The Third Crusade

 

 

THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189- 92)

 

Before we narrate that story we better wait until we know more about its chief hero-  sultan Salahuddin al Ayyubi (1137- 93), known to and admired by the West as ‘Saladin’.  Sultan Nuruddin of Mossul, whom we saw before as well,  was successfully campaigning to recover Muslim lands from the Crusaders,  blessed by commanders like Shirguh and his nephew the young Salahuddin.  The trio wrestled Syria down to Damascus from the Crusader Kingdom and Nuruddin transferred his capital to that city.  Then benefiting from the internal divisions in the Fatimid court Nuruddin sent Shirguh and Salahuddin ostensibly to help one party against another but really in order to claim Egypt for himself.  Shirguh slew his client Fatimid vizier Shawar and installed himself as the ruler of Egypt but soon afterwards died from too much eating and debauching. He was both a corrupt bon viveur  and a brilliant general and intriguer. 

 

Salahuddin naturally stepped into his boots and entirely eliminating the impious Fatimids began to rule Egypt as sultan except in name- nominally recognizing Nuruddin as his king.  The latter for his part began to find Salahuddin too independent and see him as a dangerous rival,  had began to contemplate removing him but fortune was on the pious young man’s side and Nuruddin died soon enough to allow Salahuddin to claim the whole new kingdom from Mossul to Egypt which move was universally acclaimed.  The Crusaders now had at long last had a Muslim leader of highest calibre and good stars.  He was what ancient sages called an all-rounder-  fit and excellent bodily, mentally and spiritually.  He was a superb fighter and general,   a born leader of men and a properly pious and scholarly luminary of the age.  His treatment of and behaviour towards both friend and foe was charitable, equitble and honourable.  He is on record for sending his royal physician to tend the battle wounds of his arch enemy (and ironically good friend and admirer) king Richard the Lion-heart and so save his life.  

 

A or two will also be necessary about the condition of the Crusaders ruling their Jerusalem Kingdom.  By Salahuddin’s time about a century had elapsed since these Christian knights hade made the Holy Land their home and as both the conquerors and the conquered came to know more about each other a certain level of tolerance, respect and even affection rose between them.  The Crusaders did conquer the Holy Land and other places around it on account of impious divisions among the Muslim rulers and also on account of their own prowess. Coming from a wild culture seeping with superstiotion and violence and yet advanced in war technology of a different sort the Easterners had never seen before so tall and large men riding so big horses and both the rider and the horse so well clad in iron.  Arrows and lances, swords and even maces used by Muslims had difficulty in penetrating the heavy armour the knights and their horses wore while the long and heavy swords and lances of the latter could demolish what Muslims put against them in the way of resistance.  Add to this the incredible fanaticism and energy of the semi-giants from the icy lands of the North and Muslims found themselves at a great disadvantage.  The situation could be likened to a match between a feather-weight and heavy-weight champion boxer. Whatever the courage and skills of the former the incomparable arm span and superior punching power of the heavy-weight will easily bring down the smaller fellow whose arm span will not be sufficient to land a punch on any vital part of the rival. 

 

But if the rival was over-awed by the majestic power and tank-like armour and fire power of the winner the latter, once victorious and secure and relaxed as a result begin to see merits in the loser he could not even begin to appreciate in the past.  The wealth, sophistication and generally refined and charitable manners of the Muslims arose in the Crusaders (who had now become a large minority among muslim thanks to their settling and marrying local Christian women as well as taking on several concubines and procreating fast) a dazed admiration and it wasn’t long before they were similarly civilized and even almost totally emulated the Muslims in dress, grooming, comforts and civilities and the Arabic language.  Many individual Christians became good and sometimes loyal friends of many Muslims and the communities mixed well during times of peace.  Today’s Lebanese Christians and some others around boast of both descending from the Crusaders and being Arabs at the same time.  But the fundamental Crusader- Muslim opposition remained and fights continued.  And often more mercenary wars were also fought the sides being made up shifting Muslim-Christian alliances.  That was what Salahuddin found himself facing.

 

Lastly over time the usual disease of the comfortable complacents came on the Crusaders as well who began to split in to factions and fight bitterly among themselves.  On the other hand Muslims were moving towards unity and Salahuddin had nearly established it all around the Crusader ruled territories.  It is against this background that we must study that most epic of the Crusades the Third Crusade.

