Muslim Responses to the Crusades – An Analysis of the Muslim Ideological, Military, and Diplomatic Responses to the Medieval Christian Crusades –

Year 2015, , 219 - 252, 17.06.2016

Dr. Mohd Yaseen Gada

https://doi.org/10.12730/13091719.2015.62.132

Abstract

Muslim responses to the Crusades have been a focus of modern scholarship in both Crusades studies and medieval Islamic history over the last decade or so. This important aspect of the Crusades had been largely, if not entirely, ignored by Western scholars owing to their particular Western academic environment. One of the common misconceptions about the Muslim understanding of and response to the Crusaders is the view that the Muslims knew little, if anything, about them and were confused about the difference between the Byzantines and the Franks (Crusaders). Consequently, it took the Muslims approximately a half century to organize a unified Muslim front to fight against the Crusaders. Despite this view, Muslim sources reveal that Muslim intellectuals and religious figures closely observed the Crusaders’ actions and motives, and they did, in various ways, respond to this hitherto unimagined flood of people from the West. This paper attempts to highlight and explore the Muslim ideological, religious, military, and diplomatic responses to the Crusaders.

References

• Abū Shāma al-Maqdisī, Abū l-Qāsim Shihāb al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismāʿīl, ʿUyūn al-rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn al-Nūriyya wa-l-Ṣalāḥiyya, 5 vols., (ed. Ibrāhīm al-Zaybaq; Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1997).
• Akbar, M. J., The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (London & New York: Routledge, 2002).
• Atiya, Azīz Suryal, Crusade, Commerce, and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962).
• Azzām, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Saladin (Harlow, England & New York: Pearson Longman, 2009).
• al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 14 vols., (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2003).
• Bonner, Michael, Jihād in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006).
• al-Bukhārī, al-Imām Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 9 vols., (translated into English by Muḥammad Muḥsin Khān; Riyadh: Dār al-Salām, 1997).
• Christie, Niall, The Book of the Jihād of ʿAli ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106): Text, Translation and Commentary (Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2015).
• Christie, Niall, Muslims and Crusades: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East 1095-1382: From the Islamic Sources (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014).
• Cobb, Paul M., The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
• Dajani-Shakeel, Hadia, “A Reassessment of Some Medieval and Modern Perceptions of the Counter-Crusade,” in Hadia Dajani-Shakeel and Ronald A. Messier (eds.), The Jihād and Its Times: Dedicated to Andrew Stefan Ehrenkreutz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, 1991), 41-70.
• Dajani-Shakeel, Hadia, “Diplomatic Relations between Muslim and Frankish Rulers 1097-1153 A.D.,” in Maya Shatzmiller (ed.), Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 190-215.
• Dajani­Shakeel, Hadia, “Some Medieval Accounts of Salah al­Din's Recovery of Jerusalem (Al­Quds),” in Hisham Nashab (ed.), Studia Palaestina: Studies in honour of Constantine K. Zurayk (Beirut: Beirut Institute for Palestine Studies, 1988), 83-113, retrieved from http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/med/salahdin.asp
• Elad, Amikam, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage (2nd edn., Leiden: Brill, 1999).
• Foss, Michael, People of the First Crusade: The Truth about the Christian-Muslim War Revealed (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997).
• Gabrieli, Francesco, The Arab Historians of the Crusades (translated from Italian into English by E. J. Costello; Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2010).
• Gibb, H. A. R., The Life of Saladin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
• Gil, Moshe, A History of Palestine, 634-1099 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
• Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspective (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
• Ibn al-Athīr, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Shaybānī al-Jazarī, al-Kāmil fī l-tārīkh, 13 vols., (ed. C. J. Tornberg; Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1965-1967).
• Ibn al-Athīr, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Shaybānī al-Jazarī, al-Tārīkh al-bāhir fī l-Dawla al-Atābakiyya bi-l-Mawṣil (ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad Ṭulaymāt; Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadītha, 1963).
• Ibn al-Athīr, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Shaybānī al-Jazarī, The Chronicle of Ibn Al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rīkh, Part I: The Years 491-541/1097-1146: The Coming of the Franks and the Muslim Response (translated by D. S. Richards; Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2010).
• Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū l-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 80 vols., (ed. ʿUmar ibn Gharāma al-ʿAmrawī and ʿAlī Shīrī; Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995-2001).
• Ibn Kathīr, Abū l-Fidāʾ ʿImād al-Dīn Ismāʿīl ibn Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr-Abridged Volume 5, Surah Hud to Surat Al-Israʾ, Verse 38, (3rd edn., Riyadh, Houston, New York & Lahore: Darussalam Publishers; 2003).
• Ibn Shaddād, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Rāfiʿ, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawādir al-ṣultāniyya wa-l-maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya by Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād (translated by D. S. Richards; Aldershot, England & Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2002).
• Jaspert, Nikolas. The Crusades (translated by Phyllis G. Jestice; London & New York: Routledge, 2003).
• Kelsay, John, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
• Lambden, Stephen N., “Islamic Faḍāʾil [“Excellences”] and associated literatures,” available at http://www.hurqalya.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/BIBLIOGRAPHY-HYP/06-FUTUH%20&%20FADA%27IL/Fada%27il-QUDS.htm#_ftn1
• Lane-Poole, Stanley, Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (New York & London: G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1906).
• Lapidus, Ira M., A History of Islamic Societies (2nd edn., Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
• Lyons, Cameron, and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of Holy War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
• Mourad, Suleiman A., and James E. Lindsay (eds.), The Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in the Crusader Period 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
• Muslim, Abū l-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 7 vols., (translated into English by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Khaṭṭāb; Riyadh: Dār al-Salām, 2007).
• Newby, P. H., Saladin in His Time (New York: Dorset Press, 1992).
• Nicolle, David, Saladin: Leadership, Strategy, Conflict (Oxford & Long Island City, NY: Osprey Publishing, 2011).
• Partner, Peter. God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997).
• Reiter, Yitzhak, and Marwan Abu Khalaf, “Jerusalem’s Religious Significance: Jerusalem in the faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” Palestine-Israel Journal, 8/1 (2001), available at http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=169
• Riley-Smith, Jonathan (ed.), The Oxford History of the Crusades (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Rubenstein, Jay, “Saladin and the Problem of the Counter-Crusade in the Middle Ages,” Historically Speaking 13 (2012), 2-5.
• Sivan, Emmanuel, L’Islamet la croisade: Idéologie et propagandedans les réactionsmusulmanes aux croisades (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1968).
• Thomas, David, and Alex Mallet (eds.), Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, (1050-1200) volume 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
• al-Tirmidhī, al-Imām al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā, Jāmiʿ Tir-midhī, 6 vols., (translated into English by Abū Khalīl; Riyadh: Dār al-Salām, 2007).
• ʿUlwān, ʿAbd Allāh Nāsiḥ, Salah ad-Dīn al-Ayyubi (Saladin): Hero of Battle of Hattin, Liberator of Jerusalem from Crusaders (2nd edn., translated by Khalifa Ezzat Abu Zeid; Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2004).
• al-Wāsiṭī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad, Faḍāʾil al-Bayt al-muqaddas (ed. Isaac Hasson; Jerusalem: Dār Māghnis, 1979).