alt-Ibn Taymiyyah could definitely jive well with the TTL Almohads -- and perhaps a longer-lasting Almohad state might spread their ideas down to the Sahel and supplant the jurisprudence practiced there. The Fulani and others certainly found the Niger a fertile area for conquest and Islamization centuries later IOTL, and if the Crusaders are entrenched in Egypt and the Levant there's very few other places for Muslim polities to expand.
And All Nations Shall Gather To It - Volume I: The Abode of Peace
- Thread starter Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)
- Start date
Could we even see an alt-version of Wahhabism if the Crusaders continue to overrun the Muslim world?
Considering that Wahhabism in itself is merely a term (perceived as derogatory) to refer to the wider Salafiya movement, in particular the strand of ultraconservative legalistic thought of the Saudi ulema, it is possible. The teachings of scholars such as Abdul Wahhab, and indeed scholars of the contemporary Salafi movement, are heavily rooted in the workings of Ibn Tammiyah, who was a man as polarising in his lifetime as he is today. I believe he did refer to himself as a Salafi in his works.
The continued deterioration of the boundaries of Dar-al-Islam may provide further credence for the ideals of an ATL equivalent (should they actually emerge) and could stimulate the growth of his following to a much larger faction then the clique of fellow Hanbali scholars and adherents in OTL.
Last edited:
Will the Prestor John myth still exist as it did? What kind of impact will it have?
We've actually battered this idea around a few times - and the going consensus seems to be that something akin to Prestor John will still exist in the Western popular mind. Especially with the Crusader States existing, and being stable, there is going to be greater contact between the West and Eastern Christian groups (though how close that contact will be, is still an open question) and so there's liable to be rumors starting and spreading about some great Christian bishop-kings in the East (as I've said before, I think it would be rather hilarious and ironic if the *Mongols, when they arrive, have rulers who are part of the Church of the East because this would really create some interesting story threads, even if the rulers eventually do convert to Islam after a generation or two. And I, for one, would love to see a mini-CotE wank). However, how these rumors are interpretted and the impact they will have on the West-East relations still remains to be seen.
66. The Third War Between the Crusaders
66. THE THIRD WAR BETWEEN THE CRUSADERS
The attitude of Raymond III, Prince of Jerusalem and Duke of Galilee during the second Manueline campaign of Egypt had evidenced his political irrelevance to the ambitious Frankish lords of Syria. His apparent servility and passiveness when Manuel had demanded of him another Frankish army to wage a useless war - as if the Prince of Jerusalem was but a lackey of the Greeks - instilled in those who opposed the Provençal rule in the Outremer a haughty and rebellious sentiment. The fact that the war had resulted in an even decisive fiasco only served to reinforce this narrative.
The Normans and Lombards of Tyre, of Tripoli and of the Damascanese, who as a political faction, had been decapitated after the destitution of the Bohemondines, now looked to Robert Capet as a natural leader, even more so after he demonstrated his intention of safeguarding their interests in Damascus against the Prince of Jerusalem. Indeed, Robert, in exchange for providing knights to the Princely army, had demanded of Raymond the cession of some castles in the Hauran which had been enfeoffed to Raymond’s younger brother William-Berengar, the Viceduke of Transjordania, which he argued that pertained to the dominion of Damascus.
After the Franks returned to Jerusalem from Egypt, however, William-Berengar and some Provençal knights, such as Blacas of Salca, refused to accept Raymond’s shameful compromise, claiming that these castles had been constructed by the orders of the preceding Prince of Jerusalem (Raymond II) and thus belonged to the personal patrimony of the House of Caesarea. Simon of Ioannine [House of Montfort], now Count of Damascus, challenged them, arguing that all the territories of the Hauran belonged to the domain of Damascus, since time immemorial until the *Second Crusade, when the last Saracen prince had been expelled from there. Simon called for the support of his liege-lord, the Duke of Emèse, who, at the time, enjoyed the clear favoritism of the various French unlanded knights and sergeants who had come to the Outremer since the *Second Crusade, both due to his blood relation to the French monarchy and due to his personal charisma. Robert immediately answered and mustered his men in Emèse.
Then, Raymond, apparently having changed his mind after consulting with his own liensmen, demanded from Simon the return of the castle of Saphad [OTL Safed], which, ever since the Bohemondine rebellion, had been occupied by one of Mabel’s bailiffs, in spite of belonging de jure to the demesne of the County of Tiberias.
Perhaps Raymond did not expect that the debacle would provoke another war, because he had already disbanded his levies and his retainers. Perhaps he simply underestimated his adversaries. In any event, barely a week after Simon responded to his heralds with a straight out refusal to surrender Saphad, Robert of Emèse, whose army had not yet been disbanded, was already marching from Damascus with the Damascene levies, headed by Simon and Mabel, and followed by various knights of Coelesyria.
Robert’s offensive was a bold one: unlike what Bohemond of Tyre had previously done, he marched directly against Caesarea on the Mediterranean, using Saphad as an advanced outpost.
Raymond was taken by surprise and rode to the battle with a small battle party and some conscripted militiamen. The opposing sides met near the slopes of Monscainus [Is. Tel Yokneam] - the place where Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, had been slain by his descendant Lamech - and where Raymond of St. Giles had erected one of the first Crusader castles. The Emesenes and Damascenes had set an encampment, but, short of putting the fort to siege, they in fact awaited for Raymond’s arrival, and then fell upon him. Largely outnumbered, Raymond could barely preserve the cohesion of his party when the French knights charged at them, and the ensuing engagement resulted in a quick but decisive victory to Emèse and Damascus.
