In Our Time - Third Crusade

Episode Date: November 29, 2001

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the highs and lows of the Third Crusade. In 1095 Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade and by the end of the 11th century an army of Franks had driven what they called the ‘infidel arab’ out of Jerusalem. The Crusaders held the city for over eighty years until Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, seized it back in 1187. The Muslim world celebrated as the Christian world shuddered and Pope Gregory VIII issued a Papal Bull for restoring the Holy City to Christian Rule. The Kings of Europe clamoured for the honour to take up the challenge. However, the Third Crusade did not get off to a ripping start. The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, set off at the head of the greatest crusader army ever assembled but drowned whilst crossing a small stream in Armenia. This left Phillip of France and ultimately Richard of England to take on Saladin’s supremacy in the Middle East. What happened in that famous encounter? How did the names of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart come to bear such a weight of reputation across the centuries and were the crusades racial, imperial or religious wars? With Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University and author of many books on the Crusades, Carole Hillenbrand, Professor of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh, Tariq Ali, novelist, playwright and author of The Book of Saladin.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, and by the end of the 11th century, an army of Franks had driven what they call the infidel Arab out of Jerusalem.

The Crusade has held the city for over 80 years until Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, seized it back in 1187. The Muslim world celebrated as the Christian world shuddered, and Pope Gregory VIII issued a papal bull for the restoring of the Holy City to Christian rule. The kings of Europe clamoured for the honour to take up the challenge. However, the Third Crusade didn't get off to a very promising start. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa set off at the head of the greatest crusader army ever assembled, but drowned while crossing a stream in Armenia.

This left Philip of France and ultimately Richard of England, England to take on Saladin's supremacy in the Middle East. What happened in that famous encounter? How did the names of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart come to bear such a weight of reputation across the centuries? And were the Crusades racial, imperial, or religious wars, and were chivalry part of the equation? With me to discuss the Third Crusade is Jonathan Riley Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, an author of many books on the Crusades. Also here is Carol Hildenbrand, Professor of Islamic History. at the University of Edinburgh,

an author of the Crusades, Islamic Perspectives, and we're waiting for Tarik Ali, the novelist and playwright, author of a novel, The Book of Saladin. He's stuck in a traffic jar. Jonathan Riley Smith, Richard arrived in the Holy Land in June 1191 by ship. He landed at the head of a crusader fleet.

What was the political situation he found there? What sort of army did he had? What was the setup? Well, really, it was a consequence of Saladin's, failure because Saladin had, after destroying the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem, in July 1187, had swept through Palestine and taken Jerusalem, as you'd said, and taken nearly every crusader strong point, except for the town of Tyre. And his failure to take Tyre really sort of marked a point from which the Christians could advance, because there was a beachhead. There was actually a

rather involve political dispute, which naturally, I suppose, followed the disastrous defeat at Hattin, in consequence of which one of the parties embarked incredibly bravely on a reconquest of the coast from Tyre, besieged the main port in Palestine, which was Aker, and when Richard sailed out, he was joining, an army which was already assembled laying siege to this very important port, and an army which already, in fact, had all sorts of political divisions within it. So we get Richard and Philip II of France, who join other Christians in the siege of Aker, which has been going on for about a couple of years.

Saladin's got Jerusalem, he hasn't taken Tire, Richard and Philip are there, Aca falls soon after Richard gets there. He takes a lot of credit for that. Can he give us some idea of the size of the armies involved? The Richard's army was actually a relatively small one. What's relatively small in those terms? Well, I mean, it was not much more than of the knights, about 1,500 knights,

with a lot of support from ordinary soldiers. But it joined an extraordinary miscellany of forces because there was also the King of Francis. There were other English forces which had gone out earlier. There were forces from elsewhere in Europe. including the remnants of the German army. So it was quite a significant force. I couldn't give you the exact size.

10,000, 10, 15,000 force, which was laying siege to Aker at that time. And the fall of Aker, of course, was followed very quickly by Philip of France's departure for Europe. And it was really after that that Richards' achievements as a field commander really led to the reputation he had later in history. Carol Hillenbrand, what did contemporary Muslims make of the crusaders themselves before we get under the battle?

