53. A Day in the Life of the Emir of Mosul (1142)
Non-contemporary statue representing Taj al-Muluk Buri "Saif al-Islam", Emir of Mosul. There are no contemporary extant depictions of his image
When the Christian army arrived, Taj al-Muluk Buri ibn Toghtekin “Saif al-Islam” had already deployed his troops, in the entrance of the valley of Hasankeyf, that the Arabs used to call Ḥiṣn Kayfa‘, but the Greeks had named Kiphas or Kephia. The city itself was not rich or populous, but it controlled a strategic position into eastern Armenia, and from whence one could penetrate into Jaziria from its northern border, right into Mosuli territory. Saif al-Islam had no intention of allowing passage.
Now, he remembered the first time he had met the Franks in battle. It had been… what, some thirty years ago? Indeed, he was young still. His father had joined the very first jihad against the infidels, conducted by the despicable Tutushid brothers and the cursed Fatimids, who desecrated the legacy of the Prophet, peace be upon him. After the battle near al-Quds [Jerusalem], in which the armies of the faithful, united in disgrace, were vanquished by the armies of the Franj, Saif al-Islam, with only four of his companions, entered in the Holy City and attempted to burn it from the inside. Alas, he knew that he would be forever cursed for laying his hand against the city where the Prophet, peace be upon him, had ascended to Heaven. But, instead, Allah had appointed him the ultimate endeavor: the submission of the infidel.
And, indeed, he hated them. The Franj and the Rûm. They were ′Ahl al-Kitāb of course - People of the Book, unlike the idolaters, who worshipped creatures and spirits -, but in their obsession and delusion they profaned the word of Isa al-Masih [Jesus Christ], the last of the prophets before Muhammad, peace be upon him. Now, Saif al-Islam saw the truth: the Franj and the Rûm were kafir - disbelievers - and for this they had to be submitted or destroyed, there could be no peace with the unfaithful, because there had to be submission.
Like many of his contemporaries, especially among the Turkmen, whose passions were war and hunt, and not literature and arts, Buri was only barely literate, and had never actually read the Qu’ran, but there was not a single day in his life in which one of his preceptors would not sing the surah to him, after the morning prayer. And he could recite some of them from memory, but, in the end, all that mattered was not the word of the Qu'ran itself, but the precepts and principles of the faith, which he, as a devout Muslim, was supposed to follow. While he knew much about the lineage of his Turkic forefathers from the steppe, he did not see himself distinguished by his customs nor by his mother tongue, but rather by his religion. And he did not care if his soldiers were Turkish, Persian, Arab or Kurd, but rather if they were Sunni or not. They were all ghazi - warriors of the faith.
And now, Saif al-Islam had grown in age and power and prestige, but he had failed the ultimate endeavor. He could only feel shame. If he had to offer the lives of every one of his sons and daughters and wives and brothers as well as his father and his soldiers, everyone of whom he loved as if they belonged to his own soul, he would, for the honor of Allah, as had done old Ibrahim, who father of Ishak and Ishmael. Because it was his purpose, to submit the unfaithful, lest he might never be deserving of Allah’s embrace.
*****
When the Christians advanced to give battle, it was not long before Saif al-Islam realized that they would experiment with a different tactical formation. The Kaisar î-Rûm, called simply Kumninu [Komnenos], organized the battle in the odd shape of a staircase: in the left side, it was some lines deeper than in the middle, and then this one was a few lines deeper than in the right side, oriented along a vague diagonal axis. Now, it was all but evident that by this they intended, in some way, to frustrate the advantage of the Turkmen in the open field, with their horse archers, but forcing the cavalry to either concentrate fire in a part of the enemy line or to disrupt their own formations, to permit mobility, but to the cost of losing their own cohesion.
Now, the Franj, much like the Rûm before them, had long since realized that the Turkish horse archers were not merely skirmishers but rather the main corps of their army; the Turkmen were trained from early age to operate on horseback, but they, contrary to what some Franj believed, were used to perform as heavy cavalry and infantry as well. One Turkman was expected to wield the saber as well as the bow. And now, to the Christians’ surprise, seemingly all of the enemy fighters were horse cavalrymen! How could this be possible? A battle without infantry?
But the Mosuli Emir was determined to submit these rabid dogs to a painful fate, and employed solely horse cavalry. His archers, second to none in the Orient, would exsanguinate the Christians. And this he did, for hours and hours. By securing the open expansive fields in the country between Diyarbakir and Hasankeyf, he employed his men in small groups, supposed to act as independent cells, but coordinated into larger attacks, not unlike a swarm of wasps assailing a bison.