 

Initially Salahuddin’s battles with the Crusaders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were minor affairs for a lot of preparation and planning was necessary before he could take on their well-established and dug-in power.  Nearly ready in 1186,  Reginald,  the lord of the Karak Castle gave Salahuddin the necessary spur to take on the Crusaders in a decisive way.  This Reginald was the worst character the Christians had amomg them.  Extremely crude and arrogant he was also an intense enemy of Islam and the Prophet sws.  He was vowing to himself to invade Arabia and desecrate the tomb of the Allah’s beloved.  Unable yet to do that he avenged his frustration by attacking a Hajj caravan travelling under the truce agreed by sultan Salahuddin and Guy de Lusignan the King of Jerusalem.  He captured and plundered the caravan and took the  Muslims including Salahuddin’s sister prisoners.  Salahuddin was incensed, called a holy war and vowed to kill Reginald with hi s own hand. The Latin kingdom had to defend itself and joined battle with a magnificent army with Reginald’s contingent included.  Acting swiftly before the Crusaders could arrive at the field of battle both sides were converging towards Salahuddin captured all the wells.  When the two sides met on 4th july 1187 at the site called Hittin near the Tiberias river (dry then in the intense heat of the summer) the heavily iron-clad Crusaders were quickly exhausted by thirst, having not calculated well a risk like that. 

 

Additionally the wind was blowing their way and Muslims set any bushes on fire and the smoke blown by the winds also harassed the enemy. In the ensuing battle the Crusaders were utterly crushed and both king Guy and  Reginald were captured and brought to Slahuddin.  The king he graciously entertained and pardoned and let go while to Reginald he explained that his only salvation laid in professing Islam. On his refusal Salahuddin killed him instantly.  The main Christain army so destroyed Salahuddin proceeded to and captured the port city Acre and set free the 4000 muslim prisoners held there. Great booty was obtained and included the so-called ‘True Cross’, the battle standard of the Crusaders.  Salahuddin sent it to the khalifa in Baghdad.  Lastly he laid siege to Jerusalem itself and after only 12 days it capitulated on lenient terms graciously offered by the sultan.  Christians were both delighted with the to them unthinkable kindness and ashamed of themselves being so inferior to Muslims in moral, spiritual and civilized terms.  Suddenly Salahuddin became their hero albeit grudgingly and his name became a household name in Christendom for chivalry and charity. 

 

When the news of the loss of Jerusalem reached the West,  they were shocked and angered beyond measure.  Within two years of the bitter blow three kings were on their move to the East to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the ‘Saracens’ as they had began to call the Muslims.  It was a corruption of the Arabic plural for ‘thief’,  ‘as sariqeen’,  a compliment actually the Crusaders deserved.  King Richard I (the Lion Heart) of England (but leading mainly a Norman army),  Frederick Barbarossa (the Red Beard) of Germany and Philip Augustus of France joined forces and began their move towards the East.  Richard sailed from Marseilles,  Philip from Genoa and each took about six months to travel the Mediterranean because they dallied into many adventures,  Richard for his part conquering Cyprus from its Byzantine governor.  He sold the same to the recently made crownless Guy de Lusignan and landed at Acre which he invested and captured after 19 months fighting.  Philip had preceded him there but after Richard’s arrival he fell ill ad had to return home.  Frederick chose to come overland but falling from his horse while crossing a river in Turkey he was drowned.  

 

So Richard ended up as the sole leader of any Crusaders which made it to Palestine and had to fight against the Salahuddin with troops from Norman, French and German armies under him.  Interestingly the two kings fell under the spell of each other and although they fought against each other seriously and well,  they also exchanged gifts, compliments and chivalrous acts and  courtesies.  Initially battes went in Richard’s way but his heteregenous army and the jealousies of the ‘naturalized’ Christians who tried to play the two kings against each other wore him and made him disgusted and increasingly unsuccessful against Salahuddin. He seeked and made peace with Salahuddin who left the coastal towns including Acre to Richard.  Jerusalem remained Muslim, so the Cruasade had failed and Richard sailed away both crestfallen and happy with superior Norman knights and their equipment of war while Salahuddin’s tactics were subtler and achieved results by strategy and stratagem rather than needless heroism.  The two kings parted amicably with Salahuddin as the overall winner and Richard the undisgraced loser further compensated by the conquest and retantion of a few important towns.  Needless to say it wasn’t long before when these also reverted to Muslim hands thereby signalling the total defeat of the Third Crusade as well. 

