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By J. Arthur McFall for Military History
Magazine
"Jerusalem
is the navel of the world, a land which is fruitful above
all others, like another paradise of delights," wrote Robert
the Monk in Historia Hierosolymitana. And, indeed,
for centuries Jerusalem, sacred to Jew, Christian and Muslim
alike, had been the center of attention for a succession of
conquering armies--which made life anything but a paradise
for its populace.
The
summer of 1098 saw the much-fought-over fortress city in
Egyptian hands. The Fatimid Emir (commander) al-Afdal
Shahinshah had taken Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks after a
40-day siege, on orders of Vizier (minister of state)
al-Musta'li, ruler of Egypt. Many months of political and
diplomatic maneuvering with the Franj ("Franks"--the
Arabic term used for all Western European Crusaders) and the
Rumi ("Romans"--actually the Greeks of the Byzantine
Empire) had not gotten the vizier the concessions he wanted,
so he simply had sent Emir al-Afdal to seize the city the
Crusaders were coming to capture, thereby presenting the
Franj invaders with a fait
accompli.
In the
months ahead, the Shiite Muslim poets of the Fatimid court
would work diligently to compose great eulogies to the man
who had wrested Jerusalem from the Sunni Seljuk "heretics."
The poetry ended in January 1099, when the Franj
departed Antioch to resume their southward march.
These
European warriors had first set out on the road to Jerusalem
after Pope Urban II made an appeal for troops at Clermont,
France, on November 27, 1095. The pope was responding in
part to rumors, mostly false, of Muslim atrocities committed
against Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land, and he
also sought a means of uniting Europe's contentious kings
and lords in a common cause. Since then, waves of zealots
had made their way toward their ultimate
goal--Jerusalem--but the road had been far from easy.
Indeed, many of the survivors who tramped their way along
that final leg of their journey regarded the incidents that
had occurred along the way as a series of trials to weed out
all but the most worthy soldiers of the cross.
In
1096, German Crusaders, led by the Swabian Count Emich von
Leiningen, vented their religious zeal on unarmed Jews,
murdering thousands until they ran afoul of King Kolomon of
Hungary, whose army killed some 10,000 of them and drove the
rest from his country. Others, led by Peter the Hermit,
became so unruly that they were set upon by the Byzantine
soldiers who were ostensibly to have escorted them to
Constantinople. Thousands of others were slaughtered in
their first encounter with the Seljuk Turks, at Civitot on
October 21, 1096 (see Military History, February
1998).
Next page > The
Crusaders
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This
article was written by J. Arthur McFall and originally
published in Military History Magazine June 1999.
J. Arthur McFall writes from Newark, Ill.
For
more great articles be sure to pick up your copy of
Military
History.
©2002,
PRIMEDIA History Group, a division of PRIMEDIA Special
Interest Publications. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part in any form or medium without express
written permission of PRIMEDIA is
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