The past two decades have witnessed remarkable developments in the study of the Islamic perspectives on the Crusades. Until recently, western scholarship on the Crusades treated its subject almost entirely from the vantage point of European sources, incorporating a perspective from Islamic sources only insofar as to bring added detail or nuance to narratives of events set within a European framework of the subject. Beginning with the groundbreaking work of Amin Maalouf and continued more recently with the critical scholarship of Carole Hillenbrand, Niall Christie, Alex Mallett, Paul Cobb and others, the Muslim sources on the Crusades are now at last receiving their well-deserved attention.Footnote 1 The Muslim sources have been demonstrated to not only add critical layers of detail to the events of the Crusades, but have been marshalled to call into question the very epistemological framework by which we understand the Crusades as a historical category.Footnote 2
Yet one area of this topic that still remains poorly understand is the question of the broader historical legacy and memory of Saladin and the Crusades within the Muslim world. While in recent years the topic of the Crusades in European historical memory has gained increasing attention,Footnote 3 far less attention has been paid to the memory of the Crusades in the Islamic world. To date, two polarising narratives on this question have predominated. The first is a popular narrative that a pair of scholars has recently termed the “Nine Hundred-Year-Long Grievance”, which views the Crusades as a festering wound inflicted upon Muslim memory that has motivated anti-Christian and anti-Western passions down to the present.Footnote 4 While few scholars today would take seriously this depiction, this notion still enjoys a strong following in popular perceptions, fed by ubiquitous references to the Crusades in Islamist and nationalist discourses in the Islamic world today and reciprocated by equally ill-conceived attempts by western governments to embroider the “war on terror” with the terminology of the Crusades.Footnote 5
A different perspective that has become better established by far in the academic study of the Crusades is the converse proposition, that Saladin and the events of the Crusades were virtually forgotten within the Islamic world until their memory was revived (with assistance from western Orientalist scholarship) in the late-nineteenth century.Footnote 6 As one scholar has put it:
By a curious irony, the Muslim Middle East discovered or rediscovered Saladin only rather late, in the nineteenth century. By a circuitous route Muslims learned of this great hero of the twelfth century at the dawn of the colonial period when Christian Arabs translated European writings on the Crusades and told their Muslim fellow-Arabs about the exploits of Saladin. The Muslim world then embraced him and has subsequently re-created him in the image of the charismatic leader who will unite the Middle East against the forces of external aggression.Footnote 7
The argument for the novelty of the idea of the Crusades in the Arab world is supported in part by the need to create an Arabic neologism to describe them: al-Ḥurūb al-ṣalībiyya, or “The Wars of the Cross”, which does not appear in Arabic sources prior to the nineteenth century.Footnote 8 As an explanation for this historical amnesia, proponents of this theory have advanced an assortment of hypotheses, ranging from the suggestion that Saladin's Kurdish background may have accounted for his lack of popularity in the Arab world (based on an anachronistic application of contemporary nationalist politics) to the presumption of a general lack of intellectual curiosity among pre-modern Muslims regarding European civilisation.Footnote 9 A more credible hypothesis holds that the mediocrity of Saladin's successors and the anti-Ayyūbid agenda of thirteenth-century historians contributed to a decline in his recognition in later centuries.Footnote 10
While it is evident that the current popularity of Saladin as a household name in the Arab world is of more recent vintage, a series of recent studies have now rendered untenable the claim that his legacy was entirely forgotten within the pre-modern Muslim world, having revealed a range of sources demonstrating a continuous record of active engagement with the memory of Saladin in the Near East in the pre-colonial era.Footnote 11 Hence, it is clear now that, far from having been reintroduced only in the colonial era, the memory of Saladin was preserved and evoked in an array of contexts among Muslim communities in the Near East. But what of the legacy of Saladin within the broader Islamic world? Scholarship on the place of Saladin in Muslim historical memory has thus far found his memory preserved in precisely those contexts in which we might most expect to find it – in travel and pilgrimage accounts of Jerusalem, in local and regional histories of the Levant, or in tracts concerned with the theme of holy war and the defense of the external boundaries of the realms of Islam. Yet while in most respects Saladin's current pan-Muslim popularity beyond the Arab world is a more recent phenomenon, in this article I demonstrate that in fact Saladin's memory was commemorated beyond the Arab world in the pre-modern era – only not in the manner that he is commonly remembered today.
Saladin and His Legacy in Western Scholarship
While the memory of Saladin may have waxed and waned over time in the Islamic world, his figure has been continuously evoked and even celebrated among European authors dating back to his own lifetime.Footnote 12 Saladin later emerged as a perennial object of admiration among Enlightenment-era British writers such as Edward Gibbon and Sir Walter Scott, who envisioned him as a paragon of manly virtue and heroism, casting him as a foil to the corruption and bigotry of the medieval Church. This romantic hero-image continued to inform scholarly treatments of Saladin well into the twentieth century.Footnote 13 Among the first biographies of Saladin to be based solidly in the Arabic sources was Stanley Lane-Poole's Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.Footnote 14 Lane-Poole's biography remained the standard reference on the subject for many decades, only later surpassed by the work of Hamilton Gibb who, like Sir Walter Scott, has been described as bestowing on Saladin the status of “honorary Scotsman”.Footnote 15 All of these studies uniformly depicted Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem as the crowning moment of his career.
A more sober approach to Saladin was taken by Gibb's younger contemporary Andrew Ehrenkreutz, who drew upon a number of previously untapped sources to paint a more complex portrait of his subject. In particular, Ehrenkreutz was the first author to argue against the single-minded focus on his conquest of Jerusalem seen in previous biographies:
Popular though the story of Saladin's war against the Crusaders has always been, it constitutes but one aspect of his political and military career. To obtain a full understanding of that glamorous historical career, one has to consider both his role in the foundation of the Ayyubid regime and his policy towards Egypt, as well as his commitment against the Crusaders.Footnote 16
Despite this, nearly all modern biographers of Saladin still remain in agreement on the overriding importance that his conquest of Jerusalem held for his legacy in the Muslim world. Even Ehrenkreutz in his iconoclastic study argues in the end that, “it was neither Saladin's dynastic pursuits nor his Egyptian involvements which won him a lasting international reputation. Rather the dramatic struggle against the Crusaders, the spectacular victory at Hattin, and recapture of Jerusalem far outshone his other activities and secured him an illustrious place in history”.Footnote 17 The almost singular emphasis on Saladin's re-conquest of Jerusalem remains in vivid evidence in popular culture, as witnessed in the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven. It is only with the work of Saladin's most recent academic biographer that we have finally seen a more complex and multi-faceted portrait of the subject come into view, albeit one which still heavily emphasizes his conquest of Jerusalem.Footnote 18
None of these studies cited above, however, have investigated one of the most critical collections of sources for understanding the “lasting international reputation” of Saladin in the Muslim world, namely the Persian historiography produced in the wake of the Mongol conquests between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.Footnote 19 At first glance, the neglect of this literature in the study of the Crusades is easily justified: most of these texts were composed at least several decades, if not centuries, after and in locales far removed from the events described; furthermore, most of them in their treatment of Saladin and the Crusades draw largely upon earlier Arabic historiography. My approach here, however, is not to treat these sources as “unstructured, uninterpretive mines of factual information”, for which they would undoubtedly prove quite useless as sources for the Crusades, but rather to pay heed to what Marilyn Waldman has identified as the importance of questions of structure, placement, presentation, and didacticism in Persianate historical writings.Footnote 20 I explore these texts with an eye to see not what they can tell us about Saladin's life and the events of the Crusades, but rather to understand which aspects of this history were considered to be important to later observers, and hence worthy of preservation in historical memory.