 

 

THE INCREDIBLE FOURTH ‘CRUSADE’

 

The failure of the Third Crusade did not make the West wiser.  Pope Innocent III rolled up sleeves to launch another not realizing that neither his subjects in the West, nor those in the Holy Land were the same people as during the First Crusade;  nor the Muslims were the same Muslims.   The descendants of the conqueror Crusaders were now almost Arabized and Islamized in the sense of civilization.  They came to look on their Muslim compatriots as much partners and occasionally even friends, like them found their Western Christians despicably wild and boorish and that had helped in frustrating the Third Crusade.  So when the third wave of the Crusaders started out in 1202 it was anything but based on Christian idealism.  Plunder it was that was on the minds of most Lords, they began to squabble among themselves from the first step towards the East and converged as usual on Constantinople which proved not a half-way station to Jerusalem but the final destination! 

 

As usual the Western and Byzantine Christians were mutually suspicious and conspiratorial and so far the  Byzantines could congratulate themselves for giving as little as possible help and gaining as much as possible benefits.  For one thing, they had pitted the Westerners and Turks against each other and decimated both.  For another, thans to the Turk’s costly occupation with the Crusaders the Byzantines were able to recover a lot of lands they had lost to them.   Crusaders forming the fourth expedition knew these  facts only too well and were seething with treacherous and vindictive feelings. 

 

To make a long story short the after a long marathon of mutual demands and hypocrisies the net reault of this Crusade was that the ‘Franks’ invested Constantinople determined to conquer it and convert the Greeks to the Latin rites,  emperor Alexius III fled for his life and the Franks stormed the city.  It was almost a repetition of the conquest of Jerusalem,  slaughter, desecration,  and plunder being the norm.  Byzantine nobles and rich were tortured to reveal their hoards and killed after the goods were recovered.  More interestingly Western Christians, extremely jealous and envious of the fabulously rich and accultured and civilized Byzantine Christians and out of that jealousy they thought of them worse infidels than Muslims and avenged their hatred of them accordingly.  The leaders of the Crusade then divided the major spoils like lands and palaces among themselves and set up a Latin Kingdom.  Then they forgot all about going to the Holy Land.

 

OTHER CRUSADES AND THE COLLAPSE

 

Four more Crusades were launched. All except the Sixth ended in failure.  The Sixth was led by king Frederick II of Germany and Italy.  In 1215 he took the Crusader’s vow but could only launch his campaign in 1228.  As we saw before Frederick was an accomplished Arabist andafter he reached Palestine he quickly established a very amicable rapport with his opposite number sultan al Kamil.  They and their entourage mixed and feasted, debated and laughed their heads off and in the end al Kamil, in true Muslim fashion of generous hospitality presented to his friend Frederick the keys of Jerusalem except the Dome of the Rock and a few other sites sacred to Islam.

 

To Jerusalem were added many other towns and lands like Acre, Jaffa and Sidon as economic gifts and Bethlehem and Nazareth as religious.  In both al Kamil’s and Frederick’s lands however both Muslims and Christians could live amicably together and the arrangement basically worked well and the two monarchs parted as friends and said farewell perhaps in tears.  At first sight al Kamil’s behaviour may seem a cowardly sell-out.  But it proved the opposite.  Turks arrived on the scene a bit later and by 1244 (a mere 15 years after Frederick’s free conquests) others and sultan Baibars of Egypt recovered all back including Jerusalem.

 

THE RESULTS OF THE CRUSADERS

 

The net result was an intellectual and spiritual gain for Christendom.  The two centuries of fighting with and gradual understanding of each other Islamized the West in civilization to a significant degree.  Christianity was retained but it was eaten inside by the more reasonable and curative Islam.  Christians without much admitting it began to emulate Muslims without giving away much of their forms but just adopting the principles and the spirit as much as they could assimilate.  Philosophy, science, technology, government and living habits of Islam penetrated Christendom more and more and enabled the Westerners to begin and profit from their overseas discoveries and conquests and the social and economic developments at home.  Eventually even that hallowed Christianity was brought to book, criticized and questioned, reformed and eventually abandoned by the majority except perhaps in its limited applications and forms.  The prejudice against Islam also slowly and gradually began to get less and more conspicuously the multi-racial, multi-cultural tolerant ethos of Islam found a secure home right in the West. That has been the real victory of the West which is also Islam’s. 

