A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of Righteousness in the Crusading Near East 9780812297515

Citation preview

A Pious Belligerence

THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

A PIOUS BELLIGERENCE Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of Righteousness in the Crusading Near East

Uri Zvi Shachar

U n i v e r s i t y o f P e n n s y lva n i a P r e s s PhiladelPhia

 Copyright © 2021 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8122-5333-7

 To Tamar, my love.

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix 1

Chapter 1. Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances: Historical Overview

13

Chapter 2. Warriors and Border Anxieties: Jacques de Vitry and His Legacy

36

Chapter 3. Warrior Mothers: The Coproduction of Pious Chivalry in Romance Literature

65

Chapter 4. A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East: The Immigration Movement

97

Chapter 5. Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations of Holy War

130

Chapter 6. Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

167

Epilogue

191

Notes

201

Bibliography

245

Index

283

Acknowledgments

“So is the word that issues from my mouth: It does not come back to me unfulfilled, but performs what I purpose, achieves what I sent it to do [Isaiah 55:11].” Generations of medieval readers, both learned and lay, turned to this verse to ratify the hope that their words—like those of God, the prophets, and Christ— are effective and could do good. This book is about the power of words to bind people together by making manifest the shared interpretive and literary history of the communities that put them to use. This strangely optimistic view would not have been possible if this abstract notion were not at the same time a reality that I have experienced over the course of writing this book and bringing it to print. My thanks, then, goes to the many communities that welcomed my ideas and provided the rigor necessary for them to incubate. I am very fortunate to have found an intellectual home at Ben-Gurion University in my department and among the extraordinarily large and generous community of medievalists. I am grateful to Amir Ashur, Yizhak Hen (now at Hebrew University), Nimrod Hurvitz, Daniel Lasker, Peter Lehnardt, Sara Offenberg, and Daniella Talmon-Heller. Special thanks to Ephraim Shoham-Steiner and Ruth Ginio, as well as to Harvey (Chaim) Hames, whose wise and compassionate leadership shines far and deep in these nebulous times. This project took shape during unforgettably fulfilling visits in several institutions. I thank the kind hospitality of the staff and fellows at the Katz Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (my thanks to Elisheva Baumgarten, Rita Copland, Talya Fischman, Judah Galinsky, Kati Ihnat, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Ruth Mazo Karras, Ehud Krinis, and David Ruderman), the Medieval Institute at Fordham University (my thanks to Susanne Hafner, Laura Morreale, and Nicholas Paul), and the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University (my thanks to Luis Giron-Negron, Miriam Goldstein, Rachel Rockenmacher, and David Stern).

x

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to those who read, heard, or critiqued parts or all of this book in its various manifestations, including interlocutors at home and Outremer (an incomplete list): Jessica Andruss, Hillel Ben-Sasson, Ram BenShalom, Thomas Burman, Brian Catlos, Jeremy Cohen, Suzanne Concklin Akbari, Torsten Edstam, Tamer el-Leithy, Ronnie Ellenblum, Misgav HarPeled, Yossi Israeli, Damien Kempf, Sharon Kinoshita, Racha Kirakosian, Elizabeth Lapina, Uri Leventer, Michael Lower, Christopher MacEvitt, Karla Mallette, Nicholas Morton, Suleiman Mourad, Catalin Stefan Popa, Motti Rauchwerger, Jonathan Rubin, Marina Rustow, Yossef Schwartz, Iris Shagrir, Uriel Simonsohn, Ryan Szpiech, Paola Tartakoff, Jan Vandeburie, Ittai Weinryb, Liran Yadgar, Luke Yarbrough, and Julian Yolles. A very special thanks goes to Nicholas Paul, whose erudition and generosity helped to make this book what it is. Most of all, I am eternally grateful to my mentors, James Robinson, Michael Sells, Gabrielle Spiegel, and of course David Nirenberg, who works tirelessly to create a world in which a book like this one could be meaningful. The making of this book involved the diligent attention of librarians at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Manuscript and Microfilm Department at the National library of Israel, and the Burgerbibliothek Bern. This book would not have been possible if it were not for the faith and expertise of Jerome Singerman and the staff and the University of Pennsylvania Press. Likewise, this book would have not been readable if it were not for the genius and magic of Annika Fisher. The final words of this book are written as the world is plagued by a disease that not only takes the lives of many but also leaves communities scorched in strife and distrust. It is in these moments that one is reminded of the greatest gift of all, the gift of a family that is at once a refuge and a shrine. My deepest debt of gratitude goes to my parents, my sister, Daniel and Binyamin, and Tamar, to whom I dedicate this book.

A Pious Belligerence

Introduction

In the spring of 1211, a large group of French-speaking Jews reached the port of Acre with the intention of settling in the Land of Israel. A fifteenthcentury chronicle states that this group numbered more than three hundred rabbis, and their families presumably, but even if this figure is somewhat exaggerated, a movement of this size is massive in medieval terms.1 Nor was it the first—a few years earlier, a smaller contingent from the south of France led by Jonathan ha-Cohen of Lunel took to the sea and reached the Holy Land via Egypt. Both groups, and subsequent ones, included eminent scholars who had made a name for themselves in the intellectual elite of the French-speaking rabbinical world. Sources tell us that the rabbis and their families first settled in Jerusalem, which a few decades earlier had been taken by Saladin. Between the First Crusade and 1187, the Holy City was closed to non-Christians, but under Ayyubid rule, the immigrants were welcome inside. Yet, plagued with inter- and intrareligious strife, as Judah al-Harizi famously observed, the city was not a particularly pleasant place during the first years of the thirteenth century. What is more, in 1219, the Ayyubid ruler al-Mu‘azzam dismantled its walls in anticipation of the Fifth Crusade, making it less hospitable still. The Frenchmen subsequently moved to Acre, the acting capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where their descendants and followers stayed until 1291. In the port city of Acre, they found a more cosmopolitan environment, home to groups and individuals professing every creed and speaking every language known around the Mediterranean. What led to the formation of this unusually large and prominent group is a question that has long puzzled historians. Surely a combination of factors, political and theological, must have played a role in their decision to leave their homes and head east. But what is clear beyond doubt is that these

2

Introduction

rabbis never embarked on this journey in order to conquer the Holy Land; they were no crusaders. It is doubtful whether any of them were trained in the art of swordsmanship, much less in mounting a destrier. And yet, some of those who participated in this fateful crossing of the Mediterranean chose to depict it as the first phase of an eschatological war against the heathen.2 One author even declared that the true purpose of the journey was to liberate the Holy Land from the impurity that it suffered due to the presence of Christians and Muslims upon it. When the vanguard finishes to cleanse the land from the “Ishmaelites” and the “uncircumcised,” he continues, then the messiah will be revealed in their midst and will champion several more cycles of war in which the Jews will finally emerge triumphant. While this portrayal is thoroughly fantastic—in the sense that none of the participants actually sought to instigate war against the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and its surroundings—and must have been appreciated as such by its contemporary readers, it had a tremendous impact on subsequent generations of Jewish authors living in Acre. Over the course of the thirteenth century, they penned multiple messianic treatises that, using a highly elusive language, staged the local Jewish community and the messiah in an imagined armed conflict against the enemies of their faith. Readers of these texts would hardly have missed the echoes of contemporaneous ideas that orbited in crusade and jihad literatures. Those Jewish authors who resettled in Acre and their successors, in other words, found this language of holy war useful. Surprising as it may seem, they chose to engage with their neighbors in mobilizing traditions that thematized images of pious warfare in order to convey ideas about their presence in the Holy Land. What cultural and intellectual circumstances would have made these literary gestures possible? This book sets out to investigate this very question. That Acre would have facilitated these kinds of discursive strategies should come as no surprise. Throughout this period, Syria and Egypt saw a steady stream of immigrants from East and West as well as transient visitors, such as pilgrims, merchants, warriors, statesmen, and temporary ecclesiastic officials.3 Indeed, the Near East emerged as a major multicultural crossroads in which members of the various religious communities shared a common space that generated multiple opportunities for mutually defining interactions. Both in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and around it, European Jews and Christians lived among or maintained frequent contacts with their Muslim, oriental Jewish, and Orthodox Christian neighbors. If at first the political landscape in the Near East was polarized,

Introduction

3

this too started to change already before the end of the twelfth century. The era of political uncertainty that followed the fall of Frankish Jerusalem in 1187 and the death of Saladin in 1193 engendered frequent alliances across political, religious, and linguistic divides, as members of all three communities regularly collaborated with each other against rivals among their own coreligionists. This political fragmentation also brought about multiple opportunities for economic, social, and intellectual contacts between inhabitants in the region. And yet for almost a century, the reigning paradigm in the study of the crusading era held the view that contacts between religious communities in the Near East were insignificant, if not in quantity, then in importance. Indeed, in both lay and academic circles, this period is characterized as one plagued with religious fanaticism and polarizing intercommunal discord. Postwar historians of the crusades, says Christopher Tyerman in his revealing survey of crusade historiography,4 were disillusioned by the prospects of a “benevolent colonialism” and saw the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as an oppressive regime that had exploited the indigenous populations.5 Working against the backdrop of French and German scholars who were sympathetic toward the colonial ambitions of their own countries, historians trained in Britain and America (and later in Israel) asserted that the Franks did not adapt to the Near Eastern intellectual climate, nor were they tolerant toward the choices of their subordinates and neighbors.6 What is more, we are told that even as the Frankish elites came into the habit of consuming regional goods and adopting local architectural practices, they continued to cultivate European legal and institutional traditions and maintained a rigid separation from local communities. It is true that scholars, especially of art and intellectual history, have recognized that the crusading Near East constituted an important site of encounter. The assumption for a long time, however, has been that the Frankish territories served primarily as an impartial conduit through which goods of eastern provenance filtered to the West. This picture was inscribed by generations of historians who, in search of ways to reaffirm their respective national myths, turned to the Middle Ages and identified the crusades as the site in which Eu rope was shaped through its rivalry with Islam.7 This attempt to invoke the authority of the past on behalf of various national impulses meant that histories of the crusades were necessarily conceived through notions of opposition and exclusion that, despite having been critiqued since the 1990s, are proving remarkably persistent.8 Both continental advocates of the crusading project as a benign

4

Introduction

colonial enterprise (Emmanuel Rey, René Grousset, etc.) and their less enthusiastic Anglophone critics (R. C. Smail, Dana Munro, and later Joshua Prawer, etc.) engaged in an intellectual project whose roots lay firmly in nineteenth-century sentiments. While the opinions of these scholars on the nature of intercommunal relations in the East varied depending on the political traditions that informed their scholarship, both schools share the fantasy that the birth of modern nation-states can be traced back to the defining episodes that took place during the crusades. The studies of interreligious exchange in the East took for granted the existence of communities whose cultural and political differences were stable and that imagined their interaction as either naively appreciative or stubbornly bellicose.9 The importance of attempts by Ronnie Ellenblum, Christopher MacEvitt, and most recently Paul Cobb at destabilizing these assumptions cannot be overstated.10 However, save these notable exceptions, historians have generally viewed intercommunal contact in the East to have been rare and, in any case, restricted to circumstances of political subordination,11 diplomacy,12 conversion,13 or the occasional physical overlap of devotional space.14 In privileging questions of “influence” or “assimilation,” which historians either confirm or reject, these studies accept the assumption that any exchange (or absence thereof) in the Near East took place between clearly distinct traditions that maintained an enduring spatial and intellectual coherence.15 This book seeks to move away from this paradigm by showing that physical and intellectual proximity between neighboring and often hostile communities in the Near East greatly impacted and shaped the very language they used to think about their most fundamental concerns. Even as a measure of political conflict prevailed, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish authors in the eastern Mediterranean came to imagine the idea of holy war through each other, in what I call A Pious Belligerence. I do not, however, wish to replace one paradigm by an equally tangential fantasy of a perfectly pluralistic alliance in the Near East. The discourse on holy war that emerged in the thirteenth century was not a synthesis of erstwhile irreconcilably different voices. But a close reading of contemporaneous traditions in Latin, Old French, Arabic, Hebrew, and Judeo-Arabic reveals a dialectic in which the various corpora grew deeply dependent upon one another in their enduring alterity. A Pious Belligerence, then, traces the discursive strategies of writers who engaged with each other by relying on a common stock of images and themes relating to holy warriors and the spaces they were imagined to protect. Importantly, it dwells on ways in which these very notions of militant

Introduction

5

piety provided Muslim, Christian, and Jewish authors with possibilities for imagining their cultural boundaries and hermeneutical codependencies. The overarching claim of this book is that ideas about holy warfare were dynamically coproduced by authors in the Near East as the various communities thought with and about each other in the context of waging war on behalf of the Holy Land.16 This notion of cultural coproduction, which seeks neither to dissolve the singularity of the various traditions nor to fetishize their difference, lies at the heart of the approach toward the texts that inform this book. It is worth in this context to recall an essay from 2004, evocatively entitled “Everywhere and Nowhere,” in which art historian Anthony Cutler warned of the most elusive yet perilous way in which a premodern object may be “lost”—namely, when it “is treated unquestioningly as the product of a single society—a monolith within a monoculture—mindless of the many strands that make up its fabric and the multitude of responses that this very diversity would have evoked.”17 Cutler’s essay sought to draw attention to a kind of myopia from which scholars of so-called “crusading art”18 suffer, which causes them to view the presence of Islam in Frankish culture as merely “the objectification and ultimately the very essence of what the Franks were not.”19 While Cutler offered an antidote to this oversight in the reading of visual objects from the eastern Mediterranean, his plea speaks more generally to the need to decode a multiplicity of voices at play in works that traditionally have been seen to emanate from monolithic environments.20 There is a need, in other words, to shift our attention from the mechanics that supported systems of transmission, which occasioned the travel of objects or ideas between communities, and instead focus more on the cross-cultural dynamic that shaped these objects, through which communities rendered them meaningful. In keeping with Anthony Cutler’s pronouncement and with recent postnational impulses in reinterpreting Mediterranean literary and visual cultures, this book sets out to recover the dynamics of cultural entanglement in the Near East that had previously been lost to overdetermined discourses of exclusion and national idiosyncrasy. The discourse on holy war has a long legal and theological history in each of the monotheistic traditions. It has long been a site of particular contention, used by various parties to justify acts of military hostility underwritten by an unambiguously polemical reading of scripture. Indeed, in the crusading period, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all engaged in producing narratives pledging their ideological commitment toward the Holy Land (whatever each meant by this term) and

6

Introduction

its conquest or protection. But whether in the form of chronicles, sermons, apocalyptic treatises, or vernacular romance, the effort to write about pious warfare involved the use of literary conventions that had themselves become a part of the entwined contemporary history of the area and became increasingly interdependent. By reflecting on how communities in the late medieval Near East imagined themselves by thinking about waging war against each other and by invoking rhetorical gestures that had a shared lineage, this book demonstrates how these communities produced their mutual entanglement. Seeing as this book seeks to show that narratives on holy war themselves became sites in which authors and communities performed their interdependence, it seems inappropriate to employ overdetermined labels that impose a baggage of political exceptionalism. In truth, this book is not about “Christian,” “Jewish,” and “Muslim” communities, although the authors on whose works it dwells belonged to one of these creeds. When possible, therefore, I try to be more specific and to use epithets that are as close as possible to the ones that the various authors themselves invoked: Franks21 or Latins, instead of Christians (or, worse yet, crusaders); Ayybuids, Mamluks, or Zengids instead of Muslims. There is no convenient way to designate the various Jewish communities that inhabited the Holy Land during the thirteenth century, but as with the anecdote that opens this introduction, the community of French-speaking Jews that descended from the rabbis who immigrated to Acre around 1211 plays a central role in the story this book attempts to unfold. Contemporary Hebrew sources often simply refer to them as Frenchmen, curiously mirroring the naming of the Latin Christian inhabitants of the East. Equally important is the need to be prudent in designating the institutions whose usage in literary and doctrinal sources this book scrutinizes.22 Scholars have noted an undeniable resemblance between certain institutions in the crusading period and have attempted to explain this as a chain reaction that resulted in imitation. This interpretive strategy, however, implies certain assumptions, for example, regarding political agency. The notion of counter-crusade implies that the Muslim religious elite at the end of the eleventh century was caught off-guard and only fifty years later, largely as a result of its exposure to Christian ideas, developed a doctrine of jihad that was but a mirror image of crusade ideology.23 Conversely, scholars have resorted to this strategy when in search for the roots of an idea that they deem “foreign” to the culture with which they sympathize. The notion, for example, that the idea of the military orders percolated into Christendom through

Introduction

7

contact with the Muslim ribat came from scholars who found the (allegedly unsettling) combination of monasticism and knighthood as somehow unorthodox.24 Irrespective of the direction in which the alleged imitation unfolded, in other words, the expectation that concepts—like “Crusade” or “ribat”—could act as neutral designators of various phenomena across cultures is deeply flawed and reduces the theological and sociological complexities that were involved in the development of these kindred, yet profoundly independent, institutions.25 “Chivalry” and even “knighthood” are no less problematic as blanket terms to describe a vast range of institutions with a decidedly different history and ideology. Despite major differences, historians of medieval Europe agree that the turn of the thirteenth century presents a major shift in the crystallization of chivalry as a “self-motivated” code with clearly defined, yet unwritten, normative expectations. 26 More impor tant, there is agreement that it is precisely at this period, roughly between 1180 and 1220, that the ideology that had been promulgated by the arms-bearing aristocracy became increasingly sacralized.27 Exactly how, where, and to what extent is, of course, a matter of debate: Jean Flori proposes that the warrior aristocracy absorbed militant Christianity into its martial values, allowing the clerical establishment to articulate a knightly theology that defined chivalric courtly culture.28 Richard Kaeuper, mostly inspired by Maurice Keen, makes a case for a much higher degree of independence on the part of lay authors in interpreting and adapting teachings of the church on salvation and meritorious violence.29 All of this is to say that chivalry came to take its distinctively iconic shape at exactly the time (but, importantly, not necessarily the place) in which, after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and the death of Saladin, the Near East became realigned in a network of continuously entangled alliances, in which the timeframe of this book begins. It is a time, as we shall see, in which authors of the various faiths in the Near East produced a large number of narratives whose very purpose was to investigate the possibilities of a warrior ethos that compounded nobility, gallantry, and piety. In fact, Chapter 3 dwells at length on an Old French composition—Ordene de Chevalerie—that many historians believe marks the very transition of chivalry into this pious noble institution by invoking the figure of Saladin, the Muslim sultan, in surprising ways.30 The temptation, therefore, to invoke “chivalry” as an abstraction of the various models of militant virtuosity and the multiple attempts at reconciling aristocracy, piety, and warfare is big. Indeed, the use of the term to describe associations of Muslim frontier warriors, whether state controlled

8

Introduction

or voluntary, has become conventional since the first half of the twentieth century.31 But, of course chivalry and knighthood carry many connotations that not only are culturally specific and deeply rooted in the European tradition but also invoke a particular historiography with its own set of questions, some of which were mentioned above. Furthermore, while the Christian authors whose works are presented in this book, including Ordene de Chevalerie, certainly probed the connection between virtuous arms-bearing, dynastic identity, and sacred space (or sanctity, more generally), it is not clear that they necessarily meant the same things as their continental contemporaries or that their texts resonated in quite the same way among their readers in the eastern Mediterranean as they did elsewhere. Similarly, the question of the particular kind of virtuosity that is associated with the claim for dynastic power by the descendants of Saladin, and later the Mamluk sultans, is densely and richly discussed in our texts. Authors could summon a wide range of categories, each with its own history and legal ramifications, with al-ghazi, mutatawiyya, and fityan respectively invoking different early Islamic episodes involving the prophet.32 Over the course of the twelfth century, terms such as mujahid (i.e., jihad warrior) or faris (horse-mounted warrior) became increasingly more popular. But, again, the fact that authors summoned terms with a richly loaded history does not necessarily imply that they meant the same things as their predecessors. This is not to say that any attempt to decipher the meaning of the various institutions in our texts is futile but simply to caution against assuming that this meaning was stable. Finally, in order to facilitate this suspicion, I try to employ a terminology that is as close as possible to the one the authors themselves invoked. These semiphilological notes occasion one last methodological remark, about language. The first part of the book traces a transition around the turn of the thirteenth century in the ways Near Eastern authors of narrative sources thought about the notion of pious warfare. Articulations in chronicles and didactic literature in Latin, French, and Arabic show that writers increasingly came to think of holy warriors as being produced, rhetorically and anthropologically, through their contacts with neighboring communities. After 1187, there emerges, for example, a notion that threads through various literary communities, which imagines the Holy Land itself as the generator of pious warriors by virtue of the hybridity that it encompasses. The second part of the book shows that authors belonging to various confessional groups, writing in different languages, came to articulate thoughts about pious warfare through rhetorical devices that had regional,

Introduction

9

cross-communal resonances. That is to say, the meaning and force of these articulations were achieved partly by invoking tropes and registers that had contemporary purchase in the various communities that inhabited the Near East. This calling attention to the variety of confessional commitments together with multilingualism is deliberately vague about how both grids of multiplicity were mapped onto each other. Such ambiguity is appropriate not only because most authors could choose between more than one language (and, in fact, sometimes between more than two) but also because they inhabited a space marked by a range of linguistic dispositions, which could perform a variety of gestures regarding the history and present of their neighboring communities. The use of French in Outremer helps to illuminate this important methodological matter. Frankish literature from the East has often been seen as an extension of the literature produced in France during the late Middle Ages.33 But, as Alison Cornish has shown regarding the use of French in late medieval northern Italy, despite our modern assumptions about linguistic hegemony, there was not always a connection between language and the ethnicity of the ruling elites.34 This lack of necessary connection helps us to understand the French idiom deployed in the Near East as a now-lost vernacular possessing cultural pronouncements that belonged fully to its own literary, geographic, and political landscape. The French of Outremer, in other words, functioned in the context of a variety of dialects that were all indebted to a range of local and “foreign” traditions.35 Authors could choose between various registers of Old French, Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, or Arabic, and they could choose between rhyme, prose, or a combination thereof. These choices allowed their works to function as political instruments able to perform a range of cultural gestures.36 Throughout the following chapters, therefore, I have made efforts to locate and establish texts that belong to the cultural realm of the Near East without invoking categories— stylistic or material—that presume cultural or linguistic purity. Instead, I have attempted to consider how the texts operated within, and simultaneously created, linguistic spaces that invited a range of possible responses and articulations from their neighbors, past and present. By tracing the intertextual network of ideas on militant piety between Near Eastern traditions, this book, then, sets out to recover dynamics of cultural overlap that created a shared grammar of spiritual warfare. It explores how various contacts between the three communities and their multiple linguistic modalities created circumstances that allowed for meaningful

10

Introduction

conversations conceptualizing the shared space of the Holy Land and the intertwined, yet often polemical, spiritualities. Importantly, the discourse on holy war in the thirteenth century does not reveal that communities in the Near East became assimilated or particularly tolerant of each other. A Pious Belligerence, instead, shows that the literary traditions surrounding holy war grew mutually dependent and that their ability to generate meaningful gestures often carried an implicit recognition that their very language had become dialogical. * * * Chapter 1 provides a historical narrative of the crusading Near East after 1187 and traces the gradual collapse of the polarized political structure that characterized the first century of this period. It considers the political circumstances that gave rise to a new language of militant piety in which soldiers were imagined to perform and to erect cultural, religious, and political boundaries through a complex and dynamic combination of similitude and difference. The next two chapters begin to unfold the consequences of particular ways contemporary authors came to conceptualize the idea of holy warfare in the thirteenth century. The first traces a shift in the way Jacques de Vitry, the archbishop of Acre during the fateful years of the Fifth Crusade and its aftermath, came to understand the dialectic between oriental chivalry and the cultural space that it inhabited and kept safe. We subsequently turn to a number of narratives in Latin, French, and Arabic about the identity formation of noble soldiers, which exemplify the bishop’s later views on chivalry in employing categories that emerged from the interplay of cultural trajectories. Chapter 3 turns to works creating literary spaces that staged women as facilitators of cross-cultural trajectories. I argue that the women in these tales of pious belligerence provided opportunities for authors to explore the work of sexuality in the conceptualization of communal boundaries and the ability to wield sacred violence. The chapter begins with a close examination of an Old French compilation called Estoires d’Outremer that combines historical narrative and legendary anecdote with a curious interest in the life of Saladin. At the heart of this composition is a tale that attributes a fictitious genealogy to Saladin, according to which he was descended from an anonymous French noblewoman who traveled to the Near East and back to France even before the First Crusade. Estoires d’Outremer invites its readers to imagine the Holy Land as a site able to produce two inherently interdependent

Introduction

11

chivalric traditions—Muslim and Christian—thanks to the primordial ancestress who embodied a combination of spaces, religions, and languages. Thus, Estoires d’Outremer made a case for the sacrality of Frankish chivalry through imagining its interdependence with Ayyubid notions of pious warfare by echoing one of the most popular ways of imagining the rise of sacral power in the Near East, namely, through the work of a hybrid warrior mother. The second part of the chapter is devoted to tales about the birth of militant aristocracies in popular Arab literature from the Mamluk period. These stories show that in the Mamluk imaginary, pious warfare is profoundly dependent on a sense of dynastic instability and is always the product of geographic, and also often religious, displacement. In both Frankish and Mamluk literature, then, illustrious warriors—from Balian of Ibelin to the Sultan Baybars— all owed their militant virtuosity to female protagonists whose inherent hybridity enabled the pious use of violence and whose literary efficacy was achieved through the narratives’ mutual dependence on both Eastern and Western tropes. This point marks a chronological and generic break in the book. We go back in time to the arrival of the French-speaking Jews to Acre around 1211 and scrutinize their usage of a bellicose language mostly in messianic literature. Absorbing a variety of Near Eastern apocalyptic traditions, the generations of Jewish authors who became integrated in Acre penned several messianic meditations on spiritual claims over the Holy Land. These writers also discussed their disposition toward the region and its gentile occupants in messianic terms and provided an eschatological framing of their recent past and anticipated future. Furthermore, by choosing apocalyptic writing as a rhetorical vehicle, Jewish authors attempted to undermine notions of Christian pious belligerence by drawing a polemical connection between the hermeneutical principles that informed Christological militancy and the claim for a right over the Holy Land. The final two chapters employ a thematic approach: Chapter 6 treats apocalyptic sentiments in prophecies and messianic homilies by Jewish, Frankish, and Ayyubid authors. This chapter seeks to place the choice of genre within an interreligious context, claiming that in turning to apocalyptic registers, thirteenth-century Near Eastern authors immersed themselves in a deeply entangled, shared literary space that encompassed all three religions. The decision to invoke the apocalypse, I argue, presented those writers with the opportunity to discuss questions of spirituality and sacred geography through the use of narrative structures and categories that they shared with their neighbors. Although

12

Introduction

having little to do with actual wars, these texts articulated complex views on belligerent spirituality, enabling authors to communicate critiques on the political, spiritual, and hermeneutical stances of their neighbors through contemporary renditions of older messianic traditions. The final chapter turns to the theme of ritual purity and the intertwined history of purification rhetoric in Ayyubid, Frankish, and Near Eastern Jewish prose and verse accounts. It suggests that as rhetorical gestures, notions of purity and pollution had an entangled local history and were largely shaped by the intellectual and cultural proximity of the very communities that the rituals, on the face of it, were attempting to exclude. Specific ritual imagery, such the cleansing of conquered holy space through the blood of the enemy, traveled across borders and came to take on new meanings. Claims for purity and charges of contamination became vehicles of interdependence, not only carrying messages of hostility but also marking the intercommunal space from which they derived meaning and to which they contributed. As this brief summary of the book discloses, A Pious Belligerence is not an intellectual history of holy war or an account of political alliances or militant collaborations during the crusading period. Rather, this is a book about how Near Eastern communities clustered around pious warfare as a set of literary conventions and how these dialogical conventions infiltrated the semantics of contemporary authors. Readers might, then, wonder how authors and audiences of these texts became familiar with traditions belonging to their neighboring communities, especially as those were often written in languages that were not their own. This book does not presume to answer this reasonable concern directly. Scholars of the crusading Near East have amassed a considerable amount of evidence showing that communities maintained regular contacts, both material and oral, that could occasion the kind of exchange of stories and ideas that my approach to the texts assumes. This includes, for example, books that changed hands through commerce or looting,37 the command of multiple languages by professionals38 and laymen,39 the circulation of oral literary traditions,40 and frequent intellectual collaborations.41 If scholars have been reluctant to draw out the vectors of interdependence that these circumstances provided, it has more to do with the paradigm animating their scholarship than with the quantity and plausibility of the evidence. This book does not necessarily seek to supplement the existing data with yet more historical testimony of mutual acquaintance but rather to flesh out its consequences for the discourse that arguably was most urgent and loaded for communities in the Near East.

Chapter 1

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances: Historical Overview

The hills between Gaza and Ascalon had seen many battles and not a bit of blood stained their sandy soil after the arrival of the Latins to the Near East at the end of the eleventh century. But a picture quite as puzzling as the one in October 1244 they had never seen before. The armies heading toward each other were, in fact, arrayed in two fronts that had coalesced over the course of the decade and a half since Fredric II had left the Holy Land. Or perhaps the seeds to this political discord had been sowed in the 1190s with the inability of either the Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Ayyubid Sultanate to achieve governmental coherence. On one side, the north-facing front comprised Egyptian troops together with a corps of Khwarizmian Turks. On the other was an alliance of Ayyubid armies from Homs and Damascus together with the Frankish army augmented by Templar and Teutonic knights. The northern alliance, says Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furat, rode under the banners of the Franks with crosses heading the procession: “priests among their squadrons made the sign of the Cross over the Muslims and blessed them.” Clerics let Ayyubid soldiers drink from chalices filled with wine, saying, “We all belong to God and to Him we shall return.” This image of a mixed Muslim-Christian army preparing for battle against an equally compounded Muslim-Turkish enemy, with priests beseeching the favor and protection of the one God, is of course striking and seems to contradict every thing we know about war in the crusading period. To be sure, both Frankish and Mamluk chroniclers who related this episode attributed the defeat to this “shameful, treacherous alliance” between Christian and Syrian rulers.1 And yet, it is far more representative of thirteenth-century military and political

14

Chapter 1

culture in the Near East than most modern histories of the crusades would have us think. Traditional narratives of the crusading period posit that the ideology of holy war reached its peak in the 1180s.2 With two political entities, each taken to seek legitimacy from their claim to wield power on behalf of a universal creed, sacred warfare was both a rhetoric and a practice. But, so the narrative goes, after 1187 and then the death of Saladin, with the fragmentation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Ayyubid Sultanate, there was also a decline in the intensity of holy war ideology. The thirteenth century certainly saw a great deal, perhaps even an increase, of hostility, but historians view attempts to garb this political friction—which allegedly resulted from earthly ambition and lack of leadership—in ideologically religious terms as cynical and inauthentic. This chapter seeks to move away from this paradigm, which presumes to weigh the relative sincerity of the various articulations, by doing two things. First, on the basis of a largely synthetic historical survey, it chronicles the shifts in the political environment of the Near East over the course of the thirteenth century. Second, it attempts to provide context for the textual studies that are deployed in subsequent chapters. * * * The early decades of the thirteenth century saw the near collapse of both the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Ayyubid Sultanate, creating a state of constant instability characterized by the lack of clear political borders. As a result, the polarized frontiers that had shaped political discourses in the Near East during the twelfth century rapidly dissolved. Christians and Muslims began to collaborate more frequently and to ally against their respective coreligionists in attempts to solidify political control, defying traditional divisions of religion, language, and culture. Starting at the end of the 1220s, a discourse on militant piety emerged that reflected these dramatic political shifts and the profound cultural crises that accompanied them. Authors no longer portrayed holy warriors as the principal carriers of the banners of their religion. Rather, inhabiting the volatile space where religions, spaces, and ideologies overlapped, warriors came to exemplify the range of new possibilities for conceptualizations and performances of loyalty, piety, and purity. This chapter surveys the diplomatic history of the thirteenth-century Near East and seeks to chronicle a change in the political culture that begins with the death of Saladin. Historians of the crusading Near East see

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

15

this as a turning point, after which Muslim princes and Frankish lords started to mask their cynical political choices through the use of a religious language that a previous generation of rulers had introduced and refined.3 Subsequent chapters will question this assertion by studying various narrative strategies in which this rhetoric was deployed and by scrutinizing its multiple layers of significance. Alliances between Muslim princes and Frankish lords were already fairly common during the first century of the Frankish presence in the Levant.4 In 1098, participants of the First Crusade settled in a region that, for over two centuries, had been occupied by multiple Muslim dynasties, which had managed to create a stable balance of power between the many shifting allegiances. Consequently, cross-confessional alliances in the first half of the twelfth century were rarely initiated by Christian princes with the purpose of undermining the authority of their coreligionists. Rather, they usually reflected the willingness of Muslim emirs to collaborate with their Christian counterparts in their interests against other princes.5 In fact, no sooner had Frankish barons arrived in the East than they started using these rivalries to their advantage.6 The Fatimid vizier, for example, famously sought the help of King Amalric against Ayyubid attempts to intervene in the internal politics of the declining dynasty during the 1160s.7 After the consolidation of the Muslim Near East, first under ‘Imad al-Din al-Zengi (d. 1146) and finally under Saladin (d. 1193), such liaisons became increasingly infrequent. A famous exception to this rule is Raymond of Tripoli’s pact with Saladin from 1185 to 1186 against his archenemies, Guy of Lusignan and Gerard of Ridefort. However, the strong condemnation that contemporary Frankish sources voiced toward this decision reveals just how rare an occasion this was.8

The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem from the Leper King to John of Brienne Conflicts that had already started to emerge in the early 1180s fi nally surfaced in the wake of the Frankish defeats of 1187, introducing the new political culture into the Latin East that prevailed until its final demise in 1291. Already under the weak grip of the “leper king,” Baldwin IV (d. 1185), rebellious barons started setting their gaze on the crown. In 1182, the king, whose disease claimed his eyesight and physical mobility, decided to appoint

16

Chapter 1

a regent. Guy of Lusignan, who in 1180 had married the king’s sister, Sibylla, was chosen. However, a year later, deeply disappointed with Guy’s performance during Saladin’s attack on Kerak, the king decided to transfer the regency to Raymond of Tripoli. The latter was also appointed guardian to Baldwin’s nephew, Baldwin V, who at six years of age was crowned king while his uncle was still alive. The king’s attitude toward Guy broadened the gap between the two nascent parties aligning behind either baron. The death of the child king in 1185 escalated the baronial tensions into a near civil war. Sibylla and Guy enjoyed the support of Joscelin, the deceased king’s former guardian; Gerard of Ridefort, the Templar Grand Master; Reynald of Chatillon; and many other influential barons. Instead of leaving the crown in the hands of the regent, Raymond of Tripoli, while the matter of succession was resolved, Guy was crowned by his supporter, Eraclius the patriarch of Jerusalem. Reluctantly, Raymond—who enjoyed the support of the power ful Ibelin family, the Hospital Grand Master, and the other barons of the kingdom—was forced to accept Guy’s rule.9 Despite their deep animosity, Raymond and Guy were able to join together in the battle against Saladin in Hattin. However, the battle for the legitimacy of the crown continued even after Raymond’s death in 1188. Guy was taken captive by Saladin in Hattin and released the same year. Upon his return to the kingdom, he met the resistance of Conrad of Montferrat, who was responsible for the only truly successful crusader battle in 1187 to save Tyre.10 When Sibylla—Baldwin IV’s sister and Guy’s wife—died in 1190, Guy’s claim for legitimate inheritance of the throne was further diminished. Conrad married Baldwin IV’s other sister, Isabella, and, to the dismay of Guy’s supporters, became king by matrimony.11 With some of Europe’s most powerful leaders in the region for the Third Crusade, this conflict between Guy and Conrad came to carry the weight of the entire fate of the crusading project. What is more, the political situation in the early 1190s was, to a large extent, representative of the turbulent future of the kingdom. Baldwin IV, in other words, was the last king whose rule was universally accepted. The barons of the land split along two (or, at times, three) lines, often prone, as we shall see shortly, to use alliances with Muslim princes against each other, while massive involvement from the West usually worsened the situation by undermining what little authority local rulers had. Among Western leaders, Guy of Lusignan enjoyed the support of Richard I the Lionheart, the Pisan Commune, and some lesser nobles, while Conrad

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

17

of Montferrat allied with Philip II Augustus and the strong baronial Ibelin family.12 Determined to find even a temporary resolution to these conflicts, Richard decided to put Cyprus in Guy’s hands. Count Henry of Champagne, who arrived in the East as part of the Third Crusade and was involved in the successful siege on Acre, also engaged in massive efforts to reconcile both sides. However, stability barely lasted for two years. In 1192, Conrad was killed by members of the Muslim sect of the Assassins, and his widow, Isabella, married Henry of Champagne. The Jerusalemite nobility, having suffered a huge loss of wealth with the Muslim conquests of 1187, was in a state of flux. By offering to offset their losses with large land tenures in Cyprus, Guy sought to gain the support of the nobility against the crown.13 In the 1190s, Henry’s attempts to restore some order in the kingdom through negotiations with Guy’s successor and brother, Amalric, were successful at

Figure 1. BnF fr. 22495 fol. 249v: Two Assassins demonstrate their zeal to Henry of Champagne by jumping off a tower.

18

Chapter 1

first. The coastal nobility was happily reinstated in their pre-1187 baronies and the Ibelins continued to support the crown. However, the northern principalities of Tripoli and Antioch were traditionally far more reluctant to recognize the authority of the crown. Due to ongoing tensions with the princes of Armenia, the northern princes (such as Bohemond III) benefited more from strong ties with the Cypriot house than with the king in Acre, limiting the strength of their Frankish neighbors to the south.14 In this environment of mutual suspicion and desire to keep each other in check, it is not surprising that both sides responded enthusiastically to invitations from Muslim princes. Henry of Champagne famously renewed the ties that the kingdom had formerly with the sect of the Assassins (whose leader apologized for the murder of Conrad of Montferrat), and the rulers of Tripoli comfortably collaborated with their neighboring emir of Beirut.15 With the collapse of internal politics in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, rulers in the West became increasingly involved in the succession of the crown. Upon Henry’s death in 1197, a German contingent headed by Archbishop Conrad of Mainz strongly supported Amalric of Cyprus’s claim to the throne.16 This policy of greater intervention on the part of European powers—which were typically entangled in multiple struggles of their own in the West—only brought further instability to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As a result, Amalric was the last king for almost sixty years who was from an eastern lineage. In fact, for most of the thirteenth century, the kingdom had only a nominal king with minimal involvement in the affairs of the state. Beginning with John of Brienne, the kingdom saw a succession of rulers who were appointed by Western leaders and who became increasingly uninvolved in its affairs. John’s appointment took place after the Jerusalemite nobles made an appeal to Philip-Augustus of France to find a knight of considerable repute to lead the kingdom after the failure of the Fourth Crusade.17 After his disappointing performance during the Fifth Crusade, however, John left the kingdom and never returned. In 1225, he passed his title to Yolanda, his only daughter, who was wedded to Frederick II. Frederick was, therefore, given the crown through marriage but spent less than a year in the East. Frederick’s son Conrad (d. 1254) and grandson Conrad V, called Conradin (d. 1268), held the throne in his succession but never visited the Kingdom of Jerusalem. After that, the rulers of Cyprus regained control over the kingdom until its fall in 1291. This ongoing absence of a monarch and effective governance made the middle decades of the thirteenth century especially turbulent ones in the politics of the Frankish Levant.

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

19

A decade of struggles between the landed nobility headed by John of Ibelin, lord of Beirut, against the intervention of Frederick II and his imperial supporters left the kingdom in deep turmoil and completely devoid of a centralized government.18 Despite his unmatched success in regaining partial control over Jerusalem, Frederick II’s policies and diplomatic strategies were met with more suspicion than support on the part of both the local Franks and the papacy.19 Frederick’s departure in 1229 brought about the empowerment of a variety of local actors, including the landed nobles and rulers of cities (such as Tyre, Tripoli, and Jaffa), the Grand Masters of all three Military Orders, and the leaders of the Italian communes.20 The kingdom, in other words, saw the rise of an empowered but utterly fragmented nobility, interlocked in a stable but debilitating balance of power that was to remain in place with minor adjustments until 1291.21

The Ayyubid Sultanate After the Death of Saladin A similar process of destabilization took place during precisely this same period on the Muslim side, beginning immediately after the death of Saladin. At its largest, the Ayyubid Sultanate stretched from Yemen to the south to Syria in the north. Saladin (d. 1193) appointed during his lifetime eight of his sons as rulers of the various regions. Before passing away, he did name a successor: his eldest son, al-Afdal (1169–1225), ruler of Bilād al-Shām (including Damascus and Jerusalem). However, Saladin most likely did not envision the continuation of the Ayyubid Sultanate as a unified realm. Indeed, neither al-Afdal nor any of the other sons were powerful enough, either within their own territories or across the sultanate, to assert control and emerge as a great leader. Dwarfed by the memory of their father, alAfdal and his brothers dealt with administrations and armies that had been appointed by, and loyal to, Saladin. Ruling over fractions of their father’s kingdom and overshadowed by his prestige, they quickly had to deal with uprisings, and they sought to channel this rebellious energy outside the boundaries of their own allotted realms. Consequently, no sooner had the heirs assumed their positions than a bitter rivalry arose between al-Afdal and his younger brother and ruler of Egypt, al-‘Aziz (1171–1198). This strife, along with disputes about the rights to tax certain regions and the handling of a rebellion in the far northeastern provinces, were pretexts of the sultanate heading toward civil war by 1194.22 Al-Afdal’s weakness

20

Chapter 1

and political incompetence were probably enough of an incentive for al‘Aziz to gather his army and head north. Al-Afdal was left with no other choice than to appeal for the help of his neighboring kinsmen—al-Mansur Muhammad of Hammah, al-Mujahid Shirkuh of Homs, and al-Amjad of Baalbek—who demanded costly compensation for their alliances. Ultimately, the brothers stopped short of direct battle and resorted to settling the dispute diplomatically. However, it was al-‘Adil, Saladin’s younger brother (1145–1218), who emerged triumphant from this situation. Not only had he played a decisive role in reconciling this family dispute, but he was to take advantage of the governmental void that had opened as a result of this debilitating rivalry among his nephews.23 It was probably in al-‘Adil’s every interest that the dispute between both contenders to the sultanate not be resolved permanently. Indeed, the understandings of 1194 did not last beyond mid-1195. This time, not only did al-‘Adil march with his army into Damascus, but he also assumed executive authority for the duration of his stay. Al-Afdal, in other words, was close to relinquishing his title and territory not to his brother but to his uncle. 24 What is more, al-‘Adil maintained equally good relations with al-‘Aziz. In fact, another dispute at the end of 1195, which once again almost escalated into war, was finally resolved in an agreement that positioned al-‘Adil as a personal advisor to the Egyptian prince. Al-‘Adil moved to Cairo to oversee the administration and to become the de facto ruler of Egypt in al-‘Aziz’s name. The third round of tensions, however, did finally culminate in combat in 1196. The joint armies of al-‘Adil and al-‘Aziz stormed Damascus without warning and met little to no resistance. Despite help from his brothers— al-Zahir Ghazi of Aleppo and al-Zafir Khidr of Basra—al-Afdal was unable to assemble a unified, loyal front, and the city was handed over to the Egyptian faction.25 Humiliated, al-Afdal was forced to surrender his title to al-‘Aziz and to cede his control over most of Bilad al-Sham to his uncle. However, he continued to pose a periodic threat to al-‘Adil’s gradual ascension. Significantly, throughout this period in which al-‘Adil took advantage and even fueled the rivalry between his two young and inexperienced cousins, he consistently utilized the rhetoric of jihad. In 1197, for the first time since the death of Saladin, the Franks managed to put up a military challenge to their Muslim neighbors despite being equally divided. The kingdom was slowly recovering from the defeats of 1187 and the failure of the Third Crusade, but it was still entangled in rivalries between the (now Cypriot) Lusignans and the landed aristocracy and was

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

21

thus in no condition to take advantage of the Ayyubid vulnerability. The ambitious Henry VI of Germany did send a heavily equipped contingent, headed by the duke of Brabant and the archbishop of Mainz, with the hope of gaining prestige in the Holy Land and strengthening support for the Empire.26 The Germans, however, were unable to gain any serious territorial or strategic concession. They did gain nominal control over the northern Lebanese coastal cities, largely as the result of al-‘Adil’s nonconfrontational policy, which involved him avoiding direct combat by abandoning sites after razing their fortifications. The one real confrontation in which al-‘Aziz’s forces were involved, at Toron, ended quickly, with the Franks retreating to Tyre and suffering many losses.27 Al-‘Aziz’s death in 1198 marks the end of al-‘Adil’s campaign for control over the Ayyubid Sultanate.28 He appointed two of his sons as na’ibs (regents)—al-Mu‘azzam over al-Sham and al-Kamil in Egypt. With the exception of al-Zahir Ghazi, the powerful governor of Aleppo, all the other sons of Saladin, including al-Afdal (who died in 1225), were left in control of negligible regions in the outskirts of the sultanate. The short combative episode with the Germans, however, served to remind both the Franks and al-‘Adil that a policy of regional stability was far more congenial for sorting out their internal issues. In July 1198, al-‘Adil signed the first of three truce agreements with the Franks, which were to last intermittently until his death in 1218.29 Both al-‘Adil and King Amalric II (1198–1205) utilized this policy of truce and external stability in order to focus on establishing their internal authority. However, signs of governmental fragmentation and dissident politics—which would later become the rule rather than the exception—could already be seen. From the Ayyubid side, al-‘Adil was unable to assert full control over the sultanate, especially over regions and rulers who remained faithful to Saladin’s direct heirs. AlZahir, for example, the ruler of Aleppo and Saladin’s third oldest son, supported al-Afdal against the Egyptian alliance. While al-‘Adil was able to overthrow the ruler of Damascus, he was unable to either fully ally with or suppress the opposition of the younger al-Zahir, who implemented a separate, at times subversive, political agenda.30 On the Frankish side, since the days of Henry of Champagne, the rulers of the northern Frankish principalities were concerned about strengthening the crown and were tempted to ally with their Muslim neighbors. Toward the end of the 1190s, however, the incentive grew stronger as relations between Antioch and Armenia deteriorated into frequent disputes regarding borders and taxation.31 In 1207, Bohemond IV of Antioch

22

Chapter 1

and Tripoli allied openly with al-Zahir of Aleppo, who was wedged in an equally disagreeable situation following an attack by al-‘Adil.32 Back in 1205, despite the official truce that King Amalric II had signed with al-‘Adil, forces of the Hospitaller knights from Krak des Chevaliers regularly attacked the city of Homs. By 1207, after one attempt to resolve this condition by diplomatic understandings had been breached by the Franks, al-‘Adil finally heeded the appeals of the city’s ruler, al-Mansur Ibrahim. Al-‘Adil headed an army that included his two sons, al-Mu‘azzam and al-Ashraf, local rulers of adjacent regions such as al-Amjad of Baalbek, and al-Mansur himself. After a month, however, al-‘Adil decided to lift the siege, realizing that even with his mighty army, it would take much longer before the fortress would finally fall. Instead of dismantling the army, he decided to turn to Tripoli, hoping to take this opportunity to deliver an easy blow on Bohemond. However, here too, after a period of stagnation and after learning that al-Zahir had promised to ally with the Franks should there emerge an imminent threat, al-‘Adil again opted for diplomatic reconciliation. A peace treaty was signed in August 1207, and al-‘Adil was soon back in Damascus.33 This minor episode of crossed loyalties is one of the first signs of the weakening of centralized governments in both realms, in which successions of struggles had become a permanent reality rather than a temporary situation. If this was the “preview,” then events surrounding the signing of the socalled Treaty of Jaffa in 1229 announced the full-scale version of this new political culture.

The Treaty of Jaffa, 1229 In 1218, facing the very first stages of the Fifth Crusade, the aging al-‘Adil quickly took to his deathbed. He ceded his kingdom to his three sons—alKamil in Egypt, al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa in al-Sham, and al-Ashraf in northern Iraq (al-Jazira). The brothers and other Ayyubid supporters were able to collaborate in repressing the Fifth Crusade.34 In fact, chronicles acknowledge that even during the crusade, there were times when the armies of al-Ashraf and al-Kamil were dangerously close to turning against each other, with each, of course, claiming that their only purpose was to defend the land against the aggression of the unbelievers.35 What is more, in February 1219, al-‘Adil’s youngest son, Fa’iz Ibrahim, was involved in a failed coup against his brother al-Kamil. While the scheme was quickly thwarted thanks to the timely

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

23

arrival of al-Mu‘azzam with forces from Damascus, the confusion it created enabled the crusading army to redeploy in a favorable position and ultimately to capture Damietta.36 In any case, whatever was left of any partnership between al-‘Adil’s heirs immediately collapsed after the last of the crusaders had left Damietta in 1221. Threatened by the strong ties between his two brothers, al-Mu‘azzam sought to undermine al-Ashraf ’s hegemony in northern Syria and Mesopotamia.37 Rulers of regional principalities and mediumsized cities quickly learned to take advantage of the tension between the Ayyubid princes. In the mid-1220s, the city of Hammah came to bear much of the tension between the two fronts. After the death of Mansur Muhammad, ruler of Hammah, al-Mu‘azzam saw to it that the younger of his two sons, al-Nasir, enjoyed the support of local nobility and was able to seize control. As much as al-Kamil and al-Ashraf were alarmed by this step, they bought the support and patience of the original heir, al-Muzaffar, by granting him control over land in Egypt. This proved to be a wise measure when, less than a year later, al-Nasir allied with al-Ashraf and refused to pay tributary tax to al-Mu‘azzam.38 Al-Mu‘azzam, however, was determined to check his brothers’ panAyyubid alliance by undermining al-Ashraf ’s assets in the northern regions. After his attack on Hammah in 1223 yielded no results, al-Mu‘azzam secretly collaborated with his younger and ambitious brother, al-Muzaffar Ghazi. Word about the surprise attack planned for the spring of 1225 reached al-Ashraf early enough for him to arrive on the scene with an army of ten thousand.39 Nevertheless, by 1226, the tide appeared to be changing, as al-Mu‘azzam enthusiastically greeted back an old player onto the scene, Jalal al-Din, ruler of the central Asian tribe of the Khwarizmians. Jalal al-Din had been on a long and successful campaign, sacking or threatening large regions of the Caliphate.40 After a series of coordinated attacks in several northeastern locations, al-Ashraf ’s control was further diminished. In September of that year, he entered Damascus with a small personal entourage to negotiate a settlement but instead was taken into custody.41 Al-Mu‘azzam suddenly seemed almost unstoppable. Al-Kamil was observing with much agitation the calamity of his brother and ally, al-Ashraf, when news of a planned new crusade headed by the great emperor Frederick II reached the East. Already on the occasion of his papal coronation in 1212, Frederick had taken the crusading vow, but due to political turmoil in the empire, he repeatedly delayed taking up the cross. Pressure on the young emperor to fulfill his vow grew heavier after the failure of the Fifth Crusade and increased

24

Chapter 1

again when he was wedded to Yolanda, John of Brienne’s only daughter and heiress to the Jerusalemite crown, in 1225.42 The patience of Pope Gregory IX finally ran out in 1227 when Frederick yet again failed to depart as promised, this time after already having assembled the necessary army and ships.43 The pope therefore excommunicated one of the most power ful rulers in Christendom and the only one who would have been able to undertake a successful military campaign to the East. Over the course of that year, however, with al-Kamil at his most vulnerable since 1219, the prospects of crusade seemed increasingly plausible for Frederick. The Egyptian sultan sent envoys to Sicily offering to restore the Kingdom of Jerusalem west of the river Jordan, including the city of Jerusalem itself, in return for Frederick’s promise to ally with al-Kamil against the threatening northern alliance.44 This bold and rather desperate move on the part of the Ayyubid prince finally opened the stage for a Muslim-Christian collaboration in the Near East as an official policy, the consequences of which became immediately apparent. Frederick, who had a taste for advantageous political rivalries, made little effort to conceal his parallel negotiations with al-Kamil and al-Mu‘azzam. Not only did this increase the alienation between the rival brothers in the East, but it also raised the stakes for Frederick. However, the unexpected death of al-Mu‘azzam at the age of fifty-one in 1227 completely reshuffled the board. For al-Kamil, this change was both a relief and a curse. At once, the prospects of a threatening northern alliance, let alone one that could entice the emperor to join, declined. Yet whereas in the beginning of that eventful year, al-Kamil saw in the crusading army a way to prevent a looming attack, now the presence of German troops in the region became a nuisance that delayed his plans to advance a northbound campaign. The timing for such a campaign, furthermore, was perfect for al-Kamil because the new ruler of Damascus, al-Nasir Da’ud (d. 1261), suffered from the usual weaknesses of a recently appointed prince and was unable to consolidate the trust of either his higher administration or neighboring emirs. Nevertheless, al-Kamil reluctantly headed to Tel al-Ajul near Askalon in the spring of 1229 in order to finally meet Frederick and confirm the details of a treaty that had already been discussed by envoys at length.45 However, Frederick proved to be a slow and uncooperative negotiator. What is more, a surprising visit from al-Ashraf yielded a promising alliance that would allow al-Kamil to pursue an immediate campaign against Damascus and its environs. In February 1229, the famous Treaty of Jaffa was finally signed.46

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

25

Most significantly, the agreement granted both Bethlehem and Jerusalem (save the Temple Mount, which was to stay in Muslim guardianship) to the Christians. In addition, Sidon was recognized as officially belonging to the Franks, creating a Christian territorial continuum all the way from Beirut to Jaffa with corridors leading to Nazareth and Jerusalem. What is more, the treaty clearly acknowledged that it was an agreement not between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Ayyubid sultanate but rather between two coalitions that operated with each of these two realms. Thus, the northern Frankish principalities, the Military Orders, and all the other Ayyubid princes were excluded. In fact, both sides agreed to refrain from providing help to any groups, Muslim or Christian, who attacked either party.47 On 17 March 1229, Frederick received the keys to the Holy City and entered Jerusalem ahead of a large procession.48 Although this was a tremendous political achievement that brought Jerusalem back into the hands of Christendom, both Eastern and Western commentators treated it with much suspicion. The emperor never bothered to become involved in the local political scene or to consult with any of the major Frankish actors in Outremer. Threatened by his seemingly close ties with the Muslims and complete disregard for their standing, these Frankish lords were pleased with the patriarch of Jerusalem’s frequent reminders that Frederick was still under the restrictions of excommunication. Accordingly, the patriarch issued an interdict prohibiting any Christian worship in Jerusalem or Bethlehem. The Military Orders, reluctant to cooperate with the excommunicated and politically ostracized emperor, would not even agree to help rebuild the Holy City’s fortifications.49 The hasty departure of Frederick from Acre in late 1229, coupled with the collapse of the northern Ayyubid alliance, brought the region to near chaos once again. For much of the 1230s, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was immersed in conflicts between supporters of the landed aristocracy, the papacy, or the emperor, complicated further by aggression surrounding the succession to the Cypriot crown. From the Muslim perspective, it seemed that every ruler during the period was engaged in conspiring with or against al-Kamil at some point in time.50 Already before the imperial army had set sail back to Italy, al-Kamil and al-Ashraf started executing their plan to seize Damascus. As expected, alNasir Da’ud was unable to assemble a defensive campaign. Humiliated, he left the city to become the ruler of Transjordan and Karak.51 However, in a typical turn of events, within less than a year, these roles were reversed.

26

Chapter 1

Al-Ashraf, now empowered by his Damascene army and support of the Syrian regional princes, started conspiring against his previous ally, al-Kamil, while al-Nasir Da’ud, who had only recently been defeated by al-Kamil, became his partner.52 Within two years, however, al-Ashraf died, and Al-Kamil quickly attempted to snatch control of Damascus and removed the new emir, al-Salih Isma‘il (al-Ashraf ’s younger brother, d. 1245). When al-Kamil himself died shortly thereafter, the land fell into another civil war, during which the nobles in Damascus, Cairo, and the northern regions tried to appoint and support competing heirs. The sultanate was now endemically fragmented and structurally fragile. The Damascene nobility appointed as their new leader al-Jawad Yunus (d. 1239), the son of Shams al-Din Mawdud, one of al-‘Adil’s younger sons. However, al-Salih Ayyub (d. 1249), al-Kamil’s eldest son who was promised the sultanate, started heading south from the distant northern provinces, gathering supporters to depose al-Jawad, who turned out to be an incompetent yet tyrannical ruler.53 Meanwhile, al-‘Adil II (d. 1248), al-Kamil’s second to oldest son, was already established in Cairo enjoying the support of the local administration and named himself sultan. The next decade, especially until the death of al-Salih Isma‘il in 1245, was characterized by extreme hostility between the rival heirs that resulted in yet more collaboration with the Franks. Damascus changed hands several times, and the region saw numerous realignments of internal loyalties.54 What is more, the death of al-Kamil, which marked the beginning of this round of Ayyubid hostility, coincided with the end of the ten-year truce dictated by the Treaty of Jaffa. While this treaty was not always observed with extreme diligence, the end of its term brought about a rise in tension. In fact, in September 1239, exactly ten years after Frederick II and al-Kamil signed the documents in Tel al-‘Ajul, a large flotilla with barons from France and England arrived in Acre.55

The Barons’ Crusade As with the earlier arrival of Frederick II, this overt foreign intervention served to expose and deepen the schisms in the region’s political landscape. Thibaut of Champagne, the leader of the barons’ army, was a skillful politician and enjoyed the support of both the pope and the king of France. Initially, he hoped to create a wide coalition among the Frankish leadership by convening the Military Orders, church officials, and barons representing

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

27

the different parties.56 His hope was to design a strategy that would accommodate everyone’s different and often conflicting agendas.57 The result, however, was exactly the opposite, as both the conversation and the actual attempted execution of the policy revealed the seemingly insurmountable differences between the parties. To the disappointment of the Templar Grand Master and several lords whose interests lay in the northern parts of the kingdom, the first agreed objective of the Barons’ Crusade was Ascalon. Immediately as the mixed Frankish-European army started heading south, however, it became apparent that Thibaut was unable to exert his control and lead a sufficiently coordinated campaign. Indeed, despite repeated warnings by Thibaut and local knights, a contingent decided to head south of Ascalon and confront enemy forces directly. In morning light, they found that they were facing a fully deployed Egyptian army led by Rukn al-Din al-Hijawi, al-‘Adil II’s commander in chief. The Egyptians, in a quick and efficient attack, destroyed the entire crusading force before Thibaut and the vanguard could intervene. Simultaneously, al-Nasir Da’ud seized the opportunity to deliver a quick blow on the small garrison left to guard the unfortified Jerusalem. Within hours, the city itself was again in Muslim hands. Only weeks after their arrival to the Holy Land, Thibaut and the barons were politically isolated and nearly exhausted militarily.58 It was then that an opportunity presented itself in the northern frontier. In the spring of 1240, al-Salih Isma‘il, then ruler of Damascus, sent Thibaut an envoy with a surprising offer. Earlier that year, al-Salih Ayyub, al-Kamil’s eldest son, had finally taken control over Egypt after the emirs of Cairo had deposed and imprisoned his usurper and younger brother, al-‘Adil II. However, al-Salih Isma‘il, who a year earlier turned against Ayyub and cast him out of Damascus, knew that revenge was soon to come. He decided to turn to the Franks for help and started negotiating an agreement with Thibaut. Both leaders agreed on the terms by midsummer: in exchange for the Franks’ help in fighting against the Egyptian army, Isma‘il conceded Sidon and a number of fortresses (including Beaufort, Toron, and Safed) to the Christians.59 In addition, Isma‘il agreed to join hands in an offensive campaign against al-Nasir Da’ud in order to restore Jerusalem as well as Transjordanian lands that had previously been in Frankish hands.60 Although by no means the first partnership between Frankish and Ayyubid forces, this treaty seems to have ushered in a period of tremendous internal tension and intensive cooperation between Muslims and Christians

28

Chapter 1

against their coreligionists. As we saw earlier, since the end of the twelfth century, rulers from either side of the religious divide recognized the alignment of interests and formed interreligious pacts. Al-Salih Isma‘il’s gesture toward his Frankish counterpart, however, appears to have introduced a new phase in the trajectory, intensifying the use of this policy and further undermining the boundaries between both communities. As word about the pact’s terms spread, religious authorities from around the Muslim world (including the Abbasid Caliph) expressed strong disapproval of the strategic pairing of Thibaut and al-Salih Isma‘il.61 The criticism of one influential jurist and preacher was especially vocal. Sheikh ‘Izz al-Din ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Sulami (d. 1262), the head of the Shafi’i school in Syria and one of the leading religious authorities of his generation, devoted a Friday sermon to criticizing the pact with the Franks. Granting the Franks firearms and ammunition, he explained, is especially shameful. Al-Sulami then finished his sermon with the following lines: “Oh that you would bind this people firmly in a good bond, O God / Wherein your friends are upheld / And your enemies subdued / Wherein men act in obedience to you / And forbid one another to rebel against you.”62 The poet invokes the metaphor of binding together two elements in a suggestive manner. His verse weaves together contradicting elements—friends versus enemies and obedience versus rebellion—in a way that invokes the covenantal tie between the nation (ummah) and its God. The implicit message, however, sends acerbic arrows of criticism toward the decision to bind the Muslim community with the vile Franks. Insulted by what was interpreted as a highly belligerent proclamation, al-Salih Isma‘il had al-Sulami imprisoned. Upon his release, alSulami left Damascus for Cairo, where he spent the rest of his life.63 There was also some reluctance on the part of the army to comply with the political decision of the pact. The Muslim garrison in Beaufort/Shaqif Arnun, in fact, refused to surrender the castle as dictated by the agreement, forcing Isma‘il to besiege his own army.64 The deeply entrenched internal discord that resulted from Isma‘il’s policy is exemplified in the way Muslim chroniclers depict the events surrounding the rehabilitation of Safed. As part of the strategic alliance, Isma‘il turned this castle, which had been uninhabited since al-Mu‘azzam dismantled its fortifications in 1218, to the Templars. In 1240, Armand of Peragors, Grand Master of the order, decided to rebuild the castle and brought a thousand Muslim captives on site to carry out the work.65 Seeing as they vastly outnumbered their Frankish captors, the Muslims planned an uprising and sought the support of an Ayyubid

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

29

general. They clandestinely reached out to al-Nasir Da’ud, who forwarded the request to al-Salih Isma‘il. The latter, however, decided to reveal the ploy to the Templars, who massacred the conspirers to the last one.66 There were also many inside the Frankish camp who voiced discontent. The Hospitallers, for example, criticized the obviously disproportionate advantage to the Templars in regards to the northern and eastern territories of the (former) kingdom.67 They were eager to reach a competing partnership that would better address their territorial interests.68 As a result, Thibaut and Isma‘il deployed their forces south of Ascalon, where they met Ayyub’s army. The Damascene troops, however, seeing the banners of their Egyptian compatriots, switched sides; the Franks then took flight and sought refuge in Ascalon.69 A poem that was composed after this affair by a contemporary who belonged to the contingent of French barons captures the ambiguity of religious identity and political accord that allegedly came to characterize the East. The poet, identified as Philippe de Nanteuil, blames the embarrassing outcome on the Frankish Military Orders: “Had the Hospital and the Templars / and the brother knights / given example / to our men and charged forth / then our great cavalry / would not be in prison now / nor would the Saracens be alive / But they did not do this / and it was a great mistake / a seeming treason.”70 The binary that emerges from these lines places the barons, whose attack ended in imprisonment or martyrdom, opposite both the Franks and the Saracens, who remained idle. Choosing diplomacy instead of exemplary combat, the Templars proved unfaithful to their own nature; the Templars became like the Saracens, and in their stead, the French barons became the Templars.71 The poet concludes by fervently hoping that his own verses inspire sufficient pity to compel the army to redeem the captives. Thibaut of Champagne was ostensibly disappointed by the outcome of this battle and the dissipation of the partnership that he had negotiated. By September 1240, deciding that he had exhausted the military and diplomatic potential of his expedition, Thibaut set sail from Acre and headed back to France. Less than a month later, however, Richard of Cornwall landed on the shores of the Holy Land with a fresh and enthusiastic crusading fleet. Following on the recent precedent of Thibaut, Richard favored the diplomatic avenue, hoping to advance the territorial objectives of his passage by cooperating with the various Ayyubid princes. He first reached out to alNasir Da’ud, whose territories in Transjordan had come under threat of the Damascus alliance. However, the latter had been emboldened by his recent rapprochement with al-Salih Isma‘il and understandings with the ruler of

30

Chapter 1

Homs. As the disappointed envoys returned from Kerak announcing alNasir’s refusal, a surprising embassy arrived at Acre from Cairo. Al-Salih Ayyub had been witnessing the formation of a vast Ayyubid coalition— comprising Syria, Transjordan, and al-Jazirah—that was conspiring to depose him. He offered Richard a strategic partnership, to which the Templars and the lords of the northern principalities were quite obviously opposed. In favor, however, were the Hospitallers, the lord of Jaffa, Richard Filangieri (Frederick II’s imperial marshal, who shared his patron’s traditional leaning toward Egypt), and Hugh of Burgundy (representing the barons who remained in the East after Thibaut’s departure and were frustrated with the outcome of their agreement with Damascus).72

Two Alliances and the Battle of La Forbie/al-Hirbiyya For the first time in history, both the Ayyubid Sultanate and the Frankish kingdom were internally ruptured by political disunity and maintained two competing cross-religious alliances. These two rival coalitions within the Kingdom of Jerusalem were split along party lines that had been established during the 1220s, and each advanced a different diplomatic agenda. An anonymous Frankish chronicler relates this state of affairs with much anguish: This treaty was negotiated and done by the Temple and without the agreement of the Hospital. So the Hospital, along with another group of Christians, also negotiation a treaty. This treaty was sworn by the King of Navarre, the Count of Bretagne, and many other crusaders, who were not deterred by the vows that they had [previously] given to the Sultan of Damascus . . . after which they returned to Acre, boarded their ships and headed back to their countries. The Grand Master of the Hospital, Pierre de Vieille-Bride, who swore to the treaty with the Sultan of Damascus, left Jaffa, accompanied by his entire convent, and went to Acre. . . . The Temple, the Count of Navarre, and a group of crusaders remained in Acre, not wanting to breach the terms they had agreed upon with the Sultan of Damascus. Thus, the affairs of Christians were full of contention and discord, those keeping to one treaty and those to another.73

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

31

Shortly thereafter, the chronicler illustrated a typically contentious situation. The Earl of Cornwall arrived in Acre, bringing with him much-needed provisions. After spending a while in Acre, where he lodged at the house of the Hospital, he traveled to Jaffa, where he stayed with other Christians: “When there, the Templars pressured him to keep to the treaty and agreements with the Sultan of Damascus, [demanding] that he swear to it. The Hospitallers [on the other hand] asked and discussed with him at great length, that he keep to [the treaty] with the Sultan of Egypt [‘Babiloine’]. He wished to do neither the one nor the other.”74 For the remainder of the century, even after the gradual collapse of the Ayyubid regime in Egypt and then Syria, this political situation was to become the norm. Local rulers, especially in the northern principalities, often resorted to cross-confessional alliances in order to advance their interests. A testament to the consequence of this new political culture can be gleaned from the frequency of (often false) rumors on both sides that conveyed concern about the propensity of leaders to maintain conspiratorial ties with their counterparts. In late 1239, for example, the city of Hammah was under immediate threat of attack. Al-Salih Isma‘il was determined to take revenge on its ruler, al-Muzaffar Muhammad, who had been a staunch supporter of the recently defeated al-Salih Ayyub. A mixed force from Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus was getting ready to embark on the campaign when rumors started circulating that al-Muzaffar had promised to hand over the city to Thibaut and convert to Christianity in return for protection.75 The prospects of this dangerous gesture, especially the threat of conversion, appear to have been enough to deter the Aleppan-led coalition.76 In the Frankish camp, too, there were stories about the treacherous inclination of this or another leader to make secretive arrangements with Muslim princes. For example, after the defeat of the barons in Gaza, the surviving troops returned to Acre and remained idle for long months. Local Franks are said to have circulated rumors that the leaders of the crusade, whose ties with Ayyubid emirs were conspicuous, were in fact bribed by the Muslims to refrain from staging attacks.77 These waves of rumors found attentive ears in part because they were not entirely untrue and in part because traditional divisions that had shaped political discourses in the crusading Near East had gradually dissolved over the course of the first half of the thirteenth century.

32

Chapter 1

The return of Khwarizmian forces to the region in the middle of the 1240s accelerated and deepened this process. As relations between the two “parties” in the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued to deteriorate after Richard agreed to collaborate with al-Salih Ayyub, Templar forces initiated repeated provocations with the purpose of undermining the Egyptian alliance. In 1242, for example, troops of Templar knights carried out a number of raids on villages south of Bethlehem and sacked Nablus, which was al-Nasir’s temporary place of domicile.78 The sultan hesitantly agreed to send a midsized army to surround Jaffa, but his goal was merely to send a mildly threatening message to the Franks to restrain the Templars rather than to take revenge on alNasir’s behalf. The latter, humiliated and frustrated, gravitated toward the emerging alliance with the northern Ayyubid princes. By 1243, al-Salih Ayyub was, once again, facing a menacing northern alliance comprising Damascus, Homs, and now Kerak. Knowing that a physical attack on his lands and title by his Syrian kinsmen was imminent, he sent for an embassy of Franks in order to renegotiate the terms of their alliance. The decision to include Templars among the envoys to Cairo may indicate that the Franks were well aware of their superior position, eagerly waiting to learn about al-Salih Isma‘il’s counteroffer. Representatives from Damascus met in Jaffa, and both sides agreed on the terms of the new alliance that was to expand the Frankish borders westward. What is more, Al-Mansur Ibrahim, the ruler of Homs, came to Acre in June 1244 to coordinate the joint campaign against Egypt.79 The formation of a northern “Confederate” (even if short-lived and loosely bound) was likely accelerated by the growing involvement of another external player in the region—the Mongols. It is not before the 1260s that an imminent threat was presented to the Near East, but already the Mongol invasion to Hungary and Poland in 1241 must have drawn the attention of rulers in the region to the escalating eastern frontier.80 In the summer of 1244, a relatively small squadron, headed by a general named Yasa’ur, reached northern Syria and demanded submission from Homs, Damascus, and (Frankish) Antioch. All three were able to evade the aggression by a combination of bribe and deliberate hesitation.81 Time in this case worked in their favor, as the Mongols were forced to head east for other reasons, but the fact that neither ruler set out to help their ally in face of this external threat did not go unnoticed. In any case, while al-Salih Ayyub was watching the preparations of the Frankish-Ayyubid army with much concern, the fate of the region was once again overturned by the arrival of an unexpected force. After almost twenty

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

33

years in which Khwarizmian tribes had been engulfed in bitter battles in central Asia, a flank headed by Jalal al-Din made a swift return westward. On 11 July 1244, a flood of Khwarizmian fighters on horseback waged an attack on the unfortified and poorly defended city of Jerusalem. After leaders in Acre failed to heed the desperate appeals of the Christian Jerusalemites, it was al-Nasir Da’ud of all people who negotiated safe conduct on their behalf. Despite his efforts, however, only three hundred of the seven thousand Christians living in city survived the attacks, and the city was all but razed.82 After the destruction of the Holy City, the Khwarizmians continued straight to Cairo to discuss an alliance with al-Salih Ayyub. The two fronts finally met on the battlefield between Ascalon and Gaza on 17 October 1244. Rukn al-Din Baybars, who fifteen years later as the ruler of the Mamluk sultanate would once again unite Egypt and Syria, headed the Egyptian-Khwarizmian force; al-Mansur Ibrahim led the FrankishSyrian army. Although the Franks were able to overlook deep internal rivalries and assemble a unified Ayyubid-Christian army, their performance on the battlefield was poor, and the results of the so-called Battle of Hirbiyya were catastrophic. The Egyptian army was able to breach the FrankishAyyubid front, and regiments of the military orders were left isolated. The Franks lost most of their fighting corps, comprising approximately two thousand knights on horseback and ten thousand infantrymen. The Egyptians surged northward, literally unstoppable, and redeployed their forces around Damascus. The city finally fell after a siege that ended in October 1245, and al-Salih Isma‘il was exiled.83 Despite the fact that this kind of political and military cooperation had become the norm, authors on both the Christian and Muslim sides—both triumphant and defeated—blamed the outcome of this battle on the disgraceful collaboration between Ayyubids and Franks.84 A short excerpt characterizing interactions between Muslim and Christians from the chronicle of the early Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furat illustrates the profound confusion that this alignment of powers and faiths created: “The two armies met outside of Gaza. [al-Malik al-Mansur] Ibrahim [ruler of Homs] and the troops of Damascus rode under the banners of the Franks, with crosses at their head. Priests among their squadrons made the sign of the Cross over the Muslims and blessed them. With chalices filled with wine in their hands, from which they gave them to drink, [they said]: ‘We belong to God and to him we will return.’ . . . The Khwarizmians [on the other side] rode with the Egyptian troops, and this was a great day of

34

Chapter 1

battle.”85 The chronicler proceeds to relate the shameful defeat of the northern Ayyubid-Frankish alliance: “[al-Malik al-Mansur] wept tears of regret and said: ‘by God, I knew that we would come to no good when we marched beneath the crosses and banners of the Franks.’ ”86 While al-Salih Ayyub’s victory dealt a crushing blow to the spirit and the physical state of his Frankish and Ayyubid rivals, it really only bought him five years of quiet. At this point, strategic collaborations between Christian and Muslim entities on both local and regional levels had come to shape the political landscape in the Near East. Rumors about the pending arrival of a new crusade in 1249 headed by King Louis IX of France ushered in a new round of negotiations between the Franks and the Ayyubids on their northern and southern borders. These loose talks became slightly more concrete upon the failure of the Seventh Crusade and the rise of the Mamluks in Egypt. Once again, both the Egyptians and the threatened Ayyubids in Damascus were eager to entice the Franks into strategic alliances.87 The first years of Mamluk rule in Egypt were marked by a succession of political assassinations, and al-Nasir Yusuf (d. 1260), the newly appointed Ayyubid ruler of Damascus, sought to take advantage of this instability.88 He sent envoys to Acre and offered a strategic alliance to Louis IX, who had recently been released from humiliating captivity in al-Mansurah. But in as much as the French king was eager to further the interests of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, his first priority was the release of Christians who were still kept in Egyptian prisons after the failed campaign south of Damietta. The king, then, leveraged al-Nasir’s offer as a way to pressure the Egyptians into fulfilling the promise that Sultan Turanshah had made in the truce of May 1250.89 After the prisoners were indeed released in October of the same year, the Mamluks bought an alliance with the Franks in return for the release of children who were forcibly converted to Islam as well as for the promise to reinstate parts of the Kingdom of Jerusalem that would be conquered from their Damascene adversary. As promised, at the beginning of 1253, the king and a contingent of French knights headed south to join the Mamluk army in a unified attack against al-Nasir. The latter, however, had caught word of the maneuver and led his army to Gaza preemptively to act as a buffer between the Egyptian and French armies. When finally, thanks to the insistent intervention of the Abbasid caliph, the Muslim factions reconciled, the French could no longer exploit the fortuitous position of go-betweens, effectively bringing Louis IX’s Eastern sojourn to its end.90

Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances

35

However, this understanding among the Muslim factions of the Near East took months to negotiate and did not last long. Continued infighting among the various Mamluk parties resulted in attempts to lure al-Nasir or other Ayyubid princes into joining hands in overthrowing each incumbent sultan. The caliph intervened time and again, but the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongol army led by Hulegu Khan put the region into another round of turmoil. Various Frankish lords found multiple opportunities to collaborate with their neighbors in the face of these new threats in attempt to further their interests that often stood in conflict to those of their coreligionists.91 While the few and hesitant attempts of the Franks to secure diplomatic agreements with the Mongols were futile, it is possible that these gestures too contributed to the general instability and distrust that characterized the period.92 Fidentio of Padua, the Franciscan vicar to the Holy Land (Vicarius terrae sanctae) writing during the last quarter of the thirteenth century, attests that this political culture remained in place for the duration of the existence of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: “Barons of the Holy Land repeatedly disagree among themselves on vows [= alliances]. Sometimes one city would have an agreement (concordiam) with the Sultan while another is in a disagreement. One religious [= Military Order] would strike friendship with the infidels, while the other would wage war against them. One would suffer loss by the infidels, and the other would reach out for help from the same infidels. How could the Christians, who are so divided among themselves, do well against the infidels?”93 Fidentio assures us, in other words, that until the fall of the Frankish kingdom in 1291, Christian and Muslim actors were bound in an inextricable knot, which continued to challenge the political and cultural borders between these neighboring communities. In this context, Frankish and Ayyubid (and, as we shall see, Jewish) authors introduced a language of militant piety in which soldiers performed and erected cultural, religious, and political boundaries through a complex and dynamic combination of similitude and difference. Subsequent chapters will examine these languages of pious belligerence in attempt to unfold the consequences of this political and cultural entanglement.