I argue in this article that the primary significance of the figure of Saladin within the Persian historiographical canon is placed not on his victories against the Franks and on his re-conquest of Jerusalem, but rather on his “Egyptian involvements” and his role in the deposition of the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo. While these events have received separate attention in scholarship, they have been treated either as merely a secondary aspect of Saladin's career and as a prelude to his conquest of Jerusalem, or, alternatively, within the context of the history of Egypt.Footnote 21 Yet, as I will outline below, for many Muslim authors writing in the centuries after Saladin, it was precisely his activities in Egypt, and not his re-conquest of Jerusalem, which carried the greatest consequence for the Islamic world. At best, the Crusades in these accounts factor as mere background to his campaign against the Fatimids; in many cases, they receive virtually no mention at all. In the wake of the Mongol conquests, Saladin's legacy was relocated from the context of the Crusades into the context of a narrative concerning the danger of internal heresy within the Islamic world, embodied first and foremost in the presence of the Ismāʿīlīs and the Fatimid caliphate. While this narrative, and Saladin's place within it, has a precedence in writings in the pre-Mongol era, it obtained a more complete elaboration in the wake of the Mongol conquests and in the efforts of various observers to explain and to legitimate those events. This article, therefore, is a study in how the Crusades came to be viewed and reinterpreted in the light of the Mongol conquests, which inarguably had a far more extensive and more enduring impact upon the Muslim world than the Crusades.
Contemporary Persian Historiography of the Crusades
One of the many lasting consequences of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century was the nearly complete displacement of Arabic as the dominant language of historiography in the Eastern Islamic world in favour of Persian.Footnote 22 In a wide swath of the Islamic world, Persian became the dominant literary language and lingua-franca, a position it retained largely down to the nineteenth century.Footnote 23 Having first emerged as a vehicle for historical writing in Iran and Central Asia in the tenth century under the Sāmānid dynasty, Persian was later adopted as the language of administration under the Turkic Saljūq dynasty, which came to rule much of the eastern Islamic world in the mid-eleventh century.Footnote 24 However, by Saladin's time the Saljūq realm had become highly fragmented, resulting in a rather disjointed historiographic landscape. Consequently, while a number of important local and provincial histories in Persian survive from the twelfth century, we see none of the more universal histories of sweeping scope that were patronised by later dynasties. That being said, there are several Persian works from the twelfth and early-thirteenth century that, if not bearing directly on events in the Levant, nonetheless are important for understanding the broader impact and perception of the Crusades within Muslim society in this era. A survey of this literature demonstrates that even in contemporary times the Frankish invasions of the Levant were not considered to be of overriding concern for the Muslim world as a whole, and in many ways were overshadowed by more pressing concerns, most notably the presence of heretics, as I will outline below. In many respects, the approach found in the Persian literature of the pre-Mongol era foreshadows the key themes that would define the historiography of the Crusades that emerged in the wake of the Mongol conquests.
The most extensive Persian chronicle of the Saljūq dynasty is the Saljūq-nāmah of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, which presents a history of the dynasty from its beginning down to its final defeat by the Khwārazm-Shāhs in 1194.Footnote 25 This text also exists in a second version which includes a continuation appended by an author named ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Kirmānī, which provides further details on the end of the dynasty. This later version exists only through its inclusion by Rashīd al-Dīn in his Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh (discussed further below).Footnote 26 Given that this work covers the entire period of the first three Crusades, one might expect these events to make some appearance in the text. On this point, however, both versions of the work are utterly silent. The Crusades and the fall of Jerusalem pass without notice, as do the wars and victories of Saladin against the Franks.Footnote 27
It is certainly not the case, however, that the text is unconcerned with jihād or with the security of the borders of the Islamic world. The text is in fact replete with accounts of battles against non-Muslims and heretics, most notably with the Ismāʿīlīs in Iran and with the forces of the Qara-Khitay, who have often been described as a sort of twelfth-century forerunner to the Mongols.Footnote 28 It is here that we may find a clue to explain the apparent lack of attention to the Crusades in the historiography of the Eastern Islamic world. Discussions of Islamic history in the twelfth century, generally dominated by the events of the Crusades in the west, often overlook the fact that for much of the latter half of that century a portion of the Islamic world in the east, of significantly greater size than the Crusader kingdoms, was under the rule of non-Muslim invaders from the steppe in the form of the Qara-Khitay. The Mongol invasions in the first half of the thirteenth century in fact were merely the latest and deepest of a series of incursions by nomadic powers from the steppe that had begun well over a century earlier. Despite the importance of Jerusalem in the sacred geography of the Islamic world the Crusaders, in the grand scheme of things, never posed more than a localised threat, especially in comparison with the threat posed by the nomads of the steppe to the east. This danger was well recognised among the Saljūqs, who had their own roots in the steppe. It should be of little wonder therefore, that few Muslim observers outside of the Levant in the twelfth century failed to register great concern for what essentially amounted to a series of border skirmishes with the Franks, especially when faced with the much greater threat looming in the east.
