Painting representing a battle between the Turcoman troops of Saif al-Islam and the Armenian vassals of Edessa, a scene in the Medieval Epic "Vartan the Grey Bearded", inspired in the folkloric character Vartan Vartanyan, Lord of Romanopolis [Vartan Vartanyan]. The period after the fall of the Kingdom of Armenia, all up to the Crusader Era, is frequently depicted in modern Armenian literature and arts, and the struggles of the local Armenian lords and commoners, never subservient to either Roman or Frank, furnish various folk legends, the most notable of which is the "Vartanian Epic"
The Latins could have reasonably expected the Islamic army to depart and disband in winter, as it was usual. The cold season in Armenia was particularly harsh, with howling winds descending from the mountains and nights were usually pitch-black under blankets of dark clouds. However, only a fraction of the Seljuq force abandoned campaign - those commanded by the Shirvan-Shah and by the Atabeg of Fars -, while a sizeable contingent remained afield, now led by Buri Saif al-Islam, finally elevated to the leadership position that he aspired to. The Emir of Mosul, having proven himself a worthy champion of Allah, co-opted the allegiance of the fanatical Arabian
ġhāzī, as well as of a myriad of Kurdish warlords from Jaziria, and, to him, it was as if the campaign had just started.
Once again, the Mahometans traversed along the Euphrates valley, but this time Saif al-Islam ventured deep into the hinterland to the west, weaving a path of destruction all the way to
Aintab [Turkish:
Antep]. There he quickly expelled a warband led by local Armenian ruler after a quick skirmish, and, inspired by his seemingly tireless soldiers, marched to
Doliche, which the Franks called “
Tulupa” [Turkish:
Dülük], a walled town whose countryside was wholly pillaged. Disregarding keeps and fortified cities, he desired solely to prey upon the defenseless peasantry, his impetus sustained by the insatiable bloodlust, as well as by the growing hoard of booty. He made no prisoners; either the locals were slain or expelled from their homes, and this would force them to seek refuge in the lordly keeps, which would soon become overcrowded, a very problematic situation in winter season. This, in turn, would jeopardize the Frankish rule in the region, seeing that the native Armenians and Kurds would lose the faith in their feudal lords to protect them.
Saif al-Islam’s campaign in the western provinces of Edessa was put to an end by the timely arrival of a ten thousand strong force from Rhōmania, led by John Axouch, coming from Paphlagonia. The Turcomans avoided battle and retreated all the way to the Euphrates valley, trusting that the Greeks would not engage in pursuit. Indeed, Axouch had orders to prevent a Turkish incursion into Imperial territory, but he did not chase Buri.
Now, being likely that the County of Edessa was liable to collapse under the insurmountable pressure of the invaders, the Rhōmaîon forces “invited” themselves into
Germanicia [Turkish:
Kahramanmaraş], a fortified settlement that had only recently been conquered by the Crusaders from an insignificant Turcoman chieftain. The locals, mostly Armenians, led by a Francophone baron, were delighted to see John Axouch’s men, and scantly realized that they had come to actually stay. Using Germanicia as an advanced base, the Rhōmaîoi also militarily occupied the Frankish holds of Aintab and Ravendel. Baldwin II could not give himself the luxury of being malcontent with this situation, considering the circumstances; it was the last hope of his falling principality.
*****
Between January and February, in 1139 A.D., a host of Latin-Levantine nobles finally arrived to relieve the hapless province that had been so rapaciously devastated by the Saracens.
They were led by Roger of Syria, Prince of Jerusalem, by the Archbishop Gregory and by the other magnates of the Princely Court, and accompanied by the Crusaders from Flanders, Lorraine and England. It is possible that this army had been one the Normans had intended to muster to, once again, invade Egypt; now, however, the emergency of Edessa’s situation demanded immediate action. Assembled hastily in the height of winter, the native Levantine levies were poorly prepared to conduct a dedicated campaign; fortunately for them, the Flemish, Lorrainer and English Crusaders were mostly professional and ever ready for battle, and thus evened the scales of the balance.
