The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

Maalouf introduces the theme of inter-Muslim political turmoil early in the text. Despite the book’s title, the historical figures appearing in the text are not only Arab, but also Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish, and it is at times unclear if he means the Islamic world as a whole when he refers to “Arabs,” which are not synonymous. It is thus more appropriate to speak of fractures between Muslim rulers rather than within the Arab world alone.

Maalouf identifies this problem of internal conflict as the major reason for the Crusaders’ early successes. He contrasts Islamic territories with those of the Crusader states in his Epilogue, where he argues that Westerners effectively implemented early apparatuses of governments. He likewise contrasts this early turmoil with the effective unification policies of Zangī, Nūr al-Dīn, and Saladin. It was their ability to overcome petty conflicts and put the greater good of the Islamic world above their personal interests that facilitated their successful outcomes against the Franj. Though this problem persisted after Saladin’s death, the Mamluks were eventually able to expel the Franks and reclaim the Holy Land in the name of Islam.

This inter-Islamic quarreling appeared soon after the Sultan Kilij Arslan rebuffed the first wave of Crusaders at Xerigordon. He ignored new reports about Crusader reinforcements arriving to engage in an on-going conflict with his rival Danishmend the Wise rather than preparing his defenses. Arslan may not have lost part of his sultanate, Nicaea, had he heeded these warnings and engaged in stronger coalition-building. This inability to respond in a strategic and effective manner to Western aggression is juxtaposed with modern divides between the West and Muslim-majority countries. For example, Maalouf accuses the “Arab world” of an inability “to consider the Crusades a mere episode of the bygone past” (265). Maalouf’s characterization thus suggests that a similar lack of strategic thinking incapacitates the modern Arab world. The Crusades’ specter haunts contemporary Arab states, just as old feuds and ongoing quarrels paralyzed past rulers.

Strategic and intelligent rulers, beginning with Zangī, however, ended the stalemate that inter-Muslim political discontent spawned during the age of the Crusades. Maalouf elevates these men as models for emulation and admiration while also highlighting their flaws, to emphasize the important lessons the past provides. For example, Maalouf credits Zangī with beginning the jihād that Nūr al-Dīn and Saladin continued and expanded, asserting, “Before him, anxious Turkish generals would arrive in Syria accompanied by troops anxious to engage in plunder and depart with as much money and booty as possible […] All this changed with Zangī […] His entourage was made up not of courtesans and flatterers but of seasoned political advisors whom he learned to heed” (113-114).

When Zangī died, the familiar fractures reappeared, but his second son, Nūr al-Dīn emerged from the chaos to continue the jihad. He constructed a “propaganda apparatus” (143) to successfully rally fellow Muslims to the cause, but he was also plagued by internal fracturing when he reunited Syria and Egypt because his vassal, Saladin, operated almost independently when the relatively powerless Fatimid caliph named him vizier. This division threated what Nūr al-Dīn had built, but he died before putting his plan to intercede in Egypt into motion. Luck thus played an important role in Saladin’s rise. Old feuding surged upon Saladin’s death, too, but the Mongol threat forced the Mamluks to orchestrate a united response to this threat from the Central Asian steppe while also ending the Frankish occupation.

Later rulers thus overcame this inter-Muslim political conflict that plagued the Islamic world in the Crusades’ early years, though it always persisted just below the surface. This division explains the First Crusade’s success and the long war to expel the Franj, with Maalouf suggesting that the Crusaders’ victories were due just as much to these internal weaknesses within the Muslim world as they were to any military prowess of the Crusaders.