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A History of the Crusades-Vol 2

BOOK: A History of the Crusades-Vol 2
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A HISTORY OF

 

THE CRUSADES

 

 

VOLUME II

 

THE KINGDOM OF
JERUSALEM

 

BY

STEVEN RUNCIMAN

 

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

 

Published
by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

The
Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP

40
West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

10
Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

©
Cambridge University Press 1951

First
published in hardback 1951

First
published in paperback by Cambridge University Press 1987

Reprinted
1951, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1962, 1968, 1975, 1980, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1993,
1995

Printed
in the United States of America

Library
of Congress catalog card number: 75-10236

 

Volume
I: ISBN 0 521 06161 x hardback

ISBN 0 521 34770 x paperback

Volume
II: ISBN 0 521 06162 8 hardback

ISBN 0 521 34771 8 paperback

Volume
III: ISBN 0 521 06163 6 hardback

ISBN 0 521 34772 6 paperback

Set
of three volumes: ISBN 0 521 20554 9 hardback

ISBN 0 521 35997 x paperback

Paperback
editions for sale in USA only

 

To

RUTH BOVILL

 

CONTENTS

 

List of Plates

List of Maps

Preface

 

BOOK I

THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE KINGDOM

I           Outremer
and its Neighbours

II         The
Crusades of 1101

III        The
Norman Princes of Antioch

IV        Toulouse
and Tripoli

V          King
Baldwin I

VI        Equilibrium
in the North

 

BOOK II

THE ZENITH

I           King
Baldwin II

II         The
Second Generation

III        The
Claims of the Emperor

IV        The
Fall of Edessa

 

BOOK III

THE SECOND
CRUSADE

I           The
Gathering of the Kings

II         Christian
Discord

III        Fiasco

 

BOOK IV

THE TURN OF THE
TIDE

I           Life
in Outremer

II         The
Rise of Nur ed-Din

III        The
Return of the Emperor

IV        The
Lure of Egypt

 

BOOK V

THE TRIUMPH OF
ISLAM

I           Moslem
Unity

II         The
Horns of Hattin

 

Appendix

II         The
Battle of Hattin

III        Genealogical
Trees

1. The Royal House of Jerusalem,
the Counts of Edessa and the Lords of Sidon and Caesarea

2. The Princes of Antioch and the
Kings of Sicily

3. The Counts of Tripoli and the
Princes of Galilee

4. The Lords of Toron,
Oultrejourdain, Nablus and Ramleh

5. The Ortoqid Princes

6. The House of Zengi

 

LIST OF PLATES

 

I           Templar
knights fighting the Saracens (From the 12th century frescoes of Cressac,
Charente. Photograph by the Musee des Monuments francais)

II         Jerusalem
from the Mount of Olives (From
Syria, Illustrated,
Vol. III by Bartlett,
Allom, etc., London, 1838)

III        Tripoli
(From
Syria, Illustrated,
Vol. I by Bartlett, Purser, etc., London,
1836)

IV        The
Emperor John Comnenus (From a mosaic in Agia Sophia, Constantinople, reproduced
in Whittemore:
The Mosaics of Haghia Sophia at Istanbul,
Oxford, 1942)

V          Damascus
(From
Syria, Illustrated,
Vol. I)

VI        Seals
of Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem; Bohemond III, Prince of Antioch; Pons, Count
of Tripoli; William of Bures, Prince of Galilee (From designs by Amigo,
published in Schlumberger:
Sigillographie de l’Orient Latin,
Paris,
1943)

VII      The
Emperor Manuel Comnenus and his wife, Maria of Antioch (Codex Vaticanus
Graecus, 1176)

VIII     Aleppo
(From Maundrell:
A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem,
Oxford, 1731)

 

LIST OF MAPS

 

1          Northern
Syria in the twelfth century

2          Southern
Syria in the twelfth century

3          The
Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century

4          Jerusalem
under the Latin Kings

5          Egypt
in the twelfth century

6          Galilee

 

 

PREFACE

 

In this volume I have attempted to tell the
story of the Frankish states of Outremer from the accession of King Baldwin I
to the reconquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. It is a story that has been told
before by European writers, notably with German thoroughness by Rohricht and
with French elegance and ingenuity by Rene Grousset, and, too briefly, in
English by W. B. Stevenson. I have covered the same ground and used the same
principal sources as these writers, but have ventured to give to the evidence
an interpretation that sometimes differs from my predecessors’. The narrative
cannot always be simple. In particular, the politics of the Moslem world in the
early twelfth century defy a straightforward analysis; but they must be
understood if we are to understand the establishment of the Crusader states and
the later causes of the recovery of Islam.

The twelfth century experienced none of the
great racial migrations that characterized the eleventh century and were to
recur in the thirteenth, to complicate the story of the later Crusades and the
decline and fall of Outremer. For the moment we can concentrate our main
attention on Outremer itself. But we must always keep in view the wider
background of western European politics, of the religious wars of the Spanish
and Sicilian rulers and of the preoccupation of Byzantium and of the eastern
Caliphate. The preaching of Saint Bernard, the arrival of the English fleet at
Lisbon, the palace-intrigues at Constantinople and Baghdad are all episodes in
the drama, though its climax was reached on a bare hill in Galilee.

