And All Nations Shall Gather To It - Volume I: The Abode of Peace
- Thread starter Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)
- Start date
Stop bumping! It doesn't do a thing to get us another update. If the author wishes to return, they'll do so in their own time. In the meantime, you're just being rude and spamming notifications.
Friends and readers.
First of all, I owe you all an apology. I've been absent not only from this thread, but from the Forum as a whole. These past months were particularly exhausting, as I've been up to finish a long and tiring cycle of studies, and then some issues appeared, some serious stuff I had to devote my whole attention. Yet, obviously I should have given some answer so that the readers wouldn't think I actually abandoned the story, out of respect for all of you who supported this project and put all of your time and ideas here.
Anyways, it seems that now I'll be finally getting some time to get back here, and, hoping that some of you will still have interest, I'm reassuring my commitment to advance this TL. I believe that today even I can fire an update to continue the story, and then we'll get to an important piece that details the worldbuilding in this Alt-TL (something you usually request). Thus, I hope that we can resume the thread with regular installments.
Of course, for the sake of much needed recapitulation, considering the significant hiatus, I'm open to any questions, criticism, suggestions and everything else, as always
First of all, I owe you all an apology. I've been absent not only from this thread, but from the Forum as a whole. These past months were particularly exhausting, as I've been up to finish a long and tiring cycle of studies, and then some issues appeared, some serious stuff I had to devote my whole attention. Yet, obviously I should have given some answer so that the readers wouldn't think I actually abandoned the story, out of respect for all of you who supported this project and put all of your time and ideas here.
Anyways, it seems that now I'll be finally getting some time to get back here, and, hoping that some of you will still have interest, I'm reassuring my commitment to advance this TL. I believe that today even I can fire an update to continue the story, and then we'll get to an important piece that details the worldbuilding in this Alt-TL (something you usually request). Thus, I hope that we can resume the thread with regular installments.
Of course, for the sake of much needed recapitulation, considering the significant hiatus, I'm open to any questions, criticism, suggestions and everything else, as always
Alexa, play Hallelujah_chorus.mp3
Very glad to know that this TL is making a comeback. Hope that your studies and everything went well.
Very glad to know that this TL is making a comeback. Hope that your studies and everything went well.
Hurray! Glad to have you back Rdffigueira and I'm very pleased to see this timeline continue as well!
37. From Syria With Love (1120 - 1124)
Map of western Syria and northern Lebanon, c. 1120
Robert of the Marquisate’s reign was fated to be short, as the Realm in the middle of 1124 would witness his untimely death. In the comfortable vacuum resulting from the relative obscurity of his life, a heavily idealized persona was created parallel to the factual chronicles, and this contributed to popularize him among the early Latin-Levantine rulers, most notably in the courtly literature developed in the late 15th Century. While the lives of Bohemond of Hauteville and of the later Norman princes of the Outremer are well documented, we have surprisingly little detail about Robert’s early years – much as we know nothing about his brothers Tancred and William before they embarked in the First Crusade –, about his personality, and even about his appearance, even if nowadays it is common for him to be depicted in arts and media as grizzly bearded veteran. Like his cousin and predecessor, Bohemond, he was passionate about military affairs and campaigning; even his daily habits, such as hunting and dueling, consisted in a perpetual preparation for war. Thus, Robert seemed indeed a man perfect for the job of leading the armies of the Latins in this wild frontier of Christendom, or at least he regarded himself as that. Unlike Bohemond, as some analysts pointed out, he was less knowledgeable or less interested about strategy, lacking basic concerns such as logistics, which was to become the main preoccupation of his wary subordinates, notably Richard of Salerno, who was elevated to Constable of the Realm. Robert sought to strengthen the relationship with the Salernitani to counterbalance his Hauteville rival, whom he had pardoned, but never really forgiven.