Another popular Persian historical chronicle of this period is the Rāḥat al-ṣudūr va āyat al-surūr of Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Rāvandī.Footnote 29 The text was completed around 1204–5 for the Saljūq ruler of Konya in Anatolia. The work is essentially a provincial history of Anatolia, with some information on broader intra-Saljūq conflicts and affairs, but it provides only incidental mention of the Crusades, and none of Saladin. Perhaps the most relevant contemporary Persian source for the Crusades is an anonymous text titled the Baḥr al-favāʾid, or the “Sea of Precious Virtues”, which was written for one of the Saljūq rulers of Syria between 1159 and 1162. The work is part of the “Mirrors for Princes” genre of Islamic Persian literature, or books of advice for kings and rulers.Footnote 30 The text opens with a discourse on the “Conduct of Holy War”, to include both the inner jihād, or the “Holy War against the Soul”, and the “Outward Holy War”.Footnote 31 Here we find a discussion of the rules of conduct for war, based entirely on examples from the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, and the wars of the early Islamic era; the discourse is a normative and theoretical one, with no mention of contemporary events. It is not until the fifth book, concerning the “Character of the Pious”, that one finds a reference to the Crusades. In a discourse on the “Qualities of the Companions” of the Prophet the author laments;
The kings of this age have robbed Islam of two things: first, waging jihād for the glory of Islam, and second, (maintaining) the treasury for the sake of the poor and those entitled to it. When a king of old arose, there was a jurist on his right hand whom he would ask about the lawful and unlawful, and a Qurʾān reader on his left from whom to hear explication of the Qurʾān. Today the rulers of this age rise at dawn, an astrologer on their right hand and a Naturalist on the left. Nothing remains of the treasury; Jerusalem is destroyed and is a place of dogs and swine, and the land of the Franks prospers. Alas for life! Alas for this calamity! Armies are mustered against Muslims: 0 people of Islam, take warning! Footnote 32
But whereas the Franks earn but a single mention in the Baḥr al-favāʾid, in a passage intended to highlight the declining character of kings more than the imminent danger of the Crusaders, the author reveals a much greater concern for the presence of heretics, and first and foremost for the Ismāʿīlīs, who are distinguished with an entire chapter, on the “Refutation of the Heretics”. The author asserts that, “There are twenty sorts of infidels, but the heretics are more infidel than any, and they are worse than the seven hundred sects of Gabrs.Footnote 33 Shedding a heretic's blood is the equal of seventy holy wars”. In the event that the point was not clear enough, he further enjoins the reader to, “Know that killing them is more lawful than rainwater; sultans and kings are required to suppress and kill them, and cleanse the earth's back of their pollution and evil. . . It is better to shed the blood of a heretic than to kill seventy Greek infidels”.Footnote 34 The overriding concern shown in the Baḥr al-favāʾid for the threat of internal heresy above the presence of the Crusaders is echoed in a wide range of Sunni sources from the twelfth century. As the recent study by Mourad and Lindsay has shown, Sunni jihād propaganda during the early Crusades often equated the battles against the Franks and the Fatimids as part a single campaign to restore the land to Sunni Muslim rule.Footnote 35 The question I will explore here is why only one aspect of this campaign, namely the campaign against internal heresy, was preserved in later historiography, to the nearly complete exclusion of the campaign against the Crusaders.
Other Contemporary Persian Sources for the Crusades
Geographical works, pilgrimage guides, and travel accounts also provide an important insight into the state of knowledge regarding Jerusalem and the Levant in the period of the first three Crusades. While most of these texts in the pre-Mongol era were composed in Arabic, there are several important works in Persian. One important work in this regard is the Mujmal al-tavārīkh va al-qiṣaṣ, a miscellaneous collection of historical, geographical and legendary accounts composed around the year 1126.Footnote 36 The author is unknown, but was most likely a secretary to one of the Saljūq princes of Iran. Its history mentions nothing of the Crusades, while the section on geography includes a description of Jerusalem (complete with illustrations) based largely on information gleaned from the Qurʾān, but also making no mention of its current occupation by the Franks.Footnote 37 Another important but under-studied geographical work from early thirteenth-century Central Asia is the Jahān-nāmah of Muḥammad b. Najīb Bakrān, written as a guide to a map presented to the last Khwārazm-Shāh. The text includes a discussion of Jerusalem and the towns of the Levant, but again includes no mention either of the Crusades or of Saladin.Footnote 38
Perhaps the most important Persian geographical text from the Saljūq era is the ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt va gharāyib al-mawjūdāt (commonly known as the ʿАjāʾib-nāmah) of Muḥammad Hamadānī. The work was composed for the Saljūq ruler Abū Ṭālib Tughril b. Arslān (r. 1175–94), and hence was contemporaneous with the career of Saladin. While belonging to the sphere of geographical literature, the work may be more precisely identified with the emerging genre of ʿajāʾib literature, detailing various wonders and miraculous occurrences.Footnote 39 The text contains multiple references to Jerusalem, relating many stories of the prophets associated with the city, and praising it not only for its Islamic architecture, but also for its churches, synagogues and, perhaps most highly of all, its fine olives. Despite all this, the text makes no mention of the city's occupation by the Franks. It may be argued that a discussion of contemporary events lay beyond the scope of the text which, with a handful of exceptions, rarely ventures into discussions of contemporary political history. Among these exceptions, however, is one that is of great interest for our discussion here. In the section on Egypt an account is given of Saladin's overthrow of the Ismāʿīlī Fatimid dynasty in 1171 and his restoration of ʿAbbāsid authority there.Footnote 40 The account begins thus: “Up to that time, Egypt was in the possession of the Ismāʿīlīs. They displayed the white flag, so it was conquered by Saladin. He (Saladin) pledged to them that he would not continue the holy war in Egypt unless it be by their command”. The report then continues with an elaboration of the failures and factional disputes among the Egyptians, forcing Saladin to assume power in his own name. It concludes by proclaiming, “Egypt submitted to him and the slogan of Islam became manifest (shiʿār-i islām āshkārā shud)”, signifying the restoration of the spiritual authority of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate in Egypt.
To my knowledge, this is the only mention of Saladin to appear in a Persian source from the pre-Mongol era. It is significant that this account comes in a text that is generally not given to discussions of contemporary political history, suggesting that the overthrow of the Fatimids struck the author as being among the great “wonders” of the age. Notably, however, the account does not mention any of Saladin's subsequent campaigns against the Crusaders in the Near East; rather, the one allusion to the “holy war” found here appears intended primarily to showcase the ineffectualness or even duplicitousness of the Fatimids in dealing with the Crusaders, foreshadowing a key theme of later historiography. It is possible that the text was composed prior to his capture of Jerusalem in 1187; no specific date of composition is given in the work, while the dedication suggests only that it was completed prior to the death of the Saljūq ruler Abū Ṭālib Tughril in 1194. Nonetheless, the campaigns of Saladin leading up to that event would almost certainly have been known to the author. The decision to include a mention of Saladin's overthrow of the Fatimids in Egypt, but to omit his subsequent campaigns against the Crusaders, therefore, must be taken as a conscious choice. Altogether, the treatment of Saladin in this early Persian account establishes a clear precedent for the major themes that would define his image in subsequent Persian historiography, to which I will now turn.