Chapter 2

Warriors and Border Anxieties: Jacques de Vitry and His Legacy

Chapter 1 chronicles the gradual collapse of the polarized political structure that characterized the first century of the crusading period. With the weakening of the Frankish and Ayyubid hegemonies in the 1190s, there emerged a highly dynamic network of alliances that extended beyond the political, linguistic, and religious borders. This chapter begins to unfold the consequences of this shift in the way contemporary authors came to conceptualize the idea of militant piety. As we shall see, authors gradually began to model pious warfare by appreciating the multidirectionality of the enterprise and by orchestrating narratives that echoed a number of voices and cultural trajectories. The figures that emerged from these literary constructions were multidirectional not only in recognizing the role of the “enemy” in the formation of warriors’ identities but also in allowing for entangled categories to govern this process. Attempts to conceptualize the contact between warriors revolved around motifs that were saturated with cross-confessional symbolism and power structures, which authors seized as opportunities to explore the contours of a peculiar Near Eastern chivalrous habitus.1 The accounts examined in this chapter show how authors, both Frankish and Ayyubid, portrayed the production of pious warriors by dwelling on the overlapping linguistic, spiritual, and representational spaces that they were seen to inhabit and that defined their identities. We begin by working through the way one highly influential commentator viewed cultural interactions in the Near East. Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre and participant in the Fifth Crusade, spent over a decade in the Levant and left a corpus of letters, treatises, and sermons he composed while

Warriors and Border Anxieties

37

there.2 In Jacques’s writing, there is a strong connection between how he conceptualizes the cultural space of the Holy Land and the roles he ascribes to holy warriors in protecting and maintaining it. Previous scholarship has treated Jacques’s writing as a unified corpus that represents stable opinions on the nature of contacts between Christians and Muslims in the Near East.3 The first part of this chapter, in contrast, traces a profound shift in the way the bishop came to conceptualize the dialectic between pious chivalry and the cultural space that it inhabited and safeguarded. Jacques’s views on this matter and the way he deployed narratives that capture its complexity anticipated those of many subsequent authors, some of whose narratives will be explored in the second half of this chapter. During his first years in the East, Jacques de Vitry saw the purpose of sacred warfare as fixing an endemic instability, which in his eyes characterized the Levant, by restoring the walls of differentiation that Latin Christians brought with them from the West. This approach, however, changed profoundly in the sermons that he composed toward the end of his stay in Acre and put down in writing after returning to France.

The Fifth Crusade and Arrival in the East Despite his eminence and the popularity of his writings, relatively little is known about Jacques de Vitry’s life prior to his arrival to Acre in 1216. He was born in the 1170s in northern France, perhaps in the vicinity of Reims.4 In one of his sermons, he relates his experience while a student at the University of Paris,5 but neither the exact years of his residence nor the course of his studies are known. He mentions Jean de Nivelles and refers to Peter the Cantor quite fondly in his generally acerbic Historia occidentalis. This is an indication that in the university, he was part of a milieu of theologians associated with reformist elements in the church who valued preaching as a privileged tool for advancing moral and spiritual reforms.6 After his ordination as priest in 1210, Jacques moved to the diocese of Liège and a year later became an Augustinian canon at the monastery of St. Nicholas in Oignies. He was likely drawn to this region by the already famed piety of the Beguine Marie d’Oignies, whose vita he composed after her death in 1213.7 What is more, Jacques’s continuous commitment to supporting lay piety and the crusading enterprise very much reflected the attitudes that characterized the final years of Innocent III’s papacy.8 In keeping with Innocent’s reform agenda,

38

Chapter 2

much of Jacques de Vitry’s early work is devoted to severe criticism of institutional, secular clergy. During his later years as a leading cardinal, he helped shape papal policies to support these new forms of religious life.9 In addition, he was commissioned by papal legates to preach first for the crusade against the Albigensians in 1213 and shortly afterward for the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land. In 1215, Jacques was elected by the chapter of Acre to serve as bishop, and he received Episcopal consecration from the recently appointed Pope Honorius III in July 1216.10 He resided in the East for almost a decade, during which he traveled extensively throughout the Frankish territories and took an active part in the crusades for which he had preached. Immediately after his arrival to Acre, Jacques expressed concerns regarding the efficacy of his preaching campaign and the attempt to recruit crusading forces.11 After long months of impatient waiting, however, the first crusading ships from the West landed on the shores of Palestine. These were troops led by King Andrew II of Hungary and Duke Leopold VI of Austria. Several months later, large contingents of French, German, and Italian forces joined them, and in May 1218, the unified crusading army, reinforced by local Frankish troops led by John of Brienne, started heading toward the delta of the Nile near Damietta.12 The crusading army was able to gain early control over a strategic tower defending the wall of Damietta. Nevertheless, the siege of the well-fortified city lasted over a year and a half and claimed the lives of many soldiers on both sides. Finally, in November 1219, the Ayyubid forces both within and outside the city were exhausted, and the crusaders captured the city with very little force.13 They immediately purified and consecrated Damietta, hoping to quickly continue the campaign. Leaders of the crusading camp, however, could not agree on a strategy and became restless waiting for possible reinforcements from the West. In July 1221, after over eighteen months of idleness that contemporary chroniclers describe as a period of corruption and debauchery, the Christian army left Damietta and started marching up the Nile River toward Cairo.14 However, the unified Ayyubid army was waiting in al-Mansura, ready to use their control over a complex system of irrigation channels and dikes to their advantage. Al-Kamil soon was able to trap the majority of the crusading army on a narrow island surrounded by Muslim forces. John of Brienne was sent to discuss the terms of the defeat with alKamil: the Christians were to surrender Damietta and evacuate Egypt immediately in return for the release of all prisoners from both sides.15

Warriors and Border Anxieties

39

Jacques de Vitry remained in the East for several more years and completed the writing of his famed Historia Hierosolimitana abbreviata. This work, which surveys the past and present state of Christendom, was to include three parts, but the author never completed the third portion devoted to the Fifth Crusade.16 The first part, Historia orientalis, relates the history of the Holy Land and its environs from the time of Abraham until the eve of the Fifth Crusade and contains a taxonomic survey of its current inhabitants and geographical phenomena. The second part, Historia occidentalis, composed after Jacques’s return from Damietta, describes the dark state to which both ecclesiastical and secular institutions in the West have fallen (“de corruptione occidentalis regionis et de peccatis occidentalium”). He admonishes the corrupt practices of secular rulers (chapter 3) as well as the neglect and irresponsibility of the episcopal leadership (chapter 5). He puts this condemnation into relief through an encyclopedic survey of all the reformed movements and orders, which he introduces by praising their individual founders and describing their daily practices.

The Bishop’s First Impressions from the East—A Dangerous Mixture of Oriental Identities As mentioned above, before joining the crusading army on its southward expedition to Damietta, Jacques toured the Frankish territories and compiled observations about the state of religious life in the East.17 The bishop was immediately horrified by what he found on his travels through the Holy Land. He had envisioned his project as an intellectual effort to catalogue and document the various religious phenomena in the Levant. But instead, he discovered a space that defied most cultural, political, and religious categories. Throughout his descriptions of the regions he visited, he rearticulates powerfully the notion that the people of the East, both Christians and Muslims, were corrupt, dangerously fragmented, and intolerably interwoven into one another’s lives. “I found the city of Acre,” the bishop writes immediately upon arriving in Palestine, “seeming like a monster or beast with nine heads each fighting the other.”18 This metaphor seems, in fact, characteristic of his attitude toward the East in general.19 He begins by commenting with ostensible disapproval on the conspicuous proximity between the various Christian Orthodox sects and Muslims. At first he states that the Jacobites, for example,

40

Chapter 2

“circumcise their boys at a young age like the Jews, and never confess their sins except to God.”20 Later in the Historia, he observes that the Jacobites “circumcise newborn children of both sexes, as the Saracens do.”21 The Syrians (Orthodox Christians) seemed to the bishop even more worthy of condemnation. Describing them as “traitors, terribly corrupt,” he explains, “Having been brought up among the Saracens, they conform to their perverse mores [moribus], and among them there are those who, tempted by bribe, reveal to the Saracens the secrets of Christianity,”22 which was possible because, to the dismay of the bishop, the Syrians’ spoken language was Arabic. In addition, Jacques was particularly alarmed to find that, as was common among Muslims, the Orthodox Christian women walked about completely veiled, such that even husbands first saw the faces of their newly wedded wives after matrimony.23 What is more, the Syrians, he laments, were completely useless (inutiles) in battle and incapable of waging war for they lacked courage and were quick to flee danger.24 The bishop proceeds to comment with equal disapproval on the state of the Muslim people. He was apparently surprised to find that they too were split into multiple groups that disagreed on questions of doctrine, liturgy, and custom: “They are highly divided due to the fact that they possess multiple sects.”25 One such division, he explains, goes back to the time of the advent of Islam but continues to his day: “Since the time of Ali, there has been a great dispute and implacable hatred between the Egyptians and the rest of the oriental [Muslims]. The Law became a subject of contestation and controversy after the Saracens became divided, one part following Ali and his successors and the majority staying with Mahomet.”26 However, divisions could be found elsewhere as well. Some Muslims, he elucidates, “adhere to the Law of Mahomet, while others mock it by drinking wine and eating pork in contempt of Mahomet’s command; unlike other Saracens, they also do not practice circumcision.”27 In discussing the Muslim states, too, he refers to the ratio between oriental Christians and Saracens: “It seems to me that the Christians living among Saracens are more numerous than the Saracens themselves.”28 Elsewhere, he reiterates with discontent that “one counts among the Saracens, mixed in them and living under their yoke, a larger number of Christians than Saracens.”29 The bishop does not interpret this fact as flattering testimony to the superiority and appeal of Christianity. Rather, for him, this is additional evidence that the Orient, plagued as it was with different peoples living in the same area, was characterized by the lack of political and

Warriors and Border Anxieties

41

spiritual borders. He goes on to study a number of liminal groups in particu lar, like the Bedouins and the Assassins, who make it still more difficult to demarcate social and religious lines between the various peoples in the Holy Land. In his early writings from the East, therefore, Jacques de Vitry laments the fact that oriental Christians were dangerously similar to Muslims, who themselves suffered from crippling fragmentation. He was, furthermore, especially wary of individuals and groups who tended to shift their identities and loyalties, blurring further still the cultural map of the thirteenth-century Near East. But Jacques de Vitry reserved his greatest wrath and criticism for the Franks. By the time of his sojourn in the East, some of the Latin Christian inhabitants in Frankish Palestine were fourth-generation natives of the land. While their ancestors had been famously pious and inspiringly hardworking, Jacques believed their descendants (or Pullani, as he calls them) had become corrupt. He described them as “adulterers who lust after the wives of their neighbors, robbers, murderers, treacherous to their close-ones and disrespectful to their elders.”30 In the bishop’s eyes, the Franks had developed a taste for luxury and idleness: “They nourish on delicacies . . . are given to impurity and luxury and, like women, dress in delicate garments.”31 What is worse, the Franks seem to have acculturated to the East in a worrisome way. Men, he bewails, “are more familiar with baths [balneis] than with combat,”32 while women “instruct themselves, among the Saracens and Syrian women, on the art of sorcery [sortilegiis], magic [maleficiis], and abominations of all sorts.”33 This happened to such a degree that, in the eyes of Jacques, the Franks were dissimulators. He uses the metaphor of language to convey his inability to fix their elusive identity, which was dangerously enmeshed with that of their enemies: “They learned to cover [palliare] that which is in the heart [intra mentis] behind well-ordered words [verbis compositis], masked by the most beautiful leaves but without fruit, like a sterile willow-tree. As a result, those who do not know them well can hardly examine the duplicity [dissimulationes] between that which is in their heart and that which their mouth speaks, and can hardly protect themselves from their fallacies.”34 Jacques’s main concern, however, exceeding his disapproval of the Franks’ lack of moderation in committing sin and their appreciation of luxurious items, was that he deemed them effeminate and cowardly in battle.35 Their lack of faith, he believed, caused them to be faint-hearted and timid (pusillanimes et timidos) before the enemy of Christ. It is well known, he claims, that the Saracens, who used to tremble before the courage of the Frankish

42

Chapter 2

ancestors, do not even consider the Franks as a threat anymore.36 But, being the treacherous dissimulators that they were, the Franks preferred to remain in their idleness, “bringing satisfaction to the flesh rather than breaking-off and denouncing their treaties with the Saracens, and entering into war with them.”37 Jacques was concerned that the Franks valued their ties with the Saracens over solidarity with one another: “They enter into treaties [fedus] with Saracens and joyfully maintain peace with the enemy of Christ while, driven by futile motivations, they dispute among themselves, given to frequent quarrels and internal strife. They often make claims on behalf of the enemies of our faith, and do not mind wasting assets, which they should have turned against the pagans in honor of Christ, on [disputes] among themselves, in detriment of Christianity.”38 This is what, the bishop believes, led the Lord to snatch the promised land from the hands of the Christians and to grant it to the enemy.39 In the letters and the Historia that Jacques wrote during his first years in Acre, he couples this outlook on the troubled state of the East with an ideology of crusading. Over a century after Urban II’s famous speech in Clermont, Jacques de Vitry again employed a rhetoric of East and West in thinking about the idea of crusade.40 However, in Jacques’s reworking of the rhetoric, the “Orient” that is in dire need of help is not the oriental Church but rather the Near East more generally. The church of the Orient, he explains, had enjoyed in its early days a privileged status, diffusing its rays of supreme religiosity to the West. However, since the advent of Islam “until our very day,” the East has been in decline: “Weakened and trapped in the fleshly floods of voluptuousness, she who was brought up in scarlet has embraced the dung.”41 Luckily, however, “the Lord noticed her affliction and has inspired many sons of the Church to sympathize with her sorrow as their own mother” and to embark on the eastbound expedition. In contrast to the Near Eastern Christians and the Franks who were all blended together in an unstable mixture of oriental identities, the Western crusaders, Jacques de Vitry thought, brought with them a firm militant piety capable of reerecting walls of spiritual difference. As if to exhaust fully the use of his aforementioned linguistic metaphor, Jacques describes the crusaders as the exact opposite of the Franks: by their use of suspect eloquence, the Franks are able to mask their true affinity to the Muslims and their real fear of battle; the “transalpine nations” who take up the cross, on the other hand, are less articulate (minus composite), less cautious with words (in verbis minus cauti), and hasty with less foresight in their deliberations (in consiliis

Warriors and Border Anxieties

43

festini et minus provide), but they are more impetuous (impetuosi) and less circumspect in action (minus circumspecti in agendis). What is more, because they are wholly devoted to the Church and are fervent in almsgiving and other merciful deeds, they are animated in battle (in preliis animosiores) and, to the horror of Muslims, highly effective (utiles) in defending the Holy Land.42 During his first years in the East, in other words, Jacques de Vitry saw the purpose and method of sacred belligerence as correcting this endemic instability that characterized the Levant by restoring the differentiation that the Latin Christians brought with them from the West. By the time the bishop’s stay in Acre was drawing to a close, however, his approach had changed significantly, as is evident in his later sermons.43

Sermons for the Military Orders—A New Model As mentioned above, Jacques de Vitry belonged to a circle of Church reformists who promoted the importance of preaching to diverse audiences as a privileged vehicle to communicate aspects of the Christian dogma.44 His letters reveal that while in the Near East, he preached extensively to the demoralized crusading army as well as to the aberrant Latin and Orthodox Christians in the Frankish lands. He also reports having delivered translated sermons to Muslims with the hope of convincing them to renounce their religion and convert to Christianity.45 Quite often in his sermons, he invokes stories that stem from his experiences in the East or tales that he must have heard while there. His collection of nonliturgical model sermons—Sermones ad status vel vulgares—contains two lengthy homilies intended for members of the Military Orders, both of which treat the demand to practice humility in a rather conventional manner.46 But interspersed in both are stories pertaining to situations from the crusading East and references to the Saracens, suggesting that the bishop had composed them during his ser vice in Acre or that his opinions in these texts were profoundly shaped by his experiences in the Orient.47 In both sermons, Jacques puts to work a metaphorical symmetry between the structure of the warrior’s soul and the role of the Military Orders relative to the Church. They begin and end with the notion that the purpose of the Military Orders is to enfold the Church and to protect it by surrounding it: “Just as a lily amid thorns is pricked on all sides, just as a small

44

Chapter 2

boat amid the surge is shaken on all sides, just as gold in the furnace is continually examined . . . just as a fortified city is besieged by the enemy from all sides; just as on all sides [the Church] is attacked, so it is walled and protected by the Lord on all sides, as the Lord said through Zechariah [9:8]: ‘I will set around [circumdabo] my house those who fight for me [militant mihi].’ ”48

Figure 2. BnF fr. 352 fol. 61r: The vision of a pious knight on the Mount of Olives during the First Crusade.

Warriors and Border Anxieties

45

Sermon 38, employing a soteriological framework, conveys the notion that the most pious and virtuous Christians are tasked with the noble duty of enveloping the Church with piety and zeal. The Church, in both its celestial and its historical battle against the Saracens, is like an army, Jacques muses, where weaker soldiers are placed in the middle and the strongest knights occupy the rear- and vanguards. Just as the Lord summons the fiercest “warriors” in the beginning and the end of the Church, so too he appoints the sacred knights of the Military Orders to enfold the Church in its current battle against the Saracens. In the early Church, He ordained the apostles and the martyrs; during the time of the apocalypse, He will assemble an army of “firm knights.” Similarly, Christ’s knights protect the Church like a “cavalry [equitatui] opposing the path of the Devil.”49 The bishop, however, repeatedly indicates that a similar relationship exists between the spiritual and the combative forces within each individual warrior. The sermons are about precisely this dialectic between both the priest and the warrior as well as the soul and the sword.50 To further explicate the role of the knights, Jacques invokes the dual nature of the Church and the Military Orders. The Church, he reminds the reader, possesses “two swords [duos gladios]”—one to be exercised spiritually by prelates and the other by Christian soldiers (militaribus) and princes.51 Priests use the spiritual sword (gladium spiritualem) against “tyrants and false brothers” so that they are compelled to return to the Church.52 Knights, on the other hand, use the physical sword (gladium materialem), always with the priests’ approval, against the violence of pagans and Saracens.53 In a similar manner, the structure of the holy warrior, too, is twofold: “Just as they are knights [milites] in battle, they are like monks [quasi monachi] at home.”54 They go to war to fight, says Jacques de Vitry, but return in peace to pray quietly. The hierarchy must be maintained on both sides of the equation in order for knighthood to be effective. On the one hand, laity must not “usurp” the offices of priests. Therefore, leaders of the Orders, he commands, must send literate brothers to schools of theology (scolas theologiae) so that they can provide guidance for the others; with these erudite and ordained brothers being “sufficiently instructed in the God’s law, you, having been taught by them, may do every thing according to the advice of Sacred Scripture.”55 In this way, priests are able to steer the Order that would have other wise been but an empty vessel. In a similar fashion, it is vital that each individual knight maintain a pure and pious soul. In times of peace, they must engage in spiritual activities, such

46

Chapter 2

as prayers and intensive fasting, so that they are ready to lay down their souls in battle for the defense of the Church: “The knights of Christ must be purified and holy, so that they are always ready to die, lest they dare to live even one day in a state in which they would not dare to die.”56 Jacques proceeds to devote large parts of the sermon to discuss exactly how a pure soul can be maintained and the nature of the sins from which the knights must be cleansed. The underlying assumption, however, that guides this purported link between purity of the soul and willingness to die is one of great importance as it pertains to both ecclesiastical and individual layers. Those who have a pure conscience and a just cause must also be audacious and secure, Jacques says. But people of bad faith (falsis religiosis) who possess a bad conscience (malam conscientiam) are invariably fearful for, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “It is only the hypocrite who experiences [possedit] fear” (Isa. 33:14).57 In other words, the dual nature of, and the symmetry between, the church as a whole and the individual warrior results in the twofold nature of its enemy, who strikes both physically and spiritually. Before the sermon comes to a close and the preacher reiterates the notion that the knighthood of Christ enfolds the Church, Jacques turns to several stories that help explain what he means by the problem of hypocrisy, how he conceptualizes the enemy, and precisely what kind of barrier the Military Orders are to erect around the Church. In the introductory paragraphs to Sermon 37, the bishop contends that the Military Orders are already prefigured in Zachariah 1:8: “At night I had a vision: before me was a man riding a red horse . . . behind him were red, speckled and white horses.” Each of the horses evoked in the biblical verse represents one of the Christian orders. The red horse stands for the Order of the Knights Templar, who bear a red cross on their habit.58 The preacher then turns to an exemplum: a wealthy blind man, we are told, wished to escape a tyrannical lord. He first saw to it that all his belongings were shipped to another region and then prepared to escape himself. He mounted a red horse but concealed its color, and being blind, he enlisted the help of a young boy to “show him the way [viam illi ostenderet].” Shortly thereafter, the lord sent someone after the man, whom the boy quickly detected: “Behold! Someone mounted on a black horse is hurrying after us, to apprehend us [ecce quidam super equum nigrum currit post nos, ut nos comprehendat].” The blind man, however, assured the boy that with the help of God, they would prevail. After the boy spotted another knight chasing them, this time upon a white horse, faster and more menacing than the first, the man once again

Warriors and Border Anxieties

47

reassured him. The appearance of a third knight, however, rendered the man less confident: “What kind of horse does he have [cuiusmodi equum habet]?” he asked the boy, who replied, “A red horse, very much like yours [equum rufum, equum tuo valde consimilem].” The man narrowly escapes capture by ordering the boy to lead their horse from the stony road (via lapidosa) into a muddy path (vias lutosas) (cf. Hab. 3:15), where the fleeing pair finds safety. The bishop promptly offers a gloss to this complex story to elucidate its poignant message about the true nature of the dangers that imperil holy knighthood. Calling to mind that the red horse in his exegesis on the verse from Zachariah represents the Templars, Jacques now explains that the fleeing blind man is in fact a knight, naturally inclined to sin. The Templar, as the story teaches us, should know that he is incapable of fleeing the devil and sin without the help of the boy, who guides him “by the grace of illuminated reason [rationis per gratiam illuminatae].” He must renounce his worldly possessions and flee on “a red horse, enflamed with love and ready to shed blood for Christ [fugit com equo rufo, charitate succensus, et paratus sanguine effundere pro christo].” The various mounted pursuers, in turn, represent the kinds of threats that a holy knight faces on his journey to salvation. These threats correspond to the sins Jacques had mentioned earlier in discussing the need to purify and maintain the soul so that the knight is always ready to lay down his life. The black horse represents the devil, who casts upon the knight “several tribulations” meant “to throw him off by adversities.”59 But the knight must protect himself, Jacques warns in the beginning of the sermon, from arrogance (elatione) and rivalry (aemulatione), which would other wise lead him to confront and probably be overcome by such provocation.60 The white horse that subsequently arrives represents the dangers of seduction by “prosperity [prosperitate].” Jacques demands that holy knights heal their hearts from the vice of greed and avarice [avaritia] and admonishes those who join the Order with the main purpose of gaining material wealth. It is Jacques’s gloss on the third and final horseman, however, that sheds the most light on the entire sermon and his attitude toward holy knighthood. The fugitive’s attempt to disguise the color of his own horse was futile, the bishop explains, as “the devil sends to the man the most difficult and dangerous temptation on a horse similar to his own.” Mounted on an identical red horse and maintaining an appearance that resembles that of the fleeing man, the final knight tries to tempt his prey by “praising him for his holy manner of life and religious fervor.”61 Jacques devotes much of the

48

Chapter 2

sermon to a discussion of pride; he explains that knights must not take pride in their “noble descent, or wealth, or power,”62 nor should they boast about their physical strength or glorify their own achievements.63 By the end of the homily, Jacques makes clear that the most dangerous and deceptive form of pride results from a perilous yet inevitable affinity to the enemy. The most dangerous foe, in other words, is the one who bears the same appearance as the warrior. Those whose faith is weak are seduced by such dangerous flattery. In order to evade this most severe threat, the fleeing man must stray from the stony road into the mud, which is to say “to humiliate his heart by contrition and his body by affliction.” Only in the depth of the muddy trail, “continually recalling to memory the impurity of his life and past sins,” is the man able to escape the final pursuing knight and rise above the greatest danger of pride. “With all humility and caution fight for God,” the preacher exalts, “and do not stray from Him for adversity or prosperity or vain flattery of [those who] praise you.” In all its preoccupation with humility and ostentation, which were conventional in dealing with the Military Orders, this parable could be seen to represent a profound shift in Jacques de Vitry’s attitude toward holy knighthood and the complexities that are involved in pious warfare against the enemy of the faith. In contrast to his early reproach of those who engage in social and physical proximity to the Saracens, he acknowledges in the sermons that pious warriors inevitably become entangled in a dense web of cultural affinities, sharing a common repertoire of militaristic and somatic symbols. The challenge of the faithful follower of Christ, he now proclaims, is not to extricate himself from these ties of similitude but to overcome the challenges that this proximity poses. The bishop then tries to show further, through a number of didactic narratives, how specific categories that constitute the identity and piety of knights emerge from the interplay of cultural vectors. The first exemplum in Sermon 37 investigates how notions of virility play out in the inevitable intimate physical and cultural encounters with the enemy that the bishop identifies as the condition of pious chivalry in the East.64 Jacques relates the story of a certain noble knight of French descent who had crossed the sea to go on crusade and was captured by Saracens, along with other secular knights and also a contingent of Templars (quibusdam militibus fratrum militie Templi).65 The captors decided to hold the secular knights hostage but to slay all the Templars. “Because the aforementioned

Warriors and Border Anxieties

49

knight was bald and bore a beard [calvus erat et barbatus], the Saracens believed he was a Templar and planned to treat him accordingly. But he, as was the truth, said ‘I am a secular knight and a pilgrim’; to which they responded: ‘on the contrary, you are a Templar!’ Roused up by the zeal of faith, he said, extending his neck: ‘In the name of the Lord, let me be a Templar [sim Templarius].’ Having said that, and pierced by a sword together with the brethren of the Temple, the new Templar [novus Templarius] travelled to the Lord happily to be crowned with martyrdom.”66 In this charged and ultimately lethal encounter, the Muslim captors play a defining role. They establish the very identity of the French knight and designate him a “new Templar”; it is the swords and defining gazes of his interlocutors—who insist on seeing him as more than just a secular knight and a pilgrim—that seal his fate. What is more, the Muslims identify him as a Templar solely on the basis of his external features— a bald head and an untrimmed beard. These are precisely the features that Christian commentators in the Near East had long associated with oriental men in general—and Muslim warriors in particular.67 The Saracens in the story of the “new Templar” are thus the ones who identify and constitute the virility and martial prowess of the French knight. While the story ends with the Muslims slaughtering the knight, the reader learns that Saracens indeed acknowledge the efficacy of the Order as an armed militia and attribute to its members the same traits of virility and prowess that they ascribe to themselves. This cross-cultural acknowledgment of the Order’s merit is attested several decades later when the Muslim chronicler Ibn Wasil invoked the same terminology in order to praise the role of the Baḥri Mamluks in the battle of Fariskur in April 1250, which set the seal on the Seventh Crusade: “Carrying out a glorious carnage, they were responsible for the greatest part [in the victory]; they are the ones who headed the pursuit after the Franks, indeed they were the Templars of Islam.”68 In both cases, the designation “Templar” emerges as a category by which Muslim commentators attribute a combination of military prowess and religious zeal to warriors, either Mamluk or Frankish. In Jacques’s exemplum, unlike the inclination seen in his early work, the new Templar is crowned with martyrdom, having been endorsed and reluctantly praised by his potential enemies.69 Jacques de Vitry’s sermons about the Military Orders reflect a significant shift in his attitude toward the idea of militant piety. During the first years

50

Chapter 2

of his episcopate, he was mainly alarmed by the physical proximity between Christians and Muslims in the East. He thought that the purpose of militant intervention by crusading forces should be to disentangle this cultural knot and to redeem the purity of the Holy Land and its Christian inhabitants. In his later writing on the subject, however, the bishop employed a markedly different language: one that allowed for the very proximity to the enemy to play a role in defining the spirituality of warriors. Christian and Saracen warriors emerge as interdependent, and their entanglement is framed as an inherent condition of militant piety. Warriors are tasked with protecting themselves and the Church not from this proximity but rather from the dangerous consequences that could result from this proximity. The changes in Jacques de Vitry’s views on militant piety and cultural entanglement in the East coincide with the political shifts beginning in the 1220s illustrated in the previous chapter. Furthermore, other authors from the same period and cultural space shared Jacques’s interest in the role of warriors from both sides of the religious divide in establishing their mutual identities. Like the bishop of Acre, authors started thinking about holy knights through their multiple affinities to their enemies and with the advantages and dangers that emerged from these affinities.

Warriors Without Borders—Mercenaries and Political Loyalty One way in which authors revisited these questions of militant piety in an age of flux was by reexamining the work of political borders in drawing the boundaries between treason and piety. The Ernoul-Bernard chronicle, a history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem that was compiled in the early 1230s, describes one such charged situation. When al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam died in 1227, he bequeathed his possessions to his sons, who were young at the time. However, he left both his lands and children in the hands of a knight from Spain, who was a brother of the Temple. He did so, the chronicler explains, “ because since the time the knight had left the Christians and had come to Coradin [al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam], the knight served him loyally. Coradin [considered him trustworthy] because he did not become a Saracen, but rather remained loyal to his religion, except only when he fought against the Christians. And because of the loyalty that he saw in him, in keeping and observing his religion, Coradin was confident that he will loyally guard

Warriors and Border Anxieties

51

his lands and children. He did not want to pass it to any Saracen, for he knew that they would turn it to his brother, the Sultan of Babylon.”70 The author, in other words, is compelled in this anecdote to reconsider the alignment of religion and politics. Interestingly, Coradin both facilitates the crossing of lines and underscores their limits for he is quoted as deeming the fight against one’s own coreligionists as a breach of loyalty. Indeed, portrayed throughout the chronicle as a ruthless persecutor of Franks and all those of the Christian faith, the sultan represents a dominant symbol of Islamic power. The chronicler by no means evades the Islamic identity of Sultan Coradin but rather uses it to explore the spirituality of the Christian mercenary and, by extension, the contours of his par ticu lar Near Eastern chivalrous piety.71 Similar vectors of piety, loyalty, and political symbolism intersect in another Frankish narrative entitled Estoires d’Outremer from the middle of the thirteenth century, whose provenance is discussed at length in Chapter 3. The work explores the spirituality of a French mercenary called Reynald (Renaus), who fought in Saladin’s army.72 We are told that the Frenchman was a loyal and stalwart warrior: “Saladin had a great liking for him [so] that he allowed him . . . to keep his [Christian] religion.” Reynald was let into Saladin’s entourage and fought in the vanguard, bearing a “red shield with a white cross.” What is more, Saladin took Reynald with him into battles against the Christians and lavished him with as much wealth as he wanted.73 The account describes a final battle in which Reynald participated in a campaign against the Frankish force that attempted to lay siege on Damascus and was killed by a fellow Christian. Baldwin of Ramlah, we are told, “advanced against Reynald . . . and fought [jousta] him to death.” Surprisingly, however, the chronicler’s attitude toward the renegade knight is not thoroughly negative. On the one hand, he is critical of Reynald’s decision to side voluntarily with the enemy of his coreligionists: “There had been much grief when Saladin had taken him along to fight against the Christians; for although he was in Saladin’s prison, he joined [the battle] on his own will.” On the other hand, the author does not relate Reynald’s death with pleasure: “There was much sorrow, for he was such a stalwart warrior [preudom] and was a good knight [boins chevaliers].”74 The knight’s merit, in other words, was not sullied by his association with the Saracens, and his insistence on using the cross as his symbolic and physical shield was understood as consistent with his piety, even under the banner of Islam.75 The author takes advantage of

52

Chapter 2

the symbolic capital that is associated with Saladin in order to craft this image of praiseworthy knighthood.

Disloyalty Narrated from Both Sides—The Case of John of Gale The previous examples show how stories about mercenaries, in their unsettling liminality, allowed Near Eastern Frankish authors to think about chivalry and piety through summoning a variety of vectors that pull in surprising directions. It is for this reason that the rare occasion in which we can listen to both sides of the conversation is particularly illuminating. The tale about a knight called John Gale provides an example for the way authors conceived of the physical and linguistic borders that warriors inhabited, seen from both a Christian and a Muslim perspective.76 John Gale, a Frankish knight born in Tyre, fled to Muslim territories to escape punishment for a crime he had committed.77 Apparently, John murdered his feudal lord after he had caught the latter committing adultery with his own wife.78 Saladin welcomed John very warmly, giving him wealth and lands, as well as garrisons to protect them. The sultan furthermore asked that John train his nephew “to bear arms in the fashion of the Francs [a la guise des Frans] and that he teach him courtliness and good conduct [corteisie et bien].”79 One day Saladin took both the knight and his nephew on an expedition to Aleppo. John occupied the boy with exercises in honor and good conduct, while he himself secretly sent for a messenger from the nearby Templar castle. John was looking for a way to return to his homeland and offered to turn the boy over to the Templars in return for half of the ransom they would gain from his release and for their promise to protect John from the Frankish family of his previous lord. After the Templars paid him 14,000 besanz and vouched for his safety, John took the boy to the fields outside of Damascus under the pretext of bird hunting and kidnapped him to give to the Templars at the castle of Safed. After the boy spent several years in Frankish captivity, Saladin finally secured his release by freeing many Christian prisoners. In addition, the sultan took his revenge on John of Gale by laying siege to his residence, the castle of Roche Guillaume. Despite the fact that John committed crimes, crossed lines, and offered his ser vice to the enemy, this account is rendered in a tone wholly sympathetic toward him. His contemporaries, for example, do not condemn him for his misdeeds but rather bolster his reputation as one who possessed

Warriors and Border Anxieties

53

intimate and valuable knowledge of Ayyubid court culture. When King Philip-Augustus of France was preparing to take the cross before the Third Crusade, we are told that he asked “to talk with [John Gale] so that he can ask him about the affairs of the land of the Saracens.”80 What is more, the author uses John’s flight to Muslim lands and the fact that Saladin asked him to educate his own nephew in the art of chivalry to celebrate the excellence of Frankish knightly culture. This account exalts chivalric codes not by highlighting the differences between Frank and Saracen but rather by destabilizing their boundaries and by projecting the production of pious chivalry on the fantasy of aristocracies that share values and customs. Seeing as Saladin was indeed succeeded not by his own sons but by his nephews (the sons of his other brother, al-‘Adil), this account could be seen to cultivate a fantasy in which Christian militant codes came to form an essential part of the political language of Ayyubid sovereignty. This episode about the entanglement of John Gale and the young Ayyubid prince was inscribed also by the chronicler, poet, and Ayyubid courtier, ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (d. 1201).81 The story, which was also taken up by the late Ayyubid authors Abu Shamah (d. 1268) and al-Bundari (d. 1245), is nestled in a section devoted to the deeds of Taqi al-Din ‘Umar (al-Malik alMuzaffar), Saladin’s nephew and the ruler of Egypt between 1183 and 1186.82 One of Taqi al-Din’s sons, we are told, found his glorious death in the battle of Montgisard/Ramlah (1177), while the other was the victim of John Gale’s kidnapping plot. The Muslim author does not dwell on the circumstances that brought the Frankish knight to Damascus or depict the cunning negotiations between John and the Templars. Instead, he claims that the Frank enticed the boy, whose name is now mentioned—Shahanshah—by deception. Lying to him, he said, “[If you] come to the king [of the Franks], he will grant you much wealth [al-mulk].”83 Significantly, in order to make this false promise credible, John is said to have “forged [zawwara] a charter [kitāb] and conjured a summons in the language of such appeals.” Shahanshah gives into this temptation, and John then binds the deceived child and turns him over to the Templars in return for a large sum of money. But, unlike in the French account, the young prince is rendered sympathetically rather than admonished for his ill-fated act of greed. The author explains that it is in fact Shahanshah’s courage that tempted John to place him in Frankish captivity.84 What is more, the Ayyubid author appears to work a loaded symmetry between the two valorous knights involved, Shahanshah and his Frankish captor. The Frank “tightened the knot [around

54

Chapter 2

Shahanshah], and shackled him. He bound him and pressed his throat toward the Templars.” Upon handing over the young prince, John Gale is said not only to have received a payment but also “to have been reinstated among them [i.e., the Franks or the Templars].”85 On the other end, we hear that after seven long years, Saladin finally “unbound” Shahanshah, after which the boy “returned from his raid [al-ghazwah]” like a triumphant conqueror.86 The Frankish knight, in other words, regained his (previously jeopardized) knightly status after he surrendered the valuable captive and returned home, while Shahanshah’s capture and release is precisely what awarded him the status of a courageous warrior who returns from battle. Both figures thus benefited from their time across enemy lines, despite the questionable circumstances that brought each of them there. Al-Isfahani views Shahanshah’s experience in Frankish captivity as so edifying, in fact, that he seems to equate it with the chivalrous martyrdom of Shahanshah’s abovementioned brother. In the winter of 1177, their father, Taqi al-Din, decided to take his younger child, Ahmad, to the battlefield: “His heart having hardened [qasa’ qalbuhu], he wished that his son [Ahmad] would become a martyr.” The boy met his death fighting a Frankish knight, as “he preferred to obey his creator and father, over the love of his own [life].” This ordeal took place while Shahanshah was in captivity, as we are told that “the loss of his brother (i.e. Ahmad) stiffened Taqi [al-Din’s] heart regarding that boy (i.e. Shahanshah).”87 While in the Quran the vocabulary of a hardened heart often refers to those who stubbornly resist the divine message,88 clearly here it denotes a certain stern expectation that one would behave in a righteous manner. Significantly, this virtue pertains to the attitude of Taqi al-Din toward both of his sons, one for dying in battle and the other for being in Frankish captivity. In several ways, then, the French and Arabic accounts complement each other. Both entertain a sense of cross-edification: the Ayyubid prince is trained by John in the chivalric demeanor (according to the French account) and is thought to become refined while in Frankish captivity (according to al-Isfahani); John himself is recognized for his acquaintance with Ayyubid military culture in both stories. While authors may convey a concern about the ease of crossing political borders and a certain ambivalence with regard to its consequences, they also describe the production of knights by embracing and breaching conventions that belong to both traditions. In Arabic and French, in other words, knights are imagined to be the product of the interlacing of multiple cultural vectors. Neither author tries to conceal the very

Warriors and Border Anxieties

55

qualities that brought about the acts of treason committed by both John and Shahanshah: both commit transgressions for the promises of power and material wealth. In the end, however, these expressions of greed do not take away from their value and prowess, since the Frankish account results in John’s restitution, and al-Isfahani’s account links the nephew’s greed with courage. In fact, this back-and-forth motion, which characterizes both John and Shahanshah’s stories, constitutes the defining part of both figures’ chivalrous aptitude. The model of militancy to which these accounts gives rise is one that celebrates warriors as figures that inhabit the space in between cultures, where aristocracy and militancy are the product of multiple, often contradicting, vectors.

Political Bilingualism—The Lord of Montfort and Saladin Questions of bilingualism, too, play a central role in how Frankish and Ayyubid authors imagined the trajectories that came into play in the production and conduct of knights. While al-Isfahani and the anonymous Old French chroniclers shared with Jacques de Vitry an interest in the degree to which physical and political proximity to Muslim warriors was inherent to holy knighthood, many others were instead concerned with the perils of this affinity. Many such accounts on the way warriors positioned themselves visà-vis the borders focused on questions of language and bilingualism. Midthirteenth-century authors became increasingly suspicious of those who were able to communicate freely with members of the other culture. Command of French or Arabic respectively featured prominently as a trope in accounts that portray soldiers as liminal figures whose social and cultural proximity to the enemy came to be considered both a strength and a threat.89 Language in these accounts often serves as a metaphor for the dangers of which Jacques de Vitry so forcefully warned. Accounts of the siege and ultimate conquest of Beaufort (Qal’at Shaqif Arnun) in 1190 provide illuminating examples for the approach of Near Eastern authors toward the question of language and dissimulation. Significantly, accounts of this episode survive in both Old French and Arabic allowing us, again, to compare how Frankish and Ayyubid chroniclers deployed their attitude toward the strategic use of language. Having been defeated in the battle of Tyre, Saladin advanced in 1189 toward the castle of Beaufort, which he hoped would fall without much effort.90 While several

56

Chapter 2

Muslim chroniclers relate this event, only one Frankish work (namely, the Lyon Eracles, which was compiled in the 1250s) preserves an account in Old French.91 Realizing that the castle is unlikely to be conquered by force as originally anticipated, the Frankish chronicler recounts that Saladin “thought of a ruse [barat] and a mortal treachery [mortel traison].”92 He asks that Reynald, lord of Montfort and Sidon, who Saladin knew was able to converse in Arabic, come out to speak with him, and he promises to do Reynald no harm. Saladin, in other words, seems to promise that the purpose of the meeting is to gain the castle via reasoned conversation. At first, Reynald and his fellow soldiers are reluctant to “trust the promise of an unbeliever,” but finally he complies. Standing by his word, Saladin “put up a nice appearance [biau semblant] and made a grand feast for Reynald’s coming.”93 He tries to entice the Frank with promises of riches “in the way that Saracens know to offer Christians.” But the Frankish lord asks to leave, and Saladin, obliged to keep his own promise, is forced to let Reynald go. However, a certain scribe (ecsrivain) from Beaufort, “a ‘man’ of Reynald, named Belhes,” finds this decision unfitting and offers to force Reynald to return to the sultan. The second encounter between the two leaders takes the shape of a minor disputation, in which the Frank tries to convince Saladin on his terms to give up aspirations of taking the castle. The main issue at stake is the promise that Saladin issued, namely, to not seize the castle from its Frankish ruler by force. “If it pleases God, who does you such great honor,” Reynald pleads, “you shall not break your promise for the sake of this poor castle. For you have already kept your word to all those you had given it.” Thus, although earlier Reynald may doubt the validity of a promise made by a non-Christian, he now emphasizes that Saladin is known to (and should) keep the promises he gives to non-Muslims. Saladin, in response, explains, “My prophet Mahomet teaches that by the faith [fiance] in God I should seize the enemy of God.”94 He further states that his sacred vow to take hold of every castle and city in the land abrogates any other promises he may have made.95 Reynald, however, remains unconvinced, and the sultan reiterates that if Reynald does not surrender the castle, he will receive “a cruel death.” For Reynald, this last proclamation is precisely what illustrates the weakness of Saladin’s argument. He explains, “The body is between your hands, but the soul is in the hands of God. You could do to the body as you please, for you cannot have the castle.” Reynald seems to level here the widespread polemical claim that the Muslim faith appeals to force in the place of rational persuasion for he insinuates that Saladin’s justification for breaking his

Warriors and Border Anxieties

57

promise rests on the alleged prophetic precept that the faithful should kill the enemies of God.96 Reynald remains steadfast in his refusal to surrender the castle because physical coercion could not possibly result in effective persuasion, and therefore the castle (and, metaphorically, the Franks) would remain Christian in soul even if physically seized by the sultan with force. This debate about the nature of religious persuasion is soon put to a test, which yields moments of suspense typical of chivalric drama. When Saladin brings the stubborn baron before the castle, Reynald repeats his earlier proclamation to his subordinates: “Hold tight!” he cries to the knights defending the castle walls, “Make no poor judgment [mauvais plait] on my behalf! Guard the castle well, in the interest of Christianity!” Saladin’s men then begin torturing Reynald, and when the torment grows unbearable,97 he shouts, “I can no longer take the pain. I relieve you of your vows! Return the castle and rescue me, for if you do not, I fear that I will be lost in body and soul [en cors et en ame].” Understandably pleased, Saladin grants Reynald half of the castle of Sidon with its surrounding lands along with a promise that Reynald’s holdings will not be threatened by the Saracens, “for the treason that [Saladin] had done to him.”98 Contrary to the initial polemical stance, then, Reynald yields to force and indeed changes not only in appearance but also in essence as he gladly accepts Saladin’s gift. While the chronicler is sympathetic toward Reynald’s brave endurance of Saladin’s pressure, he also betrays a growing suspicion that the bilingual leader may be treading a cultural no man’s land. In the mind of the Frankish author, Reynald’s ability and willingness to engage in theological discourse with the sultan ended up drawing the bilingual Frankish warrior dangerously close to his enemies. The Muslim accounts of this episode maintain a similar recognition that the Frankish lord belonged, as it were, to both camps and to neither.99 Authors laud Reynald’s (in Arabic, Raynāt) familiarity with their culture but are also far more explicit in criticizing what they see as the deceptive strategy of the Arabic-speaking Frank.100 Abu Shamah contends that it is rather the lord of Qal’at Shaqīf who, seeing the size of the Muslim army, realized that without a treaty (salāmah), the castle would soon fall. He sneaked unnoticed (instead of being brought by force as in the Frankish narrative) to Saladin’s tent and tried to advance a mischievous ploy. Reynald promised to turn over the castle on the condition that he be granted permission to remove his entire family to Damascus, where he would receive property and status. The problem, he reiterated, was that part of his family

58

Chapter 2

resided in Tyre, and it would take him three months to sneak them out without the marquis of Montferrat noticing. In order to win Saladin’s favor, Reynald took care to make a good impression on his interlocutors. Abu Shamah relates that Reynald “was one of the finest and most reasonable [‘uqalā’ihim] Franks; he spoke Arabic and was well versed in their histories [tawārīkh] and traditions [aḥādīth].” We furthermore learn that Reynald had a Muslim aide (possibly Belhes, the scribe also mentioned in the French chronicle) who would read and gloss Arabic literature for him101 and that Reynald engaged in heated yet benign theological disputations with Saladin’s helpers. Reynald, in other words, used his knowledge of Arabic and familiarity with Muslim culture as a means to improve his credibility in the eyes of his interlocutors, who perceived him as a “highly eloquent and an excellent partner for dialogue.” But the Ayyubid chroniclers, too, voice the idea that what might have begun as a tactic to leave the castle intact led to an ordeal that reveals Reynald’s unstable identity. When three months were over and Reynald asked for an additional year before he would be ready to surrender the castle, his Ayyubid counterparts grew suspicious: “It became known among the people that he did that in order to delay his disaster, and had no intention [of handing over the castle].”102 At that point, the sultan seized the seemingly deceptive Frank, who continued to use his command of both languages as part of his scheming:103 when brought before the castle, Reynald ordered his men in Arabic to submit while urging them in French to continue fighting.104 At the same time, Ibn Shaddad also reports that when Reynald finally succumbed, he sent his deputy to order the knights in the castle to surrender, “but they made their disobedience to him manifest, and replied: ‘we are the subordinates [nawā’ib/nu’āb] of the messiah, not yours.’ ”105 The chronicler, in other words, articulates the notion that for the Frankish knights, the militant spirituality of their lord seemed to have undergone a change through his contact with their enemies. This is corroborated, to an extent, as Ayyubid chroniclers report that Reynald functioned as an emissary on behalf of the marquis of Monferrat in his attempts to scheme together with the Ayyubid leaders of Damascus against the Franks.106 While both Frankish and Ayyubid texts express ambivalence toward Reynald with his peculiar spirituality, they both allow for the fact that he inhabits a bilingual space. While his ability to communicate with Muslims seems, from both perspectives, at times objectionable, curiously neither account ends with complete condemnation. Rather, both allow Reynald and his

Warriors and Border Anxieties

59

descendants a political role as the holders of Sidon, which is the result of his political skill and the clever manipulation of his linguistic and cultural advantages. Authors employ Reynald’s familiarity with Muslim culture to stage a debate on the validity of Muslim militant theology. But the discussion in itself is thought to have a transformative effect in that it places the Frankish lord in the space between cultures, able to take advantage of both. The framing of the warrior as a pious aristocrat through his cultural proximity to his Saracen neighbors involves an exploration and realignment of both Christian and Muslim spiritualities. The Muslim authors laud Reynald’s erudition and commendable familiarity with Muslim culture but also contend that his ability to “speak” in both cultures is a sign of his slyness and indecent nature, characteristic of Christian warriors at large. In this narrative, the ability to carry out an appearance of proximity to one’s enemy while simulta neously destabilizing the rhetorical integrity of both sides is the space within which meaningful bellicose interaction was thought to take place and to yield symbolic profits for all.

Linguistic and External Dissimulation—The Siege of Safed Indeed, for both Frankish and Ayyubid authors, real or metaphorical bilingualism, with its high prospects and equally high risks, signified the condition that was thought to produce pious warriors. This concern about the consequences of multilingualism for pious knighthood plays an important role in the way Muslim and Christian chroniclers depicted the siege on Safed in 1266. After almost a decade of internal instability and an imminent threat by the ruthless Mongols, the newly established Mamluk regime under Sultan Baybars finally fell to the Franks in the mid-1260s. The successful siege on Safed was one the first large-scale confrontations between the two polities, and it was thus an opportunity for authors to reflect on the theological stakes that were involved in this conflict.107 The portrayal of the siege in the anonymous chronicle entitled the Templar of Tyre, for example, works a symmetrical literary structure in which cultural proximity—whether linguistic or external—is a crucial component in the production of Mamluk militant culture but can also be seen to lead Christian knights to adopt Muslim habits. The chronicler describes how the Mamluk sultan, Rukn al-Din Baybars, surrounded the Templar castle with an army of a hundred thousand soldiers. He claims, however, that a certain Arabic-speaking Templar knight

60

Chapter 2

committed an act of treachery that brought the death of its Templar defenders. When those inside the castle felt that they could no longer defend it, they sent a messenger to the sultan via “a certain brother, sergeant from the Temple, named frère Leon, a castellan from the castle of Safed, who spoke the Saracen language very well.” In public (en audiens), the sultan replied to Leon’s pledge for peace favorably, but in private, he offered him a deal: “An emir who resembles the Sultan very much [quy avoit tout se semblance]” would deceitfully declare a truce, but as the knights exited the castle unarmed, the sultan would “put all of them to the sword.”108 In addition, Baybars promised that if Brother Leon cooperated with this plan, he would be rewarded generously, but if not, he could expect a harsh death (aspre mort). The next morning, the sultan sent his impersonator, who stood before the castle dressed in appropriate honorific garb. The Frankish knights believed that it was the sultan and felt safe, “but, in fact, they were betrayed and deceived.” The knights agreed to surrender the castle on the emir’s promise to lead them to Acre safely, but the following day as they exited the castle, the sultan had them all taken to a nearby hill and beheaded. The story ends by stating that Brother Leon, “who out of fear of death did this act of treachery, renounced his faith and became a Saracen.” The Franciscan friar Fidentio of Padua also describes the siege and fall of Safed, using Baybars’s behavior as an example of the deceitful nature of Muslim warriors in general. “The Saracens are unstable,” he says, “especially in promises. They agree on a truce or a certain pact with the Christians, but then do not observe it. . . . However great the Sultan who has peace with the Christians, this does not endure nor stand unless by the will of the Sultan. And therefore, Christians cannot trust the Saracens, for they do not possess stability.”109 Fidentio reports that inside the besieged castle were two thousand warriors and two minor friars, whom he had sent to provide spiritual support. When, after several weeks of fierce battle, only sixty Templar knights were left, they decided to surrender and negotiate safe conduct with the sultan. Baybars gladly agreed to the terms and swore on them in a firm oath (juramento firmato): the Franks would cease their resistance and hand over the castle, and in return, the sultan would see that they reach Acre safely, provided that they leave their personal belongings behind. But as we already know, “the Sultan deceived their trust and broke his promise to them.” Standing exposed in the plateau in front of the castle, the knights expected to be transported to Acre. Instead, the sultan sent an emir, who said, “My lord sent me to you, asking that you become [efficiamini] Saracens.

Warriors and Border Anxieties

61

If you do what the Sultan wants, he will give you horses and arms. . . . Otherwise, by tomorrow all of you will be beheaded.”110 The knights responded that “it is not fitting that the Sultan should break his word [frangere fidem suam]” and turned down the offer. The next day, all except the two friars and the prior of the Temple were taken to “the place of martyrs” on the slope of the mountain and were beheaded, “so that none of them would deny the faith of Jesus Christ.”111 The remaining three Franks were asked as well to convert to Islam, and upon their refusal, they were sentenced to severe torture and death. The steadfast adherence of all Christians to their faith was marked by a miracle: “As soon as the killing of martyrs began, a great light projected over their bodies at night, one that all the Saracens could observe, and seeing so much light for the true faith of Christ, not one [of the Templars was tempted to] convert.”112 These Frankish renderings could be read as rather transparent attempts to disapprove of Saracen militancy by characterizing it as fundamentally treacherous, underscored by the fact that in the Templar of Tyre version, the Frank who was complicit in the ploy converted to Islam. But Mamluk historians put forth a more complicated picture that sees the meeting of both traditions as the necessary condition for acts of militant devotion and provides a more daring study of those figures who inhabited the linguistically and politically uncharted zone that was created during the siege. First, Muslim chroniclers take pains to portray this episode as one of unusual militant piety, seen perhaps as the advent of the holy war that Baybars was thought to instigate against the Christian Franks. Authors repeatedly mention the role of pious men in the battle, such as the Grand Qadi of the Hanbali school in Damascus.113 They furthermore employ a distinctive religious language to describe the spiritual stakes of the Muslim army. For example, we are told that the “believers,” many of whom died as martyrs, are said to have been put through a major trial (abtala bala’ shadid).114 Last, Ibn al-Furat relates that at the very hour when the Franks finally broke down and requested a truce, the imam in Damascus preached a sermon praying for the “mujahidin” fighting in Safed: “Heads were shorn, voices lowered, and Allah responded to their [prayers].”115 One would expect, therefore, that the actual descriptions of the siege and triumph consist of attempts to establish the superiority of Muslim warfare, but in fact, quite the opposite is true. Mamluk authors juxtapose Baybars’s cunning behavior against the Franks’ steadfast and, at times, suicidal insistence on protecting their castle. The sultan, for example, tries to cause

62

Chapter 2

dissension among the Christian camp by offering the Frankish envoys various goods, which they first take but quickly reject. He then orchestrates a scheme in which the Franks are led to believe that the Atabek, Karmun Agha, is in fact the sultan and that his oath of safe conduct would therefore be observed.116 Mamluk historians agree that even if the sultan consciously conspired against the Franks, in the end, it was the Templars who breached the terms by coming out with concealed arms and valuable possessions, which was an excuse for Baybars to order their death. Ibn al-Furat further recounts that Brother Leon (ifrayir layun), who was part of the scheme, chose to become a Muslim, after which he enjoyed the sultan’s favor and much wealth. But the chroniclers mention another Frankish messenger whom Baybars decided to save; this too, they explain, “was but a plot” meant to inform the Franks in Acre of what had happened in Safed and to create dissention ( fitnah) among their ranks. Indeed, this anonymous bilingual knight sought the protection of the Hospitallers because the Templars accused him of failing to have Baybars swear on the terms of truce. But soon thereafter, we are told, the knight found his death by “the armies of Islam” on a raid, “as God refused him the way [sabīl] to life or an escape from the Muslim swords.”117 Instead of proud displays of bellicose supremacy, in other words, the Islamic narratives of the Mamluk triumph are full of examples of places where the boundaries between the two armies were destabilized. Muslim chroniclers portray both Mamluk and Frankish warriors as belonging to a shared militant culture. Ibn al-Furat, for example, says Baybars granted the Frankish messengers robes of honor (khila’) as a sign of his commitment to their well-being.118 The messengers are then said to have returned to the castle with these robes, which were part of Mamluk and Fatimid courtly culture, typically given to dignitaries when invested with office.119 When the Franks changed their minds and decided to turn down Baybars’s offer, they hurled the robes over the castle walls in a display of their outright contempt of his insulting gesture. Next we hear about the use of certain shawls (manādīl) to confirm the terms of safe conduct: the second time the Frankish messengers arrived, Baybars refused to grant them terms, but the Atabek hands them a mandil, through which the Franks are supposed to understand that, in fact, they can exit the castle safely. The author, in other words, assumes that the Franks would correctly interpret this refined political gesture that was implied by the use of this artifact, despite its infrequent presence in works of popular Arabic literature and folklore.120

Warriors and Border Anxieties

63

In sum, both Frankish and Mamluk accounts do not merely dismiss the validity of those behind enemy lines and instead attempt to explore how the stakes that make up their encounters can be used for the fabrication of two parallel sets of warriors—Templar and Saracen. The Mamluk sources repeatedly stress the praiseworthy refusal of the Templar warriors to accept any terms of submission and portray a battlefield that is inhabited by warriors belonging to one shared militant culture. The Frankish sources, conversely, show a great deal of admiration for the bravery and piety of the Mamluk sultan and do not, therefore, use his figure instrumentally to laud the resistance of those Templar warriors who were killed. The instability of the sultan (having been replaced by a similar-looking emir) and the bilingual friar, rather, help to establish the knights’ witness of martyrdom by having the Saracens subsequently reaffirm and therefore validate the miracle of divine light.

Conclusion The anecdotes that this chapter has brought together all tell the story of the language that authors conjured in order to think about the conditions that made the piety of Near Eastern knights possible and meaningful. To be sure, even in a political environment that encouraged frequent and shifting interreligious alignments, holy knights were tasked with eradicating unbelievers and preventing evildoers from harassing members of their communities.121 Early Western theoreticians of the crusades, such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable, sought to articulate the contribution of the Military Orders to the project of divinely sanctioned warfare in the Holy Land by drawing mostly on an exaggerated satire of secular knighthood and on a hollow caricature of the infidel.122 Beginning with Jacques de Vitry and increasingly during the thirteenth century, however, authors in the Near East chose to portray warriors that were seen to wield the guise, idiom, and prestige of their enemies when performing the knightly ideals of their own community. Jacques de Vitry’s sermons to the Military Orders reflect a weighty shift not only in his attitude toward the idea of militant piety but in the way other authors in the Near East, too, came to think about holy warfare against the backdrop of the political turbulence of the thirteenth century. Together with

64

Chapter 2

a growing anxiety about the fluidity of identities and the instability of cultural boundaries, there emerged a discourse on militant piety that sought to realign and reevaluate questions of similitude and difference. Authors were prepared to conceptualize the range of possible militant practices available to pious warriors by exploring those aspects that they shared with their neighboring cultures, the separation from whom they were expected to define and defend. Holy knighthood, in the eyes of Jacques de Vitry and other contemporary authors, was to “enfold” the Church and to protect (or establish) its identity by defending it from hypocrisy—that is, not by maintaining difference but by learning to offset the dangers of similitude. Like Jacques de Vitry, some authors seized the opportunity to think about holy warriors from both sides through degrees of their affinity. Like the bishop of Acre, however, they also reflected on the perils involved in this proximity, which could prove to be both misleading and dangerous. The remaining chapters of this book will explore further how authors in the Near East circumscribed and exploited this notion of proximity in practices of holy warfare.

Chapter 3

Warrior Mothers: The Coproduction of Pious Chivalry in Romance Literature

The turn of the thirteenth century was a dramatic period in the Near East that inspired authors to alter how they conceptualized the notion of pious warfare. As previous chapters discuss, the turn of the thirteenth century saw a rapid collapse of the Frankish and Ayyubid hegemonies, followed by incessant struggles for political dominion that lasted for most of the thirteenth century. This fragmented political landscape gave rise to the frequent formation of various coalitions across political, religious, and linguistic divides, creating an environment characterized by constant instability and a lack of clear political distinctions. Alongside a growing anxiety about the variability of cultural boundaries, a discourse on militant piety emerged by the 1230s that sought to realign and reevaluate questions of similitude and difference. Where Christians and Muslims regularly joined forces in battle or politics against their respective coreligionists, warriors were no longer only taken to mark and protect lines of physical and political separation. Authors came rather to see the murky waters of questionable loyalties, shifting identities, multilingualism, and unstable appearances as the space within which various, mutually dependent models of pious belligerence emerged. Chapters 1 and 2 attempted to map the stakes that both Christian and Muslim authors had in approaching the question of militant piety by treating mostly historiographical and didactic texts. The present chapter turns to fabulous literature and explores how authors mobilized legendary traditions to reflect on how cultural interactions coproduced both Christian and Saracen warriors in the Holy Land. In particular, this chapter traces the role of women within this mythical literary context as facilitators of cross-cultural

66

Chapter 3

trajectories. I argue that the women pivotal to these tales of pious belligerence provided opportunities for authors to explore the work of sexuality in the conceptualization of communal boundaries and the ability to wield sacred violence.1 The first part of the chapter considers Frankish attempts to appropriate the figure of Saladin, the illustrious Ayyubid sultan, via a compilation of revealing texts. The second part turns to contemporaneous Arabic literature with a focus on a highly popular epic devoted to the life and exploits of Baybars, the renowned Mamluk sultan. I argue that this work, which sought to fashion the historical events of the early Mamluk regime in literary form, provides the context for Frankish narratives about the formation of bellicose sympathies. This chapter, by way of orientation, is bracketed between two well-known Old French narratives: La Fille du Conte du Pontieu and Ordene de Chevalerie (already mentioned in the Introduction). Both are popular stories that circulated widely and have survived independently in a number of medieval versions. But, importantly, both were also interpolated into a rather neglected (for reasons I discuss bellow) mid-thirteenth-century crusade history, called Estoires d’Outremer. In order to assess the role these two important narratives played in the discourse on pious warfare in the East, I devote considerable attention to the provenance of this composite work, in which they became fossilized, and to the circumstances in which it may have been compiled. I will make the following argument: as the basis for his compilation, the scribe responsible for Estoires d’Outremer used a version of the Ernoul-Bernard tradition— a highly widespread history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—that must have circulated in Outremer. After discussing the work that La Fille achieves in effecting a powerful model of oriental chivalry and before returning to Ordene, this chapter works through several middle Arabic war epics, of which Sirat Baybars is the most prominent.

The Daughter of the Count Crosses the Mediterranean A short story in Old French begins on an Iberian back road leading to Santiago de Compostela, where a young lady of aristocratic descent turns into a ruthless warrior. Blinded by rage and shame, she takes up a sword and turns it against her husband, subverting the codes and hierarchies—the very logic— of aristocratic romance literature. This makeshift warrior, the unnamed hero of the short story called La Fille du Conte du Pontieu [The Daughter of the

Warrior Mothers

67

Count of Pontieu] (henceforth La Fille), is portrayed in battle with the social and cultural conventions that define the boundaries of this literary genre. She fails to kill her husband, but her story ultimately destabilizes the spatial, religious, and political foundations that underlie crusading chivalry. The young lady ends up in the Orient and adopts the language and religion of the Saracens while never quite renouncing her own. Her travels eastward, furthermore, result in the travel of the French chivalric tradition to the Levant. In one of the literary climaxes of the story, she orchestrates a battle that involves the collaboration of Christian and Muslim knights, resulting in what could be seen as the rise of a unique form of Outremer chivalry. From the standpoint of Outremer history, then, this tale of the exploits of the count’s daughter functions as a fictional introduction of French chivalric culture to the East. The story of the belligerent young lady, whose travels span the entire Mediterranean Sea, plays a major role in a mid-thirteenth-century work of Outremer history. Estoires d’Outremer combines a narrative survey of the crusading affairs in the East from the early days of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem until the 1230s with various fictional interpolations. One of these interpolations is a largely fantastical biography of Saladin, which claims that the dynasties of both the Ayyubids and the northern French counts of Préaux resulted from the union between a young French lady—the daughter in La Fille—and a Muslim sultan. At the end of this anecdote, the anonymous compiler clarifies the stakes of his entire project: “You have heard this tale [contee] about the lineage and the descent of Saladin, because many people who have heard the Estore d’Outremer [sic] and the making of Saladin into king do not know from which people he was descended [de ques gens il fu estrais]. We want those who read our book to know, but let us now leave him and his deeds and return to our Estore d’Outremer.”2 This tale, in other words, presents the “history of Outremer” as deeply entangled with the biography of the great sultan and warrior Saladin.3 And moreover, this pivotal anecdote instructs those who read Estoires d’Outremer that the accomplishments of the crusading endeavor in the East were largely possible because both Ayyubid and Frankish warrior nobilities were of mixed blood. This chapter, then, first argues that Estoires d’Outremer introduced a new way of thinking about pious chivalry that gives Saladin and the Frankish knights equal agency in initiating each other into varying states of militant spirituality. What is more, this notion that knights in the Holy Land are somehow coproduced is made possible through the work of the French count’s

68

Chapter 3

Figure 3. BnF MS fr. 12203 fol. 4r: “Comment li rois Salehadins fu estrais de la terre de France de par sa mere.”

daughter, thanks to her ability to cross political borders and to inhabit a multiplicity of Mediterranean identities. She is the keystone in the attempts of the compiler of Estoires d’Outremer to produce a history of Outremer chivalry that enjoys the prestige of both Saladin and Picardian nobility. This important composition thus strives to redress the narrative of Outremer chivalry by shifting the focus from its celebrated occidental roots to its Near Eastern context. The compiler of Estoires d’Outremer achieved this subversive notion not only through the interpolation of La Fille into the historical narrative but also by echoing conventions of the literary environment that it inhabited and

Warrior Mothers

69

in which it sought to make a claim. Contemporaneous traditions in the Near East regularly employed the transgressive work of women to deploy political and cultural sympathies. In fact, Arabic popular literature from the Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods often imagines the sacralization of power and space, as well as the rise of new ruling dynasties, through fantasies of miscegenation and migration with powerful women in leading roles. Female protagonists with the ability to generate shifting hybrid identities for themselves form the backbone of contemporary Arabic epic literature. Therefore, in depicting the travel of pious chivalry to the East and its refashioning through the hybridizing inclusion of La Fille, Estoires d’Outremer partakes in a highly established Near Eastern trope. This chapter argues, second, that Estoires d’Outremer also inscribes the history of the literary strategy that underlies its political objective. In other words, Estoires not only makes a case for Outremer chivalry (and, by extension, culture) by invoking a fantasy about its hybrid birth but also performs this fantasy by adopting a language that bears the traces of this very hybridity. It thematizes, that is, both the contact of different literary traditions and the coproduction of neighboring chivalric languages.

Estoires d’Outremer and the William of Tyre Tradition Historians of the Latin Near East have traditionally dismissed works that were suspected of being overly fanciful, including legendary narratives about Saladin’s contacts with Christians. Even those accounts that appear in socalled reliable historical sources are seen as worthy of little attention due to their “fictional” nature.4 Nineteenth-century historian Louis de Mas-Latrie, for example, intimated this attitude in his famous classification essay of extant manuscripts from the William of Tyre family. His system of classification groups manuscripts according to the year in which their account ends. The third class of manuscripts, whose narrative ends in the year 1231, however, has an appendix: “This manuscript [shelf marked BnF fr. 770, previously Bibliothèque Royale 7185–3–3] encloses a history of Outremer that is corrupted [altérée] by the insertion of fables and popular traditions; however, it is clear that the major part of the account [récit] was drawn from good sources. The author had access to an original chronicle from within the Continuations, most likely that of Ernoul.”5 This statement reflects an attitude toward accounts that are deemed historically unreliable held by many historians of the crusades that remains

70

Chapter 3

prevalent to the present day. The manuscript Mas-Latrie dismissed as corrupt (BnF fr. 770), in fact, contains the aforementioned work entitled “Estoires d’Outremer et de la Naissance Salehadin.”6 This text is an ambitious project that has received scant attention from modern critics precisely because of its unpalatable hybridity (both literary and cultural). It devises a notion of Outremer chivalry by stringing together a framework of crusader historiography with fabulous stories that laud the military prowess of Saladin. In large part, the Estoires d’Outremer is quite close to other texts that are part of the so-called William of Tyre tradition.7 However, the redactor of Estoires d’Outremer introduces a number of interpolations into the main narrative—namely, accounts of legendary character that were very likely not part of the original source that Estoires d’Outremer shares with the other manuscripts in this corpus. Similar to the Ernoul-Bernard text, the historical narrative in Estoires begins in the year 1100 and covers the first decades of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. This period is treated in a rather cursory manner (pp. 45–59, 89–98) in comparison to most manuscripts of William’s chronicle, which devote upward of one hundred folios to the period ending with Amalric I’s death in 1174. The narrative in Estoires then shifts gears after Saladin makes an appearance, relating his role in the coup at the Fatimid court in 1169. The bulk of the story—and where most of the unique additional features threaded into the narrative are to be found—revolves around the years leading up to and following the fateful events of 1187. After the death of Saladin, the prose becomes highly condensed and quite confusing, relating the period between 1197 and 1230 in only 16 pages (out of 205, or four folios out of forty-one in the manuscript). The work finally ends with the absolution of Fredric II by Pope Gregory IX in February 1230. As mentioned above, already Mas-Latrie in his 1871 essay acknowledged the relationship between Estoires d’Outremer and the William of Tyre tradition while nevertheless excluding Estoires from serious consideration due to its questionable historicity.8 The anonymous contributors responsible for the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres edition of the William of Tyre’s chronicle and its Continuations also mention the affinity between Estoires d’Outremer and the Ernoul-Bernard recension (which they erroneously designate as the Abrégé).9 They considered both, however, as later renditions of the basic Continuation and thus deemed them inferior in historical accuracy to the text of their edition.10 Gaston Paris, who had an interest in the legend of Saladin in Occidental literature, was also surprisingly dismissive of

Warrior Mothers

71

Estoires d’Outremer as a whole. The prose, he proclaims, presents an inextricable fusion of “foreign” elements and historical narrative in a way that is not characteristic of “a serious chronicler.” There is nothing in this work, he concludes, “that can be of interest either to real history [histoire réelle], or to the history of legend or romance.”11 More recently, a renewed interest in the William of Tyre corpus led to the publication of an edition of Estoires d’Outremer in 1990. The editor, Margaret Jubb, provides a more sympathetic account as to the text’s peculiar combination of historical narrative and legendary anecdotes. Nevertheless, Jubb shares the opinion of her predecessors when discussing Estoires’ narrative practices in the sections that presume to be historical. She states that the redactor’s “carelessness on matters of detail” creates a narrative that is often incomprehensible and at times historically unsound.12 Jubb, too, concludes that “the factual shortcomings call into doubt the status of Estoires as a serious work of history.”13 For our purposes, however, questions regarding the veracity of the historical narrative are of little concern. Rather, the issue is how Estoires d’Outremer represents the attitudes of its day concerning holy knighthood and sacred war against and alongside Saracens. It is therefore crucial to establish the context in which and for whom this text was created.

The Oriental Provenance of Estoires d’Outremer It is impossible to determine with precision the exact place and time this composite work was compiled. Some things, however, are clear. First, while the two extant thirteenth-century manuscripts were probably copied in northern France, both independently draw on a now-lost earlier recension of unknown provenance.14 Furthermore, the composition also integrates a number of previously existing textual anecdotes. Additionally, the basic historiographical framework that the compiler of Estoires used, and into which he interpolated the supplemental material, is quite obviously a version of the so-called Ernoul-Bernard text. This important history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem played a key role in the evolution of Outremer historiography in a complicated way that has recently been untangled by Peter Edbury and Massimiliano Gaggero.15 The nature of the connection between Estoires and this corpus, complicated and inconclusive as it may be, is the key to anchoring, as best as possible, the context in which Estoires came to be.