Once they established a headquarters in Turbessel, the first act was to attempt to attract Saif al-Islam to a more convenient battlefield. The Muslims, however, did not intend to give one. Instead, the Emir of Mosul, coming from the western frontier of Edessa, simply bypassed Turbessel, and took the road to the Euphrates. The Latins attempted to check his retreat in the bridge-town of al-Bira, but Buri, sacrificing his rearguard, mostly comprised by Kurdish and Arab mercenaries, successfully escaped, plunder included. The Flemish and English knights even attempted to pursue the Turcomans all the way to Saruj [Turkish:
Serugh], but were forced to retreat under heavy assault of their horse archers.
Afterwards, expecting that the Christians would follow him to Harran, Saif al-Islam departed back to Mosul, finally satisfied with the results of his campaign of havoc.
*****
The Latins made only a feeble attempt of reducing Harran - which had been granted as a reward by Shirvan-Shah to a minor Azeri warlord, but, now that Edessa had been reduced to rubble, there was no purpose in expanding east beyond the Euphrates. They were too far from their logistical and manpower bases on the Levant, and had no desire of persisting in these operations.
This might explain, in fact, why they seemingly did not oppose the occupation of the western castles by John Axouch, even though Roger was surprised by the justification: the Emperor argued that Rhōmanía ought to be compensated by the fact that the Crusaders had made themselves the masters of Damascus. Besides, according to the Rhōmaîoi, it was much more sensible to have Edessa under Imperial protection, considering the geographic proximity, lest it would most certainly fall to the “
Tourkoi”, and thus invite a hostile power in the region, to threaten the whole of eastern Christendom.
The fact that Edessa’s fall and the subsequent Rhōmaîon takeover was so abrupt created uneasiness among the Franks, who, despite not really caring too much about Edessa, regarded it as a right of conquest. After some time, though, realizing that it was a faît accompli, even more after Count Baldwin II himself, out of desperation, welcomed the Rhōmaîon armies to reinforce Samosata, the Franks decided it was better to accept it for the better. The western provinces of the County of Edessa, those on the nearer side of the Euphrates River, would soon be incorporated into the Imperial dominion, although John II Komnenos confirmed the local rule of the Frankish lords who were there established. Baldwin was created “
Doux Edessos” and ceremoniously recognized as the guardian of the eastern frontier, but now his effective demesne was reduced to Samosata and Turbessel.
*****
Now, the Christians expected that they would enjoy a respite from the war.
They would not.
In the midst of the year of 1139, just as the King of France was arriving in the Balkans with his grand army, Saif al-Islam captained another bold offensive against the Crusader State. To fulfill his objective, and knowing that his own Mosuli soldiers were tired from campaigning, he obtained the cooperation of the
Shah-Armens [Turkish:
Ermenşahlar], a Turkish dynasty situated in the former Armenian stronghold of Ahlat. He convinced
Nāṣir al-Dīn Sökmen II, the (self-proclaimed) “
Shah-î-Arman”, to join him in campaign, remembering that their fathers, Toghtekin and Sökmen I al-Kûtbi, had fought together against the infidels some 30 years previously, and almost had reconquered al-Quds. And now, by their negligence and impiety, the infidels had grown tenfold, like an infestation of vermin, and threatened the safety of Allah’s faithful. The Shah-Armens, seeing that an alliance with Mosul, and, by extension, with the Seljuqs, might ensure their growth against the neighboring Christian and Islamic polities, agreed to join him. Buri also procured the cooperation of the Bedouin groups that had become entrenched in
Diyar Mudar, fully aware that those were, however, nothing above greedy mercenaries.
