Non-contemporary depiction of the Battle of Tebnine (1109)
In 1109 A.D., with the Europeans in the Outremer suffering with heat and dustbowls that seemed gargantuan sand-demons conjured by the sirocco-like Arabian winds, the Syrian-Turks and the Arabic-Turks led by
Radwan of Aleppo, his vassal
Toghtekin, and his allies
Ilghazi ibn Artuq of Mardin and
Sökmen of the Shah-Armens, advanced from Homs and marched southwards directly to Beirut – the city being currently under siege by Duke Raymond’s forces – while a minor infantry army led by
Tutush II went from Damascus to cross the upper Jordan and attack northern Palestine, near the Sea of Galilee.
The Phoenician city of Sidon, which had been accepted late Duqaq of Damascus’ suzerainty, had been approached earlier that year by a Fatimid navy and then eagerly (re)welcomed the Egyptian rule, a few days after the Italo-Normans led by Bohemond and the Aquitanians of William IX of Aquitaine put it to siege, with the intent of annexing it to the “Principality of Tyre”. The Franks were surprised by a night attack of the reinforced Lebanese garrison and gave up the siege, having since returned to Tyre.
Bohemond returned to Tyre empty-handed, and contented himself with secretly cursing Raymond, who had recently besieged Beirut, in an evident effort to deny Bohemond any sort of depth to his newly conquered fief. Raymond himself was always eager to prove himself a better and worthier lord than that
nouveau riche Norman adventurer.
Now, it seemed that Bohemond’s ill-considerations towards Raymond might have gone even far then he himself desired, as it conjured, as if a trick of dark sorcery, a horde of Turkish cavaliers from beyond the Syrian desert. The vanguard was led by none other than Toghtekin, the warlord whom Bohemond had previously met in battle, during the Crusade of 1101. Narcissistic as he might be, Bohemond knew well that such an invasion needed the whole of the realm to be combated, and was the first to answer to the call of duty, marching from Tyre to meet Raymond and his son Bertrand near the high-grey walls of Beirut. Perhaps, yet again, he might prove himself as the better man in comparison to Raymond, who was undeniable a courageous, even if stubborn and obnoxious, warrior of the faith.
*****
To Bohemond’s surprise, though, Raymond refused to give battle to the invaders. According to him, his own men were tired and demoralized by the protracted siege of Beirut, and stressed by the exceedingly hot and windy season. Indeed, even Lebanon, a country more temperate and lush than the mostly-arid region of Galilee, was being punished by beige whirlwinds coming from the desert, perhaps even Nature had been announcing the coming of these godforsaken savages.
Since the Crusaders had failed to capture the formidable Qala'at al-Shaqif, nominally under vassalage of Damascus – and thus, loyal to Tutush II – they opted to build a fortress of their own near the provincial town of
Nabatia [
Nabatia/
Nabaṭiyya]. By then, the
Castle of St. Eulalia, which was destined to be a formidable Frankish stronghold, was a minor citadel, and a fairly isolated one, since between the Lebanese coast and the Latin-occupied city of Safed there lay a lawless frontier uncontrolled by the Jerusalemites.
Bohemond was simultaneously furious and enthusiastic about Raymond’s decision to “flee”. On one hand, he earnestly believed that the Latins, with God’s help, had the upper hand in the field of battle, if they attacked with violence and straight hearts, against the infidels. One the other hand, he could not shy away of the opportunity of denigrating his rival’s reputation. He did not accuse him openly of cowardice, but such was the vicious rumor disseminated among the rank-and-file that even the Raymond’s Toulousains became unquiet, believing they ought to march back north to face the Turks before they entered the Holy Land proper.
One must remember, as well, that by then Raymond was already an old man, and constantly infirm. His chronicler, Raymond of Aguilers, constantly reminds that his namesake liege was, in these years, struggling with chronic pain in the articulations, in some days could not even walk by himself, having to be carried in a litter, a very demoralizing display to his troops. The overall decisions strategic decisions were mostly in the hands of his protégés – his own son Bertrand of Toulouse, and his nephew, William-Jordan of Cerdanya.
Apparently, being so confident in their numbers and in the righteousness of their cause, the invaders had no hurry, and marched slowly across Lebanon, their ranks being daily increased by the arrival of new recruits from the cities of Tripoli, Beirut, Byblos and Sidon, as well as Muslim Syrians from the hill-lands of Zahlé and Baalbek, a city where allegedly ancient ghosts haunted the ruins of the Hellenic pagan temples.
Thus, only in August 1109, the main Crusader force found itself cowered in Nabatia, awaiting for the Turks. Duke Welf of Bavaria had communicated Raymond and Archbishop Gerard about his intention of hurrying north to join the Toulousains, Italo-Normans and Aquitainians against the Turks, but, at the Archbishop’s behest, he decided to remain in southwest Palestine, moving from his fief of
Iamnia [
Yavne/
Jabneh/
Ibelin] to join with the Toulousain garrison guarding Ascalon. They were supposed to be the bulwark of the realm against the fast-moving Egyptians, which by then had already crossed the Sinai and approached Gaza.
Now, the Turks attacked the Latins in Nabatia, and, despite the sizes of the armies involved it resulted in but a minor tactical victory to the Muslims. Again due to the cautiousness of Duke Raymond, the Crusaders opted to retreat further south, likely with the intention of mustering all the available forces in Palestine to provide a substantial resistance. In fact, Raymond attempted to negotiate a truce, and was apparently willing to surrender important frontier forts and relinquish his own claims to Lebanon, but the concession enraged the Latin leaders, Count Bohemond and Duke William, and proved to be unsatisfying to the Turks, whose sole purpose was the complete eradication of the Latin realm.