They called them, how do you pronounce it, Farange, didn't they? Yes. What did that mean? What did they make of these people coming from the West? Well, before the Crusades actually began, the Muslims had a clear stereotypical picture of Western Europe anyway, which was very negative. Before 1099, the usual conception of the medieval Europeans was that they were people with lank hair, gross bellies, very dull intellects, beasts rather than men.

They were valiant in war, however. That was clear. That was what Muslims believed even before the Crusades. And in terms of religion, these guys had nothing to offer the... the Muslims because the Muslims held the final revelation. The Jewish and Christian faiths which had preceded Islam were completed and perfected by Islam. And who wants a superseded revelation? So when the crusaders advanced on Jerusalem... Also, they were not at all impressed by the culture from the West. They had taken the Hellenistic tradition on themselves.

They regarded themselves as much more cultivated, which indeed, by many accounts they were, much more educated. They had the wealthiest cities in some ways. You're shaking your head, Jonathan. We'll come back in a second. Carl. Well, as I said, this is a stereotypical picture, but this is one that the Arabs were very firmly convinced was true. And when the Crusaders actually came,

and the Muslims were able to see them at close quarters, as it were, their serotypes and prejudices were reinforced. The Crusaders were dirty and unhygienic. The Spanish traveller Ibn J. Jubei going to the Holy Land in the 1180s, passes through Crusader Acre for a day or two, and says the place stinks, and it's full of pigs and crosses.

And the even more famous Osama bin Munketh, who wrote his racy memoirs, and who knew the crusaders firsthand over many, many years, he looks at their antics, at their culture with amused contempt, be it in the field of the Bath House or of their staggeringly naive medical practices. Can we just round up, as it were, very, very briefly, the Third Crusade before we start talking about the motivations behind it.

Jonathan Riley Smith, Richard arrived. He was perhaps more responsible than anyone. Very soon after he got the Acre Fell. There were great brutalities after that. We can talk about those later. Then he did this extraordinary march. down the coastline, but failed to take, but did not take Jerusalem. He was never defeated in battle, but he did not take Jerusalem.

Can you just quickly tell us the success, and was that a failure of not taking Jerusalem? Well, he regarded it as a failure. Yes. But actually, I think the Third Crusade was a success. And the reason for that was that it retook the ports along the coast. the most important factor in the survival of the crusader settlements for another hundred years was their lines of communication back to the west and those were sea maritime and the greatest threat to those lines of communication lay in any Egyptian galley fleet

which would be down in the Delta, the Nile Delta. Now, the absolute requirement for any fleet to get at shipping, which generally congregated in the northern part of the eastern Mediterranean, was the ability to take on water. For the rowers? For the rowers. Because these are galleys, it's fairly hot. These men consume an enormous quantity of water every day.

By retaking the ports and closing off the water supplies, effectively the range of the Egyptian galley fleet was so limited that it could not strike effectively at the fleets. Now briefly, because I want to move on to the ideas behind this, why did he not take Jerusalem? Richard took a military advice that armies in the Judean hills were in fact threatening him and he couldn't in fact sit down in front of Jerusalem

and were then behind him. There's some water in front of them. Yes, thank you. Carol, did the Muslims see clearly that they were being attacked by people driven by religious motives? Is that how they perceived it, or were these just warring peoples coming across to fight with them? At the beginning, they were just warring peoples coming across to fight them. The problem was that the Muslims at the time of the First Crusade were quite used to Byzant, armies coming on regular basis and invading Syria.

And this new enemy, this strange enemy from another planet almost, was something quite unprecedented for them. But that said, they did not really understand or show very much curiosity about what had brought these strange people to their lands. In fact, there was no. never a parallel drawn between crusade and jihad, for example, in the medieval Muslim sources, which one might have expected. What was the distinction drawn then if it wasn't a parallel? Well, the point was that the Muslims only saw jihad. They had no concept that these

crusaders had come for a religious motive at the beginning. I think by the time of the Third Crusade, things had begun to change. And the sources clearly reveal that the... Those in Saladin's entourage, Saladin's biographers, Saladin's scribe, they write things like these crusaders are fighting around the cross. They want Jerusalem just as much as we do. There's the beginnings of a curiosity about why they've come and an understanding that they are fighting for their faith. But it took a while.

