Hello there, folks. Sorry for the delays, as usual. Lots os commitments and so forth. But, anyways, let's get to the point. There have been 9 pages of discussions and no update. So, here's the closing of the Second Crusade arc. I'll be posting some few more non-narrative chapters dealing with aspects of the daily life in the alt-Crusader State, from economy and culture to cuisine and so forth. It's a very common request from readers, and it will help flesh out this world we're building here.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Non-contemporary painting representing the capture of an Egyptian city. It is highly fantasious, and mostly inspired in Ancient Roman and Greek imagery than properly in the descriptions of contemporary sources (c. 1550s)
By the end of 1142, the Rhōmaîoi had established the military hold over western Armenia, while its heartland, near Lake Van, had been secured by the Georgians and their Turkic vassals. The Latin army was mostly disbanded, with the Franco-Levantine princes returning to Syria to assess the news about an uprising in the region of Damascus, all while the Crusader armies that had come from Europe departed from Asia.
As it happened, the revolt in Syria was but a sedition commandeered by a disgruntled Christian Syrian officer who, after mustering a group of peasants, attempted to stage a coup in Damascus, but failed to even enter the city after its gates were closed. The revolters then fled to an abandoned hilltop fort near the desert, and were slaughtered by the Frankish knights established in Syria. This would be the last native rebellion to be seen in the region for the next few decades.
More troubling, actually, would be an assault conducted by a group of raiders affiliated to the Fatimid Caliphate. They were led by an obscure, but nonetheless interesting, personage named Ahmed as-Salih. His lack of nasab [patronymic name] betrays his mamluk origin, and there is still debate as to if he’s of Turkic or Berber origin. A bandit who, in times of peace and stability, would meet a quick demise in the gallows, he thrived in chaos and received an offer by the Caliphal government, already in decay by corruption and vicious factionalism, to become a lieutenant. In this official military capacity, he unleashed his doglike freebooters against both the hapless peasantry of the Nile, and those who lived in the lands now ruled by the Franks, in southern Palestine.
His temerity was such that he simply bypassed any and every Frankish fort in Palestine, and endeavored to prey upon the unprotected peasants deep into enemy territory, going as far as the outskirts of Jerusalem. By avoiding the roads, and going through the hill-lands and rugged wilderness, they eluded the handful of Frankish knights charged with guarding the lands of the magnates, and eventually returned to the Sinai without fighting a single battle.
In spite of the surprising act of violence, his relevance in the grand scheme of things would be minimal. By then, the Franks were already deeply entrenched in the Near East, and the Fatimids were a paper tiger, ever fractured by internal issues, and increasingly more relying on mercenaries. It was but a matter of time before the Fatimid-affiliated Berbers and Turkic mamluks became not the coadjuvants, but rather the main actors of the political chess inside the Caliphate, displacing and domesticating the native Arabic-Egyptian aristocracy. This circumstance, in turn, will alienate the regional magnates, whose allegiance will turn to foreign agencies, such as the lords of Yemen and the African Almohads, in an effort to further their own ambitions to wrestle power from the puppeteers of the Caliph in Cairo.
******
The final act of the Second Crusade is one truly vilified by contemporary and modern historians - some of which even go as far as claiming that it was not really “part” of the Second Crusade, but a separate expedition altogether - and it was the campaign conducted by the Crusaders from Germany against the Fatimid Egypt. The campaign, which lasted shortly more than a year, happened between the middle of 1143 and early 1144. It was, to put it simply, an unmitigated disaster, marred by poor strategic decisions, factionalism and haughtiness.
The German magnates apparently believed that their status as vassals of [Latin] Christendom’s ultimate monarch warranted them a privileged standing among the European potentates, and this brought some serious issues even as they traversed to Asia. The passage through Hungary was tumultuous enough to incur the protests of its king, who threatened to never allow the entrance of German Crusaders in his territory. In Constantinople, the Germans refused to pay the traditional homage to the Basileus - a fixture initiated during the First Crusade that, by that time, had already become an unobtrusive formality.
John Komnenos, ever conscious of the value of diplomacy and of civilized manners, nonetheless granted this last congregation of devoted expeditionaries hospitality and safe passage into and across Anatolia. He was, however, alarmed by the verification that the Crusaders, having festively celebrated the fall of Damascus in western Europe, were now obsessed with reducing the realm of Egypt. Not that the Emperor really believed that this unruly mob would really be prepared to undertake the conquest of the Fatimid Caliphate - decrepit as it was now - but he did not deign underestimate their resolve and fanaticism. So, even if the coffers of the treasury were already being drained by a multitude of military and administrative syphons, and the standing army was thinly spread along the newly reconquered provinces and border fortresses, John hastily prepared another military enterprise to join the Crusaders in their assault against Egypt, this time prioritizing the naval capabilities of the Empire. It would be an unnecessary effort.