 

10.  THE MONGOLS COME

 

COMPLACENCY ATTRACTS ITS PUNISHMENT

 

Islam and in fact all its pious predecessors began as reactions to worldliness which means preferring the indulgence of the senses to the cultivation of a wise mind and a universally kind mind.  A believer in God does not so much mean a person who assents to a statement that a God exists but a person who represents that God in the universality of his vision and compassionate basis of his character.  Once the second and deeper meaning is lost all we have are superstitious people who however have little notion of a Godly conscience.  They may at best be Unitarian pagans because their faith do not reach deeper than their voice boxes while their ambitions are focused on and fixed at their arbitrary passions.

That a Muslim society has dropped to that level is indicated by the quality of its rulers.  Like a thermometer the quality of rulers show how high or low a temperature of enthusiasm the average level of a Muslim community is.  If enthusiasm is low, so the thermometer registers.

 

No doubts the cause of Medieval Western Christian barbarians descending upon Muslims was Allah’s inspiration them with the ripeness of their opportunity.  They were required to come and punish Muslims for their sins and consequently purify them to a certain extent and as their reward learn very great lessons from their victims and their superior culture.   The Christians returned home richer than before but Muslim complacencies were only half cured. Apparently the transaction ended without the Crusaders doing enough house cleansing for Muslims and another contractor had to continue with the task.

 

The above religious explanation of history is not accepted  by historians who are too proud with their materialistic view of history and shy of any spiritual factors on pain of being excommunicated by the new Catholic inquisitorial church of scientism. In other words the scientific community (and church means community-  like jama’at in Islam) in its own different dogmatism, obscurantism, fanaticism and inquisitorial attitudes is a mirror image of the Medieval Church in the sense that their anatomies are the same but values reversed.  We are not saying that material factors like geography, envoronemt and resources don’t matter. They fully count as historians claim. But spiritual circumstances also play an equal part and the two may well be related at least some times. One of the most striking examples of this is the consistently prosperous condition of the Quaker communities. Their work ethic is so ingrained in their faith and education that wherever they emigrate and set up home they quickly make a model society of themselves.  Why aren’t other societies sharing the same environment or other immigrants from other faiths aren’t doing as well?  Why Arabs were such failures before Islam and such spectacular success after it? 

 

Ideological lies won’t wash down even when told by scientists.  They are as vulnerable to ‘political correctness’ delusions as the rest.  Spiritual factors are real movers of events, as real as gold, silver and climate.  What is more, this is very good news. A person or community can quite conceivably compensate for any shortages in his or its material resources by conjuring up more spiritual resources. That is both cheap and often more effective.  That is why religions stress faith so much.

 

To see how spiritual factors can determine historical events one only need to know a little bit depth psychology which is the domain of Sufism.  In man there is something called a conscience which can either be consciously and constructively allowed to dictate good behaviour and create friendship and therefore reduce the incentives for discord and warring;  or conscience is suppressed in order to indulge wrongs pleasurable to the flesh and to pride.  When this option is taken wrongs are done, offences given, friendships broken and hostilities provoked.  What is more the guilty conscience of a person or community create in them an unconscious self-disgust and death-wish which is again unconsciously registered by predatory neighbours with even less conscience (barbarians) who they move in to rough and rob them.

 

It is also well known to Sufis with gnosis that a person with a guilty conscience becomes accident prone and too risk-taking so as to ensure that he causes his own punishment.  No wonder than that the Crusaders and then Mongols were attracted to the ripe for punishment guilty-conscienced Muslims. Similarly Casanovas and pimps of old times had a keen knack of recognizing a woman ready for seduction from her telltale body language signs despite her otherwise chastity-protesting demonstrations.  Again similarly experienced bribers of officials have a similar knack of feeling which official is safe to seduce with a bribe as well as who is a ‘virgin’ with an innocent past but yet itching to be bribed.  So,  the theory that people’s spiritual and psychological condition is causative to what they do or what is done to them next is well-known to those in the know whatever the scientists say and pontificate.  Lastly a person who betrays his or her dearest values invites retribution from the whole universe around him or her and gets it. 