72

Chapter 3

Ernoul-Bernard is an Old French compilation of Outremer history that survives in eight medieval manuscripts, all of which contain a narrative that begins in 1100 and ends between 1227 and 1232. Scholars have argued about who composed this text, where and when it was compiled, and the nature of its relationship to the historiographical tradition associated with the archbishop William of Tyre.16 What seems to be the case is that a scribe in the early 1230s took several historical accounts of varying lengths and compiled a history of Outremer that spanned the years 1100 to 1227. One of these accounts was penned by Ernoul, Balian of Ibelin’s scribe, and as a result shows an extreme bias toward the Ibelin family. In fact, impartiality toward the Ibelins and more generally toward Frankish political stakes probably characterized Ernoul’s chronicle.17 Soon after this composite history of Outremer was fabricated, a monk, probably in the abbey of Corbie, introduced some minor changes and extended the narrative to 1232. This text is particularly valuable for the period after 1184, when William of Tyre, the foremost historian of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, stopped writing. A further resourceful scribe (probably on the Ile-de-France) then apparently had the idea of combining both texts to form a unified history of the Latin East from the seventh century to 1232. He, in other words, cropped the pre1184 part of the Ernoul-Bernard text and attached it to William’s chronicle, which had been translated to Old French. This composite work, which is known as Eracles, enjoyed tremendous success—it circulated widely, and scribes in various locations extended the narrative into their own times (with 1277 being the longest continuation). Significantly, Eracles also traveled back to the East, where it was copied several times and where scribes created several unique versions of the historical narrative.18 For example, one version (known as Colbert-Fontainebleau, which Edbury dates to the late 1240s) amplified considerably the sections in Eracles that pertain to the Third Crusade, adding an entirely new account for the period after 1205.19 Another scribe, perhaps in the 1250s, further expanded and revised parts of the narrative, producing a version—known as the Lyon Eracles—that reveals a great interest and familiarity with the internal politics of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.20 While all extant manuscripts of the Ernoul-Bernard were copied in the West, there is strong evidence that this work, too, circulated in the East. For example, the Eracles manuscript, BnF fr. 9086 (henceforth: F50), which was copied in Acre in the 1250s, adheres to the Colbert-Fontainebleau version until May 1187, after which it switches to the original Ernoul-Bernard recension until its conclusion in the year 1232. So we can surmise on the

Warrior Mothers

73

basis of the existing evidence that some nonextant copies of Ernoul-Bernard must have circulated in the East and that the scriptorium in Acre produced a number of manuscripts of the text, including unique accounts that, as far as we know, first arrived to the West after the fall of the Kingdom in 1291.21 Since the compiler of Estoires d’Outremer likely used a version of ErnoulBernard as the base narrative framework for the composition, it follows that, at least for the period between 1184 and roughly 1197, it has much in common not only with the extant Ernoul texts but also with most Eracles manuscripts. But Estoires consistently showcases variants that appear exclusively in codices that were copied in the East and that preserve a distinctly Frankish tone. For example, the episode featuring the so-called Green Knight in Estoires is ostensibly close to Lyon Eracles. All versions of the tale, save the one in Estoires, relate Saladin’s failed attempts to conquer Tyre and Tripoli in roughly the same way. As part of this extended episode, Ernoul, as a representative case, recounts that one Christian knight was especially dominant. The Lyon Eracles alone specifies that his name was Sanche Martin, while the other texts only mention his Spanish origin. He wore green armor with a horn of a stag atop his green helmet and rode a large horse in green caparison. Saracens both feared and admired this Green Knight, as they called him—especially Saladin, “who loved nothing more than a good knight.”22 The narrative then describes how Saladin reluctantly lifted the siege on Tyre and turned to attack Tripoli. The Green Knight reemerges a bit later when naval reinforcements from King William of Sicily land on the shores of Acre. Saracens notified Saladin that the Green Knight was again leading the Frankish assaults. The latter invited the knight and offered to give him wealth and lands if he agreed to stay with him. The knight refused and explained that “he did not come to the [Holy] Land to stay with Saracens, but rather he came to help Christianity in ser vice of Our Lord, and that indeed he is committed to hurting [greveroit] them as much as he can.”23 Estoires, on the other hand, combines both parts of the episode pertaining to this knight, in context of the battle over Tripoli. The text describes the peculiar appearance of the warrior but omits the fact that the Saracens called him the Green Knight, as in Lyon Eracles. In contrast to the other versions that claim the knight is Spanish, Estoires alleges he is of Picardian decent and gives his name as Raous de Santiers, specifying, “he was born between Roie and Lyons in the [region of] Santiers.”24 More significant still are the deviations in Estoires describing the knight’s encounter with Saladin. The sultan is said to have stood before the Frankish knight and promised

74

Chapter 3

Figure 4. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore 142 fol. 255r: The Green Knight and Saladin.

him that if he agrees to stay with the Saracens, he will not be asked to fight against the Christians. Rather, he could join the Saracen army and “go with a great many people to conquer [lands] from Saracens . . . and will be put in charge of [Saladin’s] army to guard and to govern.”25 Estoires also relates that the knight refused, explaining that he had taken an oath (fiancer) prior to his departure and that “he did not cross the sea to help the Saracens, but rather to fight and to destroy [grever et confondre] them with all his power, night and day.” Thus, Estoires again includes unique information that makes for a richer account. It provides alternative information regarding the knight’s background and mentions his crusader’s vow. It also states that Saladin offered to let him to join his army with the promise that he would not fight against his coreligionists—a practice that the Ayyubid sultan indeed employed in several occasions, as we have seen in Chapter 2.

Warrior Mothers

75

A further comparison between the stories in Estoires with those in other manuscripts reveals that it is consistently closest to the Lyon Eracles and that it shares what Margret Morgan calls its “parochial” character.26 Both, in other words, display familiarity with internal Ayyubid affairs and are consistently concerned with the struggles among various factions of Frankish aristocracy, maintaining an unequivocal bias in favor of arguably the most influential family in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Ibelins.27 Estoires’ account for the loss of the True Cross in the battle of Hattin is a case in point. Here again, Estoires takes after Eastern codices that voice complete support of the Ibelin family. All versions of the story relate that on the eve of the battle of Hattin, Guy of Lusignan asked Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, to bring the True Cross from Jerusalem to the battlefield.28 Stating that he would rather stay in Jerusalem with his wife, the Patriarch handed the cross to the prior, as a result of which it was lost to Saracen hands.29 Estoires, however, adds more specific details to the story (underlined parts are unique): King Guy summoned the [soldiers] of the land. When he had called them, he took one of his best knights, Balian of Ibelin, and sent him for the True Cross in Jerusalem, so that Christ would make the army stronger, for they all had great trust in it. Balian took with him ten knights to go to get the True Cross in Jerusalem. When he arrived there, he delivered his message to the patriarch, who handed it over to the Prior of the Sepulcher. The patriarch explained that he cannot go, for he . . . feared it too much and would much prefer to stay with his wife, Pasque de Riveri.30 The compiler of Estoires does not say that Heraclius’s behavior is a fulfillment of William of Tyre’s prophecy.31 Rather, he places equal stress on the valiance of Balian as on the villainy of Heraclius, whereas both ErnoulBernard and Eracles dwell only on the latter. Partisanship for the Ibelins strongly suggests that the compiler of Estoires had access to a copy of ErnoulBernard that was circulating in Outremer and that was at the disposal of the scribes who were responsible for the codices copied in Acre around 1250, such as the Lyon Eracles and F50. The additional material that the compiler of Estoires integrated into the work reinforces the impression that he had access to traditions that circulated mainly in the East. One significant variant that Estoires presents is related to the events of 1187. Similar to the Ernoul-Bernard tradition, the

76

Chapter 3

narrator provides a topography of Jerusalem immediately before describing Saladin’s siege on the city.32 This information is missing from all the Eracles manuscripts save one, the abovementioned F50, copied in Acre in the 1250s, which switches in 1187 from the Colbert-Fontainebleau continuation to Ernoul. The description in Estoires, however, is markedly different: it is much abridged, being only a fourth as long as the descriptions found in other versions, but elaborates some parts far more. Among the original details it includes is an account of the streets surrounding the Tower of David and the unique, if somewhat confused, anecdote about Nebuchadnezzar to explain the layout of the city walls.33 What is more, as Paul Riant remarks, while the account in Estoires employs verbs only in present tense, all other accounts use a combination of verbs in present and perfect tenses.34 Riant concludes that the compiler of Estoires must have used an account that was written before the fall of the city to Muslim hands in 1187, while the scribes responsible for the other versions used a later recension of the same text that they embedded in its entirety. A closer look shows that where the Ernoul manuscripts and F50 differ, Estoires consistently follows the text in the latter. This suggests that the compiler of Estoires most likely created an abridgement of the sacred topography on the basis of the same (or kindred) text used by the scribe who copied F50 in Acre. Arguably the most peculiar supplement that the compiler of Estoires integrated into the composition is a story about the battles that Saladin and his kinsmen allegedly waged against the king of Nubia and his allies.35 This long episode, which the compiler threaded into the narrative in four separate installments, is not found in any of the extant versions of Ernoul-Bernard or elsewhere in the William of Tyre tradition.36 As a result, scholars have proclaimed confidently that it is “patently fabulous” and that it must have been drawn from an “oral tradition” of little value.37 But the kernel of the story is in fact based on actual events; despite the lack of any mention in Western sources, the Ayyubid wars in Yemen and Nubia are indeed well documented in Arabic historiography, in both prose and verse.38 The Nubia account in Estoires d’Outremer, then, is likely a romanticized and partly fictional adaptation of the historical account that circulated widely in Arabic chronicles.39 Textual evidence, to sum up the discussion so far, shows that the compiler of Estoires d’Outremer drew primarily on a nonextant version of ErnoulBernard for his account.40 The leaning of the text in favor of the Ibelin family can be ascribed to the same branch of Ernoul employed by the scribes working

Warrior Mothers

77

in Acre. The inclusion of the topography of Jerusalem and the Nubia campaign likewise suggests that the compiler had access to traditions, both oral and written, that circulated in Outremer and that only crossed over to the West after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291. It is therefore clear that the compiler’s deep familiarity and profound investment with the affairs of the Orient granted him access to the literary corpus of the Frankish elite. While it is possible, as both Jubb and Morgan assert, that he worked in a northern French scriptorium, it is rather unlikely.41 What we can say confidently is that whether by birth, through travels (as Mas-Latrie has suggested with regard to Bernard, a monk from the abbey of Corbie, who edited the longer version of the Ernoul text),42 or via contact with others, the compiler was exposed to sources that circulated only in the Holy Land.43 Furthermore, Estoires d’Outremer was clearly created by a person looking to praise the crusading chivalric endeavor in the East and who sought to achieve this by suffusing a (by then standard) historical narrative with textual material intended to alter its literary and political stakes. Which is to say, the work celebrates the supremacy of Outremer chivalry not by reminiscing on its Occidental roots but rather by mapping it onto a textual and literary imaginary that allows it to share in the prestige of various Near Eastern traditions.

The Interpolation of La Fille in the Estoires d’Outremer As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, Estoires achieves this panegyric for Outremer chivalry in large part through an episode that the compiler chose to interpolate at a key point in the historical narrative: immediately after introducing the arch villain of the story, Reynald of Chatillon (pp. 57– 58), and right before the main protagonist, Saladin, enters the plot (p. 98). Fundamentally, La Fille du Conte du Pontieu is a story about the exploits of a young French noblewoman whose crossing of the Mediterranean is imagined to set in motion a process that redefines the possibilities of chivalrous piety. In addition to the version found in Estoires, the tale survives in another thirteenth-century version, as well as in a considerable number of modern adaptations.44 It is unclear which of the two medieval versions is the earliest,45 but we can take for granted that regardless of which version of La Fille was available to the compiler of Estoires, he altered it to fit the historical and thematic framework of his narrative.46 In other words, we need to remain

78

Chapter 3

cognizant that readers of Estoires appreciated La Fille as part of a project whose geographical and political stakes differed from those involved with the stand-alone version.47 A major theme in the story about the unnamed daughter of the Count of Pontieu and her husband, Thibaut of Dombart, is the profound transformation that the protagonists undergo as they crossed the Mediterranean. The tale is structured, in fact, on two transformative peregrinations—the first to Santiago de Compostela and the second to the Holy Land. The first is a penitential pilgrimage on which Thibaut and the count’s daughter embark to break the five-year spell of their barren marriage.48 On the way there, they encounter a band of thieves who bind Thibaut tightly and rape the lady.49 Before the assailants flee, they release her. Instead of immediately freeing her husband’s bonds, she takes a sword that belonged to the thieves and charges toward Thibaut, enraged. He escapes the assault by the skin of his teeth. The question of why the lady chose to perpetrate this unexpected attack is a central crux of the story. When the couple returns home, her father, the count, insists on hearing about the journey. Thibaut reluctantly recounts the affair, and the daughter is asked to explain her assault. She responds enigmatically that she did it “for the same reason that it still pains me that I did not kill [Thibaut].”50 The pilgrimage westward thus proves incapable of healing the daughter from her sorrowful sterility, and she is condemned for her unexplained and ruthless savagery. After hearing about his daughter’s unprovoked attack on her husband, the count seals her in a barrel and casts it into the sea. With this ireful and hasty deed, the tale shifts its orientation eastward. A ship bound “to the land of the Saracens” soon retrieves the barrel. The Flemish merchants on board, surprised to find the lady inside, take her with them and offer her as a gift to the sultan. Meanwhile, the count decides to embark on a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land with his son and son-in-law in order to atone for the sin he committed against his daughter. After serving in the Order of the Knights Templar for a full year, the three men are shipwrecked on their return home and find themselves on the shores of the same Saracen kingdom where the lady now resides. The prose identifies this kingdom as Almeria (“Aumerie”), on the southeastern shores of Spain, which was major center for the trade of slaves and other goods.51 The story clearly invokes this place for its reputation as one of the most cosmopolitan port cities in the Mediterranean, but in Estoires d’Outremer, this kingdom is ruled by Saladin’s great grandfather and is associated with the place where the count

Warrior Mothers

79

performs his Holy Land pilgrimage. Despite this geographical discrepancy, then, as Catherin Croizy-Naquet states, the compiler of Estoires d’Outremer intended for this kingdom, the birthplace of Saladin as we soon discover, to be coterminous with the future Ayyubid Sultanate in the Near East.52 The inevitable reunion between the men and the castaway daughter crystalizes the transformations that all three are seen to undergo as the result of their travels east. The prose begins by tracing changes in the faith and demeanor of the lady. The Flemish merchants presented the mysterious and pretty girl as a gift to the sultan of Aumerie, who later we learn is Saladin’s grandfather.53 He gleans from her appearance that she is a lady of a “gentil” Christian descent, but she agrees when he asks whether she would “leave her religion” to become his wife: “seeing well that it better come from love than by force . . . she renounced [her faith] and relinquished her religion.”54 The couple is wedded “according to the use and manner of the Land of Saracens,” and soon thereafter she bears the sultan two children, a boy and a girl.55 The text emphasizes that her transformation was not a superficial gesture to please her new master. Indeed, we learn that she quickly immersed herself in the local culture and learned the Saracen language since the local people are said to enjoy her pleasant and courteous company. Thus, among the Saracens in the East, the daughter becomes an Arabic-speaking, Muslim princess, whose beauty is repeatedly extolled and who is finally capable of bearing children. What is more, we soon learn that she is now also capable of speaking (and discerning) the truth. The reunion with her French family members reveals that the transition to the East resulted in the rejection of conventional binary identities. When the sultan discovers the shipwrecked men, he incarcerates them and plans to have them killed. The daughter is present when they are brought out one by one. Although she does not recognize her relatives (“covered as [the count] was with a long and furry beard”),56 she discerns their ethnicity and asks the sultan to spare them, telling him for the first time of her own background: “Sire, I am French [jou sui françoise].”57 However, when she later privately interrogates her “prisoners” about what brought them to the East, she warns them to tell her only the truth, showcasing her abilities in sorcery: “I am a Saracen [jou sui Sarrazine],” she declares, “and I know the art of astronomy [art d’astrenomie],58 and I will know full well if you do not tell me the truth.”59 Thus, despite her refusal to disclose her identity to the Flemish merchants and initially to the sultan, the daughter now declares her hybrid identity as both French and Saracen. What is more, even as she finally

80

Chapter 3

realizes who her captives are, she maintains an appearance (samblant) that renders her unrecognizable to them.60 Especially in the presence of the sultan, “the lady held herself [se contenoit] very cleverly, such that no one among the [prisoners] recognized her, neither by word nor by deed.”61 The daughter does not simply conceal her original religion and heritage but rather comes to possess both identities, allowing faith and appearances to intersect in complicated ways. Indeed, the daughter facilitates the integration of both cultures in the midst of the sultan’s court by emphasizing the characteristics of each. When she asks for permission to save the captives, she justifies this request by drawing not only on their shared French nationality but also on their cultural attributes: “Sire, give me this captive (i.e., her father), if you will, for he knows chess and backgammon [tables], as well as many beautiful stories [biaus contes] that we like much.”62 She then insists that the count narrate the events that brought him and his two companions to the East. She seems to value the count specifically for his storytelling and indeed requests that he further relate the story of her own rape. Living up to his promise as a gifted raconteur, the count repeats the charged episode in full detail, thereby bringing the narrative itself to the East. Indeed, at the very climax of the count’s retelling of the story, the daughter—still unknown to her captives—exclaims, “I know well why the lady wanted to do this [i.e., to launch an assault on her husband, Thibault].” She finally explains, “It was as a result of the great shame that she felt because of what had happened to her.”

The Daughter as the Matron of Outremer Chivalry Even as she finally unveils her true identity as the count’s daughter (“you are my father and I am your daughter, on whom you took such cruel justice”),63 all the while keeping her relationship to her French husband a secret from the sultan, the daughter continues to embody the combination of both cultures. The response of her family to this shocking revelation is appropriately ironic—“they were very happy and prostrated themselves before her”—as if acknowledging that their captor is at once their beloved kin and a cunning Saracen princess. Soon, however, we learn that the daughter facilitates the meeting not only of languages and forms of courtly entertainment but, significantly, also of chivalric traditions, as the consequence of the eastbound crossing of the count and his gallant son-in-law unfolds.

Warrior Mothers

81

During their year abroad, the three Frenchmen, we hear, visited the holy sites and served in the Order of the Knights Templar.64 Their piety comes up again as the daughter devises a ruse to leave the sultan’s kingdom and return to France. It turns out that Aumerie is experiencing a period of instability as a result of an invasion by a neighboring ruler. The sultan starts to assemble a large army and prepares to declare war, and it is at this point that the daughter orchestrates a scheme that employs her hybrid identity to its full extent. Her plan is to show the sultan that Thibaut is both a trustworthy and excellent preudom, so that, when she later asks to take temporary leave of the kingdom on a fabricated pretext, the sultan would confidently entrust the Frankish knight with her protection. Unbeknownst to the sultan, she intends to run away with Thibaut, her first husband, and never return to Aumerie. The sultan heeds the woman’s advice and takes Thibaut on the raid, supplying him with “a good horse, armor, and every thing that he needs.”65 The narrator celebrates the irony of this situation: a Christian knight, who only a short time earlier was a member of the Templar Order fighting against the Saracens in the Holy Land, was now serving in the army of a Muslim warlord. The text describes his success: “through the will of Christ, who never forgets those who have faith and a strong belief in him, Thibaut did so well . . . that in a short time all the enemies of the Sultan were subdued.”66 Importantly, Thibaut’s good ser vice to the sultan is rendered by virtue of his piety as a Christian knight and not in spite of it. In fact, although Thibaut is described as a preudom far earlier in the tale, all his previous efforts at combat are either unsuccessful or moot. He fought against the vile thieves on the road to Compostela and, despite killing three, was overpowered by the remaining two (and later nearly murdered by his own wife). Moreover, his military prowess as a knight Templar receives no mention at all. Only when Thibaut joins efforts with the kind sultan as they face “their enemies” does the true quality of his pious belligerence become manifest. The sultan is so impressed by Thibaut’s valor that he tries to persuade the young knight to renounce his faith: “I appreciate your prisoner [= Thibaut] very much,” he says to his wife, “for he served me well. If he wants to abandon [guerpir] his religion [loy] and take ours, I will grant him much land and will marry him richly.”67 But like the so-called Green Knight, Thibaut declines this generous offer.68 The consequence of this entanglement is finally revealed in the very last moment of the tale, when the compiler at last discloses the genealogical and political stakes for interpolating this story into his history of Outremer. The

82

Chapter 3

lady’s ruse, we are told, is characteristically successful, and the Frenchspeaking voyagers head back to Pontieu. But the woman needs to decide what will become of the two children she conceived with the sultan. The whole genealogical logic of this story rests on this decision, which creates a symmetrical dynastic triangle, in which the lady is revealed to be the mother of two legends of Outremer pious warfare. She opts to take her son on the ship sailing back to Europe but leaves the daughter in the East to grow up with the sultan. The girl who remains in Aumarie “grew to be very beautiful”69 and, after marrying, conceives “the mother of the gracious Turk Saladin, who was both chivalrous and wise.” 70 On the other side of the Mediterranean, the boy is baptized upon arriving in France and takes the Christian name William. He marries the daughter of an heirless nobleman and becomes the Count of Préaux.

Two Mediterranean Aristocracies Intertwined This story, then, turns out to reveal the “real” lineage of two historical figures—Saladin and William of Préaux—which is, of course, not incidental. At the end of September 1191, in the midst of the Third Crusade, King Richard the Lionheart set out in Jaffa with a small contingent for a leisurely “hawking expedition.” Nearby Ayyubid troops caught sight of this opportunity and set an ambush for the reckless king. Recognizing the potential for catastrophe should Richard be captured, one of the king’s companions planned a clever decoy. Ambriose, the foremost historian of the Third Crusade, relates that “a worthy and loyal knight, William of Préaux, spoke and said: ‘Saracens, I am Melec’, which means King [in Arabic].” The Saracens naturally seize him and withdraw “rejoicing exuberantly in the belief that they had captured the king.”71 William is praised by his coreligionists for displaying such “rare devotion and commendable loyalty.” The Saracens soon realize that the captive was not who they thought he was but placed a large price for his ransom nonetheless. William spends a year in Ayyubid captivity before King Richard exchanges ten Ayyubid prisoners for his release.72 Estoires d’Outremer admittedly does not relate this episode, but clearly in stating that after arriving in France, the son takes the name and title— William of Préaux—there is an expectation that the reader will have already heard about the exploits of this unusually adventurous knight. The daughter of the Count of Pontieu, therefore, is the ancestral mother of two belligerent

Warrior Mothers

83

dynasties that reside on either side of the Mediterranean, the descendants of which meet in Outremer during the Third Crusade. The very last lines of La Fille establish it as a true prehistory of Estoires d’Outremer for the pivotal encounter between the sultan and Thibault that the daughter orchestrated (in romance) is later mirrored by her alleged descendants—Saladin and William of Préaux (in history). This daughter, who first appears as a reckless fighter and later as a devout military strategist, plays a crucial role in embodying what Estoires d’Outremer sought to achieve as a work of literature. She is able to link French and Saracen cultures through her bilingualism, her taste for stories and courtly culture, her magical capacity to discern the truth, and her ability to travel between religions. Her story establishes the East as a space where Frankish knights can manifest their militant piety through their involvement with the Oriental tradition. She creates the circumstances in which the sultan and Thibault fight together, which prefigures the entangled piety that Estoires d’Outremer attempts to depict via its relation of knights like William of Préaux and possibly Balian of Ibelin to Saladin and its presentation of all these fighters as coproduced by a shared chivalric tradition.

The Literary Climate of Intercultural Women Estoires d’Outremer attempts to recast Outremer chivalry by fashioning a sophisticated appropriation of Saladin’s prestige. It achieves this objective in part by echoing the Near Eastern literary tradition of evoking women to justify the claim to legitimate power of pious warriors, both male and female. This is, however, puzzling as Muslim women very rarely engaged in warfare during the Middle Ages. A few women are known to have been in positions of political power—such as Queen Arwa of Yemen (d. 1138) and Shajar alDurr (d. 1257)—but they are never depicted as leaders in military affairs. In fact, the majority of jurists in the various legal traditions ruled the participation of women in jihad as impermissible.73 Nevertheless, as Remke Kruk has observed, women warriors make a striking appearance in Arabic popu lar fiction about the wars of early and medieval Islam.74 Medieval Arabic societies cultivated a rich tradition of epic cycles (sira, pl. siyar), often comprising thousands of pages, that typically related the exploits of early or pre-Islamic heroes.75 While the oldest manuscripts of the canonical cycles are from the thirteenth century or later, there is little doubt that they

84

Chapter 3

preserve an oral register that is much earlier.76 The language, too, which is a combination of prose and rhymed prose, is at times heavily colloquial and retains the signs of oral performance. Be that as it may, whether as queens, princesses, or sorceresses, warrior women abound in almost all these epic traditions and constitute the main protagonists in some of the most popular ones.77 Female protagonists in these epics not only join in combat themselves, often using magic as their main weapon, but also facilitate the crossing of religious and geographical boundaries that result in the rise of hybrid military dynasties. The work, therefore, that the French count’s daughter does for Estoires d’Outremer in imagining the rise of Frankish chivalry as a hybrid endeavor had particular resonance in view of the literary context in which it circulated. Take, for example, the role of magic in depictions of female warriors. In one of the most dramatic episodes of La Fille, the daughter interrogates her captives about the circumstances that brought them to the East and invokes the trope of the menacing Saracen princess who is versed in the art of magic. In attempts to intimidate the prisoners into telling the truth, the daughter draws on the tactic she knows is most likely to be efficacious with her Western interlocutors: “I am a Saracen,” she tells her own father, “and I know the art of astronomy. Know that you have never been this close to shameful death as you are now, if you lie to me about what I asked you. And I will know full well if you do.” 78 The use of magic is not unusual in Western depictions of Muslim women. In fact, the Saracen princess who practices the fantastic science of magic is a highly popular trope in Western Romance literature.79 But magic as part of a belligerent strategy practiced by female figures is far less common in the West, despite its ubiquity in contemporary Arabic epics. Furthermore, the count’s retelling of the “primordial” attack on the way to Compostela at the daughter’s request evokes the characterization of the woman as a force that violates social order and generates chaos. This inversion is underscored as the count and Thibaut bow in submission when she reveals her true identity. The trope of the powerful Saracen sorceress, so fundamental to the role of women in medieval popular Arabic epics and in folk literature in general, stages female warriors as an elemental force to be both feared and revered. But significantly, in La Fille, as in the Arab epics where women assume leading roles (e.g., Baybars, Dhat al-Himma, Sayf ibn dhi Yazan), the female warrior is an agent of positive change. In other words, although the daughter repeatedly subverts power structures, ultimately she contributes to the unfolding of a new, divine order. In the words of Helen

Warrior Mothers

85

Blatherwick, powerful women in popular Arabic epics are to be assimilated, not conquered.80

Combative Sorceries in Arabic Popular Literature One example will suffice to epitomize the numerous iterations of this character type in the siyar. Without a doubt the sira that features the largest number of female protagonists who wield witchcraft to advance the plot is the relatively late Sirat Sayf ibn dhi Yazan.81 It is the (rather Hephaestian) story of a prince’s return to prominence after his abandonment at a young age by his power-hungry mother. After securing control over Madinat alḤamra, the city his father had founded, Prince Sayf embarks upon a series of adventures that eventually bring him to Egypt, where he accomplishes major feats like diverting the Nile River to its current course and building many cities, including Cairo. He then sets out on a thirteen-year-long expedition in which he repeatedly fights both terrestrial enemies and representatives of evil jinn. Ultimately victorious, the hero finally returns to Egypt, where he divides his sultanate and dies.82 One of Sayf ’s adventures on his way back to Madinat al-Ḥamra begins as he is stranded on a shore and hails a passing merchant ship.83 The sailors take him on board, but the long and agonizing sail ends when a violent storm decimates the vessel, leaving Sayf as the sole survivor. A number of jinns find him on the seashore and bring him to the palace of the local queen, Thurayya al-Ḥamra (lit., the “Red Lantern”). A courtier warns Sayf that the queen is a sorceress, and he must only tell her the truth, which he finally does as he relates the circumstances of his travels. The queen, in turn, takes a romantic interest in her captive but reveals that she has been involved in an ongoing clash with her cousin, Queen Thurayya al-Zarqa (lit., the “Blue Lantern”), who is an equally skilled sorceress but far more malevolent. It turns out that the storm that shipwrecked Sayf ’s vessel was part of a spell that al-Zarqa had cast to deter trespassers to the kingdom. Learning that her spell failed, the vindictive al-Zarqa decides to snatch Sayf and marry him, despite his reluctance. As a result, a full-fledged war ensues between the queens. Al-Zarqa denies kidnapping Sayf and instead plans a ruse: “the queen took a talismanic bowl, filled it up with water and chanted some incantations on it. . . . She then brought the bowl close to King [Sayf] and dripped some of the water on him, saying: leave your human form [al-ṣūrah

86

Chapter 3

al-adamiyyah] and take the form of a crow [ṣūrat ghurāb]; then you will be black, and will have claws and feathers, and wings to fly.’ No sooner had she said these words than King [Sayf] started trembling and quivering, becoming a real crow.”84 To illustrate the shame inherent in this humiliating metamorphosis, the author says that Sayf sought to ask al-Zarqa why she did this to him, “but he could only utter: ‘qaq’ which is the language of the crows, and he was unable to say anything else.”85 The ruse works, but only for a while: the transformed king flies back unrecognized to a garden in al-Ḥamra’s court, and the narrative turns to the exploits of his sons. Sayf is later discovered by the resourcefulness of his (female!) companion, ‘āqiṣa, and restored to human form. Sayf then captures the fleeing al-Zarqa and kills her after she refuses to convert to Islam. This little story stands out relative to the pattern established by the sira up to this point in which repeated altercations between the protagonist and foreign groups result in the conversion of the latter and marriage of Sayf with a local princess. As Helen Blatherwick observes, women in this sira oftentimes symbolize a threatening alterity, and intercultural marriage serves to designate the triumph of Islam and to restore order by assimilating alien cultures.86 In contrast, the episode with Queen al-Thurayya minimizes—and, in fact, ridicules—the male hero and instead stages conflict primarily around the female protagonists. The metamorphosis of Sayf into a crow is not presented as a punishment, but it does clearly frame him as the “Other” in this episode.87 The transcription of Sayf ’s nonhuman speech (“qaq”) allows the reader a sympathetic foray into the perspective of the underdog, since the author states explicitly that Sayf perceives the loss of his ability to communicate as a sorrowful and agonizing insult. Furthermore, only a loyal female sorceress is able to restore Sayf to his “ human form.” This sequence of events, in many ways, silences Sayf ’s voice, and the effort of integrating alien cultures is pursued without him. Significantly, this tale does not present the traditional battle between pious orthodoxy and female sorcery, for Queen al-Ḥamra herself embodies both sides of this binary during Sayf ’s absence from his human form. When initially introducing herself, the queen describes her education in the art of magic. She demanded that four masters of sorcery (arba’ rijāl arbāb kahānah) instruct her in several areas: astronomy, transmutations (taqlīb al-ṣūr), divination, etc. But then, the queen says, she asked them also to teach her about

Warrior Mothers

87

“He who created the heaven and He who rolled out [basat] the earth, and who anchored down the mountains and made rivers flow in between . . . and about He other than whom there is no-one.” As it turns out, the masters refused her inquiries, stubbornly stating that they worship Saturn (zuxal) alone. They subsequently declined her solicitation that they become Muslims and accept the supremacy of Allah. As a result, the queen decides to kill all four masters once she is confident that her training in sorcery surpasses that of her cousin.88 This episode, then, celebrates the triumph of a praiseworthy combination of orthodoxy and magic against the evil power of idolatry, which is represented by the wicked cousin who jeopardizes the very humanity of the hero. In other words, what Queen al-Ḥamra shares with the daughter in La Fille and the many other female protagonists across siyar literature is a sense of the combination of self and Other. In their own duality, they are able to embody the principle that restores—or generates—a new world order. Their victory is achieved by evoking an ambivalent sympathy in the reader, prompting identification with the female warrior despite, or thanks to, her inherent blend of self-Other, order-chaos, and orthodoxy-idolatry. Many siyar do thematize the reversal of gender roles either to emphasize the return to social order when the female submits to the “natural” hierarchy or to vilify females who refuse. In contrast, as we have seen, what La Fille shares with Sirat Sayf ibn dhi Yazan is a plot that revolves on sympathy for the female protagonist in her inherent subversive quality. The classic theme of marriage as a way to subdue alterity is inverted here. In the case of the count’s daughter, her marriage to the sultan inspires reverence and fear, coupled with sympathy. The union results not in the restoration of social order but rather in the expansion and refashioning of the realm of pious chivalry. In these tales, marriage functions as a mechanism to produce hybrid dynasties, whose claims to power are indebted to their convoluted pasts. This principle works especially forcefully in the sira that is closest, geographically and politically, to Estoires d’Outremer: Sirat al-Malik al-Zahir Baybars.

The Mother Warrior Dynasties in Sirat Baybars Sirat Baybars certainly ranks among the most widespread works in the Arabic literary tradition. While most manuscripts are early modern, the epic seems to have circulated frequently in Mamluk Egypt and Syria during the

88

Chapter 3

late Middle Ages.89 Unlike most epics that frame their events and pseudohistorical characters in the context of the pre- or early Islamic past, Sirat Baybars belongs to a subset that takes contemporary events as their literary springboard. The sira traces the life and ascension of the first monumental Mamluk sultan, Baybars, who ruled from 1260 until his death in 1277, as a pretext to deploy a story about the rise of the Mamluk regime in its encounter with multiple internal and external enemies. Unlike most popular siyar that revolve around an iconic confrontation between the eponymous hero and a rivaling tribe or kingdom, Sirat Baybars features many “Others.”90 While much of the plot unfolds in the centers of Mamluk rule and trade— Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus—the story includes multiple excursions across the Mediterranean, including key episodes that take place in Italy, Provence, Byzantium, Iberia, and even England. Accordingly, the story features frequent encounters with the various religions and ethnicities that inhabited the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages, including Jews, Christians, Shia Muslims, Mongols, Turks, and Persians. The sira is a composite text with a complicated (and largely undecipherable) composition history. But as Thomas Herzog has contended persuasively, the core of the story must have been conceived in the late thirteenth century when the Mamluk sultanate had not yet consolidated power and was ardently seeking political legitimacy.91 In November 1249, the celebrated Ayyubid sultan, Salih Ayyub, died and was temporarily succeeded by his wife, Shajar al-Durr, who had been his slave in her youth. Shortly thereafter, Turanshah, their son, took the throne, but in May 1250, a group of ambitious emirs conspired to assassinate the young ruler. So, stemming from a coup d’état led by commanders of the Egyptian army in the wake of the victorious Seventh Crusade, the Mamluks were accused of usurping the sultanate from the Ayyubids.92 Aware of this allegation, the emirs decided to appoint Shajar al-Durr, al-Salih’s widow, as the first Mamluk sultana, probably in effort to devise a sense of continuity with regard to the previously overthrown regime. Additionally, Shajar al-Durr was an appropriate choice precisely because, like her new political patrons, she was a slave who rose to power and not an heir from a royal or aristocratic dynasty. She was then forced to marry the next sultan, Izz al-Din Aybak, who ruled amid a series of disputes between competing parties of Mamluks, until he was murdered in 1257.93 The next sultan, Sayf al-Din Qutuz, was assassinated in 1261 by Baybars himself, who immediately thereafter ascended to the throne until his death. The first decade or so of Mamluk rule, therefore, saw a

Warrior Mothers

89

succession of political assassinations that increased instability and made it all the more difficult for reigning sultans to justify their claims to power.94 The sira stylizes the biography of Baybars in ways that are clearly meant to address these difficulties. First, while the plot traces the succession of rulers in the early years of the Mamluk sultanate in considerable detail, Baybars is distanced (and hence exonerated) from any involvement in the assassinations. What is more, he is given a completely fabricated genealogy. As son of the exiled king of Khorasan, the future sultan was given the ostensibly Muslim name Mahmud at birth. His jealous uncles, however, kidnaped Mahmud/Baybars at a young age and, invoking the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, hurled him into a deep pit. Soon thereafter, the boy was rescued and brought safely to al-Sham, where he was adopted by a wealthy widow.95 As a Mamluk, he slowly rose up the hierarchy of the Syrian army until he finally came to the attention of the reigning Ayyubid sultan and his wife, Shajar al-Durr, who insisted that they, too, adopt him: “you and I are both without heirs,96 and if you were to have an heir then he is right in front of you; and I wish that you make this slave-boy [ghulaam] our son, for by Allah he is brave and chivalrous and so is more worthy [to inherit] our rule.”97 As Herzog points out, this fabricated biography ascribes to Baybars a mixed heritage. As a slave who was brought to Syria, he is imagined to be of royal, Muslim descent, and at the same time, he is heir to the last Ayyubid ruler of Egypt. In her request to adopt the slave-warrior, Shajarr al-Durr is cast by the sira as the producer of the hybrid dynasty through which the Mamluks could claim political continuity, religious authority, and geographical territory. What is more, as the first Mamluk sultana, she is seen to establish an important pattern fundamental to the new political language of the Mamluks. The claim to power of the slave warriors is thus supported by the fantasy that they are descendants of a hybrid dynasty that merges local and foreign culture. Indeed, in the sira, Baybars is not the only figure with a convoluted genealogy. The narrative, in fact, is preoccupied with the mixed heritage of most of the central warrior figures; much effort is spent on the descriptions of mothers who embody the intersection of two (or more) cultures and thereby fulfill this prevailing precondition for pious belligerence. One of the leading protagonists in the story, Arnus, is a perfect exemplar. The backstory of this important warrior involves both a hybrid heritage and repeated travels across the Mediterranean between Egypt and Genoa, resulting in his experience with an array of different religions, cultures, and languages.

90

Chapter 3

This important part of the story begins when the king of Genoa (alRin Hanna’) sends his ill daughter, Maryam al-Zunariyyah (= the girded, or girdler), to Alexandria and vows to send her on pilgrimage to Jerusalem if she is cured. After her health is restored, Maryam is en route to the Holy City and meets Ma’ruf, the Isma‘ili sultan and Baybars’s chief political collaborator in Jaffa. The two fall in love at first sight. They get married after Maryam converts to Islam following a dream that she interprets as a sign.98 After falling ill again, Maryam moves with Ma’ruf to a monastery (dayr alshaqīq),99 where she conceives his child. Hearing of this, the king of Genoa is enraged and looks to bring his daughter back home. He seeks out the help of Juwān, the arch villain in the sira, who devises a ploy to bring Maryam back to Genoa. The plan seems to work, but a storm on the way forces the galley to stop at an island. Here Maryam goes into labor and delivers a boy, whom she names Muhammad Sayf al-Din ‘Arnus.100 Maryam is then forced to abandon the baby and resume the trip to her father’s home. Thus, the story involves the daughter of a Christian king, who converts to Islam and gives birth to a son of dual royal blood (in this case, Isma‘ili and Genoese), echoing the origin stories of Saladin, William of Préaux, and Baybars. Back in Genoa, Maryam refuses to renounce her new faith and instead retires to the “prison of griefs [sijn al-ḥasarāt],” where she insists on staying, refusing proper nourishment, “until my son is brought to me.”101 The plot then turns to other dramatic events in Genoa (Sultan al-Salih raids Genoa to release Baybars, who had also been abducted by Jawan) and in Damietta (the surge of the Seventh Crusade led by four European kings). When the story returns to Arnus, we learn that he was found abandoned on the island and brought up by Kinyaar, king of Catalonia/Aragon, whom Arnus believes is his father. At the present, Arnus seeks the hand of Princess Shumūs, but in order to obtain her father’s consent, he must kill the “king of Islam.”102 As he heads east en route to Egypt accompanied by forty Portuguese princes, Arnus meets Ma’ruf but refuses to believe that he is his real father. He proceeds to carry out various battles against Muslim emirs and to lay siege on Aleppo, hoping that its fall will lead to the conquest of al-Sham and Egypt. However, in an abrupt twist characteristic of the sira, Arnus has an ominous dream and converts to Islam. As a result of his conversion, Arnus accepts Ma’ruf as his father, who tells him of his true genealogy: “know, my son, that you are related to the Imam who shattered the idols and who cleansed the holy precinct, the Zamzam [the Well in Mecca] and the place [of the Prophet’s grave],” all of which

Warrior Mothers

91

are clear references to the Prophet Muhammad.103 Mar’ruf continues, “and your mother is queen Maryam al-Zunariyyah, the daughter of King Ḥannah the ruler of Genoa.”104 The recently converted warrior is thus presented as a descendent of both Muhammad and Genoese royalty.105 But even as he returns to the religion of his birth and becomes one of the most prominent heroes of the sira, there are frequent reminders that Arnus’s identity is deeply convoluted and in constant flux. Take, for example, the circumstances that led to his conversion. As mentioned above, Arnus wakes up from a dream and proclaims the shahaadah. He relates that he saw “a brave hero [shujā’]” with a sword in his hand who instructed him to “surrender.” This man, who was “the reason [sabab]” for his conversion, turns out to be Ali ibn abi Talib, the prophet’s cousin and the fourth Rightly Guided Caliph.106 The authority on which this pivotal conversion hinges, then, is certainly part of the Islamic tradition but one that was frequently associated with heretical movements that were persecuted by Mamluk orthodoxy.107 Another short anecdote reveals the centrality of Arnus’s mixed heritage in how he is imagined to be part of Mamluk militant aristocracy. In Cairo, Arnus has an audience with the sultan, but his appearance irritates one of the jealous courtiers (Idmur al-Bahlawān), who complains to the local ulama’/jurists, “What do you make of someone who has converted from heresy [kufr] to Islam but has not stripped away his Christian attire [thiyāb]?” The jurists rule that Arnus must be forced to remove his gown (badlah), “for it is a dress that belongs to the people of heresy.” The sultan reluctantly accepts the ruling and bestows Arnus with one of his own precious habits, but that night, having worn the dress all day, Arnus wakes up ill and is unable to make audience the next morning. The sultan finally makes an exception and allows Arnus to wear his “Christian” habit and headwear in the fashion of “foreign kings.”108 At the same time, the sira consistently presents Arnus as a highly pious warrior. Once, for example, he shared a prison cell with a certain Qara Aslan (the son of the king of Morocco) and takes an interest in his nightly prayers. Arnus asks to study “the eternal speech of God [kalāmu Allahi alqadīmu]” and quickly learns to recite the Quran most beautifully. One day, Tuḥfat al-Rūm (lit., the “Treasure of Rum/Byzantium”), the daughter of the king who had imprisoned the two men, walks by the prison and is bewitched by Arnus’s beautiful Quran recitation. She has him brought to her chamber, converts to Islam herself, and helps Arnus and Baybars fight the Christians.109 Much later in the sira, another daughter of an enemy king (curiously also named Tuḥfat al-Rūm) falls in love with Arnus and converts

92

Chapter 3

to Islam in order to marry him. The two proceed to convert the whole kingdom (madīnat al-rukhām; the “City of Marble”) and to destroy churches, erect mosques, build institutions of religious learning (madaris), and teach the inhabitants how to pray and practice the Islamic faith.110 The sira depicts Arnus as a foremost Muslim warrior but constantly reminds the reader that his militant prowess and chivalrous character are the result of his destabilized, hybrid identity, made possible through the conversion of his mother, Maryam, the Muslim Genoese princess. Arnus’s story cements a central pattern in the sira, in which the form of chivalry most prized is attained through a complicated combination of transversals that repeat throughout the narrative. Protagonists in the sira, including Baybars himself, are often seen both to produce and to be produced by dynasties that originated with the religious—and often cultural and linguistic—conversion of a powerful woman, like Shajar al-Durr or Maryam al-Zunariyyah.

Conclusion Maryam, Shajar al-Durr, and many other women in Sirat Baybars underwrite the Mamluk aspiration for pious power, which is profoundly dependent on a sense of dynastic instability. In the Mamluk imaginary that the sira animates, pious warfare is always the product of geographic and often religious displacement. More generally, this source of agency speaks to the basic principles of authoritative power in siyar literature at large. While most siyar rehash chapters from early or pre-Islamic history, their vast popular appeal in the late medieval Near East has much to do with the fact that questions of conflict between Islam and its enemies continued to occupy the collective consciousness. The basic plotlines of many siyar deal with the attempts of Arab tribes to integrate neighboring societies into their own dominion and thus to expand the Islamic faith. These efforts rarely take the form of bloody massacres or forced expulsions; rather, the siyar usually portray a more complicated story in which conflicts result in the redrawing of political borders and a creative refashioning, rather than silencing, of existing values. Indeed, the convoluted and often surprising manifestation of power is frequently the very subject matter that underlies these vast epics. It is not a surprise, then, that women play a crucially important role in how Arabic epic literature from this period imagines the crafting and wielding of sacral violence. In their perceived subversivism and ability to accommodate multiple traditions, women

Warrior Mothers

93

as warriors and/or mothers are instrumental in producing the circumstances necessary for the rise of the new pious, militant postures. In that sense, Estoires d’Outremer not only makes a case for the sacrality of Frankish chivalry by imagining its interdependence with Ayyubid knighthood but also—whether intentionally or not—pays tribute to one of the most popular ways of articulating sacral power in the Near East. This compiled text invites its readers to imagine the Holy Land as a site that produced two inherently interdependent chivalric traditions, both of which go back to the same matriarch. In its narrative logic, the French daughter’s defining transversal of spaces, religions, and languages accounts equally for the very possibility of the “chivalrous Turk Saladin,” as well as for such revered Frankish warriors as William of Préaux and Balian of Ibelin. But in order to drive this notion home, the compiler of Estoires d’Outremer chose to interpolate yet another story into the narrative, with which this chapter concludes. This anecdote, known in the literature as Ordene de Chevalerie, too, has a complicated and hotly debated compositional history.111 As mentioned in the Introduction, many scholars view this short story as a crucially important milestone in the sacralization and solidification of medieval chivalry. But the vast majority of studies on the subject are based on a versified version of the story that circulated independently in France and England during the late Middle Ages. Estoires d’Outremer, in contrast, features a prose version of this story that is different in several significant ways, among which the most important is how it ends. The plot (in both versions) takes place allegedly at Saladin’s court, where the sultan has detained a number of celebrated Frankish knights defeated in a battle near Beaufort in 1179.112 When speaking to one of these knights, Hugh of Tabarie, Saladin makes an unusual request: “I pray to you and ask, in the faith that you owe your God, that you teach me how one becomes a knight in the Christian Law [a la loi crestiene].”113 Despite Hugh’s predictable reluctance (“God forbid that I hold such a faulty body as yours responsible for such a lofty thing as the order of chivalry”), he agrees to teach Saladin the secrets and meanings of Christian knighthood by walking him through the various steps of the dubbing ritual. It is in their discussion of the final stage in the process, the accolade, that the two versions of the story—the one that circulated independently in the West as opposed to the one that was interpolated in Estoires d’Outremer— differ most dramatically. In the Western, versified recension, after Hugh explains the significance of this step (“[the accolade stands for] remembrance of the person who dubbed [adoube]

94

Chapter 3

him to chivalry, and ordained [ordene] him”), he stubbornly refuses to carry it out.114 The strike of the sword on the shoulder is meant to inscribe the inherent hierarchy between a lord and the knight he initiates, and therefore, Hugh explains, it would be inappropriate for him to do that to his own captor. As a result, Saladin in this version is imagined to show great reverence to Christian knighthood and even attempts to become one, but ultimately this potential remains unfulfilled. The version of Ordene de Chevalerie in Estoires take a dramatically different path. Here, Hugh reluctantly agrees to grant Saladin this “gift”; he deals the sultan a blow on the neck and declares, “Ha, God makes you a preudoume.”115 The accolade, Hugh explains, is meant to remind the knight of the “honor, and [the person] from whom one takes on chivalry.”116 The sultan then says, “Blessed be he who established the [order of] chivalry, and whoever loyally maintains it,” to which Hugh replies, “Sire, it was God himself [who established chivalry in order] to exalt the Holy Church and to maintain justice.”117 In this version, then, Saladin fully appareled and armed as a Frankish warrior does in fact become a knight of Christ, whom he is taught to remember and to honor. The story seems deliberately to exploit the tension that is created between the religion that the sultan continues to profess—Islam—and the chivalric tradition that he is now seen to adopt. In the context of the compilation in which the story is interpolated, this event stands as an outcome of the process that began with the daughter of the Count of Pontieu, whose crossing to the East created the circumstances that first intertwined the two traditions. The fantasy of the sultan’s dubbing as a Christian knight, in other words, epitomizes the profound hybridity that underlies Outremer chivalries. The “chivalrous Turk Saladin” and his Christian counter parts, such as William of Préaux and Balian of Ibelin, are coproduced by both cultures thanks to their shared transgressive matriarch. Estoires invites its readers to imagine the Holy Land as a site able to produce two inherently interdependent chivalric traditions, due to the primordial ancestress who negotiated Frankish and Saracen spaces, religions, and languages. Compiled in the middle of the thirteenth century, Estoires d’Outremer is an attempt to rehabilitate the prestige of crusading in the Holy Land at a time when support for the project in the West was flagging. Indeed, the composition does not strive to appeal to the predictable tastes and sensibilities of European readers. Rather, it redresses pious warfare in the East by rooting it inextricably to an Oriental setting and framing the crusader effort as

Figure 5. BnF Fr. 770 fol. 327v: Saladin fully armed as a Frankish warrior.

96

Chapter 3

a return to a site whose origins it shares with other, neighboring projects of sacred power. This message is made more powerful by evoking the highly widespread Arabic trope that underwrites regional attempts to justify the claim to power of local aristocracies. The tapestry of oriental fighters—from Balian to Baybars to Saladin—that animate these stories all owe their militant virtuosity to female protagonists like the daughter of the Count of Pontieu and Shajar al-Durr, whose inherent hybridity make the pious use of violence possible—and whose literary efficacy is possible through the mutual dependence of the narratives on Eastern and Western tropes. In conclusion, it is certainly true, as scholars have argued, that compositions such as Estoires d’Outremer invoke the figure of Saladin in order to extol—and perhaps, in some contexts, to exonerate—Christian knighthood by associating it with the Saracens’ triumphant and famed chivalry. Audiences of such works across the centuries in the West celebrated the fact that, although the sultan had dealt a fateful blow to the crusading endeavor in the East, he was ostensibly enchanted by the institution of Christian knighthood and sought to draw as close to it as possible. What I argue in this chapter, however, is that within a Near Eastern context, these narratives about fabulous encounters between Muslim and Christian warriors provided a new opportunity for thinking about the kinds of cultural interactions and exchanges possible in the Holy Land. Estoires d’Outremer represents one example of a genre of narratives that reflect on the Holy Land and the eastern Mediterranean as a site of codependence, in which Christian and Muslim warriors are established through sharing an interpretive and cultural space.

Chapter 4

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East: The Immigration Movement

In the spring of 1211, a large group of Jewish immigrants from France reached Acre.1 The leaders of this unusually large movement were notable religious authorities, who were widely known as exegetes in Europe prior to their departure.2 In Palestine, the French-speaking immigrants first settled in Jerusalem,3 but following the destruction of the city’s fortification by the Ayyubid prince al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam in 1219, most of them resettled in Acre.4 As a result, the acting capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem came to house a vibrant community of European Jews, toward which subsequent immigrants, both individuals and groups, continued to gravitate throughout the thirteenth century.5 The first generation of immigrants arrived at a time of political turmoil in the Near East. As previous chapters illustrated, around the turn of the thirteenth century, both the Ayyubid Sultanate and the Frankish kingdom experienced a rapid process of disintegration that created constant instability and an incessant battle for political domination. With the weakening of these regional hegemonies, there appeared an ever-shifting network of alliances that extended beyond traditional political, linguistic, and religious boundaries. Moreover, the political landscape was characterized by the formation of ad hoc pacts between Muslim princes and semi-independent Christian lords in the face of either internal or external threats. On all sides of the political divide, however, contenders drew regularly on a bellicose and polemic language of Holy War. Both Christian and Muslim authors invoked a language of spiritual militancy that came to delineate physical, devotional, and hermeneutical boundaries with an imagined or real enemy. While the newly arrived Jewish immigrants were neither

98

Chapter 4

equipped nor trained for physical combat, they also employed an elaborate language of Holy War—strongly resembling that of their Muslim and Christian counterparts—to account for their own political and spiritual claim over the Holy Land. The first wave of Jewish immigrants laid the intellectual and spiritual foundations for thinking about the pious presence of Jews in the Land of Israel through the use of a belligerent literary and theological framework. The legacy of those founding fathers later became the spiritual and intellectual backbone for subsequent attempts to articulate these notions. This chapter begins by exploring the different ways in which a physical existence in Palestine became meaningful and ritually significant for both the pioneers who settled in Acre and their descendants. Each generation, I argue, added an interpretive layer to the discourse on sacred violence and the way this discourse was mapped onto a material and political appreciation of the Holy Land. To be sure, there is no indication that those involved in these movements were trained or equipped to undertake any type of warfare, nor did they cultivate an expectation that their decision to reside in Palestine would bring about the arrival of the messiah in the immediate future. Nevertheless, the Eu ropean Jewish immigrants chose to employ a language that portrayed, if only allegorically, their engagement with, and commitment toward, the Holy Land in overtly belligerent and apocalyptic terms. What is more, many of the texts about the messianic wars that were imagined to take place as a result of the immigration to Palestine made sophisticated use of both Christian and Muslim figures to play important roles in the spiritual and physical drama. The foundational ideas of the immigrants provided the basis and justification for two parallel traditions that evolved over the course of the thirteenth century. One advanced what I call a hermeneutical messianic posture, which portrayed an exegetical “warfare” over the Land of Israel. This tradition was heavily influenced by the teaching and methodology of Nahmanides (d. 1270) and associated the arrival of the messiah with a certain exegetical appreciation of the biblical landscape. However, because this tradition does not employ representations of warfare except in a highly allegorical sense, we shall not deal with it here. The other tradition centers on the figure of the martyred King Messiah, who is imagined to wage war in order to purify the Land of Israel and is portrayed through a loaded encounter with his mythical nemesis. This belligerent messianic posture dwells on the ritualistic role of participants in the effort to bring about the messiah,

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

99

recognize his arrival, and fight alongside him. In this latter tradition, authors throughout the thirteenth century made repeated use of early medieval apocalyptic literature but altered the older texts in order to fit them to their political and spiritual outlooks. This chapter will unfold in three parts. We begin by reviewing the patterns of Jewish settlement and immigration to Syria and Palestine before and during the early crusading period, examining the historical background that motivated the large-scale immigration of 1211. The second part traces the ways Jewish commentators perceived the political circumstances in the Near East that made their immigration possible and examines the language that they chose to make their presence there meaningful. The last part of the chapter then turns to the heart of the ideology that animated this group in its relocation to the Land of Israel with a focus on a foundational treatise entitled Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog.

Jewish Communities and Communal Life During the Early Frankish Period Both Christian and Muslim reports relate the outcome of the siege on Jerusalem in a somber language, although the sources disagree on the number of casualties.6 After five weeks of siege, the walls of the city were finally breached in July 1099, and crusading forces stormed into the city. The majority of Jerusalem’s inhabitants—Jews, Muslims, and some Eastern Christians—were slaughtered or taken captive. Sources relate that some Jews fought alongside Muslims against the crusading army and that the Jews who assembled in the synagogue were all burnt alive.7 Jewish communities in Haifa and Hebron, which crusading forces conquered in subsequent years, appear to have suffered approximately the same experience: some participated in the efforts to protect the walls and fortresses while others, who failed to escape in time, were either slaughtered by the storming armies or taken into captivity.8 Immediately after founding the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Franks reinstated the Byzantine edict that had banned both Jews and Muslims from residing in the Holy City of Jerusalem. For the first few decades of the twelfth century, this policy may have been observed rigorously, taking to mean that Jews were denied entrance into the city altogether.9 But genizah documents reveal that soon thereafter, a small number of Jews were allowed to reside and work in Jerusalem. Both Benjamin of Tudela and Petahia of Regensburg,

100

Chapter 4

Jewish merchants who visited Palestine during the 1170s and 1180s, mention several Jewish families who worked as painters in ser vice of the king.10 However, apart from this exclusionary policy with regard to the city of Jerusalem, the Crown implemented a markedly tolerant policy toward Jewish inhabitants elsewhere. While the arrival of the Franks to the Near East involved significant struggle, the indigenous Jewish communities in Palestine and Syria recovered quite quickly.11 In fact, given that neither the academy (yeshiva) nor the majority of Jews in the region had been residing in Jerusalem since the Seljuk conquest of 1071, in practice, the fall of the city was of little material significance to the Jewish community.12 The majority of Jewish captives were eventually ransomed for a price that the communities in Ashkelon and Tyre were able to raise, and economic ties with the traditionally wealthier Jews in Egypt gradually resumed.13 By around the third decade of the twelfth century, most communities had either recovered or completed their relocation, and overall, the Jewish population in Syria and Palestine benefited from the rise in trade, the investments in infrastructure, and the relative safety that came with the consolidation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.14 What is more, thanks to the Frankish occupation of Palestine, travel to the East from Europe during the twelfth century became easier and safer than ever before. As a result, after coming to a halt for around fifty years, the centuries-old tradition of Jewish pilgrimage to Palestine and its surroundings reemerged as a practice. A steady stream of Jewish visitors from both Iberia and Ashkenaz headed toward the Land of Israel, many of whom documented their travel in lengthy accounts that were later disseminated widely in the West.15 As Elchanan Reiner claims, these accounts of pilgrimage to shrines around Palestine very much mirror the new genre of Latin itineraria, travel accounts that detail the experiences of Christians travelers in this newly accessible sacred space.16 Among the celebrated Jewish figures who visited the Holy Land during the twelfth century are Benjamin of Tudela, Petahia of Regensburg, Jacob b. Nathaniel ha-Cohen, and, of course, Maimonides. However, despite these favorable conditions and the increase of the Christian population of the kingdom through the arrival of immigrants from western Europe, very few Jews chose to resettle permanently in Palestine during the twelfth century. In fact, the only high-profile intellectual who immigrated to Palestine was R. Judah Ha-Levi, who set out from Iberia in July 1140.17 Ha-Levi probably reached Acre in the spring of 1141 and spent

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

101

the last few months of his life there.18 A longing for the promised land and the maritime voyage eastward were major themes in his poetic corpus. In the Book of the Kuzari, his major philosophical work, Judah Ha-Levi lays forth a systematic argument in favor of Aliyah (the immigration of Jews to Israel), which he grounds on a set of assumptions regarding the divine nature of the land and its unique relationship with the Jewish people.19 Although he ends the book by presenting the Khazar king with a powerful apologia of Aliyah, neither in the Kuzari nor elsewhere did Judah Ha-Levi attempt to set forth a popular immigration movement.20 Rather, he perceived immigration east as an act of personal devotion that one carries out alone; accordingly, he embarked upon his journey unaccompanied.21

Immigration to Palestine in the Thirteenth Century The early thirteenth century saw a profound shift in the pattern of Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. Far greater numbers of Jews chose to head eastward than in previous centuries, settling in Jerusalem and then in Acre. More important, those who did employed a new and different language to justify their move and to describe their perceptions of it. The first wave of immigrants hailing from the south of France reached Jerusalem during the first decade of the thirteenth century.22 Participants in this movement were all disciples of Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquieres (RAbaD) (d. 1197), who had composed a treatise on religious precepts associated with the Land of Israel.23 A subsequent group of French scholars who headed to the East was led by Jonathan ha-Cohen of Lunel.24 Together with Samuel b. Samson, who had documented the journey, they reached Palestine in the summer of 1209 and conducted a comprehensive pilgrimage to holy tombs in the region.25 The largest and best documented wave of immigration to Palestine was the group of three hundred who arrived in the spring of 1211. 26 They traveled eastward in at least two separate sets— one crossing through Egypt and another heading directly to Palestine.27 A sixteenth-century Hebrew chronicle reports: “In the year 1211 the Lord has incited the rabbis of France and England to head toward Jerusalem, and there were over three hundred among them. The King [of Jerusalem] paid them much respect and they erected synagogues and places of religious learning. Our rabbi, the high priest, R. Jonathan ha-Cohen also went there. A miracle happened to

102

Chapter 4

them: they prayed for rain, and were granted, and they sanctified the Name of God.”28 The leading figures in this movement were R. Samson b. Abraham of Sens29 as well as R. Joseph b. Baruch and his brother Meir of Clisson, all of whom were disciples of R. Isaac b. Samuel of Dampier.30 By the time of their arrival, there had already been a number of French scholars living in Jerusalem alongside a community of local Jews and a community of Jews of North Africa descent.31 By 1219, however, following the destruction of the city’s fortification by the Ayyubid ruler al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam, the majority of Jewish inhabitants resettled in Acre.32 While some of those who reached Palestine around 1210 to 1211 chose to return to Europe after only a few short years in the East, many others became established in Acre. Over the course of the thirteenth century, both individuals and groups were drawn to the city, becoming part of the multilingual and influential community.33 The most famous of these is Nahmanides (d. 1270), one of the most influential Jewish commentators in late medieval Europe and a famed kabbalist. Driven to leave Iberia after his famous disputation in Barcelona, Nahmanides reached Palestine in 1267.34 While in Jerusalem and Acre, he penned some of his most impor tant compositions. Furthermore, he had a profound impact on the intellectual communities in Acre— both rabbinical and kabalistic—as we shall see shortly.35 Some of the best-known intellectuals who headed to Palestine did not reach their destination. R. Yehiel b. Joseph, who was head of the yeshiva of Paris and participated in the famous disputation that led to the burning of the Talmud in 1240, left for Palestine around 1258.36 Upon reaching Greece, however, the elderly rabbi became ill and was forced to disembark the ship.37 He later returned to his home in Paris, where he died around the year 1260.38 R. Meir b. Baruch of Rothenberg was also unsuccessful, suffering a tragic end after embarking upon a journey with the intent to settle in Acre.39 This vocal advocate for the value of observing supplemental precepts in the Land of Israel set out on the journey eastward together with a large contingent of disciples and family in 1286.40 However, an unfortunate encounter in northern Italy with the count of Gortz led to his imprisonment. He was then handed over to King Rodulf of Germany and was kept incarcerated until his death in 1293.41 Why did so many Jews seek to make Palestine their home in the thirteenth century? Scholars have offered a range of explanations. Henri Gross asserts that economic hardships and severe persecution must have propelled

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

103

Jews out of western Europe toward the East.42 This opinion was refuted by Samuel Krauss, who demonstrates that at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Jews in northwestern France were not subjected to extraordinary oppression.43 Instead, he suggests that the Maimonidean controversy and its ramifications—an event that sent shock waves throughout the Jewish intellectual world during the early decades of the thirteenth century—must have been the main impetus behind the movement. Its core purpose, Krauss concludes, would have been to visit Maimonides’s tomb and to restore peace in the Jewish world.44 Other scholars argue that it is rather theological considerations that drove Jews to Palestine in large numbers and shaped their ideological profile.45 Ephraim Kanarfogel, for example, suggests the immigration wave resulted from the increased claim of legal rulers that the commandments could only be fulfilled in Israel.46 Historian Israel Yuval, in contrast, points as a key factor to the apocalyptic expectations associated with the year 1240, the beginning of the sixth Jewish millennium.47 More recently, Avraham Grossman, Elchanan Reiner, and Alexandra Cuffel have shifted the focus to the affairs of the Near East, suggesting that the victories of the Ayyubids must have had a decisive effect on the decision of Jews to immigrate.48

The Book of Taḥkemoni—Judah al-Harizi Essential for explaining this shift in the pattern of Jewish immigration to the Holy Land is the change in the political climate in the Near East at the turn of the thirteenth century. After the death of Saladin, the region spiraled into turmoil, which, as I shall argue, helps explain why Jews found living in the Holy Land feasible over twenty years after the Ayyubid conquests of 1187. What is more, as we shall see later, this sense of political fragmentation in al-Sham features dominantly in the rhetoric employed by immigrating Jews to justify and animate the spiritual and political agenda of their movement. An oft-cited passage by the Toledan poet, translator, and traveler Judah al-Harizi confirms that indeed the political affairs in the East created the circumstances that made immigration to Palestine both possible and desirable. However, a close reading of the passage in the Book of Taḥkemoni shows that it is not the conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 that accounts for the change but rather the fact that the turmoil in the region brought about a shift in

104

Chapter 4

the attitude of Jews toward their prospects of living in al-Sham.49 In ways that are reminiscent of thirteenth-century Frankish and Ayyubid discourses explored in previous chapters, al-Harizi’s account draws a connection between the disintegration of the twelfth-century Near Eastern political hegemonies and the language through which Jews conceptualized their return and settlement in Israel. Born in Toledo in the second half of the twelfth century, Judah al-Harizi, in many ways, reflects the symbiosis between Arabic and Jewish literary traditions in late medieval Iberia and Provence.50 He became established as a renowned translator, making philosophical, halakhic, and exegetical works in Arabic and Judeo-Arabic available to a Hebrew-speaking audience in the area. Al-Harizi became the center of a passionate controversy on the philosophy of translation when he created a Hebrew rendition of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed in 1210 that rivaled the one produced by Samuel ibn Tibbon.51 While attempting to preserve the sense and form of the original text, al-Harizi’s rendition was almost immediately criticized for lacking the accuracy to convey philosophical concepts from Arabic into Hebrew. In verse and rhymed prose, al-Harizi also pioneered attempts to transplant and adapt Arabic literary forms.52 He famously translated al-Hariri’s maqamat and proceeded to emulate its literary qualities in his own work of rhymed prose, for which he is best known. Al-Harizi embarked in 1215 on a voyage to the eastern Mediterranean starting in Alexandria and then continued to Cairo, Palestine, Syria, northern Mesopotamia, and Baghdad.53 He then headed further south before turning back to Aleppo, where he probably died in 1225.54 While the Book of Taḥkemoni is by no means a travelogue, several chapters relate some of his highly insightful observations of the East. Particularly illuminating is the chapter al-Harizi dedicates to Jerusalem and his encounter with a local Jew.55 It includes an account about the return of Jews to the city after the momentous battles of 1187. Chapter 28 in the Book of Taḥkemoni is a multifaceted ode to the city of Jerusalem. The prose begins with a peculiar depiction of recent events through the voice of a local Jew. He explains how Jews came to reinhabit the Holy City after having been banned during the reign of the Franks: Then “the Lord uplifted the spirit” [Ezra 1:1; 2 Chron. 36:22; see also Hagai 1:14; 1 Chron. 5:26] of the king of the Ishmaelites in the year 4950 [= 1190], and the “spirit of counsel and might

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

105

[cf. Isa. 11:2]” rested on him. He marched up with all his army and laid siege on Jerusalem. And the Lord gave her unto him and commanded that “he make a proclamation” [Ezra 1:1; 2 Chron. 36:22] throughout every town, to old and young: “Speak unto the heart of Jerusalem [Isa. 40:2], let anyone who so desires, from the seed of Ephraim, who is in Assyria and Egypt, those exiled to the ends of the earth, come to Jerusalem [cf. Neh. 1:9, Deut. 30:4]. From all sides they gather unto her and settle within her border.”56 The Ishmaelite king who conquered Jerusalem around the year 1190 is, of course, Saladin. Al-Harizi famously portrays the Ayyubid sultan as the biblical Cyrus, whose spirit was also uplifted by the Lord and who made a proclamation throughout his kingdom.57 The rabbinic tradition has taken Cyrus’s proclamation to be a miraculous event that prefigured the future redemption of Israel and the end of Jewish exile.58 God, then, worked through Saladin to create favorable material circumstances for the return of the Israelites and to thus bring about the end of the period of exile by gathering Jews to Jerusalem from all corners of the earth.59 However, when al-Harizi turns to his present time, he depicts a thoroughly different state of affairs, which also puts to question the connection between Saladin’s victory and the renewed Jewish interest in settling the Land of Israel: And now we dwell within the shadow of sweet sloth. May it surely be shaken up and broken off! For we are afraid because of the evil deeds which are done in it, and of the violence and the wickedness that are within it, and the fire of hatred and of factional strife, that in it is rife, and divides the hearts of its inhabitants like a knife. They all want to be head, and are hard, cruel tyrants instead. Each man seeks with malice to make his fellow man forlorn. The father hates his son, his first-born, and the son holds his father in scorn. . . . Every day they increase quarrels and divisions, and all hearts are cleft by derisions, so that I nicknamed the city “the Rock of Divisions” [1 Sam. 23:28]. The leaders appointed over them are as thorns in their eyes to them. One leader turns to injure the other. And the other opposing, thrashes his hide. Each one to his fellow is as thorns in his side [Num. 33:55].60

106

Chapter 4

This final passage of a chapter that is entitled “An Ode for Jerusalem” is in fact quite grim. The local inhabitant relates a gruesome state of internal strife into which the communities of Jerusalem have fallen in the period following the Ayyubid overtake. Modern interpreters of Taḥkemoni have all assumed that this passage portrays a rivalry between the leaders of the three Jewish communities who were residing in Jerusalem at the time (distinguished by their places of origin: Ascalon, North Africa, and France).61 This interpretation, however, is both ungrounded and unlikely. The Jerusalemite observer, I propose, portrays a social and political state of affairs that is not limited to the Jewish population. Significantly, not once does al-Harizi mention any rivalry between the Jewish communities of Jerusalem in his other accounts of the city. Both in Taḥkemoni and in his other works, al-Harizi praises the leaders of the three Jewish communities who seem to coexist in all but perfect harmony.62 In fact, the only indication of internal unease among the Jewish communities stems from the one genizah document discussed above, from which the degree of severity is hard to ascertain.63 Furthermore, in the passage from Taḥkemoni, the transition from the historical overview about the return of Jews to the Holy City to the present time juxtaposes previous tranquility with current turmoil. During the time of Saladin, Jews from multiple locations gathered in the city, “But now we dwell within the shadow of sweet sloth. May it surely be shaken up and broken off! For we are afraid because of the evil deeds which are done in it.”64 It does not follow that the “evil deeds,” which stand in contrast to the previous serenity, were carried out by Jews. In fact, it makes much more sense to assume that what has changed is the overall political situation, which once encouraged mass immigration thanks to its tranquility and is now turbulent and deplorable. Al-Harizi found a city almost thirty years after the Ayyubid conquest that was plagued with a lack of solidarity and “the fire of hatred and of factional strife.” While Saladin cherished Jerusalem and closely oversaw its speedy rehabilitation, after his death in 1193, the city experienced a succession of rulers and deputies who were appointed and quickly replaced while Saladin’s heirs engaged in lengthy, debilitating squabbles with one another.65 Furthermore, weakened by constant succession struggles and overshadowed by the monumental legacy of Saladin, his sons and nephews met a great deal of enmity on the part of the Jerusalemite intellectual and administrative elite, who had been appointed by Saladin and remained loyal to him.66 Indeed, al-Harizi mentions conflicts between siblings 67—possibly referring

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

107

to al-Mu‘azzam and al-Kamil—as well as an overarching generational clash: “The father hates his son, his first-born, and the son holds his father in scorn.”68 While none of Saladin’s heirs was able to reestablish a political and religious hegemony that would match that of their famed predecessor, each employed a belligerent language of spiritual worthiness and holy entitlement.69 Jerusalem figured dominantly in the theology and mechanics of these conflicts, as it changed hands so frequently and played a major role in the rhetorical edifices that each of the contestants erected.70 But al-Harizi is not particularly antagonistic toward the Ayyubids as such. In fact, in addition to his flattering depiction of Saladin, he devotes a panegyric to al-Ashraf Musa (d. 1237), the ruler of Damascus,71 and portrays the victory over the Christians in the Fifth Crusade as the work of God through the Ayyubid kings (muluk bani Ayyub) to bring relief to the Jews of Egypt.72 Indeed, in his eyes, the blessed Jewish community of Cairo, which claimed no rights over the city or land, enjoyed the patronage of the Ayyubid kings and took advantage of their political cohesion. In the Holy Land, however, matters were different; describing later in Taḥkemoni his travel from Cairo to Jerusalem, al-Harizi says, “I saw [in the Holy City] divine scapes / And I met the ‘Angels of God’73 / The most righteous saints / Who came from France to reside in Zion.”74 The passage clearly alludes to Jacob’s journey in search of a spouse in Genesis 28. Both on the way to Harran and back, he saw angels that marked the borders of the Land of Israel. On the way back from Harran, Jacob, like our itinerant poet, sees the “Angels of God” and names the place “the Camp of God” (Gen. 32:3). For al-Harizi, the righteous rabbis who immigrated to the Palestine in 1211 performed this same defining function of identifying and marking political and temporal borders. Neither their presence nor the satisfaction of their spiritual ambitions could be achieved through the hegemonic stability of foreign rule. Through the mouth of his local interlocutor, in other words, al-Harizi voices a major component of the language and ideology of those who immigrated to Palestine in the thirteenth century: what brought Jews back to Jerusalem was indeed the conquest of 1187, but what enabled the arrival of the French Jewish immigrants (and their followers) was rather the deplorable infighting that characterized the Ayyubid Sultanate after the death of Saladin. It so happens, therefore, that the political circumstances illustrated in the previous chapters in this book animated not only the ideology of Christians and Muslims but also inspired those Jews who chose to immigrate and take spiritual possession of the Holy Land. Al-Harizi’s portrayal of the deterioration in

108

Chapter 4

the general political landscape of Jerusalem, set against the background of an earlier polarized stability, is in fact a powerful justification of the political language adopted by the Jewish immigrants of his own time, to which we now turn.