Yes, the Franji knights were very resilient, as were the Kataphraktoi, but they were slow and would be tired by constant pursuit, even more as they were punished by the sun and dry winds.
Now, the Christians brought plenty of light cavalrymen. There were many Turks, but also Cumans and Pechenegs, and stranger peoples even, such as those Hungarians, with distinctive feathers in their coats, as well as some blonde-haired soldiers from distant Faransa [France], who went to battle with only small shields and javelins. The hardest part of the battle, and the one that could have decided its fate, actually, was the engagement between the light cavalry of the Christians and that of the Muslims. In this, the later prevailed, being more actually numerous - even if in global numbers they were outnumbered by a significant margin - and better equiped and trained. Barring the Cumans and Pechenegs and Hungarians, few to none of the European horsemen could really match the Turkmen veterans, and, exhausted after successive melees and skirmishes, the Christian side faltered, all while their infantrymen and heavy cavalry had barely engaged, having unsuccessfully attracted the Turkish horsemen to a closer position. This happened until nightfall, but the battle did not stop, not until they were completely enveloped by darkness.
*****
The Christians did not retreat. Why would they? Their numbers were much larger, and the Turks could not do this forever; they would run out of arrows eventually, for sure!
In the next day, they adopted an even more aggressive stance, trusting their own cells of cavalry to act more autonomously, but, this time, they avoided maintaing a static position, as they had tried in the previous day. Now, on the contrary, they formed defensive columns and squares and actually marched eastward, all while under continuous assault by the Turkish horse archers.
This seemed what Saif al-Islam intended, to corral the large army into the narrow pass of the valley, whereupon certainly they would be welcomed into a trap; most certainly, his infantrymen would deter their advantage while their rearguard would be overwhelmed by the cavalry. To develop his strategem, he at least twice executed the infamous tactic of feigning retreat; and this the Emir did with such a mastery and proficiency that many of the Franji, from noble to commoner alike, believing to have finally routed the Turkish cavalrymen, attempted to pursue them and, in exhilaration, broke their formation, ony to be slaughtered down by hundreds of arrows by the gleeful Turkmen.
Kumninu, however, was no fool, and, like many of the Franji nobles of Falastin [Palestine], was all too familiar with the tactic of feigned retreat, and, after the second time, reined down his dogs of war so they would not be senselessly butchered in their frenzy.
In the end of the second day, the Christians closed near the entrance of the valley, but, perhaps predictably, they refused to enter it, suspicious that it was, most certainly, a deception. Now, to Buri’s surprise, they set a fortified camp in the very doorway of the valley, near the Tigris river, surrounding themselves with wagons and cow hides. Reacting to his strategem, Kumninu wanted now to keep the Turkmen out of the valley in which they were being forced to enter. With this, he wanted to coerce Buri into playing his last ace in a disadvantage; as it was expected, Mosuli and Ahlati’s infantry had been deployed into the valley, to protect Hasankey, but now the Muslim army had been divided into two halves. This obviously surprised, among the Turkish generals, Sökmen II, as he did not expect that the Crusaders would actually attempt - in contrariation of all common tactical sense - a battle in two distinct sides, all while the Muslims had their archers positioned atop the mountains towering the valley to assault the newcomers.
What the Muslim generals did not expect was that the Kaisar î-Rûm was willing to pay the blood price to conquer that piece of the earth, and he was. He knew that by entering the valley, the Christians would suffer significant losses, being a rather worse position, but he was now dictating the terms of the battle, and they had numbers to spare. Only time could tell if the Christians, with their many pilgrims who had never grabbed a weapon in their life, would resist.
By the end of the day, having established cohesive squares of infantry - whereas even the knights and aristocrats dismounted to fight side-by-side with their men -, not unlike the “testudos” used by the ancient Romans, the Christians exploited the advantage of numbers and of the dreaded crossbowmen, whose speed and range outmatched the Muslim infantry, all while the rearguard of the army, reinforced by veteran soldiers, formed another line to defend against the incessant attacks of the thousands of archers who had been barred from entering the valley.
Now, after sacrificing many and many souls in this cursed valley, the Latins and Greeks successfully forced the Muslim infantry out of the battlefield, to retreat to Hasankeyf in desperation. Now, having secured the entrance, the Christians reorganized and, even in sight of the ample casualties, reformed their brigades and hardened their hearts, and advanced into the valley, even under barrages of darts and missiles from the skirmishers located upon the crags and cliffs.