Saladin in Persian Historiography of the Mongol Era: ʿAtā-Malik Juvaynī
One of the earliest Persian historians of the Mongol period is ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAtā-Malik Juvaynī, who composed his Tārīkh-i Jahān-gushā in 1260 under the patronage of the Mongol ruler Hülegü Khan. As a Sunni Muslim from a family with a long history of service under Muslim rulers – most recently under the Khwārazm-Shāhs, whose line was brutally extinguished by the Mongols – Juvaynī no doubt perceived some difficulties and contradictions in serving a patron who was responsible for the destruction of countless Muslim lives and cities. Consequently, to a large extent Juvaynī’s history may be interpreted as an attempt to rationalise the Mongol invasion within the context of an Islamic theodicy; its treatment of the history of the Islamic world in the time of the Mongol conquests, therefore, served first and foremost as an elucidation of the conditions that necessitated its chastisement. As Juvaynī writes in his introduction,
Since in every age and century men have been prevented by the excessiveness of wealth, the pride of riches and the arrogance of prosperity from carrying out the commandments of God. . . therefore for the admonishment and chastisement of every people a punishment has been meted out fitting to their rebellion and in proportion to their infidelity, and as a warning to those endued with insight a calamity or castigation has overtaken them in accordance with their sins and misdemeanors. Thus, in the age of Noah there was a general deluge; in the age of Thamūd, the punishment of the people of ʿĀd; and in the same way every nation has undergone punishments such as metamorphoses, plagues of noxious creatures and the like.Footnote 41
Juvaynī concludes that, “just as a skillful healer in dispelling base diseases makes use of scammony in his purgatives and then sees fit to apply correctives. . . the Greatest Physician is well aware of the temperaments and constitutions of His servants and understands the use of drugs, which He administers according to the time and in agreement with nature”.Footnote 42 This approach serves as the primary backdrop to Juvaynī’s history. His account reports a speech given by Chinggis Khan from the pulpit of the Friday mosque in Bukhara, following his investment of the city, in which he states, “O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you”.Footnote 43 Hence, Juvaynī effectively transforms the Mongol invaders into the scourge of God.
In the early twelfth century a number of Muslim authors advanced a similar argument that the conquests and successes of the Franks reflected divine wrath for the sinfulness of the Muslim world, not unlike Juvaynī’s argument regarding the causation of the Mongol conquests.Footnote 44 Juvaynī is very clear on what he perceives to be the source of iniquity in the Islamic world on the eve of the Mongol invasion, namely the presence of the Ismāʿīlīs, the account of which occupies a substantial portion of his work. It is in this context that Juvaynī provides an account of Saladin and his role in the overthrow of the Fatimids. In Juvaynī’s account, the Franks appear primarily as a prop to demonstrate the weakness and incompetence of the Fatimids. In this sense, Juvaynī joins a long list of Muslim authors to have accused the Fatimids of treachery in their dealings with the Franks and who laid the blame for the fall of Jerusalem at their feet.Footnote 45 The basic outline of this account is well-known from earlier sources, particularly the work of Ibn al-Athīr, upon which Juvaynī largely based his account. He begins by outlining how in 1159 the Franks invaded Egypt, following which the Fatimid ruler ʿĀḍid attempted to bribe them to leave the country in peace. Following this, ʿĀḍid turned to Nūr al-Dīn Zangī, the ruler of Syria, for his help in repelling the Franks. Nūr al-Dīn dispatched his lieutenant Malik Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh, who travelled to Egypt along with his nephew Saladin. Upon hearing of the imminent arrival of Shīrkūh and Saladin the Franks promptly fled, and ʿĀḍid reluctantly appointed Shīrkūh as his vazīr, or chief minister. Saladin then assumed the position three months later, following the death of Shīrkūh. Juvaynī concludes his account of Saladin by detailing his final removal and overthrow of the Fatimid dynasty and assumption of power in his own right:
Saladin reduced affairs to order; he gained the mastery over ʿĀḍid and Egypt and ʿĀḍid was completely subservient to him. Nūr-ad-Dīn Maḥmūd, the lord of Syria, wrote to Saladin that, order having been re-established in those countries, the truth should triumph over the false and be restored to its rightful place, (that is), the outward signs of Islam revealed again by the mention in public prayers of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphs. Saladin agreed, and on the first Friday of Muḥarram, 567/1171,Footnote 46 he pronounced the Friday sermon (khuṭbah) on the pulpits of Egypt and struck coins in the name of (the ʿAbbāsid caliph) al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh.Footnote 47 ʿĀḍid died on ʿĀshūrāFootnote 48 and Saladin imprisoned his children and kinsmen and finally caused them all to drink the draught of annihilation and utterly extinguished their race. Saladin now became supreme: his achievements were praiseworthy and the circumstances of his life are well-known.Footnote 49
It should be noted that the account presented by Juvaynī in this section of the work appears to be almost entirely derived from the chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr.Footnote 50 What is significant about Juvaynī’s account of Saladin is not its originality, but rather its placement. In Ibn al-Athīr's work this narrative comes in the context of a broader account of the Crusades and the career of Saladin, while in Juvaynī’s text it is found in the context of an account of the Ismāʿīlīs. In contrast with Juvaynī’s triumphalist account of Saladin's rise to power in Egypt, Saladin's own biographer Ibn Shaddād considerably downplays the significance of this event, and certainly subscribes to it none of the sectarian polemic witnessed in Juvaynī’s account, noting only that Saladin assumed “temporal power” in Egypt upon the death of ʿĀḍid and had the khuṭbah read in the name of the ʿAbbāsid caliph.Footnote 51 Ibn Shaddād's brief and matter of fact account of Saladin's assumption of power in Egypt contrasts sharply with his triumphalist account of Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem, which his unmistakably characterised as a victory for Islam over infidelity.Footnote 52 In Juvaynī’s rendering this juxtaposition is reversed, with Saladin's assumption to power in Egypt characterised as a far greater achievement over his conquest of Jerusalem.