The Immigrant Movement of 1211: Homily of the King Messiah Darmstadt’s municipal library manuscript Codex Orientalis 25 contains an assortment of Hebrew texts on subjects that include astronomy, persecutions, kabbalah, and the resurrection. It also includes a number of homilies about the coming of the messiah and the anticipated apocalyptic wars that are associated with his arrival.75 Among the texts is one unattributed treatise (fols. 13v–17v) of particular interest entitled Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog (‫)דרשות של מלך המשיח ומגוג מגוג‬.76 This rich and complex text appears to put forth a comprehensive manifest in defense of the immigration to Palestine with the goal of reclaiming the land from the hands of both Christians and Muslims. At its heart is a discussion on the group of devout Jews who gather in Palestine and conquer the Land of Israel in preparation for the coming of the messiah. By heading East, they put in motion an elaborate process that includes several cycles of triumph and defeat and that is to end with the ultimate conquest of the Holy Land. This core narrative, however, is enveloped by a lengthy musing on the date and nature of the coming of the messiahs, which employs carefully articulated apocalyptic language to describe the holy warfare that surrounds the settlers’ arrival. Codicological evidence shows that the manuscript was probably compiled in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. One astronomical calendar extends to the year 1383, but it is located in the second half of the codex, which is written by a different hand and arranges the text differently (in one rather than two columns). A blank folio (fol. 92) most likely marks the crossover between the two parts that seem to have later been bound together to constitute Darmstadt 25.77 The last identifiable text in the first part of the manuscript is attributed to R. Meir of Rothenberg (MaHRaM), who died in 1293. Our treatise, therefore, must have been composed several decades prior to that date. Helping also to date the treatise is the fact that the anonymous author identifies himself as the disciple of the famous commentator and halakhic ruler R. Isaac b. Abraham (RiZbA).

Figure 6. Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt Or. 25 fol. 13v: Incipit Homily of the King Messiah.

110

Chapter 4

RiZbA was a leading authority among the French Tosafists in his focus on the value of the Holy Land and the importance of fulfilling commandments that are associated with the Land of Israel.78 While he did not dedicate a separate treatise to the subject, his abiding concern with “Hilkhot Eretz Israel” (laws pertaining to the Land of Israel) can be found in his corpus in several locations. For example, RiZbA addresses the subject in his answers to R. Jonathan of Lunel prior to his aforementioned Aliyah or in his Kesef Mishnah to Mishneh Torah.79 The latter work is also proof that RiZbA maintained intellectual and halakhic contacts with Jews in Palestine. Moreover, RiZbA was the older brother of R. Samson of Sens, who was one of the leaders of the French rabbis who immigrated to Palestine in 1211. Scholars have long debated the nature of RiZbA’s involvement in this important movement in light of his family connection and his clear commitment to the kind of ideas that appear to have shaped its ideology. As RiZbA died in 1210, a common assertion was that while he had most probably collaborated with his brother in launching the movement, he either passed away prior to its departure or was considered too old to join.80 However, on the basis of new evidence, Simcha Emanuel has recently shown that RiZbA had in fact embarked upon the journey to the East but died on the way and was interred in Vienne, some three hundred miles south of Paris.81 His funerary ser vice was attended by his brother and several other rabbis who are known to have soon thereafter settled in Palestine.82 RiZbA, therefore, was both an influential ideologue and participant in the immigration movement. His ideas were a product of legalistic and messianic concerns with the Holy Land as well as an up-to-date understanding of the political situation in the Near East. This helps to situate our treatise within its ideological and temporal orientation. Five times the author of the homily quotes or mentions his teacher, RiZbA, and attributes to the latter not only contemplative teachings on resurrection and the arrival of the messiah but also the conceptual scheme that calls for an urgent reconquest of Palestine. It is therefore quite reasonable to assume that the author/disciple was indeed part of the movement and that he had composed this treatise either shortly before or after undertaking the great passage to Palestine, in the very early stages of which RiZbA had participated. The Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, a lengthy and comprehensive essay, begins with a discussion on the four ages of the world and the thereafter. Based on Talmudic methods of periodization, the author lays out the original timeline of world history in increments of millennia: the

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

111

first two millennia were the age of chaos (‫)תוהו ובוהו‬, after which the age of Torah took place for an additional two millennia, followed by the age of the messiah for two further millennia. During the seventh millennium, chaos will reign again, after which “the Lord will renew His world for eternity” (fol. 14r). However, because of sins committed by the Israelites, the messiah did not appear in the beginning of the fifth millennium (equivalent to the year 240 c.e.) as scheduled. Instead, his arrival can be expected “before the end” of the same millennium (i.e., before the year 1240 ce), after which he will rule over the world for the entire sixth millennium. The majority of the essay—and the focus of this chapter—is a discussion on the messianic age, including the circumstances that led to the appearance of the messiah and his conquests of the Land of Israel. The treatise, afterward, continues with chapters about the Judgment Day, the resurrection, and the eternal world that will follow the end of the seventh millennium. The text ends with a short messianic postscript that prays for the expeditious coming of the savior. For the author, the first contingent of immigrants plays a pivotal role in setting the stage for the arrival of the messiah. These settlers will rebuild the Land of Israel, allowing their collective prayer to reach the heavens. Most important, they are to purify the Land defiled by the presence of gentiles. Only when the Land houses “ bearers of the Law, righteous people, ‘men of deeds’ from all over the world,” and no one else will the messiah appear among them. While people from diverse backgrounds may find a way to contribute or participate (“each in accordance with the willingness of his heart”), “scholars and righteous people” will undertake the crucial responsibility of identifying the messiah. It is at that point that the second act in this messianic drama begins. The messiah will erect an army of brave men from “the four corners of the world” to fight Edom and Ishmael and to drive away the uncircumcised from Jerusalem. In his discussion of the messianic age, the author dwells at length on the role of both the movement of the immigrant community and of Jews who chose to stay abroad. He describes the role of the Jews in four subsections. Each represents a slightly different messianic sentiment, and accordingly, each concludes with the phrase: “And the messiah will be revealed among them.” The first section suggests that merely settling in the Land of Israel will bring the messiah: “Redemption begins with the ‘ingathering of the Exiles’ [in which] each person among the Israelites contributes ‘each in the measure

112

Chapter 4

of the generosity of his heart [Exod. 35:21/29],’ [in order] to go to the Land [of Israel] and settle in the holy city of Jerusalem as well as in the other parts of the Land of Israel. . . . When scholars ‘from the four corners of the world’ and pious men settle in Jerusalem and dread the Lord, the Messiah will be revealed among them according to [the observation of] scholars and pious men, and they will adhere to him” (fol. 14r.a). The author, in other words, is suggesting that after the immigrants travel to Palestine and settle in Jerusalem, the messiah will be revealed among them. It is important to notice that by scholars and pious men, the author is indeed referring to the group of French Jews (of which he is part) who headed to Acre—meaning that the author envisions the mission as having an immediate effect in the foreseeable future. It is the very presence of the learned in this group within Israel and their continued devotion to God that is expected to create the right circumstances for the appearance of the messiah. The author specifically ascribes to the spiritual leaders of the movement (“scholars and pious men”) the task of recognizing the messiah among their lot when it is time for him to become manifest. In other words, not only is this first messiah (son of Joseph) flesh and blood, but he is even, in fact, part of the movement. The immigrants make his appearance possible by physically transporting him to Israel, by their physical presence in the land, and by authoritatively ascertaining his identity. The second section of the treatise associates the arriving of the messiah with a notion of exclusivity, yielding, without a doubt, its most poignant part: [But] let no-one take it upon himself to say that the King Messiah will be revealed on an impure Land, lest anyone make such claim. And let no-one claim erroneously that [the Messiah] will be revealed in the Land of Israel amidst the Gentiles. Whoever makes this mistake and does not rush to make this happen [i.e., to purify the Land], is disrespectful toward the King Messiah. Let it be clear: only when the Land of Israel is inhabited by “ bearers of the Law [Jer. 2:8]” righteous people, “men of deeds,”83 “from the four corners of the world” one from a city and two from a family [Jer. 3:14], and all whose hearts were stirred [Exod. 35:21] and in whose soul was a spirit of purity and love of holiness,84 then the King Messiah will be revealed among them, as it is said “I will take you one from a city and two from a family . . . and bring you to Zion [Jer. 3:14].” (fol. 14r)

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

113

This revealing passage effectively construes Jewish immigration to Palestine as a crusade to purify the Holy Land from the company of gentiles. The enduring resonance of this use of a belligerent, messianic language to justify the presence of European Jews in Palestine is evidenced by the fact that this passage was subsequently integrated almost verbatim into three separate treatises that were penned in Acre during the second half of the thirteenth century85 and again in Jerusalem in the first half of the fourteenth century.86 One anonymous author writing around 1270 attributed this call to “our precursive sages [rabotenu qadmonenu],” that is, the founding fathers of the French-speaking community, and altered the wording slightly so as to heighten its effect: “Let no one take it upon himself to say that the King Messiah will be revealed on an impure Land. . . . And indeed now many are inspired to volunteer to immigrate to the Land of Israel. Many maintain that we are near to the coming of the Redeemer, seeing as the Nations in so many places have made their burden upon Israel heavier.”87 The wording of this defining passage in the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, which conveys the central motif of the entire treatise, echoes an important discussion in R. Sa’adia Ga’on’s tenth-century theological summa, Beliefs and Opinions. Sa’adia could be considered the founder of medieval systematic apocalyptic contemplation, and his influence over multiple subsequent messianic articulations cannot be overstated. His commentarial and exegetical corpus introduced rationalist tendencies and philosophical reasoning into rabbinic Judaism. Against the backdrop of the culmination of these rationalist inclinations, Sa’adia was seen as the founder of the Ga’onic-Andalusian rationalist tradition,88 and his works were translated into Hebrew and studied widely in Iberian and Provencal circles. Although in halakhic and exegetical writings, Franco-German thinkers displayed marked resistance to Sa’adia and the rationalist tendencies that his generation represented, in messianic literature, Ga’onic influence was ubiquitous.89 In the eighth chapter of his magnum opus, Sa’adia interprets a messianic sequence that, like our homilies, stipulates that participants will be “one from a city and two from a family,” citing Jeremiah 3:14.90 Talmudic discussions on this passage from the book of Jeremiah interpret it as epitomizing God’s generosity. R. Eliezer claims the verse means that the people of Israel will be redeemed only if they all repent. As a proof text, he references the beginning of Jeremiah 3:22: “Return, O faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness.” R. Yehoshua, in response, evokes Jeremiah 3:14 as an indication that God will redeem Israel even if they do not all repent:

114

Chapter 4

“Return, O faithless sons . . . and I will take you one from a city and two from a family.”91 In other words, through the righteous deeds of a minority, the Lord will cast His grace upon the entire people.92 Sa’adia, in contrast, sets forth yet a different interpretation that reconciles the two positions by setting the verse in a messianic context. He rejects the possibility that if the end arrives before Israel repents, then the good deeds of a select few could be seen to bring about repentance for the rest. Instead, he purports that there will be a time of hardship: “The Lord will appoint to [Israel] a ruler as vicious as Hamman.” Messiah-son-of-Joseph, however, will lead the resistance; he will assemble a small army: “A select few from the nation will join him, not many, as it is said ‘one from a city and two from a family.’ ” As a result of the revolt, the entire nation will suffer great travesties such as famine and expulsion to the deserts. What is more, many will be won over by the hardships: “ Those whose faith is weak will abandon their religion [dat].”93 Only those who withstand the challenge will be considered to have repented. This messianic sequence, therefore, sees the work of the select few as putting in motion a process with the purpose of purifying the nation so that only the “refined and pure [ha-mitbarerim v’ha-m’zukakim]” will be left. The author of the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, however, introduces a unique twist on Sa’adia’s theme of apocalyptic social and religious purity. What emerges from the passage cited above is that the select few (one from a city and two from a family) will first be responsible to purify not the nation from unbelief but rather the Land of Israel from the gentiles: “Let no-one take it upon himself to say that the King Messiah will be revealed on an impure Land. . . . And let no-one claim erroneously that [the Messiah] will be revealed in the Land of Israel amidst the Gentiles.” As Chapters 5 and 6 discuss at length, this formulation echoes many contemporaneous regional voices. Multiple thirteenth-century authors, both Christian and Muslim, entertained and elaborated on this principle of social and spiritual purity in their reflections on holy warfare. Authors time and again in both cultures portrayed pious armies and valorous warriors as purifying the polluted land from the defiling presence of the unbelievers, rendering it both pure and sacred once again.94 Our author, however, introduces two additional novelties to Sa’adia’s formulation: first, in accordance with his own history and political needs, he takes the group of pioneers to be responsible first for the coming of the messiah and joining him in battle. Second, he adds a pragmatic dimension to his portrayal of their pietistic program. While the movement may comprise

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

115

members from diverse backgrounds, the author clearly depicts a circle of spiritual leadership. He refers to them as scholars and pious men, but he also distinguishes between “ bearers of the Law (‫—”)תופשי תורה‬by which he may refer to rulers in practical questions of halakha—and “men of deeds.” While this final category appears multiple times across rabbinic literature, it is most closely associated with a first-century Tanna, R. Hanina b. Dosa. Tractate Sota of the Mishna celebrates R. Hanina not only as a righteous practitioner and thinker of rabbinic law but also as the last or greatest of the “pious men, men of deeds.”95 In fact, he is best known for having openly valued virtuous deeds over a life of contemplative learning: “Any man whose deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom will endure; but if his wisdom exceeds his deeds, his wisdom will not endure [mAb. 3:9b].” The author of the homily, in other words, employs a spectrum of dispositions to portray the unique spirituality of the immigrant movement, which ranges from intense contemplation to pragmatic involvement with the worldly needs of the Holy Land. However, before the author continues to lay out the precise deeds that the immigrants need to do to welcome the messiah, he invokes the memory of the return from the Babylonian exile to describe tensions between those who chose to take part in the immigration movement and those who decided to stay abroad: Go forth and learn from the ‘Alliyah of Ezra, when . . . “only 4,000 people among the [Babylonia] community returned [to the Land of Israel] [Ezra 2:64],” for “they were in great trouble and disgrace” [Neh. 1:3].96 And those who were dwelling [like wine] on their dregs, tranquil and acquiescent, remained motionless. And it is said “If she be a wall, we will build upon her a battlement of silver [Song 8:9],” [which is to say that] had they all returned in the days of Ezra [to the Land of Israel], they would have been compared to a tree that never gives in to decay.97 The [ingathering of the] Exiles will follow the same pattern: little by little,98 everyone [would contribute], “each in the measure of his generosity [Exod. 35:29/6],” so they shall contribute while the capable and wealthy who remain tranquil and acquiescent will not. (fols. 14r.b–14v.a) As in the case of the return from the Babylonian exile, the impoverished state of Jews in the Land of Israel had deterred many affluent Jews from returning to their homeland. Members of the community in exile, who had

116

Chapter 4

gained political and material capital (“capable and wealthy”), were reluctant to leave all of that behind. The author employs a peculiar biblical allusion that symbolically compares those Jews who stay behind to the Moabites since Jeremiah had predicted in his oracle that the cities of Moab will be crushed. Not having had to endure the hardships of exile, the prophet pronounces, the Moabites were complacent and tranquil (“[like wine] dwelling on their dregs”), undermining their claim to be courageous fighters. Rather, it is the Israelites with the help of God who are the true warriors: “Moab has been destroyed and men have gone up to its cities; his choicest men have gone down to slaughter [Jer. 48:15].” This subtle play with the distinction between ascent (‘alah, which also designates the return to the Holy Land) and descent may have made this proof text particularly useful for our author. Valiant young men who respond to the call to return/ascend to Israel are thus contrasted with the complacent folk who choose to remain abroad. Not only will the latter not be able to claim part of the military victories that are expected in the Holy Land, but in fact their very identity as Jews is put to question.99 The author, furthermore, uses the prophetic diatribe in yet another way. Jeremiah relates that the Moabites were able to cultivate their production of wine—a symbol of stability and wealth—while at the same time likening them to wine that has not lost its taste or quality by having been “emptied from vessel to vessel [Jer. 48:11].” But the warriors of Israel will put an end to the unjust prosperity of the Moabites by “emptying her vessels and shattering her jugs [Jer. 48:12].” The wine symbolizes the exiled Jews, who refuse to take part in the immigrant movement to the Holy Land and yet enjoy an unjust prosperity. While each person “contributes according to the measure of his generosity,” some prosperous Jews in exile refuse not only to physically join the movement but also to support it financially—and their reckoning will come. A late thirteenth-century version of this homily preserved by Meir alDabi in his encyclopedic work Shevile Emunah [Paths of Faith] appears to have interpreted the involvement of each person in a more narrow sense: “Many among the Israelites . . . volunteer to come to the Land of Israel to dwell in the holy city of Jerusalem.”100 For this later redactor, in other words, the only relevant distinction is between those who choose to stay abroad and those who volunteer to leave their homes and head eastward. While the anonymous author of Darmstadt 25 begins his proclamation using the same verb (yitnadvu), the immediate citation of Exodus 35:4 indicates that he envisions a wider range of possible contributions to the movement. He begins by

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

117

asserting that the messianic process will begin when “each person among the Israelites may contribute ‘in the measure of the generosity of his heart [Exod. 35:29/6]’ [in order] to go to the Land [of Israel] and settle in the holy city of Jerusalem.” He then returns to this issue when criticizing wealthy exilic Jews who refuse to contribute to the movement. Clearly, the author has in mind a variety of ways in which one can become involved: physically, financially, or a combination of both. This nuances the distinction between Moabites versus Israelite warriors in the parallel to wealthy exilic Jews versus valorous immigrants who take physical part in the messianic drama. Our author is not the first to reflect on the possibility of financial involvement in holy war. In fact, his use of the Moabite imagery from Jeremiah is also ironic precisely because his pontifical contemporary, Pope Innocent III, is famously responsible for greatly enhancing the financial infrastructure of the crusading enterprise. With the failure of the Fourth Crusade in recent memory, Innocent levied a new tax on the clergy for three years and implemented changes in the means of collecting the money to ensure greater revenue and flexibility.101 But more important, the Fourth Lateran Council cast the widest possible net for involvement in the crusading mission as it ruled that every Christian can choose to either take the crusading vow or provide material support for someone else to participate in the expedition in their stead.102 In other words, not only those physically involved in the expedition were promised remission of sins. Pious members of the Church who only financially contribute to the mission could receive the crusading indulgence and share equally in the spiritual rewards of the expedition.103 After establishing the basic tenets of the spirituality of the immigrant movement—exclusivity, contemplative pragmatism, spiritual contribution, and so on—the author of the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog describes the kind of deeds they are to undertake. Already in the first passage, he stipulates the importance of dwelling both in Jerusalem and in other parts of the Land of Israel.104 The author, furthermore, maintains that the immigrants will lay the foundations for the future building of the Temple. In their very presence, they will be “witness to, and [lay] a firm peg [Isa. 22:23] for the building of the Holy Mt. [= Temple].”105 Like Elyakim, son of Hilkiah, in Isaiah 22, the new Jewish community in Jerusalem will metaphorically be a peg on which “all the substance of [the] father’s household shall be hung [as well as] the sprouts and the leaves [Isa. 22:23].”106 The Jewish community, in other words, holds a promise for both the past (bearing the heritage of the “house” of David) and the future. The notion of the people

118

Chapter 4

as a peg in the house of the Lord also appears in Ezra in a postexilic and redemptive context. Following all the hardships that the returning Israelites endured, the biblical scribe finally cries, “Our God has granted us a surviving remnant and given us a peg [yated] in His holy place . . . to raise again the House of our God, repairing its ruins and giving us a hold in Judah and Jerusalem [Ezra 9:8–9].” It is also worth remembering that the context in Exodus 35, to which the author of the homily alluded in invoking the notion of contributing to the movement, is the building of the Tabernacle: “Let each man who is moved by his heart, and by the generosity of his spirit, come and bring the Lord’s contribution to be used for the Tabernacle [Exod. 35:21].” Participants, in other words, are likened to those who helped erect this portable temple that accompanied the Israelites on their journey to the Land of Israel. This powerful allusion is crucial in amplifying the spiritual and ritualistic character of the immigration movement. What is more, here too the same word is used in describing how the skilled and able people prepare the “pegs for the Tabernacle, the pegs for the enclosure and their cords [Exod. 35:18].” In other words, the community of recent immigrants is tasked with a number of activities that will lay symbolic foundations for the building of stable governance and for a spiritual focal point and a marker of cultural continuity in Jerusalem and Israel. Their ritualistic and symbolic activities will symbolize the future building of those cultural and religious edifices. As this group contributes, each in their own way, to laying the cornerstone for the national and cultural redemptive effort, the author reiterates for the fourth time, “The messiah will be revealed among them.” To this the author adds to this final reiteration, “When the community in the Land of Israel will be plentiful [yirbeh] they will pray on the Temple Mount, and ‘their cry rose up [to God] [Exod. 2:23],’ [as a result] the King Messiah will be revealed among them.” Interestingly, the Shevile Emunah rendition has a slightly different view on the intensity of the ritual: “When those righteous men will settle there, they will pray on the Holy Mt. in Jerusalem often [yarbu], and the Lord will hear their cry.” While both versions use the same verb, their meaning is quite different. The version in Shevile Emunah, probably written toward the end of the thirteenth century, takes for granted the existence of a Jewish community in Acre and therefore tends to associate the efficacy of the ritual with the frequency in which it will take place. The author of Darmstadt 25, on the other hand, places a greater emphasis on the size of the community that he describes. By conveying the

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

119

expectation that the community becomes “plentiful,” he may be hoping that the immigrants would multiply over several generations in their new home. Or he may anticipate that his reproach in the previous passage would drive more exilic Jews to join the movement, gradually increasing their number. In both renditions of this homily—Darmstadt 25 and Shevile Emunah— this juncture in the narrative marks the point in which the author finally introduces the messiah and begins to discuss both the war that he will wage and the crucial participation of the immigrants. The messianic drama in Darmstadt 25 unfolds in three acts that revolve around the attempt to purify the Land of Israel. After the immigrants are able to both occupy and purify the land for the first time, the messiah finally appears. Following the tradition of Sefer Zerubavel, the author employs a twofold messianic structure. First, there appears Messiah-son-of-Joseph, whose name is Nehemiah, son of Hushiel (fol. 14v.a). The Israelites wage war against the satanic king of Edom and conduct a heated polemical disputation with him, but he emerges triumphant in the first round of battle and slaughters Nehemiah (fol. 15r.a). This paves the way for the arrival of Messiah-son-of-David, called Menahem, son of Amiel, who smites the nations and their king—after which the Jews “purified the land . . . and settled in Jerusalem and in the Land of Israel undisturbed” (fol. 15v.a). For this part, the author employs a tapestry of apocalyptic traditions from antiquity and the Ga’onic periods. Mostly, he follows on the footsteps of the ‘Otot ha-Mashi’aḥ tradition that enumerates the Signs (Otot) that are thought to precede the arrival of the messiah. This tradition is an extremely popu lar apocalyptic genre, appearing in multiple Near Eastern cultures, which features the study of signs to foretell the imminent coming of the end-time.107 Many texts that fall into this category are structured around specifically ten signs that are usually organized in order of chronology and intensity. Several Hebrew versions of the Ten Signs motif justify the structure as follows:108 “God has chosen Israel from seventy nations . . . and has taught them the Ten Commandments which are the heart of the Torah and the main precepts. . . . The sages have enumerated Ten Qualities [midot or ma’alaot] that correspond to the Ten Commandments. Each is greater than the former, the lighter followed by the more severe. One ascends through them until one reaches the highest level, above which is God alone. . . . And corresponding to these Ten Commandments and Ten Qualities, God will bring Ten Signs before the coming of the Redeemer, may he redeem us soon.”109 In other words, there is an assumption that the decimal structure

120

Chapter 4

is the key for gaining esoteric knowledge about the end-time. The law, revealed in ten constituents, corresponds to ten forms of righteous and pietistic behavior, which, in turn, correspond to an esoteric apprehension of the arrival of the messiah and the end of time. Scholars have assumed that authors of Ten Signs compilations used these texts to portray events of their own lifetimes in an effort to cast these occurrences as signs that the violent yet desirable end was in sight.110 Authors, that is, employed an intentionally nonspecific language while, at the same time, inserting cultural and political cues that the reader would have been expected to decode.111 As John Reeves says, even if at the moment of their original composition, medieval Jewish apocalypses revolved around a grain of historical truth, it is quite clear that they involve significant imaginative and interpretative interventions on the part of the authors.112 This is perhaps the reason these narratives became so popular and were disseminated so widely in such an unusual variety of forms. Copyists and authors throughout the late Middle Ages reproduced versions of the Ten Signs theme—at times placing ancient recensions in new contexts and at times adapting the details to better fit their current sensibilities and political landscapes. The author of our homily utilized the Ten Signs tradition in precisely the same manner. He preserved many of the details that are found in other versions of the tradition but introduced important and noteworthy changes. Most significantly, the author consistently stages the messianic events not as an anticipated fantasy in the distant future but rather as a continuation of the present political landscape, to which he himself belongs, as earlier parts of the treatise make clear. For example, in most of the extant versions of the Ten Signs literature, the arrival of the first messiah is described as follows: “Messiah-son-of-Joseph, whose name is Nehemiah son of Hushiel, will be revealed among those from [the tribes of] Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin and a few from Gad, who returned [to the Holy Land]. And when the rest of Israel come to know that the Messiah has come they gather from every country and city.”113 Our author, however, has a slightly different description: “When the community in the Land of Israel will be plentiful, they will pray . . . and the King Messiah will be revealed among them. And He will gather the rest of the exiles, for Israel will hear that the King Messiah had been revealed.”114 The author portrays the recent immigrants to Acre, on whose behalf he is writing, as the returnees from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, and Gad, which appear in the original Ten Signs text. By this work of sophisticated editing, the author reshapes motifs in the

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

121

original text to fit and integrate the events that he wishes to portray. When the first messiah appears, he assembles the enthusiastic members of the immigrant community from “those who were with him—forty thousand brave warriors from [the tribe of] Ephraim [1 Chron. 12:31]”; the messiah thereby creates “a large army” of “mighty men [Song of Sol. 3:7].” Their first task is “to fight the King of Edom and the garrisons of Ishmael.” The author then immediately clarifies that this battle has both a terrestrial and a celestial front and that its purpose is not only to defeat the manifestations of Christianity and Islam on earth but also to subdue their deific representations in the heavens: “The king of Edom will fall never to rise again, [but] the Lord will also frustrate the [celestial] minister of Esau” (fol. 14v.a). The author conveys this point by drawing on and manipulating a verse from Isaiah 24:21. Where the original states that “the Lord will punish the hosts of heaven in heaven and the kings of earth on earth,” our author has: “As it is written ‘the Lord will punish the hosts of heaven in heaven’ and then the kings of Edom on earth.” The mighty army will then “beat the ‘garrisons of Ishmael and Edom [1 Sam. 13:3]’ that are in Jerusalem, from which they will expel all of the uncircumcised, ‘for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall never enter [it] again [Isa. 52:1].’ ” Earlier versions of this motif—the first round of confrontations between Nehmiah versus Edom and Ishmael—stipulate that the Israelites win and force their ruthless rule over the nations in and around Jerusalem.115 Typically, however, our author stresses that the victory will also entail an ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, leading toward the desired state of purity. Another thirteenth-century apocalyptic tradition, itself a contemporary rendition of an earlier one, shares this very same sentiment. This text, however, attributes the cleansing to God: “A fire will come down from the heavens and consume Jerusalem three feet underground, and will expel all of the uncircumcised, and the defiled and the evil ones.”116 Furthermore, the author of Darmstadt 25 uses terminology that is associated with cleansing the Promised Land in order to establish the biblical and historical roots of this army and its leader. After repeatedly mentioning that their main task is to “conquer the Holy Land and expel from it the Nations,” he revisits this theme yet again. This time, he draws on Exodus 17:16 to convey the notion that the messiah and his army are to “blot out the seed of Amalek.” This motif rests on the divine commandment from Deuteronomy 25:19, which calls for the erasure of the memory of Amalek after all the misery that this nation had forced upon the Israelites in the desert.

122

Chapter 4

The rabbinical tradition had already reinterpreted the verse to be part of a threefold decree given to the Israelites upon entering the Land of Israel: they must erect a temple, anoint a king, and persecute the people of Amalek. R. Judah, for example, in the Babylonian Talmud is said to have tried to determine the correct sequence of these three tasks on the basis of Exodus 17:16.117 However, our author cites another tradition—from Pesikta de-Rav Kahanah—that draws on the same verse from Exodus to stress the neverending nature of the imperative to eradicate the Amalekites: every generation is involved in this effort, from Moses to Samuel, through Mordechai and Esther and all the way to the messiah, “after which He will eradicate the seed of Esau and there will be no remnant from the house of Esau.”118 The author is advancing here a genealogical claim to emphasize that the messiah will not only engage in the cleansing of the Christians but, by doing so, will also establish himself as a physical heir to a long and defining lineage of Jewish leaders who have fought Amalek (and its later manifestations). By chronicling a generational link between Moses and the contemporary community, the author is both echoing and undermining parallel Christian narratives that utilize techniques of Christological figurations to draw a connection between crusading lords and biblical figures, such as the Maccabees, Joshua, and Christ.119 The homily goes on to prophesy that as a result of the eradication of the hostile nations from the Land of Israel, the followers of the messiah will settle down and enjoy many days of safety. However, the following purification of the land a second time brings about the third act in the messianic drama. This time, the author evokes the supreme satanic figure in medieval Jewish apocalypses, the king of Edom, to fight against the pious Jewish community.120 As in previous sections of this treatise, our author relies heavily on older apocalyptic traditions but introduces important changes. While he does not mention the name “Armylus” in describing the satanic king of Edom, the author is clearly drawing from this legend and tradition. The legend of Armylus had first appeared in Sefer Zerubabel and subsequently figured in multiple medieval apocalyptic contexts.121 The version that seems to have informed our narrative is the one that appears in the abovementioned Ten Signs tradition. Some versions of the original legend of Armylus introduce a lengthy account of his conception and include a tantalizing description of his physical appearance. Our treatise simply states, “The Midrash relates that Satan inseminated a marble stone, whence came Gog. . . . He then ruled over all the nations of the countries” (fol. 14v.b). The story then turns

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

123

to relate the war that takes place between Armylus and Messiah-son-ofJoseph. But while none of the extant versions of the Ten Signs relate the exact location where this clash takes place, the author of our homily adds a specific geopolitical context: “[King Gog] set his face to the Land of Israel [cf. Jer. 44:12],122 as it is said ‘to the Land . . . whose people were gathered from many nations’ [Ezek. 38:8], which is to say: to the land in which only recently Israelites had gathered, from all of the countries in which they were scattered.”123 In other words, the author specifically stages this charged meeting at the place and time of the immigrant movement in a way that seamlessly connects this part of the narrative with the previous chapters of the drama. Furthermore, our author’s adaptation of the highly polemical dialogue between Armylus and his Israelite opponents becomes the culmination of a discussion on pious belligerence. Already one of the earliest and popular recensions of the Ten Signs sets up the polemical principle that lies at the heart of this dialogue. According to this early version, Armylus “is the Messiah of the Sons of Esau [i.e., the Christians].”124 As such, he asks his people, “Bring me the Torah that I have given you.” The Israelites, startled by this claim that Armylus supplied the scripture that they share with the Christians, rise up with a Torah and recite before him the second commandment, “Thou shall not have another God before Me [Exod. 20:3]!” Despite Armylus’s defiance, Nehemiah—Messiah-son-of-Joseph—confronts him: “You are not God, but Satan.”125 Nehemiah is killed in the war that erupts immediately thereafter. Darmstadt 25 includes, in addition to the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, a slightly more elaborate version of the Ten Signs tradition in fol. 50r–v.126 The author of the homily seems to have, in part, creatively elaborated the story told in this recension. In the more elaborate version, Armylus first interrogates the Sons of Esau (the Christians) about their scriptures, and then he turns to the Israelites: To the Christians he says: bring me the Torah that I have given you. Each nation brings him their idols.127 Armylus: “This Torah that I have given you is true. Believe in me, for I am your Messiah.” At once they all believe in him. Then he [= Armylus] comes to Nehemiah son of Hushiel and to all of Israel saying:

124

Chapter 4

“Bring me your Torah and bear witness to me that I am your God.” . . . Nehemiah rose with 30,000 of the warriors from [the tribe of] Ephraim and took a Torah scroll before [Armylus] and recited: “You shall not have any other God before me [Exod. 20:3]!” Armylus: “Your Torah is nothing. Bear witness to me that I am your God, as did all the other nations.” Nehemiah became infuriated and said to him: “You are not God but Satan.” At this point, a war between the thirty thousand Israelite warriors and Armylus’s army breaks out, at the end of which Nehemiah is killed. This dialogue in the Homily of the King Messiah and Maggo m’Gog, however, begins by introducing a subtle but significant alteration. Rather than simply stating that Armylus is the messiah of the sons of Esau, it posits that “He made himself into a God, a ‘loathed branch’ [Isa. 14:19].” Many late medieval Hebrew anti-Christian polemics use this expression in reference to Christ, building on the philological similarity between “branch” (neẓer) and Christ the Nazarene (nozri). Medieval polemicists, thus, invoke the mock lament of the oppressive king of Babylon in Isaiah 14 as a prefiguration of Christ’s disgraceful death: “You were left lying unburied . . . like a trampled corpse [in] the clothing of slain, gashed by the sword [Isa. 14:19].” Our author, in other words, summons a contemporary polemic stance to establish this satanic figure as a manifestation of the ultimate false messiah of the Christians.128 Furthermore, it appears that in doing so, our author knowingly draws on contemporary Christian crusading rhetoric in order to undermine it in a sophisticated fashion. Christian depictions of crusading warlords—either in contemporary texts or in historical narratives about leaders of the First Crusade—often employed a language that was meant to establish them as Christ-like figures and as modern manifestations of biblical warriors.129 Our author, therefore, portrays Gog, the king of the Edomites, as a representation of the Nazarene in order to undermine his divinity by employing a quasiChristological reading of scripture; in doing so, he acknowledges and skillfully manipulates the Christian commentators who find prefigurations of the postincarnation world in Old Testament prophesies.130 This passage thus insinuates that the Babylonian king in Isaiah 14 is a prefiguration of Christ and that Armylus is, in turn, Christ-like insofar as he too is a

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

125

manifestation of the loathsome king of Babylon. The author had already previously contrasted this figurative mode of representation with a genealogical one: King Messiah, as stated above, hails from a long line of ancestral Jewish leaders who have all taken up the commandment to eradicate Amalek. Later in the treatise, the author again reiterates the point in discussing how the initial resurrection is bound to bring together both Messiahson-of-David and the founder of his dynasty, from whom the former gains both power and legitimization: “King Messiah will rule over the entire world . . . but he will also pay respect to his ancestor, David, from whose seed he stems” (fol. 15r.b).131 Next, the author contrasts this erroneous Christology with the Jewish spirituality of war, which he presents through a play on biblical and Talmudic passages that reflect on the Israelites’ claim on the Promised Land. The author further accentuates the interreligious tension in this drama by having Armylus address only Israel and not the Christians (as in an earlier version of the Ten Signs theme), saying, “Bring me your Torah. . . . Indeed it is I who commanded you the Laws.” Furthermore, in place of a sharp proclamation that Armylus is not God or the use of the second commandment as a spiritual “dagger,” our author puts in the mouths of the Israelite warriors a powerful invective speech: “Who are you, loathed branch, to command the Laws? For our God, blessed be his name and eternal memory, ‘Exalted [is His name] above every blessing and praise [Neh. 9:5],’ has commanded [them] upon us, and we will see to observe—‘with all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our might [Deut. 26:16]’132—as the Lord has commanded us in Mt. Sinai through Moses, his servant.”133 Finally, in face of Armylus’s aggression, the warriors state, “[But] we will rise and hold fast to our refuge [cf. Isa. 27:5] . . . and we will affirm [our commitment] to He who has affirmed [His commitment to] us [Deut. 26:17], we will unify for He who has unified us, we will [make you a subject of] unique adornment He who [has made us a subject of] unique adornment, and we will sanctify for He who has sanctified us [bBer. 6:1].”134 This passage encapsulates the belligerent spirituality that this treatise tries to convey and the polemical principle that it employs. Through the dialogue with Armylus, the Israelite warriors voice a criticism of Christian hermeneutics and perform an alternative theology of somatic holy belligerence. Earlier versions of the Ten Signs theme insinuate that the nations are easily fooled into believing that Armylus is their God because his claim is consistent with their scriptures or their interpretations of them. The Israelites,

126

Chapter 4

on the other hand, demonstrate the contradiction between his claim and the second commandment, which makes his position an impossibility. In other words, the logic of the text is that Armylus seeks the approval of Israel to establish himself as God, but it is precisely the fallacies in his appeal that provide the core principle of the author: that the God of the Bible is the real God and that Israel is his chosen nation. The dialogic principle in our treatise, however, is more sophisticated: it is not by virtue of a contradiction with the second commandment that the Israelites discern that Armylus cannot be God; rather, it is his being a “loathed branch”—that is, an abominable figuration of Christ and the king of Babylon—that undermines his claim. The warriors declare their commitment to fulfill the God-given law by drawing on one of the key biblical discussions on the right of the people over the Land of Israel. Upon entering the land after their forty-year sojourn in the desert, the Israelites reconfirm their covenant with God. They avow their commitment to observe the law and to worship God alone: “You have affirmed this day that the Lord is your God, that you will walk in his ways, that you will observe his laws and commandments [Deut. 26:17].” The Lord, in turn, confirms their status as his chosen people: “The Lord has affirmed this day that you are . . . His treasured people [Deut. 26:18].” The Babylonian Talmud glosses these verses as establishing a mutual relationship: “It is written ‘You have affirmed God today’ and it is also written ‘and God has affirmed you today,’ [which is to say] God said to Israel: you made me the subject of unique praise in the world, and I will make you the subject of unique praise in the world.” To that our author adds the key components in medieval Jewish martyrology: the sanctification and unification of the Lord. In other words, in the same way that the warriors establish a mutual commitment in faith, they also declare their willingness to fight and die for the sanctity and unity of he who has sanctified and unified the Israelites. In addition, while the verse stipulates that the Israelites promise to observe the law with all their “heart and soul [Deut. 26:16],” the author has the warriors declare that they will also follow the Lord with “all their might,” which replicates the longer construction on the Shema Israel prayer. In other words, the author applies the Deuteronomistic exchange to his current context in which the warriors perform—before the enemy of the faith—their commitment to not only believe in God but also fight on His behalf and according to His laws. The Jewish warriors contrast their willingness to suffer for the sanctity and unity of their Lord with the abominable belligerence

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

127

that the false messiah represents. While Armylus is said to draw his authority from his corrupt similitude with Christ and the king of Babylon, the author repeatedly stresses the strong genealogical tie between the warriors and their own biblical ancestors, effectively matching the typological allusions. In this dialogue on the appropriate way to engage in sacred warfare, the central question becomes one of determining between the true messiah and the false one. Paralleling the initial task of the scholars among the immigrant community to identifying the messiah among them, the onus on the warriors now is to recognize the true messiah following their encounter with Armylus. Thus, after Nehemiah, Messiah-son-of-Joseph, is killed, we are told that “the Evil [king of Edom] did not know [that it is the Messiah whom he killed], for had he known not a remnant from Israel would have survived.”135 In other words, not only does Armylus base his claim for authority on a corrupt association with scripture, but he is also incapable of recognizing the messiah that is before him. Another mid-thirteenth-century version of the Ten Signs found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which was most likely composed either in the East or by an author associated with the immigrant movement, further accentuates this final point.136 In the Bodleian Signs, after the Israelites refute the Edomite’s claims at divinity, Armylus takes the warriors who had come with Nehemiah and burns them together with a Torah scroll. When that does not help, Armylus says, “Take Nehemiah and kill him, for he does not believe in me. And if the God, in which he believes, saves him from me then I will know [that He is indeed the God].”137 In other words, Armylus proposes that an ordeal by fire will determine whether Nehemiah is indeed the messiah. After Nehemiah is killed, Armylus still does not recognize that he was the messiah. The author, then, contrasts Armylus’s cognitive or interpretative shortcomings with the perceptive eyes of others. All the nations, besides Edom, that the author relates had seen and heard about the arrival of the messiah and consequently decided to comply with his rule. In this passage, the author alludes to Deuteronomy 28:10: “And all the people of the earth shall see that the Lord’s name is proclaimed over you, and they shall stand in fear of you.” The abovementioned gloss in the Babylonian Talmud takes this verse to explain that Israel’s strength derives from wearing the Tefillin (phylactery). The name of God, which is inscribed in the headpiece of a Tefillin, is what accounts for the power of Israel, claims R. Isaac, and it is the reason the nations “shall stand in fear of you [the Israelites] [bBer. 6:1].”138 Armylus and the Edomites in our treatise, however, are unable to interpret

128

Chapter 4

the allegorical inscription of God on the messiah’s external appearance and as a result misperceive the power that is embedded in his symbolic, divine shield. This spirituality of holy war is founded upon the association of the contemporary warriors with their scriptural ancestors and on their ability to interpret the nature of their own power. In other words, for our author of the homily, divine belligerence is deeply intertwined with questions of hermeneutics and exegesis, and the treatise establishes a set of contrasts between the defiled religiosity represented by the Edomites and their king and the true, stalwart spirituality of the Israelite warriors. In this polemic encounter with the forces of the unbelievers, the immigrants speak on behalf of their greater nation—both those who can contribute immediately and those who will follow suit—and they draw on a defining moment in the history of the Jewish people that reaffirms their eternal right over the land. This biblical reaffirmation underscores not only their commitment to the Mosaic law but also their willingness to fight and die for it. The biblical parallel also carries with it certain assumptions about the nature of the divine mandate and how it lends itself to interpretative reading. The effective role of the immigrant movement comes to an end in our treatise with the surprising martyrdom of the first messiah. Immediately thereafter, Messiah-son-of-David appears. He assembles a large army that is composed of Israelite warriors and resurrected leaders from the Jewish past, including the recently martyred Messiah-son-of-Joseph (fol. 15r.a). With the help of God, they subjugate and slaughter the kings of Edom and of the other rival nations (fol. 15v.a). Our treatise then turns to a lengthy musing on the resurrection of the rest of Israel (fol. 15v.b) and on the regenesis of the world after the seventh millennium, this time to last for all eternity (fol. 16r–v).

Conclusion Throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish authors often resorted to apocalyptic language as a way to address the misfortunes of their own lives. They interpreted natural and political events as comforting signs of their imminent redemption. At the same time, they also put these episodes of discontent to theodicic work, using them as opportunities to reaffirm the commitment of the Lord toward his chosen people. The author of Darmstadt 25 and his

A Jewish “Crusade” to the Near East

129

contemporaries, however, used some of the same themes in a radically different way. They utilized the language of messianic war as an ideological vessel to render meaningful their travel to the Land of Israel and to justify their desire to dwell there. The thirteenth-century Near East saw an abundance of authors from all persuasions who resorted to this rhetorical strategy of seeking to advance political and cultural claims through narratives on divinely sanctioned warfare. In other words, the anonymous author of the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog not only employed the figures of Christian and Muslim enemies as opponents against whom Jewish warriors could enact their belligerent spirituality but also utilized the very notion of holy war that was developed and shared by those enemies as a platform through which to articulate Jewish claims of cultural and religious cohesion. The disintegration of the Frankish and Ayyubid hegemonies toward the end of the twelfth century is, in part, what made the large immigration waves of European Jews to Frankish Acre possible in the beginning of the thirteenth century. But this new political, cultural, and religious state of affairs is also what shaped the ideological footprints of those immigration movements. The Book of Taḥkemoni, the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, and other contemporary messianic tracts show that Jews in crusading Acre perceived their political language as one that was in dialogue with other contemporary discourses on holy war. The first generation of immigrants formed the intellectual, social, and institutional backbone of the community in Acre until its fall in 1291. The ideology and intellectual legacy of that founding generation was the basis for further meditation on the connections between the presence of the Jewish community in Acre and a political and spiritual claim over the Land of Israel. The adaptation of these defining ideas into a full-fledged messianic program, which was consistently in polemical contact with contemporaneous Christian and Muslim voices, is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter 5

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations of Holy War

As the previous chapter shows, Jews who immigrated to Palestine during the thirteenth century chose to portray their passage to, and presence on, the Holy Land by using a decidedly belligerent language. The author of the Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog and his followers built on ancient traditions to articulate their disposition toward the land and its gentile occupants in messianic terms and to provide an apocalyptic framing of their recent past and future. The previous chapter also shows how Jewish authors used apocalyptic narratives to undermine notions of Christian pious belligerence by drawing a polemical connection between the hermeneutical principles that inform Christological militancy and the claim for a right over the Holy Land. Jewish authors during the thirteenth century, however, used apocalyptic language not only to challenge Christological holy warfare but also to advance broad cultural and political claims. For example, a large number of messianic homilies praised the cultural cohesion of the Jewish community and criticized the tendency of Near Eastern Muslims and Christians to collaborate with each other against their own coreligionists. The genre of apocalyptic literature helped convey this notion by setting up the difference between Jews and Gentiles through staging wars between and within both camps. In choosing apocalyptic writing as a rhetorical vehicle, the authors of these messianic homilies were not merely critical but also polemical: they criticized the political ideology of Christians and Muslims by drawing on a shared pool of symbols that they turned against their interlocutors. The

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

131

decision to invoke the apocalypse presented those authors with the opportunity to discuss questions of spirituality and sacred geography through the use of narrative structures and categories that they shared with their neighbors. Like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, Jewish authors drew on, and took ownership of, an apocalyptic corpus that had ancient roots and that featured much overlap with the corpora of the other traditions. This chapter seeks to place their choices of genre within an interreligious context, claiming that in turning to apocalyptic registers, thirteenth-century Jewish authors immersed themselves in a deeply entangled literary space that was inhabited by authors from all three religions. Scholars of Jewish apocalypticism have claimed traditionally that the primary purpose of these works was to provide an appealing, if at times subversive, interpretation of turbulent and tragic events.1 Thirteenth-century messianic treatises indeed served in part to mold contemporary political and natural events into intelligible shapes, so as to render them meaningful in the typological memory of Jewish audiences. However, as the previous chapter shows, the French-speaking immigrants to Acre and their successors also put this language to use in order to portray the footprint of a political movement that sought to make claims about the Land of Israel and about the nature of their spiritual and ritual experience upon it. This apocalyptic corpus, furthermore, provided those thirteenth-century Jews in Acre with a language to put their claims in a local interreligious context, as it rivaled contemporary Frankish and Ayyubid accounts about the theodicic and political claim over the Holy Land. They put forward those claims in a genre that was popular among the other communities in the region as well. The fact that the Hebrew apocalypses feature elements and rhetorical strategies that appeared in contemporaneous Christian and Muslim compositions does not, however, mean that Jewish authors imitated their peers or vice versa. Rather, this shared apocalyptic corpus is primarily a result of the fact that authors from all three communities drew on well-established traditions that were handed down from late antiquity and that had long been deeply interlaced by the use of common apocalyptic themes. Authors then introduced slight changes that were meant to put this interreligious entanglement to contemporary uses. In order to demonstrate this process, this chapter unfolds in two parts: the first examines a corpus of mid-thirteenth-century Near Eastern Jewish apocalypses, and the second then establishes the interreligious literary space

132

Chapter 5

within which they were created. Because this chapter works through a large number of treatises in the various languages, I offer this brief textual introduction to serve as a roadmap that could help follow the argument. The first part focuses on several works in Hebrew and one in Judeo-Arabic that were presumably composed in the orbit of the Jewish community in Acre. My purpose in examining these works is to highlight a theme that threads through all of them—namely, that, thanks to its ethnic purity and social cohesion, the Israelite army shall gain victory over its divided and intermingled enemies. The main focus here is on a cycle of medieval apocalypses that stage the figure of the Talmudic sage, R. Simon b. Yochai [= RaSHBI]. The first is an early medieval (perhaps seventh- to ninth-century) treatise called The Secrets of RaSHBI (“Nistarot RaSHBI”), followed by The Prayer of RaSHBI (“Tefillat RaSHBI”), which was compiled in the thirteenth century and includes many references to the crusades. The latter was published by Adolf Jellinek on the basis of a postmedieval defective manuscript, which for the sake of convenience I call the Jellinek-Prayer. I discovered an earlier, much superior version of this important treatise in two manuscripts from Parma, which I call the Parma-Prayer. In 1971, Urbach found in the Bodleian Library a homily that features most of the thirteenth-century material in The Prayer of RaSHBI. This homily is not cyclical in that it does not frame its narrative in a story that features R. Simon b. Yochai—I call this text the Bodleian Homily and introduce another, previously unknown, version of this homily (incidentally also found in a Bodleian manuscript). While the study of these texts is devoted mainly to the idea of militant purity and social cohesion, which they all endorse, a methodological discussion on the genre of medieval Hebrew apocalypse is inevitable. On the basis of the Parma and Bodleian texts, as well as an additional Genizah fragment, I attempt to revise previous theories about how the RaSHBI cycle evolved over the course of the Middle Ages. The first part of the chapter, then, ends with a discussion of a unique “Ten Signs” treatise (that I call the Bodleian Signs), which articulates a particularly polemical and culturally sensitive ideology of militant purity. As stated above, the second part of the chapter attempts to place these Hebrew apocalypses in their regional and chronological context. It begins with a discussion of a Muslim eschatological narrative found in ibn ‘Arabi’s collection, Muhādarāt al-Abrār wa-Musāmarāt al-Akhyār [Testimony of the Righteous and Discourse of the Virtuous]. It then comes full circle with a study of two thirteenth-century Christian prophecies,

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

133

both of which surfaced in the context of the Fifth Crusade: the so-called Fils d’Agap and Liber Clementis.

The RaSHBI Cycle A number of messianic traditions in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic were composed in the mid-thirteenth-century Near East. As a result of the shortcoming of the available editions and par ticu lar challenges of the genre, however, they were previously misidentified. Primary among those texts is The Prayer of RaSHBI—a text that has received a great deal of scholarly attention thanks to its apparent, yet elusive, references to the period of the crusades. I therefore begin this inquiry by presenting new archival material that grounds both The Prayer of RaSHBI and related literary traditions, in their temporal, local, and thematic context. Since the first publication of The Prayer of R. Shim’on b. Yohai [Teffilat RaSHBI] by Adolf Jellinek, scores of scholars have debated the date of its original composition as well as the time period and events that it relates. There is a widespread agreement, however, that this homily presents an augmented rendition of an earlier composition, maybe from the seventh century, known by the name of Secrets of R. Shim’on b. Yohai [Nistarot RaSHBI]. Both texts share a fantastical frame story that invokes the figure of the famous first-century sage, RaSHBI, and both have in common large blocks of text. It appears, therefore, that the compiler of The Prayer of RaSHBI rearranged parts of the earlier text and added several chapters that pertain to events closer to his time period or apocalyptic sensibilities. Adolph Jellinek first published The Prayer of RaSHBI in 1855 on the basis of a transcription of a unique manuscript that he had received from the Rabbi of Mantua, the provenance or details of which are unknown.2 The text was subsequently reprinted and translated several times. In the introduction to this midrash, Jellinek maintains that it is a more detailed recension of The Secrets of RaSHBI and that its historical references to the period of the crusades are thoroughly transparent.3 Because Jellinek had been of the opinion that The Secrets of RaSHBI also was composed on the basis of events that occurred during the period of the crusades, his discovery of The Prayer of RaSHBI and its obvious historicity, in his mind, shed light on both rather obscure compositions.4 Heinrich Graetz, however, questioned

134

Chapter 5

the dating of both texts. He showed that there is remarkable correspondence between the contexts of The Secrets of RaSHBI and the early Islamic period, before the Abbasid revolution in the middle of the eighth century.5 The correspondences are so great, he claimed, that the author of The Secrets of RaSHBI would only have been familiar with this early history—part of which is undocumented even in Muslim sources—if he lived during that time. The Prayer of RaSHBI, Graetz argued, is a later rendition that alludes to events that took place during the subsequent centuries and ends with the wars against the Mongols in the second half of the thirteenth century.6 While most subsequent scholars accept Graetz’s findings with regard to The Secrets of RaSHBI, many reject his interpretation of the additional material that is found in The Prayer of RaSHBI.7 Moses Buttenwieser, for example, discards Graetz’s identification of the Mongol wars on the basis of both contextual and chronological evidence. He nevertheless intuits, like Jellinek, that a strong concern with the first or early crusades is unmistakable.8 In a study on a number of late twelfth-century messianic treatises, Yitzhak Baer attempted to ground the general claim that The Prayer of RaSHBI has to do with the crusades on numerous parallels with specific events of the Third Crusade.9 Yehudah Even-Shemuel accepted and further elaborated on Baer’s hypothesis.10 He saw this text as the product of widespread messianic agitation resulting from the impact of Maimonides and the charismatic influence of Saladin.11 More recently, however, scholars tend to agree that this picture is far more complicated and that an exact dating of each composition is impossible. Even if the core of The Secrets of RaSHBI was composed around the time of the end of the Umayyad dynasty, the versions extant today contain multiple layers that must have been added by scribes at different times. The same applies to The Prayer of RaSHBI, making the task of extracting and dating each layer virtually impossible. However, the fact that two significantly different versions of one “cycle” have survived presents scholars of medieval apocalyptic literature with a unique view into the history of a tradition over the course of several centuries. In many other cases, modern readers are left with but one recension that amalgamates a multiplicity of voices that may have existed at one time and are now inseparable. In that sense, The Prayer of RaSHBI and The Secrets of RaSHBI preserve two moments in a process far more intricate and complex than we can document. Some modern scholars have attempted to demonstrate this complexity. Bernard Lewis, for example, argues that even the supplemental material in

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

135

The Prayer of RaSHBI comprises several different historical moments.12 The first, he claims, alludes to the Byzantine invasion of Syria and the Fatimid conquest of Egypt at the end of the tenth century.13 Only then the treatise turns to several crusade-related reflections that Lewis does not attempt to date precisely. Ephraim Urbach has also contributed to the effort to trace the evolution of The Prayer of RaSHBI and the stages through which it took its extant form.14 He questions the very assumption that The Prayer of RaSHBI is a later, if much expanded, version of The Secrets of RaSHBI. Urbach contends, instead, that the author of The Prayer of RaSHBI simply set out to compile a number of unrelated traditions attributed to R. Simon b. Yohai, only one of which being a version of The Secrets of RaSHBI that was at the time available to him. Urbach supports his claim by introducing an independent text that he discovered in the Bodleian Library (MS Opp. Add. Qu. 128; see below).15 Alongside The Secrets of RaSHBI, this short homily, he maintains, was one of the main sources available to the compiler of The Prayer of RaSHBI and the key source of information for the part about the period of the crusades. A previously unknown thirteenth-century version of The Prayer of RaSHBI, preserved in two Parma manuscripts that I introduce below, corroborates Urbach’s hypothesis that a late medieval author incorporated the Bodleian homily in the apocalyptic and thematic framework of The Secrets of RaSHBI to create The Prayer of RaSHBI.16 In what follows, I will first show where this Parma version (henceforth: Parma-Prayer) stands relative to the earlier The Secrets of RaSHBI and the later text that Jellinek published (henceforth: Jellinek-Prayer).17 Subsequently, I will discuss how the thirteenthcentury authors of this text utilized the messianic language to engage in an implicit interfaith conversation about pious belligerence and about the right over the Holy Land.

The Parma Manuscripts: A Medieval Version of The Prayer of RaSHBI Manuscripts 3122 and 2342  in Parma’s Biblioteca Palatina, both of late thirteenth-century provenance, share a remarkably similar text that represents an early version of The Prayer of RaSHBI.18 The text in MS Parma 3122 begins with the following, rather misleading, incipit: “This is the sequence

136

Chapter 5

of signs that will appear prior to the coming of the Messiah” (fol. 228r).19 While this incipit leads one to expect a treatise associated with the Ten Signs tradition, the next three folia in fact contain a unique version of The Prayer of RaSHBI. What is more, both The Secrets of RaSHBI and The Prayer of RaSHBI famously begin with short vignettes about R. Simon b. Yohai and stage what follows as a dialogue with the Angel.20 What may have added confusion to the identification and cataloging of the Parma manuscripts is the fact that the text there does not employ a frame story featuring the firstcentury sage. Early rabbinic literature portrays RaSHBI as a vocal and courageous leader of the Jews, serving as an emissary to Rome to plead for the abolition of the crushing Hadrianic decrees.21 Especially after the incarceration and eventual martyrdom of his teacher, R. Akiva, RaSHBI was forced to flee Roman authorities and find refuge in a cave in the Galilee. Early rabbinical sources relate multiple legends concerning the causes and circumstances of RaSHBI’s flight. Together with his son, RaSHBI is said to have spent thirteen years in the cave, observing a highly ascetic lifestyle and rigorously studying Torah.22 As a result, throughout the Middle Ages, RaSHBI increasingly came to be associated with mystical traditions. Multiple legends regarding his period of occultation in the cave circulated, relating that after forty days of fasting, in which RaSHBI prayed to God to rescue Israel from persecutions, an angel appeared to him. Metatron, the angel, is said to have revealed to RaSHBI the mysteries of the Bible, establishing him as the grand purveyor of esoteric lore.23 In addition, Metatron also revealed to RaSHBI the future of the world, announcing the various stages before and after the coming of the messiahs.24 Accordingly, The Secrets of RaSHBI simply begins by attributing its apocalyptic vision to that defining encounter with the Angel: “ These are the secrets that were revealed to RaSHBI when he was hiding in a cave on account of [the persecutions of] Caesar king of Edom. . . . There were revealed to him the secrets of the eschaton and [various] hidden things.”25 However, after this—admittedly important—attribution, not once is RaSHBI mentioned for the rest of the treatise. The Prayer of RaSHBI, on the other hand, prefaces the legendary dialogue between RaSHBI and the Angel with a short story about the involvement of RaSHBI in lifting the decrees that Hadrian had enforced on the Jews.26 In several subsequent occasions throughout the treatise, sections are introduced through additional imaginary dialogues between RaSHBI and the Angel. Not only does MS Parma 3122 lack even an

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

137

initial mention of RaSHBI, like The Secrets of RaSHBI, the Talmudic sage goes unmentioned throughout the rest of the treatise as well. As for structure, here, too, the Parma-Prayer and The Secrets of RaSHBI show important similarities. The Secrets of RaSHBI contains four sections: the first presents the rise of Islam (Kingdom of Ishmael) as the beginning of the redemption of Israel. The second part enumerates the deeds of the first Caliphs. The third turns to the coming of the messiahs, first Messiahson-of-Joseph and then Messiah-son-of-David. The final section—which some scholars deem as a later interpolation—relates another belligerent narrative that takes place in Egypt, which Bernard Lewis identifies as having to do with the Abbasid revolution.27 The compiler of the Parma-Prayer appears to have taken The Secrets of RaSHBI and replicated its entirety, usually with remarkable precision, albeit in a slightly different order. It begins with the first two parts and continues directly to the final section; then comes a lengthy original textual unit, and finally it concludes with the third section of The Secrets of RaSHBI. The Jellinek-Prayer also begins by following the first, second, and fourth sections of The Secrets of RaSHBI. However, it generally presents highly condensed and occasionally incoherent readings of the sections it shares with Secrets and the Parma-Prayer. For example, where The Secrets of RaSHBI and the Parma-Prayer relate the deeds of several successive Caliphs, the JellinekPrayer fuses together the phrases about Mu’awiyyiah (the first Ummayad Caliph) and Marwan (the fourth Ummayad Caliph) into an unintelligible unit.28 At times, the Parma version also appears to illuminate passages where even The Secrets of RaSHBI tends to be obscure. For example, The Secrets of RaSHBI seems to describe the state of the Umayyad caliphate under the tenth Caliph in the dynasty, Hisham (d. 743), as follows: “He will plant young trees and will burst open the abyss to raise water to irrigate his trees. The grandsons of his sons will eat much, and whoever rises up against him will be delivered into his hands. The land will be quiet during his days and he will die in peace.”29 Several scholars have noted the incoherence of the underlined phrase in relation to its adjacent passages. John Reeves, for example, suggests simply that the grandsons had enjoyed the fruit of Hisham’s agricultural efforts. Even-Shemuel, on the other hand, proclaimed that this passage alludes rather to heavy taxation. Hisham’s offspring, he offers, “consumed much [of the people’s yields].” In the Parma-Prayer, however, it becomes clear that the eating is, in fact, associated with the subsequent comment about the political stability that the Caliph achieved during his reign. There, the

138

Chapter 5

passage continues, “He planted many trees and rebuilt ruined towns, in fulfillment of R. Ishmael’s saying ‘and he will burst open the abyss to raise water to irrigate his trees,’ and his progeny will multiply. Furthermore, he will eat the tranquility of the Sons of Ishmael, and will experience peace from all sides. And whoever rises up against him maliciously will be delivered into his hands. And all his life [the land] will be quiet and he will die in peace.”30 This description of the Umayyad Caliph’s reign seeks to portray both material abundance (which his progeny will enjoy) and political stability. It is the Caliph himself who is seen to achieve peace in his realm by metaphorically eroding or gnawing away at (“eating”) the tranquility of his Muslim subjects. This version is both more coherent and in line with the way contemporary Muslim sources portray the Caliph and the period of his rule.31 As mentioned above, both the Jellinek-Prayer and the Parma-Prayer replicate the first, second, and fourth sections of The Secrets of RaSHBI with varying degrees of accuracy. Afterward, however, both compositions depart from The Secrets of RaSHBI and turn to a lengthy, original section that appears to deal with more recent events, ending with the later crusade period. Urbach shows that a large part of this section derives from the first part of a homily that he discovered at the Bodleian Library.32 Afterward, the JellinekPrayer concludes with two other unrelated narratives, which are not found in either Parma manuscript, The Secrets of RaSHBI or the Bodleian Homily. The Parma-Prayer, on the other hand, is unique in that embedded in it is the entire Bodleian Homily—verbatim. A comparison between the Parma manuscripts and the Jellinek-Prayer reveals that the former present a more coherent version of the part that pertains to the period of the crusades. On several occasions, the Jellinek-Prayer provides a condensed and unintelligible reading that only becomes clear in the Parma renderings. Furthermore, the point at which the Parma and Jellinek versions depart is in the middle of a section that enumerates a sequence of events, each of which is announced by a “divine voice [bat-kol].” The first announces that the Israelites will avenge Edom’s persecutions; the second assures that the warriors can expect the same fortune and divine support that Joshua experienced in the siege on Jericho.33 But where the JellinekPrayer starts an entirely new narrative, perhaps having to do with the Third Crusade, the Parma manuscripts follow through with the third to tenth “divine whispers.” In other words, the version found in the Parma manuscripts was most likely the one that was available to the copyist of the Jellinek text. He decided,

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

139

Table 1. Phases of the apocalyptic RaSHBI tradition Secrets of RaSHBI

Bodleian Homily

Parma-Prayer

Jellinek-Prayer RaSHBI vs. Hadrian

RaSHBI and the Angel

RaSHBI and the Angel

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Transition: RaSHBI and the Angel Fatimid(?) period

Fatimid(?) period

Urbach, Chapter 1

Urbach, Chapter 1

Urbach, Chapter 1

“Divine voices” 1–2

“Divine voices” 1–2

“Divine voices” 1–2

“Divine voices” 3–10

“Divine voices” 3–10 Transition

Third(?) Crusade

Chapter 3

Ten Signs—Armylus

however, to break off the enumeration of Signs after the second and to supplement his composition with three additional narratives. The ParmaPrayer, on the other hand, like the Bodleian Homily, relates all ten Signs, after which a unique transitional passage links the treatise back to the third section of The Secrets of RaSHBI, with which it ends.

How The Prayer of RaSHBI Was Compiled As in the Jellinek-Prayer, the original section in Parma 3122—labeled as Fatimid(?) in Table 1—begins with two chapters that relate wars in Egypt and Palestine: “Then the westerners (lit. ‘sons of the west’) head out in a large mixed army, and they wage war against the easterners (lit. ‘sons of the east’) in their land. They kill many, and those who survive escape to Alexandria . . . where a great battle ensues. The easterners retreat and escape to

140

Chapter 5

Cairo. The [western army] then crosses over to Palestine (‘The beautiful land [Dan. 11:16]’) and destroy all that is within their reach.”34 Again, the Parma manuscripts occasionally provide a more expansive and coherent reading. For example, the Jellinek-Prayer relates, in rather obscure Hebrew syntax, that “a King of fierce countenance” will persecute the Jews, but “whomever he exiles [goleh] will escape [yimalet] to Upper Galilee ‘for in Mt. Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape’ [Joel 2:32] until he reaches Meron.”35 The Jellinek-Prayer then continues to relate the deeds of the king: “He kills among the Israelites until he reaches Damascus, and when he reaches Damascus the Lord provides assistance and relief to Israel.”36 Both Parma manuscripts, however, indicate that the true meaning of the first sentence is “[but] whoever escapes [ya‘aleh] to Upper Galilee will survive [yeheh niẓol] ‘for there will be a remnant on Mt. Zion and in Jerusalem’ [Joel 3:5] from Jerusalem to Meron.”37 This version clarifies that the subject of the first sentence is those who escape and not the cruel king, drawing on a more plausible biblical allusion. Furthermore, the Parma version clarifies the connection between the refuge in the Galilee and the calamity around Damascus: “And in those days woe to whoever resides around Damascus, for the King goes and kills from among Israel until he reaches all the way to Damascus.”38 Opinions vary as to what historical events these two chapters describe. Even-Shemuel and Baer contend that the “Westerners” who come in a mixed army and wage war against the Easterners are Frankish forces that engage in combat with Muslim armies.39 The fact that Alexandria and Egypt are some of the places that are mentioned is an indication, for them, that the historical context is King Amalric’s 1167 expedition to Egypt. Bernard Lewis, on the other hand, maintains that the historical background is the late tenthcentury Fatimid conquest of Syria and Jerusalem.40 This identification rests on the observation that the “sons of the west,” rather than Christian crusaders, could be a reference to North African Muslims (commonly referred to in Arabic sources as the Maghribis—those who come from the West). Additionally, the three years and a half of burdensome rule that the text mentions correspond, Lewis offers, to the years 971 to 974  in which the Carmathians “ravaged south Syria and Palestine.”41 Both attempts to decode the historical background, however, seem equally tendentious. The prose utilizes an elusive and highly typological language that intentionally seeks to stylize historical events into common

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

141

apocalyptic structures. Furthermore, some of the apocalyptic motifs that this passage puts to work are already to be found in an eleventh-century treatise. The short messianic reflection embedded in Midrash Lekaḥ Tob, too, relates the deeds of a “king of fierce countenance” who ruled for three and a half years. As in our passage, the king commands that anyone who professes the unity of the Lord be killed and decrees that the Jewish ritual calendar as well as the observance of the Sabbath be abolished.42 In other words, it is possible that the original passage alluded to either the Fatimid conquest or Amalric’s expedition to Egypt. But it is equally plausible that the author of the Parma-Prayer drew on readily available apocalyptic motifs and applied them in his new treatise without firmly referencing any specific historical event. We find an example of this very technique in a fragment from the Cairo Genizah kept at the National Library of Israel (NLI). The author of fragment 4.577.2.6 employed some of the same motifs and “events” as Lekah Tob and The Prayer of RaSHBI in a prose account that has explicitly to do with the rule of the Franks. This narrative, too, relates a clash between East and West, but here the sequence of events is slightly different. The JellinekPrayer ends the aforementioned passage by mentioning a king who rules for three months and forces Israel to apostatize.43 Another king, we are told, will abolish both the Sabbath and the Hebrew ritual calendar and will kill whoever professes the Jewish creed. Furthermore, the king “will receive those who are rich, remove their money and kill them,” and during his reign, there will be great distress for Israel. The Jellinek-Prayer also describes the momentous battle between the forces of East and West, “about which all the prophets have prophesied” and as a result of which “the streams of water of the Euphrates will turn to blood.” 44 The Genizah fragment describes many of the same events: after three months of distress, for example, there will be a mighty clash between the armies. But here the author specifies that on the one side are a multitude of Arab nations (mamlakat al-‘arab bi-ummam la tuḥṣi’u) and on the other the crusaders (al-Ifranj) and the Byzantines (al-Rūm), who march together. The author also mentions that this battle begins on the “Plains of Acre [fi marj ‘Akka].” As a result of this clash too, “the water of the Euphrates will become burdened by the blood of the killed.” The author also mentions that the meaning of this event is found in scripture: “For whoever comprehends the prophecy, [this battle] is elucidated in the Twelve Minor Prophets, by Zechariah—peace be upon him.” 45

142

Chapter 5

The Genizah fragment also relates the deeds of the evil king: he tries to force the Israelites (literally: the people of the Sabbath) to abandon their faith and then proscribes their ritual practices. But here we are told that in addition to the Sabbath, the king prohibits prayer and the act of circumcision. Significantly, the author ends his narrative by mentioning that “after all of these events and signs [al-‘alamāt] a King from among the Turks will appear and will stand for three months. In the beginning of his rule he will take from all the rich people their yields, then he will confiscate their wealth and finally kill them.” In other words, the author took many of the same motifs that are found in The Prayer of RaSHBI and Lekah Tob and introduced slight changes. The result is a narrative that employs familiar apocalyptic topoi but at the same time clearly uses images from the period of the crusades and their clashes with Ayyubid or Mamluk forces. Any attempt to pin down specific historical cues is futile, insofar as the author is clearly drawing on preexisting themes and intentionally employs a highly typological language. Nevertheless, the narrative is one that accords with the sensibilities of thirteenth-century, Arabic-speaking Jews. The compiler of the Parma-Prayer seems to have done something very similar. To sum up the discussion so far, the Parma-Prayer helps to trace the process by which the second manifestation of the RaSHBI cycle—namely, The Prayer of RaSHBI—came into being. As many studies of this complex composition have shown, The Prayer of RaSHBI is an amalgam of multiple previous traditions that were joined at different historical circumstances. However, while the Parma versions clarify some obscure readings in the previously published texts, they do not help to determine the exact date in which each layer was composed. Indeed, the apocalyptic traditions that the medieval redactor used may have originally been composed in an entirely different historical context, but the new composition rendered them meaningful for a thirteenth-century audience. Furthermore, slight changes and additions that are found in the early versions of the Bodleian Homily and in the Parma-Prayer reinforce the notion that both were created by and for an audience that was thoroughly concerned with, and knowledgeable about, events of the thirteenth-century Near East. Even if originally the passages may have alluded to earlier events, thirteenth-century audiences were likely able to read into The Prayer of RaSHBI their own vision of pious messianic warfare and to decode cues that were relevant to their perception of events in the East. In other words, The Prayer of RaSHBI in its earliest surviving

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

143

formulation was created for the sensibilities of the Jews living in Acre or for those who maintained close intellectual and political ties with them.