Modern-day photography of Hasankeyf/Kephia, located in the margins of the Tigris River. In its ancient layout, the city was a small hilltop fortress located in the middle of the valley, but it did not present an obstacle to passage of land armies.
Now, Saif al-Islam was furious. His men had made the field and the valley into a massive graveyard for the Christians, but their resolve was seemingly unshakable. He realized that the trap that he had concocted against them turned against himself: if his cavalry entered, en masse, in the valley, they would be at the mercy of the Christians, without room to maneuver.
Then, as they moved against Hasankeyf, slowly venturing into the valley, Saif al-Islam retreated from the field, and maneuvered through the southern flank of the mountains.
*****
To the Latins and Greeks’ surprise, however, not long after they besieged “Kephia”, Saif al-Islam and Sökmen II appeared once again; as if conjured by the earth itself, they appeared from the east of the city, to protect against a possible encirclement. As it happened, in the span of a single day, in a remarkable - almost legendary - maneuver, Buri’s men circumvented the valley and, going by a southward path, escalated and descended the mountains by an ancient shepherd’s pass, one so narrow that men had to walk in a single file. Many had to leave their horses behind, but now their purpose was to protect the city, and so they would never be able to maneuver with their equines near the sandy shores of the Tigris river.
The siege of Hasankeyf lasted less than a month. The Christians resisted by sheer resolve, but they were exhausted and distraught by the casualties, by the heat of the day and cold of the night, by the constant and never ending engagements, which, in the first days, had even involved the firethrowers that the Arabs called naffatun.
The Greeks were the first to plead for the armistice, but Sökmen-Shah refused, because they wanted the whole of Armenia, and the Arman-Shahs would never accept these terms. Saif al-Islam had the whole Christian army cornered in the valley and believed that, given time, he could force them to capitulate in better terms.
Alas, he would soon realize that Kumninu was adept in playing a long game, with macroscopic perspective, and that their whole operation was seemingly a mere diversion. Indeed, it was soon that the Emir and the Shah received the unexpected and grave news about an incursion against Ahlat, coming from the Georgians.
Indeed, as we have mentioned elsewhere in this Chronicle, the Rhōmaîoi and the Georgians had forged an alliance in the reign of King David IV Bagrationi. By the time of his death, David had made himself the suzerain of the lands between the Kura and the Araxes rivers. He had submitted the Kurdish Shaddadids, a dynasty that ruled in Ani and in Ganja, but allowed them to remain in rule as vassals, and later the same fate befell Shirvan, whose self-proclaimed “Shah” was deposed. Now, the Kingdom of Georgia was under the helm of Demetrius, who was as ambitious as his late father and predecessor, and eagerly took the opportunity of expanding his domain in detriment of the Shah-Armens, these insolent wretches who had refused to recognize Georgian overlordship.
Demetrius marched from Dvin together with his vassal monarchs, Fakr al-Din Shaddad ibn Mahmud - one who had only recently been defeated, and still resented the Georgian rule, but was now too eager to prey upon the vulnerable Ahlatshahs to the south of his country - and Manuchihr III of Shirvan, who had been made Demetrius’ son-in-law by marriage to his daughter Rusudan. In the span of less than a week, they had reduced the border fortresses and advanced directly against the Shah-Armen capital of Ahlat, situated in the northern shore of Lake Van. Blockading the city was easy enough, but the Georgians wanted a quick resolution and took down its gates after a rapid siege.
Back in Hasankeyf, Buri’s army saw itself in a difficult position. Sökmen abandoned the campaign with his own soldiers to march against the Georgians, but his ally could not join him, and thus he saw himself in a weakened position. Cursed be the kafir!
*****
Saif al-Islam attempted to resist the siege, and refused capitulation, but the fighting came to a stalemate. His cavalry, still located westward, beyond the Christian rearguard, had no condition to operate inside the valley and dismounted to engage them, but then the Christians formed consecutive trenches to secure their own position.
The Mosuli Emir expected that the Christians, cut off from their supply lines, would soon starve; their numbers would become their own disadvantage, and it was but a matter of days. However, as soon the Shah-Armens abandoned Buri’s side, Kumninu and the Franj took immediate action, surprising even Buri, and, bypassing the circuit of walls of Hasankeyf, marched directly against the remaining Muslim infantry in the other side of the line. The Basileus’ master plan had worked to perfection; had the Georgians failed to act, in the span of a few days, the Greeks and Latins would indeed have been entrapped in the valley without hope of escape; now, with the Muslims reduced and demoralized, they were assaulted. The prey revealed itself to be the predator, after all.
