relevance of the crusades

Modern Historiography: The Relevance of the CrusadesAuthor(s): KHURRAM QADIRSource: Islamic Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter 2007), pp. 527-558Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, IslamabadStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20839093 .Accessed: 12/12/2013 12:42

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Islamic Studies 46:4 (2007) pp. 527-558

Modern Historiography: The Relevance of the Crusades

KHURRAM QADIR

Abstract

Historiography in the modern West, particularly during the last century, has made many contributions to the study of the Crusades whereas Muslim scholars are few and

far between. Muslim contributions to this subject generally come from lands that

suffered from the event directly or they emanate from pens of Muslims who work in research institutions of the West today. A view that gained converts among Muslims

since the birth of Israel, which registered a surge among the intelligentsia of Pakistan

when Iraq was attacked, is that military advances of the West are an attempt to

achieve the unfinished agenda of the Crusades. However, not much seems to have been

written on the subject in the Muslim world. In contrast, European historians have

contributed considerably to the subject in recent times. Some of the works have been

reconciliatory and some defied the apologetic trend regarding the "modern crusade.,s

The present paper seeks to compare three British works in the light of general trend of

scholarship on this subject in the English language.

Introduction

When George W. Bush, the current President of the USA, used the term "crusade" in 2001 for his campaign against "terror," he was probably hoping to evoke in his national audience a sense of dignity and pride for the forthcoming endeavour. He may, however, not have bargained on projecting a sense of

persecution to the Muslim states of the third world, particularly those in the Middle East. The historic significance of the events during the first half of the second millennium CE, which constituted "The Crusades" cannot be denied either by the Muslims or Christians. However, it may be argued that the

Muslim interest in the crusades has been more out of curiosity than out of a sense of the relevance of these events in modern times. For the Christians of

Europe and America it appears that these events are still pertinent to their lives and thought since the concept behind them evokes a feeling of service to

God and righteousness. Even atheists in the West use the term "crusade" when

they refer to a relentless and dedicated effort for the promotion of what is

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

528 KHURRAM QADIR

good. In this sense the word is virtually synonymous with the term jihad in Muslim societies. None the less, this was not the meaning of the term when it was initially evoked. In the eleventh century Pope Urban II (d. 1099) initiated a movement for Christians to regain Jerusalem. The first "crusade" united

many conflicting identities within the Christian world, such as lay and

temporal authorities and feudal hierarchies which had been in conflict for centuries. As such, it is not surprising that the West has a romantic association with the event. The Muslim resistance to the crusades was sporadic, fragmented and lacked unity of a jihad for solidarity in the millat of Islam as

the Khildfah had all but ceased to be a unifying political force more than a

century prior to the first crusade. Its religious hegemony too had been under threat even in Asiatic regions where it still held a moral sway. In this climate, the Christian cohesion was in sharp contrast with the insular condition of

Muslim states that participated in or were affected by the crusades. It is perhaps for this reason that while historiography in the modern

West, particularly during the last century, has a wealth of contributions to make to the history of crusades, Muslim scholars are few and far between. In fact Muslim contributions, as and when they are to be found, are virtually confined to lands that directly suffered from the battles or they emanate from the pens of those Muslims who work in research institutions of the West

today. Recent events have, however, created a climate in which the advancing military or political might of America and its allies is viewed as an attempt to achieve the unfinished agenda of the crusades. This view has been gaining converts among Muslims since the birth of Israel but it registered a sudden

upsurge in the intelligentsia of Pakistan when President Bush attacked Iraq and

began to threaten Syria after the Palestinians had been pulverized by Israel.

Despite all this, it seems that not much has been written on the subject in the Muslim world. In contrast, the response of historians in Europe, particularly in Britain, has been phenomenal. There has been a virtual deluge of

scholarship, some of it reconciliatory, even embarrassed; some defiant,

occasionally accusatory; some afraid of the consequences of the "modern

crusade," seeking reassurance that such social fractures and conflicts are

transient; and yet others, going ahead with the study of individual events and

aspects related to the crusades that are locally or nationally relevant to their lives.

Background According to the Catholic Encyclopedia-}

The origin of the word [crusade] may be traced to the cross made of cloth and

1 The Catholic Encylopedia, available at: .


MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE RELEVANCE OF THE CRUSADES 529

worn as a badge on the outer garment of those who took part in these

enterprises. Medieval writers use the terms crux (pro cruce transmarine Charter

of 1284, cited by Du Cange s.v. crux), croisement 0oinville), croiserie (Monstrelet), 2

etc.

It further adds that Pope Urban II "convoked a council at Clermont-Ferrand" which was attended by 14 archbishops, 250 bishops and 400 abbots apart from a group of knights and several common people in November 1095. The Pope advocated a concerted effort to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, the people responded by taking vows and receiving the cross of red material to be worn on the shoulder, this may be the origin of the insignia of the "Red Cross" of later times and the tradition of badges of rank to be worn on the shoulder by European armies. Perhaps it would be germane here to briefly note that in the two or three centuries prior to the crusades, Catholicism had revived its

proselytizing activity in the regions of the north and east of Europe which had

not, until then, been absorbed into the Christian fold. Even the Germanic

peoples3 who formed the heartland of the Roman Empire were relatively latecomers in the Christian community as the Carolingian expansion provided the basis for this interrelated comity of kings.4

The several "crusades" which were undertaken lasted for nearly half a

millennium and may be divided into many phases. For our brief survey as a

perspective for review of recent historiography on the subject, a two phased distinction seems appropriate. The first phase lasted for two centuries (1095 1291 CE; till the fall of Acre] and was the more serious attempt when the likelihood of a relatively secure Christian hold over Palestine in general and the city of Jerusalem in particular seemed imminent. A second phase, which

lingered till the fifteenth century, was a more romantic movement which lacked intensity and is somewhat reminiscent of Don Quixote's adventures.

During the first phase the papal power rose to its zenith and is classified

by Southern as the "Age of Growth."5 It seems that the crusades were as much

2 See, < http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04543c.htm >. 3 L. S. Stavrianos, The World to 1500: A Global History, W. edn. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice

Hall, 1982), 190ff, classifies the conquests of the Germans as a "transformation rather than modification." He points out that they came from the Baltic region to occupy the lands of Central and Eastern Europe. He believes that they brought a class structure: 'At the top were

the nobles .... At the bottom was a class .... [who] could not be sold apart from [their land].' Although they had been at the frontiers of the Roman Empire at the time of its fall, The Franks and the Saxons took their time to convert to Christianity. 4 See, ibid.

5 R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), the work identifies the roots of the crusades in the papacy of Gregory VII (d. 1085).

Urban II took over the task of exploiting the popular appeal of the church for the common


530 KHURRAM QADIR

a ploy for diverting public attention from the problems of the church as a means to rally support for the beleaguered papacy.6 The holy land was a

meaningful target as a substitute of the 'promised land' of the Jews, particularly in view of the fact that the youngest competitor among the Semitic religions was in occupation of the original heartland of Christianity. The journey from 'martyrs' to 'inquisitors' had taken the church nearly a millennium and Johnson believes that 11th century Europe had become a 'total society' under the church.7

In initiating the crusades, Urban II may have hoped to enlist a body of

knights in the service of the cross or guardians of its church, what he got was a "mass movement which for the next two hundred years would become a

major focus"8 of the history of Europe and western Asia. However, it would be wrong to assume that only political motives and negative impulses such as anti-Muslim emotions powered the crusades. These only led to the final

adoption of the militant strategy. The church, it seems, became conscious of its failure to proselytize during the seventh and eighth centuries. Meanwhile,

Muslims had not only conquered regions of Asia and Africa from Christian states, they had also spread their faith into huge tracts of land where no other Semitic religions had penetrated.