Raymond himself was unhorsed and was made prisoner with various of his retainers.
******
The victory of Robert’s faction was unexpected, but decisive.
Raymond was brought to Damascus as a prisoner and, under evident duress, was forced to relinquish the Damascene castles under his suzerainty.
Yet, Robert, short of ordering some raids against the Caesarean lordships, did not prosecute other significant operations, and instead returned to Emèse. Perhaps he expected that Raymond’s capture would be enough to secure his immediate objective, or perhaps he was not confident in their capacity to reduce the formidable Provençal castles in Palestine. Robert refused any settlement or offer of ransom to release the captive Prince, even from the Archbishop himself, and when he found out that Raymond’s brother, the Viceduke of Transjordania, made himself the regent of the whole of Palestine in Raymond’s absence, and insulted and taunted the lords of Syria, the Duke and the men loyal to him proclaimed war.
In the next following campaigning season, Robert mustered another army, joined by the Damascenes and now by the bondsmen of Tyre, formerly loyal to the Bohemondines. Once again, he seemed to enjoy a clear numerical superiority, and took advantage of the disorganization of his adversaries. The dynasty of Toulouse, possessing various fiefs in the whole of Palestine, from Phillistia to Hebron and to Samaria, as well as Transjordania and Moab, failed to muster the whole strength of arms of these provinces. Scholars have suggested that the recent wars in the Outremer and in Egypt had exhausted the manpower of the Crusader realm and especially of the Palestinian fiefs, but it seems that the issue at hand was related to the usual problem of the feudal obligations: the castellans of Palestine, especially those of the frontiers, had grown used to a large degree of autonomy and refused to heed the call to arms, arguing that they had already fulfilled their duties by participating in the Egyptian campaign.
Now, William-Berengar chose to avoid the field of battle, instead concentrating his men in the castles. Once Robert realized that the Provençals would await for him to come and put their castles to siege, he turned his offensive against their allies in Tiberias, where Count Godfrey was belatedly mustering his own army. When he did put his banners afield, the Syrian army was roaming at large in Galilee, having sacked the casale of Cana and Senbra [Ar. al-Sannabra] and placed a garrison in Nazareth, which lay in the very middle of the road linking Tiberias to the littoral. Duke Robert hoped to thwart any possibility the two adversaries rendezvousing, but when he realized that William-Berengar, after reinforcing Caiphas, situated less than a day’s march near Nazareth, would not move against him, Robert played a risky gamble and marched against the men of Tiberias. The Tiberinians and the Syrians met in the slopes of Mount Tabor, and there once again Robert, Simon and Mabel demonstrated their military superiority by crushing Godfrey’s smaller host. The Count himself was slain in the middle of the rout, and his army effectively disintegrated. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Robert marched directly to Tiberias and forced the Castellan to capitulate. Godfrey had left no male offspring, and his only surviving male relative was his bastard brother John, who was the Abbot of the Benedictine monastery in Mount Tabor. Godfrey was then succeeded by his under-aged daughter Matilda.
Duke Robert entered Tiberias in the height of summer of 1179 A.D., and, with the proper authority of a conqueror, he pronounced Matilda to be the legitimate Countess of Tiberias and had one of his own vassals, Hamelin of Anjou, be placed as Constable, thus entrusted with the military protection of the fief and to exercise the de facto regency in the name of Robert's faction.
Thus, Tiberias was removed as a threat to Robert's hegemony, further weakening the position of the Toulousain dynasty.
In face of William-Berengar’s recalcitrance, the Syrians marched into Samaria from Tiberias and took Nablus by storm. Despite their resistance, the local populace was spared from a brutal reprisal after the local castellan was imprisoned. The fall of Nablus was all it took to reduce the fief of Samaria, and thus the Emesene and Damascene army continued their campaign in earnest, and marched directly to Jerusalem, perhaps not expecting any other offensives from the Toulousains.
The defense of the Holy City had been entrusted to the Templarians, at the time headed by Hugh of Chartres, and it was only after Robert pledged to depose his arms and enter alone with his retainers that entrance was permitted, and this he did. There, Robert interviewed with Archbishop Walter, who proclaimed Raymond’s deposition under the specious argument that the Prince of Jerusalem could not be under the custody of another man.
Robert himself was then nominated Prince of Jerusalem and Duke of Galilee, the second of his name.
In this capacity, he exacted a peace compromise with William-Berengar, who had been humbled after the defeats of Raymond and Godfrey, and was left with no further incentive to prosecute the war. Robert nonetheless confirmed him in his position as Viceduke of Transjordania, and recognized to himself the ownership of the castles in Hebron and Jordan which had been included in Raymond's personal demesne. With this, by kindling his greed and ambition, he hoped to turn William-Berengar against his own brother, and in this he was seemingly successful, because, in spite of the protests of some of his own knights, William-Berengar did not deign to pay for the exorbitant ransom demanded by Mabel of Damascus to release Raymond from captivity.
Afterwards, Robert disbanded his army and, after a short stay in Jerusalem, he proceeded to travel through the cities and castles of Palestine to survey the defenses of the realm, and to receive homage from the lords and castellans, as well as to collect dues to his treasure. With the approach of winter, he retired to Emèse, having placed some of his own trusted men in the rule of the Samaritan castles.