Thus, with some of improvisation, he devised a double-pronged attack upon the Crusaders that would most certainly jeopardize their defensive positions:
- The combined Turcoman, Kurdish and Muslim Armenian forces, led by Buri’s eldest son, Shams-ul-Mulk Isma'il [Turkish: Şamalmülk Ismail], going from Sinjar to ar-Raqqah, would advance deep into northwestern Syria, skirting the border of Rhōmaîon Aleppo, with the intent of attacking the territory of Homs, whose Emir was a feeble client of the Crusaders. This would serve to weaken the Latin dominion over northern Syria;
- A smaller, but more mobile force of cavalry and light infantry, would retrace the same path that Buri did only a few years ago when he went to Damascus: going to Qarqūsyōn, called “Circesium” by the Greeks, the city where the Khabur River discharges into the course of the Euphrates, and from there onward to Palmyra and then to Damascus once again.
*****
The plan worked as well as Buri could expect.
In the region of Homs, the surprising appearance of the Turcoman companies forced the desperate Emir of Homs,
Abu Fadl ibn Rahman Zayd as-Salih al-Himsi to plead for the assistance of the Latins. This time, Roger wasted no time, and rapidly assembled the levies and the retinues of the lords to meet the Turks in battle. With him came, once again, the Counts of Flanders and Hainaut, as also the Toulousains and the Lorrainers of Tiberias. The host of the English, though, had already returned to Europe.
The Saracens avoided engagement, inasmuch as the Latins tried to force them into a pitched battle. They were pushed away to Hama, and from there they retreated to Mesopotamia, but the Latins, seeking retribution, pursued them as far as the remote fort of
Resafa [Arabic:
ar-Riṣafa], an ancient Roman stronghold. With a good disposition to march due the arrival of autumn, the Franks knew that the derelict fort had been occupied by Bedouin bandits, and immediately besieged it. To their surprise, the Turcomans had evacuated the walled town in the previous night, leaving their pursuers empty-handed, and stranded in the midst of a desolate country.
Meanwhile, Saif al-Islam himself conducted the cavalry column into the offensive against Damascus, arriving there just couple days after the main Latin army had began their march to northern Syria. Once again, he had no intention of prosecuting a siege, but, rather, of devastating the whole land around it. And this he did: his numbers were sufficient to allow for a comprehensive swarm-like spread of the cavalry and camelry warbands, whose cells acted autonomously, and united in their single-minded purpose of wreaking destruction and pillage. The fertile plains neighboring Damascus were torched with such a ferocity that, according to one chronicler, the city itself became entirely black , covered by clouds of ashes from the hinterland. The fertile Goulta plain, ransacked by the Turkic barbarians, would take years to recover from the depredation.
To be fair, the recently-established Frankish barons attempted to orchestrate a resistance, but their efforts fell short, as the main body of the Latin army was by then operating in northern Syria. They could only react by launching counteroffensives against the isolated foragers and groups, but this hardly prevented the destruction of the country. Count Baldwin of Tiberias, who had remained in Galilee as a reserve in the case the Fatimids attempted to invade from the Sinai, arrived in a few days with Italian conscripts and with his own cadre of knights, and attempted to organize the defense of the County of Syria, but, by then, it was already too late.
Far in Resafa, Prince Roger only received the news about the pillaging of Damascus a few days later after Saif al-Islam’s arrival, and thus they hurriedly returned to Homs, and from there the Latins conducted a forced march that brought them in less than two days to Damascus. By the time they arrived, the Turcomans had regrouped in a position further to the east of Damascus, but escaped by the desert route all while avoiding to give battle.
Overall, the Saracen campaign was a success, in the sense that it did not devise to capture any settlements, but rather to reduce the availability of resources and manpower to the Crusaders. This episode, coupled with the occurrence of another destructive quake in the region of northern Edessa, and with the almost complete disruption of the commercial venues linking Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean, ushered a period of significant economic decline in the Near East as a whole, something that serves to demonstrate the extent of the chaos of warfare.
However, as the Latins, hardened by the conflict and for once united in their resolve to exact revenge against the Saracens, reorganized their available resources in preparation for the next campaign, they received the best of news: the Crusader armies of Francia had finally arrived in Antioch, and were sided by another vast Rhōmaîon host, led by the Basileus John II Komnenos. It was, by all accounts, the most numerous force ever come to the Orient ever since the days of the Romans.
Now, it was time for payback.
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