Christianity, therefore first moved north and north east into "pagan" lands of Europe. By 1100 CE hardly a meaningfully populated and accessible

region was left in these parts for the faith of Christianity to penetrate.9 The

Christians to counter the power of the state on the one hand and the factionalism within the

College of Cardinals on the other. 6 See, Walter Ullmann, A Short History of the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1982), 165ff. 7 Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 67ff, says that the

"great tragedy of history and the central tragedy of Christianity" was that "the harmonious world order which had evolved, in the Dark Ages, on a Christian basis" was disturbed by a conflict between the church and the state. Although this may be a rather romantic view, there is no doubt that the pacifist Christian church had acquired military power and a militant outlook at the time of the crusades. Prior to this, the Frankish kings had been their support and, as a

consequence, it had become possible for kings to nominate popes. In this climate of utter

dependence, Gregory VII and Urban II turned to a call to arms. Ullmann says "the first effective infeudation carried out by the Papacy" was to declare the Normans, with whom peace had been

made in 1059AD, as the vassals of the Church. Further he adds the "Papal curia was to become the most powerful feudal court in Europe" during the next century and a half. See, Ullmann, A Short History of the Middle Ages, 138 f. 8 Joshua Prawer, The World of the Crusaders (New York: Quadrangle, 1972), 15. 9 See, Colin Mc Evedy, The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965),

41 ff. It may be argued that the concept of Europe as a continent was the outcome of the failure of the crusades to break the confinement of Christianity to lands within the limits of the northern rim of the Mediterranean on the one hand, and the lack of knowledge of the eastern

geography beyond the duchy of Moscow on the other. It may be considered ironic that in a leap



second phase of the crusades was a far less focused and rather sporadic residue which was brought to a close by the Ottoman Empire on the one hand and the secular, scientific, nationalistic and economic growth of Europe on the other. The romanticism of this endeavour may be seen as the expression of the common Christian's "acts of faith" where the venom of the inquisition was

initially preceded by the simple spirituality of group participation in "God's Work."

The present article, while reviewing the subject of recent scholarship related to the crusades in English, will focus more specifically on three different standpoints taken by Karen Armstrong,10 Carole Hillenbrand11 and

Christopher Tyerman,12 as representative of cross contextual and socio

political scholarship on the subject. To place the subject in context, a brief

survey of the events of the crusades is essayed, followed by a comment on the trends in recent scholarship. Topics addressed in English during the past two decades along with a discourse on socio-political scholarship on the subject in the past century will be discussed. Historiography as a literary and ideological

medium in the later colonial and post-colonial world are a subject of

Armstrong's study; the Muslim response is particularly visible in Hillenbrand's work, while an overview of the general scholarship on the

subject may be culled from Tyerman's book.13 The present article aspires to offer a comparative review of these three

erudite scholars from Britain who take three sides of the multi-dimensional studies on the subject of the crusades. This is the subject of the main body of the article entitled "the current divide." The main text is sub-classified as

'sources,' 'content and intent' and 'readership and utility.' The fact that all

three scholars whose books have been chosen are British does not essentially represent a bias except in so far as it indicates the limitation of the present author in being unable to access other European materials. The Americas have

not been represented partly because European studies in the United States have generally declined.

of logic through faith, the cultural legacy of the youngest of the Christians in the 11th century? the Germanic and Nordic races?became the saviour of the faith and brought about the final breach between the Orient and the Occident which had been growing since the schism between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. 10 Karen Armstrong, Holy War. The Crusades and Their Impact on Todays World (New York:

Doubleday, 1988). 11 Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999). 12 Christopher Tyerman, God's War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 13 These books have been used extensively in the second part of the article entitled "The Current

Divide," as such they have been referred to there with page numbers given in brackets. The reference data has bee given in notes 10,11 and 12 above, to suffice for these texts.


532 KHURRAM QADIR

These books represent the 'reconciliatory' or 'etic' attempt of Carole

Hillenbrand entitled The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, Karen Armstrong's analysis of implications for the modern world entitled Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World is also etic in a sense while Christopher Tyerman's voluminous God's War is emic. Although Tyerman aspires to restore the subject to the realm of neutral scholarship, his acknowledgement that his perspective, is and will remain European and British indicates an etic concern. His closest American counterpart is his ideal Steven Runciman, author of History of the Crusades }A

In choosing these three authors, the object is to identify the three major trends in the west today. Whereas on the surface, they appear to be two schools of scholarship, one which is interested in crusades as a

Christian/European enterprise for emic consumption; and the other which is interested in the vision of those who were, in a sense, its victims, in fact there is a trinity. The frankly emic is obvious and may easily be taken at face value but the etic ones bear closer scrutiny. While some of the formulations of those

seeking to understand the other side may be more incisive than the vision of a

partisan scholar from the Jewish or Muslim camp others may unconsciously be cast in 'their own image' by the analysts. This may be seen in the

scholarship across the board but has been highlighted in the writings of the two high profile female authors, one more scholarly than the other. In the case of Christopher Tyerman's book, the need for a chapter by chapter review has been obviated by the fact that his treatment in chapters and parts is consistent.

Trends in Recent Scholarship

The main threads that are visible in the scholarship on the crusades given below have been identified from the websites related to the crusades and those which provide bibliographies for university courses15 as well as from the

bibliographies of books listed above. In particular, reliance has been placed on the information available at the website of Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East [SSCLE]16 and bibliographies given in course

14 Steven Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951-1954). 15 Some examples of the bibliographies available are: ; < http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/readerserv/history/crusades, htm >; < http://crusades.boisestate.edu/admin >; < http://history.cc.ukans.edu/history/subje ct_tree/01/bibl/kansas/ > and Paul HalsalPs bibliography etc. 16

. The term "Latin East" is an interesting geographic innovation which refers to the regions of the Eastern

Mediterranean as it depicts certain characteristics of the "Latin" culture emanating from Rome but includes areas that are non European and as such not part of the "Latin West" so to speak.



outlines for students by different universities. The current review does not

refer extensively to individual articles because the number is too large to be

encapsulated here. However, the books have been referred to at length as they

seem to be representative of the socio-political, religious and cultural trends. In all seven broad types of material constitutes the corpus of historiography on

the crusades in English.

The field of medieval studies is apparently quite popular in the Christian world today, its secular image notwithstanding. Reference has been made above to two testimonies from literature and research corroborating this view.

The increase in literature on the crusades in the past two decades is clearly visible in bibliographies of university courses where authoritative older texts are bound to be placed alongside current developments in the field. The establishment of a Society exclusively devoted to the "Study of the Crusades and the Latin East" stands out for the commitment of individuals which led to

the formation of an institution. During the last 25 years, the SSCLE held conferences every four years; it has more than 400 members some of whom are so prolific that they have been publishing at least one piece annually since

they joined the Society. This prolific output is, however, not its only contribution. The Society has been producing an annual journal since 2002. If this Society is the most prolific and organized of the bodies which are devoted to scholarship on the subject of the crusades, others are not far behind. The literature devoted to studies of the crusades and subjects related to them during the past decade or so are listed on more than a hundred web pages.

Biographies of personalities involved in the crusades focus on historians of

the crusades as well as leading personalities or groups such as William of

Tyre (d. 1425), 'Imad al-Din [Zangi] (d. 540/1145), Bah? al-Din, Nur al-Dln

[Zangi] (d. 569/1174), King Richard [the loin heart] (d. 1199), Saladin [Salah al-Din] (d. 589/1193) , Peter the Hermit (d. 1115), Raymond IV of St. Giles

(d. 1105), Saint Louis (d. 1270), Joscelyn III (d. between 1190 and 1200), Frederick Barbarossa (d. 1190), Frederik II (d. 1250), Pope Gregory IX

(d. 1241), Godfrey of Bouillon (d. 1100), Raymond III of Tripoli (d. 1187), Otho of Grandison, Adhemar of Le Puy (d. 1098), Baldwin of Flanders, Bohemond I (d. 1111), Manuel II Paleologus (d. 1425), Robert Monachus, Francois de Moncada, Usamah ibn-Munqidah, Rutebeuf; the Knights of

Saint John or Order of the Hospital, the Knights Templar, Knights of

Malta, etc. Some of these figures and groups such as King Richard and

Saladin or the Knights Templar are dealt with in a greater number of works

than others partly because they invoke romantic or idyllic images, partly because they are considered more epochal or vital actors and occasionally because they are more controversial.


