I owe many debts of gratitude to those who helped me through six years spent researching and writing this book. My colleagues in the Department of History at Queen Mary University of London have been wonderfully supportive throughout, and I particularly would like to thank Virginia Davis, Julian Jackson, Peter Hennessy, Miri Rubin, Peter Denley, Yossi Rapoport, Dan Todman and Alice Austin. My students, not least those on my Special Subject ‘The First Crusade’ and the London MA in Crusader Studies, also have been a great source of inspiration.

Peter Edbury kindly read the first draft of this work (when it was considerably longer than it is now!), and I also benefited enormously from the friendship and the assistance offered by Sue Edgington and William Purkis. Andrew Gordon and John Saddler shaped my early vision of the book, while the patience and encouragement of Mike Jones at Simon & Schuster, Dan Halpern and Matt Weiland at Ecco enabled me to complete the project. Sue Phillpott’s astute eye helped to refine the text, and I am especially grateful to Katherine Stanton for her judicious editorial guidance and the great care she has taken in preparing this book for publication. My agents Peter Robinson and George Lucas have always been stalwart sources of support and advice. The numerous discussions of the crusading world I enjoyed with Tony To, Don MacPherson and Kario Salem also helped to spark my idea of switching perspectives between Christendom and Islam in this work.

I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all those who have stood by me through these years. To James Ellison, the finest of friends and colleagues; to John Hardy, a true friend through all seasons; to Steve Jones and Stuart Webber, who always knew not to ask how the book was going; and to Robert and Maria Oram, Simon Bradley, Anthony Scott, Daniel Richards, Julie Jones and Lizzie Webber for their unfailing support. I am most grateful to my family for their encouragement, and wish to thank Per Asbridge, Camilla Smith, Jane Campbell, Margaret Williams and Craig Campbell. My parents have shown enormous kindness, as always, and without their help it would have been all but impossible to write this book. At the centre of my life, throughout, have been Christine and Ella, my wife and daughter. It is their patience and love that has sustained me, above and beyond all else, and they who deserve my deepest thanks.

Thomas Asbridge

September 2009

West Sussex

CHRONOLOGY

27 November 1095: Pope Urban II’s sermon on the First Crusade at Clermont

18 June 1097: Nicaea surrenders to the First Crusade

1 July 1097: Battle of Dorylaeum

3 June 1098: First Crusade sacks Antioch

28 June 1098: Battle of Antioch against Kerbogha of Mosul

15 July 1099: First Crusade captures Jerusalem

May 1104: Battle of Harran

28 June 1119: Roger of Antioch slain at the Field of Blood

June 1128: Zangi assumes control of Aleppo

December 1144: Zangi conquers Edessa

1 December 1145: Pope Eugenius III proclaims the Second Crusade

September 1146: Zangi assassinated; Nur al-Din assumes control of Aleppo

July 1148: Failure of the Second Crusade’s siege of Damascus

29 June 1149: Battle of Inab

19 August 1153: Latins conquer Ascalon

April 1154: Nur al-Din occupies Damascus

11 August 1164: Nur al-Din defeats the Franks near Harim

March 1169: Saladin assumes the title of vizier of Egypt

September 1171: Abolition of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt

15 May 1174: Death of Nur al-Din; that October Saladin assumes control of Damascus

25 November 1177: Battle of Mont Gisard

12 June 1183: Saladin occupies Aleppo

May 1185: Death of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem

4 July 1187: Battle of Hattin

2 October 1187: Saladin retakes Jerusalem

29 October 1187: Pope Gregory VIII issues call for the Third Crusade

November 1187: Richard the Lionheart takes the cross

28 August 1189: Guy of Lusignan lays siege to Acre

10 June 1190: Death of Frederick Barbarossa in Asia Minor

8 June 1191: Richard the Lionheart arrives at Acre

12 July 1191: Third Crusaders occupy Acre

20 August 1191: Richard I executes Muslim prisoners outside Acre

7 September 1191: Battle of Arsuf

13 January 1192: Richard I orders first retreat from Beit Nuba

4 July 1192: Third Crusade makes its second retreat from Beit Nuba

2 September 1192: Treaty of Jaffa finalised

4 March 1193: Death of Saladin

15 August 1198: Pope Innocent III issues call for the Fourth Crusade

12 April 1204: Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople

November 1215: Pope Innocent III presides over the Fourth Lateran Council

5 November 1219: Fifth Crusade captures Damietta

17 March 1229: Frederick II Hohenstaufen enters Jerusalem

11 July 1244: Khwarizmians sack Jerusalem

18 October 1244: Battle of La Forbie

5 June 1249: King Louis IX of France lands in Egypt

8 February 1250: Battle of Mansourah

April 1250: Louis IX taken captive by Turanshah

February 1258: Mongols sack Baghdad

3 September 1260: Battle of Ayn Jalut

June 1261: Baybars invested as Mamluk sultan

19 May 1268: Baybars sacks Antioch

8 April 1271: Hospitallers surrender Krak des Chevaliers to Baybars

27 April 1289: Qalawun captures Tripoli

18 May 1291: Mamluk conquest of Acre

NOTES

Abbreviations

RHC Occ.    Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris, 1844–95).

RHC Or.    Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens orientaux, 5 vols, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris, 1872–1906).

INTRODUCTION

During the Middle Ages and beyond, crusades were fought in other theatres of conflict, but at the height of their popularity and significance–between 1095 and 1291–the Christian campaigns primarily targeted the Near East. As a consequence, this book concentrates upon events in the Holy Land. A broad interpretation of the Holy Land’s geographical extent has been adopted. By one definition this region might be deemed to equate roughly to the borders of the modern state of Israel, including those areas under Palestinian authority. But in the medieval era, western European Christians often had a more vaguely defined notion of the ‘Holy Land’, sometimes including other devotionally significant sites–such as the city of Antioch (now in south-eastern Turkey)–within its confines. In the age of the crusades, Muslim contemporaries also tended to refer both specifically to al-Quds (the ‘Holy City’) and more broadly to an area known as Bilad al-Sham (the Coast). The wars for the Holy Land examined in this book, therefore, relate to conflicts ranging across modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and parts of Turkey and Egypt. In recent times, it has become common to refer, in an overarching sense, to this region as the Middle East, but this is actually somewhat inaccurate. Strictly speaking, the coastal territories are the Near East, with the Middle East lying beyond the expanse of the Euphrates River. This work also makes use of the term ‘the Levant’ to describe the eastern Mediterranean lands–a word derived from the French lever (to rise), and related to the sun’s daily appearance in the east. For overviews of recent advances in crusader studies scholarship see: G. Constable, ‘The Historiography of the Crusades’, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. A. E. Laiou and R. P. Mottahedeh (Washington, DC, 2001), pp. 1–22; M. Balard, Croisades et Orient Latin, XIe–XIVesiècle (Paris, 2001); R. Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge, 2007); C. Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999); N. Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford, 2006); N. Housley, Fighting for the Cross (New Haven and London, 2008); A. Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow, 2004); H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, trans. J. Gillingham, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1988); T. F. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, 2006); N. Jaspert, The Crusades (New York and London, 2006); J. Richard, The Crusades, c. 1071–c. 1291, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge, 1999); J. S. C. Riley-Smith (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995); J. S.C. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 2nd edn (London and New York, 2005); C. J. Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (London, 2006).