Posts Tagged ‘Near East’

Economic Growth and Currency in Ayyūbid Palestine

Economic Growth and Currency in Ayyūbid Palestine

By Stefan Heidemann

Ayyūbid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1187-1250, edited by Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld (Altajir Trust, 2009)

Introduction: In 583/1187 Saladin conquered Jerusalem. This occurred in a period of renewed economic growth in Syria and northern Mesopotamia, which lasted until the Mongol invasion. The economic recovery after the political and economic collapse of the Abbasid empire began slowly in the Saljuq period in the late 5th/11th century with political and fiscal reforms, and accelerated in the time of Nur al-Din Mahmud ibn Zangi (who reigned 541-569/1150-1174) and the Ayyubids. It then blossomed in the first half of the 7th/13th century. This growth is still visible in the splendours of Zangid and Ayyubid art and architecture.

At the same time it was a period of transition for coinages in western Asia, as it supported and fostered economic development from the last remnants of the monetary systems of the early heights of the Islamic empire to the monetary system of the Ayyubids. Syria has no metal resources of its own for the production of coins. This evolution of the monetary system would not have been possible without close economic relations with the neighbouring regions of Byzantium and Egypt in the early phase, and later with Italy and central Europe.

The study of the currency situation in Ayyubid Jerusalem and Palestine has to be placed within the medieval framework of the economic and monetary evolution in historic Syria. Emphasis is laid on the situation in Jerusalem which changed its government several times, from being the political capital of the Crusader Kingdom to a provincial town under the Ayyubids, then once again coming under Frankish control, and finally back to Ayyubid sovereignty.

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2 Jul 2010
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12th-century Crusader fresco to go on display in Israel

An enormous Crusader-era fresco that was discovered in Jerusalem will go on display next month at the Israel Museum. At nine meters long and 2.7 meters high, it is the largest painting ever discovered by archaeologists in Israel.

In 1999 the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted excavations in Nahal Kidron, next to the Garden of Gethsemane of the the Monastery of Miriam, under the direction of Jon Seligman. The excavations uncovered several buildings dating to the twelfth century that were part of the Abbey of St. Mary of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, most of which had been destroyed after the city fell to Saladin in 1189. But to the excavators’ surprise a nine meter long wall that was decorated with a painting of breathtaking beauty was exposed in one of the rooms.

Thanks to a generous contribution by the Friends of the Israel Museum, the painting has been restored by a team of art conservators of the Conservation Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority, headed by Jacques Nagar, and will be placed on exhibit in the museum’s new Crusader period gallery.

According to Seligman, the subject of this fresco – only the bottom part of which survived and which originally rose to a height of about nine meters – is apparently a scene of deésis (meaning supplication in Greek). This is a known iconographic formula whereby Mary and John the Baptist beseech Jesus for forgiveness, for the sake of humanity. Only the bottom parts of the figures are visible in the main picture: Jesus sitting in the center, with Mary to his right and John the Baptist to his left. Two other pairs of legs, probably those of angels, can be seen next to Mary and John.

In the middle of the painting are colorful floral tendrils on either side of which is a Latin inscription of a saying by Saint Augustine: “Who injures the name of an absent friend, may not at this table as guest attend.”

The archaeologists concluded from this that the painting adorned the wall of a dining room – the refectorium – in the monastery. The prohibition to gossip is surprising since the monks there were Benedictines who refrained from unnecessary conversation. According to the researchers, the maxim was apparently intended for visitors who arrived at the monastery and were invited to dine there.

Jacques Nagar commented, “This is one of the most important paintings that have been preserved from the Crusader period in Israel. The painting is the largest to come out of an archaeological excavation in the country and the treatment the painting underwent in the laboratories of the Israel Antiquities Authority was, from a conservation standpoint, among the most complicated ever done here.

“This wall painting is special because of its size and quality. It measures 9 meters long and 2.7 m high, and is extremely rare because very few wall paintings have survived from the Crusader churches that were built in Jerusalem during the Crusader period. The excellent quality of the painting was in all likelihood the workmanship of master artists and the vibrant colors reflect the importance of the abbey in the twelfth century, which was under the patronage of the Crusader queen Melisende.”

“We are proud to include this unique wall painting in our new gallery of Crusader art,” added Na’ama Brosh, curator of Islamic art in the Israel Museum and who was responsible for placing it on exhibit in the new gallery. “We wish to thank the Israel Antiquities Authority for their cooperation that has resulted in the presentation of this important exhibit to the public.”

The fresco will be displayed for the first time when the Israel Museum re-opens on July 26, 2010.

Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

30 Jun 2010
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In the Shadow of Zengi: Diplomatic Relations between Damascus and the Crusader States during the Reign of King Fulk of Jerusalem

In the Shadow of Zengi: Diplomatic Relations between Damascus and the Crusader States during the Reign of King Fulk of Jerusalem

Paper by Basit Hammad Qureshi, University of Minnesota

Given at the Crusades I session at the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2010)

Until recent years, the image of Imad ad-Din Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul (1128-1146) was that he was an ardent enemy of the Crusaders and struggled continuously to fight the Christian presence in Syria and Palestine after the First Crusade. Newer scholarship has shown that their is little evidence to support this view.

Qureshi examines a question that has arisen from this new view of Zengi – was he the main reason behind the alliance formed between King Fulk of Jerusalem and Damascus in 1140? The presenter shows that Zengi was not seen in particular as a threat to either the Franks or Damascenes, but rather a nuisance.

He points to Zengi’s military campaigns, which in the early years of King Fulk’s reign were not directed towards the Crusaders or Damascus, but instead against the Abbasids in Iraq. Zengi did launch attacks into Syria, but his operations were limited and he seems to have made sure that his forces avoided any pitched battles.  Qureshi points out that in some engagements, Zengi’s armies were easily dispersed in the face of Crusader or Damascene pressure.

Zengi did launch a siege of Damascus in 1135, but the circumstances of this episode do not confirm that he presented a serious threat to the city. Zengi was invited by the local ruler of Damascus to take over, but this was because this sultan either feared that the population would overthrow him or because according to some sources he was mad. In any event, before Zengi could arrive to take over the city, the ruler was murdered by his own family, and the gates of the Damascus were closed to the army from Mosul. Zengi did arrive on the scene and attempted a siege, but this only lasted about a month and was not very effective.

In later years, the rulers of Damascus did make agreements with Zengi, who often betrayed them, but the Damascenes seemed to believe that he was not a sufficient enough threat to their city.  In fact, a treaty signed just before 1140 shows that Damascus and Zengi exchanged territory that put Zengi in a closer position to the Syrian capital.

Therefore, what were the reasons behind the Damascus-Crusader alliance of 1140? Qureshi suggests that it had more to do with each side’s internal situations. He also states that the Damascenes wanted to avoid Crusader skirmishes. Meanwhile King Fulk received more territory through the deal, which gave him a foothold in Syrian lands.

14 May 2010
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The Holy Land: The Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls

The Old City was given World Heritage Status in 1981 and placed on the World Heritage in Danger List the following year. The City, fortified by its walls, is barely 1 km2 in size, with followers of three religions living in their respective quarters.

This path is the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus walked with a cross. Jesus is said to have laid his hand on this wall. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is located on the Hill of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified. It is said that Jesus was put to death by crucifixion atop these worn stairs. There are two altars here representing two Christian sects, the Roman Catholic faith and the Greek Orthodox faith. There is a ritual for opening the door every morning, at the Church. It is a Muslim in fact who opens the lock to the Christian Church. When Islamic King Saladin recovered the city of Jerusalem from Christian Crusades, the King approved of preserving the Church on condition that the keys to the complex were managed by Muslims. The tradition has lasted for 800 years.

This is the Muslim Quarter. The Holy Rock is said to be spot from which Mohammad, the founder of Islam, ascended through the heavens to God, and received Revelation from Allah. The hill where the Dome of the Rock is located is a sacred site for Judaism. For Jews throughout the world, Jerusalem is their eternal homeland. The sight of Jewish people grieving the loss of their homeland and praying before the wall has given it the name, the Wailing Wall.

The city has had a complex history with three religions claiming and fighting over the holy sites and yet living together in the same city. Jerusalem, a city on the World Heritage in Danger List is a symbol to the whole world.

17 Apr 2010
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From wayfaring elites to local associations: Sufis in Medieval Palestine

From wayfaring elites to local associations: Sufis in Medieval Palestine

By Daphna Ephrat

al-Qantara, Vol 27, No 1 (2006)

Abstract: This article is part of a comprehensive study of the Sufis of medieval Palestine. At its heart resides the birth of locally embedded Sufi-inspired associations in this historical framework in the course of the Earlier Middle Period (late tenth to mid- thirteenth centuries). Drawing on the profiles of renowned Sufi traditionalists and legalists living in the Palestine of the time, the article highlights the assimilation of Sufis into the scholarly circles of the religiously learned, the ‘ulama’, and the social order.