KHURRAM QADIR

Social histories mainly concentrate on the "Crusaders' Kingdoms" and the

life of the crusading Europeans in the "Latin Middle East." One may consider the art and architecture of castles and churches in crusader

kingdoms as a byproduct of social history although the scholarship in this

field is enough to merit a separate section if social and cultural history was

to be divided into subsections. The first conference of the SSCLE in fact

focused on the crusader settlements and led to considerable contributions to

the literature on that subject. Scholarship in English language tends to

romanticize the crusading life but it also has undertones of the cross-cultural

interaction between the crusaders and the "Latin East."

Institutions such as Papacy, monarchy and feudalism, the arts of warfare

and commerce, military histories, Canon Law and diplomacy are some of

the issues of political and administrative studies of the crusades. These tend

to be romanticized also; however, the socio-cultural implications which

appear from time to time may provide clues to cultural history. Elements of

open admiration for the society of the Latin East are intermixed with

grudging acknowledgements and implicit undertones of the achievements in

the Latin East in Crusading times.

New source material and bibliographic studies include letters of the

crusaders, "The Capture of Damietta" by Oliver of Paderborn,17

chronicles/documentary surveys of the crusades, translations of Arab and

Jewish historians of the crusades and studies of material remains,

particularly in the form of numismatic evidence. It is possible that the most

graphic representation of the events that constitute the crusades is in the

form of an atlas.

Specific groups and places with reference to their representation in the

crusades have been studied to assess the condition of the Jews, the role of

the Catalans, the Genoese, military religious orders, the Ibelings in Syria and Cyprus, Cilicians of Armenia and the kingdom of Valencia. The

modern age is unwilling to perceive history without the "marginalized" groups and the sources on the crusades oblige by providing evidence of the

"children's crusade" and representation of women, even the gay community has been ferreted out by persistent scholarship.

Individual studies of the crusades led to separate works which concentrated on each of the several crusades or on crusades directed toward or initiated

from a specific region. Thus the Baltic or Prussian crusades, etc. show how

the crusades were not confined to war against the Muslims, but also non

Christian Europe. In a sense the crusades were a means of spreading

Christianity by the sword. Not only to the lands from which it had been

17 Oliver of Paderborn, The Capture of Damietta, tr. J. J. Gawigan (Philadelphia: University of

Pensylvania Press, 1948).



pushed back by the spread of Islam but also to lands which had never been within its fold.

Perspective studies which take a sort of partisan position on the event

include the works of stray non-Europeans like Amin Maalouf,18 and John

Godfrey.19 These may be considered precursors of two out of the three

books that have been made the kernel of this review.

It is noteworthy that monks and hermits compete with the papacy as the most popular subjects for publication in the above categories. Predictably, biographic literature is more than any other single category while studies of

specific crusades in the form of text books or source books for researchers are a close second. What is remarkable is the volume of material on castles and towns as their relevance for the modern reader is mainly derived from

curiosity. Gender and homosexuality are, of course, of topical value in the modern West; however, children and the common citizens played a prominent enough role in the crusades to merit scholarly attention. Nonetheless,

collectively both types of marginalized communities have an equal but

marginal share in the scholarship on the crusades. Social histories, etc., because of the fact that they involve much interpretation and inference, are slow to

compete with narratives and analysis of military and political history. By the same token, histories of specific communities and comments on

historiography, since they involve collation and integration in addition to

comparative analysis and inference are fewer in number and less extensive in

scope. The content of the available scholarship covers cultural histories,

exchanges in the form of contributions of different groups to other societies, debates regarding origin and ethnicity of concepts and practices, etc. Subjects such as geography, demography, mass psychology, sociology, historiography, economy and linguistics provide scope for analysis of implications of events

during the crusades on the general course of history. This general interest

acquires specific implications for identities in the modern age. Naturally, each "nation" is interested in tracing the contributions of

people who inhabited its region during the time. This localized interest

obviously does not reflect the existence of these nations during the time of the crusades but rather the glorification by association. Similar parochial considerations have led to a wealth of translations to provide the local national reader with accessible information. Searching through bibliographies it

18 Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, tr. Jon Rothschild (London: Al Saqi Books, 1984). 19 John Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).


536 KHURRAM QADIR

appears that post-colonial Europe has had a surge of interest in the subject. If one may attribute half the increase to a general increment in research and

publication throughout the West, still we have perhaps a 200% increase in the

popularity of the subject of the crusades in the last fifty years or so. The list of

virtually unending bibliographies is inflated due to the fact that there are

separate lists for each of the several crusades.

The Current Divide

Whereas trends of socio-cultural, military and political histories, biographies and local or regional sketches may have registered an increase, they do not

present a new trend in the scholarship related to the crusades. The new trend in studies on the subject is essentially an outcome of the conceptual foundations laid by The End of History10 and the Clash of Civilizations21

whereby the universal villain ceased to be the evil empire of the Soviet Union and was replaced by Muslim Fundamentalism. While serious scholars on the

subject of the crusades did not turn their intellectual energy to Muslim bashing "crusades," political statements and media projections started using the

terminology of the crusades to galvanize support in the "Christian" world. These gave some legitimacy to the perception in the "Muslim" world that the American advances in and around the "holy land" were, at least in part, an

attempt to reopen the unfinished agenda of the crusaders. Two books appeared in quick succession to challenge this trend, the more

popular and more direct was the work of Armstrong which addresses the

implications of the crusades in the modern world; the more scholarly and

explicit was Hillenbrand's book which focused on the Muslim perspectives. In

assessing the crusades from the 'other side' Hillenbrand cautions western historians to consider the consequences of a one-sided approach to the subject. The effect seems to have been strong enough for Tyerman to reaffirm the western/British perspective in a voluminous "New History of the Crusades," entitled God's War. Here we will analyze the content and intent of the three

authors, comment upon the readers to whom they address themselves and make a general statement of the utility of their analysis for the oriental/Muslim as well as the occidental/Christian readers.

Sources

The general trends of recent scholarship in English are only partially reflected

20 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 21 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).



in bibliographies of the three books which have been selected. Since the three books have been chosen as much for their scholarship as for variation in

perspectives, this lack of similarity with the general classification of

scholarship on the subject was to be expected. Among the three, Tyerman's book alone falls into the general classification of a text or source book on the

subject, even this is not merely a text book. Implicitly it is a response to the other two works which are somehow seen as apologetic and fall into the

category listed last among the seven groups noted above. While Hillenbrand's work is academic in nature, Armstrong's writing has a popular slant. A review of the bibliographies of the three sources also depicts the nature and intent of their scholarship.

Armstrong, whose quasi-atheistic and contemporary vision focuses on the fate of the Middle East and the coexistence of the three Semitic faiths has a mixture of modern and pre-modern references. As her primary interest is not in history and historiography of the crusades, the bibliography includes books on the Muslim history long before the crusades on the one hand and histories of the modern Middle East on the other. Her study even takes her to

impressionistic literature such as Miracles and the Medieval Mind,22 A Late Divorce23 A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry24 etc. Most of Armstrong's bibliography consists of works in the English language but a few titles from the European languages are also found. Research in non-European languages does not seem to be her forte; as such she seems to supplement the images of Islam and Judaism from western sources with her personal dealing with the

Muslims and Jews in Israel and Palestine, etc. Needless to say that they are

depicted in a very human light since Armstrong is an advocate of reconciliation between the creeds and coexistence between the communities.