While Robert planned and undertook his campaigns, the administrative matters of the realm remained in the hands of two capable men: Count William of Gargano, who had become Seneschal under Bohemond after the previous one, Raymond Pelet, Lord of Alès – a distinguished Crusader knight who had enffeofed with the Castle of Hebron – returned to Europe in 1117; and Archbishop Gerard of Amalfi himself. The Count of Balbac [Baalbek] came to reside in the city of Jerusalem in these years, and became responsible for the control of finances and commissioned the scribes of the Congregation of the Cenaculum to preside over a system of record-keeping to kick-start a bureaucratic structure in the realm.
Unlike Bohemond, who was single-minded in his purpose of conquering Damascus, Robert – who had participated in its siege, and had long since realized it would be wasteful to attack it without a massive army – was content enough to leave the tyrant Baktash ibn Tutush be, as long as he continued to pay tribute; and this he did, even as he styled himself the Sultan of Syria to spite his relatives in the distant Seljuk court of Hamadan. This new Norman Prince in fact coveted the wealth of Egypt, like all those who would succeed him through that century, but, again, he knew that such a massive expedition would need a lot of preparation and resources. It was no coincidence, then, that an alliance was forged with Venice – even then it was already the most formidable maritime power in the eastern Mediterranean –, in exchange for a fleet to launch an amphibious invasion of Egypt. The Doge himself promised to bring at 10.000 men-at-arms for this enterprise, but, to his disappointment, it would be called off, as Robert’s attentions were turned to the north due to circumstances beyond his control. It has been argued that this was a mixed blessing and curse to the realm of Jerusalem; in 1120, we know that al-Malik al-Afdal Shahanshah had suppressed the opponents to his despotic regime, and ruled over Egypt as an autocrat, with such a hold over the Caliphal army that a Crusader invasion would most likely have resulted in disaster. Yet, al-Afdal would be assassinated precisely in the next year, but, by then, the Crusaders had already abandoned whatever premature prospects they might have conceived to invade Egypt, and were dedicated to campaigns in Syria.
*****
In early 1121, after the worst of winter had passed, but before sowing season began, Robert marched from Jerusalem with 300 knights and an unknown number of footmen, together with Richard of Salerno and this one’s son, Roger, as well as the old veteran Ilger Bigod – who had been constable of his brother Tancred – to Zahlé, and from there into the Beqaa valley, whereupon they arrived in Balbac, with its impressive Roman ruins. The famous Temple of Bacchus had, then, been repurposed by Toghtekin, in his brief rule over the city, into a citadel, and there the Sant’Angeli family held court and passed judgment. Now, however, Seneschal William was in Jerusalem, and thus his son, Asclettin of Gargano, acted as his steward. From there, Robert went to Lebanon to obtain the oaths of fealty of the Syrian and Arab chieftains of central Syria.
Ever since the Seljuk invasions, the whole region had fractured into a myriad of independent polities, ruled by petty tyrants, usually styled “emirs” – even if most of them were not even Muslim, but rather Syriac Christians, it seemed that the Arabic appellation made more sense to them after so many centuries of Islamic hegemony – barring the curious case of Zayn ad-Din ibn Farid al-Lubnāniyyun, who preferred to be called simply “Imam”. They had accepted Radwan’s nominal overlordship, but it was Toghtekin who forced them to comply under his vassalage. After the Toghtekinids were expelled by al-Himsi, however, the local rulers did not deign to recognize neither him, nor the Latins, much less Baktash of Damascus, who was seem as a weak and ignoble ruler. Now, to their dismay, the mighty Crusaders were moving along the Anti-Lebanon Mountains to enforce their suzerainty over the whole of that region that comprised the fluctuant frontier of Syria and Phoenicia. Indeed, they had a casus belli: William of Sant’Angelo, some years before, had imposed nominal overlordship over the fortified cities located in the valley of the Orontes River, chief among them being Al-Nabek, situated among broad arable fields and with plenty of cold water, but in 1120, the Frankish knights sent there to collect tribute were imprisoned and executed, and the city closed its gates, sending envoys to Damascus. Apparently, they did not expect the retaliation to come so soon.