Of the Elevation of Robert Capet to the Kingship over Syria
In the Feast of All Saints in 1179 A.D. Prince Robert, having come from Emèse with his retainers, clad in mail and helm and mounted in his snow-white destrier, was received in Damascus by the assembled nobles of the Damascanese and by other hitherto unlanded nobles, of various races, from Frenchmen to Lombards to Normans, led by his own vassal, Simon of Ioannine and by Mabel, the so-called Lady of Damascus, and they acclaimed Duke Robert and proclaimed him King.
The Anglo-Norman Metropolitan Bishop of Damascus Ralph of Coggeshall, who was an eyewitness of the episode, gives a concise, but very much spirited description. According to it, the knights, reunited in the Citadel, kneeled and then raising at Robert’s command, they unsheated their swords and raised them to the heaven, lauding Robert as the most valiant and pious prince of the Holy Land, and thus fit to be their only lord and liege, and deserving of a crown worthy of his dignity. According to the traditional account, Robert firstly prostrated himself in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Damascus, and uttered the vow to serve and defend the Holy Land from the enemies of Christ, to bane the Saracens and infidels, and to die in the place where the Savior had threaded the Earth - theatrics which would be emulated by his successors in the throne thus soon becoming a customary ritual.
While it is evident that both religious rhetoric and ceremony have always performed a fundamental role in establishing the political authority and institutional legitimacy of the Christian monarchs, coating the image of the office with a sacral and apotheotic veneer, so that the monarch might be recognized in his social and cultural context as a semblance of the divine, contemporary historians agree that Robert Capet went a step beyond by employing the Crusadist rhetoric as an ideological tool to weave a new fabric of legitimacy and to enforce consensus among the multiethnic martial aristocracy that gave him political support. This explains, in fact, why the claim to the rulership over this state was based on the universal idea of a “right of conquest” (ius victoriae), instead of on an historical or ethnic-based justification. Both Emèse and Damascus had been subjugated during the *Second Crusade, which, in 1179, was very much still in living memory, and was especially regarded in the point of view of the French peoples as being the great holy triumph of the successors of Charlemagne in the Orient - regardless of the fact that Damascus had been captured firstly by the Latin-Levantines and by the Sicilians - and thus Robert and his peers were keen on depicting it as a meritorious achievement distinct from the conquest of Palestine as consequence of the First Crusade.
Not a few Historians of the Parisian school of historiography have argued that Robert’s exaltation into kingship by the Frankish nobles, with the recognition by the actual Syrian natives coming in second place, represented the final step in the transition between different social and political models of monarchical legitimacy: from the “tribal system” [1] that harkened from the age of the barbarian invasions, centered in the ethnic and cultural identities, to the “feudal system”, centered in the patrimonial and territorial domination, where the power of the elite is based in the ownership of the land (here including both the equestrian and the ecclesiastic aristocracies). This is accordingly verified, in this period between the late 12th Century and the early 13th Century, by a simple, but very significant, change of terminology, because whereas before the monarchs were identified by the rulership over certain gentes - the King of the Franks, the King of the Teutons, of the Romans and of the Lombards, the King of the English et cetera - now they were identified as rulers over a defined territory - the King of France, the King of England et cetera. And this systemic transition, which is intimately related with various other changes of social, political, economic and cultural nature in the *High Medieval European societies, would in turn feed and foment this peculiar reality that was the feudal structure of power. In the case of Robert Capet and his successors, it was beyond doubts that they considered themselves the rulers and proprietors of the whole land of Syria - Rex Syriae/Rex Suria or Roy de Syrie.
Evidently, at the time, the exact territorial boundaries of the kingdom might not have been completely known, but, as in other Crusader Kingdoms, the Frankish elite projected their power in very well defined spatial units, usually orbiting around the larger urban centers or castles. In its inception, the court was held usually in Emèse, for it pertained to the demesne of the Oriental Capetians, and it had an itinerant character: the monarchs would frequently travel to proclaim laws and grant charters, to pass judgment and survey the castles and estates. Later on, well into the 13th Century, the center of political power will become centered in Damascus, whose sheer cultural and economic weight shall make it dominant still in the Outremerine politics. Other important settlements include Chayzar, Ràmat and Marre.
From the very start of his reign, Robert associated his son Phillip with kingship, following the tradition of the Capetian monarchs. Phillip was crowned co-monarch in 1182.
******
From the very beginning it was all too clear to his contemporaries that Robert’s ascension into kingship was a political move architected by himself, and this can be easily comprehended by the fact that, immediately after his accession, he enacted a general redistribution of fiefs, revenues and castles and created a new structure of power. The County of Damascus, one that held a rather bizarre, if not outright haphazard composition, ever since its creation, due to the machinations of the opposing noble houses of Syria and Palestine, was elevated to the position of a Duchy - thus becoming equal, in theory, to Emèse - and received de jure all the associated lands and castles of the Damascanese and the Hauran provinces. While the rulership of these lands had been claimed by the Salernitani ever since the *Second Crusade, Prince Raymond II of Jerusalem had occupied some of the fortified settlements and granted to his own castellans, disregarding the Damascene claim. Now that his son and also Prince, Raymond III, was at Robert’s mercy, he was forced to relinquish the overlordship above these strongholds. The few Provençal lords in the region did attempt to resist, such as Blacatz, self-proclaimed (but never recognized) Lord of Salcas [OTL Salkhad], who closed the gates to the French knights loyal to Robert, though they had soon had to capitulate. Controversially, the new Syrian King granted the dukedom ab ovo to Mabel, with Simon ruler de jure uxoris, disregarding the fact that Damascus pertained to the infant Roger. It seems that Mabel, far from an unwilling abettor, had become dissatisfied with the circumstance that her son and ruler of Damascus was now a Rhõmaîon hostage and likely puppet, and sought to accrue more personal political power, and thus she had been an eager accomplice to Robert’s elevation, and now, as reward, she held the ducal position in her own right.