As mentioned earlier, there is a dearth of literature on the crusades in oriental

languages throughout history which is accentuated by the wealth of European scholarship on the subject in modern times; as such Armstrong has been forced to rely on reviews of Arab Muslim historiography such as Amin

Maalouf,25 E. Sivan26 and Francesco Gabrieli.27

As the title of her book suggests, Carole Hillenbrand is more interested in the history and historiography of the crusades. Unlike Armstrong, she is

22 Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). 23 Abraham B. Yehoshua, A Late Divorce, tr. Hillel Halkin (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1985). 24

Adonis, Mahmud Darwish and Smith al-Qasim, Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry, tr. Abdullah al-Udhari (London: Saqi Books, 1985). 25

See, n. 18 above. 26 E. Sivan. LTslam (Paris: Librairie d' Amerique et d' Orient, 1968). 27 Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades (New York: Dorset Press, 1989).


538 KHURRAM QADIR

responding to the imbalance caused by Western historiography and

consequently focuses on the "Islamic Perspective." Since the Islamic, [sic.

Muslim] perspective is not well represented in the historiography of the Muslims contemporary with the crusades nor is it a major subject of study in modern times; she has to revert to European sources or modern day comments on the subject. As the work addresses the more academic reader rather than the popular mind, its bibliography is not only more extensive and follows erudite classifications such as "primary" and "secondary" sources,

translations and original language texts, etc.

Being capable of translating Arabic sources, Hillenbrand [who partially translated the TaYikh Mayyafdriqin of Abd Allah b. Muhammad Ibn alAzraq (d. 550/1194)] studied several of the works in original Arabic texts. In fact,

given the primary concern with the Muslim reports on the subject, she has

hardly referred to any non-Muslim original sources. While this testifies to her

high moral integrity, it may be considered a minor academic blemish because the Muslim sources have not been compared or contrasted with original Christian sources. However, the deficiency has, to some extent, been

overcome in the secondary material where the balance again shifts towards Christian/Western sources. Of Armstrong's three sources for Muslim

historiography, Amin Maalouf is absent in Hillenbrand's bibliography. A few modern Muslim historians of the crusades are also listed among

Hillenbrand's secondary sources. This varied bibliography has made it possible for her to encompass the Muslim perspective. However, an essential

concomitant is that the work is not able to present a comprehensive view of the crusades as such. What emerges from the discourse is more a set of socio

cultural and military responses to the event than the evolution of a parallel process. This is a predictable outcome of the nature of the Muslim response since they, like the Jews and Christians of the "holy land," were only respondents in the series of challenges emanating from Christian expansionism of west/central Europe.

Christopher Tyerman's bibliography is markedly distinct from that of the two ladies as it relies heavily and almost exclusively on

Christian/European historiography. In one sense it is entirely traditional as it lies within the current tradition of literature on the subject. It reaches back into sources contemporary with the crusades and expands into modern

scholarship as close to the time of its publication as possible. Tyerman has not

given a formal bibliography as such but more than sixty pages of end notes

provide a fairly accurate idea of the range of sources. In addition, a list of "Select Further Reading" indicates the direction he would advocate to his readers. This is in consonance with the nature of the book as a text for



advanced students having a special interest in the subject. Given the fact that this is Tyerman's fourth book on the crusades in

eighteen years, with England and the Crusades, 1095-15881* as the first, followed first by The Invention of the Crusades19 and then Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusaded, one can imagine the author's

personal knowledge and interest in the subject. Only in the 'select' list, we

find fifteen important books on the subject that came out within a decade of God's War. These neither include translations of works on the crusades nor

titles that do not use the term crusade. In modern scholarship, the earliest book given by Tyerman in his "Select" list dates to 1902 but, as his list of abbreviations indicates; he delved into collected histories of the 18th and 19th centuries in search of secondary sources. Predictably nearly all the books have either been published in England or America, with an almost equal share to both countries. This suggests that the share of British scholarship in the

English-speaking world is larger than its geographic and demographic size, while the share of Americans is small. Thus, though American scholars appear to have lost interest in the subject it seems it is still quite popular among

American readers.

Content and Intent

Karen Armstrong is "no longer a believing or a Practicing Christian" (p. xi), but she is a champion of interfaith dialogue. She originally published her book in 1988 but added a new preface to it after 9/11. The most significant statement of the post 9/11 preface is that the Crusades were central to the new

Western identity which persists to the present. Even in the original introduction she was conscious of the fact that, in the West, children have

images of a "magical and impractically poetic" (p. ix) era of the crusades and "unless we ... specialize in Medieval History" (p. ix) the romantic image persists through life.

Armstrong's thesis is that not only is it impossible to convince people rationally and logically that a religious conflict of interest between the three monotheistic Semitic faiths is counterproductive, but that such an expectation is illogical or depressing. People should not be expected to abandon tangible and geographic reference points that lie at the heart of religious devotion but when they lead to violent and incessant conflict some kind of solution is called

28 Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades 1095-1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1988). 29 Idem, The Invention of the Crusades (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 30 Idem, Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2004).


540 KHURRAM QADIR

for. Armstrong argues that the crusades have created a historical reality which

virtually precludes coexistence between Christians, Muslims and Jews. She, however, builds on this thesis the view that in the light of historical data and

socio-political realism the "political will" necessary for social accommodation and religious tolerance is a possible means to overcome the historical

imperatives unleashed by the crusades. Material and mundane settlements for

tangible sharing of the common space rather than ideological and missionary orthodoxy is the way forward.

If, on the other hand, tangible symbols of religion are exploited to

emotionally charge the communities, atrocities in the name of faith rupture communal harmony. One may agree with this view on the note that

emotionally charged communities cannot indefinitely sustain a fever pitch of

animosity. Seeking the roots of the crusades in European soil and the origin of

religious intolerance in human nature, Armstrong's concern from the start is

the relationship between the Jews and Arabs in the present. It is interesting that in this instance the group which is identified with

faith is the Jews while the Arabs are viewed as an ethnic/tribal entity. Generally today ethnic groups who are Muslims are identified by religion rather than culture or socio-political identities. It is also noteworthy that the

Jews are not subjected to a euphemism to give them the legitimacy of secularism. Since the British support to Judaism emerged from an a-secular

guilty conscience in association with Europe's anti-secular anti-Semitism while

it was "secularizing" the world, this cultural and linguistic Freudian slip becomes a personal one when Armstrong subtitles her third chapter as "The Present Conflict: Jews and Arabs Seek a New Secular Identity." How a

religious entity may seek a secular identity would need some sophisticated philosophic explanation. Perhaps the expedient of referring to the state of Israel was not chosen in order to highlight the irony of this two sided quest.

Armstrong alternates between the past and the present in the three parts which are the basis for the epilogue entitled the "Triple Vision". The first part is entitled a "Journey to a New Self" (pp. 1-146) and consists of three chapters, two of which essentially relate to the past while the third focuses on

contemporary times. The second part, entitled the "Holy War" (pp. 147-370) consists of five chapters of which three focus on stages during what we have termed the first phase of the crusades and two relate to the near contemporary scene. Part three (pp. 371-530) also has three chapters, two relate to the first

phase of the crusades while the third takes a long view of dynamics which

integrate the second phase of the crusades with the present. Apparently the study of early Christianity in Israel forced the significance

of the crusades in modern times on the mind of Armstrong. She writes "ruins



of the Crusader castles were powerful reminders of another Western state

which ... seemed to have been just as worried about national security as the state of Israel today" (p. x). While a poignant similarity between the past and the present emerged from political realities, the palpable trauma of the communities and its persistent nexus with British policy in the "Middle East"

emanating from social discourse brought home the potential connection with a remoter past. The skeptical reader might allege that by including the crusaders of Europe in the guilt of crusades, the British burden of

responsibility in the present state of affairs could be mitigated on grounds of a

shared cultural heritage. The oriental Muslim reader is, however, likely to consider it a double indictment and a testament to her forthrightness.

