The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (23 page)

The extent to which this medical knowledge influenced actual practice in the Latin Levant is debatable. Usama ibn Munquidh wrote with relish about the peculiar and sometimes distinctly alarming techniques used by Frankish doctors. In one case a sick woman was diagnosed as having ‘a demon inside her head’. Usama apparently watched as the attending Latin physician first shaved her head and then ‘took a razor and made a cut in her head in the shape of a cross. He then peeled back the skin so that the skull was exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman died instantaneously.’ Usama concluded dryly: ‘I left, having learned about their medicine things I had never known before.’ Latin settlers in the crusader states seem to have recognised that Muslims and eastern Christians possessed advanced medical knowledge; and some, like the Frankish royal family in Jerusalem during the second half of the twelfth century, retained the services of non-Latin doctors. But there were some centres of excellence operated by western Christians, including the massive hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to St John and run by the Hospitaller Military Order.

The artistic fusion of Melisende’s Psalter was echoed in buildings erected in the crusader states around this time, most famously in the massive reconstruction programme undertaken at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, during the reigns of Fulk and Melisende. When the Franks first conquered Palestine this church was in a state of some decay. Through the 1130s and 1140s the Latins rejuvenated this most sacred site, designing a suitably majestic structure that, for the first time, would enclose all the various shrines associated with Christ’s Passion: including the Calvary chapel (on the supposed site of his crucifixion) and his burial tomb or Sepulchre. By this time, the church was also closely associated with the Frankish crown rulers of Jerusalem, being the venue for coronations and the burial site of kings.

In overall configuration, the new plan for the Holy Sepulchre adhered to the western European ‘Romanesque’ style of the early Middle Ages, and bore some similarity to other major Latin pilgrim churches in the West, including that found in Santiago de Compostela (north-western Spain). The ‘crusader’ church did have some distinctive features–including a large domed rotunda–but many of these peculiarities resulted from the building’s unique setting, and from its architects’ ambition to incorporate so many ‘holy places’ under one roof. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre standing today is still, broadly speaking, that of the twelfth century, but almost all of the interior ‘crusader’ decoration has been lost (as have the royal tombs). Of the extensive Latin mosaics only one remains–almost hidden on the ceiling, within the dim confines of the Calvary chapel–depicting Christ in Byzantine style. The main entryway to the building, through grand twinned portals on the south transept, was crowned by a pair of lavishly sculpted stone lintels: one, on the left, showing scenes from Jesus’ final days, including the Last Supper; the other, a complex geometric web of interwoven vine-scrolling, dotted with human and mythological figures. These lintels remained in situ until the 1920s, when they were removed to a nearby museum for preservation. Throughout, the sculpture on the south façade appears to incorporate Frankish, Greek, Syrian and Muslim influences.

The new ‘crusader’ church was consecrated on 15 July 1149, exactly fifty years to the day after Jerusalem’s reconquest. This building set out to proclaim, honour and venerate the unique sanctity of the Holy Sepulchre–Christendom’s spiritual epicentre. It also stood as a bold declaration of Latin confidence, affirming the permanency of Frankish rule and the might of its royal dynasty; and as a monument that celebrated the achievements of the First Crusade, even as it bore splendid testimony to Outremer’s cultural diversity.
⁹¹

God’s land of faith and devotion

The ‘crusader’ Church of the Holy Sepulchre was just one expression of the intense devotional reverence attached to Jerusalem, and to the Holy Land as a whole. For the Franks, this Levantine world–through which Christ himself had walked–was itself a sacred relic, where the air and earth were imbued with the numinous aura of God. It was inevitable that the religious monuments built in this hallowed land, and the expressions of faith carried out among its many holy places, would be coloured by an especially febrile piety. Latin religious life was also affected by the fact that many of the indigenous peoples of the Near East (including eastern Christians, Muslims and Jews) shared this sense of zealous adoration.