Jonathan, crusades are often described, or sometimes described, just the beginning of or the start of the colonisation of the European, is it dry for more land, dry for more territory. I mean, religion was a convenient cloak for this. Do you have any truck with that? No, I have no track with it at all. Crusading, of course, is only one form of Christian holy war, or even if it's the most well-known and the one that lasted longest.

But what characterises it are an intense feeling that the actions are for God, the fact that at least the nucleus have to be volunteers, and that they are performing their crusading duty as a penance. Now, that penitential element, that feeling that you were actually engaged in a crusade to pay back to God for your sins was so powerful and remained in crusading for so long

that even in the 15th and 16th, centuries, one can still see it. Now, if I can just go on about this colonial business, what basically happened was that when crusading finally and ignominiously died in the 18th century, it was secularised. I mean by that, scholars stripped it of its religion. And in the age of positive imperialism, the late 19th century, saw the crusades as the first act of imperialism of the late 19th century, saw the Crusades as the first act of imperialism. And this was taught to the first generation of Arab nationalists who turned it on its head.

Right. Tariq Arles just turned up. Tariq, are we talking about the motivation behind the Crusades, whether the motivation is, Jonathan, you were here while Jonathan gave the explanation, the religious explanation, how that was later changed and even distorted and turned on its head. What do you think the motivation of the Crusaders were at that time? Well, I think the motivation for the Crusaders were largely political, ideological. They were going to liberate the Holy Lands, which were lying under the control of the infidel Muslims. As the Crusaders saw it, that was one motivation.

And I think the other motivation, which one shouldn't underplay, is that Western Europe at that time was a very backward region compared to the Arab world. The London and Paris had populations of under 50,000 each, whereas Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo had a combined population of 2 million. The riches of this world, the material riches, were well known. And I think that there was an element of going to loot and get rich. And so I think these two operations coincided with the Crusades, and when they arrived they certainly did loot like Billio. So when the Crusaders first,

hit the Arab countries, the Arabs were stunned by the barbarism of it all. And in fact, it was regarded in the Arab world as a barbarian invasion. And this include brutalities as well, but can you illustrate those? Well, one of the brutalities, I mean, when Jerusalem was first taken by the Crusaders, something for which the Pope apologized 900 years later, every single Jew was burnt alive. The synagogue was surrounded, set on fire. Virtually every Muslim in Jerusalem was killed,

in sharp contrast to when the city had first been taken by the Muslims and later when Saddam took it again. It's no good shaking your head. I mean, this is a fact which is now recognised by everyone, including the Pope. They're being very patient, Terry. I'm giving you a bit of rope because you've arrived at 25 minutes. Not at your fault, but just say a bit more, and then I'll let them come back.

So you're talking about barbarians, invading for very mixed motives, looting, burning, genocide, pogroms. That's the situation, as you see. Rape cannibalism. You think this is the situation as was perceived then, or as you perceive it now? No, this was the situation as was perceived then. I mean, if you study the writings of the Muslim chroniclers, one of the things which they express is shock and horror at what is going on.

They simply weren't prepared for this scale of massacres that took place, especially in Jerusalem, which was a wash in blood. The killings went on for two whole days. I'm going to, Jonathan, just a second. Carol, Carol, Hindenbrandt, would you like to reply to some of those points? I'm afraid if I can ask you to be as concise as you can, because obviously there's a big argument brewing here. Yes, well, I'm going to defuse that argument with a bit of common sense, I trust.

We mustn't delude ourselves that Saladin was the way he's depicted. in his biographies by his two spin doctors, whilst I will admit that he's a charismatic figure, quite clearly he did not rise to the top by being a bookish youth as his biographers would have it, and that he was dragged, kicking and screaming into the military arena. He was tough, he was ambitious, he was determined, he favoured his family,

he was lukewarm in the prosecution of jihad on occasion. this is what his Muslim rival said. Talking about the bloodshed in Jerusalem, I have to agree with Tarek there that in 1099 this was a disgraceful performance, even by the standards of the time. On the other hand, there's no evidence that that went on. The crusaders were in a state of religious exultation.