The new king was only crowned in the Christmas of 1180, by none other than his brother Louis, the Archbishop of Rheims, who had come to the newly created kingdom to preside over the ceremony and to consecrate Ralph of Damascus as Archbishop of Syria, as a longa manus of [anti]Pope Stephen XI. The coronation, celebrated in the Basilica of Emèse, was far less grandiose and with much less attendance if compared to those seen in Europe, but the ceremony was nonetheless of fundamental importance to grant institutional legitimacy to the new monarch.
The early version of the Syrian crown was forged in France, being a fairly simple golden and jeweled circlet clearly inspired in Charlemagne’s crown used to coronate the French monarchs, and would now be kept in the citadel of Emèse [2].
In any event, the immediate implications of the creation of the Kingdom of Syria and of Robert’s coronation were conducted by the complex network of interests involving the remaining Frankish aristocracy of the Crusader State and the Church.
******
In Constantinople, the creation of the Kingdom of Syria was met with some surprise. Its mere existence was regarded by Alexios II as an usurpation of the imperial authority, considering that the Basileus saw himself not only as the sole monarch in the Christian Orient, but specifically claimed the ownership of the whole of Syria, which lay under the auspice of the Patriarchate of Antioch. He thus refused to acknowledge Robert as king, and to him and his successors the diplomatic treatment referred to them individually as Doux Frangoi. According to historian John Kinnamos, Alexios did produce a formal claim of his “guest”, Roger of Damascus towards the namesake fief in Syria, but it would never actually enforce it by force of arms, like his predecessors had done before. This direct support of the claim of a Frankish nobleman, coupled with the evident acceptance of the status quo by the Emperor, in spite of the fact that the division of the Crusader State into two factions of roughly equal strength was useful to the Rhõmaîoi, would, in time, exasperate the animosity of the Greek aristocracy against Alexios, who saw in it a veiled preference towards the Latins, further consolidating his historical reputation as a “Frangophile”. As for Roger of Damascus himself, he would never return to the Outremer, and, after marrying into Rhõmaîon nobility, he completely fades from History.
The new King of Syria, likely out of caution, nonetheless went to lengths to appease Alexios and avoid unnecessary conflict. While seeking recognition of his kingship, he expressly acknowledged the Rhõmaîon dominion over the provinces north of Laodicea, notably Aleppo and Antioch, and also recognized the same privileges to the Greek subjects in his own domain that had been previously recognized.
Curiously enough, the native Syrians themselves largely support the creation of this Franco-Syrian monarchy, especially the Jacobites, many of whom saw in it an opportunity of political advancement. While the ecclesiastic leadership, centered around the claimant Patriarchate of Syria, was still centered in the monastic country of Osroene [3], many Jacobites, of the races of the Armenians, Syrians and Assyrians, peasants and monks, had moved to Frankish Syria in the wake of the *Second Crusade, and established themselves in clusters of frontier villages and monastic communities. While unquestionably situated in an inferior social position in comparison to the Latins, they nonetheless were well-regarded subjects of the French kings, the clergymen noted for their intellectual refinement and the laborers for their sturdiness, which made them prized infantrymen. With time, these Armenians and Syrians will become more integrated in the Frankish society, and, while preserving their ancestral cultural heritage and religious devotion, their persistent loyalty will warrant continued patronage from the temporal and spiritual elites, from the Capetian dynasts themselves to the Catholic monasteries, including the armed fraternities.
******
Walter of Jerusalem, as representative of the Holy See, would never in his life acknowledge the existence of the Kingdom of Syria as a legitimate state. To him, as to Pope Sylvester IV, his ascension had been illegitimate because he lacked the consent and the sanction of the Papacy. And, indeed, all the [Catholic] European kings ever since the coronation of Charlemagne had been thusly crowned by the Pope, or had their position recognized by the Holy Father, as had been the case of William the Conqueror, for example.
Now, we would do well to remember that, at the time, Catholic Christendom was in schism, the so-called Stefanese or Ecumenicist Schism, resultant from the election, by the majority of the French clergy, of Stephen XI, who, while branded by posteriority as an antipope, in his own lifetime saw the support of many important ecclesiastical authorities in France and in Flanders, in England and in Upper Lotharingia. In France, moreover, Stephen XI enjoyed the direct support and patronage of the young King *Hugh II [Fr. Hugues] *King Phillip II’s second son [4], who ascended to the throne in 1175 A.D., after his father perished while campaigning in Provence. As for Stephen’s rival, Pope Sylvester IV, he adopted a far more aggressive stance towards the schism than his predecessor Lucius III, and as soon as Hugh acceded to the throne, upon demonstrating the same recalcitrance in his support of the so-called “Gallic heresiarch”, he was immediately excommunicated, in the very end of his first year of reign. Hugh was, however, very pragmatic in his diplomacy, much more so in than in the art of war; having realized that the French aristocrats was generally favorable to Stephen XI, whose public demonstrations of piety and austerity made him endeared in the whole of France and in England, the new King used the whole debacle as a tool to strengthen the position of the Crown in France itself, promoting his image as a supporter of reforms in a corrupt and venal Church, represented by Sylvester himself. This argument put him at odds with the [Holy] Roman Emperor *Henry VII (“the Lion”), who was a defender of Sylvester’s pontificate, and thus the conflict which had ceased when King *Phillip II died soon be reignited, pitting Henry versus Hugh.