The Ideology of Militant Purity in The Prayer of RaSHBI We can now move forward to the part in both the Jellinek-Prayer and the Parma-Prayer that pertains quite clearly to events in the thirteenth-century Near East. As stated above, this section also appears independently in the homily that Urbach discovered at the Bodleian Library. But here again, while the Jellinek-Prayer replicates lengthy portions of the homily, it presents an often condensed and ultimately trimmed rendition. I contend that the unabridged version of this section, found in both the Parma manuscripts (and of course in the Bodleian Homily), reveals the mind-set of the late thirteenthcentury redactor. While still ostensibly typological and highly elusive, the prose in this section features an unusual abundance of details and frequent mention of seemingly contemporary references. The following long quotation touches on the heart of the events and exemplifies the techniques that the author employed to render them meaningful (underlined parts do not appear in Jellinek; between ** is a section in Aramaic): The Sons of Ishmael arrive and wage war against the Edomites in the plain of Acre. Immediately the Assyrians come upon them and take them into captivity, as it is said: “Then Assyria takes you captive” [Num 24:22], and “Ships come from the quarter of Kittim” [Num 24:24]—these are the Edomites who will rise in the end of time. And when they embark [upon the battle] they arrive like thieves, as it is said “If thieves were to come to you” [Obad 1:5]. And they wage war against Israel46 and kill many among them. **And you had seen the Shalmaite entering the plain of Acre, iron shatters clay while legs crush toes [cf. Daniel 2:34–35] and they become intermingled in the kingdom. As a result the evil kingdom falls and they are liberated from the yoke of subordination. And you had seen that the sons of Rome embarked upon an attack on Alexandria, in order to put an end to the rule of the Shalmaite, which then turns to the hands of the Turks. Naked they will flee Acre, without horses or war gear. For

144

Chapter 5

the end of that kingdom has arrived, like toes that are trodden in the dirt by the crushing feet. And you saw how they dress in (?) and flee, and immediately return to their Kingdom.** And this is for you the sign: when you see that the Italians depart, joined by legions from Edom, to wage a large war in the plain of Acre, until a horse sinks up to its thighs in blood. And the sons of Ishmael47 will flee to the plain of Jericho. There they stand and say to one another: where do we flee, leaving behind our sons and daughters? And they return to wage a different war in the plain of Megiddo. And the Edomites flee and board ships carried by the wind to Assyria ‘and they will oppress the Assyrians and Eber ha-Nahar [cf. Num 24:24]’. After nine months the Assyrians come out and say to48 the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Rome as it is said: “When Assyria takes you captive [Num 24:22].” And when [the Assyrians] leave the Land of Israel49 they cast peace upon it. And Elijah proclaims to them “and that shall afford safety, should Assyria invade our Land [Mic 5:4].” And the sons of Italy seek to wage war against them and against the sons of Ishmael, saying “let the Kingdom return to us!” But before they are even able to lift their heads, Assyria takes them and their kinsmen captive.50 Baer’s claim, on the basis of the Jellinek-Prayer, that this passage relates the events leading to, and during, the Third Crusade is severely undermined in light of the additional, often confusing, information that appears in the full version. Indeed, Urbach’s attempt to decode the prose and unearth its historical underpinning yields a temporally and thematically incoherent account. While Urbach too suggests that the battles in the “plain of Acre” are the Ayubbid conquest of the city in 1189, the kingdom that “turns to the hands of the Turks” he interprets as the Mamluk coup in 1250, and the battle in Megiddo he takes to denote the confrontation with the Mongols in 1260. Urbach then sees an allusion to the internal strife among the Italian communes, before the narrative returns to the period of the Third Crusade. A key sentence for understanding the passage is the one that comes after the introductory remark, that both the Edomites and Ishmaelites came to wage war. The next sentence begins a short narrative in Aramaic, most of

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

145

which does not appear in the Jellinek-Prayer. The version Urbach had before him led him to assert that “Shalmaite” denotes the forces headed by Saladin that conquered Acre (“iron shatters clay and breaks legs”). The “toes that intermingle in the kingdom,” he proclaims, are the “Syrian and Iraqi armies” that joined Saladin’s camp and helped him bring down the evil kingdom. But if we punctuate this sentence differently, its import holds a very different significance for our understanding of the entire passage: “And you saw the Shalmaite entering the plain of Acre. Iron shatters clay while legs crush toes [cf. Daniel 2:34–5], and they become intermingled in the kingdom. As a result, the evil kingdom falls.” In other words, if indeed the Shalmaite signify Muslim forces, then the author believes that the reason the Christian kingdom was jeopardized is not because it was defeated but rather because both sides became dangerously intermingled. This approach also preserves the interpretive tradition on the powerful allusion from the Book of Daniel, which suggests that the half-clay, half-iron statue refers to the divided Greek kingdom.51 Indeed, the rest of this passage dwells on a variety of internal discords or unlikely alliances and their consequences. For example, the joint forces of Italians and Edom are able to scare off Ishmael to the plain of Jericho, at which point both sides—the Christians and Muslims—“say to one another: ‘where are you going and whereto are we coming, abandoning our sons and daughters’? They, then, both return and [together] wage a different battle in the plain of Megiddo.” In another episode, we learn that the Assyrians take both the sons of Rome and Ishmael captive. Upon their departure, after nine months of subjugation, they bring peace to the Land. However, the Italians seek to provoke war together with Ishmael, hoping that “the Kingdom return to us.” But “before they are even able to lift their heads,” the Assyrians take advantage of the situation and “take them and their kinsmen captive.” As with the other sections in this treatise, it is impossible to determine when this textual unit was composed or the “original” historical circumstances in which it was penned. What we can see, however, is the editorial and at times authorial intervention on part of the redactor in an effort to utilize previously existing traditions for his (and his audience’s) sensibilities. Nevertheless, in its present form, the prose seems to allude to conflicts among the different Ayyubid princes that persisted throughout the first half of the thirteenth century. The incessant contention between Ishmael and Assyria, furthermore, could be interpreted as the rivalry between the Ayyubid princes

146

Chapter 5

of Egypt as opposed to their northern Ayyubid counterparts, as well as their respective alliances with Frankish rulers. The contention between Assyria versus Ishmael and Rome echoes the multiple occasions in which Ayyubid sultans allied with Frankish rulers against their own coreligionists, occasions surveyed at length in Chapter 1. This preoccupation with the consequences of internal strife or indecent alliances between Franks and the Ayyubids becomes all the more striking as the narrative proceeds. The next section deals with the Jewish response to the aggression of Edom. Following the tradition of Lekaḥ Tob, the attempts of Israel to liberate their nation and Land is related in ten installments, each announced by a divine voice (Bat-Kol). As mentioned above, the JellinekPrayer relates only the first two of these installments while both Parma manuscripts as well as the Bodleian versions of the homily relate all ten. The first divine voice demonstrates how strikingly different the situation was among the Israelite camp. The homily relates that two separate groups of warriors each appoint a king in response to the divine call to take vengeance on Edom.52 The inhabitants of the Land of Israel appoint a ruler from among their lot, while those who come from abroad (lit. “Sons of Babel”) anoint “a King from among the progeny of David.” A conflict between both groups erupts, “until the day that the King Messiah arrives, and both the one [group] and the other proceed to burden Edom.” In other words, whereas both the Christian and Muslim societies consistently displayed paralyzing fragmentation despite sharing a discourse of religious belligerence, the Israelites are able to unify around the one ruler of Davidic ancestry. After the Israelite army is firmly united, the next divine voice demonstrates exactly how they put their collective power to work: Such you will do to the evil city and its king . . . : and they will raise a cry—Shemah Israel—and immediately the walls fall and they enter the city. Inside they find dead men lying in the streets. The warriors [of Edom] are frozen like stones mounted on their horses, as it is said “[her men of war] will fall silent like stones” [Jer 50:30, Exod 16:16]. And Israel grows mightier further still and kills inside the city for three straight days and nights . . . and the King Messiah is revealed among them and says: “my sons, I am the King Messiah. It is for me that you have been waiting, and in any calamity that may befall upon you I am your companion until this very day.”53

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

147

The vision here is one in which the Israelite forces, by virtue of their unity and cohesion, are able to subdue the enemy soldiers whose presence defiles the Holy City. There is additional evidence that Jews read this homily as a critique of contemporary regional affairs. The homily sets up a contradiction between the tendency of Christians and Muslims to “intermingle” as opposed to the political integrity of the Israelites. The narrative on conflicts among Israel’s enemies is bracketed by references to Edom. It begins by stating, “ These are the Edomites who will rise in the End of Time . . . and they wage war against Israel,” and ends with the divine message that “Israel will avenge the vengeance of God on Edom.” The section in between—distinguished by the frequent use of Aramaic and the use of past tense—serves to portray the sinful and deceitful nature of the Christian Franks.54 A scribe who produced another copy of the Bodleian Homily appears to have also understood this passage as stressing the impure tendencies of the Franks as well as the consequences of their unlikely alliances with Muslims.55 He gestures toward this interpretation by the following passage that he chose to insert in the middle of the first paragraph of the treatise: The [Edomites] wage war with Israel, and they crookedly [rise] on them56 as far as their hands extend,57 and he starts to act on the saying of the Prophet Zephaniah: “For then I will make the peoples pure of speech (= 798)” [Zeph 3:9], which in Gimatria is equivalent to the Holy Tongue (= 801). Furthermore, he [i.e. the Prophet] insinuated that they would agree to speak in a “pure speech,” which is the Holy Tongue. Also the previous verse confirms [this interpretation]: “But wait for me—says the Lord” [Zeph 3:8] . . . that is to say [the Holy Tongue] is the one that includes all of these letters (?). This will also help draw many of them closer to the True Religion. Already many of them circulate [warnings] about the many falsifications that Jerome has made when translating the twenty-four Holy Books into their language;58 and now many curse him for copying [i.e., interpolating] redundant or wrong words or phrases that were meant to strengthen them.59 At first sight, this passage would appear to be a scribal error, as it has little to do with the rest of the homily. It aims its polemic at a competing religion’s editing and scriptural exegesis. The author expresses an anxiety with respect

148

Chapter 5

to the dangers involved in making scripture available through translation.60 However, I propose that in fact this passage reveals the scribe’s recognition that the treatise is concerned with issues of religious, social, and political cohesion. He invokes Zephaniah’s third prophecy, which admonishes the “polluted city [Zeph. 3:1],” whose prophets are reckless and inhabitants speak falsely. After the lord spills his wrath on both the nations and Israel, only those who enunciate “pure speech [Zeph. 3:9]” will be left in the city. Purity of language, therefore, is a metaphor for the need to maintain a steadfast cultural frontier, perhaps against the backdrop of political and linguistic confusion about which the homily talks.61 In this scribe’s view, the homily advocates the use of an impenetrable rhetoric in order to crystallize a hermeneutical cohesion of Israel in face of their cultural and political enemies.62

The Ideology of Militant Purity in the Ten Signs Tradition Another mid-thirteenth-century reworking of an ancient messianic tradition conveys the same kind of commitment toward political and rhetorical purity of holy warfare. MS Bodleian Oppenheimer Add. Qu. 140 contains a unique version of the Ten Signs theme, which is described in Chapter 4. This composition derives from a distinctive Signs tradition that was first found in a Genizah document. Arthur Marmorstein published the Genizah Ten Signs in 1906, and two decades later, M. Heigger found a seventeenth-century Yemenite manuscript that contains a closely related text.63 Like the Yemenite and Genizah recensions, the Bodleian Signs retains elements that must have been present in the earliest forms of the Ten Signs tradition. Like the ParmaPrayer and the Bodleian Homily, it features a special interest in the early Muslim Caliphs and inscribes locations that were involved in the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century, often preserving the Arabic spelling of these places (such as Iskandaria for Alexandria). Much like many of the homilies we have seen so far, the author of the Bodleian Signs introduces slight changes in the tradition that was handed down from the early Middle Ages so that it reflects the immediate political context of the thirteenth century. Sign Seven, for example, sets up the events in the context of a battle between Edom and Ishmael, which both Marmorstein and Krauss took to refer to the Byzantine-Persian-Muslim battles over

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

149

Jerusalem in the seventh century.64 The king of Edom, we are told, conquers Jerusalem and drives out all of the Ishmaelites, who then gather in Yemen. The Bodleian Signs then omits a passage that explains that the Muslim army moves to Basra, where a second round of confrontation takes place with the king of Edom. Instead, the Bodleian Signs uniquely relates that the battle took place rather in Jerusalem and inserts an emphatic biblical allusion (“ ‘nation was crushed by nation, city by city’ [2 Chr. 15:6], and kingdom by kingdom”), which emphasizes the crushing rivalry between both sides. Our text then, again, omits a clause stating that the king of Edom emerges as victorious and that he reclaimed Jerusalem, as indeed Emperor Heraclius did in the year 628. In order to adapt the narrative to the more recent conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin, the prose relates rather that it is the commander of the Ishmaelite force, Mansur, who reclaims Jerusalem: “he [= Mansur] entered the Temple and placed his golden crown on the Foundation Stone. And he says to God Almighty: ‘I return that which I [or: my ancestors] took.’ ”65 The Bodleian Signs shares with the Genizah Signs a tripartite structure for the polemical dialogue between Nehemiah and the satanic Armylus in Sign Nine. In the Genizah Signs, after having conquered Alexandria and the coastal region, Armylus is said to claim that he is God. He asks the sons of Esau, “Bring me my Torah that I have given you.” They present him with their idols and gods, to which he replies, “The Torah that I have given you is true.” He then asks the same of the Ishmaelites, and they too present him with their scriptures. Armylus, again, says, “The Torah that I have given you is true.” Finally, Armylus asks the sons of Israel to bring him their Torah. But when they present him with a Torah scroll, he says, “You should not believe in this Torah.” The Israelites protest, “If you do not believe in this Torah, then you are Satan; [God] will scold you, Satan.” Armylus, in response, takes the thirty men who came with Nehemiah and burns them at the stake together with the Torah scroll. Nehemiah retorts to this act of aggression by saying, “I believe in nothing but in the God of Israel who has given the Torah through Moses son of Amram, his servant, and the prophet [Elijah] who has put me in his Temple suddenly [cf. Mal. 3:1], and [as a result] I killed the king of Edom. In Him, not in you, I believe.”66 The Bodleian Signs, too, employs a threefold dialogue with Armylus. However, instead of having Armylus address Christians, Muslims, and then Jews, the author of this version has him address the Israelites all three times. Like

150

Chapter 5

the version of the Signs we previously saw in the Homily of the King Messiah, the author of the Bodleian Signs reduced a multilayered discourse into a highly charged symmetrical polemic between Armylus and Israel. In the Bodleian Signs, Armylus, after declaring that he is God, asks the sons of Israel to bring him their Torah “that I have given you.” When they bring him their scriptures, he reiterates the notion that it is authentic. He then asks the sons of Israel, “Bring me the idols of your abomination,” and then, again, says, “This Torah that I have given you is [true].” Finally, for the third time, he asks the sons of Israel to bring him the Torah that he has given them. Nehemiah, in response, “rose together with the best people of Israel” and they presented Armylus with a Torah scroll: “I do not believe in this Torah,” says Armylus, to which the Israelites reply, “If you do not believe in this Torah, then you are not God but Satan; [God] will scold you, Satan, at once!” How could Armylus first endorse the Torah he had given Israel and then reject it? How could the author portray the Israelites (rather than the sons of Ishmael, as in the Genizah version) as those who present idols and abominations? This only makes sense in the immediate context of the previous Signs and the general framework of what the editor of this version tried to convey. The second Sign in this sequence relates that a certain “riffraff [asafsuf ]” has intermingled among Israel. God first sends several false messiahs (sheluḥei shemad) in order to entice the impersonators to go astray.67 Then He pours a rain of blood, from which only those who followed the lie drink and die. As a result, only a refined and purified contingent is what is left of Israel. Therefore, Armylus, who is presented as leading an unrefined combination of people, faces one nation alone. Nehemiah’s final proclamation, which we encountered in the previous chapter, now bears both spiritual and political ramifications: At that time [Armylus] took the men who had come with Nehemiah and burnt them together with the Torah scroll. He said again to Nehemiah: “do you not believe in me?” Nehemiah said: “I do not believe in you; rather I put my faith in the Lord of the heaven and the Lord of the earth, who gave the Torah through Moses, and who put me in the temple suddenly [cf. Mal. 3:1], and has given me strength and courage [cf. Judg. 16:28] to fight the king of Edom.”

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

151

At once Armylus said: “take Nehemiah and kill him, for he does not believe in me, and if the God, in which he believes, saves him from me then I will know [He is indeed the God].” (fol. 76r) This final confrontation between Nehemiah and Armylus conflates, in other words, notions of cultural cohesion, hermeneutics, and militant spirituality. Armylus, heading an army of “riffraff,” wishes to stage some kind of trial by ordeal, which leads him to interpret falsely the death of the refined Israelite force as a sign that he is the God. Nehemiah’s martyrological proclamation, in contrast, encapsulates the kernel of the Israelite militant spirituality. Namely, the direct line between Moses and Nehemiah as well as their cultural purity is what bestows the Israelites with “strength and courage” to fight against the Christians and what constitutes their death as martyrdom. To sum up the first part of this chapter, a variety of Jewish authors utilized the apocalyptic framework to advance a number of claims about the importance of cultural cohesion, criticizing the propensity of their Muslim and Christian neighbors to join hands. As we saw in this and the previous chapter, the thirteenth-century Near Eastern Jewish apocalyptic corpus draws on traditions that were handed down from the Gaonic period. Narratives concerning the arrival of the messiah are, as a result, deeply anchored in a rich Islamic past. Messianic accounts manifest their authenticity partly by drawing on the deeds of the early Umayyad Caliphs and by preserving an Arabic register (for example, in the Arabic names of places). Furthermore, authors supplemented and amended those traditions, which feature highly contentious representations of both Christians and Muslims, with multiple references to contemporaneous affairs. * * * As mentioned above, Jewish authors in Acre were indeed not alone in turning to apocalypse as a rhetorical vehicle to convey ideas on holy war and the right over the Promised Land. Several such traditions of Frankish and Muslim provenance, in fact, circulated in the East throughout the thirteenth century and survive in multiple copies. Although incorporated within narratives that owe much to distinct and ancient traditions, texts from all three communities feature many of the same elements albeit from different perspectives. In fact, in many ways, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim apocalypses from the first

152

Chapter 5

half of the thirteenth century read very much as mirror images of each other. By complementing the examination of Hebrew apocalypses with a study of Frankish and Muslim ones, the second part of this chapter seeks to reveal the polemical quality that was embedded in these texts.

Muslim Eschatology—Jesus Christ and the Battle over the Castle of Mount Tabor In his comprehensive compendium, entitled Muhādarāt al-Abrār waMusāmarāt al-Akhyār [Testimony of the Righteous and Discourse of the Virtuous], the famous Sufi polymath Muḥī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī collected a large number of contemporary traditions. One narrative stands out in that, unlike many others in his collection, it does not revolve around a particular person. Under the title “On the Destruction of the Land in the End of Time,” there appears an idiosyncratic account, brought forth on the authority of a certain ‘Abd al-Wāḥid b. Isma‘il b. Ibrāhīm, which begins in the year 561 H/1165 c.e. (“in the beginning of the conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter, in the last third of Capricorn”).68 The arrival of a “king from the East” initiates a sequence of belligerent encounters with regional actors.69 First the king smites the Christians three times; then, the “king of the West” embarks on an expedition with a large army, made up of three divisions, whose destination is Egypt. Each takes a different path eastward, but finally they reunite in the Nile. This, we are told, will be a time of great distress: both drought and famine will torment the people and a “devious language [al-lisān al-a’waj] will flood the region.”70 Eventually, the army will reach Cairo and “will burn it down three times.” News of these events reaches al-Rum, Byzantium, which, in response, sets out in a large fleet and takes over “coastal planes, two islands and Alexandria.” At this point, a certain “man from the East” accompanied by the Turks appears in the scene; he takes control over al-Sham, including Jerusalem, and pushes Banu al-Aṣfar, the Christians, to the coastal plane. Then, an obscure figure named Dhu al-‘Urf, the Crested One, also identified as “king of the islands,” emerges as the leader the Christians. He sends forces in land and sea to “al-dhuruf,” Syria, and Alexandria, where five battles against the Turks take place. As a result of the Christian triumph, several Muslim apocalyptic figures appear in close succession: the Mahdi arrives and kills al-Sufyani

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

153

but is then killed himself by the Dajjal. Then Jesus Christ appears and kills both the Dajjal and Gog-and-Magog, after which he dies and is buried between Muhammad and Abu Bakr. Although, as such, this account does not conform to any sequence of historical events in the region, many of the descriptions are easily recognizable. References to the Fifth Crusade and to the conquests of Saladin, for example, provided “hooks” with which to anchor this narrative in the readers’ recent past. Like the authors of the Hebrew (and, as we will soon see, Christian) prophecies, our author composed this narrative by conflating a grid of conventional apocalyptic symbolism with thinly veiled and slightly amended references to disparate contemporary events.71 Of particular significance, therefore, are places where the author put to use traditional apocalyptic motifs in a way that renders them meaningful in the context of local conversations on sacred warfare over the Holy Land. The invocation of the battle between Gog-and-Magog and Jesus Christ at the end of the narratives provides an example for such usage. Several Muslim apocalyptic cycles relate that Gog-and-Magog will storm al-Sham, drinking dry the Sea of Galilee and other water sources, and killing everyone along their path. Some versions of this tradition, however, relate that Christ will seek refuge, together with three hundred Muslims, in an unnamed fortress.72 After conquering the land—or, in some recensions, the entire world—Gog-and-Magog die from a certain lethal worm. God then sends a soft wind (invariably characterized also as warm and southern, or cold and Syrian), which collects all the remaining believers from the earth.73 Our narrative introduces important changes into this loose structure. The author, for example, chooses to identify the castle besieged by Gog-andMagog with the one in which Christ is besieged (in this version, Christ seems to be present alone): “They shall enclose him [= Christ] on Mt. alTur [Tabor], inside a castle which al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam b. al-Malik al-‘Adil built . . . , whose builders I hope God will bless. Christ will be besieged there, all the while praying for the dissolution of Gog-and-Magog, until they die the death of man by a myiasitic disease [dā’i al-naghaf ].” The choice to stage these dramatic events in the castle on Mount alTur, overlooking Acre and its environs, is not incidental. This high-profile location was the center of friction between Ayyubids and Franks in the beginning of the thirteenth century, changing hands several times. The Muslim chronicler Ibn Wasil relates that in 609 a.h./1212 a.d., al-‘Adil decided

154

Chapter 5

to refurbish the fortress on Mount al-Tur, which was originally built by the Franks.74 His son, al-Mu‘azzam, who had just returned from a successful raid in the region, took upon himself to oversee the renovation. For an entire month, the armies of al-Mu‘azzam and his brother al-Ashraf were tasked with guarding the five hundred masonry workers and transporting rocks for the fortifications.75 Soon thereafter, however, the Ayyubids got a reminder that the strategic location of this castle could also work against them. A surprise attack nearly brought the fall of the fortress to the hands of the Christians, which—should it have happened—would have imposed severe limitations on the ability of the Muslims to stream forces southward to Egypt.76 As a result, when al-‘Adil saw the Christian fleets of the Fifth Crusade landing on the shores of Egypt, he demanded that his son demolish the fortress: “You built this castle,” he told al-Mu‘azzam, “but it may lead to the destruction of al-Shām. Allah has already saved the warriors, wealth, and ammunition that were inside. It is now time to channel [them] toward the protection of Damietta.”77 Our author, therefore, probably writing after the Fifth Crusade, decided to stage the war between Christ and Gog-and-Magog around the castle that al-Mu‘azzam had destroyed in 1218 and whose fortification he razed. He, in other words, “revived” the castle and used it to appropriate the use of Christ as a messianic figure for the Muslim side. Like the Franks, Gog-and-Magog are unable to take over the castle of al-Tur, and Christ emerges victorious. The author reinforces this polemical appropriation of Christ by drawing attention to the fact that the full name of the ruler who built the castle of al-Tur was al-Mu‘azzam ‘Isa—Arabic for Jesus: “al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam son of al-‘Adil built [this castle], as if ‘Isa [= al-Mu‘azzam] built it for ‘Isa [= Jesus].” Finally, after Christ comes out, we are told that he “will get married and will bear a child, after which Christ will die and be buried in Medina, between the Prophet and Abu Bakr.” The narrative ends with the abovementioned conventional invocation of the salvific wind: “God will then send a soft wind under the throne [al-‘arsh] which will capture all the believers, leaving only the evil ones.” This polemical inversion—which enlists Jesus not only to claim ownership over the castle and the land but also to praise Muslim pious belligerence—is particularly striking in light of the commonalities between this Arabic apocalyptic account and contemporary Frankish compositions. In fact, large parts of some Frankish narratives follow almost the exact same plot as

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

155

the Arabic one, attributing all the while very different meanings to the apocalyptic symbols employed. One such Frankish prophecy is a text entitled Fils d’Agap, composed shortly after the Fifth Crusade, which survives in a number of versions. But in order to appreciate ways in which this Frankish prophecy drew on a collective, interreligious language of apocalyptic symbolism, mapped onto a more or less shared historical narrative, we must first situate it within the wider context of apocalyptic literature in the medieval West.

Apocalypse in the Medieval West—Adso of Montier-en-Der and Henri d’Arci The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw a dramatic rise in the popularity and pervasiveness of apocalyptic literature in the West. One of the most common ways in which authors discussed “last things” was by deploying a historical exegesis of scripture. The Christological view of history is inherently eschatological in the belief that “history is a teleological process and that scripture reveals truths about its end.”78 In the later twelfth century, however, there emerged a genre of exegesis that primarily revolved on an attempt to align history with prophecy by identifying various scriptural apocalyptic schemes in key events of the Church.79 The best known and most influential twelfth-century exegete to advance this approach was the Calabrian Joachim of Fiore.80 Throughout the late Middle Ages, followers of the Joachite methodology deciphered passages from scripture to discover patterns that serve as a “legend” to interpret contemporary events through the lens of biblical prophecy. In addition to these formal treatises on “last things” and biblical commentaries, there appeared in both Latin and the vernaculars an abundance of short prophecies that circulated throughout Latin Christendom.81 Typically pseudonymous, many of these compositions closely conformed to earlier traditions that had been handed down from patristic and early medieval periods. Much like the author of the Homily of the King Messiah, Christian writers invoked earlier traditions to produce texts with an ancient allure but introduced highly revealing changes that helped adjust the earlier text to the time and agenda of the author. One such prophecy was composed in the seventh century and falsely attributed to Methodius, the fourth-century Bishop of Patara.82 This highly

156

Chapter 5

stirring text is situated in the context of the Muslim conquests. It describes the devastation that was brought on the Christians and predicts the arrival of the Antichrist and the Last Judgment.83 Pseudo-Methodius was probably composed originally in Syriac, but in the eighth century, it was translated into Latin and later to various vernaculars; it circulated widely in Europe and has a significant impact on a wide range of apocalyptic compositions.84 The imprint of the Methodius tradition is felt strongly, for example, in the Christian Ten Signs literature. Multiple compositions circulated in Europe that sought to enumerate “signs” announcing the coming of the Antichrist and the Judgment Day. Unlike their Jewish counterparts, who composed collections of Ten Signs, Christian authors tended to enumerate fifteen.85 By far the most widely disseminated and influential early middle apocalypse, however, was the one composed by Adso, a reforming Benedictine monk and later abbot of Montier-en-Der.86 In the year 950, Adso composed a full account of the Antichrist, mostly on the basis of earlier sources. The text, in its original form, was addressed to Queen Gerberga and contained a dedicatory paragraph that is often omitted in later recensions. The work, whose greatest novelty lies in the author’s choice to adhere to the structure of the popular saints’ lives, gained immense reputation and circulated widely.87 Adso’s letter on the Antichrist, in Latin or vernacular, circulated during the thirteenth century in multiple copies, either independently or incorporated into larger works of eschatological character. The letter, for example, survives in at least five separate versified Old French versions.88 Thirteenth-century authors who reworked Adso’s prose treatise into Old French verse compositions made slight yet highly suggestive adjustments to the text. One example is a poem penned by Henri d’Arci, an Anglo-Norman poet from the Lincolnshire commandery of the Templar Order.89 He begins his work of around 300 lines with an abridged version of Adso’s letter on the Antichrist and continues with a passage on the Judgment Day followed by an incomplete enumeration of the Signs for the arrival of the End. Referring to the timing in which the apocalyptic drama will unfold, for example, Adso ascertained that “some of our sages say that one of the kings of the Franks will possess anew the Roman Empire.”90 Henri, instead, reverses these elements and creates a formulation that makes more sense to his contemporary readers. The period of the Antichrist, he explains, will

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

157

begin at the time of the very last king of Rome, “who will be a king of the Franks/French, [a man of] wisdom and of great intellect.” The king, who is clearly modeled on one of the great crusading kings of France, PhilipAugustus or Louis IX, “will go to Jerusalem / to the mount of Calvary / where he will remove his crown from his head / and place it on a cross that he will see there.”91 This, in fact, mirrors the account in the Genizah Signs, which stipulated that the king of Edom “entered the Temple and placed his golden crown on the Foundation Stone.” The Genizah Signs then amended this report, suggesting that it is Mansur who was responsible for the reconquest of the Holy City.92 The poet, furthermore, inserts an emphasis on the role of Jews in the narrative that does not appear quite as forcefully in Adso’s original version. The Antichrist, we are told, “will be born to a mother and a father / unlike as many believe, to a virgin alone / . . . / Engendered from [the union of] a Jew and his wife / the Antichrist will devour the entire world.”93 The narrative then quickly turns to the Antichrist’s arrival in Jerusalem: “and he will lay siege on the Templum Domini / and will circumcise himself according to the Old Law / And will say to the Jews that he is the God and king.”94 Adjusting the details of the narrative to the recent history of his own time, therefore, the Anglo-Norman poet created an account that very much mirrors that of the charged dialogue between Armylus and the Israelites in the Hebrew Ten Signs narrative discussed above.95 Another early thirteenth-century author, Geffroi de Paris, likewise stresses the role of Jerusalemite Jews in the apocalyptic drama. The sixth book in Geffroi’s Bible des Sept Etatz du Mond [Bible of the Seven Stages of the World] is devoted to the apocalypse and is based on Adso’s letter. “How the Jews and many others will believe in the Antichrist” is the second chapter in this work, and the last is entitled “The death of the Antichrist and how the Jews will convert to [the faith of] God.” The author relates that the Jews will become mesmerized by the false miracles that the Antichrist will perform. They will ascertain that “[the Antichrist] is the son of God / Who was promised to them in the Law [= Bible] / By the sacred prophets. / [Those] who did not believe in Jesus Christ / Because he was from their lineage, / Will assent to him, / For they will not recognize him. / They will submit themselves to him / Quicker than Christians or Saracens.”96 But when the Antichrist dies, Geffroi confirms, Jews will be baptized “and will see well that our faith / Surmounts all the other Laws.”97 Much like the Genizah Signs discussed above, in other words, this

158

Chapter 5

version of the narrative stages a tripartite construction, in which Jews and Muslims play important roles. All five thirteenth-century versions of Adso’s work relate that before the arrival of the Antichrist, God will send two prophets—Enoch and Elijah— to prepare and instruct the pious believers. Both prophets will embark on a three and a half years long preaching campaign meant to “convert [the populace to the ways] of the Lord.”98 Significantly, Maimonides’s famous account on the King Messiah employs the same theme. In preparation for the war with Gog, the Lord will send the prophet Elijah “not to defile the pure or purify the defiled, and not to disqualify those who are worthy or to rehabilitate those who are disqualified, but rather to bring peace.”99 Like the fate of Messiah-son-of-Joseph in the Hebrew apocalypse, the two prophets in the thirteenth-century Adso revisions are the Antichrist’s first target: “First he starts the war against the prophets / And he turns against them very forcefully / . . . / And when they are killed / He fights fiercely against the other followers of God.”100 The Antichrist, Henri d’Arci continues, will entice the populace by showering them with gifts and by performing numerous miracles involving the sun, the moon, and great bodies of water. Those whom the Antichrist is unable to convert during his rule of three and a half years, however, will be subjected to a torturous death. Henri d’Arci’s poem ends by enumerating the Signs of God’s ultimate war against the Antichrist: blazing fire will scorch the land, resulting in the evaporation of water from the face of the earth; mountains and valleys will flatten out; Michael will then blow the horn for the last time, and with the sound of this blow, men and women who are dead will reemerge, “body and soul as one.”101 As noted before, many late medieval Hebrew versions of the Signs literature included similar elements. The second Sign in “The Signs of Ten Messianic Wars [otot eser milḥamot melekh mashi’aḥ],” for example, relates that “the Lord will heat up the earth through the scorching and boiling heat of the sun . . . killing thousands among the nations.”102 Sign Nine of the same tradition refers to Michael’s horn and its resurrecting quality: “Michael’s mighty blow will rupture the tunnels of the dead [= their graves], whom the Lord will then resurrect.”103 Finally, both the Hebrew and Henri’s narratives end, not surprisingly, with the salvation of the pious elect. Judging by the number of extant copies, it is safe to assume that within and without the Templar Order, Henri’s and the other Antichrist poems disseminated widely in the French-speaking world. Numerous Frankish authors

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

159

in the East certainly shared a taste for treatises on the End and the desire to incorporate these motifs in works of contemporary concern.

The Battle of Acre in the Christian Prophecy Fils d’Agap The abovementioned Fils d’Agap (or Hannan Fils d’Ysaac in some versions) is indeed an example of the way in which French-speaking authors in the East sought to employ apocalyptic motifs with regional resonances for urgent political purposes. This short text portrays the recent history of the Near East in a highly apocalyptic typological vein, which very much echoes and is indebted to the traditions discussed above, both early medieval and contemporaneous with its composition. It then ends with a subsection about the arrival of the Antichrist followed by the intervention of God and the Judgment Day, in keeping with thirteenth-century renditions of Adso’s letter on the Antichrist. A closer look at this highly polemical composition shows how its Christian author utilized techniques and literary elements that appear also in the Arabic and Hebrew texts mentioned above. Jacques de Vitry, who took part in the Fifth Crusade, commented on this prophecy in his letter from 18 April 1221 as follows:104 “A book belonging to the Saracens, which among them enjoys great authority, has come to our possession. The author was an astrologer which the Saracens hold to be a great prophet. With great care he had written it on the basis of their basic Laws [a principio legis eorum cum summo studio scripserat]. . . . [The author] added, in keeping with that which we have seen in our own eyes, all that has happened to us recently until the conquest of Damietta. . . . This is the reason we easily believed what he predicts will happen soon.”105 The archbishop ends his treatment of this text by criticizing those who refuse to believe in this prophecy. Those skeptics, he claims, have forgotten other cases in the Judeo-Christian tradition in which unbelievers were said to prophesy or have visions about the Church, such as Balaam, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and so on. The text Jacque de Vitry mentions survives in three different recensions: one in Old French and Provençal, another in Old French and Latin, and the last in Old French alone.106 The final recension, which is embedded in the popular continuation of William of Tyre known as the Rothelin Continuation, is rather concise and at times telegraphic, but it includes a highly revealing preface, which helps to appreciate the kind of work this text did for contemporary readers: “The unbelievers possessed, and

160

Chapter 5

still do, a written work that a Muslim Saracen had composed long before [Saladin’s victories] took place. Those who read this history know that it tells about many things that happened during the time of Saladin as well as before and after (for many events have not yet occurred). Therefore, Saracens hold this writing to be a prophecy and say that all will take place as was written [in it].”107 While the chronicler identifies the alleged author as a “Muslim Saracen,” it is quite likely that the text was actually composed by a Frenchspeaking Christian who chose to invoke the authority of a Muslim simply in order to amplify the credibility of his own work.108 What makes this possibility all the more provocative is the fact that this text indeed shares a great deal with its contemporary Muslim and Jewish counter parts. In order to demonstrate how this symbolic and narrative proximity unfolds, I discuss the most expansive among the three recensions of Fils d’Agap, which also happens to be the one that contains the most frequent references to Muslim material. Fils d’Agap begins with a description of the events leading to the Fifth Crusade. The author pauses to describe events that took place around the city of Bilbeis in northern Egypt: “There will come a people who will be called Turks. In the beginning of their time a king will be born, whose people do not believe in God; these are the Saracens; And they will destroy the city of Bilbeis. For no reason or blame they will demolish it and shall very cheaply sell the men of this city as well as their sons and daughters.”109 Historians have been tempted to view this passage as referring to the expedition that King Amalric headed to Egypt in 1168, which indeed resulted in the sack of Bilbeis and nothing much more.110 However, the text quite explicitly attributes the deeds to the Turks, or Saracens. What adds to the confusion is the fact that the Muslim apocalypse seems to describe the same scene but with an inverted orientation: the “King of the East,” we are told, will smite the Christians three times “after which will begin their days in the city of Bilbeis. Many souls will be smitten there” (p. 341). Both traditions, in other words, are not in agreement as to which side is responsible for this massacre, which both seem to condemn. Interestingly, in this scene, both accounts seem to be interlocked in an inverted interpretation of the symbolic use of the color yellow. The Muslim author refers here and thereafter to the Christians as “Banū al-Aṣfar,” literally “Sons of the Yellow One.”111 Fils d’Agap, on the other hand, states that the king of the Turks (whose people do not believe in God) will be succeeded by “he who bears a yellow banner [jaune

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

161

baniere; vexillum croceum], with black eyes, compassionate and true in word [pitex et vrais en parole].”112 Based on the rest of the account, which includes references to the Battle of Hattin and the capture of Jerusalem, it is quite clear that the bearer of the yellow banner is none other than Saladin. Here again, both accounts are interlocked in opposed attempts to associate a symbolic use of the color yellow with protagonists in the apocalyptic plot. The narrative in Fils d’Agap then follows through with Saladin’s deeds with a brief mention of the places where battles took place during his 1187 campaign: Hattin, Ascalon, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, and so on. The author laments the loss and devastation that these battles left. The battle over Acre, however, receives longer consideration, one that invokes elements employed emphatically in the Jewish and Muslim apocalypses as well: “Woe to you Acre: in you shall be great sorrow, great suffering and a whirlwind of dust [pulvis turbinosis] and great adversity. Terrible will be your anguish, your horses soaked in the blood of slaughtered men [arousees du sanc des ocises gens]. Woe, fields of Acre. Sorrow will be upon those there, for streams of the blood of dead men will flow through you; in a single day men will die by thousands. The color of the river will turn red because of the blood. Vessels that pull hurriedly out to sea will be shattered and many people drowned.”113 Like the authors of the Parma-Prayer and the other Hebrew apocalypses, the present writer describes the events that happen in “the plains of Acre” and rehashes the vision of horses submerged thigh-deep in rivers of blood. Furthermore, the author of Fils d’Agap shares with the Genizah fragment and the Parma-Prayer the striking vision of rivers red with the blood of slaughtered men, which other wise appears nowhere else in medieval Jewish apocalypse.114 What is more, the final clash between the Turkish and Christian forces described in the Muslim apocalypse draws on the same virulent language: “Five battles will take place between [the Franks] and the Turks, until their blood will flow like a river; and in the end the armies of the West will immerge victorious with a force of a hundred thousand soldiers or more.”115 The plot of Fils d’Agap at this point shifts to an apocalyptic vision of the future. Like the Parma-Prayer, the author signals this shift by positing that “this will be for you the sign [che ert tes li signes].”116 The leader of the forces that assemble in Egypt to fight the Turks will be “a man, thin faced and long bodied [maigres par viaire et lons par cor].” The Muslim apocalypse does not describe the physical appearance of the Christian king, but it refers to him as dhu al-‘urf—which can be rendered as “the Crested One” or, perhaps,

162

Chapter 5

“the Lord of Order.” It is, therefore, noteworthy that the author of Fils d’Agap chooses to emphasize the undisputed authority of this lean and long-faced leader: “all shall be under his command . . . and all shall be obedient to him and to his orders.”117 The enemy, which the author renders as “wolves,” will gather in a small place, but the lean general shall carry out a successful campaign that will lead to the fall of the Turks and the devastation of their lands. Later, we are told that both Baalbek and Homs will fall, but it seems that the author of Fils d’Agap shares with the Parma-Prayer the notion that what brings them down is their internal struggle: “By God’s will Baalbeck [Malbech] and Homs [Charmelle/Camella] will be taken and ravaged, [for] great battles will be fought between them and the massacre will be vast.”118 Finally, in keeping with the thirteenth-century apocalyptic traditions, the penultimate chapter in the drama involves the arrival of the Antichrist. He will effect dramatic metaphysical and cosmological transformations in the world, much like we have seen in the Hebrew Signs literature and the Latin Fifteen Signs tradition: “[he] will change the condition of many people from what they were before. . . . Bad people will mix with good, like water mixes with wine.119 This will continue for four years and four months. In the west a star shall be born.” The last chapter in the sequence is, of course, the Day of Judgment, which will take effect “upon those who were faithful in the love of Our Lord.” Fils d’Agap, then, not only features some components that appear in contemporaneous Hebrew apocalypses but also shares with them a concern about questions of political disunity and cultural admixture. One version of Fils d’Agap, furthermore, is especially consistent in presenting material that is meant to help the reader believe that the text is of Muslim-Arabic origin. Much like the Parma-Prayer, Bodleian Signs, and the other Jewish apocalypses, this text contains spellings of cities, places, and personages that preserve an air of Arabic. For example, while some versions state that “from the north, a king will come from the abyss [un roi d’abisme] and will destroy Mecca,” our version instead relates that the king will come from Albexi, which is probably an intentionally corrupted spelling of “Arabi,” denoting the Arabian Peninsula. Similarly, our version alone names the Antichrist “Mexadeigen,” which Röhricht suggested is a corruption of the Arabic construction masiḥ al-dajjal, the satanic figure in Muslim eschatology.120 The author also curiously mentions that the destruction will include the demolition of “the people of Arabia, Tay and Culey.”121 These are a corrupt form of two Arabian Bedouin tribes that feature dominantly in early Islamic literature, the Banu Tayy and Banu Kalb tribes. Both tribes

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

163

had originated from the Arabian Peninsula but, shortly after converting to Islam, immigrated north, to greater Syria, where they proceeded to play important roles in the politics and history of the region under several regimes.122 This version of Fils d’Agap, furthermore, relates a highly peculiar anecdote that seems to have deep roots in early Islamic apocalypse. After the “King of Araby,” as mentioned above, destroys Mecca, we are told that “the battle will draw near, and in the fields shall be found walking a pregnant she-camel [une camele apparra alans par les cams et ert grosse et ara faons]; and those who see her will say, ‘this camel belonged to the Turks/Persians, and she will go to the water of the Zamzam well [Zanzani; Zamzam, nomen cisterne], but nowhere will anyone find clear water to drink.’ ”123 The well of Zamzam is located near the Ka’aba in Mecca and occupies an important place in Islamic tradition. Early Islamic sources associate the well with multiple traditions that go back to Abraham and extend to the life of the Prophet. The eighth-century chronicler Ibn Hisham, for example, connects the rediscovery of the well by Muhammad’s grandfather, ‘Abd al-Muttalib, with the older tradition that attributes the original discovery of the well to Hagar and Ishmael.124 During the early stages of Muhammad’s ascendance, this story was meant to exemplify the close and longstanding connection between the Prophet’s tribe, the Quraysh, and the Harram, which carried both spiritual and economic value.125 The Zamzam well is not mentioned in the Quran in so many words. However, the theme of a she-camel drinking from a well appears several times. For example, several verses maintain that a prophet was sent to the people of Thamud. They were given a sign, the miraculous appearance of the she-camel, which was meant to draw them to the True Faith. Furthermore, they were ordered not to harm this camel and to let her “graze on the land of Allah” (Q 11:64), but instead they killed her. In another version, the people of Thamud were ordered to share a well with the she-camel on alternate days (Q 26:155). Finally, they rejected the prophet and were, in return, punished. Sura 81 [al-Taqwīr], which has a highly apocalyptic tone, relates yet another tradition that employs the theme of the she-camel: “when the mountains move; when the pregnant she-camel shall be neglected . . . [then] every person will know what he has put forward” (Q 81:3–4 . . . 11). The author of Fils d’Agap, in other words, was familiar with Muslim traditions that had originated in the Quran and may have circulated independently in the Near East for centuries. Like his Jewish counterparts, he makes

164

Chapter 5

great rhetorical and stylistic efforts to inject a Muslim air into his composition, an effort intended to ground and amplify the authenticity and credibility of his prediction.

Cohesion and Disunity in the Latin Apocalypse Liber Clementis The tendency to rely on an invented Muslim origin is shared by another thirteenth-century Frankish prophecy “discovered” in the East, called Liber Clementis. This text is also said to have been discovered in the context of the Fifth Crusade. Again, it is Jacques de Vitry who relates that Syrian [Christians] who were with us in the army showed us another very ancient [antiquissimum] book, written in the Saracen language, which comes from their ancient chests [armariis]. Its title: Revelations of St. Peter the Apostle in one volume by his disciple Clement [Revelationes beati Petri apostoli a discipulo eius Clemente in uno volumine redacte]. This prophecy predicted the state of the Church from the beginning of time until the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world. It predicts, among other things, success in destroying the perfidious Law of the Muslims.126 Toward the end of the century, the vicar of the Franciscan order in the Holy Land, Fidentio de Padua, returned to this prophecy in his Recuperatione Terrae Sanctae. He relates that while spending time in Tripoli, a certain Syrian Christian handed him this book. Fidentio too emphasizes that this book was written in the Arabic language and adds that “fortunately [forte] it was translated from Greek to Arabic.”127 The Franciscan cites parts of the prophecy that pertain to Antioch: O Peter, Woe to your city Antioch, to which bad things will happen! Sons-of-wolves [filii lupi] will come and will besiege it and will circulate it and will confine it. The populace will wail greatly and will pray to me, but I will not hear them. If, previously, Sodom and Gomorra had clamored to me like the people of Antioch, surely I would have heard them and not [have caused

Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations

165

them to] perish. However, I will not hear the clamor of the people of Antioch, and all will be given to the hands of the sons-ofwolves who will seize and destroy them. And alone those who took flight to the three mountains that surround [the city] will escape; for those alone will be liberated from the sons-ofwolves.128 Fidentio then glosses the term “sons-of-wolves,” the use of which we have seen in Fils d’Agap, as referring to the Saracens. On the basis of Ezekiel 22:27 (“your leaders are like wolves who tear their pray into pieces; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain”), he explains that they are called that way “ because of their rapaciousness and filth [feditatem].” The prophecy goes on to portray conventional cycles of redemption and decline, concluding with the arrival of the Antichrist: There will come, said Lord Jesus Christ, a lion’s cub [catulus leonis] who will liberate the Christians from the hands of the sons-of-wolves, and will rise above them. And you will drive them to return to the desert from whence they came. And the Christians will subjugate the sons-of-wolves forty-fold more than the sons-of-wolves subjugated the Christians. Afterward, a young leader [vigoratus] will scare-off the enemy from his kingdom. Then Christians will live in the Holy Land in much peace and tranquility, and forty kings will rule Jerusalem successively, one after the other. After that, however, the sins that the Christian inhabitants of Holy Land will commit will provoke the [anger] of God against them. And they will be given to the hands of the sons-of-wolves. Those Christians, because of the sins they will have committed, will be transferred to the hands of the worst enemy, the Antichrist, who will then appear.129 In conclusion, throughout the thirteenth century, authors in the Near East invoked apocalyptic themes and structures to produce highly charged proclamations on the spirituality of holy warfare and on their right over the Promised Land. Although having little to do with actual wars, these texts articulated complex views on belligerent spirituality. Authors communicated critiques on the political, spiritual, and hermeneutical framework of their neighbors through contemporary renditions of older messianic traditions.

166

Chapter 5

The first part of this chapter demonstrated that thirteenth-century Jewish authors used ancient messianic traditions in quite a different way than both their predecessors and modern historians have assumed. While interpreting the legacy of the pioneering French immigrants to Acre and revisiting their notion of purity, those treatises also voiced a sharp cultural and political critique of their Near Eastern neighbors. Despite the intentionally elusive and timeless language, these texts were able to convey a deep concern with the events of the Near East and an urgent critique of other contemporary discourses on holy warfare. The call for cultural and spiritual purity, which these Jewish apocalypses convey, is particularly powerful precisely because of the literary interreligious context within which these texts were created, which the second part of this chapter explores—a context in which authors from multiple communities drew on a shared pool of apocalyptic symbols to create polemical accounts about religious superiority and divine entitlement. Like the authors of the Homily of the King Messiah and “Ways of the Land of Israel,” multiple writers throughout the century, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, turned to messianic literary models in producing accounts pertaining to their presence on, and commitment to, the Holy Land. The authors of Fils d’Agap, Liber Clementis, The Prayer of RaSHBI, Ten Signs, and other messianic compositions all drew on a rich and highly complex corpus of apocalyptic sources. Furthermore, the ancient corpus that informed their writing was, in itself, deeply polemical and saturated with charged representations of one another. The traditions that authors from both communities summoned, in other words, were already profoundly entangled. As we have seen, treatises in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic, Old French, and Latin utilize many of the same images and narrative structures, often putting them to different, at times diametrically opposite, uses. Authors, in fact, were involved in forceful efforts to invert symbols that belonged to their neighbors in order to amplify the authenticity and credibility of their own narratives, generating meaning by constant gestures both to a distinct literary past and to a dialogical present.

Chapter 6

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

Following the work of Mary Douglas and Jonathan Z. Smith, modern scholars often see systems of ritual purity as symbolic structures that mark and regulate communal boundaries.1 Communities are thought to employ purity laws so as to map notions of “self ” and “other” on spatial, cultural, and bodily borders. But idioms of purity/impurity also employ a curious dialectic, in which the very means of separation emerge as the one that facilitates inclusion;2 sources of pollution, that is, also function as agents of ablution.3 Blood, to take a prime example, circumscribes communities by separating them from the polluted “other” but also connects individuals and peoples.4 Purity laws achieve this dialectic of separation and inclusion by building on the transmutable nature of key substances. The example of the crusading Near East shows that not only laws but also purity rhetoric itself works the very same dialectic, by capitalizing on the potent multifarious nature, not of substances, but rather of tropes and symbolic gestures. Indeed, many authors in the Near East deemed the notion of impurity helpful in establishing wars as mandated by God for the purification of His sacred places from defilement. Instead of assuming, however, that ideas about impurity were cultivated in isolation, this chapter seeks to show that these very idioms were shaped through a complicated dynamic of exchange and entanglement between neighboring cultures. Claims for purity and charges of contamination became vehicles of interdependence, not only carrying messages of hostility but also marking the intercommunal space from which they derived meaning and to which they contributed.

168

Chapter 6

In tracing the history of the discourse on purity and the conquest of holy spaces, this chapter, unlike the previous one, works through a variety of genres that were prevalent in the Near East over the course of crusading period. The first part is devoted to the language of purification in early crusade chronicles, particularly in how they describe the conquest of Jerusalem. The remaining three parts carry the argument from the first half of the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth; each one focuses on a discrete body of literature, first Ayyubid poetry, followed by late Frankish chronicles in Old French and Latin, and ending with Hebrew works that were written by Jews in Acre.

The Impurity of Saracens in Early Crusade Literature Notions of pollution played an important role in Christian crusade rhetoric.5 Consistent with the general tendency of early commentators and crusade ideologues to admonish Islam as a pagan heresy and to vilify Muslims as dangerous idolaters, time and again authors announced and condemned the impurity of the Saracens.6 Nevertheless, over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Frankish purification rhetoric increased in both volume and sophistication. Authors came to employ a more abstract impurity idiom to serve their theological claims regarding the territories of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In most early crusade chronicles, authors invoked the charge of pollution quite simply to convey a degree of hostility or a measure of erroneousness that was attributed to the Saracen foe.7 Raimond of Aguilers, for example, a participant in the First Crusade, chronicled the sentiments of the Franks upon their arrival to the foothills of Jerusalem in 1099: “We pray that the Lord may . . . exact judgment on His enemies, who obtained unjustly the places of his Passion and burial, and defiled [contaminant] them.”8 In a similar fashion, Robert the Monk9 maintained that “the Holy Sepulcher of the Lord our Savior, [had been] in the possession of an impure people [immundis gentibus].”10 What is more, in his account of Pope Urban II’s speech, Robert describes the wretched state of the Eastern church by stating that Muslims dismantled altars after soiling them with their own filth and that they were polluting Christian churches by smearing the blood of circumcision on the walls.11

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

169

Early chroniclers, in other words, tended to concentrate on the insulting practices that Muslims were said to have performed in sites that were considered holy to Christianity and on a sense in which Muslims were, in themselves, inherently impure. Accounts of pollution in early Frankish chronicles furthermore carried an implicit assumption that the contamination that Muslims were thought to effect was one that could be rectified immediately by expulsion of the wrongdoers and the repossession of the sites in Christian hands. The second half of the twelfth century, however, saw a shift in the way Frankish authors employed the theme of purity in depicting Muslims and conceptualizing the consequence of their presence in Palestine. Beginning with William of Tyre’s (d. 1184) highly influential chronicle, we find a more subtle attempt to map events onto historical and biblical frameworks, such that the very unbelieving presence of Muslims was thought to have a contaminating influence that both evoked and defined abstract spatial categories.12 William’s intervention on Muslim impurity begins by invoking the generic trope of churches-turned-to-stables.13 His account of Pope Urban II’s famous Claremont address begins by stating that14 “the revered places . . .  have been made sheepfolds and stables for cattle,”15 but he quickly moves on to invert this trope: “The Church of the Holy Resurrection, the resting place of the dormant Lord, endures the rule [of the Muslims], and is desecrated by the filth of those who have no part in the resurrection, but are destined to burn forever, as straw [stipula] for everlasting flames.”16 Building on an image from Obadiah 1:18, William suggests that it is rather the Muslims, not the symbolic livestock, who are the cause for pollution. They turned the church into a stable and consequently they will, themselves, burn like the straw they fed the beasts. William’s argument continues to employ a rhetorical symmetry: “The impious Saracens, heretical devotees [sectariantrix] of a defiled religion, have pressed for a long time with tyrannical violence the holy places, where the feet of the Lord had stood.”17 Instead of worshipping Christ in the very place where his own blood was spilled for the sake of humanity, Muslims slay those Christians who refuse to “serve the impurity of the [Saracen] people, to deny the name of the living God, and to blaspheme with sacrilegious lips.”18 For William, then, Muslim impurity is tied to the refusal, or inability, to recognize the soteriology that imbues space with meaning: the place not only where Christ, the historical figure, is “dormant” and will become

170

Chapter 6

resurrect but also where he is believed to have stood, where he “spilled his blood,” and where his name bears a living presence. Muslims, in other words, are thought to defile this space, but at the same time, they are defiled because of this space, as a result of the sacred history that is encapsulated in it. What is more, the impurity that William attributes to this “defiled tradition” is not one that can be reversed merely by the expulsion of the Saracens from the Holy City. The faithlessness of the Muslim occupants of the sacred sites, in their refusal to accept the soteriological vision that renders that very space sacred, demands a full ritual purification, which is indeed how William portrays the Frankish conquest of the city in 1099. But before we look at how William of Tyre and successive Frankish authors contemplated the notion of purifying Muslim superstition, a theme to which we shall return in the third part of this chapter, we first turn to notions of impurity in jihad poetry.

Ayyubid Literature: Faith, Pollution, Space Purification It is hard to overemphasize the centrality of impurity and ritual purification in Ayyubid jihad literature from its birth in the second half of the twelfth century.19 Much like its Frankish counterpart, Ayyubid purification rhetoric gradually came to be revolved around a highly charged and historically pregnant spatial terminology that used categories of impurity to convey theodicic claims regarding contested territories. The first half of the century saw surprisingly few reactions by Near Eastern Muslim authors to the Frankish conquest of Syria and Palestine, much less voices calling for jihad against the invaders.20 This, however, began to change around the time of the Second Crusade and especially after Nur alDin seized Damascus in 1154. With the rise of the Zengid dynasty to power, consolidating much of northern Syria and the Jazirah under one rule, there emerged a widespread interest in waging jihad to drive out the Franks from the Near East. In the 1150s, religious authorities in Damascus began systematically to erect a corpus of literature that articulated an ideology on holy war against the heretics and unbelievers, arguing for the centrality of this rite as an expression of spiritual commitment.21 Ibn ‘Asakir, for example, a prominent hadith scholar from Damascus, compiled a highly influential collection of forty hadith traditions on jihad.22 Many of the traditions that he compiled profess the purported urgency of this activity and establish its elevated spiritual position alongside the most important pious obligations, such

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

171

as prayer and almsgiving. Ibn ‘Asakir’s ‘arba‘ūn, while not an innovation, was the first of its kind during this time period to deal exclusively with jihad. Furthermore, his pioneering focus on jihad in the early 1150s paved the way for many subsequent contributions by his disciples and colleagues, energetically encouraged by Nur al-Din and later Salah al-Din. Subsequently, the region saw a flood of prose and verse attacks on the Franks, condemning their presence in the Near East, celebrating their few defeats, and calling for a full-fledged war to drive them out. As part of this polemical stance toward the Franks, there emerged an increased desire to amplify claims regarding the sanctity of the land, on behalf of which Muslims advocated holy war. Authors invoked, and at times revived, various genres and rhetorical traditions that sought to transform the space and its symbolic dimensions by relocating it within the broader framework of Islamic sacred history and culture.23 The middle decades of the twelfth century, for example, saw a sharp rise in the number of compositions celebrating the merits and sacred history of cities in the region.24 Particularly significant were Faḍā’il al-Quds [Praise of Jerusalem] treatises, which sought to cement the sacral status of Jerusalem, and especially of the al-Aqsa Mosque, vis-à-vis the other sites considered sacred to Islam.25 The notion of ritual purification played an important role in these theological and rhetorical efforts to ground the sanctity of lands under Frankish control, which Muslim regimes hoped to repossess.26 This notion, of course, had ancient roots on which Ayyubid authors drew in crafting statements that were directed against their contemporary enemies. Invoking as proof text Quran verse 9:28 “Truly the idolaters27 are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque,”28 early jurists debated at great length the degree to which nonMuslims were considered impure. Many traditions that make up these early juridical discussions were attributed to Ḥasan al-Baṣri (d. 728), who advanced the view that non-Muslims are substantially impure (nājis) and that, as a result, contact with them (especially with their bodily fluids) results in contamination.29 Opinions among jurists, however, varied as to the consequences of this impurity and the regimes of exclusion that it dictates. Many maintained that non-Muslims should not be allowed into mosques, which, as Marion Katz notes, speaks to an increasing concern among early jurists about protecting ritual space by excluding non-Muslim others.30 The eleventhcentury Iberian ẓāhiri scholar Ibn Ḥazm (d. 1064), for example, represents a radically conservative opinion on questions of Christian impurity and the

172

Chapter 6

need to enforce a rigid separation of each community’s spaces of worship. In his view, non-Muslims are contaminating entities, who are bound to transmit ritual defilement to Muslims.31 Eventually, however, the majority of orthodox Sunni interpreters were less severe in their judgment of Christian impurity and of the threat that it poses to the purity of Muslim bodies and mosques. Shafi’i jurists who, following the founder of their school, tended to appreciate ritual purification as an act of submission, advanced the view that non-Muslims were not substantially impure and that their impurity emanates not from their “persons” but from a lack of belief or true intent. As we shall see below, it is this notion that their disbelief is what accounts for Christians’ contaminating effect and what needs to be cleansed ritually that Ayyubid authors mapped onto the political and cultural landscape of their time. These juridical categories on the impurity of non-Muslim enemies also became manifest as widespread tropes in Muslim literature from its very inception. As Suzanne Stetkevych notes, in appropriating motifs of sacral kingship, classical Arabic panegyric, whose purpose was to establish the boundaries of political legitimacy, made frequent use of notions of impurity.32 Caliphal war poetry from the early Abbasid period, for example, repeatedly employed cycles of defilement and purification in portraying contact with the infidels. Narratives on conquest and defeat deployed a tension between contaminating influence of the enemy, often involving sexual exploitation, and the cleansing effect of performing jihad, or the submission of the rebellious as a form of purification.33 Patterns for portraying the Christian enemy in verses by such illustrious poets as al-Mutanabbi (d. 965) and Abu Tammam (d. 845) left an enduring effect on later generations of Muslim authors. Motifs of impurity in literature from the Muslim-Byzantine frontier are reproduced in medieval Arabic war poetry, echoing the attempt to portray Christian rulers as physically and morally defiled.34 Mid-twelfth-century Ayyubid authors drew heavily on the foundations that generations of exegetes and poets had established in the Arabic tradition of purity rhetoric.35 They put these traditional motifs to new uses, however, and introduced important changes: one of the most noticeable features in Ayyubid purity rhetoric has to do with the fact that it employed a more abstract notion of space, which authors imagined needed to be cleansed from Christian presence and the means through which it was thought to be cleansed. Mid-twelfth-century accounts featured a distinct focus on the idea that the presence of unbelievers carried consequences for the sanctity of the

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

173

land and on the performance of purification rituals whose purpose was to rehabilitate the defiled space into its former sacred, Muslim status. A telling example is to be found in the Diwan of Ibn al-Munir, a poet who, early in life, had fled his native Tripoli, which was conquered by the Franks in 1102. He then joined the Zengid court of Damascus and composed numerous poems encouraging jihad against the infidels. Ibn al-Munir dedicated a panegyric to Nur al-Din, following the short-lived conquest of Tortosa in 1152. The poet was taken mostly by Nur al-Din’s ability quickly to reintroduce Islam into a space that had become “infected” by disbelief: The land in the villages [around Tortosa] bore infidelity.36 / On the day before [i.e., during the conquest], Nur al-Din treated the fortification [‘awāsim] to a ritual cleansing [ghasala], [purifying it] from its filths [adrānihim]. [As a result,] on the day after, the coastal plains were destroyed / Such that [Nur al-Din] did not leave in all the land between ‘al-Ḥawlatayn’ and ‘al-Amid’ A cushion for the vengeful or blood-thirsty man. / And [Nur al-Din] has removed the idols from the region and turned the trinity into negation.37 Significantly, it is from the contamination of adrān, a filth associated with disbelief, that Nur al-Din is said to cleanse the land. Ibn al-Munir, furthermore, portrays the return of Islam to the castle and its surroundings by having the Zengid prince figuratively subject the space to the ritual bath (ghusl), which pious worshipers are obligated to undergo before prayer in order to cleanse from major pollution.38 Nor is the choice of words in defining the space in which this ritual is thought to have taken place by any means incidental. By invoking the term ‘awāsim, Ibn al-Munir echoes a charged chapter in the history of the contact between Christianity and Islam.39 For the castle of Tortosa was, in fact, the starting point of a fortress line, called al-‘awāsim, which stretched across the frontier between the early Islamic state and the Byzantine Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries.40 This period, characterized by periodic raids and recurrent acts of militant heroism, was inscribed in Muslim history as a time of heightened spiritual virtuosity, to which Muslim authors often turn as a literary trope.41 Ibn al-Munir, in other words, ties his verse to an illustrious tradition of war poetry and establishes

174

Chapter 6

Nur al-Din’s act of figurative purification as one whose rehabilitating effect conveys a powerful claim about the spirituality and history of the region. Metaphorical figurations of ritually purifying spatial units, such as the ‘awāsim, were part of the Ayyubid response to crusading rhetoric in an attempt to articulate a spatial terminology that conveyed spiritual claims with regard to the territories of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The category of “Holy Land,” however, did not carry the same soteriological and geographic meaning for Muslim rhetoricians as it did for their Christian contemporaries.42 Ibn al-Munir’s verse, therefore, is an early example of an attempt to apply classical Islamic tropes of pollution and purification on historically loaded spatial categories with the purpose of tracing putative boundaries of territorial sanctity. Subsequent authors applied this trope to a variety of political contexts. Ibn Nabih (d. 1222), for example, in a panegyric to his patron al-Malik alAshraf (d. 1237), celebrated the return of Damietta to Muslim hands after it had been under Frankish control for a little under two years (November 1219 to September 1221), during the Fifth Crusade: He fills the land [arḍ] with justice [‘adl] after it was occupied [by the Franks] / The swords of [al-Malik al-Ashraf] expose the rapacity that used to be inside it. Oh conquest of Damietta, what dignity is left / Of he who was [there] before; you are his destroyer. . . . You cleansed [ṭahharta] its high mihrab and its minbar / From their pollution, after you shook its pillars. You shattered the idol [timthal] of the messiah / Despite those who mistake it for the divine. Your diligence [jiddak] resembled that of Abraham / Your sublime intention agreed with his.43 In describing al-Ashraf ’s repossession of Damietta, the author is quite obviously invoking a highly loaded Quranic episode, that of Abraham destroying the idols (Q 21:51–70). Many commentators view this scene as one of the most powerful, if enigmatic, articulations of the nascence of monotheism

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

175

in the Quran, and Ibn Nabih ties the two stories together in an interesting way.44 For Abraham, who is said to have grown anxious about the cult of idols among his kinsmen, decides to shatter all but the largest one. When asked if he was responsible for the destruction, he replies, “No, it was done by this one, the largest of them all; ask them, if they can speak [Q 21:63].” Abraham, as al-Tabari glosses, was hoping that the idolaters would recognize that their gods can neither speak nor defend themselves and consequently would turn to worship the one God.45 Ibn Nabih insists that al-Ashraf shared with Abraham both superior qualities and good intentions. But instead of trying to instruct the wrongdoers on the erroneousness of their belief, he has the Ayyubid prince demolish the Christological presence, represented by the one messianic idol. Rather than hoping to amend their incredulity, in other words, al-Ashraf is seen to cleanse the pollution of Christian disbelief after which justice spills into the land. Finally, with the notion of the eschatological trembling pillars (e.g., Q 56:4), the purification of Damietta places it on a soteriological plane that begins with the advent of monotheism and ends with the return of Islam, and it ascribes al-Ashraf a powerful role in this drama of sacred history. If in the verses of Ibn al-Munir and Ibn Nabih the association between purifying the land and the spilling of Christian blood is understated, for some subsequent poets, this motif lies proudly at the very center of the conquest narrative. In fact, numerous authors in the second half of the twelfth century and onward penned versified figurations of conquest narratives, in which Christian blood was taken figuratively to be the cleansing agent with which the ritual purification of rehabilitated land is performed. ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, one of the most eloquent and popular poets of the Ayyubid period, employed this notion in several of his most moving verses celebrating Saladin’s victories. In 1174, he composed a poem praising Saladin’s political triumphs in Egypt, in which he alluded to the descent to Egypt of the biblical/Quranic Joseph, with whom the sultan shared a first name.46 The poet then asks that the sultan channel his success to attain a further victory: Go and conquer Jerusalem [al-Quds], and shed upon it / Blood, the flow of which would cleanse [yanẓufī] it.47 Lead the Hospitallers [al-Isbitār] to damnation / And collapse the ceilings on the bishop [al-usquf ].

176

Chapter 6

Clean that land from the presence of the infidels / And Allah will reward you with a cleansing in the Mawqif [place of gathering associated with the Day of Judgment].48 Al-Isfahani recited this poem on the occasion of his entrance to the Holy City in 1187—after, that is, it was established that the conquest of Jerusalem had not, in fact, involved any bloodshed at all. After Balian of Ibelin had famously negotiated the terms with Saladin, the Franks handed over the city peacefully and ransomed themselves in exchange for safe passage.49 Nevertheless, the poet chose to revive this image, where rivers of blood bring about the ritual cleansing of the city as well as a spiritual purification of the celebrated sultan-warrior. The context in which the poem was composed, in 1174, capitalizes on the conflation between Saladin and his biblical namesake, Joseph, in order to wish that the descent to Egypt might be followed by a return to Jerusalem. In 1187, however, it is the cleansing motif that helps al-Isfahani convey a measure of irony in how the blood that had been placed maliciously on Joseph’s garment was, finally, the blood through which Saladin drove the pollution of the enemy away.50 Reminiscent of Quran 16:26 (“Allah struck at the foundation of their [the unbelievers’] building, and then the roof fell down upon them”), the flow of blood is thought not only to cleanse the contamination of disbelief but also to demolish the structural and symbolic presence of the Christian faith and its militant manifestation in the form of the Hospitaller Order. Another Ayyubid poem provides a particularly striking example of how Muslim authors charged the technical terminology of ritual purification with political and spatial meanings. The following verse by al-Qaysarani, whose family too was driven away from Acre and Caesarea in the beginning of the twelfth century, conceptualizes holy war as involving an act of purification whose purpose is to restore the sanctity of conquered lands and to rehabilitate them as Muslim space. The poet enlists the notion of ritual purification in order to ground a claim about the sanctity of the “coastal plain” to Islam.51 Al-Qaysarani penned a panegyric to Nur al-Din, calling on him to carry out jihad to conquer Jerusalem and reappropriate the coast: Go and fill the earth with beauty and light / . . . Let there be no end to this attack / whose end in al-Aqsa has been decreed.

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

177

Let the Jerusalem [bayt al-maqdis]52 be purified [tāhir] / By nothing but the stream of their blood. If he performs ablution-by-sand [tatayammam] on the coastal plain [sāḥil al-baḥr] / Then, undoubtedly, he will reign over it. As in the previous examples, this excerpt too is saturated with Quranic language that alludes to the laws of ritual purification. The verses draw metaphorically on the procedures of preparation for prayer, which Quran 5:6 lays out. First, the author suggests that Nur al-Din should perform a ritual cleansing of the Temple, but instead of water, he should apply the blood of the defeated Franks. Next, al-Qaysarani refers to a procedure of purification through the use of sand, designed for those who are not in the vicinity of a water source. In discussing the rehabilitation of Jerusalem and the coast on the basis of these two purification rites, al-Qaysarani is in fact suggesting that the subject undergoing ablution—the land—is in a state of major pollution. Furthermore, this poem echoes another Quranic notion, which involves preparing not only the body of the pious for prayer but also the ground upon which the ceremony is to take place: “And We charged Ibrahim and Isma‘il, [saying] Purify [ṭahhira’] My House for those who perform tawaf [circumambulate] and those who are staying [there] for worship and those who bow and prostrate [in prayer].”53 In keeping with this scriptural proof text, the poet, in other words, calls the sultan to perform an act of ritual purification in order to render the space fit and adequate for prayer. By applying Christian blood on its own soil, the land metaphorically rids itself from the contamination of the Franks and is made worthy of religious ceremony. Al-Qaysarani, therefore, utilizes the theme of purification in order to give account to the sacral dimension of the land that is to be redeemed by holy war. Throughout the thirteenth century, generations of Ayyubid authors, too, integrated this motif into their literary repertoire. They both embedded into their compositions verses that drew continuity between defining acts of ritual ablution and reproduced verses that, by the beginning of the century, had become canonical. The Damascene Ayyubid chronicler and poet Ibn Wasil, for example, reflected on a short episode in which al-Malik al-Nasir Da’ud, the ruler of Karak, raided Jerusalem in 1239.54 Nasir Da’ud, we are told, laid a surprise siege to the Frankish citadel in Jerusalem. After gaining control over the castle, the Ayyubid ruler demolished it and took down the

178

Chapter 6

Tower of David: “He took hold of Jerusalem and purified it from Christians, driving the Franks, who survived the attack, back to their cities.”55 Ibn Wasil continues to report that an envoy of the Abbasid Caliph arrived and praised Nasir Da’ud, pointing to the similarities between him and his uncle, the late Saladin: Al-Aqsa Mosque maintains a traditional custom If it becomes inhabited by unbelievers / The Lord shall send it a victory While al-Nasir [Salah al-Din] purified it the first time / al-Nasir [Da’ud] purified it for the last time. The author, to be sure, employs the metaphorical power of the enemy’s blood as an agent of ritual purification in conflating two scenes of conquest that, in fact, did not involve any bloodshed. As mentioned above, in the summer of 1187, the Frankish inhabitants of Jerusalem opted to pay a ransom and to evacuate the city peacefully. In 1239, the majority of the inhabitants fled, hearing that the Ayyubid prince was nearing the city with siege equipment, before al-Nasir arrived. A small group took shelter in the Tower of David, but they too surrendered a week later. This rendering of the events, in other words, demonstrates the symbolic power that literary accounts of militant purification came to hold in late Ayyubid culture. The fantasy that conquest of Frankish territories culminates in a figurative purification of the land involving the use of water, soil, or the very blood of the enemy came to occupy an important part in the rhetorical repertoire of Ayyubid authors in their efforts to put forth political, spiritual, and literary claims of ownership over contested space.

Cleansing Sacred Space in Frankish Literature This trope, apparently, traveled to Near Eastern Frankish and Jewish literatures as well, where it took on some new meanings and usages, leaving others behind. The trajectory with which the first part of this essay was occupied traced the emergence of a notion in Frankish literature that tied Muslim impurity with a hermeneutical misapprehension regarding the sanctity of space. For William of Tyre, an act of figurative purification was necessary in

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

179

order to cleanse sacred spaces from the presence of a Muslim refusal to accept the soteriology that brought about the sanctity of that very space. It is to William of Tyre’s chronicle that we now return, for it is here that for the first time in Frankish literature, the notion of Muslim blood cleansing the Holy City is introduced. Most early accounts of the First Crusade famously feature vivid images of the massacre that the crusading army witnessed upon entering the city in 1099. Chroniclers provided enthusiastic descriptions of the blood-soaked streets: the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum, for example, reported that the Temple had “streamed with the blood of the slain,”56 and Fulcher of Chartres further specified that the blood rose ankle high. Raimond of Aguilers similarly recounted that “in the Temple of Solomon and the portico crusaders blood rose to the knees and bridles of the horses.”57 However, none of these authors, even those who showed concern about the contaminating influence of the Muslims, insinuated that the massacre itself carried a purifying function. Robert the Monk, in fact, goes further in the opposite direction, suggesting that the bloodshed itself had an added contaminating effect: “The streets of the city were dyed with rivers of blood and strewn with corpses of the dead. . . . There was not a place in the whole city and no ditch which was not defiled with their corpses or blood.”58 Not only, in other words, does the blood in Robert’s account not have a purifying effect, but it is said to have further contaminated the city. In contrast to these early accounts, William of Tyre turns the episode of bloody conquest into a moment of purification. The portrayal of the scene builds on a passage found in Raimond of Aguilers’s account, which William altered in a telling manner. Witnessing the Muslim bloodshed in the Temple, Raimond commented on the reestablishment of divine order through the collocation of sin and punishment: “I believe that it is by just judgment, that the same place spilled [exciperet] their blood, which had borne for such a long time their blasphemies of God.”59 William, in his turn, dwells on the connection between the nature of the sins the Muslims perpetrated against the Holy City and the spilling of their blood there: “Certainly by the just judgment of God it came to be, that those who had profaned the sanctuary of the Lord through superstitious rites, and had rendered [it] alien to the faithful, should wash the sins of their disgrace by the spilling of blood there and die, [thereby] cleansing it [the Temple].”60 William’s use of Raimond’s phrase brings his symmetrical rhetoric of impurity, which he had employed to

180

Chapter 6

introduce the crusade in Urban II’s speech, to a closure. The blood that was spilled in the same place where the Saracens had diffused their false beliefs also helped to cleanse the contaminating effect of their very sins. Sometime during the first half of the thirteenth century, William of Tyre’s chronicle, originally composed in Latin, was translated into Old French.61 With subtle changes, the anonymous translator infused his version with the sensibilities and ambitions of his own time. The translator then rendered the abovementioned passage: “It was indeed appropriate, that the faithless unbelievers, who had debased the sacred Temple of our Lord, and defiled it with mosques and false Muslim faith, would pay the same price there; and that [by] their blood they [the holy places] would be washed [respanduz], where they spilled [espandues] the defilements of their unbelief.”62 This rendering features a growing emphasis on the sense that the sins of the Muslims lay also in their unbelieving presence in a space that is considered holy to Christianity. It furthermore draws a link between the diffusion of sins and the ritualized washing of the space with expiatory blood. The blood of the Saracens, therefore, is felt as if wiping away the stains of their contaminating presence, and its spilling is part of the ritual that was necessary to restore the Holy City to its original owners and sanctity. William of Tyre died before the fall of Jerusalem to Ayyubid hands in 1187, but subsequent Frankish authors lived to see and portray this dramatic event. The shift in Frankish purification rhetoric, which began with William of Tyre and continued into the thirteenth century, is particularly telling precisely due to the difference in circumstances between both conquests of the city, in 1099 and 1187. Although early crusade historians were ostensibly occupied with questions of impurity, none of them explicitly developed the notion of the conquest as an act of purification or of the Muslim bloodbath as a metaphorical process of ritual cleansing. In contrast, after 1187, both Muslim and Frankish authors repeatedly invoked images of a ritually purifying bloodbath, although the Ayyubid conquest of Jerusalem did not actually involve any bloodshed. Late twelfth-century Frankish purification rhetoric, in other words, came to share with its contemporaneous Ayyubid accounts some key elements. Authors of Arabic, Old French, and Latin accounts entertained the idea that contamination of unbelief is not remedied by mere expulsion but rather demands an act of metaphorical ritual purity with water or blood. Two short narratives demonstrate that Frankish authors were well aware of the fact that these ideas had become widespread among their Muslim contemporaries.