Armstrong claims that her object is to establish a "triple vision" since the drama in the Middle East through the last millennium has three parties. Thus, she tries "to consider the position and point of view of Jews, Christians and

Muslims" (p. xiii)31 throughout her study. She goes on to suggest that great

"tragedies have occurred when one tradition has sought to eliminate the other two ...." Armstrong admits that she is "not a professional historian" and no

'rival' of the historians "who have devoted their lives to the study of the Crusades." Some of them are sources for the "triple vision" while others typify impassioned scholarship of intercultural studies of the Middle East. Armstrong hopes to provide "an alternative to a purely rational view" and see "the power of emotions as a force." "This," she says, "is a history of myths, emotions and

religious passions" (p. xiv). The first chapter of Holy War identifies the common heritage of violence

in monotheistic devotion, pilgrimage, fundamentalism, morality and justice in the Semitic religions. In order to trace these common elements and place them

in historical context, Armstrong gives a brief history of each faith to depict the seeds of pacifism and violence in them due to sanctity of land, pilgrimage and

morality through historical experience. Having placed all the three religions within 'her' perspective, Armstrong focuses on the misgivings that Christians had owing to Muslim expansionism in Europe during the Middle Ages and with the ascendant and assertive Muslims of modern times. Here she fails to address the Jewish and Muslim misgivings, arising from consistent Christian

aggression for nearly a millennium, and the lack of misgivings between the

31 The change in the form of referencing is deliberate and is intended as a methodological innovation. While the previous references, if added in running text, would have distracted the

reader, giving endnotes or even foot notes for references to a continuous comment on a single book is not only space consuming but also can be quite absurd as an unlimited series of ibid without any additional purpose beyond providing page numbers. It does not seem rational to

accept a convention which has no utility in a given context.


542 KHURRAM QADIR

Jews and Muslims. It seems remarkable that Armstrong, who advocates rapprochement

between the Semitic religions, is keen to explore the divide between cultural and religious norms of Eastern and Western Europe in her second chapter. She is obviously partisan in approach and inclined to glorify the Germanic

parochial defiance of unity with the Byzantine orthodoxy when she mentions that "they resented the way the Greeks obviously looked down upon them"

(p. 50). We might infer from this chapter that Armstrong secretly admires the "New Christian Soul" acquired by the West "Before the Crusades" and

approves of the replacement of the Byzantine Emperors by the Frankish descendents of Charles Martel (d. 741 Ce) as "chief secular protector[s]" of the

Papacy. No doubt this was propitious for the Catholic faith as it led to a sudden

increase in its followers with the creation of the Roman Empire in 800 ce and the resultant northern and eastern expansion of Christianity that followed the

rising fortunes of the Franks. While one part of the New Christian Soul derived from the political and military might of the Roman Emperors, Armstrong argues that the other emerged from the Cluniac Monks, their monasteries and Churches. The third element of this soul came from the militarization of Europe that started with the expansion of the Franks and turned inward to terrorize the common people. This militarization, according to Armstrong, was harnessed and later turned south and east as a result of Cluniac beliefs and practices to lead to the crusades. In any event, Armstrong's contention is that at the beginning the crusades were "a mixture of popular,

monastic and secular motives" (p. 75). Karen Armstrong dates the roots of the "Present Conflict" to 1882 when

the Jews who were displaced by Tsar Alexander HI (r. 1881-1894) reached Palestine. Quite correctly, she does not ascribe any aggressive intent to them.

However, the peaceful rehabilitation of the Jews in the "promised land" when evicted from various European states goes much further back to the middle

period of the Ottoman Empire. We might distinguish the early phase from the one described by the Holy War since the earlier settlers did not intend to recreate Zion. Armstrong then traces subsequent phases of anti-Semitism, she

has chosen her watershed well since the Germans and Russians were more active in this period.

Armstrong distinguishes between Jews from "Eastern Europe" and those

who were "European Jews" (p. 78). Here is another manifestation of the difference of her perception between the Byzantines and the Franks as in the

previous chapter. In this, the third chapter of her book, Armstrong has traced the contributions of the Jews and the British in the establishment of the state



of Israel placing it on one hand within the context of internal grouping within the Jewish community and on the other in the declining hold of the colonial world order dominated by Britain. Here Armstrong leans heavily on literature to depict the feelings of the communities.

The counter-anti-Semitism of the modern world, however, leads

Armstrong to anomalous statements. Thus she says that prior to 1948 the British and Arabs "often appeared to be stubborn and one sided on the

question of Palestine ...."in contrast with the attitude of the Zionists at that time (p. 99). Surely people who had nothing but hope of gaining a foothold

were in no position to make demands while those who had something to lose in almost all eventualities were unlikely to give any concessions. In point of fact it was only the British who had a choice between being stubborn or

accommodating to either side and they were stubbornly in favour of the Jews. After tracing the roots of the problem to the creation of Israel, Armstrong turns to the post Arab Israeli war period.

The second part of the Holy War follows the pattern of the first except in that three of its chapters relate to the period of the crusades and two relate to the present. The chapters on the crusades play on the concepts of Jihad and Crusade and the religious versus secular nature of the conflict. The chapters on

the modern period deal with the middle phase of the present conflict under the title "Zionism Becomes a Holy War" as of 1967 and "Holy War and Peace" in 1981. The romance of crusades is palpable in Armstrong's narrative despite a critical view of the actions of the crusaders in this section as well. The

personal and individual state of mind of the commoner and the nobleman is

delicately interwoven with the collective and mass psyche of the crusaders in a fine literary discourse bringing to life the magic of the crusades with an undercurrent of realism.

The first chapter of this part "The Crusade Becomes a Holy War and

Inspires a New Jihad" is a statement of the process whereby the Muslims who were not collectively inclined to wage a jihad were forced to it by "the Crusaders' brutal behavior." While the first chapter dealt with the period from 1096 to 1146 as a whole, the second chapter deals exclusively with the second crusade from 1146 to 1148. Armstrong's condemnation of Louis of France

(d. 1180) is strictly rational but there is an undercurrent of disappointment that Louis' misplaced piety resulted in the failure of the venture. However, in this chapter, Armstrong is most explicitly pro-Islam and pro-Orient. She talks of cultural interaction with the people of the Middle East and of the practice of "peaceful coexistence" among the Semitic religions in the Muslim states of that time.


544 KHURRAM QADIR

The third of the chapters dedicated to the crusades deals with the period between 1168 and 1192. This is the period of Salah al-Din [Yusuf b. Ayyub] Ayyubi (r. 569-589/1174-1193), termed Saladin by the Europeans. Armstrong's title declares this the period of "A Religious Jihad and a Secular Crusade." Though Armstrong is skeptical of Ayyubi's motives, she asserts that he wanted peace with the Christians and had "never broken a truce in his life"

(p. 244-5). Why this crusade is to be considered secular is not quite clear

except to the extent that there was no real aspiration of piety involved. In this

chapter, unlike the previous one, however, the author seems more exasperated with the frankly worldly considerations of the crusaders.

While the crusaders were generally portrayed to be in the wrong during the second and third crusades, it is the Arabs who are declared the party

responsible for the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, and the aggression of the Jews for the next twenty years is rationalized. Once again the sympathetic treatment of the Jews and the assessment of their fears, aspirations and even their failings is marked. Armstrong tends to justify them on the grounds of mass psychology, in contrast the Arabs are seen as irrational and unduly aggressive even though the argument of mass psychology would apply to that community as well. The Jewish group that does not receive unequivocal understanding, given Armstrong's inclination towards the secular, is the religious community in Israel.