At that point, they'd come an incredible journey, and this was the culmination of all their, their dreams. And lastly, for this time round, I feel it's important to stress that we're dealing in the context of the Crusades themselves in the 12th and 13th century

with a religious context, a profoundly religious society. Both sides understood that. Both sides of the ideological divide knew that they were fighting for religion. That was the way their society was defined. So we mustn't be anachronistic. Jonathan. No one denies that the First Crusaders adopted a fairly brutal policy on their march south,

and that they sacked Jerusalem, both sides throughout the crusading period, abided by customary rules more. Are we talking about the Third Crusade now? No, I'm talking about the first Jerusalem was sacked. But then you switch to Saladin. After the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, this was the point that Tariq Ali was making. It was not sacked. That was a negotiated surrender.

Yes. And where there was no negotiation, Muslim armies behaved as Christian armies. Now, what I want to say is this. First of all, Goitaine, a historical Gaetan, has demonstrated that the massacre of the Jews in Jerusalem in 1099 did not take place. That the Genetza records have shown letters. Jews were being ransomed. The Crusaders even sold the Jews back their library. Secondly, one of the problems with the size of the...

massacre is it's coming down all the time. Now, a new source which Carol may know about has been discovered by a man who had studied in the Alaksa Mosque before the First Crusade and was writing from Egypt. And what you've got basically is 70,000 being said being killed by Ibn Al-Athia in the 13th century, 10,000 by Ibn Kalanasi in the 1140s. And now this chap, who admittedly it isn't the total number, but gives the figure of 3,000. Now, I'm not saying 3,000 is the number, nor am I saying that there was not a sack. What I am saying is that the subject at interest me now is why the Christian eyewitness writers should have gloried in blood and gore exaggerating what may indeed have taken place.

What ideological forces were at work which led those eyewitnesses to elaborate a large, a massacre than actually took place. None of this, the actual number of figures, detracts from the horror of what took place. As to whether the Jews were, the synagogue was burnt and the Jews were burnt in it or not. I mean, this has certainly been the view of most Jewish historians up till now and of Arab chroniclers,

but anyway, we can... John Lange said it as well. Can I say, you see, this is quite an important point. Goetat himself is a Jewish historian. Yeah. The fact is the real horrors against the Jews took place in Europe before the crusade departed. Richard Montaginette wiped out many a community en route. And one of the most interesting sort of comparisons is the comparatively reasonable way in which the crusaders, when they've settled in the East, treat both Muslims and Jews. They actually apply themy legislation and the violence of the attacks on Jews in Europe.

I mean, there's a kind of distinction in behaviour here, which is itself quite interesting. I'm going to have to, I'd like to take some different direction. It's slightly unbalanced because Terry couldn't get here in time. So I want to talk about the legends of Saladin and Richard. Briefly, Terry, can you tell us how Saladin appeared then and how you think he appears now? I think Saladin acquired his reputation in the world of Islam because he was the man who took back Jerusalem. That was the key thing he did.

And they won, they kept Jerusalem. And they got Jerusalem and they kept it and it was kept till the 20th century. It fell again. It fell again, but for a very short time. I mean, basically there's a sort of blip. So that is what gave Saladin his reputation, which he's preserved and also how he fought and contested battles. But I think by and large if you read all the biographies, doesn't strike you as a sort of very brash general, as a bushy general, quite a person who was,

who became what he is, by dint of ambition, but also due to the fact that his oldest brother, who was the father's favourite, had died before. Carl, do you think his reputation was reinvented and in this, sorry, the last century, in the 20th century, and re-pointed? Yes. The problem with Saladin was that after his death, he was not rated very highly in the Muslim world. The ascetic Sultan Nuruddin or the great Mamluk Sultan Baibas were much more likely to be figures of veneration in the Muslim world.