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

181

Several versions of an Old French narrative survive in local historiographic traditions relating how Saladin took possession of the holy sites after conquering Jerusalem. The sultan, one chronicler relates, “did not want to depart the city before performing worship there, and before Christianity is driven out.” He is said to have asked his sister to join him in carrying out a prayer in the Temple. When she heard this request, “she packed twenty camels with rose water [yaue/eve/aigue rose]” and headed to Jerusalem. When Saladin and his sister entered the temple, they “saw to the cleansing [laver] of the grounds in the same way that prelates rehabilitated churches that had been violated. For Saracens believe that pork, or men who eat pork, must not enter into that Temple.”63 This account demonstrates the author’s familiarity with the Muslim trope: namely, the desire to convert and reappropriate a space that was contaminated by the presence of Christian faith, by invoking the framework of ritual purification. The narrative appears to be well founded, as numerous Arabic accounts of this same episode also celebrate the use of “rose water [ma’ al-ward].”64 Medieval Muslim traditions invoke the use of rose water—in preparation for prayer, or sprinkling on the Ka‘bah—in celebratory occasions that feature an unusually heightened spiritual elevation. The Frankish author, however, does not only portray sympathetically the Muslim wish to cleanse the sacred precinct, for which the sultan brought special means; he seems to take advantage of the fact that in Old French, aigue rose could designate either rose water or red water. The French-speaking readers, therefore, were likely to appreciate this double entendre, in which the rose water used by Saladin to cleanse the Temple is also reminiscent of the red water (blood) that the Franks had used to do the same, eighty-eight years earlier. The anonymous author of a text written after the Third Crusade, probably an eyewitness Templar or Hospitaller, engages with the religious and doctrinal investments that were involved in the Muslim desire to purify the Holy City. De Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum Libellus relates the negotiations between the Franks and Saladin that preceded the Ayyubid conquest of Jerusalem and their immediate aftermath. In the first encounter with the Frankish delegation, the sultan puts forth a firm position that he grounds on the authority of the religious establishment: “Verily, I heard frequently from our scholars [sapientibus] al-faqihs [alphachinis]65 that Jerusalem cannot be purified [mundari] unless it is cleansed [lavetur] with the blood of Christians; and I wish to take their counsel on that matter.”66 In face of the

182

Chapter 6

sultan’s refusal to negotiate an agreement that could save the loss of more lives, the second Frankish delegation reciprocates with an equally belligerent statement, declaring that if an agreement cannot be reached, “they would remain [to fight over the city] until their own fall.”67 Both sides, however, end up retracting from their original positions and adopt a compromise that—in the eyes of the author—is disgraceful from the point of view of both traditions. Instead of waging war in defense of the city, the Franks agree on the amount to be paid in return for the ransom of each Christian inhabitant. Rather than pious warriors, they have become, in the mind of the author, “the worst of merchants.” Like “that vile merchant” Judas, the author explains, the inhabitants “sold Christ and the Holy City.”68 Judas, however, was punished for his crime: with the money he received for “selling” Christ, he purchased a field where he “burst in the middle . . . and all his entrails of malignity gushed-out,” which is why it became known as “the field of blood.”69 There is, therefore, no precedent for the Franks’ decision to abandon the city: “Nowhere have we read [in scripture] that the Jews had deserted the holy of holies without the spilling of blood and hard struggle; never had they turned it over willingly.”70 Jerusalem, the author admonishes, “was turned over to the hands of the impious [Muslims] by the impious [Franks],”71 immersed as it was “in ashes, and in the pollution of [the Franks’] crimes.”72 When the Ayyubid army finally marched into Jerusalem, the Muslims found a city contaminated with Christian crimes. But the agreement between Saladin and the Franks to avoid an armed clash meant that Christian blood was not available for use in cleansing. According to the Muslims’ own perspective, therefore, they were unable to perform ritual purification. Instead— the author explains in an account that, again, stresses the role of religious authorities and demonstrates his familiarity with the Muslim rites and terminology—they exacerbate the state of the city’s contamination: The Faqihs [alfachini] and Qadis [cassini]—ministers of the obviously impious error, bishops and priests according to the opinion of the Saracens—first ascended to the Templum Domini— which they call “The House of God,”73 and in which they have great trust of salvation—as if to pray and for religious [purposes], believing to purify [mundare] it. But with unclean [spurticiis] and horrifying [horribilibus] growls, they polluted [polluerent] it [the Temple] by bawling with polluted lips [pollutis labiis] the Law of Muhammad: “Allah Akbar [halla haucaber, halla haucaber].”74

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

183

The Muslims proceeded to “contaminate [coinquinaverunt] all the places that surround the Temple.”75 Saladin’s brother, furthermore, was responsible for invading the sanctified space on the other side of Mount Zion and polluting it through their “drinking, feasting, and exuberance.”76 The reluctance of the Franks to shed their own blood in protection of the city, in other words, frustrated the desire of Muslims to use that very blood for their purification ritual. In the absence of Christian blood, the Ayyubid clerics, like makeshift muezzins who symbolize Muslim “soundscape,” reappropriated the Holy City by pronouncing publicly the supremacy and return of Allah. Finally, in the eyes of the anonymous author, the city remained polluted both by the crimes of the Franks against its sanctity and by the Ayyubids’ clamorous adherence to the Muslim faith. Frankish authors continued throughout the thirteenth century to employ versions of this purification rhetoric in portraying imagined or real episodes of territorial conquest. Oliver of Paderborn’s description of the siege over Damietta during the Fifth Crusade provides a salient example of an account that conveys the notion not only of reappropriating space but also of continuing a rhetorical and spiritual tradition. Oliver was heavily involved in preaching the Fifth Crusade, and in the summer of 1217, he joined the thousands who took the cross and headed east. During the long periods of wait, both before and after the conquest of Damietta, Oliver composed an unusually erudite and rhetorically sophisticated account of the entire campaign, Historia Damiatina, which circulated widely in the West. Oliver frames the narrative about the siege of Damietta through a concise historical preamble that sets out to explain the Christian victory in the typological framework of translatio imperii.77 The first two attempts to overtake Damietta, he recounts, those led by the Greeks and the Latins, were unsuccessful. The leader of the third and initially victorious attempt, however, was no other than Christ himself. Oliver, in other words, adopts an Orosian model in understanding Christian siege and rule through historical patterns of succession and supersession. What is more, by subtle use of biblical allusions, Oliver relates who the main mover of the episode was. The conquest scene, in fact, exaggerates Oliver’s tendency throughout the work to conflate Christ with the all-powerful and ever vital Nile River. He, for example, places Christ where the biblical verse states that it was rather the Nile that had “dried up all the sown fields [cf. Isa. 19:7, Ezek. 27:16].” Indeed, in the siege and conquest scene as well as elsewhere in the work, the Nile water emerges as the main protagonist. Accordingly, Oliver suggests that

184

Chapter 6

at the time of the final attack on Damietta, what was working in favor of the Franks was a miraculous alignment between divine power and the water, attained by the symbolic value of the date on which it occurred: “the river overflowed, filling our ditch with copious water. . . . But God, who on the third day gathered the waters under the firmament into one place [cf. Gen. 1:9], who himself brought his soldiers through the waters of the sea to the harbor of Damietta on the third day of the month of May, led them over the Nile to besiege the city on the third day of the month of February, and himself captured Damietta located amid the waters, on the third day of the month of November.”78 In early November 1219, fatigued by long months of siege, recurrent attacks by the Ayyubid army, and sickness that took the lives of many and drove many more to head back west, the crusading army was ready to launch what appeared to be the final attack on the fortified city.79 It was at that critical moment, however, that hunger and disease overpowered the Muslim inhabitants of the city. Italian soldiers observed that the watchtowers were unmanned—a clear sign that the defense of the city had finally given in.80 Frankish troops quickly climbed the walls and, meeting no resistance, stormed the city uninterrupted. What they saw inside left a strong impression on all those present: “marching into Damietta, the soldiers of Christ found scattered in the streets bodies of the dead [cf. Jer. 49:26],81 wasting away from pestilence and famine.”82 As Oliver turns to portray how the city came into Frankish hands, he draws on an earlier comparison that he made between Christian and Muslim law: “as truth and purity fortify our law,” he maintains, “worldly and human fear guide their error most firmly.” Saracens, too, Oliver further explains, accept “the purity of the Law that Christ taught.” However, on the basis of the truth of the Gospels, Muhammad “laid down a Law concerning uncleanness and vanity.” The conquest of Damietta, therefore, serves to correct this error and to turn back the law to its proper use: “Damietta, ‘the flower of Babylonian pride, most famous of kingdoms [cf. Isa. 13:19],’ . . . you are ‘humbled under the mighty hand of God [1 Pet. 5:6].’ ”83 The crusading army replaces the Muslim rule by adding another chapter in the sequence of imperial sovereignty, represented here by Babylon, Greece, and Rome. In keeping with the historical pattern of translatio imperii, furthermore, it at the same time also fulfills the typological figuration of Christian conquest by having Christ bring back the old law to the city. In order to accommodate both trajectories, Oliver turns to the language of regeneration:

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

185

Having cast out the adulterer whom you kept for a long while, you have returned to your former lover. You who first bore bastards shall bear legitimate sons to the faith of the Son of God, now that [Damietta] is firmly held by the faithful of Christ. The bishop of Acre [Jacques de Vitry] absolved from you the first fruits [primitias] of souls84 for God, cleansing sacramentally by a surge of baptismal [water] your little ones, who by his powers were discovered [alive] in you, nearing death.85 You received multiple punishments, for beyond those who were seized in you alive, the number of dead of both sexes from the time of the siege amount to thirty thousand and more. The Lord struck them with neither iron nor fire, refusing to bear the uncleanness committed in you.86 The gendered appeal to Damietta, referring to its regenerative faculty, is also reminiscent of the Orosian model. In his Seven Books of History Against the Pagans [Historiarum adversum Paganos], Orosius likens Jerusalem to a womb that has served its purpose by giving birth to the Christian Church. For Orosius, this spectacle of feminine fecundity serves to separate the spiritual generative quality of Jerusalem from its physical remains:87 after the birth of Christianity, the city that Titus conquered was but an empty womb, a purposeless vessel.88 For Oliver, in contrast, the city parallels the work of history in refiguring the birth of Christian law and creating the possibility of purification. In so doing, Oliver summons back into the narrative the surging waters of the great Nile River, which wash away Muslim contamination but also preserve the voice of its past. Finally, the Lord “struck” the Muslim inhabitants of the city because of their polluting crime against the city, but it is not with their own blood that their contamination is remedied but rather with baptismal water of the Nile and the ceremonial intervention of the archbishop. The many examples in Arabic, Latin, and old French, of authors who articulated a language of spatial sacrality that is predicated on categories of impurity, and who put forth conquest narratives that culminate in an allegorical cleansing of an unbelieving pollution, are a testimony to the intertwined literary culture that emerged in the crusading Near East. Both Frankish and Ayyubid authors utilized pollution rhetoric to think about the sanctity of land as well as of personal and spatial purification through each other. What is more, their rhetorical conventions came to denote not only notions of hostility and exclusion but also the desire to take part in an

186

Chapter 6

intertwined literary space of coproduction. Ritual purification of conquered territories, that is, became a rhetorical gesture that, hostile as much as it was in character, also encoded the self-conscious use of what emerged as a shared literary tradition. The fact that Jews who immigrated to Palestine in the thirteenth century chose also to frame their ideas about the Holy Land in terms of cleansing the land from major pollution caused by the presence of Christians and Muslims provides further evidence of the interconnected way in which authors put to use this motif.89

Purification and Conquest in Jewish Messianic Homilies As Chapter 4 illustrates, over the course of the thirteenth century, Jewish scholars of French descent who immigrated to Acre as well as their successors established a rich corpus of messianic homilies. Although unarmed and entertaining no immediate political ambitions, authors imagined the purpose of their passage to the Near East by drawing on a messianic framework. Sermons that constitute part of this corpus ascribed to the community of French émigrés the task of creating the circumstances necessary for the appearance of the messiah among them. After his arrival, the émigrés are then imagined to partake in several cycles of triumph and defeat in which they eventually conquer Palestine and set in motion a series of eschatological events that bring about the end of time. The choice to utilize the framework of holy war to discuss problems of spirituality and identity provided authors an opportunity to think about those questions through intellectual and rhetorical contacts both with their neighbors and with their own tradition. One central motif that runs through this corpus has to do with the notion that, under Christian or Muslim rule, the Holy Land and the holy city of Jerusalem are in a state of pollution. As a result, the conquest of the land is thought to include several acts of ritual purification, with varying degrees of efficacy. In a way that seems to echo some of the motifs discussed above from Ayyubid and Frankish literatures, Jewish authors portrayed a personified figure of the Holy Land as undergoing a ritual bath, whose ablution also brings about the purification of the warriors involved in these messianic episodes. The author of the Homily of the King Messiah and God m’Gog, for example, who apparently participated in the largest of the thirteenth-century waves of immigration, in 1211, ends the introduction to his composition as

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

187

follows: “Let no-one take it upon himself to say that the King Messiah will be revealed on an impure Land. . . . And let no one err to say that [the messiah] will be revealed in the Land of Israel amid the Gentiles. Whoever makes this mistake and does not rush to make this happen, is disrespectful toward the King Messiah.”90 The task of the immigrants, in other words, is to prepare the Holy Land for the arrival of the messiah. The desired condition for this is one in which the land contains only “ ‘practitioners of Torah [Jer. 2:8]’ and ‘the pious and men of deeds,’ . . . and all whose hearts were stirred [Exod. 35:21, 29] and in whose soul was a spirit of purity and love of holiness.” The author portrays this “Jewish Crusade” as one whose purpose is to prepare both the land and the spirits of the participants for messianic times. This marks the point in the narrative in which the author introduces the messiah and begins to relate both the wars that he wages and the crucial participation of the émigrés. The messianic drama unfolds in several “acts” that revolve around the attempt, which at first fails and finally succeeds, to purify the Land of Israel. Throughout this treatise, the author frames his desire to expel the foreigners from the land through the charge that they are unclean. Messiahson-of-Joseph and the Israelite army, for example, are imagined to “ ‘ beat the King of Edom and the garrisons of Ishmael [1 Sam. 13:3]’ who are in Jerusalem; and they will expel all of the uncircumcised, and ‘the uncircumcised and the unclean shall never enter [it] again [Isa. 52:1].’ ” News about this initial success in subduing the polluted enemy spreads and draws additional members to join the army: “Israel will hear that the King Messiah will putrefy [cf. 1 Sam. 13:4] the uncircumcised, and [Israelites] from the four corners of the world will join him.”91 As if to exacerbate the decay that lies at the bottom of the heathens’ corruption, the Israelites turn the impurity of the Christians against them and use it to drive them away from the Land of Israel. The author of the Homily of the King Messiah as well as his successors drew both on biblical and postbiblical categories of pollution, which are found ubiquitously in the early rabbinical halakhic, homiletic, and exegetical corpora.92 However, these thirteenth-century messianic accounts creatively embedded them in new narrative frameworks and charged them with meanings that pertained directly to the spiritual and political experience of the Jews in the crusading Near East. Nahmanides (d. 1270), for example, the renowned exegete and mystic who fled Iberia in 1267, invoked categories of impurity and sexual immorality in

188

Chapter 6

referring to the attitude of the Holy Land toward its foreign inhabitants.93 Glossing Leviticus 26:32, Nahmanides famously maintained that “during all of our exiles our Land will not accept our enemies. . . . Since the time that we left it, it has not accepted any nation or people, and they all try to settle it, but to no avail.”94 Following Numbers 18:25, he further clarifies that “the land, which is the inheritance of God, will vomit whoever defiles it, and will not tolerate idolaters and those who practice incest [‘arayot].”95 A midcentury homily, paraphrasing the earlier “Vision of Daniel,” seems to reframe Nahmanides’s categories in a messianic narrative. This passage draws a connection between the polluting sins of the enemies and the measures that the Israelite army takes in order to restore a state of ritual purity: “A sinful ruler will emerge from the North, and will rule for Three and a half years; he will commit a sin unlike any other from the creation of the world until its end; involving the copulation of sons with their mothers, and brothers with sisters and daughters with their fathers; and the impurity will be greater and more severe than any other described in the Torah. . . . The Lord will direct his fury against them, and he will spill his fire, and shower his water on them, and he will shake the seas and boil the waves [until Rome and Ishmael are obliterated].”96 The King Messiah and God, in other words, are imagined to administer a metaphorical ritual immersion (tevilah) of the land in fire and water, in order to cleanse it from the state of impurity caused by the transgressions of the uncircumcised. Like their Muslim and Christian neighbors, therefore, Jewish authors invoked liturgical and legal categories that regulate the use of water in acts of moral and physical cleansing and charged them with political, territorial meanings. Furthermore, Jewish authors of messianic homiletic literature also entertained the use of blood as a means of purifying the land and its inhabitants. The author of a thirteenth-century version of the popular Ten Signs tradition, for example, enumerates the events that precede the arrival of the messiah. According to the second Sign, God sends three “false messiahs” whose purpose is to attract followers from both the Israelite and the foreign communities, resulting in a dangerous cultural mix. Signs Four and Five describe how this is resolved: “Sign Four: The Lord sends rain from the heavens, for three days and three nights. But this will not be a rain of water, but rather of blood. Those who wrongfully followed the false messiahs drink from the blood and die. . . . Sign Five: The Lord then sends dew from the heavens for three days and three nights, which cleanses the blood that had descended upon the earth. This [dew] revives the grains, and the nations

Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric

189

and [speakers of] tongues think that it is rain. But, in fact, it is dew.”97 The blood, in other words, helps identify the true believers from those who came to follow an erroneous faith. After the blood helps obliterate the wrongdoers— that is, to reach once again a state of social and religious purity—reviving dew is sent to cleanse the blood and restore the purity of the land.

Conclusion The fantastical vision that blood kills, vacates, and cleanses the Holy Land from the defiled presence of the unbelieving enemy could be taken as a generic gesture of hostility. But an examination of the local rhetorical context in which it was put to use reveals that this and the other purification gestures were born out of a continuous intercultural dialectic between literary traditions that shared a tendency to take hold of opposite typologies and reorient them within new symbolic and political frameworks. Like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, thirteenth-century Jewish authors produced narratives about the purification of Jerusalem and of the Holy Land, and they portrayed the conquest of the land as an act of ablution that was expected to cleanse the space from the presence of their impure neighbors. But the choice to frame their disposition toward the Holy Land through the vehicle of ritual purity was rhetorical rather than concrete. This rhetorical strategy put their corpus in contact not only with a long history of Jewish engagement with ideas of purity and warfare but also with local living traditions of Ayyubid and Frankish literatures in which ideas on purity regularly breached and destabilized linguistic and cultural boundaries. Notions of contamination and ritual purification traveled within and across traditions and languages, taking on in the process some new meanings and usages and leaving others behind. Purification rhetoric, in other words, bears witness to a way in which these three neighboring cultures became meaningful to each other. Living side by side, occasionally in violent conflict and usually in a dialectic of suspicious and curious neighborliness, these cultures came to occupy a space of coproduction, in which their very proximity shaped the language they used for thinking about their shared boundaries and entangled spiritualities. What is more, narratives about the impurity of the “enemy” provided authors with opportunities to mobilize a language that, in fact, took shape through the intellectual and cultural proximity to the very communities they, on the face

190

Chapter 6

of it, sought to exclude. Purification idioms that Frankish, Ayyubid, and Jewish authors employed, in other words, possessed the same multifarious quality as purity laws: they were born out of a highly refined intercultural dialectic that implemented strategies of exclusion but also enabled acts of linguistic, political, and religious transgression, regularly breaching and destabilized cultural boundaries.

Epilogue

This book ends where it began: with a description of the mass immigration of French-speaking Jews to the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and their attempt to frame their journey as a quasi-crusade of purification and conquest in the early thirteenth century. It has been the objective of this study to highlight this type of discursive strategy in the writings of the different faith traditions of the crusading Near East, to trace the circumstances that made these strategies meaningful, and to ask what might have made it important to the communities who lived side by side. In the course of answering this question, we have seen indeed that purification rhetoric, for example, had a rich career in the various Near Eastern literary traditions. Images such as the one of cleansing conquered holy space through the use of sacred water or the very blood of the enemy traveled across traditions in time and space and took on new meanings. So much so that the trope of purifying conquered territories became a rhetorical gesture that, hostile as much as it was in character, also encoded the self-conscious use of what emerged as a shared literary tradition. That Jewish authors would also employ these images and put them to use in a way that would advance their political stakes while responding to other usages in the region is not all that surprising. Other ways in which authors in the Near East imagined pious war and those who waged it display the same dynamic. Attempts, for example, to contemplate the circumstances that produced pious knights in Outremer drew in part on the canon of chivalric literature. The compiler of Estoires d’Outremer, discussed at length in Chapter 3, mobilized narratives and conventions that enjoyed significant popularity in Europe. The theme of a hybrid matriarch who is imagined to generate warrior dynasties that inhabited both parts of the Mediterranean is pivotal in one of the interpolated anecdotes

192

Epilogue

(La Fille du Conte de Ponthieu). This major plotline, in fact, plays a defining role in binding the historical frame narrative together with the desire to portray all of Outremer chivalry as somehow sharing a primordial ancestor with Saladin. But importantly, the choice to link Outremer chivalry to Saladin by invoking the theme of the hybrid matriarch of warrior dynasties could not have been completely accidental (or naïve), as this very trope played a major role in the rich tradition of Arabic popular epics. For various authors in the Near East, in other words, the desire to sing the praise of a warrior aristocracy involved tracing its fictive origins to a celebrated figurehead—Saladin or Baybars—and attributing to them a fabricated biography that was punctuated by conversion, travel, and the crossing of the Mediterranean. That both Mamluk and Frankish authors would resort to these strategies, again, should come as no surprise. The investigations that each of the chapters in this book unfolded yield, therefore, two conclusions. The first is that whether in sermons, homilies, prose fictions, or poems, authors in the Near East engaged with each other by self-consciously invoking themes with a history in their own traditions but that also enjoyed important prestige in the traditions with which their works shared a space. The other conclusion, however, is perhaps a methodological afterthought—namely, that the sources that have been scrutinized in this book have been ill-served by the literary theory through which they have been studied in the past two centuries, a theory that to a large extent depends on the assumption that the various literary traditions separated at an early stage in their history and evolved in relative isolation, barring a few distinct cases of “borrowing” and lexical “contamination.” I therefore devote the final pages of this book to a brief reflection on recent historiography of premodern cultural interaction and the problem of language. A widespread interest in premodern contacts between communities and religions has been on the rise since the 1990s. Scholars working on a variety of time periods and areas have shown great interest in documenting, theorizing, and modeling spaces and patterns of cross-cultural transmission. Studies have attempted to unfold the mechanisms of exchange between communities and individuals that belonged to different religions, ethnicities, and/or political entities, asking how texts, objects, identities, and ideas were both produced by and understood in the light of these exchanges. A first wave of studies attempted to posit the question of interreligious exchange by mapping it onto the East-West fault line and limiting the focus to contacts between Europe and Islam. The crusades and, to a lesser extent, the Iberian

Epilogue

193

Reconquista were interpreted as the major catalysts for the emergence of new opportunities for “fruitful cultural intercourse.”1 The political and military aspects of the crusades, however, were deemed an utter failure. According to this view, it is solely thanks to the commercial exchange “of portable objects and complex decorative formulae that the true richness of the cultural interchange is revealed.”2 This exchange, historians claim, while driven by an economic impulse, left an everlasting imprint on the history of European science, literature, and the arts. The continuous presence of Europeans in the Near East, in other words, was seen to be instrumental mainly in that it facilitated the creation of sustained trade networks across the Mediterranean. This line of inquiry entailed a powerful sense of Europe as a coherent cultural entity, distinctly separate from its neighbors. Fruitful and stimulating as its contacts were with the world of Islam, both entities, before and after their exchange of goods, were perceived as remaining entirely independent of one another. This overtly Eurocentric approach did not look to waver from the grand (and arguably teleological) narrative of the emergence of Europe from the ruins of its Greek and Roman ancestors: a narrative that marginalized the importance of contacts with other influences, whether external or internal.3 As mentioned above, the 1990s saw a growing tendency in scholarship to gravitate toward areas characterized by intersocietal entanglement. There was an effort to reflect on ways in which multiculturalism was integral to fantasies on the origins of the West or the rise of the modern subject. As a result of the rise of multiculturalist discourse in both academic and lay circles, “ethno-religious pluralism,” which ironically had previously condemned some areas to marginality in traditional medieval studies, was precisely what made the very same regions extremely popular.4 The study of medieval Iberia, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews shared overlapping urban, political, and linguistic spaces, was a prime beneficiary of this shift. This began with a critical reevaluation of convivencia, the notion coined by Américo Castro in 1948 to account for the peaceful relations that supposedly had existed between members of the three communities in “Golden Age” Spain.5 Critics of Castro pointed out that romantic fantasies of a lost heterogeneous or hybrid past flattened the topography of contoured landscapes that were, in fact, marked with political, religious, and social tension.6 But the impulse to celebrate a utopian past of interreligious harmony and the emphasis on persecution and expulsion of non-Christians are two sides of the same coin; both are attempts at asking when and under which circumstances Iberia “fell

194

Epilogue

victim,” as Jonathan Ray says, to the exclusivism that had swept across much of Eu rope.7 Indeed, much of the scholarship on interactions with nonChristian minorities has employed binaries that are decidedly Eurocentric. The turn, or rather the return, to “area studies” has brought some relief to the question of problematic stakes involved in producing historical narratives of a multicultural past. The quest for new models with which to think about long-lasting, mutually transformative contacts between communities and cultures has drawn scholars back to the consideration of large geographical entities such as the Mediterranean. Part of the appeal in studying the history of regions clustered around large natural barriers lies in the fact that the subjects extend across the political divisions that have shaped traditional histories. This methodology, pioneered by Fernand Braudel and more recently rejuvenated by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, seeks to unfold the kinds of cultural interactions enabled by particular environmental and ecological patterns that become manifest over the course of the longue durée.8 Building on the legacy of Braudel’s monumental works, scholars have turned to the Mediterranean Sea in search of a language with which to study interactions between European and non-European cultures. There was, in other words, an expectation that the Mediterranean, as an interpretive framework, would provide the opportunity to unfold the possibilities of interactions between premodern societies.9 As Purcell and Horden persuasively observe, however, without giving account to the unique geographical characteristics of the Mediterranean, these studies tended to be merely histories in the Mediterranean. The uncritical use of categories such as “Europe” and the “Middle East” (and, in fact, “the Mediterranean”) yields studies that do nothing but reproduce the national and imperialistic payloads of their authors.10 Following Braudel, Horden and Purcell studied the unique ecological space of the Mediterranean as well as its maritime and agrarian histories to articulate a new, site-specific framework for interpreting the mechanics of diversity and exchange in the region.11 The goal of their project was to rethink the history of space, commerce, and law in the Mediterranean through a language that attempted to provide tools for grasping unifying impulses but avoiding superficial similarities that are no more than romantic or imperial stereotypes. This account of the Mediterranean in The Corrupting Sea focuses on the stability of distinct social and economic units and on their interconnectedness.12 Both Braudel’s and Purcell and Horden’s accounts, despite their great interest in trade and commerce, deal mostly with populations that were

Epilogue

195

largely stationary. Nevertheless, the relational characteristic of The Corrupting Sea has prompted scholars in a number of fields to attempt to unfold the larger mechanisms that upheld the multiple, overlapping networks of connectivity.13 Missionaries, converts, and merchants have long been recognized as enthusiastic “border crossers,” but more recently, there has been an attempt to understand these highly mobile populations as agents of connectivity that supported the Mediterranean cultural ecosystem. Travelers, mercenaries, diplomats, and dragomans, too, have come to be seen as instrumental to the formation of complex informational networks that facilitated the constant flow of goods, people, and ideas across geographic, linguistic, political, and confessional boundaries.14 More recently, however, scholars have expressed a growing concern that previous attempts to theorize mechanisms of intercultural exchange have come at the expense of religion. The older works, in other words, had a tendency to reduce, or even dismiss, confessional convictions as mere strategy.15 In order to envision possibilities of interreligious exchange, this scholarship resorted to one (or a combination) of several strategies: for example, imagining merchants or mercenaries as crude cynics who treat their counterparts as instruments for attaining goods, thus viewing their faith as transparent or hollow, or, alternatively, taking subjects to be purely rational agents who escape the “limitations” of their respective faiths. There were also attempts to reconstruct circumstances of free-flowing intellectual interaction by drawing on fantasies of tolerant regimes while conveniently reducing to a minimum the real differences between faith communities. Additionally, as Adnan Husain has argued, the account of the Muslim conquests and the burgeoning Islamic religion in The Corrupting Sea seems to be an uncritical reproduction of Henri Pirenne’s caricatured portrait of Islam (which in itself has roots in nineteenth-century, orientalist scholarship and values).16 Portrayals of contact zones in the area-focused histories presume to illustrate oases of interfaith exchange, but in fact, they often hide implicit assumptions with a remarkably long shelf life about the inherently violent nature of Islam and its incompatibility with the cultures and values of Christian Europe. If the immediate reaction to Horden and Purcell’s portrait of the Mediterranean was a tendency to study and celebrate the efficacy with which networks of communication found ways to bridge regional fragmentation, then the pendulum has more recently been swaying back.17 There are attempts to take on the question of how religious cultures interacted by using analytical tools that go beyond the anthropology of shared practices and sites

196

Epilogue

(without taking away from the value of work that has been done on the orthopraxis of colocation in shared shrines and possibly also on the habitus of coreligious philosophical circles). Inspired by the broader trajectory of the theological, or religious, turn, this shift reflects a return to religion as an articulation of collective and individual identity.18 It is, however, important to note that the choice to focus on either individual or collective manifestations of religious phenomenology marks a crucial methodological watershed. It betrays an often unspoken assumption regarding the interplay between legislative establishments (sometimes equated with a ruling elite) and individual actors in premodern societies. The church and its comparable institutions in Judaism and Islam, says John Tolan, produced thousands of normative texts that reflect a systematic attempt “to define and police borders between faith communities.”19 For Tolan, this corpus “attests both to the continued efforts of elites to restrict and regulate inter-religious encounters, and to their frequent inability to do so.”20 Scholars, in other words, tend to accept the paradigm that institutions responsible for codifying normative behaviors were ordinarily exclusive, and therefore most intercommunal interaction was by definition the result of individual vectors that are taken to be inherently subversive. The choice on which corpus to focus results in the question what of history one seeks to craft: a history of the state and its ability to inherit the aspiration for universal sovereignty and unifying power of the church or a history of how modern subjectivity, in its capacity for innovation and struggle against the inhibiting effect of the medieval church, liberated the West from its ancient inclination for conservatism. Either version instrumentalizes the interaction of Christians with other faith communities in the medieval Mediterranean in order to fabricate a narrative of European modernity. The argument about the role of medieval Islam in the making of European modernity has a venerable pedigree with a completely different methodology. Importantly for the purpose of the current meditation, it is a debate specifically about the role of Arabic literature and its defining effect over the vernacular traditions with which it came in contact. In fact, the so-called Arabic thesis—namely, the idea that Arabic poetry was the inspiration for the humanizing verses of, say, Occitan troubadours, which at once captured and instigated the essence of modernity—is a trope that in some places is as old as modernity itself. In other words, as soon as the notion of humanism as a synchronic rejuvenation of classical antiquity gave way to the idea that

Epilogue

197

European nations were a dialectic development of their own medieval incarnations, thinkers came to assign Arabic a crucial role in the process. Maria Rosa Menocal sought to remind of this “forgotten heritage” in her pioneering book about the role of Arabic in the history of European vernacular literatures. Arabic-speaking poets (both Muslim and Jewish), she says, played a major role in bequeathing this heritage not only in Spain and Italy, where they shared a space and language with their Christian successors, but also to their peers north of the Pyrenees. Thanks to this cultural vector, the love poetry of Occitan troubadours kindled the light of humanism and liberated Eu rope from the tyrannical darkness of Latin. More than anything else, this book advocates the inclusion of the Andalusian tradition in the assessment of how European literature came to possess its modern shape.21 Indeed, as she says, the “selective process of history,” like the tendency of postrevolutionary French enthusiasts to locate the genius of their tradition within the space of their own crystalizing nation, “deprived us of an appreciation of many critical subtexts, . . . which distorted beyond recognition many of the cultural forces that were catalytic in the medieval period.”22 But as Menocal is well aware, already medieval poets and commentators recognized and polemicized about their possible debt to Arabic as opposed to Greek letters. In Spain (and in Italy, albeit in a very different way), this heritage required no rehabilitation or reminder until quite recently, as the “Arabic thesis” became increasingly conventional after the first half of the nineteenth century. 23 Curiously, resistance toward what Menocal calls “the notion of [Arabic] influence and interaction” became dominant in Spain only after the fall of the fascist regime, when ultra-patriotic narratives of the country’s medieval past fell out of fashion.24 But clearly what was at stake for both liberal (even exiled) and conservative Spanish nationalists was not the rehabilitation of an underappreciated chapter in the history of the peninsula. Instead of disavowing the Muslim conquest as an anomaly, historians from José Antonio Conde to Américo Castro viewed al-Andalus as a proud proof of a Spanish essence that was autochthonic and distinctly Christian even when exercised by those who (accidentally) professed other creeds. Spanish orientalist Julian Ribera (1858–1934), for example, famously proclaimed that “the Muslims of the Peninsula were Spaniards, in race, tongue, character, taste, tendencies, and genius . . . and we should consider the merits of the Spanish Muslims to be our own national, Spanish wealth.”25 In order to show that Castilian literature

198

Epilogue

was inflected by its contact with Arabic, Ribera dubbed the Muslims who ruled over Iberia, as well as produced large parts of its cultural treasure, as Spanish. In all its generous appreciation for the contribution of Arabic verse to the making of the Spanish nation, this formulation assumes an irreconcilable distinction between cultures, languages, and faiths, such that for Muslims to be seen as part of the Spanish cultural heritage, they must somehow cease to be Andalusians. This is exactly the task that philology was expected to perform in the nineteenth century, when it became the methodological engine behind the disciplinary study of languages: to identify the moment when a nation emerged by isolating its idiom from among the premodern multiplicity in which it had been nestled. If Spanish philologists were willing to assign Arabic a role in the history of the literature that they sought to praise, it was solely in the ser vice of the nation they helped to build—a nation, as Karla Mallette says, that Conde portrayed as Arab in its youth and Spanish in its maturity.26 A synthesis of Arabic and Castilian, then, was summoned in the ser vice of a patriotic impulse, which, against the charge that Spain was not in earnest part of enlightenment Europe, attempted to view Muslim authors as somehow reflecting on the land that had borne their eloquence. To follow David Nirenberg’s argument, even as they give thanks to Arabic for lighting the spark of humanism, such accounts of Eu ropean vernacular-nationalism always “proceed by splitting the strands of interwoven and coproduced histories of identity and difference in order to rewire them along more polarized lines.”27 Arabic as an instrument for European modernity, in other words, does not help much in asking how to think about literary traditions that were coproduced, that in their medieval manifestations were indeed already interwoven, and not in anticipation of the national projects they will be seen to serve centuries later. Despite the growing recognition of the way in which philology and nationalism had been wedlocked since the nineteenth century, recent decades have seen a repeated return to philology with the expectation that it could liberate the humanities from the dialectic teleology in which the study of history and languages was trapped institutionally. The idea is, of course, captivating. Philology involves a critical scrutiny of linguistic forms that is meant to disclose the uniqueness both of a text and its time-bound reception.28 Importantly, the repeated call to revive philology cultivates the fantasy that this reading strategy, in its unyielding attention to the variance that lies at the very heart of medieval textuality, could somehow penetrate through

Epilogue

199

the political agenda in whose ser vice it is deployed.29 This impulse has been particularly powerful in the study of literary and linguistic traditions in the late medieval Mediterranean. Summoning a “new philology,” scholars have sought to replace teleological narratives of cultural and linguistic stability, as well as the tendency to see the history of language as a tool with which to produce historicizing taxonomies.30 Unbound by (or at least conscious of) the expectation that languages should serve national sentiments in their modern territorial manifestations, students of the Middle Ages are looking to develop a vocabulary with which to understand the many ways in which literary traditions left defining imprints on one another and enjoyed an entangled past.31 Rather than assuming, in other words, that a text is the product of one hegemonic force, studies attempt to recognize the multiple regulatory, structural, and narrative regimes that created a variety of epistemologies with unique and dynamic interconnections. Scholars see textual lineages as sites of coproduction in which multiple languages operated simulta neously and where authors inhabiting numerous cultural fault lines across the Mediterranean constantly re-created a social semantics.32 But not all fields have been equally receptive to this methodological imperative. In fact, in fields that are still very much defined by disciplinary boundaries, which themselves reflect a political and ideological resistance to notions of hybridity, the coproductivity of which I speak earlier is all but invisible.33 Nor is it easy to imagine how the study of the crusades, for example, would look like if it were to implement some of these changes. This field enjoys tremendous lay enthusiasm and institutional support thanks to a sense of urgency that is created through its promise to provide a historical justification for an alignment of political forces against the perceived enemy of the West.34 Nevertheless, the wealth of publications in recent years on multilingualism in the Middle Ages is a testament to the enduring effect of the new approach toward philology.35 Languages are now seen to bear witness to the contest for political and social authority wherever multiple identities coexisted.36 Multilingualism, therefore, attempts to capture the notion that social and cultural fragmentation persisted in most areas of Eu rope many centuries after demographic shifts occasioned by conquest and political subordination became stabilized. Hegemonic idioms often came to dwarf local dialects, but they were also sites where social unrest became fossilized in grammar, where poets regularly committed acts of linguistic dissent by rejecting the hierarchical binary that political institutions attempted to enforce, and where ancient semantic spheres sprouted like geysers that surfaced

200

Epilogue

vestiges of subversive meaning.37 Multiplicity is to be found, in other words, not only where one “language” meets another but in the history of domination (and its failure) that is inscribed in literature. What is more, this multiplicity is now available to historians only when they resist the triumphalist narratives of national languages that informs much of their professional training. And yet, there is a limit to the work that philology can do and not only because our academic discourses are so deeply entangled with the political forces that provide them material support. As Karla Mallette acknowledges, while philology is well suited to parsing narratives and making their inherent variance manifest, it “may stumble when used to study texts that are constituted by hybridity.”38 Lucid and ingenious as the genealogical structure of philological thinking could be, it is less suitable as an interpretive tool for dealing with literary miscegenation. “Our critical vocabulary,” says Sharon Kinoshita, “is poorly equipped to conceptualize material and literary objects of multiple provenances, often the products of cultures which prized eclecticism as an expression of political or civilizational strength.”39 This recognition should encourage us, says Kinoshita, to go “beyond philology,” to allow this very eclecticism or even confusion act as the guiding principles for how we think about languages and the multiple vectors that yielded their meanings. While this is an exciting pronouncement, it also makes clear that we are not yet in possession of this intellectual apparatus. It is a curious gesture, then, to end a book by musing on the limitations of the theory that animated its interpretive strategy. But this meditation on the conditions that made it possible nonetheless may help to show that its contribution lies equally in what it achieved as in that which it failed.

Notes

introdUction 1. Ibn Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehuda, 147. A sizable bibliography has dealt with this group and its possible motivations. See, for example, Kanarfogel, “ ‘Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis.’ ” Chapter 4 returns to this episode. 2. For example, the anonymous author of the Homily of the King Messiah in Darmstadt, Hessisches Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, MS Cod. Or. 25, fols. 13v–17v. 3. Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, 87–94, 152–57; Jotischky, “Ethnographic Attitudes in the Crusader States,” 1–5; Barber, Crusades States, 50–64; Murray, “Demographics of Urban Space,” 205–24. 4. Tyerman, Debate on the Crusades; see also Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusading States, 1–21; Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories, 18–37. 5. Most notably, this view was promulgated by Smail, Crusading Warfare. 6. Prawer, Crusaders’ Kingdoms: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages, esp. 545–99: “Much has been written about the ‘orientalization’ or ‘levantinization’ of the crusading society. One has the sense, however, that these studies were driven mostly by romantic, or extreme-liberal sentiments of scholars; more than anything else, this wishful thinking is scholars’ hope to prove the plausibility of colonial situations during their own time, in Northern Africa or the Near East. . . . The orientalization . . . was countered and minimized by the basic inclination for repulsion and aversion” (581–82). See also Prawer, “Roots of Medieval Colonialism,” 23–38. 7. For an articulation and critique of this concept, see Qureshi and Sells’s introduction to New Crusades, 1–49; see also Horswell, Rise and Fall of British Crusader Medievalism. 8. A good example of this persistent tendency lies in the scholarly tradition of registering Eu ropean perceptions of Islam during, and as a result of, the First Crusade. In addition to the classical works of Southern, Western Views of Islam, and Daniel, Islam and the West, see also Völkl, Muslime, Märtyrer, Militia Christi; Housley, “The Crusades and Islam”; and Skottki, “Medieval Western Perceptions of Islam.” There have been more recently, however, notable attempts to complement and, in fact, to undermine the legitimacy of this project, most notably by Leclercq, Portraits croisés, and König, Arabic-Islamic Views. 9. See, for example, Goodich, Menache, and Schein, Cross Cultural Convergences. On cultural contacts in late medieval Iberia, see Robinson and Rouhi, Under the Influence, 9. 10. These studies show that the remoter areas of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in par ticular, maintained more complicated ties with the local Christian populations than have previously been appreciated. But the relations between Franks and their non-Christian neighbors

202

Notes to Pages 4–6

have not yet been redressed in a comprehensive manner. See the immensely influential works by Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement and Crusader Castles and Modern Histories, esp. the second half; see also MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World. Cobb’s work successfully subverts our gaze on ideas and events that have been studied from a firmly Eurocentric perspective (Race for Paradise, 6–8, 70–77). 11. Kedar, “Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” 135–74; Dajani-Shakeel, “Natives and Franks in Palestine.” 12. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy; Köhler, Alliances and Treaties. 13. Kedar, “Multidirectional Conversion”; Forey, “Military Orders and the Conversion of Muslims”; Ryan, “Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages.” 14. Kedar, “Convergences of Oriental Christian”; Taragan, “Tomb of Sayyidyna ‘Ali Arsuf.” 15. See, for an example of this use of language, Aslanov and Kedar, “Problems in the Study of Trans-Cultural Borrowing.” For a recent attempt to implement this methodology (“Trans-Cultural Borrowing”) with its underlying assumptions regarding cultural interactions, see Morton, Encountering Islam. Mourad forcefully critiques this paradigm and shows how deeply rooted it is in the fields of Jerusalem and crusade studies (“Critique of the Scholarly Outlook”). 16. My use of this notion of coproduction of ideas on holy warfare is inspired by Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths, 1–13. 17. Cutler, “Everywhere and Nowhere,” 253. 18. In itself, “crusading art” is already a loaded term that is associated with the Eurocentric legacy of Kurt Weitzman and Jaroslav Folda and with the assumption that such culturally “pure” categories are helpful in interpreting works of art; see Dodd, “Jerusalem,” 11. 19. Cutler, “Everywhere and Nowhere,” 254. 20. This approach consciously avoids the question of what either authors or contemporary readers were aware and instead focuses on attempting to articulate a phenomenology of the various, often conflicting, impulses and trajectories that existed simulta neously in text or image. See, for another example of this methodology, Amer, Crossing Borders. “Old French literature,” Amer says, “may be usefully considered a palimpsest, a textual surface that both obscures and reveals signs of multiple contacts (and conflicts) between medieval France and the Islamicate world” (27–28). To appreciate what lies beneath the surface, Amer recaptures alternative voices, recovering references to the Arabic tradition that medieval audiences heard but that modern scholars may fail to recognize due to the lack of the critical cultural and linguistic tools to identify these voices as such. 21. The use of the term “Franci” goes back to the chronicles of the First Crusade; Fulcher of Chartres famously provided an anthropology of the various inhabitants in the East; see Prawer, “Social Classes in the Latin Kingdom,” 117–93, esp. 120–21, and Murray, “Ethnic Identity in the Crusader States.” For the use of a pejorative term to describe those Latin inhabitants who were born in the East, see Morgan, “Meaning of Old French Polain/Latin Pullanus.” 22. MacEvitt has recently critiqued the use of the term “Crusader States” for the excessive emphasis that it puts on the “penitential and purificatory” ideology of the crusades in studying the history of Latin settlement in the Levant (“What Was Crusader”); see also a response by Buck, who defends the use of the term by showing that the liturgical and institutional memory of the crusades continued to play a role in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (which MacEvitt, in fact, does not doubt) but seems to discard the political and methodological payload that it carries (“Settlement, Identity, and Memory”).

Notes to Pages 6–12

203

23. Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 40. This concept has enjoyed some purchase until more recently; see Dajani-Shakeel, “Re-Assessment of Some Medieval and Modern Perceptions,” and Stewart, “ ‘Maqamat.’ ” 24. Lourie, “Confraternity of Belchite.” 25. The abovementioned theses are dated and were rightly critiqued; see Latiff, Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword, 55–66, esp. 55–56, and, more recently, Goudie, Reinventing Jihad, 1–9. For a critique of the Ribat theory, see Forey, “ Emergence of the Military Orders.” 26. Barton, “Aristocratic Culture.” 27. Crouch, “Chivalry and Courtliness,” 33–34. 28. Flori, Idéologie du glaive, 88, and, more generally, Flori, Essor de la chevalerie. Strickland purports that the resistance of the knighthood to clerical interference was not incompatible with Christian belief (War and Chivalry, 74, 96–97). 29. Kaeuper, Holy Warriors, 16, 68. Keen believes chivalry found its roots in a thoroughly nonclerical environment, although its rise as an order was the product of complex interdependencies between knightly patrons and monastic houses going back at least to the tenth century. The language of chivalric literature and liturgy, he says, originated in early medieval formulae and gradually came to be cloaked in a thinly veiled ecclesiastical language, which modern historians tend to overemphasize (Chivalry, 6–8, 18–42). 30. Ashe, “ Ideal of Knighthood,” 160–61; Crouch, “Chivalry and Courtliness,” 39–41; Kaeuper, Holy Warriors, 9–10; Lieberman, “New Approach to the Knighting Ritual.” 31. See Salinger, “Was Futuwa an Oriental Form of Chivalry?” While Salinger critiques the attempt to draw institutional parallels between Eu ropean chivalry and Islamic organ izations, in the way that Täschner, Thorning, and others did, he evokes Saladin as a “brilliant example of gallantry and chivalrous spirit” that existed in the Muslim Middle Ages (491). For more recent examples, see Tor, Violent Order; as a literary and cultural category in late medieval Arabic society, see Shoshan, “High Culture and Popu lar Culture,” 87–89, 98–100. 32. On the use of ghazi and mujahid, see Hillenbrand, Crusades, 100–1, and Chapter 2; see also Mourad and Lindsay, Intensification and Reorientation, 55–67, 104–14. 33. Notable exceptions come from the field of historical sociolinguistics. See the vastly influential works of Aslanov, Français au Levant and “Languages in Contact.” 34. Cornish, “Translation Galliae,” 310; see also Kinoshita, “Reorientations,” 39–40. 35. Minervini has pioneered the study of the French language spoken in the East, revealing its complexity; see, for example, Minervini, “Emprunts arabes et grecs,” 99–198, and Minervini, “Français dans l’Orient Latin,” 119–98. 36. On Outremer French and political bilingualism, see Smarandache, “Re-examining Usama ibn Munqidh’s Knowledge.” 37. Dominican missionary Riccoldo da Montecroce relates that a large number of books in Latin, including breviaries and missals, were looted from homes and libraries during the sack of Acre in 1291 and sold in markets across the Near East; see Becker, “Riccoldo da Montecroce’s Epistolae V commentatoriae,” 105–6; conversely, Ibn Munqidh relates that the Franks sunk a ship near the coast of Acre and looted the trea sures on board, which included “four thousand bound volumes of the most precious tomes” (Book of Contemplation, 44). 38. For Arabic-speaking scribes in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, see, for example, Kedar, “Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” 135–74; on translators in the Near East, see Burnett, “Antioch as a Link,” 1–78; Savage-Smith, “New Evidence for the Frankish Study”; and, most recently, Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 62–83.

204

Notes to Pages 12–15

39. Attiya, “Knowledge of Arabic”; Coureas, “Use of the Arabic Language”; on the widespread use of colloquial Arabic in Tripoli, see Lewis, “Medieval Diglossia” and “Count of Counts.” 40. On the travel of stories between communities, see, for example, Kedar, “Some New Sources,” 139. Joinville records a story, which he attributes to a Dominican emissary whom King Louis IX sent to Damascus; Schimmel has traced the story’s origins back to an eighthcentury Muslim mystic (Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 8). Conversely, Husain calls attention to the story of a twelfth-century Jewish convert to Islam who attributed his renunciation of the religion of his birth to his reading of contemporary Arab popular epics (“Conversion to History”). On finding a fragment of the Old French epic Fierabras at the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, see D’Ottone, “Manuscripts as Mirrors.” 41. On a Sufi mystic who used to study Maimonides’s Guide together with Jewish intellectuals, see Kraemer, “Andalusian Mystic Ibn Hud.” Another example is William of Tripoli, a Dominican polemicist whose erudite and largely sympathetic treatise on Islam from the 1270s also demonstrates familiarity with the Talmud (Notitia de Machometo, 242, 394n126). Another mystic intellectual registering positive relations with his Christian neighbors is R. Isaac of Acre, who said, “The children of Esau are lovers of peace. In a Muslim land if a Jew says ‘peace unto you’ to an Ishmaelite he risks his life, and will fall into sorrow and grave danger. [By contrast,] if a Jew offers greeting of peace to the children of Esau, they will rejoice in him and respect him” (cited from Ozar Hayyim [145r] by Fishbane, As Light Before Dawn, 44).

chaPter 1 1. Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:5–6. 2. See, for example, Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 93–113; Tyerman, God’s War, 344–54, 375–89. 3. Sivan, for example, frequently uses the term “propaganda” in the section of his book that describes the thirteenth-century Levant (Islam et la croisade, 131–38). 4. Ibn Munqidh, for example, mentions several occasions in which local Muslim lords enlisted the help of their Frankish neighbors. Usama also documents instances of small-scale collaborations between Muslims and eastern Christians (Book of Contemplation, 91–92, 132– 33). For an exhaustive survey of the alliances, disputes, and skirmishes between Franks and Muslims during this period, see Köhler, Alliances and Treatises, 90–127. 5. On this treatise in the context of diplomatic ties between Franks and Muslims in the first half of the twelfth century, see Frenkel, “Muslim Responses to the Frankish Dominion,” 33; Ibn al-Qalānīsī, Dhayl Tarīkh Dimashq, 272. Köhler concludes, “The threat to the autonomy of the individual rulers from the advances of external powers always led to the conclusion of defensive alliances irrespective of ethnic and religious boundaries” (Alliances and Treatises, 145). Cahen believes the Frankish rulers of the northern principalities were fully integrated in the local network of independent states until the 1140s and became immersed in, what he calls, a “Syrian” political culture (Syrie du nord, 241). 6. Mu’in al-Din Unur, the ruler of Damascus, initiated a strategic pact with the king of Jerusalem in 1140. The exact terms are unknown, but it appears that the Franks promised to provide armed assistance should Zengi attack Damascus. In return, they received an annual payment and some assistance in their efforts to recapture Banyas; see Köhler, Alliances and Treatises, 144–45.

Notes to Pages 15–21

205

7. Ehrenkreutz, Saladin, 22–24; Jackson, “Appreciation of the Career of Saladin,” 220– 28; Lev, Saladin in Egypt, 53–61. 8. Significantly, not only Christian authors viewed Raymond’s act as treacherous. Ibn alAthīr, too, was critical of both the Franks and Saladin; see Lewis, Counts of Tripoli, 265–70. 9. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1:520–25; Runciman, History of the Crusades, 2:447–51; Tyerman, God’s War, 359–66. 10. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:22–23; Jacoby, “Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat,” 187–238; Barber, Crusader States, 308–15; Möhring, Saladin und der Dritte Kreuzzug, 36–62. 11. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:30–31; Smail, “Predicaments of Guy of Lusignan,” 159–76. 12. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:101. Edbury sheds light on this episode by scrutinizing the bias that characterizes each historiographical tradition (“Propaganda and Faction,” 173–89). 13. For Henry of Champagne’s attempt to restore some order, see Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:82. 14. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:86–87. Buck portrays Bohemond III as an able and independent statesman, whose interests and stakes were different from many of his European and Frankish counter parts; see Buck, Principality of Antioch, 55–60. 15. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:91–92; Ernoul-Bernard, 315–16; Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, 2:85. The ruler of Beirut, Usama al-Jabali, had a reputation for implementing policies that did not always align with those of the other Ayyubid rulers. At times, he would raid merchant ships headed toward the port of Acre, and at other times, as stated above, he collaborated with the Franks. On the capricious character of his relations with the Ayyubid rulers of Egypt, see also Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:435 and 560–61. On contacts between the Hospitallers in the castle of Krak de Chevaliers and the ruler of Homs, see also Major, “Al-Malik al-Mujahid,” 61–75, and Omran, “Truces Between Moslems and Crusaders,” 423–41. 16. Henry’s death is a puzzling episode in its own right, which is discussed at length below. See also Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, 2:84–86. On the German delegation, see Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:106, and Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:94–95. 17. For a detailed chronicle of the political circumstances that led to the election of John, see Perry, John of Brienne, 45–50. 18. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1:200. For a recent treatment of Frederick II’s involvement in the Latin Kingdom, see Ross, “Frederick II.” 19. On the Treaty of Jaffa, see Holt, Age of Crusades, 64; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 202–3; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 216–23; Hillenbrand, “Ayyubid Jerusalem,” 1–21. 20. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1:195–96. 21. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1:293. See also Edbury, “Feudal Obligations in the Latin East,” and Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, esp. chap. 2 on “Constitutional Conflict,” 99–120. 22. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 93–95; Hillenbrand, “Ayyubid Jerusalem,” 15–17. 23. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 97. 24. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 99. 25. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 102–4. 26. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 105–6. Guy de Lusignan, as mentioned above, hoping to benefit from a more energetic involvement of Henry IV in the affairs of the East, chose to be crowned king of Cyprus by the imperial court.

206

Notes to Pages 21–26

27. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 107–8. 28. The year 1202, however, is sometimes mentioned as the year in which al-Malik al‘Adil finally assumed full control over the region, citing some resistance that he had to suppress between 1198 and 1202; see Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 141–43. 29. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 108; Holt, Age of Crusades, 62; Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:109–14. 30. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:81; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 121. 31. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:103. 32. Burgtorf, “Antiochene War of Succession,” 206–7. 33. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 135–36n17; Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 157; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 3:172–73; Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, 7:273–74. 34. Holt, Age of Crusades, 63. 35. Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 135. See, for example, references to that effect by Ibn alNabīh, Dīwān, 65; Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk, 1:209; and Zuhayr, Dīwān, 72. 36. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 162–63. 37. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 170. 38. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 172–76; Holt, Age of the Crusades, 60–66. 39. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 177–78. 40. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:165. 41. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 178–84. 42. Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:174–75. In fact, after the death of her mother in 1212, Yolanda became the infant queen and her father the regent. Legally, therefore, Frederick became the king by marriage already in 1225, but he agreed to leave the regency and ruling rights in the hands of John until his later arrival to the East. 43. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:163: Frederick’s excuse this time, which no one including the pope believed, was an illness. 44. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 183–84; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 6:35–37. 45. Hillenbrand, Crusades, 216–17; Pouzet, “De la paix armée.” Pouzet draws a distinction between the Egyptian Ayyubid rulers who were driven, he claims, by political ambitions alone and the Ayyubid rulers of Damascus who were also committed to a religious battle against the Franks. See also Pouzet, Damas au VIIe/XIIIe Siècle, 138–41; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 4:242, 244–45. 46. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:186–88. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 202. 47. Tyerman, God’s War, 750–51; for a close analysis of the language of the treaty, see Atrache, Poilitik der Ayyubiden, 103–35; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 4:626. 48. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:193. 49. Tyerman, God’s War, 752. 50. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:245; Tyerman, God’s War, 725–27, 753–54. 51. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:250–52; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 205–6. 52. Humphreys sees this as the origin of the “third civil war” (From Saladin to the Mongols, 228). 53. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 242. 54. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:250–51; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 283–307. 55. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:252–56.

Notes to Pages 27–29

207

56. Lower, Barons’ Crusade, 164. Among the participants were the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Grand Masters of the Temple and the Teutonic Orders, Walter of Brienne, the count of Jaffa, and several other lords. Frederick II’s representative in the East, Richard Filangieri, was curiously absent from the proceedings. 57. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:257–58. 58. Lower, Barons’ Crusade, 168–71; Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:216. 59. Jackson, “Crusades of 1239–1241,” 42–43. 60. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 266; Lower, Barons’ Crusade, 173–74; Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:218; Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:264; Estoire d’Eracles, Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux [hereafter RHC], 2:418; Rothelin Continuation, in RHC 2:553; Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk, 1:303–4; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 5:246–53; Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:736–37. 61. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 266–67: Al-Salih Isma‘il was criticized by Izz al-din ‘Abd al-Salam al-Sulami and the Maliki, Jamal al-Din abu ‘Amr ibn al-Hajib. See Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 6:35–37, and Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:737–39. 62. Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk, 304: ‫اللهم ابرم لهذه االمة اب رام رشد \ تعز فيه اولياءك \ وتذل فيه اعداءك \ ويعمل فيه بطاعتك \ وينهى فيه‬ ‫عن معصيتك‬ See also Chaumont, “al-Sulamī”; Ibn al-Kathīr, Tabaqāt al-Fuqahā’, 2. Together with al-Sulami, the Maliki jurist Jamāl al-Din abu ‘Amr ibn al-Hajib was also imprisoned and subsequently immigrated to Cairo. 63. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 269. 64. Estoire d’Eracles, in RHC, 2:552–53; Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:738–39; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 6:35–37; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 267; Ibn Shaddād, Al-Aʻlāq al-Khaṭīrah, 156: “When those who were in [Beaufort] learned of al-Salih’s decision to surrender the castle to the Templars they collectively refused to give the castle to the Franks, and they started a revolt. They wrote to al-Nasir Da’ud, and he sent one of his men to help them defend the castle. . . . When al-Salih Isma‘il confirmed their zeal for the Muslims, and their commitment to the religion, he dispatched his army and snatched the castle. The [garrison] asked for safe conduct and said: ‘you demanded that we surrender the castle to the Templars, but it is impermissible for us to surrender it to the Franks, so we surrender it to you, and you can do with it as you choose.’ And he [al-Salih Isma‘il] surrendered the castle to the Templars.” 65. De constructione, 37–40. 66. Ibn Shaddād, Al-Aʻlāq al-Khaṭīrah, 147–48; Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼlMulūk, 1:88–89 (Arabic), 2:112–13 (English); Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 267–68. 67. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:266. 68. For Forey, this dispute epitomizes the relative independence that the military orders enjoyed in the East compared to the situation in Iberia (“Participation of the Military Orders,” 45–52). 69. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:267; Tyerman, God’s War, 765–66; Jackson, “Crusades of 1239–1241,” 43–44. 70. Dijkstra, Chanson de croisade, 210, lines 31–40: “Se l’Ospitaus et li Temple / Et li frere chevalier / Eüssent donné example / A noz gens de chevauchier / Nostre grant chevalerie / Ne fust or pas en prison / Ne li Sarrazin en vie / Mais ainsi nel firent mie / Dont ce fu

208

Notes to Pages 29–34

grant mesprison / Et semblant de traïson”; based on Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS 142, fol. 310r. 71. Dijkstra, Chanson de croisade, 122–29. The Rothelin Continuation (RHC 2:548) is more critical of the barons, whose restlessness (if not outright greed) is said to have resulted in this premature confrontation that jeopardized the strategic stakes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 72. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:267 and 271; Lower, Barons’ Crusade, 175–76. 73. Estoire d’Eracles 33:49, in RHC, 2:419: “Icele trive, dont vos avez oi, avoit este porchacee et faite par l’atrait do Temple et sanz l’acort de l’Ospital dont il avint que li Hospitaus reporchaca ensi que li sodans de Babiloine refist trives a partie des Crestiens et la jurerent le roi de Navarre, et li cuenz de Bretaigne, et maint autre pelerin, ne onques ne regarderent au sairement que il avoient fait au sodan de Domas . . . alerent a Acre, et loerent lor nez et passerent en lor pais. Li maistre del Ospital, frère Pierre de Vieille Bride, que cele trive avoit juree et n’avoit riens jure au sodan de Domas, se parti de Jafe o tout son covent et s’en ala a Acre. . . . Et li Temples et li cuens de Nevers et une partie des pelerins demorerent a Japhe et ne vostrent partir ne retraire des covenances que il avoient eues au sodan de Domas. Ensi fu li fais des Crestien en contens et en descorde que li un se tindrent a l’une trive et li autre a l’autre.” 74. Estoire d’Eracles 33:41, in RHC, 2:421. 75. Estoire d’Eracles 33:46, in RHC, 2:415–16. See below a discussion about this episode. 76. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 256–57; Estoire d’Eracles, in RHC, 2:416; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 5:202–9. Humphreys, on the basis of the Muslim sources alone, situates the events a few months earlier and, consequently, provides an account that is more sympathetic to Ayyub: al-Muzaffar had planned to send troops to help protect Damascus against an alliance spearheaded by the ruler of Homs until the arrival of Isma‘il. Malicious rumors about al-Muzaffar’s contact with the Franks, however, deterred part of his army, which deserted the flanks and fled to Homs, leaving Damascus exposed. 77. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:260. 78. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:293–94. 79. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:297; Runciman, History of the Crusades, 3:223; Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, §529, trans. Smith, Chronicles of the Crusades, 277; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 274–75; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 5:332–33; Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:641–46; Ibn al-’Amid, “Chronique des Ayyoubides,” 155. 80. Jackson, Mongols and the West, 58–85; Jackson, “Crusade Against the Mongols”; Giebfried, “Mongol Invasions and the Aegean World.” 81. Jackson, “Crusades of 1239–1241,” 57–58; Richard, “Mongols and the Franks,” 46. 82. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:298; Paris, Chronica Majora 3:308 and 339. 83. Prawer, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:301; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 275–76. 84. Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 5:334; Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:648. 85. Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:5. 86. Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:5–6. 87. Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, §515–21, trans. Smith, Chronicles of the Crusades, 274– 75; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 321; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 6:168–69; Ibn al-‘Amid, “Chronique des Ayyoubides,” 164; Ibn Shaddād, Al-Aʻlāq al-Khaṭīrah, 252–57.

Notes to Pages 34–38

209

88. Thorau, Lion of Egypt, 53–69; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 302–30; Levanoni, “Mamluk’s Ascent to Power,” 121–44. 89. Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, §341–42; Strayer, “Crusades of Louis IX,” 2:504; Gaposchkin, “Captivity of Louis IX,” 98. 90. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 322–23; Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, §443; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 6:168; Strayer, “Crusades of Louis IX,” 505–7. 91. For example, the collaboration, which was not without fear of betrayal, between the community in Acre and the Saracens led by Baybars in fighting the “Tatars”; see “Templar of Tyre,” §308. 92. The most concrete arrangement was implemented in Antioch, where the office of a Mongol “resident” was established in 1260; see Jackson, Mongols and the West, 121, and AmitaiPreiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 24–25. It became evident for the Frankish political stakes in the East that diplomacy could reduce the threat of the Mongols only at the price of complete political subordination. For a later attempt at collaboration with the Mongols, see AmitaiPreiss, “Edward of England and Abagha Ilkhan.” 93. Fidentio de Padua, “De recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 69.

chaPter 2 1. Crouch, “Chivalry and Courtliness,” 41–43; for more detail, see Crouch, Birth of Nobility, 46–80; Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps, 21–27. 2. For the most recent biography, see Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry, esp. 177–245. 3. For recent examples of studies that utilize Jacques de Vitry’s writing from the East as a stable corpus that represents his opinion on Muslims and Eastern Christianity, see Grossel, “Terre qui mange les hommes”; Bird, “Medicine for Body and Soul”; Menache, “When Jesus Met Mohammed”; and Donnadieu, “Représentation de l’Islam.” 4. Benton acknowledges that the name “Vitry” does not reveal much as it is impossible to ascertain whether it is indicative of the family’s place of origin or Jacques’s birthplace (“Qui etaient les parents?”). See Hinnebusch’s introduction to his edition of Jacques de Vitry, Historia occidentalis, 4. 5. Funk, Jakob von Vitry, 10–11, 69, 154. 6. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 20–21; Jacques de Vitry, “De magistro Petro Cantore Parisiensi,” in Historia occidentalis, 94. 7. Donnadieu, introduction to his edition of Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 7. 8. On the profound commitment of Jacques de Vitry to the reformed agenda that Innocent III spearheaded, see Bird, “Reform or Crusade?”; and more generally on the intellectual climate in which his ideas were cultivated, see Bird, “Crusade and Reform” and “James of Vitry’s Sermons.” 9. McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 20–39, 154–64, 312–15, 434, 456–64. 10. Funk, Jakob von Vitry, 37–38; Prawer, History of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:125. 11. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 68: “Nunc autem in civitate Acconensi frequenter ad mare respicio cum lacrimis et desiderio magno expectans adventum peregrinorum.” 12. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 123–28. 13. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 161–62; Tyerman, God’s War, 628–30. 14. Oliver of Paderborn, “Historia Damiatina,” chap. 48.

210

Notes to Pages 38–43

15. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 27–34; Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 175–94; Prawer, History of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2:125–60. 16. Jacques de Vitry, Historia occidentalis, 9–10; Bird, “Historia Orientalis of Jacques de Vitry,” 56. Following Bongars’s edition from 1611, the third book has been confused with Oliver of Paderborn’s “Historia Damiatina”; see Smith, “Oliver of Cologne’s Historia Damiatina,” 43. 17. On the broader intellectual context of Jacques’s taxonomical efforts, see Rubin, “Benoit d’Alignan and Thomas Agni,” 194–95. 18. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 46–48: “Inveni autem civitatem Acconensem tanquam monstrum et beluam IX capita sibi adinvicem repugnantia habentem.” 19. Fidentio de Padua, some half a century later, resorted to a similar metaphor. The Franks, he says, do not obey the crown. Instead, they are loyal to individual or local lords: “Sultan [Baybars] said to them: ‘I am one head with many tails—you are a serpent with many heads’ ” (“Recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 70). 20. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 49. 21. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 306 (emphasis mine). 22. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 48–50; with slight differences, see Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 296. 23. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 50. 24. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 294. 25. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 142; see also Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 68: “ There is, in fact, a great discord among the Saracens and many, surely through recognizing their great errors, would convert to the Lord if they dare and got help from Christians.” 26. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 144. 27. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 68. 28. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 68. 29. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 143; see also Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 58: “I believe, as I have been told, that there are almost as many Christians among the Saracens as there are Saracens, [all of them] waiting every day with tears for the help of God and the succor of the crusaders.” 30. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 276, 280. 31. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 290. 32. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 288. 33. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 292. 34. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 290. 35. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 276. 36. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 290: “The Franks are disregarded [partivpendantur].” 37. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 292. 38. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 290. 39. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 420. 40. For ideas about the East in the various versions of Urban’s speech, see Lapina, Warfare and the Miraculous, 122–42. 41. Jacques de Vitry, Letter V, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 112–14. 42. Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 274–76.

Notes to Pages 43–49

211

43. Funk, Jakob von Vitry, 54–55. 44. Longère, Œuvres oratoires de maitres Parisiens, 1:31–3, 168–76, 346–51; 2:32–35, 129– 36, 256–61. On Jacques’s crusade sermons, see Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 3–31 (esp. 8–9), and Riley-Smith, “Crusading as an Act of Love,” 181–83. 45. Jacques de Vitry, Letter II, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 92; see Attiya, “Knowledge of Arabic,” 207. 46. Muessig refers to these homilies as “model sermons”: “sermons that a preacher could consult when constructing his own sermons” (“ ‘Sermones Feriales’ of Jacques de Vitry,” 26); d’Avray, on the other hand, understands the problem of reading the text, which is systematic and erudite, as capturing an oral presentation attentive to a lay or clerical audience (Preaching of the Friars, 64). 47. Analecta novissima, 2:344–442. On the use of exempla in his sermons, see Greven, Exempla aus den Sermones; Welter, Exemplum dans la littérature religieuse, 119; Jacques de Vitry, Exempla or Illustrative Stories. 48. Analecta novissima, 2:405. 49. Analecta novissima, 2:416. 50. This dialectic is an impor tant part of Bernard of Clairvaux’s crusade theology; see Sommerfeldt, “Bernardine Reform and the Crusading Spirit.” 51. Analecta novissima, 2:405. Invoking Luke 22:38, the notion of the “two swords” echoes Bernard of Clairvaux’s In Praise of a New Knighthood, 129–30. Barber, New Knighthood, 44–50. 52. Analecta novissima, 2:405. On the internal battle against the “evil spirit” as part of the militant theology of the Military Orders and crusading more generally, see Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land, 101–2. 53. Analecta novissima, 2:405. 54. Analecta novissima, 2:406. The dialectic between the Military Orders and the church hierarchy is scrutinized in Leclercq, “Attitude spirituelle de S. Bernard.” 55. Analecta novissima, 2:412. 56. Analecta novissima, 2:406, 411: “So that you may be prepared to die for Jesus Christ, and that you can proceed to battle, make time for prayers, [spiritual] exercises, fasts, and other spiritual [activities], lest temporal [considerations] come before spiritual ones.” 57. Analecta novissima, 2:405. 58. Analecta novissima, 2:405. The Hospitallers, who wear a white mantle, are represented by the white horse; the speckled horse represents the amalgam of the Military Orders who operate in Iberia and Livonia. Interestingly, Jacques takes a black horse to represent the Teutonic Knights, although a horse of that color is not mentioned in the original verse or in any of its medieval translations. 59. Analecta novissima, 2:413. 60. Analecta novissima, 2:406. 61. Analecta novissima, 2:413: “laudari facit eum de sancta conversatione et religionis fervore.” 62. Analecta novissima, 2:406. 63. Analecta novissima, 2:408. 64. Analecta novissima, 2:412; Jacques de Vitry, Exempla or Illustrative Stories, 40. 65. On the rise of the Templar Order through constant contact with their “counterparts,” see Barber, New Knighthood, 64–70, and Forey, “Emergence of the Military Order.” 66. Jacques de Vitry, Exempla or Illustrative Stories, 40–41 (emphasis mine). 67. On the oriental beard in European romantic imagination, see Heng, Empire of Magic, 38, 323–24, and Nicholson, Love, War, and the Grail, 52. This notion is played out in the Song

212

Notes to Pages 49–52

of Roland, lines 1819–29, 187, and Song of the Cid, 21. On Song of the Cid, see also Menocal’s note on p. 250 of Raffel’s edition: “The Cid’s beard symbolizes honor and virility and there are constant references to it within the poem.” Orderic Vitalis likens bearded men to goats and to Saracens (Ecclesiastical History, 6:64–66). Another example in which a Christian author, this time of Frankish decent, has a Muslim address the virility of the Templar knights by referencing their beards is found in the Lyon Eracle: a certain emir Baha’ al-Din Caracoush warns Saladin that killing the Templars whom he took captive during the battle of Hattin would be unwise as it would invite further acts of vengeance on the part of their fellow surviving brethren. “The Templars,” he rather enigmatically explains, “were born with all their beards [naistront o toutes lor barbes].” He then repeats this saying to Saladin when he sees the Western ships arriving to Acre: “I told you when you ordered the killing of the Templars that indeed they were born with all their beards [il naistroient encores o toutes lor barbes].” See Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 87, 90, and Estoire d’Eracles, RHC, 2:124. 68. Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb (Paris, BnF, Ar. 1702, fol. 369b). On the author, who died in 1298, and on this manuscript, see Hirschler, Medieval Arabic Historiography, 115. 69. For examples of the way in which a cross-cultural gaze functions in acts of martyrdom, see Talmon-Heller, “Muslim Martyrdom.” 70. Ernoul-Bernard, 459. A slightly less detailed version can be found in the G variant of Eracles; see Estoire d’Eracles, RHC, 2:371, and the Lyon Eracles, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 193. 71. The author, in other words, attributes to the Muslim sultan the attempt to make a claim to authority through the use of violence perpetrated by Christians. For a discussion on this kind of “political theology” in the western Mediterranean, see Fancy, “Theologies of Violence,” esp. 43. On the use of Christian mercenaries in North Africa and the way in which religious authorities reconciled its seeming disjuncture between ideology and practice, see Lower, “Papacy and Christian Mercenaries.” 72. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 158–59. Jubb raises the possibility that Reynald is somehow related to Raoul of Bembrac (who is mentioned previously on p. 122 of Jubb’s edition) and also in Ernoul-Bernard, 60. 73. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 159. This description is unique and not found in any other version of the continuations. What is more, it appears in the midst of a section in which the chronicler depicts a rather obscure and overall fantastical campaign that Saladin had allegedly carried out against the king of Nubia. This episode is discussed further in Chapter 3. 74. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 162. 75. Crouch traces the use of “preudhom” throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with the growing expectation that the term would encode a commitment to Christian piety (Birth of Nobility, 30–37). 76. This story appears in several versions. While the different versions share a basic framework, they vary in important details. As in other cases, the redactor of the so-called Lyon Eracles appears to be the most provocative and the most concerned with the consequences of unmediated ties between French warriors and their Muslim counterparts, which often result from the former’s command of Arabic. See a longer discussion of these sources in Chapter 4. 77. Richard discussed this affair briefly in “Account of the Battle of Hattin” and at length in “Adventure of John Gale,” 2:190. For another recent brief discussion, see Schwam-Baird, “Romance Epic Hero,” 119.