Predictably the only creditable leader among the Arabs is Anwar-us-Sadat

[Anwar al-Sadat] (d. 1402/1981) despite his offensive in 1973. His death in 1981 and its aftermath form the body of the fifth chapter of part two. Sadat is likened to Salah al-Din Ayyubi because he was a Muslim revered by the West.

However, the psychoanalysis of his personal life suggests that he did not merit this exalted comparison. The discussion on the modern Arabs and their leaders takes Armstrong back and forth through the "revolutionary" movements in

Islam from the time of the Prophet (peace be on him). This is, to some extent,

comprehensible; however, the chapter is less coherent than others perhaps because European perceptions regarding modern Muslim society intrude somewhat unnecessarily.

In the third part of her book, Armstrong has tried to answer the question "Are there really a connection and a tradition that link our current Western

policies and prejudices with the Crusades?" (p. 374). Her first step is to "look in some detail at the development of the crusading ethos in Europe after ... the failure of the Third Crusade." She points out that henceforth the importance of the crusades for people in the Middle East, Christians and Muslims alike, vanished. However, she says that the issue remained alive for the Christians of

Europe and led them into a crusade which was essentially against the Christian



empire of Byzantium and the Catharists of France. In Armstrong's view this is the root of all the religious strife in Europe since that time including the wars between Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation and after as well as the modern struggle in Ireland. She goes so far as to suggest that the views of

Pope Innocent III (Pope 1198-1216) are rather similar to modern day leaders in the West who are chanting slogans against "terrorists" (p. 395). Her criticism aside, the main theme of the chapter is the concept that, in one form or the other, Europe had fallen into the habit of crusading.

The tenth chapter of the Holy War deals with the second century of the first phase of the crusades. Frederick and Louis led these crusades between 1220 and 1291 with no meaningful result. Armstrong tells of the characters at the helm of affairs on both sides with much sympathy and compassion. She sees the failed attempt at coexistence as a failure of the two communities but without condemnation. In this chapter, in particular, one is able to sense the reverence that she has for the teachings of Islam and even for the Muslim communities before her time.

In the last chapter before the "Epilogue," (pp. 531-539) Armstrong traces the history of intolerance and religious persecution in Europe through seven centuries. This is a well constructed description based on the hypothesis that

religious and orthodox beliefs alone are forces behind human intolerance. That cultural norms leading to nationalism and imperialism, colonialism and secularism or those emanating from capitalism or socialism could as easily trigger intolerance is not even considered. We may argue that the crusades evolved from the culture of Germanic and Norman Europe and the culture of Renaissance Europe evolved from the crusades. Armstrong does bring to light incidents of religious tolerance as well as cultural inconsistencies of various

nations. However, the main thrust is that "old religious fantasies had been

translated into new racial myths" (p. 510). Balfour is labelled a "true Crusader"

(p. 521) but it is impossible for Armstrong to deny the colonial flavor of the modern experience. In a sense she has overcome this by suggesting that to

some extent the original crusades were a colonial enterprise.

The "Epilogue" appeals to rational and realistic statesmen to consider that

"religious geography" and "tangible" relics are as rational as state and interstate

considerations. Feeling is as real as fact and religion as potent as politics even in the educated mind. She concludes that "In the Christian West we must ...

embark on a long journey toward a new understanding and a new self." She is

particularly conscious that "We are also involved in the conflict and must make our own attitudes our prime responsibility" (p. 539).

o o o


546 KHURRAM QADIR

Hillenbrand's The Crusades consists of nine chapters, several illustrations, figures and plates apart from glossaries, chronologies and dynastic tables, etc. It is thus invaluable as a source book as well as a history from "the other side."

Not only is it as voluminous as Armstrong's work but it also deals with the

legacy of the crusades in various forms. In the concluding chapter "The

Heritage of the Crusades" this legacy is discussed in detail but some references are to be found in other chapters as well. She has a keen interest in the Jihad and the "Counter-Crusade" which is a continuous thread through her discourse. Hillenbrand is also interested in perceptions and feelings, unlike

Armstrong, however, the interest is less intuitive and is confined to the Muslim perspective alone, except in so far as her interpretation and selection of facts may have intruded into her discourse. There seems to be an innate asceticism and scholarship that pervades Hillenbrand's enterprise.

Her first concern is to try and balance "the skewed picture of the Crusades in Western scholarship" (p. xxxvii) by addressing the "antagonistic period in the history of Arabo-Islamic and Euro-Christian relations." The second is that the illustrations should not only place the "text within a visual context" but fill gaps or "function as a kind of subtext" to project omissions and errors of Muslim historians because "material remains" are "devoid of bias" (p. xli). Hillenbrand is eager to record at the outset that she has only given an outline of the "detailed response of Muslims to the Crusader

presence" because this is "a pioneering venture" in this field. She feels that

"great benefit [is] to be derived" from studying the Muslim side for "the non Muslim reader living in a so called secular age ... to see what lessons can be

learned and what insights gleaned" (pp. 2-3). It seems that Hillenbrand also wishes that the Muslims should learn some lessons on how to respond to the modern West in the light of how their ancestors "coexisted, indeed on occasion collaborated with the invading Franks." It appears that she has failed to notice that many Muslim rulers and peoples are still coexisting and

collaborating with the West.

Hillenbrand tries to weave together an account of the "political and

military story" of the crusades with the "ideology and motivation of both sides" as well as "the social and economic interaction" of the time. It is in the

study of the ideology and motivation of the actors in the crusading event that a comparison of the then contemporary Christian and Muslim texts would

have been most fruitful. Hillenbrand attempts a "thematic approach which addresses the broader ideological and socio-cultural issues" but, because of the "rather murky Realpolitik" of the period, "much of the book ... inevitably focuses on military aspects of the Muslim-Crusader confrontation." Since

Muslims viewed crusaders much the same as any other enemy, the image of



the crusades as a movement is not visible in their sources. The content of Hillenbrand's book is thus derived from responses to the Frankish invasion. Hillenbrand's "Prologue" apart from introducing the book, gives a general survey of the sources available to her as well as "A Short Historical Overview" of the crusades; essentially a sketch of the narrative that is to follow.

The second chapter of the book which outlines the situation in the "Muslim world" of the time and Muslim "Reactions" to the first crusade is a rather meandering discourse which moves from topic to topic without

developing a central theme. History, historiography and the varied responses in the fragments that formed the state system of the Muslims are interspersed

with comments on the "Spirit of the Times" and "Muslim Disunity" and followed by a Tailpiece. The chapter however has a constant refrain, which is the fact that the Muslims were a weakened and fragmented political entity. It would take the new Muslim states emerging from this flux a century or so to

regroup. In setting the stage for the analysis that is to follow, Hillenbrand suggests

that there was a sudden collapse of unity and power in Muslim states during the years 485-487/1092-94 due to the death of several prominent political figures. This seems to be an oversimplification; the transition had long been in

progress as the Khilafat had been losing power to the Amirs on the one hand and due to religious fragmentation on the other. As in Europe, the Muslim

religious monolith broke into two parts, one of which retained a sort of unity for some time while the other, rather like the Western Roman Empire, formed several states within a short time. However, there is no gainsaying the fact that there was a vacuum of power in the region of the Holy Land at the time when the Franks landed as crusaders. Hillenbrand affirms that some

Muslims were aware of the plans of the Franks while others saw their incursion as part of a general offensive from the northern rim of the

Mediterranean. Since the "Muslim World" was not a monolith this, therefore, does not mean that all Muslim states saw the crusades in the same light.