In 1178 A.D., though, King Hugh II, still compliant to the truce signed with the German Emperor, happily received the envoys from Syria, announcing that his uncle had been elected king of this distant Oriental realm. These unexpected news, which coincided with the birth of Hugh’ first son, Phillip [of Sens], were received with much fanfare in Paris and Orleans, where Hugh hosted a large tournament, attended by various of his vassals.
Robert’s position towards the Papacy was ambivalent. He had been crowned by the Archbishop of Rheims, who vested him with the royal office as per the delegation of Stephen XI, and not Sylvester, and he kept close diplomatic relations with his nephew, King Hugh, and with the French notables, meaning that he seemed to endorse the French Papacy as being the legitimate one.
However, he maintained the ties with Jerusalem, even enforcing the payment of the tithe, including from non-Catholics, to the Archdiocese of the Holy Land, and he sponsored the sword fraternities by the grants of lands and castles, and, finally, he did enforce the rights of the temples and monasteries inside his domain. This seems to indicate that, at least in what was concerning the interests of the Church, King Robert did not seem to be undertaking a rupture. And, for the matter, he never actually antagonized Sylvester’s Papacy, perhaps tacitly admitting that he had no stakes in the conflict, regardless of the fact that his nephew was the main support of the schismatic movement.
______________________________________________________
Comment: This chapter brings, in brief passages, some bits of "alternative historiography", a concept which I find as fascinating as Counterfactual History itself. There's a brief exposition based in two "schools of historiography":
A. The “Universalist [or Holistic] Theory”, as the name suggests, is an alternate historiographical method which posits that “universal history” - the analysis of the whole of humanity’s history as a whole, coherent unit - is the sole correct perspective to the discipline of History. Its methodology is focused in macrohistorical events and mainly in identifying repetitive patterns, trends or existential cycles, rejecting the agency of “great men”.
B. The Chronological Linearity is a comprehensive historiographic stance similar, in some respect, to the Theory of Progress. The general idea holds that the course of human events can be comprehended in categories of progress and retrocess, and that the human agencies must be ordained in achieving overall progress. Various doctrinal divergences, however, caused the formation of competing schools of thought, the largest ones being centered around the “Wilderness Doctrine” - which posits that competition between states and institutions is necessary for progress - and around the “Cooperation Doctrine” - which posits that cooperation is necessary for a genuine humanitarian progress.
[1] IOTL, this concept is called “Popular Monarchy”; contrast with the concept of “Territorial Monarchy”. While it is not correct to correlate the first with ethnic homogeneity nor the second with the Medieval European feudal establishment (...)
[2] At the time, the French Crown of Charlemagne (not to be confused with the “Reichskrone”, used by the Holy Roman Emperors) was a simpler band of jewelled gold, without the adorning fleur-de-lis, which were forged in the reign of …
[3] In-character, the author is referring to the Mor Hananyo Monastery, which IOTL served as the headquarters of the Jacobite Church from the 1160s until 1932 C.E., but the generic mention also alludes to the presence of other very important ecclesiastic centers in Edessa and Mardin.
[4] ITTL, alt-Phillip II had three male sons: Louis, Hugh and Phillip, with only the latter two surviving him. The name Hugh for his second son is somewhat unusual for the Capetians, who, at the time, normally alternated between Louis and Phillip for the first and second sons. Here, the choice for Hugh serves as a triple homage: firstly, to the first Capetian king; secondly, to Hugh of Vermandois, King Phillip II's great-uncle, who was one who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, and who by the late 12th C. was a much celebrated personage in French cultural memory; and thirdly, to Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy, who was one of his most loyal vassals and personal friends of the now dead king.
Will we get a map of the political divisions of the Outremer so we can see who owns what?
Interlude 5. The "Crusader States" as Historiographic Models
Author's Note: This one is a brief non-narrative interlude which introduces an idea I am developing for the future of the TL. It is a brief piece, but I thought it would be better to present it separately from the narrative-focused chapters. In the following installment, we'll get back to see how things are going on in Byzantium.
Some of these traits, the defenders of the thesis argue, could already be identified in other polities, but the sum of them is necessary to give scientific rigeur to the concept, and avoid it becoming too elastic. To give examples, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Principality of Sicily and Apulia are sometimes defined by certain scholars as Crusader Kingdoms (or Proto-Kingdoms), but in most descriptions they are not included, because they do not encompass the whole definition.
On the other hand, the categorization admits that these Crusader States must not necessarily be sovereign nor centered in kingship, the most interesting example being those of the colonies and satellites founded by the Italian Republics, such as Denia in Hispania and Madiana [Tu. Mahdia] in Africa.