It outlines how they perceived their role and place in society and disseminated the truth of Islam, and how, parallel with their integration into the world of the ‘ulama’ of the established legal schools (the madhhabs), they developed their own inner life and organizational forms and devised their own ways of integrating into the fabric of social and communal life. The early development of a coherent local Sufi congregation around the Sufi guide out of the loosely knit and dispersed circle of disciples is closely tied to the change in the concept of guidance for advancement along the Path and the change in the relationship between master and disciple.

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1 Apr 2010
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The Christians of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre and the Origins of the First Crusade

The Christians of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre and the Origins of the First Crusade

By Andrew Jotischky

Crusades, Vol.7 (2008)

Introduction: Crusader historians and Byzantinists have traditionally not agreed on very much, but on one point they have generally seen eye to eye. Crusading origins, notwithstanding the role of Emperor Alexios Komnenos in manipulating Western military aid, must be sought in the West, not the East. “The origins of the First Crusade lay in developments that took place within Catholic Christendom,” as a recent historiographical survey of crusading has underlined, and Byzantinists have agreed that crusading as a practice and set of ideals lay outside the Byzantine temper and understanding.

In the synthesis accepted by most historians, Alexios’ appeal for Western military support was intended to serve the aim of reconquering the lost territories of Asia Minor. Although the appeal to Pope Urban II at Piacenza in the spring of 1095 was only part of a network of contacts that he had already established with influential leaders of Western society, it remained for the pope to transform that appeal into an armed pilgrimage for the liberation of Jerusalem. That Urban II was able to do so is indicative of the orientation of Western piety in the late eleventh century, which looked toward Jerusalem. The increasing frequency of organized pilgrimage to Jerusalem, much of it deriving from Benedictine inspiration, the interest of reforming popes both in the physical relics of the Holy Land and in an ideology of liberation, and the aspirations of the laity to fulfil the requirements of penances, all appear to have combined to produce the crusade.

This synthesis, which explains neatly the incentives and aspirations of those who initiated and executed the crusade, makes sense of contemporary Western discussions of the expedition. Once the objective of Jerusalem had been attained, the chroniclers could present it as a justified cleansing of the Holy City; as a pilgrimage of the faithful to show their devotion to God by delivering Jerusalem from bondage; even as a singular event in the history of human salvation. In so doing, they made much in their reports of Urban’s preaching at Clermont of the threat posed by the Seljuq Turks to Christians in the East. But the role, aspirations and needs of those whom, according to most Western chroniclers, the expedition was intended to help – the “eastern Churches” referred to by Urban according to Fulcher of Chartres, Baudri of Bourgeuil, Robert the Monk and Guibert of Nogent – have been all but forgotten in current crusading historiography.

The prevailing view is that the chroniclers’ reports of Turkish atrocities are part of a pattern in which the enemy was demonized by employing stock descriptions of barbaric behaviour. Yet one of the fullest near-contemporary accounts, the chronicle of Albert of Aachen, makes the origin of the First Crusade hinge on the perceived injustice of Seljuq treatment of the indigenous Christians, and this version was taken up by William of Tyre, the twelfth-century historian of the Crusader States who has always enjoyed a reputation for serious-mindedness. It is also told in the Chanson d’Antioche, which is now acknowledged to have been one of the very earliest texts available to Albert as he wrote his chronicle. How, with this weight of evidence behind it, has this version come to be abandoned by historians?

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16 Feb 2010
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The acquisition of the landed estates of the Hospitallers in the Latin East, 1099-1291

The acquisition of the landed estates of the Hospitallers in the Latin East, 1099-1291

By Paul Sideklo

PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1998

Abstract: During the period of the Crusades (1099-1291), the Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jenisalem, or Hospitallers, developed into one of the largest institutional landholders in the Latin East and Europe. This thesis examines the acquisiton policy of the Order and documents the chronological and geographical distribution of its rural properties in the Latin East.

In addition to land, the Hospital also acquired fortresses, houses, and other edifices, as well as rights to people, animals, water, and vines. This thesis profiles the individuals and families who transferred property to the Order and discusses the relationship between benefactor and recipient. An additional area of exploration is the administration of these lands and the people who inhabited them.

As a monastic order, the Hospital largely acquired its landed estates through pious donations made by benefactors in return for spiritual rewards. These donations were augmented by strategic purchases, which demonstrate clearly that the Order actively pursued properties with the intention to consolidate land and to develop contiguous estates. The charters also suggest that rural settlement was more extensive than has previously been assumed. As settlers, the Hospitallers came into contact with the native population.