Juvaynī concludes his voluminous history with an account of the siege and capture of the Ismāʿīlī headquarters at the fortress of Alamūt and the execution of the Imām Rukn al-Dīn Khūrshāh at the hands of the Mongols:
The Mongol envoys led him away from the road on the pretext of a feast they had prepared for him, and then caused him to taste the punishment for all that his forefathers had done to the people of God. He and his followers were kicked to a pulp and then put to the sword; of him and his stock no trace was left, and he and his kindred became but a tale on men's lips and tradition in the world. So was the world cleansed which had been polluted by their evil. Wayfarers now ply to and fro without fear or dread or the inconvenience of paying a toll, and pray for the (continued) fortune of the happy King who uprooted their foundations and left no trace of any one of them. And in truth that act was the balm of Moslem wounds and the cure to the disorders of the faith. Let those who shall come after this age and era know the extent of the mischief they wrought and the confusion they cast into the hearts of men. . . . ‘This is a warning for those who reflect,’ (Qurʾān 6:116) and may God do likewise unto all tyrants!Footnote 53
Thus concludes not only Juvaynī’s account of the Ismāʿīlīs, but his history as a whole. Hence, the eradication of the Ismāʿīlīs is cast as the crowning achievement, and even the raison d’être of the entire Mongol conquests; or in the words of Juvaynī, “By this victory, which is on a par with the conquest of Khaybar. . . . the truth of God's secret intent by the rise of Chinggis Khan has become clear”.Footnote 54 One may draw a clear line in Juvaynī’s account between Saladin's overthrow of the Fatimids in Egypt and Hülegü’s extirpation of their successors in Iran; both figures are portrayed as saviours of the Muslim community, not for their actions in repelling the infidels or protecting the external borders of Islam, but for their strivings against internal heresy. While a modern observer may consider it odd to find Saladin placed on an equal level with pagan invaders who murdered Muslims and ravaged their cities to a degree exceeding even the wildest dreams of the most bigoted Crusaders, this equation appears entirely consistent and logical in Juvaynī’s paradigm. This same paradigm later informed the writings of many of Juvaynī’s successors, as we will see.
Minḥaj al-Dīn Jūzjānī
The second author I will discuss here is Minḥaj al-Dīn Jūzjānī, who wrote a universal history c. 1260 titled the Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī (in reference to his patron, the Delhi sultan Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd Shāh). Unlike Juvaynī and Rashīd al-Dīn, both of whom wrote in the service of the Mongol rulers of Iran, Jūzjānī was in the service of the Muslim rulers of northern India. Both he and his father had previously served as officials with the Ghūrid dynasty in Afghanistan; Jūzjānī himself participated in the failed defense of the Ghūrid fortress of Tuluk against the Mongols in 1220, after which he escaped to India and took up service with the Delhi sultans. This difference in patronage, as well as Jūzjānī’s own personal experience as a combatant in and a refugee from the Mongol conquests, undoubtedly coloured his presentation of Saladin and the Crusades, as we will see. Not coincidentally, Jūzjānī’s history provides the most complete account of Saladin and the Crusades out of any of the Persian histories of the Mongol and post-Mongol era; furthermore, his account of Saladin is unique for having integrated a degree of original material, derived largely from oral traditions.Footnote 55
Jūzjānī’s discussion of both the Crusades and the Ismāʿīlīs comes in the context of his dynastic account of the Zangids, telling of Malik Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh's entry into Egypt, his successes in repelling the Franks and his ascension to the position of vazīr under the Fatimids. Up to this point, Jūzjānī’s account is largely derivative of earlier sources on the subject. However, this approach changes when he begins his discussion of Saladin. Jūzjānī begins his account of Saladin by drawing a parallel between him and his contemporary within the Ghūrid dynasty, Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad, writing:
Since God Most High desired that His religion be victorious and that the sovereignty of Islam be manifested at the end of time, from every royal family he choose a servant and unlocked the gates of victory to the lands of the infidel with the key of his jihād. Just as in the lands of the East He designated Sulṭān Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad-i Sām Shansabānī Ghūrī to conquer territories to the borders of China, in the domains of the West and the land of Syria He appointed Sulṭān Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf Kurdī to conquer North Africa and the lands of the Franks, until many victories by his hand became manifest. He restored the kingdom of Egypt from the hands of the Egyptian ʿAlavīs (Fatimids), who were the chiefs of the Bāṭinīyah and the Qarāmiṭah,Footnote 56 to the possession of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs.Footnote 57
Jūzjānī then goes on to narrate a number of anecdotes concerning the biography of Saladin related to him from personal informants. Among them is an account of a dream dreamt by Saladin in which he envisioned himself being captured by a group of people in Egypt and hung by his neck from the ramparts of a fortress. The very next day, Jūzjānī relates, the message came to Saladin ordering him to travel to Egypt. Being fearful of what this dream portended for him in Egypt, Saladin consulted a dream interpreter who assured him that the dream signalled that he is destined to become the ruler of Egypt, hence proving that his acquisition of power was not through his own covetousness but rather through divine sanction. Saladin then proceeded confidently to Egypt and assumed the position of power upon the death of his uncle. He relates that Saladin then, having gathered together the people of Egypt:
He requested that they pledge their loyalty to the caliphate and imamate of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs, and all together they affirmed their pledge to the ʿAbbāsids. During the time of the reign of the Commander of the Faithful al-Mustaḍī bi-Amr Allāh, the khuṭbah was made in the name of the ʿAbbāsids. He sent a book of victory (fatḥ-nāmah) to the capital of the caliphate along with an inverted Frank standard and the flag of the Qarāmiṭah.Footnote 58
As with Juvaynī’s account, Saladin's assumption of power in Egypt is shown to symbolise a dual victory over the Franks and the forces of internal heresy. Unlike Juvaynī, however, Jūzjānī does not conclude his discussion of Saladin here, but instead continues with an account of his exploits against the Franks in the Levant:
One of the trustworthy among the distinguished persons has related that when the news of the ascension of Saladin reached the kingdom of Rūm and the kings of the Franks, an innumerous army came from the infidels towards Syria and fought a battle with Saladin before the gates of Damascus. The army of Islam was routed and the Sultan fled within the gates of Damascus. The infidels pitched their camp before the gates of the city and a great disaster fell upon the Muslims. Saladin gathered the people of Damascus in one place in order to have them pledge to make war upon and defend against the infidels. He summoned one of the ecclesiastical scholars to the pulpit in order to say a few words of encouragement to the jihād and to exhort the people to holy war. That pious scholar with all sincerely turned towards Saladin and said: “O Saladin! From your mouth, your chest and your body comes the stench of Satan! How will your vow with God be affirmed, and who will verify it?” This incident, with the blessing of the Most Merciful, took hold of the heart of Saladin. He stood up, took the hand of that Godly scholar (may God's mercy be upon him), and renounced wine and all worldly things.