As it was the case in all monarchical regimes in History, ever since the dawn of mankind, from Biblical times to our days, the various topoi associated with the feudal system of social organization orbited around the monarch, who, for all of his personal merits and demerits, personified an institution identified by ceremony, ritual and semblance.
By the late 12th Century, it was well accepted in Europe as ius naturale the notion that monarchs were recipients of a boundless imperium given by divine grace [“Dei gratia”], thus being situated in the apex of the political and social framework of their respective monarchy. It was certainly understood that the anointing of a monarch in a ceremonial event transmutated this individual from mortal into sacred.
While it is evident that the concept is based in a theophilosophical rationale, it nonetheless had political, institutional and legal facets as well, because it defined the contours of the monarch’s performative roles, active or passive, and served as a justification for his powers of lawmaking, judicature and statesmanship. The subordinate authorities in the realm who held secular military, legal, political or judicial power - from dukes to knights - exercised them as per the will of the king, and he himself was believed to pertain to a separate order in the cosmic ordination of the universe. From an institutional point of view, the monarch was not solely a political authority, but rather the living embodiment of the realm, of the nation and of the peoples subject to him. In allegorical discourse, this idea is represented by is a common motif in fantastic literature, such as in the mythos associated to the “Matter of Britain”, that refers to the land itself as physically representing the demeanor and the mood of the monarch, thus prosperous if the monarch is happy and pleased, and decayed if he is unhappy or ill. In aesthetics, he is associated with the symbol of the sword, representing his auctoritas, and the scepter and the orb, representing his imperium.
Contrary to a popular misconception derived from the postulates of the Chronological Linearity philosophical school [see commentary below], in the age of King Robert I of Syria, kings were not generally expected to be agents of social change. In fact, the king could either be an herculean and enlightened statesman or a pleasure-loving fainéant, and the social expectations would be mostly the same: he was to be the preserver of the status quo, an upholder of tradition and precedent, and a just mediator - but not the disruptor - of the interests of the other Estates, the nobility, the church, the urban communes and the free plebs. In allegorical portrayals of the period, the virtuous monarch is the one that passes just judgment and preserves the order in the realm and in the society, against those who usurp or challenge this status quo. The [Modern] concept of “progress”, especially if predicated in the admission of social change, was incomprehensible to this worldview. Even when architecting a legal or administrative reform, or when attempting to solve a legal conflict involving members of distinct social spheres, monarchs often refer to the premise of restoring to an idealized “old order” which usually is seen as having been corrupted and having decayed with the passage of time. So did the Imperial Welfs in reference to the reign of the Ottonians, when Henry the Lion produced the seminal "Diploma Henricianum", as did the Parisian Capetians in reference to the Carolingians when producing ordinances to discipline lordly disputes in France, to cite a few examples.
It is worth noting, in fact, that the scholars from those periods usually refer to dynastic eras or to the reigns of individual monarchs as being the chronological scope of reference when discussing historical events, rather than the decades or centuries, as it is the norm today, and thus we can fully realize that, in the contemporary worldview, the monarchy served even as an existential referential.
________________________________________________________________
Comment: This chapter brings, in brief passages, some bits of "alternative historiography", a concept which I find as fascinating as Counterfactual History itself. There's a brief exposition based in two "schools of historiography":A. The “Universalist [or Holistic] Theory”, as the name suggests, is an alternate historiographical method which posits that “universal history” - the analysis of the whole of humanity’s history as a whole, coherent unit - is the sole correct perspective to the discipline of History. Its methodology is focused in macrohistorical events and mainly in identifying repetitive patterns, trends or existential cycles, rejecting the agency of “great men”.
B. The Chronological Linearity is a comprehensive historiographic stance similar, in some respect, to the Theory of Progress. The general idea holds that the course of human events can be comprehended in categories of progress and retrocess, and that the human agencies must be ordained in achieving overall progress. Various doctrinal divergences, however, caused the formation of competing schools of thought, the largest ones being centered around the “Wilderness Doctrine” - which posits that competition between states and institutions is necessary for progress - and around the “Cooperation Doctrine” - which posits that cooperation is necessary for a genuine humanitarian progress.
INTERLUDE 5. THE "CRUSADER STATES" AS HISTORIOGRAPHIC MODELS
Of the “Crusader State” as a Conceptual Archetype
Of the “Crusader State” as a Conceptual Archetype
In recent historiography, French and German scholarship dedicated to the Historiography of the Crusades have forwarded and developed the concept of “Crusader States” or “Crusader Kingdoms”, one that has long since become rather controversial as an epistemological category. The premise is that those states founded after and because of the Crusades have proper characteristics unlike those of other states founded during the same period or in later ones, which make them distinctive and worthy of separate categorization.
In the Teutonic academy, the “Crusader States” are categorized as "artificial polities", here meaning those whose very existence centers around the “will of the institutions”, - such as a constitution, written codes or in precedent-recognized customs, or around a more sophisticated institutional framework -, such as is the case of aristocratic republics and the imperial monarchies, and is contrasted with the idea of "natural polities", who were historically derived from the “will of communities”, and whose existence occurs naturally in the development of mankind, as an obvious and predictable form of social organization, and is thus exemplified by tribal-based monarchies such as those of the old barbarian kingdoms or by the popular democracy of the ancient Greek and Phoenician city-states. The idea is that the Crusader States, having been borne out of the institution of the Crusades, did not happen as natural occurrences of the human social organization, but instead as artificial political constructs.