Once the outnumbered Mahometan infantry was vanquished, with only a handful of them surviving a grueling engagement, the Christians returned to Hasankeyf and, once again, ignored it, and marched back to the entrance of the valley, with the intent of facing the dismounted Turkish cavalrymen. This time, however, victory was not easy; the Franj and Rûm suffered many losses in the melee against the veteran troops of Buri.
In the end, however, the sheer superiority of numbers allowed the Christians to overwhelm the Muslims while facing serious tactical and logistical difficulties.
The joy of seeing that the Christians slain by the thousands did not wash the bitter taste of defeat and humiliation; once again, he had been bested by them, his hated enemies. He, alone, the champion of the faith, with his tiny Emirate, attempted to counter the the might of Romyyun and of Faransa, suffering with blood and steel, all while his Saljuq overlord enjoyed a languid afternoon in his palace.
Hasankeyf - now to be definitely called Kephia - had to be given. It was her fate to fall, and now the Rûmi could claim mastery over the fairest part of Armenia.
*****
The conquest of Hasankeyf/Kephia ended the middle phase of the *Second Crusade, and would in fact be the last act of the Greek reconquest of Armenia. In the next years, the Armenians would also see the rise of the star of Georgia, whose monarchs, exploiting the foundations laid by King David IV, would usher a true golden age, one that would bring great prosperity and tranquility to Armenia, in the wake of the Seljuq downfall.
After the battle, the Crusaders from Hungary voyaged to Jerusalem in haste together with the Outremerine army, seeing that they had received alarming news about an invasion from Egypt and a rebellion in eastern Syria, that threatened their hold over Damascus.
Alas, we will see that Saif al-Islam, old and tired by war - one that lasted for all his life - would return to Mosul broken and infuriated, believing to have been betrayed by all his correligionaries, who had, not unlike vulturers, had abandoned him to face alone, like a lone lion, a whole pack of jackals. Indeed, he knew that the other vassals of the Saljuq court had been conspiring against him, and avidly commemorated what they believed to be the prelude of his downfall among the powerbrokers of the Sultanate.
But he refused it to simply acquiesce to a position of subservience and humility. He had been defiant of fate ever since the day of his birth - legend say that he was supposed to die before seeing the first light after leaving the womb, but Allah had decreed that he would live -, and so he would meet it in his own terms.
In 1147, insulted by his nemesis, the Atabeg of Azerbaijan, Shams ad-Din Ildeniz - who had made himself a virtually independent monarch in Azerbaijan after Mas’ud spiraled in a circle of debauchery and slothfulness - Saif al-Islam declared war against him and invaded the Azeri atabeylik. This, in turn, would allow the formation of a coalition against Mosul, led by the Sultan himself, who joined with Ildeniz to depose the rebellious vassal.
This war would be a long one, and neither Saif al-Islam nor his hated suzerain, Mas’ud, would live to see its end, as the former was fated to pass away in 1149, and the later in 1152. Afterwards, the last vestiges of the monarchy’s authority would fade, and the former vassals would usher an age of warlordism, of brother fighting against brother, fated to last almost three decades.
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Notes: OK, this chapter is a bit different and experimental. I've focused on the battle, but I figure that the descriptions might be a bit confused and fuzzy. I'll be sure to revise it in a few days.
Now, some readers might skip the discussions of the thread, and, for those who did not read my previous non-storyline post, I've been explaining that I realized a mistake in previous chapters, by mentioning the Shirvanshahs as vassals of the Seljuks, but rather, in 1142, they were vassals of Georgia, and this is mentioned here. I'll retcon the previous chapters to correct the mistake.
Also, the relationship between Georgia and the Shaddadids is a bit complicated. The Wiki doesn't goes in detail, but it seems that the Shaddadids still controlled Ani in the 1140s, during the reign of Demetrius, but there seemed to be a vassalage/client-state relationship, which I mentioned only briefly to avoid specifics.
Next chapter will close the Second Crusade arc, promise. The following ones will be a break on the narrative, in which we'll focus in culture, economics and other details I believe would be interesting to explore in greater detail.
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) will get some land now that the Roman campaign in Armenia is over...![[totally a legit person]](/forum/data/avatars/m/134/134906.jpg?1617940240){kind=avatar}