Through the twelfth century, the most common western European visitors to Outremer were not crusaders; they were pilgrims. Thousands came from Latin Christendom, making landfall at ports like Acre–the human equivalent of the precious cargo shipped from east to west; others came from the likes of Russia and Greece. Some stayed as lay settlers or became monks, nuns or hermits. Only a few religious houses were erected on entirely undeveloped sites, but many disused locations were revitalised (such as the Benedictine convent of St Anne in Jerusalem), and Latin monasteries that pre-dated the crusades, like Notre-Dame de Josaphat (just outside the Holy City), enjoyed a massive boost in popularity and patronage.

Acts of devotion also brought Franks into contact with the native inhabitants of the Levant. Some Latins sought to get closer to God by living ascetic lives of isolation in areas of wilderness like Mount Carmel (beside Haifa) and the Black Mountain (near Antioch); there they mingled in loose communities with Greek Orthodox hermits. One of the most remarkable examples of religious convergence occurred at the Convent of Our Lady at Saidnaya (about fifteen miles north of Damascus). This Greek Orthodox religious house, deep in Muslim territory, possessed a ‘miraculous’ icon of the Virgin Mary which had been transmuted from paint into flesh. Oil supposedly flowed from the icon’s breasts and this liquid was treasured for its incredible healing properties. Saidnaya was a well-established pilgrimage destination, popular with eastern Christians and Muslims (who revered Mary as the mother of the prophet Jesus). From the second half of the twelfth century onwards, it also was visited by a number of Latin pilgrims–some of whom took phials of the Virgin’s ‘miraculous’ oil back to Europe–and the shrine proved to be particularly popular among the Templars.

Just as some Franks were permitted to pass through Islamic lands to reach Saidnaya, so were Muslim pilgrims occasionally able to access sacred sites in Outremer. In the early 1140s, Unur of Damascus and Usama ibn Munqidh were allowed to visit the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Around this same time, Usama also travelled to the Frankish town of Sebaste (near Nablus) to see the crypt of John the Baptist (and, as previously noted, he claimed to have made frequent trips to the Aqsa mosque). In the early 1180s, the Muslim scholar ‘Ali al-Harawi was able to make a thorough tour of Islamic religious sites in the kingdom of Jerusalem, and later wrote an Arabic guide to the area. On the basis of these few potentially isolated incidences, however, it is impossible accurately to gauge the real extent of Muslim pilgrim traffic.

In spite of these various forms of devotional interaction, the underlying religious atmosphere was still characterised by a marked degree of intolerance. Frankish and Muslim writers continued to denigrate one another’s faiths, commonly through accusations of paganism, polytheism and idolatry. Relations between Latin and Levantine Christians also continued to be shaded by tension and distrust. The crusaders’ conquest of the Near East put an effective (if not permanent) end to the region’s established Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchy. New Latin patriarchs were appointed in Antioch and Jerusalem, and Latin archbishops and bishops were installed all across Outremer. The leaders of this Latin church made strident efforts to defend their ecclesiastical jurisdiction and to curtail what they regarded as the dangers of cross-contamination between western and eastern Christian rites, particularly with regard to monasticism.
⁹²

The Frankish East–Iron Curtain or open door?

The crusader states were not closed societies, wholly isolated from the Near Eastern world around them, nor uniformly oppressive, exploitative European colonies. But by the same token, Outremer cannot accurately be portrayed as a multicultural utopia–a haven of tolerance in which Christians, Muslims and Jews learned to live together in peace. In most regions of the Latin East, at most times in the twelfth century, the reality of life lay somewhere between these two polar opposites.

The ruling western European minority showed some pragmatic willingness to accommodate and incorporate non-Franks into the legal, social, cultural and devotional fabric of Outremer. Economic imperatives–from maintaining a subjected native workforce to facilitating the passage of trade–also promoted a degree of equitable interaction. Theoretically, two conflicting paradigms might be expected to have shaped ‘crusader’ society: on the one hand, the softening of initial antipathies over time, through gradually increasing familiarity; and, on the other, the potentially counteractive force of mounting
jihadi
enthusiasm within Islam. In reality, neither trend was so clear cut. From the start, Franks and Muslims engaged in diplomatic dialogue, negotiated pacts and forged trade links; and they continued to do so as the twelfth century progressed. And even as the decades passed, writers of all creeds persistently fell back on traditional stereotypes to express seemingly immutable suspicion and loathing of the ‘other’.
⁹³