This historiographic model, by itself, has been largely criticized and led to various polemics in the academic arena. According to its opponents, it attempts to oversimplify the complexities of political and social organization - all while disregarding other aspects of economic and cultural nature - just for the sake of placing them in neat conceptual categories, evidencing it as a general effort of the universalist theory [see commentary below].
Now, to the French scholars, the Crusader States were political entities whose existence came into being during or after the Era of the Crusades, and whose political foundation has been predicated in one or various preexistent Crusades. Their peculiar traits are presented as such:
In the Teutonic academy, the “Crusader States” are categorized as "artificial polities", here meaning those whose very existence centers around the “will of the institutions”, - such as a constitution, written codes or in precedent-recognized customs, or around a more sophisticated institutional framework -, such as is the case of aristocratic republics and the imperial monarchies, and is contrasted with the idea of "natural polities", who were historically derived from the “will of communities”, and whose existence occurs naturally in the development of mankind, as an obvious and predictable form of social organization, and is thus exemplified by tribal-based monarchies such as those of the old barbarian kingdoms or by the popular democracy of the ancient Greek and Phoenician city-states. The idea is that the Crusader States, having been borne out of the institution of the Crusades, did not happen as natural occurrences of the human social organization, but instead as artificial political constructs.
This historiographic model, by itself, has been largely criticized and led to various polemics in the academic arena. According to its opponents, it attempts to oversimplify the complexities of political and social organization - all while disregarding other aspects of economic and cultural nature - just for the sake of placing them in neat conceptual categories, evidencing it as a general effort of the universalist theory [see commentary below].
Now, to the French scholars, the Crusader States were political entities whose existence came into being during or after the Era of the Crusades, and whose political foundation has been predicated in one or various preexistent Crusades. Their peculiar traits are presented as such:
- Their ethnogenesis purposefully orbits around the Crusadist ideology, meaning that the etiological “myth” consciously refers to the rhetoric and the traditions associated with the Papal-sanctioned bellum sacrum, the exaltation of Roman Catholic religious culture and of Latin cultures as a whole and of the martial and bellicose social ethos which long since guided post-Carolingian societies. This was indeed the case of all of the states founded in the Frankish Outremer, in Africa, in Hispania, in the Baltic littoral, in Scandinavia and in India. It is interesting to note that in most of the cases the reference to the Crusades becomes a strong rhetorical and institutional device used by the state, associated with symbolic motifs commonly used in numismatics and aesthetics, notably of the image of the True Cross, of the abstract portrait of Jerusalem, including in legal documents, such as the Codex Hierosolimitanum, whose preamble mentions the First Crusade and the “reconquest” of Jerusalem as a sort of foundation myth of the Kingdom of Galilee, created after the *Third Crusade.
- Their creation, in the course or as consequence of a Crusade, inevitably disrupts the pre-existing political, social and economic structures, resulting in the establishment of a Latin Christian elite in the apex of the social pyramid, associated with other indigenous Christian communities (if these exist) who are “elevated” in this very social pyramid by conscious and dedicated patronage from the Latin elite. On the other hand, the non-Christian peoples are marginalized, as was the case of the Muslims in various places of the eastern and southern Mediterranean and of the indigenous pagans in the Baltic tribal confederations and in Scandinavia.
- Their demographic composition, by its very nature, is multi-ethnic and multi-confessional, and inspires a spirit of mitigated religious and ethnic tolerance among the elites. In most cases, this state of tolerance is codified in legal constitutions - the codes, which frequently posit in minutiae the permissions and limits of religious and customary practice. This tolerance, in spite of being the norm, fluctuates according to political and social convenience. Even the Latin elite is composed of various gentes and monarchs are expected to rule not by emphasizing cultural homogeneity, but rather by enforcing legal consensus among these various groups regardless of their national origins. In the Crusader Kingdoms, in fact, we see that historically the “Roman Catholic” identity becomes the predominant one to the European elite, so as to emphasize their difference towards the other Christians and non-Christian groups.
- By their very nature, these states are expansionist, even if not in practice, always in a more dogmatic perspective. Considering that all of them were indeed founded in geographic places that were in the [*High Middle Ages] period regarded as the "frontiers of Christendom", their existential purpose was inextricably related to the premise of holy warfare and of promoting the Catholic Christian faith by force or by proselytism, extirpating and subjugating whatever adversaries might exist in these same places. There is, then, an aspect that legitimizes religious and cultural colonization of the defeated nations. And it is important to emphasize that this religious justification for warfare and military expansion is a fundamental aspect, and not a peripheral one, in contrast, to, for example, the case of the Christian Hispanian monarchies in relation to the Moors or of post-Carolingian Saxony in relation to the Wends, cases in which the political motives were more significant than the religious ones.
Some of these traits, the defenders of the thesis argue, could already be identified in other polities, but the sum of them is necessary to give scientific rigeur to the concept, and avoid it becoming too elastic. To give examples, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Principality of Sicily and Apulia are sometimes defined by certain scholars as Crusader Kingdoms (or Proto-Kingdoms), but in most descriptions they are not included, because they do not encompass the whole definition.
On the other hand, the categorization admits that these Crusader States must not necessarily be sovereign nor centered in kingship, the most interesting example being those of the colonies and satellites founded by the Italian Republics, such as Denia in Hispania and Madiana [Tu. Mahdia] in Africa.