[Then] the people with all sincerity pledged their vows to him to undertake the jihād and from that very place they turned their attention to the holy war. Altogether they went out from the city and attacked the army of the infidels and God Most High sent victory. The enemies of the faith were routed and a countless number were sent to hell by the sword strokes of the defenders of the faith. The entirety of the kings and officials and elders of the Franks were taken captive. Since the Muslims had become victorious and triumphant, Saladin set them to the issue of the captives. Finally, the decision was reached to set all of them free. He forgave them and bestowed gifts upon them. When they had travelled one station they sent a message to the Sultan saying, “We are your freed servants; send to each of us a ring that we may place in our ears, and then we will depart.” The Sultan ordered that the appropriate number of rings of the weight of one mithqāl of gold be fashioned and given to each of them, and the whole of them inserted the rings in their ears and left. Not a single one of them ever again fought against his army. And Saladin became established and his legacy has endured in Islam. He served as king for a time and then passed away, mercy be upon him.Footnote 59
Among the three primary Persian historians of the early Mongol era, Jūzjānī is the only one to include a significant discussion of the Crusades. What is noteworthy about Jūzjānī’s account cited above is that it appears to be based substantially on oral tradition, revealing a rich array of narratives that circulated concerning Saladin in the century after his death. Northern India in the thirteenth century became a haven for countless refugees from the lands ravaged by the Mongol invasions, which included a considerable number of former princes and scholars (to include Jūzjānī himself).Footnote 60 Jūzjānī throughout his text cites informants from across the Muslim world who, like him, had fled the Mongols and come to India in search of new fortunes. As his main source on the Zangids, Jūzjānī cites an unnamed descendent of the dynasty that he met in India, although it is not clear if this is the same individual cited in the account of Saladin. Hence, his account presents an entirely unique window into the various narratives that circulated among these emigrant circles at the time – narratives which, it must be stressed, undoubtedly reflected and were filtered by the recent and traumatic experience of the Mongol conquests.
The account as a whole presents a heavily abridged and mythologised rendition of Saladin's campaigns against the Franks, beginning with his return from Egypt and his conquest of Damascus in 1174. Hence, while the account clearly does not reveal much regarding the actual history of the Crusades, it does disclose a great deal regarding the development of narratives surrounding Saladin and these events in subsequent generations. There are two elements in this account that merit further discussion. The first is the anecdote concerning the reproach of Saladin by the member of the ʿulamā, after which Saladin become repentant and gives up drinking. While this particular anecdote, to my knowledge, is not reported elsewhere, it does fit in with a broader array of narratives found in the sources in which Saladin is criticised by members of the ʿulamā, generally in reproach for his misconduct in matters of politics or warfare.Footnote 61 Yet the story found in Jūzjānī’s account is striking for its deeply personal nature. At first glance, it may be considered odd that the image of such a heroic icon as Saladin may be impugned by such a critical commentary, least of all one that likens his breath to the scent of Satan. The anecdote, however, provides a clear lesson: that Saladin's success came as a consequence of his observance of the sacred law, hence demonstrating the necessity of the observance of sharīʿah. It should be noted that Jūzjānī himself was a member of the ʿulamā – his primary occupation was as a qāḍī or judge in the military of the Delhi sultanate – and hence the anecdote also affirms the importance of his own class, whose status had temporarily declined in much of the Muslim world following the Mongol conquests.
The second curious anecdote in this account is the story of the Frank captives requesting rings for their ears, a sign of bondage. Saladin's clemency towards prisoners of war is a trait frequently noted by his biographers, and one for which he has been highly praised throughout the centuries by both Muslim and Christian authors alike.Footnote 62 To my knowledge, however, this specific anecdote is also not found elsewhere. What makes the account of further interest is that the request for the rings evidently comes from the Franks themselves. At a time when much of the Muslim world had become subjected to the Mongols, such a narrative, in which infidels willingly placed themselves into the bondage of a Muslim prince, would have served as a powerful panacea for the traumatised morale of the Muslim refugees in India. Furthermore, the leniency shown by Saladin towards his captives here distinguishes him from the popular narratives of brutality associated with the Mongols in their treatment of Muslim captives.
Altogether, the differences between Jūzjānī’s and Juvaynī’s accounts of Saladin reflect the sharp contrast in their fates in the course of the Mongol invasions. While both authors praise Saladin for his efforts in unseating the Fatimids, only Jūzjānī continues with an account of Saladin's subsequent campaigns against the Franks. Undoubtedly, the extra attention given to the Crusades in Jūzjānī’s account is reflective of his recent and bitter experience of the Mongol conquests, for which the memory of Saladin's victories in the Crusades may have provided some amelioration. Yet even in Jūzjānī’s account we see the seeds of a narrative regarding the Mongol conquests that was echoed more prominently in Juvaynī’s work, and which came to predominate in subsequent authors, as Jūzjānī concludes his predominately defamatory account of the Mongol conquests by reporting exuberantly on the news of the conversion to Islam of Berke Khan, the contemporary Mongol ruler of the Golden Horde, and in praising the recent successes of the Mongols in Persia against the fortresses of the Ismāʿīlīs. The continued Islamisation of the Mongol ruling elite in subsequent decades would have a profound effect on the priorities of later historians, who increasingly integrated the Mongols within the historical and cultural discourse of the Islamic world. Concomitantly, subsequent authors almost entirely abandoned interest in the Crusades and came to discuss Saladin solely within the context of accounts of the Ismāʿīlīs and his role in the suppression of heresy. This approach is clearly demonstrated in the work of Rashīd al-Dīn, to whose account I will now turn.
Rashīd al-Dīn and the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh
The most renowned Persian historian of the Mongol era is Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī (d. 1318), whose Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh was completed for the Il-Khanid ruler Öljeitü in 1307. Aside from the history of the Mongols, which comprises the central portion of the work, there are two other sections of the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh that contain information relevant to the Crusades and to this study, namely the History of the Franks (Tārīkh-i Afrānj) and his History of the Ismāʿīlīs. The Tārīkh-i Afrānj is frequently credited as one of the few historical productions in the pre-colonial Islamic world to concern itself with the history of Europeans.Footnote 63 It has long been recognised that the text was largely or wholly based on another work; however, it was Karl Jahn who first identified the primary source text as being the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum of Martinus Polonus (d. 1279).Footnote 64 According to Jahn, Rashīd al-Dīn's version of the text is highly abbreviated and at times appears to draw from some additional sources that remain unidentified. The text provides coverage from the time of Jesus (ʿIsā) down to the papacy of Pope Benedict XI (Biniṭakṭūs, d. 1304). While the work makes constant references to conflicts between Christians and Muslims, including Saladin's campaigns, it provides only the briefest sketch of events and does not mention him by name. Hence, it can be questioned to what degree the Tārīkh-i Afrānj served as an important source for understanding the events of the Crusades for later generations of Muslims. Jahn describes the work as first and foremost “a work of the Christian occident” and argues that the text, in sharp contrast to other sections of the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh, had little discernible influence on later works.Footnote 65
The primary section of Rashīd al-Dīn's work, his History of the Mongols, also contains only a brief and largely incidental discussion of the Crusades. As the title suggests, this work is principally a history of the Mongols and the various peoples that accompanied them as allies in their conquests. Throughout the text, Rashīd al-Dīn inserts into his discussion accounts of contemporary events elsewhere in the Muslim world. Along with this, he provides a section at the end of each of these asides discussing “unusual events that occurred during this period in all parts of the world”. It is the notes that come in the midst of the account of Chinggis Khan's youth and early manhood, from the age of 13 to 40, or the years 1167–1194, that are of interest for our purposes, as they coincide with Saladin's campaigns and conquest of Jerusalem.Footnote 66 Here we find an extended account, stretching over several pages, of the internal turmoil within the Khwārazm-Shāh's domain and their conflicts with the aforementioned Qara-Khitay. We learn of a great battle in India involving seven hundred war elephants. Following this, we encounter our first and only reference in this section to Saladin. This is found in an extended account of his overthrow of the Fatimid dynasty, which is essentially a telescoped version of the account given in the History of the Ismāʿīlīs (discussed below). Finally, at the end of this account we find a brief epilogue which notes that, “Thereafter until the end of his life he (Saladin) performed great deeds. He took many territories from the Franks and of Diyarbakir and other areas. Each of his sons, brothers, and relatives became a ruler in a region of the realm on his behalf”.Footnote 67 One will note the relative weight given to these various events in Rashīd al-Dīn's work, while the conflicts involving the Qara-Khitay and the Ismāʿīlīs receive significant attention, the great counter-crusade of Saladin is mentioned merely in passing.