Hillenbrand's subdivision of this chapter into "Seljuq Disunity," "Anatolia in the Late Eleventh Century," "The Egyptian Perspective," etc.

highlights the Muslim disunity but in effect reduces the description to a

political history of each component. On the other hand sections like "The

Debilitating Effects of Religious Schism" focus on the religious side to the exclusion of socio-political trends. A thread that runs through the narrative is that the account of Frankish atrocities was "embroidered" in due course of time by details that were not reported in the earlier histories. Having discussed some of the contemporary poets, Hillenbrand turns to the book on jihad by al-Sulami who foretold the expansionist designs of the Franks and warned of


548 KHURRAM QADIR

the need for an immediate and concerted effort. Obviously this lone voice fell on deaf ears because the seer failed to recognize the spirit of the times in which he lived. On the whole this chapter leaves the reader with a feeling of

incompleteness but perhaps it also adds credibility to the author's claim that one needs "to tease out" evidence of Muslim sources.

The third chapter is entitled "Jihad in the Period 493-569/1100-1174," i.e. till the death of Nur al-Dln. The fourth chapter is a sequel to it and deals with the next period to the fall of Acre in 1291CE. It seems appropriate to review these chapters together as the author suggests that the Muslim religious zeal is taken for granted while the Christian religious motivation is underplayed if not denied. In these chapters Hillenbrand has tried to "focus on the evolution of the Islamic concept of Jihad during the Crusading period." Here the study is

remarkably focused, perhaps because the sources are more abundant and

concepts are clearly enunciated. Chapter three gives a succinct exposition of

jihad and the historical and religious forces that acted upon its theory and

practice. That all military activity was termed as jihad and that jihad against Byzantium was a response to the expansionism of the Eastern Roman Empire is central to the discussion.

Hillenbrand elucidates the conditions on the frontiers of the Muslim states with non-Muslims as well as the frontiers of Muslim states with each other. She is at pains to assert that the use of the term jihad prior to Zangi is not really valid or meaningful; rather it should be considered an idealistic romanticism of poets and seers. The events of 1134 CE are seen to be the first

real signs of a reemerging jihad by the author as opposed to the fall of Edessa in 539/1144 according to Emanuel Sivan Ulslam.32 In point of fact, the third

chapter may be divided into two segments, the first ten sections forming the first segment that sets the stage for the transformation of the Muslim response into a jihad. The remaining sections show how the counter-crusade actually resulted in a jihad under the united Syria.

This united new and powerful state of Syria came into being due to the efforts of 'Imad al-Din Zangi and his son Nur al-Dln Zangi and provided the base for Salah al-Din's virulent counter-crusade which effectively brought the

crusading threat to a halt. This segment of chapter three revolves around the

personality of Nur al-Din, the association of jihad with his wars and Jerusalem as a symbol. In fact the basic change that occurred was that Muslim rulers who viewed conflict with the Christians in more or less the same light as war

against neighboring Muslim states till this time now began collaborating with each other against the crusaders. The brief section entitled "The Coming of the Second Crusade in 543/1148?a Turning Point in the Jihad" (pp. 116-7) is

32 Emanuel Sivan, LTslam.



the key to this thesis. While Hillenbrand focuses more on the Frankish atrocities as a catalyst, the description that follows revolves around the fact that crusades rejuvenated and invigorated religious zeal among Muslims, and, the body politic, if not the rulers, rallied to the concept of jihad.

Having dwelt on the imagery of jihad, both material and literary, during the period from 1148 to 1174 CE and having outlined the interaction between the 'ulamd' and the ghdzis who formed the ruling elite, Hillenbrand turns to the heyday of jihad. Salah al-Din's career which forms the first phase of this

period is, as such, its first section. Saladin is followed by Baybars as the

spearhead of the second phase of this jihad but he is given a much smaller

space perhaps, as the author herself admits, because Saladin is a much more

important figure in the eyes of Europe. The treatment of this chapter justifies the view that it should be seen as a continuation of chapter three.

While Chapter three began with some generalizations and abstractions about jihad, followed by a historical treatment of the events related to it,

chapter four continues with the historical statement and concludes by giving new generalizations regarding the concept of jihad at the end. Approaching the

halfway mark of the discourse, Hillenbrand takes the opportunity of giving "General Reflections," "Theories of Sivan and Kohler" and

* Jihad in More

Recent Times" to integrate and place the discourse in context for the Western intellectual. It is in this chapter where Hillenbrand is walking a tight rope to

balance spiritual and mundane motives of Salah al-Din, that one finally realizes the need for the term "Counter-Crusade" when the word Jihad is available. It is a fine distinction which cannot be made merely by separating the spiritual from the mundane. The counter-crusade includes all acts, deeds, thoughts and

feelings that came to bear as a counter force to crusades in the lands affected by the crusaders.

Much of this material could not be brought as evidence under the title of

jihad although it has a vital bearing on the Muslim response to the crusades. Between 589/1193 and 648/1250 was the period of the Ayyubis, here we find

very little jihad but some of the features of counter-crusading remained vibrant. In pro-jihad literature, Salah al-Din is the spiritual heir to Nur al-Din, and Baybars is heir to Saladin's mantle. After Saladin's death in 1193 and in the pre-1250 era of Baybars, there is no jihad but there is a counter-crusade.

Hillenbrand traces the career of Baybars' internal consolidation of his empire and his concerted effort in dislodging the crusaders. She believes that the elements of jihad are to be found in Saladin's time as well as in the Mamluk era. However, under the Mamluks counter-crusades reach virtual completion with the fall of Acre in 1291 CE.


550 KHURRAM QADIR

Interesting to note the variation in the periodic segmentation of the two books discussed so far. Hillenbrand set the first crusade apart and then made two segments of the remaining period. Armstrong took the time from the first crusade to the start of the second as a single unit, set the second crusade apart and dealt with the third crusade as a separate unit making two more stages to

get to the fall of Acre as the cut off point of the serious crusading activity. Both authors have the same cut off point for the end of an era but the stages are different because the units they are looking at relate to different points of view. The Muslim response, as Hillenbrand points out, is effectively in the two stages after the first crusade which was a bolt from the blue. The Christian angle was from different points of origin and a proactive spontaneous growth within Christendom as perceived by Armstrong. Since

Hillenbrand is taking the outsider's view of the event, she ends the chapter with an inconclusive note on the pros and cons of the views of Kohler and Sivan followed by an endorsement of Armstrong's view that issues of the crusades are still germane to the situation in the Middle East.

The fifth and sixth chapters of Hillenbrand's book too may be paired off as segments of a common theme. However, they do not merit a combined treatment as did the third and fourth chapters because they do not form a continuum in evolution. Their shared objective is to "look at the broad cultural and religious dimensions of the conflict between the Muslims and the Franks. In particular

... [to] emphasize the longevity and unchanging nature of

the negative perceptions ... in Islamic literature" (p.257). The author believes that there is evidence to say that "the Frankish presence must have had a

profound impact on those Muslims" who came in contact with crusades

directly or indirectly. The dearth of sources leads to the "judicious" use of

genres other than Muslim historical works, that are "disappointing or

tantalizingly brief in their comments" (p.258). However, for Hillenbrand the

superiority complex of Muslims was such that they "knew little and cared less about Europe." This as much as their lack of "interest in Christianity, whether it was the Latin ... or the Oriental" are the lens through which Hillenbrand believes "the Muslims saw, [or in effect did not see], the European Crusaders"

(p. 268). While the entire book by Hillenbrand is filled with visual images, the

chapter on "How the Muslims Saw the Franks: Ethnic and Religious Stereotypes" is particularly ornate. Perhaps the need to be more graphic or the lack of sufficient written material is responsible for this. However, despite the

plethora of images, or perhaps because of it, the feeling that antipathy towards the Franks was common among Muslims is strengthened by the discourse. One may consider the fact that all societies have incomplete images of the



"other" and most people derive their images of other societies in ignorance based on popular generalizations. The absence of the European side of the

picture is most potent in this chapter where similar ignorance of the West and its "images based on popular perceptions" would have placed the two societies in a comparative frame.