But it was in the West that Saladin became the epitome of chivalry, even a generation or two after his death. He had already acquired this reputation. And by Dante's time, Dante, died in 1321, we have Saladin ranged along next to the heroes of classical antiquity. Caesar and Hector. Yes, whilst the Prophet Muhammad languishes in the inferno. It's Saladin who's drawn by Renaissance artists and who's taken up by the Enlightenment,

Lessing in particular, and is given the romantic aura by Sir Walter Scott. So when do the Muslims take Saladin? back, reinvent him in inverted commas. Well, this seems to have been in the 19th century where he suddenly becomes a Kurdish hero, an Arab hero, and a Muslim hero. And as we all know, he is now the person who every modern Arab and Muslim leader

wishes to emulate to be called the second Saladin. I think that's slightly exaggerated, Carol, because, I mean, it's true that his reputation grew in the centuries that followed. But I think if you study accounts of what happened when he died, of the fact that the whole of Damascus turned out, of the fact that he was a much loved leader by the common people because he wasn't regarded as corrupt in any way,

not someone who amassed a great deal of private wealth. So I don't think it's totally accurate to say that his reputation in the Arab world grew only subsequently. By dint of the fact that he'd liberate, liberated Jerusalem, he won a place in Arab hearts, and even the sort of Damascusan aristocracy, who hated his Kurdish background and regarded him of lowly origin, were forced to pay tribute. Let's turn to Richard now, my friend. Richard was given the, he was called with the Heart of a Lion, celebrated in his own day. Is, and that, would you, how has his reputation been transformed,

do you think, Jonathan? Yes, I think it has. I mean, I suspect very much that the famous story, of his return to Europe and he's then travelling through Europe in disguise on the way to his domains and being imprisoned by the Duke of Austria amassed the fact that he'd engineered the assassination of the next ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem

who happened to be the Duke of Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor's cousin and in a sense in the end all that was forgotten and pretty quickly and there is a way in which the relationship between Richard and Saladin are, is incredibly close. Absolutely. Already in the 13th century, in tiles in Chelsea, the Chelsea Abbey, a Chertsey Abbey,

there are tile of Saladin and a tile of Richard in battle. So already, in the middle of the 13th century, Richard and Saladin are being romanticised in the West. And Richard's career, in a sense, goes through the same process as Saladin. I mean, it's there all the time, unlike Saladin, who I do agree with Carol, is more or less completely forgotten until the 19th century, partly because I think his descendants had done so badly, had lost Jerusalem, and I mean, the Ayubid Empire was ended after 60 years, and with that, his reputation went. But again, they share with the romantics that same sort of efflorescence. as a way that up to today, the kind of reputations that were already evolving in the West in the 13th century are still with us.

You mentioned several times a chevalric idea. Do you think that is a spurious, over-romanticized notion to cover over the brutalities, which there undoubtedly were and on both sides, Carol? Well, there are individual acts of magnanimity and chivalry, especially attributed to Saladin, which are mentioned by his enemies. This must therefore be the case that it happened. His chivalry towards the Crusader women in Jerusalem and 1187 at the time of the reconquest. His perhaps legendary sending of Sherbert and iced water

and so on to Richard when he was ill. But there is a pattern here which one can, I think, in general, believe. But the legends of Richard and Saladin fed off his. each other really, and they both, these charismatic men, seem to have benefited from each other's charisma. We each seem to have needed them, don't we, in that way, Tariq? Well, I think, yeah, both the cultures had their heroes, and I think, as Jonathan said, a lot of Jews were killed on the way to the Crusades, and Richard was one of the people

who carried out the pogroms, but... More shaking of heads. Of course, there will always be shaking of heads, but... The interesting thing is that when the French took Damascus in 1920 after the First World War, the French general Henri Gouro marched straight to Saladin's tomb and said, Saladin, we have returned. My presence consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent. So it's still with us.

We have to go, Jonathan. I'm really sorry about that. Thanks to Jonathan Ryder Smith, Carol Hillenbrand, and the late Tarragherly. And thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.ukh forward slash radio 4.