The evidence presented in this thesis indicates that the Order developed strong ties with many Syrian Christians, but maintained a distance fiom most Muslims. It is also suggested that the Franks employed a system of land tenure which had many parallels with that practiced in parts of Europe.

The primary sources used in this thesis are the charters of the archive of the Hospitaliers, of which nearly 600 related to the Latin East have been transcribed and edited by Delaville le Roulx in Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint- Jean de Jérusalem (1 100 – 1310). For ease of recall and reference, the charters have been coded and entered into a relational database according to person, property, and type of transfer. These documents have been supplemented by the charters of other property-holding institutions in the Latin East, as well as various Latin and Arabic chronicles of the Crusading period.

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18 Dec 2009
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The role of agriculture in Mamluk-Jordanian power relations

The role of agriculture in Mamluk-Jordanian power relations

By Bethany J. Walker

Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales, Vol.57, Suppl. (2008)

Introduction: Power politics between rulers and ruled need not always take the form of open conflict. Particularly in rural society, the exercise of and response to state power can express themselves in multiple, nuanced ways and through multiple channels, such as the administrative structure and management of agricultural lands. Power relations based on access to and control of rural land may alternate between cooption and coercion, on the part of the state, and cooperation, and resistance, on the part of local villagers and tribesmen. Such are the patterns that emerge from a combined analysis of written and archaeological data on Mamluk Jordan.

Today’s Jordan was, in the Mamluk period, divided into two different administrative regions: Mamlakat Kerak (the Province of Kerak) in the south and the southern safaqa (district) of Mamlakat Dimashq (the Province of Damascus) in the north. Together, the two regions were of great strategic and economic importance to the Mamluk state. In the mid-thirteenth century, Ayyubid princes still retained castles there, and the hajj route from Damascus to Mecca ran through its interior. The peoples of the region brought sultans to power: Kerak Castle, the “nursery” of and place of exile for Mamluk sultans, gave refuge to both al-Nasir Muhammad and Barquq during their political exiles, and its local tribes actively supported their return to the throne. By the fifteenth century, Kerak had become a hotbed of political discontent, where ambitious governors and amirs struggled for power within their own ranks and against the sultan himself. Such patterns of tribal support and amiral rebellion were not limited to Kerak, but characterized much of Jordan in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, making the region critically important to the stability of the state. The Mamluks’ fluid administration of the region, with shifting administrative borders and district capitals, was one way that Cairo co-opted local tribes, manipulated their alliances, and attempted to quell amiral rebellions. Jordan, moreover, served the state in another strategic way by providing Cairo with the horses on which its cavalry so heavily depended.

In terms of its economic importance, Jordan’s rich farmland was exploited to its maximum potential by the Mamluk state to support the iqta‘at that were the financial and social underpinnings of its military. In addition, the region produced for the Mamluks’ export market, namely the sugar industry, which was one of the highest profit agricultural sectors of the Mamluk economy. The foundation, however, of the Mamluks’ agricultural regime was grains: Jordan was a key supplier of wheat to Cairo, in times of shortages there, and regionally.

Its geography and human and natural resources thus made Jordan important to the Mamluk state on many levels. It is the power relations between the state and Jordanian peasants, however, that is the focus of this paper. Key to these relations was control over land, through tenure and planting decisions. Written and archaeological sources suggest that rather than being passive participants in the Mamluks’ agricultural regime, the fallahun did, at times, assert control over their own natural resources and markets. This paper builds on the seminal work of two Jordanian historians, who have written extensively on the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods: Drs. Yusuf Ghawanmeh (Yarmouk University), who has written many books and articles on Mamluk Jordan, and Muhammad Adnan al-Bakhit, (the University of Jordan), who has demonstrated the importance of the Ottoman period for Mamluk studies through his analysis of sixteenth-century tax registers (defters). All of us doing research on Mamluk Jordan are indebted to them for their many years of important and original scholarship.

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14 Dec 2009
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Richard I and the Science of Warfare

Richard I and the Science of Warfare

By John Gillingham

War and Government: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich, edited by John Gillingam and J.C. Holt (Boydell, 1984)

Introduction: So far as most historians are concerned there was no such thing as a science of war in the Middle Ages. This is a profoundly mistaken view, but for the purposes of this paper I propose to concentrate on one aspect of war only – strategy, the planning and conduct of campaigns, and in particular in the 12th and 13th centuries, though I shall try to draw out some of the wider implications for other periods.