Of the king and of the kingdom
As it was the case in all monarchical regimes in History, ever since the dawn of mankind, from Biblical times to our days, the various topoi associated with the feudal system of social organization orbited around the monarch, who, for all of his personal merits and demerits, personified an institution identified by ceremony, ritual and semblance.
By the late 12th Century, it was well accepted in Europe as ius naturale the notion that monarchs were recipients of a boundless imperium given by divine grace [“Dei gratia”], thus being situated in the apex of the political and social framework of their respective monarchy. It was certainly understood that the anointing of a monarch in a ceremonial event transmutated this individual from mortal into sacred.
While it is evident that the concept is based in a theophilosophical rationale, it nonetheless had political, institutional and legal facets as well, because it defined the contours of the monarch’s performative roles, active or passive, and served as a justification for his powers of lawmaking, judicature and statesmanship. The subordinate authorities in the realm who held secular military, legal, political or judicial power - from dukes to knights - exercised them as per the will of the king, and he himself was believed to pertain to a separate order in the cosmic ordination of the universe. From an institutional point of view, the monarch was not solely a political authority, but rather the living embodiment of the realm, of the nation and of the peoples subject to him. In allegorical discourse, this idea is represented by is a common motif in fantastic literature, such as in the mythos associated to the “Matter of Britain”, that refers to the land itself as physically representing the demeanor and the mood of the monarch, thus prosperous if the monarch is happy and pleased, and decayed if he is unhappy or ill. In aesthetics, he is associated with the symbol of the sword, representing his auctoritas, and the scepter and the orb, representing his imperium.
Contrary to a popular misconception derived from the postulates of the Chronological Linearity philosophical school [see commentary below], in the age of King Robert I of Syria, kings were not generally expected to be agents of social change. In fact, the king could either be an herculean and enlightened statesman or a pleasure-loving fainéant, and the social expectations would be mostly the same: he was to be the preserver of the status quo, an upholder of tradition and precedent, and a just mediator - but not the disruptor - of the interests of the other Estates, the nobility, the church, the urban communes and the free plebs. In allegorical portrayals of the period, the virtuous monarch is the one that passes just judgment and preserves the order in the realm and in the society, against those who usurp or challenge this status quo. The [Modern] concept of “progress”, especially if predicated in the admission of social change, was incomprehensible to this worldview. Even when architecting a legal or administrative reform, or when attempting to solve a legal conflict involving members of distinct social spheres, monarchs often refer to the premise of restoring to an idealized “old order” which usually is seen as having been corrupted and having decayed with the passage of time. So did the Imperial Welfs in reference to the reign of the Ottonians, when Henry the Lion produced the seminal "Diploma Henricianum", as did the Parisian Capetians in reference to the Carolingians when producing ordinances to discipline lordly disputes in France, to cite a few examples.
It is worth noting, in fact, that the scholars from those periods usually refer to dynastic eras or to the reigns of individual monarchs as being the chronological scope of reference when discussing historical events, rather than the decades or centuries, as it is the norm today, and thus we can fully realize that, in the contemporary worldview, the monarchy served even as an existential referential.
________________________________________________________________
Comment: This chapter brings, in brief passages, some bits of "alternative historiography", a concept which I find as fascinating as Counterfactual History itself. There's a brief exposition based in two "schools of historiography":
B. The Chronological Linearity is a comprehensive historiographic stance similar, in some respect, to the Theory of Progress. The general idea holds that the course of human events can be comprehended in categories of progress and retrocess, and that the human agencies must be ordained in achieving overall progress. Various doctrinal divergences, however, caused the formation of competing schools of thought, the largest ones being centered around the “Wilderness Doctrine” - which posits that competition between states and institutions is necessary for progress - and around the “Cooperation Doctrine” - which posits that cooperation is necessary for a genuine humanitarian progress.
So Crusaders in India and I assume North Africa? That'll be something.
Interesting. It seems that the Crusading movement will last much longer, and will have a much greater impact on the world. Besides the Iberian Reconquista and the Baltic Crusades, North Africa will also be reclaimed by Christendom, and the Mediterranean will become a Christian lake.
The presence of Crusader States in India is surprising. Perhaps the Nestorians and the St. Thomas Christians reunified with Rome in a manner similar to an eastern catholic church and, inspired by the Crusadist movement and theology, estabilished their own states in the Indian subcontinent?
I wonder if this "adventurer" mentality will persist through the Age of Discovery. The practice of warriors leaving their home to a foreign heathen land in order to estabilish a "speartip" of Christian presence and dominion, to better protect and propagate the Faith, has already found precedent with the Crusadist movement.
That's an interesting contrast between the German and French schools; obviously Germany has that institutionally-minded framework from the HRE, but it could also imply a contrast between German Crusadist polities and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The Franks, OTOH, seem to have an interpretation that could also come to include future New World Latin conquests, which also involved a religious basis for a new ethnogenesis
Given that the Norman Conquest happened some 30 years before the POD (Battle of Hastings 1066) I would assume England should look somewhat familiar. But I'm not the author so...
If my memory serves, the de Normandie dynasty is still in power - our good Prince William Adelin's Pleasure Cruise never sank and so England was spared the Anarchy and is (was?) ruled by King William III
You know, in my opinion, a much more interesting situation would be the failure of Islam. This would mean a greater departure from the OTL and more conflict between Christians in the future.