half a century to respoind adequately to the challenge of these apparently invincible barbarians from the West who were now almost domiciled among them and ruled over large populations of muslims. Zangi prince of Mossul felt confident enough to wage war against the Crusaders and wrestled from them Edessa (1144). He was assassinated soon afterwards but his son Nuruddin proved even abler then him and continued defeating the Crusaders convincingly. The West became alarmed and a Second Crusade was called for to stem the Turkish tide.
THE SECOND CRUSADE (1146- 48)
One of the greater saints St. Bernard was first to take the matter up. He applied to the pope to act who in turn asked him to lead. He fisrt recruited Louis VII the king of France. The two preached the ‘taking up the Cross’ to the masses and the same hysteria swept through France and then elsewhere and volunteers poured in. Emperor Conrad III of Germany and future king Frederick Barbarossa, then only Frederick of Swabia joined in as well. The French and the German armies began their trek towards the East each suspecting and hating the other knowing whether or not the Turks were to be hated more.
It was an ill-starred campaign from the beginning. The new emperor of Byzantium, Manuel Comnenus, hastily helped them to cross into Anatolia and settle their accounts with the Turks, for the Crusaders posed a great threat to him as well, having come through the Greek European territories with a lot of Christian blood and loot on their hands. The Crusader party had a carnival air, queens, other noble ladies as well as hordes of prostitutes, gaily dressed and noisly cheering accompanied the hosts. They began to trek towards the port of Attalia (Antalya) to cross over to Palestine but all the way they had to contend with the treacheries of their Greek guides and the ambushes of the Turkish warriors. In one major battle both the French and the German contingents were greatly decimated and what arrived at Attalia was a pathetic rump of the whole and what arrived at Palestine was hardly more than a large tourist party. They arranged themselves as best as they could to figth the Muslims but a lot were accessed by Muslim agents and bribed to pack up and leave. And eventually that was what happned. The whole enterprise fizzled out and the only reward for the pious Louis VII was staying behind for another year as the guest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and visit the holy places.