The main theme in this volume is warfare; and
in dwelling on the many campaigns and raids I have followed the example of the
old chroniclers, who knew their business; for war was the background to life in
Outremer, and the hazards of the battlefield often decided its destiny. But I
have included in this volume a chapter on the life and organization of the
Frankish East. I hope to give an account of its artistic and economic
developments in my next volume. Both of those aspects of the Crusading movement
reached fuller importance in the thirteenth century.

In the Preface to my first volume I mentioned
some of the great historians whose writings have helped me. Here I must pay
special tribute to the work of John La Monte, whose early death has been a
cruel blow to Crusading historiography. We owe to him, above all others, our
specialized knowledge of the governmental system in the Frankish East. I wish
also to acknowledge my debt to Professor Claude Cahen of Strasbourg, whose
great monograph on Northern Syria and whose various articles are of supreme importance
to our subject.

I owe gratitude to the many friends who have
helped me on my journeys to the East and in particular to the Departments of
Antiquities of Jordan and of Lebanon and to the Iraq Petroleum Company.

My thanks are again due to the Syndics of the
Cambridge University Press for their kindness and patience.

STEVEN RUNCIMAN

London
1952

 

 

BOOK I

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE KINGDOM

 

CHAPTER I

OUTREMER AND ITS
NEIGHBOURS

 


Thou land
devourest up men
,
and hast bereaved thy nations.’
EZEKIEL XXXVI, 13

 

When the Frankish armies entered Jerusalem, the
First Crusade attained its goal. But if the Holy City were to remain in
Christian hands and if the way thither were to be made easy for pilgrims, a
stable government must be set up there, with reliable defences and sure
communications with Europe. The Crusaders that planned to settle in the East
were well aware of their needs. The brief reign of Duke Godfrey saw the
beginnings of a Christian kingdom. But Godfrey, for all his estimable
qualities, was a weak, foolish man. Out of jealousy he quarrelled with his
colleagues; out of genuine piety he yielded far too much power into the hands
of the Church. His death and his replacement by his brother Baldwin saved the
young kingdom. For Baldwin possessed the wisdom, the foresight and the
toughness of a statesman. But the task that lay before him was formidable; and
he had few helpers on whom he could rely. The great warriors of the First
Crusade had all gone northward or returned to their homes. Of the leading actors
of the movement only the most ineffectual remained in Palestine, Peter the
Hermit, of whose obscure life there we know nothing, and who himself went back
to Europe in 1101. The princes had taken their armies with them. Baldwin
himself, a landless younger son, had not brought to the East any vassals of his
own, but had borrowed men from his brothers. He was now dependent upon a
handful of devout warriors who had vowed before they left Europe to remain in
the Holy Land, and of adventurers, many of them younger sons like himself, who
hoped to find estates there and to enrich themselves.

 

The Land of
Palestine

At the time of Baldwin’s accession the Franks
maintained a precarious hold over the greater part of Palestine. It was most
secure along the mountainous backbone of the province, from Bethlehem northward
to the plain of Jezreel. Many of the villages there had always been Christian;
and most of the Moslems of the district had abandoned their homes on the
appearance of the Frankish armies, even deserting their favourite city of
Nablus, which they called the Little Damascus. This was an easy district to
defend. On the east it was protected by the valley of the Jordan. Between
Jericho and Beisan there was no ford across the river and only one track led up
from the valley into the mountains. It was almost equally hard of access from
the west. Farther north was the principality of Galilee, which Tancred had
conquered for Christendom. This included the plain of Esdraelon and the hills
from Nazareth to Lake Huleh. Its borders were more vulnerable; it was easily
entered from the Mediterranean coast by Acre and from the east along roads to
the north and to the south of the Sea of Galilee. But, from there too, much of
the Moslem population had emigrated, and only Christians remained, apart from
small Jewish colonies in the towns, especially in Safed, long the chief home of
the Talmudic tradition. But most of the Jews, after the massacre of their
co-religionists at Jerusalem and at Tiberias and their opposition to the Christians
at Haifa, preferred to follow the Moslems into exile. The central ridge and
Galilee were the core of the kingdom; but tentacles were stretching out into
the more Moslem districts around. The principality of Galilee had recently been
given an outlet to the sea at Haifa. In the south the Negeb was dominated by
the Frankish garrison at Hebron. But the Castle of Saint Abraham, as it was
called by the Franks, was little more than an island in a Moslem ocean. The
Franks had no control over the tracks that led from Arabia, round the southern
end of the Dead Sea, along the course of the old Spice Road of the Byzantines;
by which the Bedouin could infiltrate into the Negeb and link up with the
Egyptian garrisons at Gaza and Ascalon on the coast. Jerusalem itself had
access to the sea down a corridor running through Ramleh and Lydda to Jaffa;
but the road was unsafe except for military convoys. Raiding parties from the
Egyptian cities, Moslem refugees from the uplands and Bedouins from the desert
wandered over the country and lay in wait for unwary travellers. The Norse
pilgrim, Saewulf, who went up to Jerusalem in 1102, after Baldwin had
strengthened the defences of the kingdom, was horrified by the dangers of the
journey. Between Jaffa and Haifa were the Moslem cities of Arsuf and Caesarea,
whose emirs had announced themselves the vassals of Godfrey but kept all the
while in touch by sea with Egypt. North of Haifa the whole coast was in Moslem
hands for some two hundred miles, up to the outskirts of Lattakieh, where the
Countess of Toulouse was living with her husband’s household, under the
protection of the Byzantine governor.

BOOK: A History of the Crusades-Vol 2
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