My chief reason for this choice is the fact that strategy remains the most neglected area of medieval military history. It is true that the days when a book on the history of war turned out toe be little more than a history of battles are almost gone. Modern scholars have tended to investigate subjects like military obligation, organization, recruitment, pay, armament and the ethos of war – all of them important subjects. As a result most recent historians have been so busy getting their armies into the field that they have left themselves little room in which to consider what they did once they were there.

My own strategy will be twofold. First, to take Richard I’s military carer as a model of medieval generalship. Second, to use vernacular sources wherever possible, in the belief that the vernacular brings us close than Latin to the thoughts and actions of soldiers. In particular I have relied heavily on three chronicesl: L’Estoire de la Guerre Sainte by Ambroise; Joinville’s Life of St Louis; and Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle. Two of the three deal primarily with warfare in the Middle East and this is no accident. We know much more about crusading warfare than we do about contemporary warfare in the West and where we have more evidence it is easier to work out the logic behind military operations. Thus Richard’s reputation as a general rests very largely on his conduct of the war against Saladin but in fact, of course, he fought many more campaigns than this.

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5 Dec 2009
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Frontier Warfare in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Campaign of Jacob’s Ford, 1178-79

Frontier Warfare in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Campaign of Jacob’s Ford, 1178-79

By Malcolm Barber

The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, edited by John France and William G. Zajac (Ashgate,1998)

Introduction: The construction by the Latins of the fortress of Chastellet at the place known as ‘Jacob’s Ford’ or Bait el-Ahzan on the Upper Jordan between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee between October, 1178, and March, 1179, and Saladin’s subsequent and ultimately successful attempt to demolish it in August, 1179, offers an interesting case history for the study of Christian-Muslim warfare in the reign of King Baldwin IV. Although the sources are not copious, they tell us enough to be able to draw some tentative conclusions about the military, economic, and religious significance of a site desired by both sides and the nature of the warfare required to make those desires a reality. The picture which emerges is far removed from the traditional images of the the gallant leper king and the chivalrous Saladin; rather it is one of grim and often desperate conflict, no less brutal and ruthless than its counterparts on western Christendom’s other frontiers in Germany and Spain. Indeed, it could not have been otherwise, for control of this crossing was absolutely crucial to both sides in a way which it had not been in the past. More than any other military event between 1174 and 1187, the loss of this fortification began the process which led to the defeat of the Christians at Hattin. The situation was made all the more critical in that it took place in a year when, according to Imad ad-Din, Saladin’s secretary and chancellor, drought and famine were especially severe, the effects of which could only have been exacerbated by the wholesale seizure or destruction of the harvest.

According to one of the versions of the Old French chronicle of Ernoul, who was a contemporary with knowledge of high politics in the Latin kingdom, Baldwin IV had agreed not to fortify the place, but was persuaded by the Templars to renege on his promises. William of Tyre – who was often hostile to the Templars and had a particular hatred for Odo of Saint-Amand, the reigning Master – nevertheless says only that the king began to build the fortress, although he implies that the Templars were behind it, when he states that, on completion, it ‘was surrendered to the brothers of the knights of the Temple, who laid claim to all that region for themselves by concession of the kings’. A truce had indeed been made with Saladin after the Frankish victory at Mont Gisard (south-east of Ramla) in November of the previous year, but neither side seems to have been very committed to it, since the Franks had attacked Hamah in August, 1178, while Saladin’s preparations for a new campaign were fairly obvious. However, the Templars did have a particular interest in the area; in 1168 King Amalric had granted them the important fortress of Safad, which was only about fifteen kilometres (or half a day’s journey, according to Imad ad-Din) to the south-west. Safad – described by Imad ad-Din as ‘a nest of evil’ – dominated northern Galilee, but could not by itself prevent incursions from the east across the Jordan.

William of Tyre says that the castle at Jacob’s Ford took six months to build, although it was apparently not finished in mid-April, 1179, when the dying constable, Humphrey of Toron, was taken there. It was in the form of a square with very thick walls, described as of ’suitable height’ (ad convenientem altitudinem), and was situated upon a shallow hill (mediocriter eminens). On the Muslim side, the Mesopotamian chronicler, Ibn al-Athir, calls it ‘an impregnable fortress’, although perhaps exaggerating its strength added further gloss to the Muslim capture and destruction of it. In fact, neither writer actually saw it; much more detailed is the account of the Qadi al-Fadil, Saladin’s administrator. His description is contained in a letter to Baghdad incorporated into the patchwork of sources sewn together by the anthologist Abu Shama in the mid-thirteenth century. Al-Fadil either saw it himself or had his information directly from Saladin, since he often wrote letters on the sultan’s behalf.

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4 Dec 2009
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