Notes to Pages 52–57

213

78. Surprisingly, it is in this part of the tale—namely, the circumstances that led John to seek refuge with the Saracens—that the Ernoul-Bernard is more detailed (p. 255). It should be noted that this passage could also be taken to have the opposite meaning, namely, that the lord had caught his wife together with John, who then murdered the lord and fled to the Saracens in order to escape punishment. 79. See the Lyon Eracles, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 58. The Arabic account, discussed below, reveals that, in fact, it was Saladin’s great nephew (the grandson of Saladin’s younger brother, Shahanshah) that John was asked to edify. 80. Ernoul-Bernard, 255; a different redaction simply has “the land of Outremer.” 81. Al-Isfahānī, Al-Barq al-Shāmī, 5:39. This account later appeared with slight changes in al-Bundari’s abridgment, which was compiled in the first half of the thirteenth century (Sanā al-Barq al-Shāmī, 130–31) and yet again in Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 2:463. 82. On Taqi al-Din, see Hartmann, “al-Muẓaffar.” 83. Al-Isfahānī, Al-Barq al-Shāmī, 5:39. 84. Al-Isfahānī, Al-Barq al-Shāmī, 5:39: “wa-sabab dhalika ‘izzatuhu al-dā’iyyah ila’ alightirār.” 85. Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 2:463: “wa-jaddad ‘indahum lahu ḥālan wajamālan.” 86. For the work that the term ghazwah (and, by extension, ghazi) did in invoking the memory of the defining campaigns on the Muslim-Byzantine frontier, see Hillenbrand, Crusades, 100–1; on the original cross-cultural context in which these concepts were inscribed, see Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, 165–67. 87. Al-Isfahānī, Al-Barq al-Shāmī, 5:40. 88. For example, in verses 2:74, 6:43, 22:53, 39:22, and 57:16. 89. Scholars of the crusading Near East have long debated whether bilingualism was prevalent during this period among Muslims and Franks. Prawer, for example, confidently argued that Franks possessed poor command of Arabic and, until the fall of the kingdom, relied heavily on the mediation of translators (“Roots of Medieval Colonialism,” 24); the same view was held by Mayer, Crusades, 189; Mayer “Latins, Muslims, and Greeks,” 175; and Kedar, “Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” 174. More recently, however, scholars have contested this notion of linguistic insularity; see, for example, Attiya, “Knowledge of Arabic,” 203–13; Burnett, “Antioch as a Link,” 1–78; and Savage-Smith, “New Evidence for the Frankish Study.” 90. Tyerman, God’s War, 405n6–7; Grousset, Histoire des croisades, 2:832. 91. Morgan highlights the peculiarities of the Lyon Eracles (Chronicle of Ernoul, 88). For the dating of this recension, see Edbury, “New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations,” 111–12, and Edbury, “Lyon Eracles and the Continuation,” 139–53. 92. Lyon Eracles, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 79. 93. Lyon Eracles, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 80. 94. This line is possibly a reference to Quran 9:5: “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them.” 95. Lyon Eracles, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 81. 96. The claim that Muhammad spread his new faith by force is as old as Islam itself. The original charge, however, was simply that the religion of Muhammad was excessively violent. In the twelfth century, commentators such as Peter Alfonsi and Peter the Venerable introduce a philosophical inflection to this old claim, stating that the main fault of Islam is

214

Notes to Pages 57–63

not its violence but its lack of rationality, epitomized by the illogical attempt to persuade potential converts of the truth of Islam by force; see Kaegi, “Initial Byzantine Reactions”; Tolan, Saracens, 148–71. 97. “When Reynald could no longer bear the torment, [fearing] lest he die from the suffering/carnage, and [thinking] that god would want that he should live to have heirs, as indeed he came to have, he asked to be brought in front of the castle and called his men.” 98. Lyon Eracles, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 81. 99. Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 4:66–67. 100. Hillenbrand, Crusades, 342–43; Runciman, History of the Crusades, 2:469 and 3:59, 489; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 142. 101. Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 4:66–67. 102. Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 4:66. 103. Ibn al-‘Adim, Bughyat al-Talab, 191. 104. According to Ibn al-Athir, Reynald asked that a priest be brought to his place of captivity. While he openly declared that he would use the priest to voice his command to his men to surrender, he, in fact, also spoke to the priest in French, asking him to encourage the Franks to resist; see Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, 2:167, and Ibn Shaddād, Al-Nawādir al-Sulṭānīyah, 161–62. 105. Ibn Shaddād, Al-Nawādir al-Sulṭānīyah, 162. 106. See, for example, Al-Iṣfahānī, Al-Fatḥ al-Qussī, 560. 107. On the siege of Safed in the larger context of relations between Baybars and the various Frankish entities, see Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 13–32; Thorau, Lion of Egypt, 166–71; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 378. 108. Cronaca del templare di Tiro, 108–10. 109. Fidentio de Padua, “Recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 87. 110. Fidentio de Padua, “Recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 89. 111. Fidentio de Padua, “Recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 89. 112. Fidentio de Padua, “Recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 89–90. 113. Al-Zahir, Al-Rawḍ al-Ẓahir, 258; Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:120 (Arabic), 2:92 (English). On another occasion, the Shaykh Nabhan died as a martyr when a rock hit the tent in which he was “renewing his ritual ablution”; see al-Zahir, Al-Rawḍ alẒahir, 260, and Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:119 (Arabic), 2:93 (English). 114. Al-Zahir, Al-Rawḍ al-Ẓahir, 259. 115. Al-Zahir, Al-Rawḍ al-Ẓahir, 261; Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:121 (Arabic), 2:94 (English). 116. Other chroniclers are more vague as to the actual involvement of Baybars in orchestrating the scheme; see al-Yūninī, Dhayl Mirʼāt al-zamān, Hyderabad ed., 238, and alDawādārī, Kanz al-Durar, 9:117–18. 117. Al-Zahir, Al-Rawḍ al-Ẓahir, 262; Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:121 (Arabic), 2:94 (English). 118. Ibn al-Furāt, Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk, 1:119 (Arabic), 2:92 (English). 119. Sanders, “Fatimid Court Dress”; see also Sanders, “Robes of Honor.” 120. Rosenthal, “Note on the Mandil,” 63–99. 121. Barber, “Social Context of the Templars,” 34. 122. See, for example, Peter the Venerable’s famous description of the Templar order: “Army of the Lord of Hosts, set to wage war against the princes of this world, and to

Notes to Pages 66–71

215

overthrow the enemies of Christ’s Cross” (Letters of Peter the Venerable, 407); License, “Templars and the Hospitallers”; Barber, New Knighthood, 38–63.

chaPter 3 1. On the function of gender and sexuality in maintaining and breaching communal boundaries, see Nirenberg, “Conversion, Sex, and Segregation” and “Sex and Violence.” 2. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 89 (emphases mine). 3. Scholars have viewed this composition as part of the longstanding obsession of the West with Saladin’s extraordinary largess and chivalry, as well as his uncanny ties to Latin Christendom. Paris, who coined the term “The Legend of Saladin,” proclaimed that it is Saladin’s tolerance and humanity that inspired respect and sympathy in his adversaries. The fables that, in different ways, helped Western medieval authors and readers imagine Saladin’s inclination toward Christianity allowed them to reconcile this positive attitude with the fact that he, nevertheless, was one of the Church’s most efficient persecutors. See Paris, “Légende de Saladin”; Jubb, Legend of Saladin, 2; Castro, “Présence du Sultan Saladin”; Hartmann, Persönlichkeit des Sultans Saladin; Tolan, “Mirror of Chivalry” and Saracens, 83–96; Ailes, “Admirable Enemy?” 51–52. 4. As an example, see how the editor explains in a footnote why the omission of an anecdote involving Saladin and Occidental barons is not even worthy of a variant reading in the edition’s usually elaborate textual apparatus: “[Manuscripts F and O] insert here an imaginary enumeration of the lords present in the Holy Land and an account, no less fabulous, of their adventures” (Ernoul-Bernard, 283n6). 5. Mas-Latrie, “Essai de Classification,” 483 (emphases mine). 6. For another example that dismisses the “historical” validity of this text, see the review by Kuhler on Schlumberger’s book on Reynald of Chatillon (published in 1898), in which he laments the author’s interest in “the domain of history.” This is unfortunate, he explains, because “several chronicles of the Holy Land, of a more or less marvelous character,” such as the ones that are found in manuscripts BnF fr. 770, fr. 12203, and fr. 24210, contain equally interesting material. See Kuhler, review of Renaud de Châtillon, prince d’Antioche, by Schlumberger, 306–7. 7. This proximity, however, should be qualified. In studying the entire body of William of Tyre manuscripts, Morgan tries to establish links of dependencies and lineage. The question of “proximity,” as she defines it, is whether two manuscripts (or types) convey the same information for a given time period. It is not primarily a question of style, narrative structure, or voice. Using this methodology, Morgan notes on Estoires, “Even when it is shown as agreeing with other texts, the agreement is always of the most approximate kind, and allows for more divergence than does any other agreement between two texts in the whole [corpus]” (Chronicle of Ernoul, 14–15). 8. Mas-Latrie, “Essai de classification,” 493; Röhricht conveys a similar sentiment, stating that Estoires includes “many worthless additions” relative to Ernoul-Bernard (Testimonia minora de quinto bello sacro, xxii). 9. Edbury, “New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations.” 10. RHC, 2:vi. 11. Paris, “Légende de Saladin,” 356–57.

216

Notes to Pages 71–75

12. See Jubb’s analysis in Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 280. 13. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 294. 14. See Jubb’s stemma in the introduction to Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer (p. 30), in which she claims that MS BnF fr. 770 draws directly from the lost model (which she designates as X), while MS BnF fr. 12203 and the fifteenth-century MS BnF fr. 24210 both draw on an intermediary model (which she designates as n). Note also that the identification of both thirteenth-century manuscripts as “the work of an atelier in the northeast of France” is done on the basis of an oral communication from Dr. Jaroslav Folda to Margaret Morgan; see Morgan, Chronicle of Ernoul, 15n16. Tangential as this observation may be, the real question is the whereabouts of X, about which Jubb (and Morgan) have little to say. 15. Gaggero, “Chronique d’Ernoul”; Edbury, “French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia”; Edbury, “New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations,” 107–13. 16. Morgan, Chronicle of Ernoul, 40–54 and passim; Edbury, “Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations.” 17. A certain Ernoul, the squire of Balian of Ibelin, identifies himself as the author of an episode that took place in 1187: “Dont fist descendre .i. sien vallet qui avoit non Ernous. Ce fu cil qui cest conte fist metre en escrit” (MS St. Omer 722, fol. 32v). This comment has survived in three manuscripts and may pertain only to that episode, but scholars have debated on the actual length of the parts that can be attributed to Ernoul. Mas-Latrie, for one, assumed that Ernoul is the author of the whole composition, hence the title he chose for his 1871 edition. Edbury, in contrast, believes that the Ernoul section ends in 1187 (“New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations,” 109). 18. Most notably, MS Lyons 828 (F72), which switches to Ernoul-Bernard in 1197, and BnF fr. 9086 (F50), which switches to Ernoul-Bernard in May 1187; see Edbury, “Ernoul, Eracles, and the Beginnings,” 33–35. 19. Incidentally, this version that survives in two copies was chosen by the editors of the RHC in 1859 as the base manuscript for their magisterial edition. As a result, generations of scholars have taken this one, which is admittedly the longest, to be the authoritative version and the others to be later “abridgements.” See Edbury, “New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations,” 111. 20. Edbury, “Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations,” 140. Morgan was of the opinion that all the early continuations go back to a now-lost comprehensive chronicle, which she dubs proto-Ernoul and which she thought is best preserved in the Lyon Eracles (Chronicle of Ernoul, 78, 115, and passim); see also Morgan’s introduction to her edition (Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 7–13). 21. This perspective on the development of the various historiographical traditions in Outremer is based on Edbury’s accumulative contributions, concisely described in his “Ernoul, Eracles, and the Beginnings,” 29–35. 22. Ernoul-Bernard, 238. 23. Ernoul-Bernard, 237–38, 251–52; Estoire d’Eracles, RHC, 2:106, 120; Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, 77, 85. 24. Jubb identifies it as Santerre, a region in Picardy (Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 205–6). 25. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 206. 26. Morgan argues that the Lyon Eracles preserves a clear Oriental perspective in that, for example, it is at pains to explain peculiar customs of the Latin Kingdom to a possible Western readership. This so-called parochialism is best shown by the fact that this version

Notes to Pages 75–77

217

alone uses the term “Outremer” (lit., “Beyond the sea”) to designate Eu rope and not the Holy Land, as became customary in the twelfth century (Chronicle of Ernoul, 98–100). 27. Jubb lists the following: Reynald of Chatillon mentioned as the most valiant knight in the land after Balian of Ibelin and his brother (Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 116, 289), and Estoires alone mentions Balian’s role in the negotiations with Saladin before the siege on Jerusalem (207–8). 28. Kedar, “Patriarch Heraclius”; Richard, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1:278–79. 29. “The king asked the patriarch of Jerusalem to bring the True Cross to the Army. The patriarch took the True Cross and carried it outside of Jerusalem. Then he loaded it on the Prior of the Sepulcher and told him to carry it to the King’s army, [stating that] he was unwell and could not go. For a shameful thing it would be, [he explained,] if he would have to go and leave his wife Paske de Riveri.” See Estoire d’Eracles, RHC, 2:46. 30. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 193. 31. For William’s original statement in the context of the elections in 1180, see ErnoulBernard, 82–84: “and so was fulfilled the prophesy that the archbishop [William] of Tyre said on the occasion of the election of Heraclius [then bishop of Caesarea] as patriarch, that Heraclius had won a victory in Persia and brought the Cross to Jerusalem, and that Heraclius will jettison it, and during his time it will be lost.” See also Edbury and Rowe, “William of Tyre and the Patriarchal Elections,” 4–6. 32. Ernoul-Bernard, 189–210, MS BnF fr. 9085, fols. 375v–380r, RHC, 2:491; Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 212–16. 33. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 213–14. 34. Michelant and Raynaud, Itinéraires à Jérusalem, xiv. 35. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 137–40, 148–52, 157–62, 172–74. 36. Morgan suggests that this episode must have constituted part of the original source, which other redactors excised, as it no longer met their historical sensibilities (Chronicle of Ernoul, 134–35). 37. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 287. 38. For an overview of the events and the reasons that medieval sources and modern scholars provide, see Smith, Ayyubids and Early Rasulids, 1:31–47. Saladin’s early attempts to become established within the caliphate were met with the same kind of resistance from the Sudanese contingency in the Fatimid army; on the 1169–1170 episodes, see al-Azhari, “Influence of Eunuchs,” 130–32. On the Ayyubid affair in Sudan, see Lev, Saladin in Egypt, 100; Lev, “Infantry in Muslim Armies,” 189–90; Welsby, Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia, 75–76; and Kropacek, “Nubia from the Late Twelfth Century,” 399. 39. See Shachar, “ ‘Re- Orienting’ Estoires d’Outremer.” 40. Morgan, who was convinced that the Lyon Eracles, in its uniquely Oriental character, preserves the vestige of the original Ernoul, was inclined to think that Estoire d’Outremer is a witness of that same early and now-lost tradition (Chronicle of Ernoul, 14). 41. Morgan, Chronicle of Ernoul, 191; Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 289. 42. Ernoul-Bernard, 510. 43. The attempt to determine exactly where this scriptorium was located assumes a stability of craftsmen and objects that has proven not to be the case. Recent work on so-called crusader art objects and family structures reveals strong commercial, cultural, and linguistic ties between communities on both sides of the Mediterranean. See, for example, Schenk, Templar Families; Cutler, “Everywhere and Nowhere”; and Aslanov, “Indices d’une couleur,” 257–69.

218

Notes to Pages 77–79

44. Brunel, introduction to Fille du comte de Pontieu, lxvii: modern adaptations of the legend all draw from an eighteenth-century version published in 1723 under the name “Edele de Pontieu.” In addition to numerous redactions of the same text, the tale was also turned into an opera, a historical poem, and a number of plays. 45. For a sample of commentators who think that the version in BnF fr. 25462 is earlier, see Krause, “Genealogy and Codicology,” 323–25, and Brunel, introduction to Fille du comte de Pontieu, iii. Vitz, too, supports this claim, referring to the longer extant version as an “amplified reworking” (Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology, 646). Crow, however, holds the opposite view. The version in Estoires, she argues, includes more frequent interventions by the narrator, which Crow takes to mean that he must have been “closer to the original story” (“Art of the Medieval Conteur,” 9). 46. Krause confirms this observation, namely, that the editor of Estoires embedded a preexisting copy of La Fille. The stylistic peculiarities of La Fille, relative to the rest of Estoires, are, as Krause points out, frequent use of direct speech and infrequent use of the or vous dirai construction (which reappears at the very end of La Fille, as it blends back into the surrounding text). What is more, this observation leads her to claim that the connection to Saladin, which occurs at the very end of the tale, is the addition of the redactor of Estoires, who was interested in establishing the Pontevin lineage of the famed sultan (“Genealogy and Codicology,” 328, 332). 47. Croizy-Naquet, “La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu,” 163–80. 48. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 62: “The voyage is longsome and the land very hostile and unkind.” 49. Régnier-Bohler, “Figures féminines et imaginaire généalogique”; Rieger, “Fiction litteraire et violence.” Rieger shows that the tripartite structure of the assault appears elsewhere in medieval literature, for example, in the Roman de Rénard; Spiegel refers to the rape scene as an important trope in foundational narratives of late medieval French dynasties (“Maternity and Monstrosity,” 107). 50. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 68. 51. Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries, 181–85. 52. Croizy-Naquet, “La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu,” 198–99. 53. After the good treatment the daughter receives from the sultan, we learn that “the colors return to her face and she becomes even prettier” (Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 72). 54. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 72; note that the version in MS BnF fr. 25462, one of the two medieval manuscripts containing the work, omits the words in italics, thus minimizing the gesture and allowing for the possibility that the daughter simply chose to appease the sultan superficially. 55. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 72–73. 56. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 74, variant reading; Brunel’s transcription of the MS BnF fr. 25462 here is incomprehensible (Fille du comte de Pontieu, 28), but Mekeieff offers a reasonable solution (reading menesne as ne mesne), rendering the passage: “Covered by beard, dressed in hair and nothing else” (“La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu,” 25n302, 289). 57. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 76; note that MS BnF fr. 25462 has “I know French”— a more hesitant declaration about her former/current identity. 58. MS BnF fr. 25462 has only “art”; Brunel in the glossary elucidates that it means “art magique”; Makeieff renders this term “trickery” (Fille du comte de Ponthieu, 284). 59. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 79.

Notes to Pages 80–86

219

60. For example, “When the lady heard [the whereabouts of the first captive, the count], she made no semblance [samblant]” (Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 76); then, again, when interrogating the third captive, “She knew well that this was her brother, but made no semblance [samblant]” (Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 77). 61. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 78. 62. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 76; Kinoshita observes that there is a reversal in the conventional cultural trajectory, in which chess and backgammon were introduced to Eu ropean cultures through encounters with Muslim societies (Medieval Boundaries, 189–90). 63. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 81. 64. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 74. 65. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 82. 66. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 82. Notably, MS BnF fr. 25462 has “by the will of God and the help of others.” 67. MS BnF fr. 25462, again, plays down the religious tension. In this version, the sultan praises Thibaut and offers to give him much land for his ser vice; Fille du comte de Pontieu, 41. 68. It is worth noting that in the case of the Green Knight, in all extant versions (ErnoulBernard, 237–38, 251–52; Estoire d’Eracles, RHC, 2:106, 120; Lyon Eracles, Documents Relatifs, 77, 85), as well as in the other cases mentioned in Chapter 2—John of Gale and Reynald of Beaufort—the point is precisely that sultans offer wealth and lands for the ser vice of Frankish knights, without expecting them to renounce their Christian faith. At most, as in the case of the Green Knight (according to the version in Estoires alone), Saladin allegedly promised to put him in charge of battles against non-Christians only. 69. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 87. 70. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 88–89. 71. Ambroise, History of The Holy War, 1:114–15 (Old French), 2:128–29 (English); Chronicle of the Third Crusade, 266–67. 72. Ambroise, History of The Holy War, 1:192. 73. Christie, “Noble Betrayers of Their Faith” and “Fact vs. Fiction.” 74. Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 18–19. 75. Reynolds, “Epic and History”; Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 1–4; for the place of the siyar in context of world literature and folklore, see Lyons, Arabian Epic, 1:1–7. 76. For the tension between the various registers that are preserved in the sira, see Heath, Thirsty Sword, 45–49, 51–53; Herzog, “Mamluk (Popular) Culture,” 131–59. 77. Most notably is, of course, Sirat al-Amira Dhat al-Himma (also known by the name Sirat al-Mujahidin). For a comprehensive study of this impor tant composition, mainly in its modern setting, see Ott, Metamorphosen des Epos. 78. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 79. 79. The association of magic with Muslims and especially Muslim women is exceedingly common in Eu ropean vernacular traditions; see Bancourt, Musulmans dans les chansons, 575; Cohen, “On Saracen Enjoyment,” 114–46; and de Weever, Sheba’s Daughter, 111–15. 80. Blatherwick, Prophets, Gods, and Kings, 57–59. 81. The full title is Sīrat Fāris al-Yaman al-Malik Sayf ibn dhī Yazan. 82. This summary is based on Lyons, Arabian Epic, 2:239–65; Kruk, Warrior Women of Islam, 188–89; and Blatherwick, Prophets, Gods and Kings, 26–51. 83. Sīra Sayf ibn dhī Yazan, 2:442–89, 3:114–63. 84. Sīra Sayf ibn dhī Yazan, 2:343. 85. Sīra Sayf ibn dhī Yazan, 2:344.

220

Notes to Pages 86–91

86. Blatherwick, Prophets, Gods and Kings, 58; Connelly, Arab Folk Epic, 208. 87. Animals in medieval literature are often seen to subvert forms of domination and patriarchy by animating repressed voices. For studies with an obvious Eurocentric bent that read bestiary voices from feminist and ecocritical perspectives, see the foundational issue of Postmedieval: Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 2 (2011) and the classic Ziolkowski, Talking Animals. 88. Sīrat Sayf ibn dhī Yazan, 2:328–29. 89. For a comprehensive survey of the manuscript history of the sira, see Herzog, Geschichte und Imaginaire, 31–50. 90. For attitudes toward non-Muslims in Sirat Baybars, see Herzog, “Francs et Commerçants.” 91. Herzog, “First Layer of the Sirat Baybars.” 92. Holt, “Structure of Government,” 44. 93. On the tumultuous and evidently inspiring career of Shajar al-Durr, see Levanoni, “Sagar ad-Durr,” and Soetens, “Sagarat ad-Durr.” 94. The last Ayyubid ruler of Egypt, al-Mu‘azzam Turanshah, was murdered by a group of Bahri Mamluks, who were unable to remain in power. Aybeg, another Mamluk of al-Salih, ascended but his rule, too, was short-lived. He was succeeded by Qutuz, who was murdered and replaced by Baibars; see Thorau, Lion of Egypt, 79–91; Herzog, Geschichte und Imaginaire, 331–32; Irwin, Middle East in the Middle Ages, 21–29; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 302–30; Levanoni, “Mamluk’s Ascent to Power.” 95. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 470–80. The 1996 edition is a reprint with different pagination from the 1923 Cairo edition. 96. This could also mean “I am from a different progeny than you are,” which, in fact, would speak to the notion that Shajjarat al-Durr was herself a slave girl from an obscure background. 97. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 462. 98. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 874. 99. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 888–89. Maryam is told that the climate on the island is not good for her health and that she must travel to a different environment. 100. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 905–16. 101. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 910–11. 102. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 1543–44. 103. The cleansing of the Ka‘ba precinct from idols upon the conquest of Mecca in 630 is related in several post-Quranic traditions. See King, “Prophet Muhammad.” The reference in the sira, perhaps deliberately, also echoes the shattering of idols by Abraham in Quran 21:50–71; see Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands, 107–8 (for the Abraham’s connection to the Ka‘ba and purging its pagan cult, see 76–90). 104. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 1546. 105. The tendency to associate converts with Abraham was conventional in the Middle Ages and in some areas remains so still to this day. It is noteworthy, however, that in this case, Arnus converts back to Islam, and so the invocation of the Quranic story of Abraham serves to destabilize his identity more than to fix it. 106. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 1576. 107. Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy, 26–30, 235–37. For anti-Shi‘ite attitudes, especially in the context of the rise of Sufism in Upper Egypt, see Hofer, Popularisation of Sufism, 181–224.

Notes to Pages 91–99

221

108. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 1571–72. 109. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 1577–78. 110. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 2306–10. 111. For a treatment of this story in its oriental context, see Shachar, “Ecumenical Mysticism.” 112. For a discussion of the various opinions on the manuscript history of the story by Busby, see de Hodenc, “Le Roman des Eles” and the Anonymous “Ordene de Chevalerie,” 73–83, and House, “Ordene de chevalerie,” 34–38. For the manuscript context in which the various versions were copied, see Krause, “Genealogy and Codicology,” 323–42. 113. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 110 (emphasis mine). 114. Ordene de Chevalerie, lines 246–55, in de Hodenc, “Le Roman des Eles” and the Anonymous “Ordene de Chevalerie,” 112. 115. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 112. For a discussion of the meaning of the dubbing in the tradition of chivalric literature, see Lieberman, “New Approach to the Knighting Ritual,” and Keen, Chivalry, 18–42. 116. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 112: “en quel hounour on prent chevalerie et de cui on le prent.” 117. Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer, 113: “çou fu diex meismes, pour sainte eglyse essauchier et pour tenir justice.”

chaPter 4 1. See Prawer, History of the Jews, 75–76; Ibn Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehuda, 147. 2. Cuffel, “Call and Response,” 71–72; Goitein, Jewish Communities in the Land of Israel, 333–39. 3. Ya’ari, Mas’ot Eretz Israel, 67. 4. Kedar, “Jewish Community of Jerusalem,” 84–86. 5. Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 56. 6. Kedar, “Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099”; compare, however, with Hirschler, who shows that early Arabic historiography views this siege and its consequences as no different from similar events in the region (“Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099”). 7. Goitein, Jewish Communities in the Land of Israel, 231; Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem took part in defending those parts of the walls under siege that were adjacent to the Jewish quarter. See Prawer, History of the Jews, 42, and “Jews in Jerusalem,” 198. He, however, claims it is unlikely that the crusading army bothered to gather the Jews in the synagogue. 8. Gil, Land of Israel, 665–68. 9. According to Prawer, however, one cannot deduce on the basis of Hebrew sources that there was an official policy banning Jews from the city. In fact, according to twelfthcentury Latin sources, it is indeed likely that at first, the Franks enforced legislation that banned non-Christians from the city. However, in subsequent decades, this policy grew quite lax. It is, nevertheless, fear from the Christian oppressors— and not an official policy—that probably deterred Jews from either residing in Jerusalem or conducting periodic prayer on the Temple Mount. What is more, authors who relate that the Franks were adamant about keeping non-Christians away from the city were writing during the Ayyubid period and were likely interested in portraying the Frankish period in grimmer light. See Prawer, History of the Jews, 45–46.

222

Notes to Pages 100–102

10. Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 88–97. 11. Jacobs, Reorienting the East, 88–97. 12. Gil, Land of Israel, 8–9; Prawer, History of the Jews, 8; Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 329; see also Grossman, “Yeshiva of Eretz Israel,” 225–69. For the population decline in Jerusalem during the eleventh century, see Ellenblum, Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean, 172–95. 13. Prawer cites 123 gold dinars (“Jews in Jerusalem,” 53); Goitein, Settlement in the Land of Israel, 255–56. 14. Save Jaffa, and Jerusalem obviously, all the other communities (especially Tyre, Tiberius, Safed, Acre, and smaller villages in the Galilee) are accounted for; see Prawer, History of the Jews, 41, 66, 72–73, 79, 81–82, and Klein, History of Jews, 126–39. 15. Prawer, “Accounts of Jewish Travelers,” 31–60, 65–90; later published as chapter 7 in History of the Jews. Prawer points to the even distribution of extant travelogues, demonstrating the popularity of the practice in multiple communities. 16. Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 5–12; Meri, Cult of Saints, 5–9. 17. For the most comprehensive documentary study on ha-Levi’s voyage to Egypt and Palestine, see Gil and Fleischer, Judah Ha-Levi and His Circle, 252–56, and Scheindlin, Song of the Distant Dove, 97–154. 18. The question of whether ha-Levi in fact reached Palestine is famously obscure. The documentation reveals that he boarded a ship in May 1141 and that he died about four months later, allowing for the conclusion that he probably reached Acre in the spring and perished a short while thereafter. Rumors regarding ha-Levi’s deeds and burial in Palestine are most likely apocryphal but serve as testimony that some of his near contemporaries took for granted that the poet indeed reached the Holy Land before his death. See Goitein, “Did R. Judah ha-Levi Reach the Land?”; Gil and Fleischer, Judah ha-Levi and His Circle, 482; and Scheindlin, Song of the Distant Dove, 149. 19. Silman, “Earthliness of the Land of Israel”; Silman, “Systematic Arguments”; Yahalom, “Judah ha-Levi Between Christians and Muslims.” 20. ha-Levi, Kuzari, 156–58; see also Scheindlin, Song of the Distant Dove, 58–61, and Yahalom, “Judah ha-Levi’s Pilgrimage.” 21. Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy; Chazan, “Israel and the Nations.” 22. Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 52; Prawer, History of the Jews, 153; Ta-Shema, “Immigration of Provencal Sages.” 23. Twersky, Rabad of Posquières, 72. Among RAbaD’s disciples who may have reached Palestine are Asher b. Saul, Abraham b. Joseph, and R. Jacob b. Saul ha-Nazir (the Pious). 24. Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 54; Prawer, History of the Jews, 148, and “Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem,” 50–51. 25. Gross, “Étude sur R Simson ben Abraham de Sens,” 6:177; see the travel report in Prawer, History of the Jews, 213–18. 26. Ibn Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehuda, 147; Shatzmiller, “Provençal Chronography.” 27. Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 56; Goitein, Settlement in the Land of Israel, 376. 28. Ibn Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehuda, 147: ‫]ב[שנת קעא העיר השם רבני צרפת ורבני אנגלאטירה ללכת לתוך ירושלים והיו יותר משלש מאות וכבדם‬ ‫המלך כבוד גדול ויבנו שם בתי כנסיות ומדרשות גם רבינו הכהן הגדול רבינו יהונתן הכהן הלך לשם ונעשה להם‬ .‫נס והתפללו על הגשמים ונהנו ונתקדש שם שמים על ידם‬ See also Ta-Shema, “New Chronicle,” 323:

Notes to Pages 102–103

223

‫ רבינו שמשון משנצא ורבי' יוסף קליצון ורבי' מאיר‬,‫בשנת תתקעב נסעה החבורה הקדושה לארץ צבי‬ ‫ ורבי יוסף‬...‫ ורבינו שמשון משאנצא נפטר בתתקעד ורבי מאיר קאליצון בתתקף בשנת תתקפא נפטרו‬.‫אחיו‬ .‫קליצון‬ (In the year 1121, the Holy Band traveled to the Glorious Land, R. Samson of Sens, R. Joseph of Calisson, and R. Meir, his brother. And R. Samson of Sens died in the year 1214, and R. Meir of Calisson in the year 1220, and Joseph of Calisson in the subsequent year.) 29. Krauss, “Emigration de 300 rabbins,” 343–46; Gross, “Étude sur R Simson ben Abraham de Sens”; Urbach, Tosafists, 261–98. 30. Urbach, Tosafists, 318–35. 31. Goitein, Settlement in the Land of Israel, 321–37. 32. Prawer, “On the History of the Jews”; Kedar, “On the History of the Jewish Settlement.” 33. We know significantly less about most of these subsequent waves. A genizah document, for example, relates that in 1235, a large number of French Jews arrived at the port of Marseille with the intention of sailing to Palestine. We do not know, however, whether they reached their destination or what the exact purpose was of their journey. Yuval, unlike Goitein, connects this Aliyah’ to messianic agitation related to the year 1240, the end of the fifth millennium in the Jewish calendar (Two Nations in Your Womb, 268). On the integration of European rabbis in the Near Eastern intellectual climate, see Emanuel, “RaSHBA’s Responsa,” and with a focus on R. Eliyahu, Gottesman, “Rulings of R. Eliyahu.” On tensions between the French rabbis and some of the local Jewish officials, partly in connection to the Maimonidean controversy of the 1230s, see Friedman, “The Nagid, the Nasi, and the French Rabbis.” 34. Twersky, introduction to Rabbi Moses Naḥmanides, 1–10. 35. A considerable amount has been written on the contrast between Nahmanides and Maimonides regarding their respective attitudes toward the Land of Israel and the messianic implications that living there might have; see Pedaya, “Erez shel Ruah ve-Erez shel Mamash,” and Nehorai, “Erez Israel.” 36. About Yehiel of Paris, see Urbach, Tosafists, 448–92. 37. Emanuel, “R. Yehiel of Paris.” 38. Urbach, Tosafists, 448–60; Kook, “R. Yehiel of Paris”; for the argument that Yehiel did reach Acre, see Ta-Shema, “Matters of the Land”; Kedar, however, on the basis of Latin sources, proved this argument to be wrong (“R. Yehiel of Paris”). 39. Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 86. 40. Prawer, History of the Jews, 161; Grossman, rather skeptically, mentions the possibility that MaHaRaM’s followers were driven by a certain messianic fervor emanating for the Frankish defeats of 1187 (“MaHaRaM’s Attitude Toward Immigration”). 41. Urbach, Tosafists, 541–51; Ta-Shema, “New Chronicle,” 323; recently, Emanuel has suggested that part of the story regarding R. Baruch’s imprisonment and death is apocryphal (“Did Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg Refuse to be Ransomed?”). 42. Gross, Gallia Judaica, 636, and “Étude sur Simson ben Abraham de Sens,” 6:166–86; Urbach, Tosafists, 125; also, Chazan documents persecutions by King Philip August around the year 1210, which had particularly harsh consequences for Jews in the royal domain (Medieval Jewry in Northern France, 86–87). 43. Krauss, “Emigration de 300 rabbins,” 336. 44. Krauss, “Emigration de 300 rabbins,” 338–42. 45. Cohen, “Messianic Postures,” 206–7, 222–23.

224

Notes to Pages 103–106

46. Kanarfogel, “ ‘Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis,’ ” 198–200; Kanarfogel, “Medieval Rabbinic Conceptions.” Kanarfogel (“Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis’ ”) calls attention to a tendency among late twelfth-century Tosafists to emphasize the importance of commandments that require living in Israel, which inevitably Jews living abroad are unable to fulfill regularly. There was, in fact, a proliferation of Tosafist halakhic treatises that deal with “Mizvot ha-teluyot ba-Aretz” (commandments that are associated with the Land) or “hilkhot Eretz Israel” (precepts regarding the Land of Israel). A growing number of rabbis, predominantly in late medieval France, held the view that a pious lifestyle outside of Palestine is both incomplete and insufficient and that whoever is both able to move to Israel and can guarantee that they will observe the precepts ardently once there should do so (Kanarfogel, “ ‘Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis’ ”). 47. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 276–83; Urbach, Sages, 231, and “Jewish Messianic Expectations.” 48. Grossman, “Victories of Saladin”; Cuffel, “Call and Response,” 69–81, 89–91; Reiner, “Jewish Response to the Crusades”; Reiner, “ ‘Overt Falsehood and Covert Truth,’ ” 159–61; Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 5, 97–99, 115–17, 153–54; see also Goitein, Settlement in the Land of Israel, 339–33, and Prawer, History of the Jews, 162. 49. Pace Grossman, “Victories of Saladin,” 363; Ashtor-Strauss, “Saladin and the Jews”; Prawer, History of the Jews, 87. 50. Sadan, “R. Judah al-Ḥarizi”; Drory, “Invisible Connection.” 51. Shiffman, “Differences Between the ‘Translations.’ ” 52. Drory, “Literary Contacts”; Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 126–28. 53. Schirman, History of the Hebrew Poetry, 156–68; Yahalom, introduction to Masʻe Yehudah, 9, 24. 54. Sadan, “R. Judah al-Ḥarizi,” 38. 55. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 261–66, trans. Reichert, 143–49. 56. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 264–65, trans. Reichert, 147–48. 57. About Kaspi and his use of Cyrus, see his book Tam ha-Kesef, 41–47, recently edited by Sackson as an appendix to Joseph Ibn Kaspi, 306; for additional bibliography, see Twersky, “Joseph ibn Kaspi,” 231–57; Herring, Joseph ibn Kaspi’s Gevia’ Kesef, 240; Emery, “Documents Concerning Some Jewish Scholars.” 58. Grossman, “Victories of Saladin,” 310, with references to B’Rosh-Hashanah 3:2 and to Esther Rabbah 2:1. 59. Grossman, “Victories of Saladin,” 362–64; Prawer, Crusaders’s Kingdoms, 294–302. 60. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 264–65, trans. Reichert, 148. 61. Prawer, “On the History of the Jews,” 107; Kedar, “Jews of Jerusalem.” In part, this interpretation is based on an epistolary exchange that reveals a good mea sure of internal tension among the community of Jerusalemite Jews regarding the appropriate use of public resources. See Reiner, “Pilgrimage and Immigration,” 61–64, and Prawer, Crusaders’ Kingdoms, 300–6. Recently, however, Schweika has further reconstructed the exchange and shows that the dispute must have taken place after 1221; it, in other words, postdates al-Ḥarizi’s observations (“Episode from the History”). 62. Al-Ḥarizi, Kitab al-Durar, 121–25: “I then headed to Jerusalem, where at the time there were three communities . . . the French, the North-Africans [or Maghrebis] and the Palestinians. . . . As for the community of the North-Africans, among it were many virtuous people. . . . The head of the Palestinian community, Mufadal al-Yamini, was a man of sharp intellect, gifted like a firestone.” Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 452: “The Frenchmen came

Notes to Pages 106–113

225

to reside in Zion. . . . There was also a splendid community of Ashkelonites whose head, R. Sa’adia of Yamini, was both learned and kind. . . . Of the North-Africans there was an important and superb community whose leader, R. Eliyah the Maghrebi, was a righteous man.” 63. Goitein, Settlement in the Land of Israel, 154–55; Kedar, “On the History of the Jewish Settlement,” 83–84; Mann, Jews in Egypt and in Palestine, 300–1; according to this documentation, there existed a continuous rivalry between R. Yehiel and a certain Solomon ha-Dayyan about political and financial domination. 64. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 264, trans. Reichert, 148. 65. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 87–101; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 211–23. 66. Little, “Jerusalem Under the Ayyubids”; Khatib, Al-Quds bayna Aṭmāʻ, 29–52. 67. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 265, trans. Reichert, 148: “ There are among them . . .  those who divide brothers.” 68. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 265–66, trans. Reichert, 148. 69. Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 134–49; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 195–224; Latiff, Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword, 209–17. 70. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 94–108; Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 115–20. 71. Sadan, “R. Judah al-Ḥarizi,” 48–49 (Hebrew), 56–58 (Arabic); see also Decter, Dominion Built of Praise. 72. Al-Ḥarizi, Kitab al-Durar, 110. 73. A different manuscript reads “the Camp of God (cf. Gen. 32:1–2)” (Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 436). 74. Al-Ḥarizi, Book of Taḥkemoni, 452. 75. Róth and Striedl, Hebräische Händschriften, pt. 2:17–18, cat. no. 22–36. 76. This is clearly a deviation from, or corruption of, Gog u-Magog. 77. Róth and Striedl, Hebräische Händschriften: the manuscript contains a number of different hands and several different styles; fols. 22v and 92v are blank, marking the transitions between the different phases of production. 78. Kanarfogel, “ ‘Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis,’ ” 198–99; Kanarfogel, “Medieval Rabbinic Conceptions,” 82. 79. Hilhot Terumot 1:11; Emanuel, “R. Yehiel of Paris,” 96; Urbach, Tosafists, 270–71. 80. Urbach, Tosafists, 270. Grossman’s argument (in “Victories of Saladin”) rests on the assertion that RiZbA died in 1199, following Urbach’s statement that he had died either in 1199 or 1210. However, both of the sources Urbach used state that RiZbA died in 4970 [= 1210]. 81. Emanuel, “R. Yehiel of Paris,” 97–98; Ta-Shema, “New Chronicle,” 323: “RiVA died in the year 1210.” See also Ta-Shema, Zerahia ha-Levi Ba’al ha-Maor, 161n24, on the basis of Oxford, Bodleian, MS 847, fol. 36v. 82. Isaac of Corbeil, Sefer Amudei Golah haNikra Sefer Mizvot Katan, 25. 83. MSukkah 5:4; Tosefta, Sukka 4:2. 84. Genesis Rabbah, Va-Yeshev, 84:19; see also Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 43:8. 85. Vatican, MS Ebr. 303, 122r–123r; Rome, Casanata Library, MS 3097, fols. 34v–36r; St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS EVR II A 434, fol. 4r. 86. Al-Dabi, Shevile Emunah, 122. 87. “Tozeot Eretz Israel,” in Ya’ari, Mas’ot Eretz Israel, 98 (emphasis mine). 88. Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 59; Schwartz, Messianic Idea, 37–45. 89. Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 88–89. 90. Even-Shemuel, Midreshei Geulah, 117–20; Sa’adya Ga’on, Sefer ha-Emunot ve-haDe’ot, 195–96.

226

Notes to Pages 114–117

91. BSan. (Helek), 97b. 92. See also BSan. 111a. 93. Even-Shemuel, Midreshei Geulah, 122; R. Sa’adia Ga’on, Sefer ha-Emunot ve-haDe’ot, 196. 94. See, for example, the use of the motif of ritual purity in Ayyubid jihad poetry: al-Isfahānī, Kharīdat al-Qasr, 158–59; Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 1:269; Cole, “ ‘O God, the Heathen Have Come”; Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City, 37; Gaposchkin calls attention to the importance of purity—of the heart and of the Land—in crusade liturgy (Invisible Weapons, 179–91). Importantly, crusading ideology consistently employed the symbolic commemoration of purifying the Holy Land in order to also mandate the purification of the supplicants’ hearts. 95. Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, s.v. “Hanina b. Dosa,” 68; Bokser, “Wonder-Working and the Rabbinic Tradition,” 42–49; Sarfatti, “Pious Men,” esp. 130–42; Vermes, “Hanina ben Dosa”; Buchler, Types of Jewish Palestinian Piety, 22; Flusser, Jesus, 97–98. 96. Rashi on Neh. 1:3 maintains that the verse refers to those Jews who, throughout the period of the exile, remained in the Jerusalem and never left for Babylon. Our author, however, seems to address the condition of contemporary Jewish communities in Jerusalem, including both the indigenous Jews and those who immigrated there recently. Therefore, rather than suggesting that only a minority of exilic Jews chose to return despite the grim condition of their compatriots, he claims that those very conditions had deterred more Jews from returning to their homeland. 97. This sentence does not make much sense and does not reproduce the logic of the Talmudic passage to which it alludes. bYoma 9:2 has: “Had you been like a wall, and had returned together in the time of Ezra, you would have been compared to silver, which no rottenness can ever effect. Now that you have returned like doors (i.e., sporadically and in small numbers), you are compared to a cedar tree, consumed by rottenness.” Yalkut ha-Shim‘oni (on SoS #994) has roughly the same construction. Therefore, it is not entirely clear what the author means by “a tree, which no rottenness can ever effect.” Another option is that the copyist confused the terms of “silver” and “tree,” which is not unlikely in Ashkenazi script. 98. Literally, “hand by hand”; see bShabbat 156a. 99. See also the Midrash on Esther, based on Jer. 48:11: ]‫יא‬:‫ שנ’ [ירמיה מח‬. . . ‫זקני מואב שלוים ושקטים בארצם כיין השקוט על שמריו לפי שלא גלו ממקומם‬ ‫ על כן עמד טעמו בו‬,‫ ובגולה הוא לא הלך‬,‫“שאנן מואב מנעוריו ושוקט הוא על שמריו ולא הורק מכלי אל כלי‬ .”‫וריחו לא נמר‬ 100. Al-Dabi, Shevile Emunah, 122: ‫ לבא לדור בארץ ישראל ולהתיישב בירושלם ע”ה‬,‫ תופסי תורה וחסידים ואנשי מעשה‬,‫יתנדבו הרבה מישראל‬ ,‫ ונצנצה בו רוח טהרה והכשר חיבת הקודש מארבע פנות העולם‬,‫ איש איש כפי נדבת לבו‬,]‫[=עיר הקודש‬ ‫ ועל זה נאמר “ולקחתי אתכם אחד‬,‫ למען היות לו ניר ויתד נאמן בהר הקדש‬.”‫“אחד מעיר ושניים ממשפחה‬ ‫ וישמע‬,‫ ירבו להתפלל בהר הקדש בירושלם‬,‫ וכאשר יתיישבו שם החסידים ההם‬.”‫מעיר ושניים ממשפחה‬ .‫ ויקרב קץ הגאולה‬,‫הבורא יתברך שועתם‬ 101. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 89–93; Cazel, “Financing the Crusades,” 6:116–50, esp. 136–38. 102. Mastnak, Crusading Peace, 142–47; Cole, Preaching of the Crusades, 80–97. 103. Constable, “Financing of the Crusades,” 117–42; Riley-Smith, Crusades, 175–76; Martini, (“Innocenzo III”) traces the evolution of mercenary practices in crusading financing and ideology; Bysted, Crusade Indulgence, 132–35.

Notes to Pages 117–122

227

104. In keeping with the abovementioned tendency of Shevile Emunah to narrow the original meaning, it suggests that the immigrants are to “come and dwell in the Land of Israel” but “to settle in the Holy City of Jerusalem.” Here and throughout the treatise, the editor demonstrates a strong commitment toward the Holy City, whereas the author of Darmstadt, Hessisches Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, MS Cod. Or. 25, cultivated a commitment toward the Land of Israel as a conceptual entity. 105. Al-Dabi, Shevile Emunah, 122: “So that they be a lamp and firm peg in the Holy Mount.” “Witness” (‘ed) and “lamp” (nir) can easily be switched in a scribal error, which seems to have happened here. 106. Perhaps the author was aware of parallels between Isa. 22:20–25 and Rev. 3:7–12, in which Christ, rather, is the one who is given the keys to David’s palace and is called the pillar of the Temple. In that sense, the author’s declaration that the immigrants are both a witness and a “peg” may carry certain polemic undertones. 107. Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic, 106. 108. Even-Shemuel distinguishes between at least four separate traditions, each enumerating a series of ten signs that signal the approach of the end-time. Only one, however, is called Ten Signs. For the others, Even-Shemuel uses the titles “Otot Rashbi,” “Otot haMashiah,” and “Pirke Mashiah”; see Midreshei Geulah, 294–300. 109. See Paris, BnF, Heb. 716; Oxford, Bodleian, MS Or. 135; London, British Library, Or. 1055; and Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 3097. 110. See Horowitz’s introduction to the Midrash Aseret ha-Melakhim (Bet Ekked ha-Agadot, 19–33); Krauss, “Mansur in Otot ha-Mashiaḥ”; Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 2:xxi–xxii. 111. Marmorstein, for example, asserts that the Ten Signs tradition goes back to the Persian-Byzantine-Muslim wars in Jerusalem of the early seventh century and that subsequent authors added layers to this originally historical kernel (“Signes du messie”); see also Even-Shemuel, Midrashei Geula, 295–97. 112. Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic, 3. 113. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Or. 135 (= F 16385), fol. 359v. 114. Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Cod. Or. 25, fol. 14v.a. 115. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Or. 135. London, Montefiore, MS 131 (= F 5134), however, seems to suggest that Nehemiah destroys the surrounding nations (Damascus, Askalon, etc.) but rules over the nations in Jerusalem (fol. 302v); Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 140 (= F 21424) again suggests simply that Nehemiah embraces the crown that had previously been worn by the ruler of Edom. 116. Tefilot RaSHBI: ‫והאש יורדה מן השמים ואוכלת את ירושלים עד שלש אמות ומפנה את הערלים ואת הטמאים ואת הזרים‬ ‫מתוכה‬. See especially a version of Tefilot in Oxford, Bodleian, Heb. d. 46 (= F 21274). For a long discussion about the RaSHBI cycle and its thirteenth-century manifestations, see Chapter 5. 117. Sifre ‘al Sefer Devarim 16:10. 118. Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 3:16. 119. Giese coined the term “the Maccabbean Condition” in discussing the way Fulcher of Chartres describes the encounter of the outnumbered Franks with their Saracen enemies (“Untersuchungen zur Historia Hierosolymitanades,” 75). See also Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana 2:6, 10–12; see Gouguenheim, “Maccabées,” 3–20; Gaposchkin, “Louis IX,” 245–74; see also Lapina, “Maccabees and the Battle of Antioch”; Alphandéry, Chretiénté et l’idée de croisade; Schein, “Crusading Movement as a Messianic Movement.”

228

Notes to Pages 122–127

120. Dan, “Armilus.” 121. Even-Shemuel, “Introduction to Sefer Zerubavel,” 55–66; Levy, “Apocalypse de Zerobabel”; Himmelfarb, “Sefer Zerubavel,” 67–70. 122. Significantly, it is the Israelites in the biblical reference who set their faces and heads to Egypt. 123. Darmstadt, Hessisches Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, MS Cod. Or. 25, fol. 14v.b (emphasis mine): ‫ח]' פירוש שמקרוב‬:‫“וישים פניו לבא אל אדמת ישראל כדכתיב 'אל ארץ מקובצת מעמים רבים [יחזקאל לח‬ ”.‫באו ונתקבצו בה ישראל מכל הארצות אשר נפצו שמה‬ 124. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol.” 125. Even-Shemuel, Midrashei Geula, 316; Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic, 118. 126. Unfortunately, the text begins with the second part of the seventh sign on fol. 50r. It is therefore impossible to identify this exact version with precision. However, it seems to be closest to the recension that Even-Shemuel names “Otot Mashiah.” 127. A different version (Oxford, Bodleian, MS Or. 135, fol. 359v) has instead of “idols” the phrase “their sterile books [sifre tiflutam],” which is a word play on prayer books (sifre tefilotam). 128. See, for example, the Mainz Anonymous: Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 287, 333. ‫ ממזר ובן הניד‬,‫אנו עושין על קידוש שמך הגדול בלי להמיר אותך בתלוי נצלב נצר נסחב נתעב ומשוקץ בדורו‬ .‫ ולא אבו לכפור ולהמיר יראת מלכינו בנצר נתעב‬. . . ‫ובן הזימה‬ See also Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 35; Abulafia, “Invectives Against Christianity,” 66– 74; Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, 344n123. 129. On the portrayal of crusading leader as the heirs of Christ, see Smith, “Crusader Conquest of Jerusalem,” 36: “Readings of the 1099 conquest as a second cleansing of the Temple also typologically linked the crusaders to Christ and other biblical heroes, and gave their unprecedented undertaking christo-mimentic status.” 130. Spiegel, Past as Text, esp. 82–98; see also White, “Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination,” and Auerbach, Mimesis. 131. ‫מלך משיח יהיה ראש ומלך מסוף העולם ועד סופו שנ‘ ”כל הגוים יעבדוהו“ וגם הוא יכבד את דוד‬ .‫זקינו שיצא מזרעו ויתישב בירושלים‬ 132. Compare also Deut. 6:5 (Shema’ Israel), 2 Kings 23:25, where King Josiah is portrayed as the paragon of obedience to God by citing this part of the Shema’ Israel prayer. 133. ‫ יתברך שמו ויתעלה זכרו לעד‬,‫מי אתה נצר נתעב לצוות החוקים? הלא אותם ציוה אותנו אל אלהינו‬ ‫ ותשמור [=נשמור?] מאד לעשות בכל לביבנו ובכל‬,‫ ויתרומם [=מרומם] על כל ברכה ותהילה אותו נורא‬,‫לנצח‬ ‫נפשינו ובכל מאורינו [=מאודינו] כאשר ציונו יי’ בהר סיני ביד משה עבדו‬ 134. ‫ ונאמיר מאמירינן ונייחד מייחדינן ונחטיב מחטיבינן ונקדיש‬. . . ‫ואנחנו נעמוד ונתחזק במעוזינו‬ .‫מקדישינן‬ 135. This sentence does not make sense and is, in fact, a fusion between two versions of the story. One suggests that had Armylus known that the messiah died, he would have completely wiped out Israel. The other proclaims that had the messiah—which is to say, Messiah-son-of-David—been revealed to Armylus, all of the enemies of Israel would have been wiped out. 136. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 140, fols. 74v–76v. 137. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 140, fol. 76r, my emphasis. 138. Skemer, Binding Words and Textual Amulets, 34; Kartsonis, “Protection Against All Evil,” 73–102.

Notes to Pages 131–136

229

chaPter 5 1. Sarachek, Doctrine of the Messiah, 2. The prime interlocutors in the debate about the function and anthropology of Jewish messianism are, of course, Scholem and Idel; see Scholem, “Understanding the Messianic Idea,” 156–58; Idel, Messianic Mystics, 28–29, 31; Idel, introduction to Messianic Movements in Israel, by Aescoly, 10–11; see also Pedaya, “Spiritual Land and a Real Land.” 2. Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 4:117–26, and introduction (viii–ix). The manuscript does not appear in the cata logue that the same rabbi, Marco (Mordechai) Mortara, compiled of codices in the library of Mantua; see Mortara, Catalogo dei manoscritti. 3. Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 4:viii. 4. Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash 3:xix. 5. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 5:406–13, 7:449. 6. Graez, Geschichte der Juden, 7:449. 7. Steinschneider, however, argued that the evidence for this assessment is weak. Information about events during the late Umayyad period could have been accessible to an Arabic-speaking Jew much later. Accordingly, he suggested that both The Secrets of RaSHBI and The Prayer of RaSHBI were penned during the time of the crusades and demonstrate a preoccupation with events pertaining to that period (“Apocalypsen mit polemischer Tendenz,” 636–38). 8. Buttenwieser, Outline of the Neo-Hebraic Apocalyptic Literature, 41. 9. Baer, “Jüdische Messiasprophetie”; Prawer also, rather cautiously, endorsed the notion that at least part of The Prayer of RaSHBI pertains to events in Acre during the Third Crusade (History of the Jews, 259). 10. Aescoly agrees with Even-Shemuel but also acknowledges the complexity and variety of voices that are found in both compositions: “The apocalypse . . . had disseminated over the course of several generations, while each generation adapted and amended it for their own use, so long as the Redeemer has not yet come” ( Jewish Messianic Movements, 1:137). 11. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 254–67. 12. Lewis, “Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History.” 13. Lewis, “Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History,” 311. 14. Urbach, “Messianic Midrash.” 15. Urbach, “Messianic Midrash,” 61; Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 128, Neubauer 2339. 16. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122 (previously De-Rossi 1240); Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2342 (previously De-Rossi 541). For a description of the manuscript, see Kanarfogel, Peering Through the Lattices, 88, 138–42; see also Fudeman, Vernacular Voices, 92. 17. I distinguish between The Prayer of RaSHBI, which I take to be a no longer extant text, probably penned around the middle of the thirteenth century, and the two extant versions of it: Parma-Prayer and Jellinek-Prayer. While each of the two Parma manuscripts contains a slightly different version of the text, they are close enough to be dealt with as one unit. I do, however, address differences in the readings each manuscript presents whenever relevant. 18. Previously the manuscripts were shelf-marked, respectively, De-Rossi 1240 and DeRossi 541. 19. ‫סדרן של אותות שיבואו קודם ביאת משיח‬ 20. Liebes, “Messiah of the Zohar”; Rosenfeld, “RaSHBI.”

230

Notes to Pages 136–141

21. Mishnah-Me’ilah 17-a-b. 22. YShab. Ix.38d; BShab. 33b; Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 88b; Genesis Rabbah ixxix.6; Ecclesiastes Rabbah x.8; Esther Rabbah I:9. 23. This concept culminated in the pseudepigraphal attribution of the Zohar to RaSHBI. Liebes argues that by the thirteenth century, certain kabalistic circles perceived RaSHBI as a successor of Moses. The former transmitted the written Law while the latter was said to have transmitted the mystical lore (“Messiah of the Zohar,” 105–7). 24. Konowitz, Rabbi Shim’on b, Yohai; Liebes, “Messiah of the Zohar.” 25. Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 3:78; Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic, 78. 26. Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 4:117; this tale about a wise “counselor” who tricked Hadrian into lifting the decrees—abolishing circumcision, Sabbath, and purification laws—circulated during the Middle Ages in various forms, interchangeably attributing the deed to a range of Talmudic figures such as R. Reuven Isrubali, RaSHBI, and others. 27. Lewis, “Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History,” 329–31. 28. Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 4:120; Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122, fol. 228v. The identification of Muawiyyah belongs to Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 272. 29. Reeves renders this passage: “He will plant [trees . . .] so that his future sons will have plenty to eat” (Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic, 83). 30. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122, fol. 228v: ‫ויטע נטיעות רבות ויבנה ערים חריבות לקיים דברי ר‘ ישמעאל ויבקע התהומות להעלות מים להשקות‬ ‫ וכל מי שיעמד עליו לרעה ינתן בידו‬.‫ ויהיה לו שלום מעבדיו‬.‫נטיעותיו ובניו מרובין ויאכל שלום בני ישמעאל‬ .‫ובימיו שוקטת וימות בשלום‬ See “Atidot RaSHBI (The Future of RaSHBI),” where the phrase “he will eat the tranquility of the Sons of Ishmael” also appears; Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 403–5. 31. Al-Tabarī, Ta’rīkh al-Rusūl, 2:1466–728, 1428–40; Mas’ūdī, Murūj al-Dhahab, v, 465– 79. 32. I refer to this composition as “independent” because it shares many textual unites with The Prayer of RaSHBI and The Secrets of RaSHBI but lacks the frame-story that invokes the figures or R. Simon b. Yohai; see Urbach, “Messianic Midrash,” 58–61. 33. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.8.6: a Jewish prophet will repeat the miracle of Jericho in Jerusalem; see Berger, “Three Typological Themes,” 142. 34. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 276: ‫אחר כל אלה מתגברים בני מערב בחילים גדולים והם באים מעורבים ועורכים מלחמה עם בני מזרח‬ ‫ ויברחו‬,‫ ותהיה שם מלחמה גדולה‬. . . ‫ והנשארים בורחים מלפניהם ובאים לאלכסנדריה‬,‫שבארצם והורגים אותם‬ “[‫ ויעברו ”בארץ הצבי וכלה בידם ]דניאל יא טז‬. . . ‫משם בני מזרח ויבאו עד מצרים‬ 35. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 277. 36. Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic, 98–99; Lewis, “Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History,” 316. 37. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122, fol. 202r–v. 38. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122, fol. 202v. 39. Baer, “Jüdische Messiasprophetie,” 163; Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 277–78. 40. Lewis, “Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History,” 331–37. 41. Lewis, “Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History,” 332. 42. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 102–3; Lewis acknowledges the similarities between the passage in The Prayer of RaSHBI and Lekaḥ Tob (“Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History,” 333). 43. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 278.

‫‪231‬‬

‫‪Notes to Pages 141–147‬‬

‫‪44. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 277, also Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm.‬‬ ‫‪2341, fol. 202r.‬‬ ‫‪45. This is a reference to the messianic narrative in Zechariah 9.‬‬ ‫”‪46. Both Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122 and Urbach (“Messianic Midrash,‬‬ ‫”‪60) read: “Ishmael.‬‬ ‫‪47. Jellinek-Prayers: Israel.‬‬ ‫”‪48. Could also be “capture.‬‬ ‫”‪49. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2342: “and they chase.‬‬ ‫‪50. Underlined parts do not appear in Jellinek-Prayer. Significant differences among the‬‬ ‫‪Parma and Bodleian versions were noted in the apparatus.‬‬ ‫ובאין בני ישמעאל ועושין מלחמה גדולה בבקעת עכו עם אדומים; מיד אשורים באים עליהם ושובים אותם‬ ‫שנאמר‪” :‬עד מה אשור תשבך ]במדבר כד כב[‪” “,‬וצים מיד כיתים ]במדבר כד כד[“ אילו אדומים שעתידים‬ ‫לעמוד באחרית הימים; וכשיוצאין באין כגנבים שנאמר‪” :‬אם גנבים באו לך ]עבדיה ה[“ ועושים מלחמה עם‬ ‫ישראל והורגין מהן הרבה; וכד אתחמי שלמא מתכניש למשריתא דעכו דע דאדק פרזלא לחספא ושקייה תברין‬ ‫לאצבעיתיה ומתחלטין ]דניאל ב‪:‬לד‪-‬לה[ במלכותא מנהון פסקא מלכותא רשעיתא ‪ .‬ת*רת מן שיעבודא‪,‬וכד את‬ ‫חמי רומייה נפיק בתקוף לאלכסנדריא דע דמטא קץ שלמיא מתחסרא בידיה דתורכיא ערטילין מעכו ערקין בלא‬ ‫סוס ומאני קרב; דע דמטא קץ מלכות מתילי באצבע רגליו ויתרמסין בעפרא תחות רגלין דוחקהא וכד תחוי בלבשי‬ ‫קביץ ערקין מיד חוזרין למכותו; וזה לך אות כשתראה שיצאו בני איטליטא ויצטרפו עמהם לגיונות הרבה מאדום‬ ‫ויעשו מלחמה גדולה בבקעת עכו עד שישקע הסוס בדם עד יריכו ויברחו בני ישמעאל לבקעת יריחו ושם יעמדו‬ ‫ואומרין זה לזה אנה אנחנו בורחין ועוזבין בנינו ובנותינו? וחוזרין ועושין מלחמה אחרת בבקעת מגידו ויברחו‬ ‫אדומיים ויעלו לספינות ויצא הרוח וישאם עד שיביאם לאשור ויענו אשורין לעבר הנהר; ולקץ תשעה חדשים‬ ‫יצאו בני אשור ויאמרו לבני ישמעאל ולבני רומא שנאמר ”עד מה אשור תשבך ]במדבר כד כב[“ וכשיוצאין‬ ‫רודפין בארץ ישראל וזורקין לתוכה שלום; ואליהו מבשר לפניהם שנאמר ”והיה זה שלום אשור כי יביא בארצו‬ ‫]מיכה ה ד[‪ “.‬ובני איטליא יבקשו לעשות מלחמה עמהם ובני ישמעאל אומרין חזרה לנו המלוכה‪ .‬ואינם מספיקים‬ ‫להרים ראשם מעט עד שאשור שובים אותם ואת שאריתם‪.‬‬ ‫” ’‪51. Bonfil, “ ‘Vision of Daniel.‬‬ ‫‪52. Literally: “men”; see Judges 20:15; see also Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 1:263–68.‬‬ ‫‪53. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2342, fol. 203r:‬‬ ‫כן תעשו לאנשי עיר המרשעת הזאת ולמלכה ‪ . . .‬מיד יריעו בתרועה שמע ישר' ומיד נופלת החומה תחתיה‬ ‫והם נכנסין לתוכה ' ומוצאים בחורים מתים ברחובותיה לקיים מה שנ' לכן יפלו בחוריה ברחובותיה [ירמיה‬ ‫נ‪:‬ל] ' ואנשי מלחמתה רוכבין על סוסיהן ודוממין כאבנים שנ' “ידמו כאבן [ירמיה נ‪:‬ל ‪ +‬שמות טז טז]” וישראל‬ ‫מתגברין והורגם בתוכה שלשה ימים ושלשה לילות ' ‪ . . .‬ונגלה עליהם מלך המשיח ואומר להם בניי אני הוא‬ ‫מלך המשיח אני הוא שהייתם מחכים לי בני וכל צרה שבאת עליכם אף אני שותף עמכם עד היום הזה ועתה אל‬ ‫תיראו תחזקנה ידיכם‪.‬‬ ‫;”‪54. On the use of Aramaic in the Book of the Zohar, see Liebes, “Hebrew and Aramaic‬‬ ‫‪Liebes rejects the traditional view that the language of the Zohar is a fabricated use of Aramaic‬‬ ‫‪that is meant to re-create artificially the language of RaSHBI and his first-century companions.‬‬ ‫‪Instead, he shows that Aramaic was in use throughout the Middle Ages and suggests that in‬‬ ‫‪the context of the Zohar, Aramaic creates an intimate, divine register. Notice, however, that‬‬ ‫‪in contrast to the Zohar, the Bat Kol, which carries a divine voice, speaks Hebrew.‬‬ ‫‪55. This version of the homily was not known to Urbach (although the text he discov‬‬‫‪ered and published hails from the Bodleian Library as well). Neubauer describes the script as‬‬ ‫‪a cursive Ashkenazi hand, probably sixteenth century. A colophon mentions that the manu‬‬‫‪script was copied in Holleschau and includes a composition by the northern Italian scholar,‬‬ ‫‪Menahem Azaria, from Fano (d. 1620).‬‬ ‫‪,” which‬הפכפך דרך איש“ ‪56. See Ruth Rabbah 3:3 (trans. Neusner, 29) based on Prov. 21:8‬‬ ‫‪.‬אלו אומות העולם שמהפכין ובאין על ישראל בגזרות ‪is glossed:‬‬

232

Notes to Pages 147–150

57. Bava Mezi’a 7:1. 58. This is a reference to St. Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin. 59. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. 550, fol. 29v: ,‫ הם עושים מלחמה עם בני ישראל והופכין ומהפכין בהם כא‘ ]=כל אחד[ עד מקום שידו מגעת‬. . .  ‫והתחיל לקיים מאמר צפניא הנביא ”כי אז ]א[הפך אל עמים שפה ברורה ]צפניה ג ט[“ בג‘ ]=בגימטריא[ עולה‬ ‫ כי בפסוק‬,‫ ויש רמז לזה‬.‫ ועוד אמר לרמז שיסכמו לדבר בשפה א[ות] ברורה היינו לשון הקודש‬.‫לשון הקודש‬ ,‫נראה?[ שלשון הקודש מחוברת ונארגת מהם‬/‫שהוא קודם ”לכן חכו לי נאם ה‘ ]צפניה ג ח[“ כל הנר‘ ]=הנרמז‬ ‫ זה יהיה סבה להתקרב בנקל רבים מהם‬,‫ללמדינו שהלשון שילמדו תהיה שזאת הכוללת כל אלה אותיות; ולמדנו‬ ‫לדת האמת וכבר מהם מפזרים עתה כמה זיופים עשה בהעתקה גיזונימו שהעתיק להם קד‘ ספרי הקודש ללשונם‬ ‫ועתה רבים מהם מקללים אותו על שהעתיק להם שוא ותפל וקצת תיבות ומלות כדי שיתחזקו‬ 60. There is, of course, the possibility that the sixteenth-century copyist, and not an earlier scribe, was responsible for attaching this passage to the homily. In that case, a possible context for these claims could be contemporary controversies regarding the production of polyglot Bibles and Christian Hebraism. Furthermore, the passage echoes a certain concern regarding the attitude of “others” toward the holy tongue with a par tic u lar emphasis on the meaning and value of letters of the Hebrew language. For a pos sible contemporary context, see the treatise by Aegidius Viterbensis, “Libellus de Litteris Hebraicis,” written in 1517. This short treatise expounds upon the importance of the letters of the Hebrew language for Kabbalah. It then lays out a Christo-Kabbalistic interpretation on the Hebrew alphabet. See Egidio da Viterbo, Scechina e libellus de litteris Hebraicis, 23–55. 61. Note that Maimonides too employs the notion of “pure tongue,” drawing also the verse from Zephaniah, in chapters 11 and 12 of Mishne-Torah, dedicated to the King Messiah. Two seemingly contemporary treatises feature a curiously free prose rendition of this text and put additional emphasis on this notion; see Oxford, Bodleian, MS 225, fol. 41r: .‫מלך המשיח יתקן כל העולם לעבוד ה‘ ביחד שנ‘ אז אהפוך כל העמים שפה ברורה לקרוא כולם בשם‬ See also London, Montefiore, MS 131, fol. 304v: ‫וכל הדברים האלה שכל זה שעמד אחריו אינו אלא לישר דרך למלך המשיח ולתקן את העולם כולו לעבוד את‬ .‫יי‘ ביחד שנאמ‘ כי אז אהפוך אל עמים שפה ברורה‬ Maimonides’s treatment of sacred warring, especially in the Guide for the Perplexed, features a marked concern of questions of purity, which, as Stern argues, should be understood as a normative, rather than a pragmatic, pronouncement (“Maimonides on Wars”). 62. Taku refers to Zephania in the context of the war with Armylus (Ketav Tamim, 90 [= fol. 45v]); about Taku, see Dan, “Ashkenazic Hasidism and the Maimonidean Controversy,” 42–44; Epstein, “R. Moses Taku b. Hasdai.” 63. Marmorstein, “Signes du messie”; Heigger, Halachot ve-Agadot, 115–23, published on the basis of New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, Halperin, MS 146. 64. Marmorstein, “Signes du messie,” 176–77; Krauss, Studien zur byzantinisch-jüdischen Geschichte, 35. See also Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geulah, 295–96. 65. Fol. 75r–v: ‫יבא בהיכל ויקח עטרת הזהב אשר על ראשו וישם אותה על אבן השתיה ויאמר לפניו רבונו של עולם הרי‬ .‫חזרתי מה שלקחתי‬ 66. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 140, fols. 75v–76r: ‫איני מאמין בך אלא ביי‘ אלהי השמים ואלהי הארץ אשר נתן את התורה ביד משה רבינו ואשר העמיד את רגלי‬ .‫[פתאום בהיכל יי‘ וחזקני ואמצני להלחלם‬SIC] ‫את מלך אדום‬ 67. Even-Shemuel, Midrashe Geula, 311, or for a more comprehensive version, see Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 140, fol. 75v.

Notes to Pages 152–156

233

68. Ibn al-‘Arabī, Muhādarāt al-Abrār, 1:340–43. See also the seminal study on this apocalypse by Hartmann, Islamische Apokalypse, 89–116. 69. Particularly striking is the fact that a Genizah fragment contains a messianic sequence in Judeo-Arabic, which is an obvious variant on this very same tradition, JTS ENA 2973.3: “Then, a Turkish man from the East, by the name of al-Sufyani will arrive with a large army, and he will smite them until not one will remain. Acting on the command of God, he will then purify the [blank] which belonged to [blank], peace be upon him. And the disputes/apostasy will vanish in [blank] and he will put an end to the heresy. He will purify the land [from] heresy and pollution and contamination. During his time there will appear several signs, and proofs, and miracles, after which Messiah Son-of-David will appear, and he will raise the dead as is written by the prophets, peace be upon them.” ‫ __ימה‬/ ‫ ספיאני מן אלתרך פי אלעסאכר אל‬/ ‫ יכ’רג’ רג’ל מן אלשרק יקאל לה אל‬/ ‫ ופי עקיב ד’לכ‬:‫ב‬ ‫ __ עליו‬/ ‫ __מיס באמר אללה אלמנתסב אלי‬/ ‫ לא יבקא [מנ]הם אחד ופי עקיב ד’לך יטהר אל‬/ ‫פיסתביחהם חת’י‬ ‫ אנג’אס‬/ ‫ __מא אלשרך ואלארג’אס ואל‬/ ’‫ __(ד)ת’ה ויביד אלשרך ויטהר אל ארץ‬/ ‫השלום פת’הדא אלפתן פי‬ ‫ משיח בן דויד ויקים אלאמואת כמא‬/ ‫ ()איאת ומעג’זאת ויט’הר בעדה אל‬/ ‫ויט’הר עלי איאמה עדה בראהין‬ / ‫ אשרי המחכה ויגיע‬/ ‫ השלום אלכיר מעלום למן יפהם ד’לך‬/ ‫ הו מכתוב עלי יד אלאנביא עליהם‬:‫א‬ .‫לראותו אמן נצח‬ 70. The notion of devious or fraudulent language appears in Surat al-Zumar, where the Prophet proclaims that God has allowed no crookedness (ghayra dhi-‘iwajin) in the Quran “so that they may guard against evil” (Q 39:28). 71. Some of the apocalyptic conventions that this prophecy follows could be found in Ibn ‘Asakir’s biography of Jesus; see Mourad, “Jesus According to Ibn ‘Asakir,” 31–37. 72. Muqātil Ibn al-Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 2:603. 73. Al-Suyūṭī, Al-Durr al-Manthūr, 4:272; Ibn Abi Shaybah, Kitāb al-Musannaf, no. 19483 (vol. 15); Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 184–88. 74. Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 3:215. 75. Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 8:545. 76. Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 3:215–16. 77. Ibn Taghrībirdī, Al-Nujūm al-Zāhirah, 6:222; Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil fī-al-Tarīkh, 4:175. 78. McGinn, Visions of the End, 2–3. 79. Emmerson and Herzman, Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature, 5; DamianGrint, “Apocalyptic Prophecy in Old French,” 51. 80. With particular attention to the way in which Joachite apocalyptic exegesis was employed to interpret events associated with the crusades, see Rubenstein’s masterfully insightful Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, 165–207. 81. Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, 17. 82. Alexander, Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, 13–33; Martinez, “Eastern Christian Apocalyptic,” 2–33. 83. McGinn, Visions of the End, 70–76. 84. Martinez, “Eastern Christian Apocalyptic,” 25–26. 85. Heist, Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday, 23–34. 86. McGinn, Antichrist, 100–1. 87. Verhelst, Adso Dervensis; Emmerson, “Anti-Christ as Anti-Saint.” On the sources that were available to Adso in composing his treatise, see Konrad, De Ortu Tempore Antichristi; Rangheri, “ ‘Epistola ad Gerbergam Reginam,’ ” 708–12; and Verhelst, “Préhistoire des conceptions d’Adson.”