The most relevant section of the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh for understanding the contemporary perspective on the legacy of Saladin is the History of the Ismāʿīlīs. Along with Juvaynī’s work, it is one of the most critical sources for the history of the Ismāʿīlī community in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, based as it is in part upon Ismāʿīlī sources that are now lost.Footnote 68 Like in Juvaynī’s history, Saladin makes his appearance in the account of the end of the Fatimid dynasty:
On Friday, the tenth of Muḥarram in the year 567, ʿĀḍid passed away. At that time, on the pulpits of the land of Egypt the Friday sermon was decorated and coinage was cast in the name of al-Nāṣir li-Din Allāh ʿAbbāsī.Footnote 69 The state and the reign of the ʿAlavī caliphs of Egypt were terminated. Saladin imprisoned their children and dependents, and caused them all to drink the draught of annihilation and brought their lineage to an end. . . . . When the glad tidings of the impoverishment of the family and downfall of the kingdom of the caliph reached the ʿAbbāsid caliphs they rejoiced and posted the news on the Bāb al-Nūbī.Footnote 70 To the helper of the caliph, Saladin, they gave robes of honor (khilʿat) and sent black robes, which are their insignia (shiʿār), for performing the Friday sermons, in order that the coinage and sermons of the ʿAlavī caliphs, of Egypt may cease. And laudable works and renowned stations are attributed to him in the repelling of the Franks.Footnote 71
Thus concludes Rashīd al-Dīn's account of Saladin. The sheer balance of Rashīd al-Dīn's account is telling: following over a hundred lines of text dedicated to his efforts in the removal of the Fatimids, the entirety of Saladin's subsequent career, including his role in the Crusades is summarised in one brief sentence. It is nearly inconceivable that Rashīd al-Dīn could not have found room within the vast scope of his world history to accommodate an account of Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem had he found it expedient to do so. This exclusion, therefore, must be taken as reflecting a conscious agenda on the part of the author, one which was echoed in the work of nearly every subsequent Persian historians.
Saladin in the Work of Later Persian Historians
Nearly all of the Persian historians from the fourteenth century onwards derived their accounts of Saladin from the work of Juvaynī and Rashīd al-Dīn, generally placing them within the context of historical accounts of the Ismāʿīlīs. For instance, the Zubdat al-tavārīkh of Rashīd al-Dīn's younger contemporary Abuʾl Qāsim Kāshānī in its account of Saladin's overthrow of the Fatimids (the only context in which Saladin is mentioned in the text) matches Rashīd al-Dīn word-for-word.Footnote 72 The same may be said for the work of a later contemporary of Rashīd al-Dīn, Ḥamdullāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī, whose Tārīkh-i guzīdah also presents an account of Saladin in the context of his history of the Fatimid dynasty.Footnote 73 Likewise, the history of Shihāb al-Dīn ʿAbdullāh Shīrāzī “Vaṣṣāf al-Ḥaḍrat” discusses Saladin within this same context, mentioning nothing of his participation in the Crusades.Footnote 74
This pattern continues with the Persian historiography of the Timūrid era. Among the earlier Tīmūrid-era authors of this genre is Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū (d. 1430), two of whose works are of relevance for this study. The first is a historical-geographical work generally known either as simply the Jughrāfiyā or the Tārīkh-i Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū. In its account of Jerusalem, the text mentions nothing of Saladin or the events of the Crusades, focusing mostly upon legendary accounts of the city associated with the lives of the prophets.Footnote 75 The second work is a universal history known as the Majmuʿ al-tavārīkh al-sulṭānīyah. Like the earlier works on which it is based, this work discusses Saladin solely in the context of the Ismāʿīlīs, the account of which is drawn entirely from Rashīd al-Dīn and matches his text nearly word-for-word.Footnote 76 The later historian Mīrkhwānd in his monumental Rawḍat al-ṣafā mentions Saladin in two sections of his work. The first comes in his account of the Ismāʿīlīs, where his account is derived from Rashīd al-Dīn, focusing exclusively on his role in extirpating the Fatimid dynasty.Footnote 77 The second and more notable account is found in the section on the Atābeks of Syria and Persia.Footnote 78 It is in this context that we might expect to find a more elaborated discussion of Saladin's campaigns against the Crusaders. Yet while this section does include a handful of references to battles against the Franks, none are mentioned in the account of Saladin; rather the account again mentions only his involvement in the deposition of the Fatimids. It is telling that in the thousands of pages of Mīrkhwānd's voluminous history, which served as one of the foremost historical authorities in the Muslim world down to the modern era, Saladin is discussed exclusively in the context of his overthrow of the Fatimid caliphate, with no mention of his role in the recapture of Jerusalem. This approach is equally in evidence in the work of Mīrkhwānd's grandson, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Khwāndamīr, whose renowned Ḥabīb al-siyar likewise discusses Saladin solely within the context of an account of the Ismāʿīlīs based on the work of his predecessors.Footnote 79
The Rawḍat al-ṣafā and the Ḥabīb al-siyar in particular held critical positions in the evolution of Persian historiography, serving in many respects as the capstones of the early-modern genre of Islamic universal history. These works continued to serve as canonical sources of history in the eastern Islamic world down to the twentieth century, and consequently enshrined the Mongol-era depiction of Saladin in the historical memory of these regions for centuries. Yet the memory of Saladin's overthrow of the Fatimids retained its salience even in the western areas of the Muslim world, which were more directly affected by the events of the Crusades. For example, the nineteenth-century Egyptian historian al-Jabartī in his account of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt remarked upon the repulsion of the invasion by the Ottoman general Yūsuf Ḍiyāʾ Pāshā, that whenever Egypt had been threatened in the past it has been rescued by an individual named Yūsuf, among whom was Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf), who saved Egypt from the heresy of the Fatimids and restored it to Sunni Islam.Footnote 80 In the following section I will offer some considerations as to why Saladin's role in combating the Ismāʿīlīs may have been given such overwhelming precedence over his campaigns against the Franks in the historiography of the post-Mongol era.