 

THE RISE OF MONGOLS

 

Mongols lived in to the north of Altai mountains as nomads in an inhospitable desert which, like pre-Islamic Arabia nobody coveted. Left to themselves they would do no more than raising and living on animals and occasional raiding of each other and their neighbours.  But Allah granted them a leader of a calibre which comes once in a millennium or so. 

 

Genghis Khan was born in 1167 and died at 60 in 1227.  His real name was Temuchin and his subsequent title Genghis meant ‘great.  Like all great national leaders he fist fought and brought under his rule all other Mongol khans and established almost infallible justice among them if a very brutally secured one.  He then launched his career of conquest and in a few years extended his rule from the Great Wall of China to the Volga river (Russia) in the West.  Surprisingly or instructively he did not bother with the fabulously rich lands of Islam to his south in what is now Turkestan and Afghanistan.  The casus belli came from the Muslim side!!!

 

Taking advantage of Cenghis from his capital at Karakum a rival khan conspired with the Muslim shah of  Khwarezm, namely Alauddin and rebelled in the belief that the shah would come to his aid.  Genghis suppressed it and offered peace to the shah.  The shah, being guity was shamed by Genghis’s magnamimity but interpreted it as weakness.  So when two Mongol merchants was wantonly killed in Khawarezm territory on the suspicion of being spies the Khan demanded the culprit, the governor of Ottar to be extradited to him for punishment. Alauddin added insult to injury by beheading the ambassador of the Khan adding his personal insults to the Khan (1209).  He sent his son Juji who soundly defeated the shah who then began an escape taking refuge in strongholds farther and farther away the pursuing Mongols and continuing in his defiance.  Another army under the Khan’s other son Chagatai and still other under the Khan himself pursued him as well as diversified to lay to utter waste all Muslim lands and massacre hundreds of thousands as they saw fit.

 

All those fabulous towns of high culture and great prosperity, like Samarkand, Bokhara and Balkh were turned into rubble and ashes and great pyramids of skulls dottet the landscape around them. Mongols were even more rapacious than the Crusaders as well as by far more accomplished warriors. In fact they were soon to penetrate Europe itself laying to waste all castles of proud chevaliers and lords and making mountains of their heads as well.  History has never seen such ferocious and for about two centuries invincible warriors.  In their slaughter they only spared men of learning and skills whom then they employed in their own service.  Alauddin’s son and successor Jalaluddin tried to regroup and resist and gave battle against Genghis’s another son Tule near Indus river but broke and fled to Delhi.  Soon afterwards the Great Khan died at his capital.  Jalaluddin took another chance and put up resistance at Diyarbakr (south east Turkey) against the ever-advancing Mongols under another son of Genghis, namely Oghetai, was defeated and this time killed. 

 

A grandson, namely Hulagu who had become the khan of roughly Persia and also destroyed the Assassins who had continued their insolence against even the terrible Mongols, made some demands from the Abbasid Khalifa al Muttasim who arrogantly refused them.  Accordingly Hulagu’s armies conquered Baghdad in 1258 and laid it to waste and its population to eternal rest.  All the architectural and cultural glories of Baghdad went up in flames and smoke and in one library alone it is said that three million books were lost.  The khalifa and his family were made to show the places of their treasures and killed.  The Mongols, now in control of whole central and south west Asia as well as east Anatolia, Armenia and Azerbaijan came to a halt only when the mamluk Turkish sultan sent his army under Qutuz and Baibars who utterly broke and destroy the Mongols (1260).  That was the end of the Mongol terror at its worst.  It had lasted a mere forty years, purged Islam as no other civilization was purged as thoroughly or as fast!

 

When Mamluks had won even the Christian West took an incredulous sigh of relief and celebrated for days all churches sounding their bells.

 

But the results were no total disaster. While most Mongols turned back to Mongolia,  a lot stayed  behind under Mongol khans then ruling almost all Eastern Islam sometimes through vassals like the Anatolian Seljouk sultans and were rapidly absorbed into Islam and Turkified since their tongue and origin were closer to theirs.  What is more these new Muslims brought back a lot of the lost piety of Muslims and gave Islam a new lease of life which stopped its decline and decadence and led to a new aga of glory under the Mughal Empire in the east and the Ottoman in the west.

 

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