God's War: A New History of the Crusades (32 page)

The failure of the Franks to take Aleppo in 1125 opened the way instead to the new atabeg of Mosul, Imad al-Din Zengi, to resolve the anarchy in the city by occupying it in 1128. The settled union of Mosul and Aleppo posed a serious threat to Edessa, especially after the Franks’ failure in 1129 to take Damascus, which now attracted Zengi’s attention.
Although primarily concerned with affairs further east and the politics of the Seljuk Baghdad sultanate, Zengi steadily increased his hold on the eastern frontiers of northern Outremer. In 1137 he captured the Frankish castle of Montferrand (Ba ‘rin), the important Muslim city of Homs in 1138 and the strategically significant town of Baalbek in the Biqa valley in 1140, where he installed as garrison commander a Kurdish mercenary, Naim al-Din Ayyub, Saladin’s father. The failure of an uneasy Byzantine/Antiochene/Edessan army to capture Aleppo and Shaizar in 1138 removed Greek intervention in Syria for a generation but allowed Zengi a free hand, with Damascus compelling its ruler Unur to arrange a treaty with King Fulk of Jerusalem in 1139. This increased concentration on the south left Edessa vulnerable.

Joscelin II, no great general, continued his father’s active diplomacy with Muslim and Armenian neighbours, but his county appeared fair game for Turkish raiders from north, east and south. The adverse economic effect of this on the county weakened Joscelin’s political hold on his Syrian and Armenian subjects and his capacity to sustain mercenaries. The political chaos in Antioch in the 1130s and the loosening of the intimate ties with Jerusalem on the death of Baldwin II in 1131 left Edessa further exposed, its viability depending more than ever on external military aid. It is perhaps significant that the Franks of Edessa, few in number and reliant on non-Frankish subjects and allies, appear not to have begun a substantial programme of stone castle building. The evidence from the Frankish stronghold of Turbessel is inconclusive, but at Edessa itself existing fortifications seem to have sufficed with local modifications. In 1122, the Armenian governor of the city, Vasil, constructed a new tower, round after an Armenian design.
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The absence of new fortifications did not mean that the counts of Edessa were defenceless, rather that, unlike their peers elsewhere across Outremer, they lacked the wealth to undertake new building projects.

Yet the downfall of the county resulted from an opportunist raid rather than systemic collapse, although it occurred through Latin weakness and Edessan diplomacy. The kingdom of Jerusalem was embroiled in internal difficulties following the sudden death of King Fulk in 1143. Antioch, although spared a fresh Byzantine invasion by the death of John II Comnenus in 1143, remained preoccupied, relations between Joscelin II and Prince Raymond of Antioch later described as being of ‘insatiable hatred’.
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Joscelin II’s alliances with Muslims opposed to Zengi
gave the atabeg an excuse to attack the eastern frontier of the county in the autumn of 1144 when the count was away from Edessa on campaign towards Aleppo. Edessa itself held out for a bare four weeks before falling to Zengi on Christmas Eve 1144. Despite cursory attempts at reconquest, the county east of the Euphrates was lost. Joscelin retained the western half, based on Turbessel, where his father had begun forty years earlier. Despite the murder of Zengi in 1146, the failure of the Second Crusade (1146–8), civil war in Jerusalem and the defeat and death of Raymond of Antioch at Inab in 1149 left the rump of the county exposed. In 1150, Joscelin was captured by troops of Zengi’s son Nur al-Din and imprisoned for the remaining nine years of his life in Aleppo, allegedly having to endure regular torture. His wife read the signs and sold her remaining forts to the Greek emperor Manuel I in 1150. These were overrun by Nur al-Din the following year. The Christian bulwark to the east that had posed a potential threat to the heartlands of Turkish power was lost for ever, a sign that the political chaos of the early twelfth century that had permitted, even encouraged, the political opportunism of the first two Baldwins and Joscelin I was giving place to an ominous and growing Muslim unity in Syria that challenged all Latin Outremer.