Robert’s reaction was indeed swift. He had been duly preparing for an expedition, and even a minor one such as this would be enough to prove his worth as a commander of the Christian armies. Besides, he realized that securing these settlements would allow the Crusaders to control the middle part of the Orontes valley, and perhaps, in the future, to strangle Damascus from upstream… should he attempt to besiege it. It worked all good on paper, but, in practice, it was a logistical nightmare: the roads that penetrated the Anti-Lebanon range were made for shepherds on donkeys, but not for the Frankish knights in their destriers, and beyond them until the valley of the Orontes valley there was an expansive arid plain – the Lebanese mountains blocked most of the humid Mediterranean winds, after all –, where the soldiers suffered with sunstroke and thrist. Now inside Syria, they first marched against Assal al-Ward, a small town with a few hundred inhabitants surrounding a spring, famous for its cultivation of therapeutic flowers. In spite of their peaceful welcoming to the Crusaders, these ones’ desperate quest for water sparked a brief, but bloody altercation because of miscommunication. The local Syrians, mostly Christians, were appalled to see some of their neighbors and family attacked by frenzied Frankish men-at-arms, and dispersed from the city’s market into their homes, which were immediately barricaded. Prince Robert lacked the tact to defuse the tensions, but Asclettin of Gargano set up a meeting with the town’s petty emir, and paid the reparations from his own pockets, expecting that the city would later be enfeoffed to him. In any case, the damage was done, and the episode aroused the ill-disposition of the Syrians towards the Crusaders, cementing their image of a barbarian race.
They did not remain there long, and after some days of march along the Orontes valley, reached Al-Nabek. The city was very small, but its fortifications were in shape, and its denizens opted to resist the inevitable siege. It took a couple months for the Crusaders to give up the siege, abandoning the city to its own devices, but then they traversed to the nearby (and rival) city of Yabroud, situated in the slopes of the Qalamun mountains, whose chieftain offered his allegiance. In spite of its small size, tiny population and insignificant economy, Yabroud was revered because the oldest church in Syria had been established there, a former pagan sanctuary dedicated by the Romans to Emperor Constantine, and his mother, Saint Helena. The lord of Yabroud was, indeed, a Syriac Christian, named John of Sedania [Yohanna bar Shednaya], a bishop elected by the people their leader and warlord after they expelled Doğan, a minor Turkish captain who had served under the Toghtekinids and, after al-Himsi’s coup, fled to al-Nabek, and from there went to Yabroud. John was not exactly happy about swearing loyalty to the Crusaders, considering that the local Syriac Christians saw the Catholics as heretics, but they seemed the lesser evil in comparison to the various Muslim tyrants that sought to oppress the region.
The same happened to Qara, a Christian settlement further north of Al-Nabek, well regarded as a market for desert caravans. They had been comfortable with the Islamic domination under the Umayyads and the Abbasids, whose Caliphs were mostly tolerant, but the Turkish warlords were despicable and ravenous like swarms of locusts. Once they learned that John of Sedania, a leader whom they greatly respected, for his honorable reputation, had defected to the Crusaders, the local ruler, a Syrian patriarch named Barsoum, sent envoys to Robert and welcomed him into the city. It was there that Robert summoned Jerusalem’s ally, al-Himsi, and, faithful to the terms of their agreement, the Emir of Homs arrived some weeks later, with a sizable infantry army.
Together, they put Al-Nabek to siege once again, and this time the Franks succeeded. The city was stormed and plundered, and all of the Saracens were enslaved. A large part of the booty was granted to the Franks’ allies, and, likely happy with the outcome, al-Himsi renewed the allegiance to Jerusalem and asked for Robert’s assistance in a campaign of conquest further north, in the upper Orontes.