Franks, eastern Christians and Muslims living in the Near East may have come to know each other a little better in the course of the twelfth century, but this did not lead to real understanding or enduring harmony. Given the prevailing realities of the wider world, this should be no surprise. The medieval West itself was racked by inter-Latin rivalry and interminable martial strife; endemic social and religious intolerance was also on the rise. By these standards, the uneasy mixture of pragmatic contact and simmering conflict visible in the Levant was not that remarkable. And while the ethos of holy war may have influenced the nature of Frankish society, Outremer does not seem to have been defined by the crusading ideal.

For all this, the Latin settlement of the Near East did give rise to a remarkable, albeit not entirely unique, society–one that was subject to a distinctive range of forces and influences. The patterns of life in Outremer show some signs of acculturation and the surviving evidence of artistic and intellectual endeavour bears the hallmarks of cultural fusion. But this is likely to have been the result of undirected and organic development, not a deliberate drive towards assimilation.

ZANGI–TYRANT OF THE EAST

It was once popular to suggest that Muslim attitudes towards Outremer underwent a critical shift with the rise of the Turkish despot Zangi in 1128. That year certainly was one of change in Near Eastern politics. It began with the death of the Damascene ruler Tughtegin, who, in time, was succeeded by a string of ineffectual emirs of the Burid dynasty, placing Damascus on the path to internal decay and debility. That June, Zangi, the
atabeg
of Mosul, exploited the endemic factionalism afflicting northern Syria to seize control of Aleppo, ushering in a new era of secure, energetic rule.

Said to be ‘handsome, brown-skinned, with beautiful eyes’, Zangi was a truly remarkable individual. Even in a brutal, conflict-ridden age, his capacity for untempered violence was legendary, his insatiable hunger for power unequalled. One Muslim chronicler offered this forbidding, awestruck description of the
atabeg
: ‘He was like a leopard in character, like a lion in fury, not renouncing any severity; not knowing any kindness…he was feared for his sudden attacking; shunned for his roughness; aggressive, insolent, death to his enemies and citizens.’ Born around 1084 to a prominent Turkish warlord, Zangi grew up amid the inferno of civil war, surviving in an environment of near-constant warfare, awash with betrayal and murder, by learning to be resourceful, cunning and exceptionally ruthless. He came to prominence in the 1120s, earning the support of the Seljuq sultan of Baghdad, and by 1127 had been appointed as governor of Mosul and military adviser and commander to the sultan’s two sons.

Zangi had a well-earned, and no doubt carefully cultivated, reputation for cruelty and callous, even arbitrary, brutality. He believed wholeheartedly in the power of abject fear, both to inspire loyalty in his subjects and to drive his enemies into submission. One Arabic chronicler conceded that the
atabeg
used terror to control his troops, noting that he ‘was tyrannical [and] would strike with indiscriminate recklessness’, observing that ‘when he was unhappy with an emir he would kill him or banish him and leave that individual’s children alive but castrate them’.
⁹⁴

Given his fearsome qualities, we might expect Zangi to have transformed Islam’s fortunes in the war for the Holy Land. In the past, he has certainly been presented as a figure of central importance to the history of the crusades–as the first Muslim leader to strike a decisive blow against the Franks, the progenitor of an Islamic ‘counter-crusade’ who rekindled the fires of
jihad
, a towering
mujahid
(holy warrior) and champion of this new era. Yet for all this, through virtually his entire career Zangi’s real impact upon, and interest in, the world of the crusades were negligible. In part, this might be explained by simple geopolitics. The
atabeg
bestrode the Near and Middle East like a colossus, with one foot resting in Mosul and the other planted west of the Euphrates, in Aleppo. Out of necessity, he was forced to divide his time, energy and resources between these two spheres of influence–Mesopotamia and Syria–and was thus never able truly to focus upon fighting the Franks. But even this rationale, often trumpeted to defend Zangi’s
jihadi
credentials, is somewhat misleading, because it is predicated upon two faulty assumptions.