Having reconstructed the "stereotypical Muslim images of the Franks" in

chapter five, Hillenbrand tries to "see if the Muslims gradually developed a more nuanced view of them" with the close proximity in which Muslims lived with the Franks in the Crusader states (p. 330). Since she is balked by the dearth of specific textual evidence in the histories, Hillenbrand reverts, once

again, to speculation. In order to base her speculations on some corpus of

facts, she produces a series of excerpts and comments on the "Aspects of Life in the Levant in the Crusading Period." It takes her a hundred pages to cover

topics such as the Muslim views of the "Religious Orders" and "Frankish

Leadership," etc. Although the author gives much more space to the crusaders who received favourable notice by the Muslims, leaving only two pages for those who were "reviled," her general conclusion is that "Muslim chroniclers remain too anchored in their own culture to develop a sense of these wider horizons" (p. 347).

In this chapter, however, Hillenbrand's biases are more manifest than in other places. It seems that she is not inclined to see any aspect of the Muslim

commentary on crusades or the crusaders as devoid of prejudice. Hardly an

image is taken at face value or a story accepted as true. Comments like "a

cleverly constructed apocryphal tale which plays shamelessly on the

prejudices," "he alleges comes from his own experience," "adding carefully and

sententiously" and "Islamic sources reveal a grudging admiration" abound in

the text (pp. 330-357 passim). However, in the pages that follow where the treatment of Muslims in crusader states is mentioned, there is no aspersion cast

on the same Ibn Jubayr, whose testimony is designated as "flawed" on account of the fact that he only spent thirty two days in the kingdom of Jerusalem, when he reflects that "it is unfortunate that these Muslims are receiving better treatment under Frankish rule than others who are ruled by their co

religionists." In this chapter, an apologetic view is taken of cases of Christian intolerance and treatment of holy places and then counterbalanced with

examples of Muslim intolerance to show this in its true light.

Since this "bias" does not apply to monuments and material remains, Hillenbrand has chosen to deal with them under the title of "Cultural

Exchanges." She takes a neutral stand on who borrowed what from whom and restricts herself to identifying similarities in the art of the communities. Sections like "The Reusing of Crusader Handiwork in Muslim


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Monuments"and "Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Imagery" encourage the inference that these were subjects closer to the author's heart than Muslim

Handiwork in Crusader Monuments or Muslim Imagery in some remains to be found in crusading relics. In this she is very clearly at odds with Armstrong's thesis that the crusading legacy was the basis of the "Western" role in the

modern Middle East.

Chapters seven and eight of The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives will be either the most interesting or most boring chapters for its readers. If the reader has been following closely the interaction between the Crusading Christian Franks and the Jihadt Muslims of Arab or Turkish origin, these chapters present an anticlimax. There is hardly anything of the analytical and

speculative flavour that was so poignant in the text up to this point. If, however, the reader was more engrossed in the description and imagery of the crusades and the knowledge of what the Muslims did and how, these chapters give us a wealth of information for the uninitiated. In essence these chapters abridge and collate a great deal of literature on Muslim manuals of military and administrative interest on the one hand and some of the modern Western

scholarship of military history of the crusades.

The concluding chapter dwells on the theme of how Muslims gradually became more conscious of the continuing fallout of the crusades. Strangely, Hillenbrand has tried to prove simultaneously that the reality of the crusades was overemphasized and not adequately felt in the Muslim community,

particularly in the Middle East. At the same time she has brought into focus some of the "counter-crusading" activities of the recent past. States like Libya;

parties like Hizb Allah, movements like Hamas and people like Sayyid Qutb (d. 1386/1966) take the stage here with conceptual parallels between the

Crusader Kingdom and Israel. An attempt is made to summarize conflicting emotive responses of Muslims to the phenomenon of Crusading as well as to

European imperialism and dominance.

o o o

Published by the Harvard University Press, God's War has a cover showing a Muslim sword drawing blood on the front and a Christian soldier kneeling in

prayer on the back, we may wonder at the imagery and its possible intent. The

flap of the dust cover tells us that the book reveals the events "both as bloody political acts and a manifestation of a growing Christian communal identity" and "explicates the contrary mix of genuine piety, military ferocity and plain greed that motivated generations of Crusaders" to show how "a militant

Christianity ... defended Europe's identity and has forever influenced the



cyclical antagonism between the Christian and Muslim worlds."33

Tyerman's "perspective is Western Europe an" (p. xvi), he has taken

nearly a thousand pages to encapsulate what is yet another "new history" of crusades. Printed by the Belknap Press of the Harvard University at

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA in 2006, the book makes an impressive volume. It comprises of ten sections, two of which (the introductory and

concluding parts) are nameless, the remaining are concerned with The First

Crusade, Frankish Outremer, The Second Crusade, The Third Crusade, The Fourth Crusade, The Expansion of Crusading, The Defense of Outremer and The Later Crusades. These eight sections, which form the body of the work, have 26 chapters and 31 illustrations. Copious end notes take up 62 pages and the list of 'selected* rulers of various states testifies to both the scholarship and the student focused vision of the author.

However, Tyerman is conscious of the "pain" that is associated with

European Christians and their treatment of oriental Christians, Muslims and

Jews. He is aware that the "emotional baggage" of culture, myth, self image and identity is "awkward, even distressing," a cause for "resentment, pain,

anger, guilt and pride, depending on which legacy ... modern observers wish to claim for themselves" (p. xvi). Despite that he believes that the view that "the

past as mirror to the present" is distorted and he finds it more "worthwhile" to

"explore the phenomenon ... on its own terms." In the same vein, but a

different plane, as the other two authors, Tyerman traces religious tradition and its varied interpretation. Armstrong and Hillenbrand focused on the traditions of Islam and Judaism, Tyerman is mainly interested in Christian

teaching of the Bible.

He leads us into the mind and soul of the crusading Christians, rationalizing the theory and practice of Christianity in those times. The criticism of some of the practices is narrated with such empathy that the reader is likely to endorse the "holy war." Having criticized the priest Raul for "inhuman" views and having upheld the gospel of peace preached by St. Paul

(d. 67CE) (pp. 28-29), he suggests that "in a perfect world, individual pacifism could be translated into political pacifism; the main thrust of Christian

teaching assumed post-lapsarian sin and imperfection." From harking to the Aristotelian phrase of a "just war" and projecting the Church as heir to the Roman Empire to likening the pax Romana to Christian peace, Tyerman has

many devices to gain our sympathies for the day to day decisions of abbots,

knights, popes, dukes, kings and common crusaders. He has prepared the

33 We have suggested earlier that it is not a "defence" of Europe's identity but rather the creation of Europe as an identity that occurred at the time of the crusades.


554 KHURRAM QADIR

grounds for this in his preface by stating that:

Crusading reflected a social mentality grounded in war as a central force of

protection, arbitration, social discipline, political expression and material gain. The crusaders confirmed a communal identity comprising aggression, paranoia,

nostalgia, wishful thinking and invented history. Understood by participants at

once as a statement of Christian charity, religious devotion and godly savagery .... crusades helped define the nature of Europe, (p. xiii)

Although Tyerman has been "thinking, working, teaching and writing towards this book for thirty years" (p. xi) its structure and form suggest that it

responds to some of the more recent trends in the field which have "distorted" the image of the crusades. We may say that in fact Tyerman has tried to reconstruct the "nature of Europe" as defined by the crusades. He is unwilling to dismiss crusading "as a symptom of a credulous superstitious and backward civilization." One could even suggest that this is a crusade of the computer in the tradition of Tyerman's ideal, Steven Runciman, who "pitted his pen against the 'massed typewriters of the United States'" (p. xiv).

The introductory chapter which stands alone is in the long standing traditional style of Western historiography as it gives a succinct description of the history and geography of the Mediterranean (literally, "between the

lands") sea and the Europe of the crusaders. We see how Christianity spread into Europe while the land of its origin slipped into Muslim control, how

relevance of the crusades

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