Saladin, the Crusades and the Ismāʿīlīs
The Ismāʿīlī community experienced a fissure upon the death of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir biʾllāh in 1094 over the question of succession.Footnote 81 While al-Mustanṣir had granted the designation of succession to his eldest son Nizār, a faction of generals and court officials preferred his second son, al-Mustʿalī. After a brief struggle between the two claimants and their supporters al-Mustʿalī emerged as the victor and inheritor of the Fatimid throne, although now as little more than a puppet king under the sway of his generals, while the cause of Nizār was taken up by the majority of the Ismāʿīlīs in Persia and Syria. The Nizārī communities of Persia quickly merged under the leadership of the renowned missionary Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who from his headquarters in the fortress of Alamūt began to assemble the workings of a far-flung Ismāʿīlī state which connected communities across Persia. In Syria an energetic Nizārī community emerged under the leadership of Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān, known to the Crusaders as the “Old Man of the Mountain”. It was this branch of the Ismāʿīlīs that soon became known to the Crusaders, and thereafter to European historiography as the dreaded “Order of Assassins”, on account of their practice of assassination of political enemies.Footnote 82
Throughout the twelfth and into the thirteenth century, the Nizārīs of Syria became locked in a multi-dimensional and, at times, violent engagement with the Zangids, the Ayyūbids and the Crusaders.Footnote 83 The Nizārīs adopted a strategy of guerilla warfare and policy of assassination that targeted key officials and military leaders, beginning with the murder of the Saljūq administrator Niẓām al-Mulk in 1092.Footnote 84 The Syrian Nizārīs under Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān maintained a long-running conflict with Saladin, at times even forging alliances with the Crusaders against their common enemy.Footnote 85 On two occasions, in December 1174 and May 1176, Ismāʿīlī fidāʾīs attempted to assassinate Saladin. On the first attempt the attackers were stopped before they reached him, while on the second attempt one of the assassins succeeded only in superficially wounding him. The disdain for Saladin among the Ismāʿīlīs persisted long after his passing, as evidenced by a document from Mamlūk-era Egypt purporting to give the text of an Ismāʿīlī oath of secrecy which enjoins the holder to avow himself as a supporter of Saladin if he breaks the oath; in other words, to announce himself as being the ultimate hypocrite.Footnote 86
Consequently, multiple generations of Persian scribes and officials in the service of these dynasties, who later provided the administrative class to the incoming Mongol invaders, had been conditioned to view the Ismāʿīlīs not only as heretics and a threat to the state, but as a personal hazard as well. Hence, when the need arose for these authors to legitimate the rule of their infidel patrons, the presence of the Ismāʿīlīs and the need to extirpate heresy within the realm provided a ready-made paradigm. Not only did this paradigm have little need for evocation of the Crusades, it may be argued that an overt emphasis on Saladin's victories against the Franks in this context would have appeared anachronistic in the wake of Mongol domination.
Conclusion: The Crusades and the Legacy of the Mongol Conquests
The findings of this study point to the profound danger of privileging the Near Eastern perspective in narrating the history of Islam. In many standard accounts of Middle Eastern history, the Mongol conquests are generally depicted in parallel with the Crusades, symbolising a second and more devastating round of destruction and occupation by infidel outsiders. To a large extent, this presentation reflects the perspective of the Mamlūk sources, which saw the fight against the Franks and against the Mongols as two fronts in a broader campaign to establish a vision of Sunni Islamic rule in the Near East. In this narrative, the Mamlūk victory over the Mongols at ʿAyn Jālūt in 1260 is depicted as the major turning point in the Mongol conquests, with the later conversion of the Mongol Khans taken as evidence of their decline and eventual eclipse. This picture changes substantially the further east one moves within the Islamic world. In the historiography of the eastern Islamic world, the Mongol conquests increasingly became seen not merely as a brief (albeit enormously destructive) irruption into the affairs of the Muslim world, but rather as a decisive turning point in history which led to a fundamental restructuring of the social, political and religious order.
In a vast swathe of the Islamic world stretching from the Balkans to the Bay of Bengal, Mongol traditions and institutions, to varying degrees, became an integral aspect of Islamic societies, persisting long after the passing of direct Mongol rule.Footnote 87 This legacy is most notable in Central Asia, where the tradition of powerholding by figures at least nominally claiming descent from Chinggis Khan continued down to the early twentieth century. From this vantage point, the Islamisation of the Mongols resulted not merely in their decline, assimilation, and eventual irrelevance, but rather provided the foundation for a new social order based on a synthesis of Mongol and Islamic tradition.Footnote 88 While in the short term, the Mongol conquests brought enormous destruction to Islamic institutions, in the long term the Islamisation of the Mongols in fact enabled the expansion and consolidation of Islam in vast areas of the Eurasian steppe and beyond. Consequently, while the initial destruction of the Mongol conquests was never forgotten, in the sources produced in those lands where the Mongol legacy persisted the longest conquests increasingly came to be viewed, not merely as acts of devastation, but rather as acts of renewal and purification.Footnote 89
Hence, it was not a lack of intellectual curiosity or self-assured smugness in the virtues of Islamic civilisation that drove subsequent generations of Muslims to ignore the Crusades, as has often been claimed; much to the contrary, it was the necessity to cope with the legacy of the Mongol conquests, and the imperative to accommodate these new realities and models of governance, which dictated the means by which the Crusades were incorporated into the subsequent universal history of the Islamic community. In particular, the penitential response evidenced by early historians of the Mongol era left their indelible mark upon later historiographic traditions. While the image of Saladin found in these histories may differ in many ways from that which is embraced by the Muslim world in the present day, it bears one critical similarity, in that the image serves, first and foremost, as a reflection on the concerns and preoccupations of the observer's own time and historical context. To better understand the “Islamic perspective on the Crusades” requires that we view these events not merely as historical events, but also as a site of memory and an impetus for the production of competing discourses and moral imperatives set within the framework of Islamic universal history.