*****
The campaigns in the upper Orontes during the 1120s are one of the most remarkable examples of Crusader and Islamic cooperation, one that would become, if not exactly common, at least not rare, in the following generations. Al-Himsi, the Emir of Homs and Hamah, certainly regarded the Latins as a dangerous and unpredictable faction in the Levant; indeed, it can be said that he had already realized that the Franks were poised to completely reshape the political landscape of the Near East, and believed it was better to have them on his side then on the opposite one. While the Qadi of Tripoli had reasons to fear and despise the Franks, whose power-hungry and ambitious princes had surrounded his tiny dominion in the span of a few decades – now that they held the control of Beirut, just some kilometers south of Byblos, and of Tortosa, located not far from the metropolis of Tripoli itself, and also of seemingly of a large part of the interior of Phoenicia – but Homs so far did not exactly border the Crusader dominion, whose main center of power in the region, Balbac, was somewhat distant. Al-Himsi, then, believed that for the time being, he could harness this amazing force of nature that were these western barbarians, to further his own ambitions; his rule depended on the Syrians, who grew to support him because of his expulsion of the despised Turkish interlopers, but he was a devout Muslim, and distrusted the various Christian communities inside his domain. Thus, he saw himself forced to hire companies of Arabic mercenaries to bolster his own army, but the Arabs were also untrustworthy and unreliable. It was due to the depredations of Bedouin mercenaries in the markets of Arjoun that the citizens had complained against him in 1118, and then, when he tried to disband the hired regiment, they mutinied and stormed the fortress of al-Qusayr, near the elderly city of Kadesh, forcing him to march against them.
Now, with the Franks’, he might finally expand his dominion, putting to sword the various regional petty warlords who had hitherto refused to acknowledge his suzerainty after the Radwanites were deposed. The Christians, on the other hand, were enticed by the promise of some settlements in Syria, a region known for its fertility and prosperity, and the Normans in particular rushed to obtain a suitable political dominion over the region, fearing that the Rhōmaîoi, having secured Aleppo, would now turn southwards.
For the next three consecutive years, this combined army of Franks and Syrians would campaign in western Syria. The Jerusalemite army, mostly comprised of Normans and Lombards, was joined by the Bavarians from Tortosa, whose numbers had been greatly reinforced by the recent arrival of Count Sieghard X of Burghausen, in 1121, on pilgrimage, with some hundreds of German retainers. As Marquis Welf of Bavaria was too old and frail to lead armies, the Bavarian host was led by his young son, Conrad of Jamnia, borne from his second wife, Sophia of Babenberg, herself the daughter of Count Leopold II of Austria and Ida “the Crusader”. At the time, Conrad was aged 17 years-old, and eager to prove himself in battle.
The first target was Shayzar (called “Sezer” by the Crusaders, after the Greek pronunciation), a stronghold ruled by the Munqidhite dynasty. It was not far from Hamah, but the citizens were proud of their independence and their traditions, and believed their formidable circuit of walls and bastions would deter any attackers. At the time, the city’s monarch was Abu'l Asakir ibn 'Ali ibn Muqallad, one of these scarce statesmen who preferred to rule by wisdom and fairness, and was thus beloved by his people.
After months of fruitless operations, the Crusaders gave up the attempt, leaving an infuriated al-Himsi to prosecute the siege alone with his meager forces, and the siege was abandoned altogether. The forces of Homs again attached to those of Jerusalem, and they went further north, to the ancient city that the Arabs called “Fâmieh”, but had been known since Antiquity as Apamea, famous for the Roman colonnade and marvelous mosaics. The city lacked walls whatsoever, and offered no resistance to the assailants. In spite of his goodwill, the local emir was deposed and sent to Jerusalem as a hostage; his palace would be refurnished by the Franks to serve as their headquarters in northern Syria.