Serious issues in the German expedition occurred due to the fact that none of the lords were actually dedicated to the Crusade; they believed it would suffice to pay their pilgrimage to Jerusalem and from there assault Egypt, a land that they believed to be so rich that even date palms would grow with gold and spices. The Duke of Bavaria and the Duke of Swabia knew that it was a matter of time before the [Holy Roman] Empire became beset by a dynastic war, and, failing to trust one another, neither of them brought to the Orient the full extent of their own private armies, nor of their wealth. It seemed, indeed, that they wanted to hastily prosecute this “papist” affair so they could resume their normal state of enmity back in Europe. The mutual distrust of the Bavarian and Swabian lieutenants enforced a tacit segregation of the armies, and their respective allies, such as the lords from Austria and from Franconia, also incited by petty vanities and self-serving purposes, made no effort to cement cohesion and friendship.
Their animosity was such that it was said that one man would rather desert from the Crusade altogether, because if he was captured, he would suffer flogging, lest he might die if he changed his allegiance from one bannerlord to another.
They seemed to earnestly believe that they could conquer Egypt with small armies of veterans and that the spoils of war would pay wholly for the enterprise. The plan was so divorced from reality that even the incumbent Archbishop of Jerusalem, when he heard about it, during their stay in Jerusalem, admonished them against the temerity of the act.
All for naught.
The promise of fabulous and supernatural wealth in the increasingly mythified land of Egypt incited the Crusaders against the Caliphate. By using the narrow humid corridor of the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai, they arrived in Tinnis, in the northeastern fringe of the Nile Delta, and put the city to siege, ignoring al-Farama before it because, after it was mostly abandoned by the Fatimids, the settlement became a ghost town.
The capture of the city was easy enough, but their mistake was to take it before the Greeks arrived by sea, and this unexpected breach of the alliance compact infuriated the Basileus, whose diplomats were quick to chastise the German lords.
This would, however, be the sole triumphal act of this disastrous enterprise. Encouraged by the victory, and disgusted by the perceived arrogance of the Basileus, they separated from his forces, now established in the northeastern Nile Delta, and ventured deep into the Nile valley. Their own internal disputes, however, ensured that this trek - apparently focused in capturing Cairo - was marred by complicated delays and inexplicable strategic decisions.
Bizarrely enough, even if the records of this specific campaign are obscure and incomplete, there is some evidence that the Crusaders did reach near Cairo before they were intercepted by a large Fatimid army. We lack any details of the engagement whatsoever, but it is worth to note that one contemporary Frankish source for the first time mentions the term “marmaligus” - which seems a Latin phonetic translation for Mamluk, suggesting that they were mostly mostly comprised by Turkic soldiers.
Considering that, soon thereafter, the Crusaders returned to Europe, and that were have some sparse commentary ascribing to the “perfidious Greeks” the blame for the overall failure of the expedition, we can infer that this defeat terminated the expedition once and for all, and gave another lease of life for the declining Caliphate. The Empire, indeed, made little effort to advance deep into Fatimid territory, and would later even surrender Tinnis back to the Caliphate - likely as a countermeasure against Frankish expansionism in the region.
Even worse than the military failure was the political and diplomatic fallout of the Crusade. If the Komnenoi had hitherto been content with the status quo - specially because he had benefited from it when these mercurial allies provided a decisive assistance to allow the reconquest of Armenia - now the Franks would have to be more deserving of his goodwill and his assistance. The Basileus had not forgotten their unauthorized attack against Damascus, one that resulted in the annexation of Syria. Now, he was positive that they were unable to reduce Egypt without the Empire’s alliance and resources, and these would be, for the time being, not be wasted in assisting the Latins in another filibustering campaign.
For these reasons, and also due to the fact that soon enough the Latin-Levantines would be plunged into their first dynastic war, the Fatimid Caliphate would be safe from another Christian offensive for a few more years.
Back in Europe, the news about the defeat of the German Crusade were mostly obfuscated by the overall good news about the successes of the Christian coalition in Armenia and in Syria. The incumbent Pope, in a
coup de grace, made every effort to exalt the dignity and prowess of *King Phillip II of France, in detriment of the [Holy Roman] Emperor, whose vassals had failed to produce a significant triumph for Christendom.
*****
It has been almost half a century since the beginning of this chronicle, which narrates the principal events of the Crusadist Age. In the span of less than 50 years, the geopolitical panorama of the Near East has been entirely transformed.
So far, we have seen that the most relevant Islamic polities in Syria were extinguished, incorporated either to the rapidly expanding Latin Principality or to the resurgent Empire of Rhōmania, all while the Turco-Persian Sultanate and the Egyptian Caliphate, experiencing terminal decline, are entering their twilight generation.
