The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1983

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Foreword-Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Key Figures

Amin Maalouf

Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer who moved to France in the mid-1970s because of the Lebanese civil war. He was raised by Christian parents and received a Jesuit education. He wrote for, and eventually became editor of, the magazine Al-Nahar Arabe et International and Jeune Afrique. He was elected secretary of the Académie Française, the official authority on the French language, in 2023. Maloof published The Crusades Through Arab Eyes in the early 1980s, after which he quit journalism for a full-time career as a writer. His works, including his historical fiction, explore themes that reflect his journalistic interests, including religious and ethnic conflict, which characterizes The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. Maalouf’s lived experiences in Beirut likely shaped this interest, for he witnessed these types of conflicts firsthand.

Reviewers describe his writing as accessible and enthralling, reflective of his journalistic career. Historians, however, have criticized his limited analysis and embellished narratives that are not derived from historical source material. For example, he describes the unrecorded thoughts and feelings of historical figures while failing to inform readers that these scenes are imagined reconstructions. Maalouf’s work, nevertheless, filled an important gap in historical scholarship at the time of its publication in 1983 because few Crusade historians wrote about these conflicts from the perspective of Muslims. It also responds to modern conflicts between the West and Islamic societies, as Maalouf indicates in his Epilogue. These tensions have not resolved since The Crusades Through Arab Eyes was published in 1983 and have been exacerbated since 9/11. Indeed, as historians note, both ISIS extremists and white nationalists have appropriated Crusading imagery or language to justify their atrocities, substantiating Maalouf’s thesis that the memory of the Crusades remains influential in present-day politics.

Franj (Franks)

Amin Maalouf references innumerable “Franj” throughout his work. This term refers to the Franks, or French, who played dominant roles in the Crusades, especially the First Crusade that established the four Crusader States. Nevertheless, as Maalouf admits, Europeans from other regions went on Crusade (e.g., Frederick Barbarossa or Frederick II Hohenstaufen), and later generations were born in the east, often to mothers who were not European, so that the term “Franj” does not refer to a truly homogenous body of European Christians.

The First Crusade was launched in three waves with the final wave, the “Princes’ Crusade” successfully conquering Jerusalem. The leaders of this wave were the French barons, like Godfrey of Boullion, Bohemond of Taranto, Baldwin of Boulogne, and Raymond IV of Toulouse (or Saint-Gilles). The Cluniac reform movement, born in Burgundy, infused medieval Western Europe with a new religious zeal that inspired many of these men to regard taking the Holy Land as a divinely-sanctioned mission.

Maalouf notes, for example, the Fatimid garrison’s perplexity and astonishment at the Franks’ religious zealotry when they arrived at the walls of Jerusalem and began their siege with a monastic-led religious procession. The Muslim chronicler, Ibn al-Athīr, reports that after Saladin retook Jerusalem, the Franks dressed in black, the color of mourning. He also observes their intense “‘religious and psychological motivations’” (205) to recapture the city. These men viewed themselves as a knighthood of Christ. Eustace III, for example, founded and entered a Cluniac monastery when he returned to Europe after the Battle of Ascalon. Their religious zeal did not prevent them from committing horrifying atrocities, which the medieval papacy justified.

These Franj became rulers of four Crusader States in the east thanks to their initial successes, and made their power hereditary. Godfrey of Boullion, for example, ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem. His brother, Baldwin, became the count of Edessa while Raymond ruled the county of Tripoli and Bohemond took Antioch.

The Franj, like surrounding Islamic domains, experienced their own internal conflicts, political intrigues, and setbacks. These conflicts led to interesting turns of events, like the Islamic-Franco forces that came into confrontation at Tel Bashīr when the Crusader, Tancred, sought to keep his rival Baldwin from retaking Edessa after having been imprisoned in Mosul. Moreover, later Crusaders’ motivations were not the same as those of the first barons to arrive in the east. King Richard I of England, for example, sought swift victory and glory but appears to have grown bored while longing for home, leading him to give up on retaking Jerusalem from Saladin and thus ending the Third Crusade.

Saladin

Saladin (1137-1193) was a Kurdish general and leader who deposed the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt and reunited Egypt and Syria in response to the successes of the First Crusaders. His rise is founded on the work of his father Ayyub and uncle Shirkūh who both served the Seljuk sultan of Syrian, Nūr al-Dīn. Saladin’s uncle propelled him into a successful but initially minor military career. When Shirkūh and Saladin successfully seized Egypt, after multiple clashes with the Franj, Saladin killed the vizier of Fatimid Egypt, Shawar, for his alliance with the Europeans. Shirkūh died two months later.

The Fatimid caliph’s councilors recommended he name Saladin as the new vizier because of his limited experience. However, they underestimated his abilities. Saladin eventually deposed the Fatimid caliphate in a bloodless coup, waiting for the young caliph to die without knowing that the Fatimid name was no longer mentioned in the Friday prayers said across Egyptian mosques.

Likewise, Saladin “began to distance himself from his master. He continuously assured Nūr al-Dīn of his loyalty and submission, of course, but real authority over Egypt could not be exercised from Damascus and Aleppo” (171). Nūr al-Dīn, nonetheless, paved the way for Saladin’s successes by galvanizing the Syrians and uniting the regions two major cities. Saladin seized power in Damascus when Nūr al-Dīn died in 1174. His death led to conflicts with others who claimed rightful succession, but Saladin eliminated these rivals and therefore focused on regaining territory from the Crusader states, including Jerusalem, a holy city for Muslims, just as it is for Jews and Christians. He took Aleppo in June 1183 and by 1187 Jerusalem surrendered with the knowledge that Christian worship would be protected.

Maalouf continuously represents Saladin as a man of mercy and benevolence, admirable qualities but not without negative consequences. For example, he continuously allowed Frankish refugees to stream into Tyre, which he never took, facilitating a strong resistance movement that launched the Third Crusade, led by the major kings of Europe in the late twelfth-century: Philip II Augustus (France), Frederick Barbarossa (Germany), and Richard I the Lionhearted (England), but their efforts at stopping him met with little success, some of which was sheer luck for Saladin, like when Barbarossa died en route of a heart attack. He reached a three-year truce with Richard in 1192 that kept Jerusalem in Muslim hands and achieved little for the Crusaders. When Saladin died the region returned to its previous chaotic state of inter-Muslim warfare over who would fill Saladin’s power vacuum.