Another engagement happened in that same month not far from Nabatia (captured and razed by the Saracens in barely a week), near the village of
Tebnine [
Tibnīn], in the plateau of Jabal Amel [
Jabal ʿāmil], and this time the invaders ousted the defenders with substantial losses. The rugged terrain was not suitable for the preferred Turkish tactics of horse archery, and Raymond believed that there the cross-bearing faithful would have the advantage. To his surprise, the Turks almost did not employ the cavalry, and, having plenty of heavy infantry from the Lebanese metropolises and from the hardy country of southern Syria and western Mesopotamia, including the infamous Kurdish spearmen, the Muslim coalition proved to be a formidable match. All of this, summed to the poor decision-making on the Frankish side, whose leaders even in the middle of battle were bickering and failed to found common cause, resulted in a disaster for the Christian side. The sheer charisma of William-Jordan prevented an outright rout by the shaken Toulousains, while, in the other side of the field, the combined Norman and Aquitanian host actually pushed the Saracens back, but became too tired and, with the sun striking at their eyes during the afternoon, were also overwhelmed and forced to abandon the field.
To this day, even among the Occitan literary circles, the fiasco is attributed solely to Raymond, with euphemisms disguising the contempt against the alleged cowardice and pusillanimity of one these “Crusader warlords”. An unfair assessment of the circumstances, perhaps, but it is obvious since the pro-Norman revisionism became prevalent: impinging the sole responsibility to a weakened and uncharismatic leader, conveniently ignoring the fact that the whole leadership of Jerusalem remained divided by childish rivalries and cheap vanities. Of course, we cannot forget to analyze the situation from the Muslim point of view, and we can easily conclude that the battle demonstrated a finer military acumen to the Turkish leadership – notably Toghtekin, whose vanguard force broke across the Toulousain infantry like an axe –; something the Crusaders, which had grown overmighty and vainglorious, would hardly acknowledge.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the first line of defenses of the holy kingdom had been breached, and Jerusalem itself would soon be menaced.
*****
In the south, Duke Welf of Bavaria remained in static position, having made Gaza a trench to resist the advance of the Egyptians, and then saw himself forced to pursue them when the Fatimid hosts simply bypassed the coastal fortress, in June 1109 (a bit earlier before the Turkish advance through Lebanon). This time, they were led not by Al-Afdal Shahanshah (who had been struck with a serious illness in the previous months), but by
Shams al-Khilafa, a Berber mercenary captain from Libya.
The Fatimids went directly eastwards after crossing the Sinai, passing through Beersheba [
Be'er Sheva] and penetrating into southern Palestine, a mountainous region west of the Sea of Galilee, inhabited by hardy and uncultured Christian and Jewish peoples. As the provincial locals hardly cared about either the Franks or the Egyptians, the invaders advanced without any obstacles until they reached Hebron. The fortified city was put to siege, and finally Welf and his avid German troops arrived to oust them, having chased the Egyptians like dogs behind the fox. The German light-armored vanguard was ambushed by a Sudanese detachment of archers and suffered heavy losses. When Welf himself arrived with the main column (already in July 1109), he was surprised to find that the Egyptians had apparently dispersed through the region in small detachments and mobile parties, tasked with raiding and scorching the land, and was forced to chase them. It took almost a month of exhausting and frustrating skirmishes.
Welf decided to not give them any breathing space, but the Egyptians reassembled and they met to battle in the outskirts of Beersheba, in the very fringe of the Negev desert. The Bavarians at first marched to fight, but in the last hour, Duke Welf wavered and decided to call his men back. The Egyptians mounted a camp and awaited for three days, without any attack, and then left in the third consecutive night, trekking to west to find the littoral.
If the Bavarians had expected that the Fatimids would return to their own cursed desert homeland, they were mistaken. The Egyptians, Berbers and Sudanese were simply looking for a more fertile country to forage, and became content with the southwestern Palestinian Mediterranean coast. Yet again they avoided Gaza, believing that the fort would have been drained of manpower by Welf’s host, and went north until they found the ancient Roman road connecting the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem.
After weeks of a frustrating cat and mouse game, the Bavarian ducal army found the Egyptians awaiting in
Bethsames [
Beit Shemesh], a parochial village guarding the entrance of the forested hill-lands immediately west of Jerusalem. The Bavarians hesitated, as the invaders had found higher ground, and would certainly have advantage by employing their dreaded archers. Welf decided to await for them to attack, perhaps imagining that the militia from Jerusalem would come to reinforce him. Thus, one can only imagine his surprise when he found out, in one of these mornings in which he was “watching” the enemy host, that their soldiers had vanished during the night, using camp fires as a diversion to deceive the Bavarians, and had advanced directly east to Jerusalem.
When Welf met the Nile’s Saracens again, they were camped in a rather safe spot near the humongous walls of the sacrosanct metropolis, committed to the siege, but awaiting for the Germans to make their own move.
Welf was not an accomplished military commander in an age in which the magnates were expected to command and triumph, and this might explain his excessive caution. Had he attacked soon enough, avoided the disaster that happened in the following week, when the Turco-Syrian army led by the boy-king Tutush II (in fact commanded by
Baktash ibn Tutush – Radwan and Duqaq’s younger half-brother) was to arrive to reinforce the Fatimids. He waited too long, however, and the Saracens took the initiative, maneuvering through the difficult terrain and flanking the Bavarian encampment.
To be fair, the Germans fought bravely, but were overwhelmed by sheer numbers and forced to abandon the ground, retreating to Bethsames to mourn the dead, while the Holy City remained surrounded by an infidel army, barely a month after the beginning of the invasion.