From a macroscopic view, the annexation of Damascus, long coveted by the Latin Princes of the Outremer, as well as of Homs and Shaizar, fulfilled the ultimate objective of the Crusaders in Syria; and, indeed, the subjugation of Syria marked the final act of the consolidation of the Crusader State, ushering a new age of Christian domination in the Levant that had not been seen for centuries, ever since the Mahometan triumph in Yarmouk. If the taking of Jerusalem and the establishment of a “Frankish” dominion in Palestine had been regarded as a war of liberation, now we are seeing a new period of territorial conquest, but, even more than that, the penetration of Catholic European society into the hitherto Islamic-dominated Asian world. Even more than Rhōmania, whose privileged position at the crossroads between continents served it wealth and prestige, the Latin Principality opens another direct doorway across the Mediterranean linking two distinct and alien worlds. This intermingling of economies, religions, cultures, languages and social constructs will reshape the world in the centuries to come.
Throughout the next decades, it is evident that the Latins put up a concerted effort to resurrect Damascus as the prime hub of Syria, but the blow it suffered by the loss of its immense population and the demolition of many of its buildings condemned it to a century of decline, before it is fated to see a genuine renaissance, from the 13th Century onwards. This circumstance would be certainly aggravated by the fact that the mere presence of the Latin Principality in the eastern Mediterranean would provoke a gradual distortion of the commercial and peregrination routes utilized by the Muslims, from Arabs to Persians alike, and would inaugurate a period of discrete economic recession in the region, that would only be remedied with the final conquest of Egypt by the Crusaders, between the 12th and 13th Centuries. One can wonder, beyond that, if the conquest of Egypt itself was, on one hand, only possible by the harnessing of the resources of Syria.
Curiously enough, the fall of Damascus from grace, coupled with the also unexpected destruction of Aleppo by the will of God, permitted the growth of the main cities situated in the civilizational axis of the Orontes valley, notably Homs, whose apogee during the Crusader Era would see it rival even Antioch.
It is all but evident to modern historiography that the survival and later expansion of the Crusader State was only possible due to the cooperation and alliance of Rhōmania. We have long abandoned the traditional spiritualist theories that ascribed the triumph of the Franks in the Outremer to the divine will, or to their peculiar valor or martial prowess. The truth is that, despite their impressive and outlandish successes, the Latin-Levantines had no especial or distinctive characteristics, from any standpoint, in regards to their many adversaries be it military, social, economic or cultural. While the western European battle tactics indeed warranted many victories against the Fatimids and the Turcomans, accustomed as they were with fighting against light and mobile troops, the Latins many times failed to address logistical, operational and manpower concerns. It has to be said that, it were not for the providential force injections produced by the various waves of soldiers, pilgrims and colonists from Europe, the Outremer was fated to a quick collapse, as it took a long time to incorporate and assimilate the subject native populations, Palestinians, Arabs and Syrians.
Of course it is by the virtue of the alliance and active patronage of Constantinople that the Latins prospered in the Orient, not in the least by the fact that the presence of Rhōmaîon armies garrisoning the Syrian and Mesopotamian frontiers against the incursions of the Seljuqs prevented the Sultanate from unleashing an onslaught against Lebanon and western Syria.
This, in turn, brings us to another point that explains the fruition and maturation of the Latin Principality: the chaotic disunity inside the Islamic Near East. We’ve devoted some chapters of this Chronicle to describe the state of utter mayhem that gradually fragmented the Sultanate of Persia, until its final dissolution in the late 12th Century, in which the Turkic lieutenants were ever more concerned with securing their own shares of the realm than in repealing the advance of the Christians, even as they – bafflingly – advanced through Jaziria and Mesopotamia.
And this means we glossed over the various conflicts and feuds among the splintered Turkic beyliks of Armenia, whose fate was to be consumed by the expanding Rhōmania, by the nascent Christian Kingdom of Georgia, or by the ambitious Shirvanshahs of Azerbaijan. In Jaziria, the power vacuum will be exploited by a rising Turco-Kurdish slave named Burhan ad-Din as-Salām, founder of the Mamluk Emirate of Sinjar, a polity that, albeit minor in the grand scheme of Middle-Eastern geopolitics, will outlive many of its contemporary Islamic rivals.
The decline and partition of the Seljuqs, even as their Sultans remained de jure the rulers of the whole commonwealth, rapidly degenerated into a period of warlordism and dynastic strife, that would last for decades, during the turn of the centuries. This age of strife and lawlessness would only see a conclusion by the 13th Century, with the rise of the Khwarezmians as the undisputed masters of the Indo-Iranian region.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes and comments: Yeah, I know that the bit about the German Crusade was very short and anticlimatic. That was on purpose. You see how insignificant it will be to the grand scheme of things, but when the time is come for Egypt to be conquered, it will be played out in much bigger detail. It also serves to demonstrate the overall fatigue of the local powers with the perpetual state of warfare in the region.