ANTIOCH

Like the county of Edessa, the principality of Antioch owed its creation to the secular impulses of the First Crusade. Any talk of Antioch as the first see of St Peter tended to be suppressed by a jealous papacy. Like Edessa, too, politics and society in Antioch followed indigenous patterns: Greek, Armenian and Muslim. Formed out of the ambitions and rivalries of the great western army of invasion in 1097–8, the principality survived by adapting and exploiting local conditions to forge a more pluralist polity than elsewhere in Outremer, embracing Greek and Sicilian institutional practices, in which marcher lords, vassals, tenants and administrators were western European, Armenian and even Muslim. Antioch’s vigorous independent identity sat uneasily between regular Byzantine claims to overlordship and the repeated need for the kings of Jerusalem to rescue the principality from succession crises as prince after prince proved extraordinarily accident-prone and unlucky. Although its
politics, self-image and strategic position allied its fortunes with the Holy Land, Antioch could not escape its ties with Byzantium nor its interests in Cilicia, its enforced acceptance of Byzantine suzerainty in 1137, 1145 and 1158–9 in many ways ensuring its autonomy from Jerusalem.
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Bohemund’s establishment of his control over Antioch in 1098–9 seemed to offer the prospect of the recreation of the pre-1084 Byzantine administrative region, or
theme
, based on the city. However, he confronted stern obstacles. In Cilicia his influence faced challenge from the Byzantine emperor and the local Armenian nobility keen to win independence by playing off Greek against Latin. On the Syrian coast and to the south and east of Antioch towards the frontier with Aleppo, Raymond of Toulouse and the Byzantines competed for dominion. By the time Bohemund was captured by the Danishmends in August 1100 attempting to relieve Melitene, he had lost control of Cilicia and Lattakiah to the Greeks and failed to exert clear authority over al-Bara and Ma ‘arrat. Thereafter, its charismatic founder exercised very little influence on the formation of the principality. In a Danishmend prison between 1100 and 1103, disastrously defeated at Harran in 1104, Bohemund left the east for good early in 1105 to chase his destiny against Byzantium.

