The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

The Assassins and their families were hunted down in Damascus when Tughtigin’s son, Būri, ordered the execution of their protector, the vizier al-Mazadaghāni. Būri refused to be their “puppet” (110). The surviving Assassins thus turned to the Franj for an alliance; the Assassins would deliver Damascus to the Franks for Tyre.

The historicity of this plot is debatable but possible, because the Franj already set their sights on taking Damascus, so Tyre would have provided a refuge for the Assassins who could use it as a base to target Fatimid Egypt (which resisted their political machinations). Indeed, the surviving Assassins regrouped in Palestine, where they received King Baldwin II’s support. Soon the Franj forces arrived at the walls of Damascus, but an Arab-Turkish coalition defeated them while the Franks foraged at the plain of Ghūta.

The Franj regrouped, but nature had other plans when the September rains mired their camp in mud and they were forced to retreat: “Baldwyn II definitively renounced any new expedition against the city he coveted” (111). Nevertheless, the Assassins got their revenge when they severely maimed Būri in May 1131. He succumbed to his injuries a little over a year later.

Simultaneously, another powerful opposition leader to the Franks rose out of Aleppo and Mosul: Al-Din Zangī, whom the Abbasids supported. He spent 18 years traversing Syria and Iraq to eliminate Frankish threats and build a unified front: “Never did he dream of residing peacefully in one of the many palaces of his vast fiefdom” (114). He was different from the petty kings and rulers who came before. He sought the advice of well-educated advisors, enforced strict discipline among his troops, and “was possessed of severity, perseverance, and a strong sense of state” (114).

He worked to ensure his legitimacy of rule in three ways. First, he wed the daughter of the former ruler of Aleppo, Ridwān. Next he moved his father’s burial to Aleppo “to demonstrate his family’s new roots in the fiefdom” (114). Finally, he got the sultan to support his supremacy over Iraq and Syria. Zangi planned to create a unified realm that would outlive him. The Franks were in disarray, making the moment “ripe” for a “sweeping counter-offensive” (115).

Baldwin II’s daughter, Alix, sought an alliance with Zangī against her father. Alix was the widow of Antioch’s Bohemond II; when her husband was killed in battle in 1130, she orchestrated a coup to control the principality and reached out to Zangī:

It was a curious attitude for her to have taken. One that heralded the advent of a new second generation of the Franj, who had little in common with the pioneers of the invasion. The young princess, whose mother was Armenian and who had never set eyes on Europe, felt Oriental and acted as such. (115)

Her father soon headed north to confront the revolt, seized Antioch, and exiled Alix. He died soon after, leading to more turmoil among the Franks. Count Fulk of Anjou had recently arrived from Europe to assume the kingship of Jerusalem. Alix raised a revolt against him, destabilizing Frankish Palestine. Rumors circulated that Fulk’s wife, Queen Melisende, was involved with a knight named Hugh of Le Puiset, and factions formed around the parties. Hugh even took Jaffa, backed by Fatimid troops. Meanwhile, conflict between the Assassins and the new atabeg in Damascus flared while conflict in Baghdad also arose. These problems distracted Zangī from his focus on Syria.

Then, early in 1135, Zangī received a message from Ismā‘īl in Damascus, begging for help. He had purged many from his household, including his own brother, after an enslaved woman tried to assassinate him the year prior. He was thus trapped in a cycle of assassinations that only intensified resentment against him. Zangī’s support was essential, and without it he would turn to the Franj. The people of Damascus, however, disliked Zangī due to previous conflict. Ismā‘īl’s own mother, Zumurrud, had her son executed, likely because he was plotting against her lover, and replaced him with another son, Mahmūd, as ruler.

Zangī thus confronted his detractors in 1135. The result was a compromise in which Damascus’s atabeg acknowledged Zangī’s “suzerainty, which remained, however, purely nominal” (122). The atabeg retreated from Damascus, marched north, and conquered four Frankish cities.