Then, the political fate of the city divided the leadership of the expedition: al-Himsi believed Fâmieh should be integrated to his dominion, but Robert ignored his increasingly vexed demands, and instead enffeofed it to Tancred of Conversano, one of his favorites. Tancred was, after all, the current lord of Brindisi, and the brother of Count Alexander of Conversano, a fief of Apulia that extended over the whole of the heel of Italy, and Robert was keen on favoring him to gain the support of his kinsmen in Europe.
The episode did more harm than good. Tancred had no real intention of remaining in the Outremer, and would depart to Europe in 1125 (after which Apamea would then be annexed to the Bavarian fief of Tortosa). By disregarding al-Himsi's interests in Syria, however, the Crusaders provoked a fallout of their tenous alliance, and thus the Emir of Homs abandoned the expedition.
*****
In the next year, having regrouped after the passing of winter, the factions of Jerusalem and Homs would be reconciled out of desperation. Al-Himsi, in spite of his loathing towards the Latins, knew that his whole kingdom depended on them for the time being, and, facing an insurgence by the bellicose Alawite clansmen of Tell Salhab, who then joined with the militia of Shayzar to raid the outskirts of Hamah, sent envoys to Prince Robert, requesting assistance. The Crusaders, sensing an opportunity to weaken Shayzar, accepted to help, but forced al-Himsi to sign a treaty relinquishing whatever claim he might have in the lands beyond a day’s ride west of the Orontes valley. In 1122, then, they campaigned against Tell Salhab, defeating the Alawites after a series of skirmishes, and then attempted again to take Shayzar, without any luck. Their most noticeable gain would be the reduction of the mountain stronghold of Masyaf, fated to become the largest among the Crusader castles of Syria.
Overall, however, it was a year of fruitless operations, with minor skirmishes and raids, because logistics were problematic, and the local Syrian communities were rarely cooperative, even the Christian ones. In the spring, Count Bertrand of Caesarea finally arrived with his Toulousain and Provençal reinforcements, and while he, joined with the Bavarians of Tortosa and the Syrian and Arab forces of Homs, kept Shayzar blockaded, Prince Robert and his Norman and Lombard loyal troops conducted various raids deep into the northern frontier of Syria.
They were well received in Marre [Maarat al-Numaan], whose emir fostered a vendetta against the Turkish atabeg of the nearby city of Idlib – one had who accepted Rhōmaîoi suzerainty after the fall of Aleppo – and convinced the Europeans to attack it. After some weeks of siege, the atabeg of Idlib convinced the Crusaders to join his side, knowing that they would be wary of offending Constantinople by an ill-advised attack against a tributary of the Empire. In the next few months, it was Marre which saw herself besieged, to the desperation of its emir, who had believed to be safe from the Crusader aggression. The settlement offered some resistance but it lacked resources to withstand a long siege, and thus the Emir agreed to pay tribute in exchange for peace.
It was in that year, then, that the Prince of Jerusalem, in an obscure historical episode that would later provide for various folk legends in the following centuries, ventured deep into the arid expanses of eastern Syria with a cadre of Norman knights, to raid and plunder the defenseless mosques of the region. While some authors, such as Geoffrey Malaterra, fancied stories about an incursion beyond the Euphrates, deep into Seljuk domain, it is likely that the expedition was but a rapid military adventure with no strategic relevance whatsoever. Even so, it is a testament to the chimerical image of the Levantine-Frankish cavaliers the fact that even today one can find about idealized images of Norman knights charging through the expanse of Mesopotamia, clad in red-crosses and gilded surcoats, ready to invade Babylon itself.
This act of dauntlessness was fated to be the last one of brave Robert’s career.