The real founder of the principality of Antioch was Bohemund’s nephew, Tancred of Lecce, regent 1101–3 then effectively prince 1105–12. Despite numerous reversals, by the time of his death Tancred had recovered Cilicia; extended Antiochene overlordship over Armenian princes to the north; incorporated the Ruj valley and the Jabal as-Summaq after defeating the Aleppans at Artah in 1105; effectively annexed Edessa between 1104 and 1108; occupied the ports of Lattakiah, Baniyas and, briefly, Jubail; pushed Antiochene frontiers east of the Jabal Talat and south to Apamea to threaten Aleppo and Shaizar respectively, both cities at various times paying tribute to the princes of Antioch. Despite his failed attempt to defy King Baldwin I over Edessa in 1109–10 and coming off worse in the succession dispute in Tripoli in 1109, Tancred’s Antioch dominated northern Syria, sufficiently strong to withstand the invasions of Mawdud of Mosul (1110–13); he was confident that the tactic of avoiding pitched battles would not destroy the inner cohesion of his territories. A network of marcher lordships strung along the borders afforded protection to the central areas of the
Orontes valley, even when the frontiers themselves were breached. After one such incursion in 1115, Roger of Salerno won a crushing victory at Tell Danith over Bursuq of Hamadan, commander of an army sent by the sultan in Baghdad, to resecure the vulnerable south-eastern frontier. Lasting security received attention with Prince Roger’s capture of the castles at Saone, Balatonos and Marqab. In 1119, Roger’s luck ran out when Il-Ghazi of Mardin annihilated the Antiochene army at the Field of Blood. However, even this revealed the principality’s strength. Roger had foolishly not waited for reinforcements from the south before equally rashly seeking a pitched battle. Yet Baldwin II contrived to retrieve the situation through the continued resistance of the frontier garrisons buying him time and the efficiency of the general mobilization he ordered at Antioch, and not, as some contemporaries suggested, because the victorious Il-Ghazi was an irredeemable bingeing sot.
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The survival of Antioch after the disaster of 1119 revealed the character of the regime built by Tancred and Roger. The administration displayed continuities with its Byzantine predecessor, as in the office of duke,
dux
, in the city of Antioch, while the princely household offices – chancellor, seneschal, chamberlain – were reminiscent of similar positions in southern and northern Norman courts in the west, perhaps unsurprisingly as many of the lords enfeoffed in the principality can be traced to Normandy or southern Italy and Sicily. Some may have gathered around Tancred during his adventurous career on the First Crusade and his territorial forays in Judea and Galilee. Others may have been supporters of Bohemund in 1098. Most importantly, the Antioch baronage appeared consistently loyal to their princes in the formative period of Frankish rule and thereafter to the principality’s independent integrity. In 1135, the barons rejected overtures made to Byzantium by the wilful dowager Princess Alice. In 1161–3 they forced her flighty daughter Constance to install her son Bohemund III as prince.
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The constant threat of invasion and dispossession; the vigorous personal support provided by the princes; and the lack of central interference in the workings of their lordships encouraged baronial loyalty. Rainald Masoir built up a strong lordship in the south of the principality, centred on Baniyas and Marqab. Despite the uncertainties and chaos after 1119, he associated himself with the regency government of Baldwin II and, after the arrival of the young Bohemund II in 1126, rose in princely favour to become constable in 1127, uniquely as a substantial landowner
holding a household office. In the early 1130s, after the death of Bohemund II in battle (1130), Rainald acted as regent for a few years. The rewards were obvious. Rainald’s origins are obscure, yet his son was considered grand enough to marry the daughter of the count of Tripoli and his wife, Cecilia, was the widow of Tancred and illegitimate daughter of King Philip I, the Fat, of France.
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Just as they relied on cooperation with the prince, Antiochene marcher lords, as elsewhere in Outremer, could not afford to adopt an inflexible siege mentality towards their Muslim neighbours. Robert FitzFulk, known as the Leper, held, among other properties, the fortress of Zardana on the frontier with Aleppo. Unsurprisingly, he established alliances with those Muslim rulers hostile to Aleppo, including Il-Ghazi of Mardin and Tughtegin, atabeg of Damascus, joining them in a military compact in 1115. Tughtegin was even remembered as being Robert’s friend, although this did not prevent him personally decapitating Robert in 1119.
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Less fraught were relations between Alan, lord of al-Atharib, another frontier fort between Antioch and Aleppo, and his Muslim physician, the chronicler Hamdan Ibn Abd al-Rahmin (
c.
1071–1147/8) whose reward for healing Alan was the grant of a village and its revenues. Hamdan assisted in regional administration, at one point presiding over the
diwan
(writing office) at Ma ‘arrat al-Nu ‘man. However, Hamdan’s opportunism matched that of any Frank. In 1128, he transferred his allegiance to Zengi at Aleppo, returning to administer the same border region he had previously managed for the Christians after its conquest by his new master.
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Hamdan was unusual but not unique. In 1118, Prince Roger granted three villages to a local Muslim sheikh.
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The rhetoric of holy war, so favoured by clerical observers such as the Antiochene chancellor Walter in his account of the vicissitudes of Prince Roger, concealed inter-faith cooperation and mutual self-interest, as in the joint campaign by Prince Roger, Tughtegin of Damascus and Il-Ghazi of Mardin against the Seljuks in 1115.
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Internally, the non-Latin Christian communities presented not dissimilar problems and opportunities. Unlike further south in Outremer, the Muslim peasantry under Antiochene rule was probably in a minority. Greek influence was strong in language, custom, identity and religion, especially in the city of Antioch itself. However, accommodation between Latins and Greeks was complicated by the Byzantine claim to overlordship, which may have precipitated the departure of the Greek
patriarch of Antioch, John IV the Oxite, in 1100. The Latin ecclesiastical hierarchy in the principality acted as a central institution of Frankish authority, led by the formidable former chaplain of Adhemar of Le Puy, Bernard of Valence (patriarch 1100–1135) and his successor Aimery of Limoges (1140–93), both of whom supplied political as well as spiritual leadership at moments of crisis, such as 1119, 1123, 1130, 1149 and 1161. Division between the secular and ecclesiastical powers weakened each, as during the turbulent patriciate of Ralph of Domfront (1135–40) or when Prince Reynald turned on Patriarch Aimery in a dispute over exactions from the church to pay for the prince’s wars. Aimery, a scholar of international repute, fluent in Greek as in Latin, translator of parts of the Bible into Castilian (the first such translation into any Romance language), was beaten up by Reynald’s thugs and left chained out in the sun for a whole day, his bleeding head smeared with honey for the enjoyment of local insects. Unsurprisingly, on being released, Aimery left Antioch for the less barbarous surroundings of Jerusalem, only returning when Reynald had been captured by Nur al-Din in 1161.
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Such internal squabbles aside, the imposition of a Latin hierarchy in northern Syria followed political conquest and matched the subordination and exploitation of the native Greek-speaking population. The political as well as economic dimension of this subjugation are clearly indicated by the contrastingly less hostile relations the Latin church enjoyed with the Jacobite and Armenian churches, both of which represented no political threat.
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