In early of 1123, still in Syria, and not long before a delegation coming directly from Constantinople arrived in Tortosa to rendezvous with the Crusaders – whose main body was then still committed to the siege of Shayzar – Prince Robert was leading his mobile cavalry force to raid Jisr ash-Shugur (named by the Latins "Isora"], a settlement whose prosperity came from the commerce between the Mediterranean littoral and the interior of Syria. Like Idlib, the Jisr ash-Shugur had accepted Rhōmaîoi suzerainty, and did not expect aggression from these barbarians from far Jerusalem. Then, it became motive for applause and celebration the fact that one of their archers, positioned in a bastion overlooking the ancient Roman bridge that permitted the crossing of the Orontes, struck al-Malik al-Franji himself with a god-guided arrow. Robert, clad in mail, would have hardly been harmed by a distant dart, but its struck his horse in the unprotected belly, and thus the proud Norman cavalier was suddenly hurled to the ground by his agonizing mount, falling precisely in the stones bedded along the course of the river. The impact shattered his head and neck, and he was already lifeless when his men retrieved him from the water. Such an ignominious fate for such a mighty warlord...
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Notes and comments: A lot of stuff happens in this chapter. I at first considered dividing it in two pieces, but then decided it was better to have it in a single installment. Humphrey is a character that I conceived later in the story; in the original draft, Bohemond had no Hauteville successors in the Outremer, and thus the Salernitani become his immediate successors. Then, when I discovered a good source that names many of Bohemond’s relatives that went in the First Crusade, I reconsidered the situation and created Humphrey as a fictional character from the lineage of an historical one, Herman of Cannae. Now I realize it was a good thing to do, as it allowed me to focus in: (1) the complicated dynamics between the Norman families, which will become very important in the following generations; and (2) in the slow expansion into Lebanon and northwestern Syria (which, in my original draft, was basically ignored altogether, excepting for Damascus).
Conrad of Jamnia is a fictional character. Welf of Bavaria IOTL had two sons: Welf II, who married Matilda of Tuscany (of CK2-fame), and Henry IX the Black. The problem was that both were fairly old, and Welf was childless, while Henry, in these circumstances, would likely have not gone to succeed his father in Tortosa if he expected to inherit Bavaria itself. Thus, I was forced to create another [fictional] son to allow for the Bavarian lineage to continue in the Outremer. Not too implausible, I believe, considering that Welf’s wife had died in 1095 A.D., and he IOTL died in 1101, so I believe that, should he have lived longer, he might have married again, even in old age. Sophie of Babenberg is historical; IOTL she married much later to some minor Bavarian nobleman, and thus I realized that the Duke of Austria – whose many daughters were married to other important rulers of the region, such as the Duke of Bohemia – might have saw with good eyes a match with the Duke of Bavaria itself, who was, after all, a Crusader too. The marriage is fictional, then, but not too implausible, I think.
Other characters, excepting Geoffrey Malaterra and the Banu Munqidh of Shayzar, are all fictional. The mentions about the ancient ruins in Apamea, Jisr ash-Shugur and Tell Salhab are true, and some of them are extant even today.
IOTL, Maarat al-Numaan became (in)famous for an episode during the First Crusade; after the siege of Antioch, the Crusaders, desperate of hunger, attacked the city and literally cannibalized its inhabitants, an event so ghastly that was recorded in graphic detail in the European sources. ITTL, because of the Roman/”Byzantine” assistance after the siege of Antioch, the Crusaders are resupplied and never attack Maarat, whose first contact comes only in the 1120s.
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They won't like it, but for the time being there is a lot of goodwill from the Empire towards the Crusaders. It is hard to see a fallout between in this very moment.
Thanks, my friends. The early fall of Masyaf before the arrival of the Assassins/Hashashin (IOTL, c. 1140) means that they either remain in Alamut (Persia) or simply reallocate in another place, likely outside the Levant, and thus they will play a much minor role in Crusader/Islamic relations of the Near East. The settlement and the castle will be incorporated into the "March of Tortosa" (or Marquisate), ruled by the Bavarian Welf dynasty, and due to its geopolitical position, the German lords will put a lot of money and energy to enlarge it.
Also, for the time being, we'll be seeing more localized conflicts, considering that the Islamic polities are still fragmented and concerned with their own questions.