234

Notes to Pages 156–158

88. Meyer, “Légendes hagiographiques en français,” 339; Berengier, “De l’avenement Antecrist”; and see the list in Damian-Grint, “Apocalyptic Prophecy in Old French,” 57–58. 89. Meyer, “Notice sur le Manuscrit Fr. 24862,” 140. Regarding the poet’s identity and relation to the Templar order, see, most recently, Sinclair, “Translations of the Vitas Patrum.” Despite Sinclair’s doubt on whether or not the author was a Templar, there can be no doubt that the work on the Antichrist was commissioned by the Templar Order and used as a didactic text for the moral edification of the brethren, as the author attests: “Henri d’Arci brother of the Temple of Solomon / For the love of God made this sermon for you / For you to present and for the brethren of the House” Thais, lines 147–49, VP lines 6919–21, in Meyer, “Notice sur le Manuscrit Fr. 24862,” 151: “Henri d’Arci frère del temple Salemun / Pur amur Deu vus ai fet cest semun / A vus le present e as frères de la maisun.” 90. McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality, 93. 91. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 277, lines 173–76. Note the strong references to the pseudo-Methodius tradition that, too, predicts the arrival of an “emperor” who, after defeating the Ishmaelites, will ascend to Jerusalem and give up his crown. 92. Fol. 75r–v: ‫יבא בהיכל ויקח עטרת הזהב אשר על ראשו וישם אותה על אבן השתיה ויאמר לפניו רבונו של עולם הרי‬ .‫חזרתי מה שלקחתי‬ 93. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 273, lines 33–34: “Un Giu de sa femme espouse engendera / Antecrist que tot le monde devorra.” 94. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 273, lines 33–34: “Un Giu de sa femme espouse engendera / Antecrist que tot le monde devorra.” Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 274, lines 65–68: “e en après desks en ierusalem vendra / e soen se en le temple domini mettra / e se fera circoncire selon la veille ley / e dira a as juels k’il est lour dieu e lour rei.” The original version simply states that the he will come to Jerusalem to slay all the Christians whom he cannot convert, will erect his throne on the Holy Temple, and will circumcise himself, pretending that he is the son of God. 95. On similarities to the legend of Armylus, which we saw in the highly popular Ten Signs theme, see Dan, “Armilus”; Bousset, Antichrist Legend, 95–112. There is still much left to be done in unpacking similarities between these two traditions, especially in their late medieval manifestations. 96. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 28, lines 66–74: “Si diront que c’est le filz Dieu / Qui en la loi leur fu pramis / Par les sainz propheites jadis / Qui Jhesu Crist ne current mie / Por ce qu’il fu de leur lignie / A celui se consentiront / Por ce qu’il ne le connoistront / Plus tost seront a lui enclin / Que Crestien ne Sarrazin.” 97. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 31, line 169. 98. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 278, line 192. 99. Maimonides, Mishneh-Torah, chaps. 11–12; see also the abovementioned sermon composed on the basis of Hilkhot Melahim in London, Montefiore, MS 131, fol. 305r. 100. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 278, lines 200–4: “E de primes vers les prophetes guerre commencera / E tant durement se tornera vers eus / . . . / E Kant il les avera oscis ensemblement / Les autres feus Dieu guerra durement.” 101. Kastner, “Some Old French Poems,” 280, lines 253–57. 102. See Oxford, Bodleian, MS Or. 135, fol. 359r: ‫משרפת ומקדחת ושאר חלאים ]ודבר ומגפה[ וזדים מן‬/‫הקבה יחמם את העולם מחמתה של חמה משחפת‬ ‫האומות מתים אלפי אלפים ביום‬

Notes to Pages 158–162

235

103. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Or. 135, fol. 360v: ‫יריע מיכאל תרועה גדולה ויבקעו מחילות המתים בירושלם והקבה מחייה אותם‬ 104. While the archbishop does not state the title of this prophecy, his description of its author leaves no doubt that he is addressing the Fils d’Agap; see Donnadieu, “Narratio patriarcae,” 293–94. 105. Jacques de Vitry, Letter VII, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 196–98. 106. Röhricht edited this prophecy in three versions using altogether nine manuscripts (Quinti belli sacri scriptores, 205–28). There are several manuscripts that Röhricht was not aware of: Vatican, Lat. 3851, fol. 14; Vatican, Lat. 3822, fol. 38; Paris, BnF, lat. 2599, fols. 249r–250r; and Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 307; see also Möhring, Weltkaiser der Endzeit, 185–207, esp. 188. 107. Rothelin Continuation, in RHC, 2:515, chap. 12: “Mes pour ce que les mescreanz avoient a cel jour i escrit et ont encorez que i Sarrazin Mahommetois avoit fait grant tenz devant ce que ce avenist par quoi cil qui ceste estoire liront et celui escrit porront auques savoir que il dist assez des choses qui avindrent au tenz Salehadin et devant lui, et apres— assez en i a qui ne sont mie encorez avenues—par quoi li Sarrazin tiennent cel escrist a prophecie, et dient que tout avandra quan qu’il i a escrit.” 108. Scholars, nonetheless, have attempted to identify the alleged Muslim author of the “original” text. Neumann, for example, attributed the composition to a tenth-century Persian astrologer, al-Qabisi, a corruption of whose name allegedly yielded the treatise’s title: Fils d’Agap (review of Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, by Röhricht, 243). Röhricht, on the other hand, pursued the identification by using the title of the other version: Hannan fils d’Ysaac (Quinti belli sacri scriptores, xlvi). He attributed the treatise to a ninth-century physician called Hunayn ibn-Ishaq, who, as Pelliot later pointed out, was in fact a Nestorian Christian. Drawing on the introduction to the text in Provençal, which claims that the work was discovered by a Syrian, Pelliot concluded that the “real” author of the text was a thirteenthcentury Nestorian, who invoked the name of his ninth-century coreligionist (“Deux passages de la prophétie,” 120). 109. Prophetia filli Agap, 215. 110. Shirley, Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century, 30n1. 111. This appellation was often used in medieval Muslim literature in reference to the Byzantines or, more generally, to Christians or Western peoples. Lisān al-‘Arab, for example, defines Banu al-Asfar as “al-Rum, Byzantine.” Authors writing during the period of the crusades used this term often to distinguish between the Franks, referred to as “ifranji,” and Christian forces coming from the West. Hillenbrand, however, insists on a pejorative quality in the use of this term (Crusades, 240n151; Dozy, Supplement aux Dictionnaires Arabes, 1:835–36). 112. Prophetia filli Agap, 215. I bring the Old French original and occasionally also the Latin when they differ. 113. Prophetia filli Agap, 216–17. 114. See above: “The water of the Euphrates will become burdened by the blood of the killed.” Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122, fol. 229v: ‫וישפך דם עד שישטוף כנחל ממנו ויהפכו מימי פרת לדם‬ 115. Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muhādarāt al-Abrār, 342. 116. Prophetia filli Agap, 218. 117. Prophetia filli Agap, 218. 118. Prophetia filli Agap, 220.

236

Notes to Pages 162–168

119. Significantly, the second Sign in the abovementioned version of the Signs theme describes the intervention of three false messiahs, who bring with them certain “riffraff ” who will become mixed with Israel. Instead of wine and water, the Jewish author uses a metallurgical metaphor to describe how God later repurifies Israel: “I will refine them like silver and test them like gold [Zech 13:9],” Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Qu. 140, fol. 74v. 120. Prophetia filli Agap, 221; Röhricht, Quinti belli sacri scriptores, xlv. 121. Other spellings are Tay and Culey, Tai and Eculey; Prophetia filli Agap, 216. 122. For the history of the tribe in subsequent centuries, see Bianquis, Damas et la Syrie. For an overview on the Tayy and Kalb tribes in the centuries preceding the arrival of the Franks to the Levant, see Gibb, “Caliphate and the Arab States,” esp. 1:87–91. 123. Prophetia filli Agap, 222. 124. Wheeler, Moses in the Quran, 90. 125. Kennedy, Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 29–35. 126. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 198–200. 127. Fidentio de Padua, “Liber recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 92. 128. Fidentio de Padua, “Liber recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 93. 129. Fidentio de Padua, “Liber recuperatione terrae sanctae,” 94–95.

chaPter 6 1. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 115–21; Douglas, Risk and Blame, esp. 38–55; Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” 46–48. 2. Smith, To Take Place, 62ff. 3. Smith, Relating Religion, 231; Klawans, “Pure Violence”; Olyan, “Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah,” 1–2. 4. Frymer-Kensky, “Pollution, Purification, and Purgation,” 400–1; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 745, 768; Branham, “Blood in Flux,” 59–60; Biale, Blood and Belief, 39–40. Henoch has devoted a special volume to explore the work that blood did in separating and connecting communities, where the editors set up the problem proclaiming that the use of blood as a marker of Jewish and Christian difference in late antiquity relied heavily on a shared and deeply polemical symbolic vocabulary; see Boustan and Reed, “Introduction to Theme-Issue,” 229–34. 5. Tolan, Saracens, 16–20, 120; Southern, Western Views of Islam, 3; Daniel, Islam and the West, 338–41; Mastnak, Crusading Peace, 128–29; Cole, “ ‘O God, the Heathen Have Come.’ ” 6. Southern, Western Views of Islam, 15, 26. 7. To be sure, the use of impurity in this corpus does not lack theological depths. It was associated with the Gregorian Reform, reformed monasticism, and the Peace and Truce movements, such that those who heard Urban refer to pollution of the holiest sites could have immediately associated it with their feelings about pollution and purity at their own local sites. For a study of this motif, see Bull, “Views of Muslims and Jerusalem,” 23–24, and, more generally, Remensnyder, “ Pollution, Purity, and Peace.” 8. Raimond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 144–45. 9. Composed around 1106–1108, Robert the Monk’s chronicle is arguably the most popular medieval account of the First Crusade; see Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade, 4–6, and Historia Iherosolimitana, 34–39. 10. Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, 6.

Notes to Pages 168–170

237

11. Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, 5–6. 12. In Fulcher of Chartres, who settled in the East after the First Crusade, we find a precursor to this sentiment. Writing in the 1120s, Fulcher accommodates the notion of pollution that is a result of unbelief. Having conquered Jerusalem, the Franks are said to have desired that it be “cleansed from the contagion of the heathen inhabiting it at one time or another, so long contaminated by their superstition [tamdiu superstitione eorum contaminatus].” He shared, however, with his predecessors the conviction that the conquest put an immediate end to this contaminating presence, as the city “was restored to its former rank by those believing and trusting in Him.” Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 306, trans. Ryan, History of the Expedition, 123. 13. On this trope, see Har-Peled, “Animalité, pureté et croisade”; Buresi, “Conversions d’églises”; Harris, “Mosque to Church Conversions”; Remensnyder, “Colonization of Sacred Architecture.” 14. William appears to have reconstructed the pope’s speech on the basis of the account found in the Gesta Francorum as well as the chronicles written by Raimond of Aguilers, Baldric of Dol, Fulcher of Chartres, and Albert of Aachen (or the main source that Albert had used); see Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, 47–50. Babcock and Krey mention Walter the Chancellor for the events surrounding Antioch (see their introduction to William of Tyre, History of Deeds Done, 1:29). Comparing the various extant accounts of the speech, Munro posited that William’s account shares many of the brute facts with the other versions but is unlike any other in style, tone, and interpretation (“Speech of Pope Urban II,” 234). 15. William of Tyre, Chronique 1.15, 1:131–32, trans. Babcock and Krey, History of Deeds Done, 1:90: “Loca venerabilia . . . facta sunt gregum praesepia, stabula jumentorum.” 16. William of Tyre, Chronique 1.15, 1:131–32, trans. Babcock and Krey, History of Deeds Done, 1:90: “Sanctae Resurrectionis ecclesia, requies dormientis Domini, eorum sustinet imperia, foedatur spurcitiis, qui resurrectionis non habebunt particium, sed, stipula ignis aeterni, perennibus deputabuntur incendiis.” 17. William of Tyre, Chronique 1.15, 1:132, trans. Babcock and Krey, History of Deeds, 1:90: “Sarracenorum enim gens impia, et immundarum [mundanarum] sectatrix traditionum, loca sancta, in quibus steterunt pedes Domini, iam a multis retro temporibus violenta premit tyrannide.” 18. William of Tyre, Chronique 1.15, 132, trans. Babcock and Krey, History of Deeds, 1:90: “Ut gentium immunditiis deserviant, et nomen Dei vivi abnegent, vel ore blasphement sacrilege compelluntur; aut impia detestantes imperia.” 19. Hillenbrand, “Jihad Poetry,” 17–20. 20. See Hillenbrand, Crusades, 79–117. One notable exception to this chronology is Abu Ḥasan al-Sulami (d. 1106), who shortly after the First Crusade started preaching on jihad near Damascus and compiled his teachings on the subject in a treatise, Kitab al-Jihad. Recent studies view al-Sulami’s choice to circulate these ideas in the cultural and intellectual outskirts of Damascus as a sign of his recognition that his authority as a legal scholar was contested and that his ideas on the subject were marginal. See Christie, Book of Jihad, and “Parallel Preachings.” 21. See Mourad and Lindsay, Intensification and Reorientation, 33–34. Among the few jihad poems composed before midcentury, most notable are al-Adhimi’s verse, addressed to the rulers of Mardin and Aleppo, and Ibn al-Nahawi’s “al-Qasida al-Munfarija,” both from the 1120s. See Kilani, Al-Ḥurub al-ṣalibiyya, 301–12, and Hermes, [European] Other, 160–61. 22. Mourad and Lindsay, Intensification and Reorientation, 3–13, 47–62.

238

Notes to Pages 171–172

23. Meri, Cult of Saints, 15. 24. See, for example, Ibn ‘Asakir’s eighty-volume encyclopedia about Damascus and its environs, Tarīkh madīnat Dimashq, and Ibn al-‘Adim’s encyclopedic enterprise on Aleppo, Bughyat al-ṭalab. 25. The relative sanctity of Jerusalem in Muslim theology and worship is contested in both medieval commentary and modern scholarship; see Elad, Medieval Jerusalem, 29–33; Livne-Kafri, “Muslim Traditions ‘in Praise of Jerusalem’ ”; and Christie, “Jerusalem in the Kitab al-Jihad.” Hillenbrand criticizes Sivan for dismissing the efforts of the Fatimid and Seljuk regarding Jerusalem and therefore undervaluing the sanctity of Jerusalem in the Muslim consciousness in the precrusade period (“Ayyubid Jerusalem,” 6–7); Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 9–22. For examples of some key representatives of this genre, see al-Wāsiṭī, Faḍā’il al-Bayt; Muḥammad b. al-Maqdisī, Faḍā’il Bayt al-Maqdis; Musharraf ibn al-Murajja’ alMaqdisī, Faḍā’il Bayt al-Maqdis wa-al-Khalīl wa-Faḍā’il al-Shām. 26. Sivan, Islam et la croisade, 62, 85, 104, 115; Hillenbrand, Crusades, 285–301, and “Jihad Poetry,” 17; Cuffel, Gendering Disgust, 145–49. 27. “Al-mushrikūn.” Yusuf Ali renders this term “pagans.” Although the term refers to those whose faith entails devotion to multiple deities (i.e., polytheists), “idolaters” seems a more neutral term that accommodates the fact that in the exegetical and polemical traditions it was used to refer also to Jews and Christians. 28. Translations of the Quran, here as elsewhere unless noted other wise, are from Yusuf Ali with minor alterations. 29. Katz, Body of Text, 162–63n50. On the question of contagion in ritual purity laws, see Maghen, “Close Encounters.” 30. One tradition that multiple jurists invoke in discussing the permissibility of allowing non-Muslims into mosques is particularly interesting for our purposes. This hadith was reiterated through several chains of transmission in a number of versions, all of which relate that the prophet allowed an embassy of non-Muslims into a mosque during prayer, saying, “The ground is not subject to pollution.” This does seem very pertinent. Why all of this in a footnote and not in the text itself? In other words, although non-Muslims are in themselves defiled, their impurity is not transmitted to the substances with which they come in contact, and therefore they do not contaminate the space they inhabit. Later Ayyubid authors, as we shall see below, do not question the judgment regarding the type of impurity of non-Muslims or its degree of contagion; rather, they employ a different conception of Muslim space and utilize different tools to define and defend it. Katz, Body of Text, 163–64, citing Muhammad ibn Abi Shaybah, Kitāb al-Musannaf, no. 8773 and no. 8775 (vol. 9), and al-Ṣanʻānī, al-Muṣannaf, no. 162 (vol. 1). For an exhaustive survey of the early opinions on this topic, see Yarbrough, “Upholding God’s Rule.” 31. Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh, 68; Fierro, “Conversion, Ancestry, and Universal Religion,” 162; Safran, “Rules of Purity,” 209–10. See Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Muḥallā bī-al-āthār, 1:137. 32. Stetkevych, Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 144–46, 281. 33. Classical examples are al-Mutanabbi’s praise of Sayf al-Dawla and Abu Tammam’s celebration of the conquest of Amorium; see Stetkevych, Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 144– 69, 271–78, and Arberry, Arabic Poetry, 54–55; on purity in poetic responses to the First Crusade, see Latiff, Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword, 73–78. 34. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence; Hermes, [European] Other, 146. For early Muslim narratives about the pollution that Christians brought about in mosque of al-Aqsa, see Gil, History of Palestine, 65ff.

Notes to Pages 172–178

239

35. For a comprehensive treatment of impurity in early Islam, see Katz, Body of Text, 162–63n50. On the question of contagion in ritual purity laws, see Maghen, “Close Encounters” and Virtues of the Flesh, 68. 36. For a word play that draws on the near homonymy between kufūr (villages) and kafūr (infidel/ungrateful), which denotes a certain ingratitude and lack of appreciation toward the divine, see Quran 22:66 or 43:15. 37. Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 1:279–81. 38. Reinhart, “Impurity/No Danger,” 15–16; on the distinction between the various purification procedures, see Burton, “Quran and the Islamic Practice,” 21–58. 39. On the place of anti-Byzantine verses that celebrate the early conquest of al-Sham in twelfth-century Syrian liter ature, or more generally on the problem of using poetry in historical studies, see Mourad, “Poetry, History, and the Early Arab-Islamic Conquests.” 40. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, 53. 41. El Cheikh-Saliba, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, 83–84. 42. The term “Holy Land” (al-arḍ al-muqaddasah) appears in Quran 5:21. Firestone’s study on the Abraham “legend” traces the history of the way the notion of “holy land” came to be appreciated by generations of Muslim exegetes. His study unfolds the intertextual environment within which Muslim interpreters appropriated foundational concepts from the Bible, and ultimately he shows that in Muslim exegesis, it was taken to refer to Mecca and its sacred precinct ( Journeys in Holy Lands, 61n1). 43. Ibn Nabīh, Dīwān Ibn al-Nabīh, 456–58; see Hillenbrand’s brief discussion and partial translation of this verse (Crusades, 308). 44. Mizra, “Abraham as an Iconoclast”; for a more comprehensive treatment of exegetical traditions surrounding the role of Abraham in the formation of the Muslim monotheistic legacy, see Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands, and Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition. As with many of the Quranic stories pertaining to Abraham, the one involving his smashing the idols also has rabbinical roots; see Genesis Rabbah 38, 361–64, as well as Lowin’s treatment of this episode in its wider narrative setting and the way it was deployed in postbiblical and early Muslim literature (Making of a Forefather, 176–207). 45. Al-Tabarī, Tafsīr al-Tabarī, 16:212–37. 46. Sivan discusses part of this poem in Islam et le croisade, 115. 47. Literally: “and shed upon it / blood, which when you intersperse, [al-Quds] becomes clean.” 48. Abū Shāmah, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn, 2:450–51. 49. Eddé, Saladin, 218. 50. Mir, “Irony in the Qur’ān”; see also Afsar, “Plot Motifs in Joseph/Yūsuf Story.” 51. For the most recent treatment of al-Qaysarānī’s war poetry, see Hermes, [European] Other, 161–68. 52. The poet could, of course, have intended a more specific meaning, such as the Dome of the Rock or the Haram. 53. Quran 1:125, translation Sahih International, with slight changes. 54. On this episode and more generally on al-Nasir Da’ud’s reign, see Drory, “Al-Nasir Dawud,” esp. 169–70; for another account of al-Nasir’s ill-fated conquest of Jerusalem, see Jackson, “Crusades of 1239–1241,” 39. 55. Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, 5:248–49. For other contemporary and Mamluk chroniclers who documented this episode, see al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk, 1:284, 292; Al-Yūninī, Dhayl Mirʼāt al-Zamān, 1:142; Al-Dhahabī, Tā’rīkh al-Islām, 243.

240

Notes to Pages 179–185

56. Gesta Francorum 10.38, 92. 57. Raimond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 127–28. 58. Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana 8.7, 87. 59. Raimond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 150–51. 60. William of Tyre, Chronique 8.20, 1:412. 61. For scholarly debates on dating the translation of William’s chronicle into Old French, see Issa, Version latine et l’adaptation française, 13–15; Hamilton, “Old French Translation of William of Tyre”; Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, 4; and Morgan, Chronicle of Ernoul, 119, 172; on the translation of the chronicle to Old French, see Edbury, “French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia,” and Handyside, Old French William of Tyre. 62. RHC, 1:355. 63. Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr. 64. Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-Zamān, Hyderabad ed., 7:2, 656, and 8:1, 397; Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil fī al-Ta’rīkh, 10:38–39; Al-Isfahānī, Al-Fatḥ al-Qussi, 47. 65. “Sapientibus” is the author’s rendering of the term “ulama,” the class of scholars of Islamic law. This phrase may indicate an appreciation for the complex relations between “ulama” and rulers, whose history goes back to the earliest Islamic polities. See Crone and Hinds, God’s Caliph, 43–57; for the Ayyubid context, see Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 69–90. 66. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 246. 67. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 246. 68. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 248. 69. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 248; cf. Acts 1:18. 70. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 248. 71. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 249. 72. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 247. 73. “Beithalla” derives from Bayt Allah, the house of God. 74. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 249. 75. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 249. 76. De expugnatione terrae sanctae, 250. 77. Akbari, “Erasing the Body,” 156–58; Akbari, Idols in the East, 123–26. 78. Oliver of Paderborn, “Historia Damiatina,” 225–26 (emphases mine). 79. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 161–62. 80. Gesta obsidionis Damiate, 113–14; Estoire d’Eracles, RHC, 2:346. 81. The Jewish author of the RaSHBI cycle draws on the same allusion and imagery to imagine a future attack on Jerusalem, which he frames as a reenactment of Joshua’s conquest of Jericho. 82. Oliver of Paderborn, “Historia Damiatina,” 227. 83. Oliver of Paderborn, “Historia Damiatina,” 228–29. 84. “aminarum.” One manuscript, however, reads “animarum,” which makes more sense. The translation reflects, therefore, this variant. 85. In his letter from 1219 describing the conquest, Jacques de Vitry does portray this as a miraculous event but does not mention any acts of figurative or real baptism (Letter VI, Lettres de la cinquième croisade, 142). 86. Oliver of Paderborn, “Historia Damiatina,” 229: “Et que prius parturiebas spurios, amodo paries filios legitimos ad cultum filii Dei firmiter a cultoribus Christi possessa. Acconensis episcopus ex te primitias animarum Deo solvit parvulos tuos, qui in te

Notes to Pages 185–194

241

reperti sunt ab ipso vitales, etiam morti proximos baptismatis unda sacramentaliter mundando. Multiplices solvisti penas, quia preter eos, qui comprehensi sunt vivi in te, mortui tui promiscui sexus a tempore obsidionis in circuitu computantur ad triginta milia et amplius, quos sine ferro et igne Dominus percussit, amodo sustinere dedignatus spurcitias in te commissas.” 87. Orosius, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, 7.9.5–6; Akbari, Idols from the East, 120–21. 88. Akabri points to possible connection between Orosius’s imagery and the fact that his teacher, Augustine, likens Jerusalem under Jewish Law to an infertile woman. 89. For scholarship on the immigration to Palestine in the beginning of the thirteenth century, see Kanarfogel, “ ‘Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis’ ”; Krauss, “Emigration de 300.” 90. Darmstadt, Hessisches Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, MS Cod. Or. 25, fol. 14r. 91. Darmstadt, Hessisches Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, MS Cod. Or. 25, fol. 14v. 92. Cuffel, Gendering Disgust, 21–35, with a special emphasis on questions of female purity and menstruation; Neusner, “History and Purity”; Feinstein, “Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible.” 93. There is a large body of literature that discusses Nahmanides’s attitude toward the Land of Israel and the obligation to live in it. See Pedaya, “Erez shel Ruah ve-Erez shel Mamash,” and Nehorai, “Erez Israel.” 94. Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, 3:473. 95. Nahmanides, “Homily for the New Year,” in Kitve Rabenu Mosheh ben Nahman, 1:250; Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, 3:269. 96. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 2342 (Richler 1542; IMHM 13218), fol. 205r. Another contemporaneous example comes from the thirteenth-century manifestation of the RaSHBI cycle, The Secrets of RaSHBI: “Immediately he [Messiah] signals for them [the army of immigrants] and gathers all of Israel, and brings them up to Jerusalem, and fire will come down from the heaven and consume Jerusalem three cubits [underground] and will displace the uncircumcised, and the impure and the foreigners from its midst.” Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 3122 (Richler 701; IMHM 12284), fol. 230v. 97. Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. Add. Qu. 140, fol. 75r.

ePilogUe 1. Soucek and Bornstein, Meeting of Two Worlds, 7–9, quote on p. 9. 2. Soucek and Bornstein, Meeting of Two Worlds, 9. 3. Goss, introduction to Meeting of Two Worlds, by Soucek and Bornstein, 3–12. 4. Here I am paraphrasing Ray’s explanation on why the Iberian Peninsula began to be the focus of attention in the decade prior his essay “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution.” For a reflection on this turn, see Menocal, Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, 155–60. 5. Castro, España en su historia. The literature on this question is, of course, vast. A representative collection of essays is Mann, Glick, and Dodds, Convivencia. 6. Soifer, “Beyond Convivencia”; Meyerson and English, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, xi–xii; Flood, Objects of Translation, 265–66. 7. Ray, “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution,” 3. 8. Horden and Purcell, “Mediterranean and the New Thalassology”; Braudel, Méditerranée et le monde Méditerran. For an example of an environmental history of the Mediterranean

242

Notes to Pages 194–199

that does not presume to show how environmental dynamics made certain communal structures possible, see Grove and Rackham, Nature of Mediterranean Europe. 9. See Nirenberg’s review of Stroumsa’s attempt to view Maimonides as a Mediterranean scholar (“Double Game,” 31–32). 10. Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 39–45; Husain, Faithful Sea, 4–5. 11. Horden and Purcell, “Mediterranean and the New Thalassology,” 729–32. 12. Algazi, “Diversity Rules,” 229. 13. In the introduction to an issue dedicated to cross-cultural exchange, Martin discusses the methodologies available for addressing the kind of fluidity that characterizes the Mediterranean (“Crossing Religious Boundaries”). Representative titles are García-Arenal and Mediano, Orient in Spain; Hames, Art of Conversion; Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews; and Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative. 14. Rotman, Esclaves et l’esclavage; Friedman, Encounter Between Enemies; Rothman, Brokering Empire; Rodriguez, Captives and Their Saviors; Fancy, Mercenary Mediterranean; Lower, “Papacy and Christian Mercenaries.” 15. Fancy’s work on Aragonese political theology is a case in point. Previous interpretations of alliances between the kings of Aragon and Muslim mercenaries tended to reduce religious considerations to mere pragmatics. Fancy, however, argues that in order to level claims of absolute authority, Christian sovereigns deployed cross-religious alliances, which rather embraced the allies’ status as Muslims and were, in fact, profoundly dependent on the religious boundaries that these very alliances reinscribed; see Fancy, “Theologies of Violence,” “Muslim Crusaders,” and Mercenary Mediterranean, 140–52. 16. Husain, Faithful Sea, 9–10. 17. The Corrupting Sea has been criticized for paying too much attention to geography and not enough to cultural dynamics (and possibly also to political agency). This is, perhaps, ironic, as Horden and Purcell criticized works that exploit the notion of the unifying sea in an instrumental way without paying enough attention to the kind of connections that the ecology made possible. See, for example, Harris, “Mediterranean and Ancient History.” It has been argued, in fact, that the weakest aspect of this new and compelling framework has to do with the way religious traditions were treated; see Abulafia, “Mediterraneans,” 64–66. 18. Husain, Faithful Sea, 6; on the theological turn, see, for example, Vries, Religion. 19. Tolan, introduction to Religious Minorities, 17. 20. Tolan, introduction to Religious Minorities, 18. 21. This point about the dismissal of Iberia in scholarship on European literature is made more concisely in Menocal, “Pride and Prejudice in Medieval Studies.” 22. Menocal, Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, 15. 23. Tolan makes this point by tracing the attitude among critics toward the “reconquista” (“Using the Middle Ages,” 335–47). 24. Menocal, Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, xiii. 25. Ribera y Tarragó, “El Arabista español,” 1:468, cited and translated in Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 57. 26. Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 164. 27. Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths, 205. 28. Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 200–1. 29. On variance in the approach to medieval manuscripts, see Nichols, “Introduction,” 1–4. 30. The volume Sea of Languages (edited by Akbari and Mallette), for example, is a tribute to Menocal’s Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, which in many ways foresaw the

Notes to Pages 199–200

243

advent of this postnational philology (see Akbari’s introduction, 3–6). The term “new philology,” which has been at the center of discussions on the future of the humanities and the study of language in the wake of the linguistic turn, could lend itself to a curious philological investigation; see, for example, Orlemanski (“Philology and the Turn Away”), who identifies the impor tant work that Mallette has been doing in staking out the rear-facing vector of philology in a transnational world (European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 198–204). 31. Amer, Crossing Borders, 92. 32. Especially pertinent in this context is the oft-quoted proposition of Bhabha—which has risen nearly to the status of a motto—from The Location of Culture (35–36): “Cultures are never unitary in themselves nor simply dualistic in relation of self to other.” See also Spiegel, “Reflections on the New Philology.” 33. Canepa, “Theorizing Cross-Cultural Interaction,” 9. 34. The founding editors of Crusades, the periodical published by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, believe that an awakening interest in this topic has been fueled by the “end of empires and post-colonialism.” But in light of the commitment to inclusivity that, as they say, will encompass publications also “on neglected topics . . .  such as the relations between crusaders and indigenous populations, in a comparative way,” it seems that perhaps for them, colonialism has, in fact, not yet ended. They state that editions of source material will be one of the journal’s purposes, but by singling out “Arabic, Armenian, and Syriac, accompanied if need be by translations,” as potential languages, they are simply reproducing the distortion that their self-attested Eurocentric orientation effects. See Kedar and Riley-Smith, “Editor’s Statement.” 35. Among the many recent influential collections on the subject, see Kleinhenz and Busby, Medieval Multilingualism; Classen, Multilingualism in the Middle Ages; and Tyler, Conceptualizing Multilingualism in Medieval England. For monographs with a Mediterranean scope, see Léglu, Multilingualism and Mother Tongue, and Dakhlia, Lingua franca. And finally, for recent additions to this field with an insular perspective, see O’Brian, Reversing Babel, and Major, Undoing Babel. 36. See Cohen, echoing, of course, Bhabha, “Introduction: Midcolonial,” 3–4. 37. For some examples of these dynamics, see Amsler, “Creole Grammar and Multilingual Poetics,” and Fulton, “Negotiating Welshness.” The geyser metaphor is inspired by an essay by Fishbane, who reflects on his discovery of how the language of the Mishna could be pregnant (yet another metaphor!) with a history of its own: “Primordial mythic structures might continue as living cultural elements in totally different religious environments— erupting from their subsurface channels into biblical similes and rabbinic metaphors” (“Archeology of the Religious Imagination,” 10–11). 38. Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean, 64. 39. Kinoshita, “Beyond Philology,” 40.

Bibliography

Primary soUrces Abū Shāmah, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismāʻīl. Dhayl ʻala’ al-Rawḍatayn. Edited by Muḥammad Zāhid ibn al-Ḥasan al-Kawtharī. Cairo, 1947. ———. Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn fī Akhbār al-Dawlatayn: al-Nurīyah wa-al-Ṣalāḥīyah. Edited by Ibrāhīm al-Zaybaq. 5 vols. Beirut: Mu’assasāt al-Risālah, 1997. Ambroise. The History of The Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte. Edited by Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber. Translated by Marianne Ailes. 2 vols. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003. Analecta novissima spicilegii Solesmensis: Altera continuatio. Edited by Jean Baptiste Pitra. 2 vols. Paris: Roger et Chernowitz, Bibliopolis, 1885–1888. Die Aufrufe der Päpste zur Befreiung des Heiligen Landes von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang Innozenz IV. Edited by Ursula Schwerin. Berlin: Ebering, 1937. Baruch b. Isaac of Worms. Sefer ha-Terumah. Warsaw, 1897. Benjamin of Tudela. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Critical Text, Translation and Commentary. Edited by Marcus Nathan Adler. London: H. Frowde, 1907. ———. Die Reisenbeschriebungen des R. Benjamin von Tudela: Nach drei Handschriften aus dem 13. und 14. Jahrhundert Stammend und ältern Druckwerken ediert und übersetzt. Edited by Lazar Grünhut. Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1903. Berengier. “De l’avenement Antecrist.” In Deux versions inédites de la légende de l’Antecrist, edited by E. Walberg. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1928. Bernard of Clairvaux. In Praise of a New Knighthood. Translated by Conrad Greenia. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1997. Al-Bundari, al-Fath ibn ‘Ali. Sanā al-Barq al-Shāmī. Edited by Fatḥiyyah al-Nabarawi. Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji, 1979. Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi. Translated by Helen Nicholson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. La Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Tresorier [Ernoul-Bernard]. Edited by Louis Mas-Latrie. Paris, 1871. La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr: 1184–1197. Edited by Margaret  R. Morgan. Documents relatifs a l’histoire des croisades 14. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1982. Continuation de l’histoire des croisades de Guillaume de Tye par Bernard le Trésorier. In Collection des mémoires reatifs à l’histoire de France depuis la fondation de la monarchie française jusqu’au 13e siècle, edited by François Guizot. Paris: Pichon-Béchet, 1827. A Critical Edition of Estoires d’Outremer et de la naissance Salehadin. Edited by Margaret A. Jubb. London: University of London, 1990.

246

Bibliography

Cronaca del templare di Tiro: 1243–1314. Edited by Laura Minervini. Napoli: Liguori, 2000. Al-Dabi, Meir bem Isaac. Shevile Emunah. Riva di Trento: Yakov Markaria, 1558. Al-Dawādārī, Abī Bakr ibn ʻAbd Allāh ibn Aybak. Kanz al-Durar wa-jāmiʻ al-ghurar. Edited by Hāns Rūbirt Rūymir. Vol. 9. Cairo: Maṭbaʻat ʻĪsā al-Bābī alḤalabī, 1960. De constructione castri saphet: Construction et fonctions d’un château fort franc en Terre Sainte. Edited by R. B. C. Huygens. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1981. De expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinum, libellus. Edited by Joseph Stevenson. London: Longman, 1875. Al-Dhahabī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad. Tā’rīkh al-Islām. Edited by ʻUmar ʻAbd al-Salām Tadmurī. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1999. Ecclesiastes Rabbah. In Midrah Rabbah. Translated by L. Rabinowitz. Vol. 8. London: Soncino Press, 1951. Egidio da Viterbo. Scechina e libellus de litteris Hebraicis. Edited by François Secret. Rome: Centro internazionale di studi umanistici, 1959. Esther Rabbah. In Midrah Rabbah. Translated by Mauric Simon. Vol. 9. London: Soncino Press, 1951. Estoire d’Eracles empereur et la conquest de la terre d’Outremer. In RHC. Vol. 2. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1859. Fidentio de Padua. “De recuperatione terrae sanctae.” In Projets de croisade: v. 1290–v. 1330, edited by Jacques Paviot, 53–169. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 2008. La Fille du comte de Pontieu: Conte en prose, versions du XXIIIe et du XVe siècle. Edited by Clovis Brunel. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1923. Fulcher of Chartres. Historia Hierosolymitana. Edited by Heinrich Hagenmeyer. Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1913. ———. A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem. Translated by Frances Rita Ryan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969. Genesis Rabbah. In Midrash Rabbah. Translated by H. Freedman. Vol. 2. London: Soncino Press, 1951. Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum. Edited by Rosalind Hill. London: T. Nelson, 1962. Gesta obsidionis Damiate. In Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores sumptibus societatis illustrandis orientis latini monumentis, edited by Reinhold Röhricht, 71–116. Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1879. Guillaume d’Orange. Four Twelfth-Century Epics. Edited by Joan M. Ferrante. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974. Al-Ḥarizi, Judah. The Book of Taḥkemoni [in Hebrew]. Edited by Yosef Yahalom and Na’oyah Katsumatah. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak ben Zvi, 2010. ———. Kitab al-Durar: A Book in Praise of God and the Israelite Communities. Edited by Joshua Blau, Paul Fenton, and Joseph Yahalom. Jerusalem: Yad ben Zvi, 2009. ———. The Tahkemoni of Judah al-Harizi: An English Translation. Translated by Victor Emanuel Reichert. Jerusalem: R. H. Cohen’s Press, 1965. Haverkamp, Eva, ed. Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des Ersten Kreuzzugs. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2005. de Hodenc, Raoul. “Le Roman des Eles” and the Anonymous “Ordene de Chevalerie”: Two Early Old French Didactic Poems. Edited and translated by Keith Busby. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1983. The Holy Qu’rān. Translated by Yusuf Ali. Indianapolis: H and C International, 1992.

Bibliography

247

Hugh of St. Victor. De sacramentis christiane fidei. Edited by Rainer Berndt. Münster: Aschendorff, 2008. Ibn Abi Shaybah, Abu Bakr. Kitāb al-Musannaf. Edited by Mukhtar Ahmad al-Nadawi. Vols. 9 and 15. Bombay: al-Dar a-Salafiya, 1979. Ibn al-’Adim, Kamāl al-Dīn. Bughyat al-ṭalab fī Tārīkh Ḥalab. Edited by Suhayl Zakkār. Damascus: Zakar, 1988. ———. Bughyat al-ṭalab fī Tārīkh Ḥalab. Translated by E. Blochet. Paris: E. Leroux, 1900. Ibn al-’Amid, al-Makin. “La ‘Chronique des Ayyoubides’ d’ al-Makin b. al-‘Amid.” Edited by Claude Cahen. Bulletin d’études orientales 15 (1955–1957): 109–84. Ibn al-’Arabī, Muḥī al-Dīn. Muhādarāt al-Abrār wa-Musāmarāt al-Akhyār. 2 vols. Damascus: Dār al-Yaqẓah al-ʻArabīyah, 1968. Ibn ‘Asakir, ʻAlī ibn al-Ḥasan. Tarīkh madīnat Dimashq. Edited by ’Ali Shibri. 80 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1995–1998. Ibn al-Athīr, ‘Izz al-Dīn Muḥammad. Al-Kāmil fī al-Tā’rīkh. Edited by Umar ‘Abd al-Salam Tadmurī. 11 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1997. Ibn al-Furāt, Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Raḥim. Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-ʼl-Mulūk. In Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders: Selections from Tārīkh al-Duwal wa-al-Mulūk, edited and translated by U. and M. C. Lyons. 2 vols. Cambridge: Heffer, 1971. Ibn Ḥazm, ʻAlī ibn Aḥmad. Al-Muḥallā bī-al-āthār. Edited by ‘Abd al-Ghaffār Sulaymān alBandārī. 12 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah, 1988. Ibn Hiyya, Abraham. Sefer Megilat ha-Megaleh. Edited by Ze’ev Poznanski. Berlin: Hevrat Mekize Nirdamin, 1924. Ibn al-Jawzī, Sibt. Mir’āt al-Zamān fi Tārikh al-Aʻyān. 8 vols. Hyderabad: Dairat al-Ma’arif al-Osmania, 1951. ———. Mir’at al-Zaman fi Tarikh al-Aʻyan. Facsimile ed. Edited by James Richard Jewett. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907. Ibn al-Kathīr, Ismāʻīl ibn ʻUmar al-Dimashqi. Tabaqāt al-Fuqahā’ al-Shāfi’īyīn. Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfah al-Dīnīyah, 1993. Ibn Munqidh, Usamah. The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades. Translated by Paul M. Cobb. London: Penguin, 2008. Ibn Nabīh, ʻAlī ibn Muḥammad. Dīwān Ibn al-Nabīh. Edited by ʻUmar Muḥammad al-Asʻad. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1969. Ibn al-Qalānīsī, Abū Yaʻlā Ḥamzah ibn Asad. Dhayl Tarīkh Dimashq. Edited by H. F. Amedroz. Leiden: Brill, 1908. Ibn Shaddād, Bahā’ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Rāfiʻ. Al-Aʻlāq al-Khaṭīrah fī dhikr umarā’ al-Shām waal-Jazīrah. Edited by Sami Dahhān. Damascus: Al-Maʻhad al-Faransī lil-Dirāsāt alʻArabīyah, 1963. ———. Al-Nawādir al-Sulṭānīyah wa-al-maḥāsin al-yūsufīyah. Edited by Jamāl al-Dīn alShayyāl. Cairo: Al-Mu’assasah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah, 1964. ———. Sīrat Salah al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī. Edited by Muḥammad ḥusni Mustafa. Halab: Mashūrāt Dār al-Qalam al-ʻArabī, 2001. Ibn al-Sulaymān, Muqātil. Tafsīr. Edited by ʻAbd Allāh Maḥmūd Shiḥātah. 5 vols. Cairo: alHay’a al-Misriya, 1983. Ibn Taghrībirdī, Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf. Al-Nujūm al-Zāhirah fī Mulūk Miṣr wa-al-Qāhirah. 10 vols. Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīyah, 1929. Ibn Verga, Solomon. Sefer Shevet Yehudah. Edited by Y. Baer and A. Shohet. Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 1947.

248

Bibliography

Ibn Wāṣil, Jamāl al-Dīn. Mufarrij al-Kurūb fī Akhbār Banī Ayyūb. Vols. 1–3, edited by Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl, Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Jāmiʻat Fu’ād al-Awwal, 1953–1960; reprint 1988. Vols. 4–5, edited by Hasanayn Muḥammad Rabī’, Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Jāmiʻat Fu’ād alAwwal, 1972–77. Vol. 6, edited by ʻUmar ʻAbd al-Salām Tadmurī, Beirut: al-Maktabah al-ʻAṣrīyah, 2004. Isaac of Corbeil. Sefer Amudei Golah haNikra Sefer Mizvot Katan. Jerusalem: Mefitzei Or, 1958. Al-Isfahānī, ‘Imād al-Dīn Muḥammad. Al-Barq al-Shāmī. Vol. 3 edited by Mustafa al-Hayari; vol. 5 edited by Faliḥ Ḥusayn. Amman: Mu’assasat ‘Abd al-Hamid Shuman, 1987. ———. Al-Fatḥ al-Qussī fī al-Fatḥ al-Qudsī. Edited by Muhammad Ṣubḥ. Cairo: al-Dār alQawmīyah lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 1965. ———. Kharīdat al-Qasr wa-Jarīdat al-’Asr. Edited by Shukrī Fayṣal. Damascus: Matbū’āt al-Majma’ al-’Ilmi al-’Arabī, 1955. Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi. In Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, edited by William Stubbs. Vol. 1. London: Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1894. Jacques de Vitry. The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry. Edited by Thomas Frederick Crane. London: Publication for the Folklore Society, 1890. ———. Historia Occidentalis. Edited by John F. Hinnebusch. Fribourg: University Press, 1972. ———. Historia Orientalis. Edited by Jean Donnadieu. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. ———. Lettres de la cinquième croisade. Edited by R. B. C. Huygens. Leiden: Brepols, 1998. Jellinek, Adolf. Bet ha-Midrash [in Hebrew]. 6 vols. Leipzig: Nies, 1853–1877. Joinville, Jean de. Histoire de Saint Louis. Edited by Natalis de Wailly. Paris: Hachette, 1888. Translated by Caroline Smith in Chronicles of the Crusades (London: Penguin, 2008). Josephus. Jewish Antiquities. Edited by H. Theckeray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930. Kaspi, Joseph. Tam ha-Kesef [in Hebrew]. Edited by Isaac Last. London, 1913. Ha-Levi, Judah. The Kuzari: The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Faith. Edited by Dov Aikhenvald. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2008. Leviticus Rabbah. Edited by M. Margulies. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1956. Leviticus Rabbah. In Midrah Rabbah. Translated by Judah Slotki. Vol. 4. London: Soncino Press, 1939. Maḥzor Vitry. Edited by Aryeh Goldsmidt. Jerusalem: Mahon Otsar ha-Poskim, 2003. Al-Maqdisī, Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Wāḥid. Faḍā’il Bayt al-Maqdis. Edited by Muḥammad Muti’ al-Ḥafiz. Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1985. Al-Maqdisī, Musharraf ibn al-Murajja’. Faḍā’il Bayt al-Maqdis wa-al-Khalīl wa-Faḍā’il alShām. Edited by Ofer Livne-Kafri. Shefa’Amr: Dār al-Mashriq lil-Tarjamah wa-alṬibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 1995. Al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī. Kitāb al-Sulūk li-Maʻrifat Duwal al-Mulūk. Edited by Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Ziyādah. 4 vols. Cairo: Lajnat al-Ta’lif wa-al-Tarjamah wa-al-Nashr, 1934. Mas’ūdī. Murūj al-Dhahab wa-Maʻādin al-Jawhar. Edited by ‘Abd al-Majīd Tu’mah Halabi. Beirut: Dār al-Maʻrifah, 2005. McGinn, Bernard, ed. and trans. Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore, the Franciscan Spirituals, Savonarola. New York: Paulist Press, 1979. Michelant, H., and G. Raynaud, eds. Itinéraires à Jérusalem et descriptions de la Terre Sainte, rédigés en Français aux XIe, XIIe et XIIIe Siècles. Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1882.

Bibliography

249

Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, edited by Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Shalem, 1996. Nahmanides. Commentary on the Torah. Edited and translated by Charles Chavel. 5 vols. New York: Shilo, 1973. ———. Kitve Rabenu Mosheh ben Nahman. Edited by Charles Chavel. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1962. ———. Writings and Discourses. Translated by Charles Chavel. New York: Shilo, 1978. Oliver of Paderborn. “Historia Damiatina.” In Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, edited by Hermann Hoogeweg, 159–280. Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1894. Ordericus Vitalis. The Ecclesiastical History. Edited and translated by Marjorie Chibnall. 6 vols. London: Bohn, 1853–1990. Orosius, Paulus. Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. Translated by Roy Deferrari. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1964. Paris, Matthew. Chronica Majora. Edited by H. R. Luard. Rolls Series 57. London, 1877. Pesikta Rabbati. Edited by M. Friedmann. Vienna, 1880. Pesikta Zutarta. Edited by Shelomo Buber. Vilna, 1880. Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana: According to an Oxford Manuscript with Variants from All Known Manuscripts and Genizoth Fragments and Parallel Passages with Commentary and Introduction. Edited by Dov Mandelbaum. 2 vols. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of Amer ica, 1962. Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana. Translated Jacob Neusner on the basis of Shelomo Buber’s edition. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987. Peter the Venerable. The Letters of Peter the Venerable. Edited by Giles Constable. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Prophetia filli Agap. In Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores sumptibus societatis illustrandis orientis latini monumentis, edited by Reinhold Röhricht, 215–22. Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1879. Raimond of Aguilers. Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem. Edited by John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968. Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux [RHC]. 5 vols. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1859. Robert the Monk. The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk. Edited by Damian Kempf and Marcus Bull. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013. ———. Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade. Translated by Carol Sweetenham. Burlington, VA: Ashgate, 2005. Röhricht, Reinhold, ed. Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores sumptibus societatis illustrandis orientis latini monumentis. Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1879. Ruth Rabbah: An Analytical Translation. Translated by Jacob Neusner. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989. Sa’adya Ga’on. Sefer ha-Emunot ve-ha-De’ot. Translated into Hebrew by Judah ibn Tibbon. Tel Aviv: Sifriyati Press, 1957. al-Ṣanʻānī, Abū Bakr ʻAbd al-Razzāq ibn Hammām. Al-Muṣannaf. Edited by Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-ʻAẓamī. 11 vols. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī. 1970–1972. Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy. Translated by Reuven Hammer. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.

250

Bibliography

Sifre ‘al Sefer Devarim. Edited by Aryeh Finkelstein. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1969. Sifre to Deuteronomy: An Analytical Translation. Translated by Jacob Neusner. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987. Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars. Cairo: al-Hayah al-Misrīyah al-`āmmah lil-Kitāb, 1923. Reprint, 1996. Page numbers refer to 1996 edition. Sīrat Fāris al-Yaman al-Malik Sayf ibn dhī Yazan [Sīra Sayf ibn dhī Yazan]. 4 vols. Cairo: Maktabat al-Jumhūrīyah al-‘Arabīya, 1877. Song of Roland. Translated by Glyn Burgess. New York: Penguin, 1990. The Song of the Cid: A Dual-Language Edition. Edited by Burton Raffel. New York: Penguin, 2009. Al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn. Al-Durr al-Manthūr fi-al-Tafsir al-Ma’tūr. Edited by ʻAbd al-Razzāq al-Mahdī. 6 vols. Cairo: al-Anwar al-Muhammadiya, 1961. Al-Tabarī, Abu Ja‘far Muhammad. Tafsīr al-Tabarī. Edited by A. al-Turki. Vol. 16. Riyad: Dār ʻĀlam al-Kutub lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2003. ———. Ta’rīkh al-Rusūl wa-al-Mulūk. Translated by G. W. Hatwing. Vol. 2. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. ———. Ta’rikh al-Rusul wa-al-Mulūk. Translated by William Brinner. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. Taku, Moses ben Ḥisdai. Ketav Tamim. Jerusalem: Merkaz Dinur, 1984. The “Templar of Tyre”: Part III of the “Deeds of the Cypriots.” Edited by Paul Crawford. Burlington, VA: Ashgate, 2003. Testimonia minora de quinto bello sacro e chronicis occidentalibus. Edited by Reinholdus Röhricht. Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1882. Al-Wāsiṭī, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad. Faḍā’il al-Bayt al-Muqaddas. Edited by Isaac Hasson. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979. William of Tripoli. Notitia de Machometo; De statu Sarracenorum. Edited by Peter Engels. Würzburg: Echter, 1992. William of Tyre. Chronique: Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum. Edited by R. B. C. Huygens. 2 vols. Corpus Christianorum 63. Turnholti: Brepols, 1986. ———. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. Translated by Emily A. Babcock and A. C. Krey. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Al-Yūninī, Quṭb al-Dīn. Dhayl Mirʼāt al-Zamān. 4 vols. Hyderabad: Ddtirat al-MaCrif alCuthminiyya, 1954–1961. ———. Dhayl Mirʼāt al-zamān. Edited by Ḥamzah Aḥmad ʻAbbās. 3 vols. Abu Dhabi: Hayʼat Abū Ẓaby lil-Thaqāfah wa-al-Turāth, al-Majmaʻ al-Thaqāfī, 2007. Al-Zahir, Muhi al-Din ibn ‘Abd. Al-Rawḍ al-Ẓahir fi sīrat al-Malik al-Ẓāhir. Edited by ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Khuwayṭir. Riyad: al-Khuwayṭir, 1976. Zuhayr, Bahā’ al-Dīn. Dīwān Bahā’ al-Dīn Zuhayr. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 1964.

secondary soUrces Abel, F. M. “Le couvent des frères Precheurs à St.-Jean d’Acre.” Revue Biblique 43 (1934): 265–84. Abulafia, Anna Sapir. “Invectives Against Christianity in the Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade.” In Crusade and Settlement, edited by P. Edbury, 66–74. Cardiff: University College Press, 1985.

Bibliography

251

Abulafia, David. “Mediterraneans.” In Rethinking the Mediterranean, edited by W. V. Harris, 64–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Aescoly, Zeev. Jewish Messianic Movements: Sources and Documents on Messianism in Jewish History from the Bar-Kochba Revolt Until Recent Times [in Hebrew]. 8 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 1956. Afsar, Ayaz. “Plot Motifs in Joseph/Yūsuf Story: A Comparative Study of Biblical and Qurʼānic Narrative.” Islamic Studies 46, no. 2 (2006): 167–89. Ailes, Marianne. “The Admirable Enemy? Saladin and Saphadin in Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte.” In Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar, Presented to Malcolm Barber, edited by Norman Housley, 51–64. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Ainsworth, Peter. “Contemporary and ‘Eyewitness’ History.” In Historiography in the Middle Ages, edited by D. M. Deliyannis, 249–76. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. “Erasing the Body: History and Memory in Medieval Siege Poetry.” In Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, edited by Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager, 146–73. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. ———. Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, and Karla Mallette, eds. A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Alexander, Paul. The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Algazi, Gadi. “Diversity Rules: Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea.” Mediterranean Historical Review 20, no. 2 (2005): 227–46. Alphandéry, Paul. La chretiénté et l’idée de Croisade. Paris: A. Michel, 1954. Altaner, Berthold. Die Dominikanermissionen des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts: Forschungen zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Unionen und der Mohammedaner- und Heidenmission des Mittelalters. Habelschwerdt: Frankes Buchhandlung, 1924. Amer, Sahar. Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Amitai-Preiss, Reuven. “Edward of England and Abagha Ilkhan: A Reexamination of a Failed Attempt at Mongol-Frankish Cooperation.” In Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of Crusades, edited by Michael Gervers and James Powell, 75–82. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001. ———. Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Amsler, Mark. “Creole Grammar and Multilingual Poetics.” In Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbours, edited by Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby, 16–42. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Arberry, A. J. Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Ashe, Laura. “The Ideal of Knighthood in English and French Writing, 1100–1230: Crusade, Piety, Chivalry, and Patriotism.” In Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission, and Memory, edited by Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf, 155–68. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2014. Ashtor-Strauss, Eliyahu. The History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria Under Mamluk Rule [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1944.

252

Bibliography

———. “Saladin and the Jews.” Hebrew College Union Annual 27 (1956): 305–26. Aslanov, Cyril. Le français au Levant, jadis et naguère: À la recherche d’une langue perdue. Paris: H. Champion, 2006. ———. “Indices d’une couleur dialectale picarde, wallonne et lorraine dans le français du Royaume de Jérusalem (XIIIème siècle).” In Des langues collatérales: Problèmes linguistiques, sociolinguistiques et glottopolitiques de la proximité linguistique, edited by J.-M. Éloy, 257–69. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004. ———. “Languages in Contact in the Latin East: Acre and Cyprus.” Crusades 1 (2002): 155–81. Aslanov, Cyril, and Benjamin Kedar. “Problems in the Study of Trans-Cultural Borrowing in the Frankish Levant.” In Hybride Kulturen im mittelalterlichen Europa: Vorträge und Workshops einer internationalen Frühlingsschule, edited by Michael Borgolte and Bernd Schneidmüller, 277–85. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. Assaf, Simha. Sources and Studies in Jewish History [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1946. Atrache, Laila. Die Poilitik der Ayyubiden: Die fränkisch-islamischen Beziehungen in der ersten Hälfte des 7./13. Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Feindbildes. Münster: Rhema, 1996. Attiya, Hussein M. “Knowledge of Arabic in the Crusader States in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” Journal of Medieval History 25, no. 3 (1999): 203–13. Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard Trask. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. d’Avray, David. The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris Before 1300. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Al-Azhari, Taef Kamal. “The Influence of Eunuchs in the Ayyubid Kingdom.” In Egypt in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk Eras IV: Proceedings of the 9th and 10th International Colloquium Organized at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (May 2000 and 2001), edited by Urbain Vermeulen and D. de Smet, 127–42. Leuven: Pieters, 2005. Azriel, Abraham b. Arugat ha-Bosem. Edited by Ephraim E. Urbach. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamin, 1939. Babcock, Emily, and A. C. Krey. Introduction to A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Baer, Yizhak. “Eine jüdische Messiasprophetie auf das Jahr 1186 und der dritte Kreuzzug.” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 70 (1926): 113–22, 155–65. Bancourt, Paul. Les musulmans dans les chansons de geste du cycle du roi. Aix en Provence: Université de Provence, 1982. Barber, Malcolm. The Crusades States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. ———. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. “The Social Context of the Templars.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 34 (1984): 27–46. Barton, Richard. “Aristocratic Culture: Kinship, Chivalry, and Court Culture.” In A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by Carol Lansing and Edward English, 505–7. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Becker, Brian N. “Riccoldo da Montecroce’s Epistolae V commentatoriae de perditione Acconis, 1291 as Evidence of Multifaceted Textual Movement in the Eastern Mediterranean.” In Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean, edited by Y. Tzvi Langermann and Robert G. Morrison, 101–15. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.

Bibliography

253

Bennet, Philip, ed. The Cycle of Guillaume D’Orange or Garin De Monglane: A Critical Bibliography. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2004. Benton, J. “Qui etaient les parents de Jacques de Vitry?” Moyen Âge 70 (1964): 39–47. Ben-Zvi, Itzhak. She’ar Yishuv. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak Ben-Zvi, 1965. Berger, David. “Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism.” AJS Review 10 (1985): 142. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Biale, David. Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Bianquis, Thierry. Damas et la Syrie sous la domination Fatimide, 359–468 / 969–1076: Essai d’interprétation de chroniques arabes médiévales. Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1986–1989. Bird, Jessalynn. “Crusade and Reform: The Sermons of Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms nouv. acq. lat. 999.” In The Fifth Crusade in Context: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century, edited by E. J. Mylod, Guy Perry, Thomas W. Smith, and Jan Vandeburie, 93–113. London: Routledge, 2016. ———. “The Historia Orientalis of Jacques de Vitry: Visual and Written Commentaries as Evidence of a Text’s Audience, Reception, and Utilization.” Essays in Medieval Studies 20, no. 1 (2003): 56–74. ———. “James of Vitry’s Sermons to Pilgrims.” Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008): 81–113. ———. “Medicine for Body and Soul: Jacques de Vitry’s Sermons to Hospitallers and Their Charges.” In Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, edited by Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler, 91–108. York: York Medieval Press, 2001. ———. “Reform or Crusade? Anti-Usury and Crusade Pleading During the Pontificate of Innocent III.” In Pope Innocent III and His World, edited by John Moore, 165–85. Aldershot: Variorum, 1999. Blatherwick, Helen. Prophets, Gods, and Kings in Sīrat Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan: An Intertextual Reading of an Egyptian Popular Epic. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Bokser, Baruch. “Wonder-Working and the Rabbinic Tradition.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 16 (1985): 42–92. Bonfil, Reuven. “ ‘ The Vision of Daniel’ as a Historical and Literary Source” [in Hebrew]. Zion (1979): 111–47. Bonner, Michael. Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1996. ———. “Madyan Shu’ayb in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Lore.” Journal of Semitic Studies 29 (1984): 53–64. Bousset, Wilhelm. The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore. Translated by A. H. Keane. London: Hutchinson, 1896. Boustan, Ra’anan S., and Annette Yoshiko Reed. “Introduction to Theme-Issue: ‘Blood and the Boundaries of Jewish and Christian Identities in Late Antiquity.’ ” Henoch 30, no. 2 (2008): 229–42. Branham, Joan R. “Blood in Flux, Sanctity at Issue.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 31 (1997): 53–70. Brann, Ross. “Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Muslims and Jews in Judah alḤarizi’s Taḥkemoni.” Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 1 (1992): 1–22. Brunel, Clovis. “Introduction.” In La fille du comte de Pontieu: Conte en prose, versions du XXIIIe et du XVe siècle, edited by Clovis Brunel, vii–lxxv. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1923.

254

Bibliography

Buchler, Adolph. Types of Jewish Palestinian Piety: From 70 BCE to 70 CE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922. Buck, Andrew D. The Principality of Antioch and Its Frontiers in the Twelfth Century. Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2017. ———. “Settlement, Identity, and Memory in the Latin East: An Examination of the Term ‘Crusader States.’ ” English Historical Review 135, no. 573 (2020): 1–32. Bull, Marcus. Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. ———. “Views of Muslims and Jerusalem in Miracle Stories, c. 1000–c. 1200: Reflections on the Study of Frist Crusaders’ Motivations.” In The Experience of Crusading, vol. 1, Western Approaches, edited by Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, 13–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Buresi, Pascal. “Les conversions d’églises et de mosquées en Espagne aux XIe-XIIIe siècles.” In Religion et société urbaine au Moyen Âge, edited by Patrick Boucheron and Jacques Chiffoleau, 333–50. Paris: Publication de la Sorbonne, 2000. Burgtorf, Jochen. “The Antiochene War of Succession.” In The Crusader World, edited by Adrian J. Boas, 196–211. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016. Burnett, Charles. “Antioch as a Link Between Arabic and Latin Culture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” In Occident et Proche-Orient: Contacts scientifiques au temps des croisades, edited by A. Tihon, I. Draelants, and B. van den Abeele, 1–78. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Burton, John. “The Quran and the Islamic Practice of Wuḍu.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 51, no. 1 (1988): 21–58. Buttenwieser, Moses. Outline of the Neo-Hebraic Apocalyptic Literature. Cincinnati, OH: Jennings and Pue, 1901. Bysted, Ane. The Crusade Indulgence: Spiritual Rewards and the Theology of the Crusades: 1095– 1216. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Cahen, Claude. La Syrie du nord à l’époque des croisades et la principauté franque d’Antioche. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1940. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion, 1992. Canepa, Matthew. “Theorizing Cross-Cultural Interaction Among the Ancient and Early Medieval Mediterranean, Near East, and Asia.” Ars Orientalis 38 (2010): 121–54. Caputo, Nina. “ ‘In the Beginning . . .’: Typology, History, and the Unfolding Meaning of Creation in Nahmanides’ Exegesis.” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 1 (1999): 54–82. Carmoly, Elyakim. “Eleh Masa’ot.” In Agudat Agadot, edited by H. M. Horowitz, 8–25. Berlin: Z. H. Ittskovski, 1881. Castro, Américo. España en su historia, cristianos, moros y judíos. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1948. ———. “Présence du Sultan Saladin dans les littératures romanes.” Diogène 8 (1954): 18–47. Cazel, Fred A. “Financing the Crusades.” In A History of the Crusades, vol. 6, The Impact of the Crusades on Europe, edited by Harry Hazard and Norman Zacour, 116–50. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Chamberlain, Michael. Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus: 1190–1350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Chaumont, E. “al-Sulamī.” Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Brill Online, 2012. http://dx.doi .org.ezproxy.bgu.ac.il /10.1163/1573-3912 _islam _ SIM _7148. Chavel, Charles. The Disputation at Barcelona. New York: Shilo, 1983.

Bibliography

255

———. “On the Question Where Nahmanides Composed His Commentary on the Torah.” Ma’ayan 8, no. 4 (1968): 32–36. ———. Ramban: His Life and Teachings. New York: P. Feldheim, 1960. Chazan, Ephraim. “Israel and the Nations in the Poetry of R. Judah ha-Levi and in Sefer ha-Kuzari” [in Hebrew]. Masoret ha-Piyyut 1 (1997): 83–91. Chazan, Robert. Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ———. European Jewry and the First Crusade. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. ———. Medieval Jewry in Northern France: A Political and Social History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Christie, Niall. The Book of Jihad: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. ———. “Fact vs. Fiction, Theory vs. Practice: Muslim Attitudes Towards Fighting Women in the Crusading Period.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Toronto, Canada, April 2017. ———. “Jerusalem in the Kitab al-Jihad of ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106).” Medieval Encounters 13, no. 2 (2007): 209–21. ———. “Noble Betrayers of Their Faith, Families, and Folk: Some Non-Muslim Women in Mediaeval Arabic Popular Literature.” Folklore 123 (2012): 84–98. ———. “Parallel Preachings: Urban II and al-Sulami.” Al-Masaq 15, no. 2 (2003): 139–48. Classen, Albrecht, ed. Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Communication and Miscommunication in the Premodern World. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Cobb, Paul M. The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Cohen, Esther. “The Expression of Pain in the Later Middle Ages: Deliverance, Acceptance, and Infamy.” In Bodily Extremities: Reoccupations with the Human Body, edited by Florike Egmond and Robert Zwijnenberg, 209–10. Burlington: Ashgate, 2003. Cohen, Gerson. “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought.” In Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, edited by A. Altman, 19–48. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. ———. “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sepharadim.” In Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, edited by Marc Saperstein, 202–33. New York: New York University Press, 1992. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Introduction: Midcolonial.” In The Postcolonial Middle Ages, edited by Jeffery Jerome Cohen, 1–17. New York: Palgrave, 2000. ———. “On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 (2001): 114–46. Cohen, Jeremy. The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Cole, Penny. “ ‘O God, the Heathen Have Come into Your Inheritance’ (Ps. 78.1): The Theme of Religious Pollution in Crusade Documents, 1095–1188.” In Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, edited by Maya Shatzmiller, 84–111. Leiden: Brill, 1993. ———. The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land: 1096–1270. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1991. Connelly, Bridget. Arab Folk Epic and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Constable, Giles. “The Financing of the Crusades.” In Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century, 117–42. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008. Cook, David. Martyrdom in Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

256

Bibliography

———. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Cook, Michael. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2002. Cornish, Alison. “Translation Galliae: Effects of Early Franco-Italian Literature.” Romantic Review 97 (2006): 309–30. Coureas, Nicholas. “The Use of the Arabic Language in Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus: 1191– 1570.” In Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk Eras, edited by Urbain Vermeulen, Kristof D’hulster, and Jo van Steenbergen, 8:398–400. Leuven: Peeters, 2016. Cowdrey, H. E. J. “The Peace and Truce of God in the Eleventh Century.” Past and Present 46, no. 1 (1970): 42–67. Croizy-Naquet, Catherine. “La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu: L’espace et le déchiffrement du texte.” In Littérature et révélation, edited by Catherine Croizy-Naquet, 195–218. Paris: Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense, 2010. ———. “La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu dans les Estoires d’Outremer.” In Le texte dans le texte: L’interpolation médiévale, edited by Annie Combes and Michelle Szkilnik, 163–80. Paris: Garnier, 2014. Crone, Patricia, and Martin Hinds. God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Crouch, David. The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900– 1300. London: Pearson Longman, 2005. ———. “Chivalry and Courtliness: Colluding Constructs.” In Soldiers, Nobles, and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, edited by Peter Coss and Christopher Tyerman, 32–48. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2009. Crow, Joan. “The Art of the Medieval Conteur: A Study of the Fille du Comte de Pontieu.” French Studies 30 (1976): 1–18. Cuffel, Alexandra. “Call and Response: European Jewish Emigration to Egypt and Palestine.” JQR 90 (1999–2000): 61–102. ———. Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Cutler, Anthony. “Everywhere and Nowhere: The Invisible Muslim and Christian SelfFashioning in the Culture of Outremer.” In France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, edited by Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney, 253–81. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Dajani-Shakeel, Hadia. “Natives and Franks in Palestine: Perceptions and Interaction.” In Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, 161–84. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990. ———. “A Re-Assessment of Some Medieval and Modern Perceptions of the CounterCrusade.” In The Jihad and Its Times, edited by Hadia Dajani-Shakeel and Ronald Messier, 41–70. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. Dakhlia, Jocelyne. Lingua franca: Histoire d’une langue metissé en Méditerranée. Paris: Actes Sud, 2008. Damian-Grint, Peter. “Apocalyptic Prophecy in Old French: An Overview.” Reading Medieval Studies 26 (2000): 49–76. Dan, Joseph. “Armilus: The Jewish Antichrist and the Origin and Dating of the ‘Sefer Zerubbavel.’ ” In Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, edited by Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen, 73–104. Leiden: Brill, 1998.

Bibliography

257

———. “Ashkenazic Hasidism and the Maimonidean Controversy.” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–1993): 42–44. Daniel, E. R. The Franciscan Concept of Mission. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. Daniel, Norman. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1960. D’Avrey, David. The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris Before 1300. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Decter, Jonathan P. Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy Among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2018. ———. Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Dijkstra, Cathrynke Th. J. La chanson de croisade: Étude thématique d’un genre hybride. Amsterdam: Schiphouwer et Brinckman, 1995. Dodd, Erica Cruikshank. “Jerusalem: ‘Fons et Origo’; Sources in ‘Outremer’ for the Development of Western Medieval Art.” In Interactions: Artistic Interchange Between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period, edited by Colum Hourihane, 11–27. Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, 2007. Donnadieu, Jean. Jacques de Vitry (1175/1180–1240): Entre l’Orient et l’Occident; L’évêque aux trois visages. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. ———. “Narratio patriarcae: Origine et fortune d’un récit sur le Proche-Orient musulman vers 1200.” Moyen Âge 124 (2018): 283–305. ———. “La représentation de l’Islam dans l’historia oriental.” Moyen Âge 114, nos. 3–4 (2008): 487–508. Donner, Fred. “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War.” In Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions, edited by John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, 31–69. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. D’Ottone, Arianne. “Manuscripts as Mirrors of a Multilingual and Multicultural Society: The Case of the Damascus Find.” In Negotiating Co-Existence: Communities, Cultures, and Convivencia in Byzantine Society, edited by Barbara Crostini and Sergio La Porta, 63–88. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966. ———. Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory: Essays in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, 1992. Dozy, Reinhart. Supplement aux Dictionnaires Arabes. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1877–1881. Drory, Joseph. “Al-Nasir Dawud: A Much Frustrated Ayyubid Prince.” al-Masaq 15, no. 2 (2003): 161–87. Drory, Rina. “The Invisible Connection: On the Literary Products of a Medieval Encounter Between the Three Cultures” [in Hebrew]. Pe’amim 46 (1991): 9–28. ———. “Literary Contacts and Where to Find Them: On Arabic Literary Models in Medieval Jewish Literature.” Poetics Today 14, no. 2 (1993): 277–302. Duggan, Joseph J. “Medieval Epic and History in the Romance Literatures.” In Epic and History, edited by Kurt Raaflaub and David Konstan, 280–92. Hoboken, NJ: WileyBlackwell, 2008.

258

Bibliography

Edbury, Peter W. “Ernoul, Eracles, and the Beginnings of Frankish Rule in Cyprus, 1191– 1232.” In Medieval Cyprus: A Place of Cultural Encounter, edited by Sabine Rogge and Michael Grünbart, 29–51. Münster: Waxmann, 2015. ———. “Feudal Obligations in the Latin East.” Byzantion: Revue Internationale des Etudes Byzantines 47 (1977): 328–56. ———. “The French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia: The Manuscript Tradition.” Crusades 6 (2007): 69–105. ———. “The Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations of Willian of Tyre.” In Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Rudolf Hiestand, 139–53. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. ———. “New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre.” Crusades 9 (2010): 107–36. ———. “Propaganda and Faction in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Background to Hattin.” In Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, edited by Maya Shatzmiller, 173–89. Leiden: Brill, 1993. Edbury, Peter, and John Gordon Rowe. William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ———. “William of Tyre and the Patriarchal Elections of 1180.” English Historical Review 93 (1978): 1–25. Eddé, Anne-Marie. Saladin. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Ehrenkreutz, Andrew. Saladin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972. Einbinder, Susan. Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Elad, Amikam. Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage. Leiden: Brill, 1995. El Cheikh-Saliba, Nadia. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Ellenblum, Ronnie. The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950–1072. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ———. Crusader Castles and Modern Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ———. Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Emanuel, Simcha. “Did Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg Refuse to be Ransomed?” Jewish Studies Quarterly 24 (2017): 23–38. ———. “RaSHBA’s Responsa to the Sages of Acre.” Tarbiz 83, no. 3 (2015): 465–89. ———. “R. Yehiel of Paris: His History and Link to the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 8 (2009): 86–99. Emery, Richard W. “Documents Concerning Some Jewish Scholars in Perpignan in the Thirteenth Century.” Michael 4 (1976): 27–48. Emmerson, Richard K. “Anti-Christ as Anti-Saint: The Significance of Abbot Adso’s Libellus de Antichristi.” American Benedictine Review 30 (1979): 175–90. Emmerson, Richard K., and Ronald B. Herzman. The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Epstein, J. “R. Moses Taku b. Hasdai and His Book ‘Ketav Tamim.’ ” In Studies in Talmud Literature and Semitic Languages [in Hebrew], edited by Ezra Melamed, 1:294–302. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983.

Bibliography

259

Erder, Yoram. “The Mourners of Zion.” In Karaite Judaism: A Guide to Its History and Literary Sources, edited by Meira Polliack, 213–35. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Erdmann, Carl. The Origin of the Idea of Crusade. Translated by Marshal Baldwin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. Even-Shemuel, Yehudah. Midrashe Geulah: Jewish Apocalypses from the Talmud to the Beginning of the Sixth Millennium. Tel Aviv: Mosad Biyalik, 1943. Fancy, Hussein. The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. ———. “Muslim Crusaders: Guzmán el Bueno and the Limits of Secular History.” al-Masaq 30 (2018): 248–65. ———. “Theologies of Violence: The Recruitment of Muslim Soldiers by the Crown of Aragon.” Past and Present 211, no. 1 (2013): 39–73. Feinstein, Eva Levavi. “Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible: A New Perspective.” In Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, edited by Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim, 114–45. New York: T & T Clark, 2010. Fierro, Maribel. “Conversion, Ancestry, and Universal Religion: The Case of the Almohads in the Islamic West (Sixth/Twelfth–Seventh/Thirteenth Centuries).” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 2, no. 2 (2010): 155–73. Firestone, Reuven. “Conceptions of Holy War in Biblical and Qur’anic Tradition.” Journal of Religious Ethics, 24, no. 1 (1996): 99–123. ———. “Holy War in Modern Judaism? ‘Mitzvah War’ and the Problem of the ‘Three Vows.’ ” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no. 4 (2006): 954–82. ———. Jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Fishbane, Elisha. As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Fishbane, Michael. “Archeology of the Religious Imagination.” AJS Perspectives, Fall 2011, 16–20. Fleischer, Ezra. Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life, in Memory of Isadore Twersky. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001. Flood, Finbarr. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Flori, Jean. Chroniqueurs et propagandistes: Introduction critique aux sources de la première croisade. Geneva: Droz, 2010. ———. L’essor de la chevalerie: XIe-XIIe siècles. Geneva: Droz, 1986. ———. L’idéologie du glaive: Préhistoire de la chevalerie. Geneva: Droz, 1983. ———. “Pour une histoire de la chevalerie: L’adoubement dans les romans de Chretiens de Troyes.” Romania 100 (1979): 21–53l. Flusser, David. Jesus. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997. Folda, Jaroslav. “Manuscripts of the History of Outremer by William of Tyre: A Handlist.” Scriptorium 27 (1973): 90–95. Forey, Alan J. “The Emergence of the Military Order in the Twelfth Century.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 2 (1985): 175–95. ———. “The Military Orders and the Conversion of Muslims in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” Journal of Medieval History 28, no. 1 (2002): 1–22. ———. “The Participation of the Military Orders in Truces with Muslims in the Holy Land and Spain During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” Ordines Militares 17 (2002): 45–52.

260

Bibliography

Frenkel, Yehoshua. “Muslim Responses to the Frankish Dominion in the Near East: 1098– 1291.” In The Crusades and the Near East, edited by Conor Kostick, 27–54. New York: Routledge, 2011. Friedman, Mordechai. “The Nagid, the Nasi, and the French Rabbis: A Threat to Abraham Maimonides’ Leadership.” Zion 82 (2017): 225–66. Friedman, Yvonne. Encounter Between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. “Pollution, Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel.” In The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman, edited by Carol L. Meyers and Michael Patrick O’Connor, 299–414. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983. Fudeman, Kristen A. Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010. Fulton, Helen. “Negotiating Welshness: Multilingualism in Wales Before and After 1066.” In Conceptualizing Multilingualism in Medieval England: 800–1250, edited by Elizabeth Tyler, 145–70. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Funk, Philipp. Jakob von Vitry: Leben und Werke. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1909. Gaggero, Massimiliano. “La chronique d’Ernoul: Problèmes et méthodes d’édition.” Perspectives médiévales 34 (2012). http://peme.revues.org /1608. García-Arenal, Mercedes, and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Translated by Consuelo López-Morillas. Boston: Brill, 2013. Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia. “The Captivity of Louis IX.” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 18 (2013): 85–114. ———. Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Liturgy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. ———. “Louis IX: Crusade and the Promise of Joshua in the Holy Land.” Journal of Medieval History 34, no. 3 (2008): 245–74. Gibb, H. A. R. “The Achievement of Saladin.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 35 (1952): 42–60. ———. “The Arabic Sources for the Life of Saladin.” Speculum 25 (1950): 58–72. ———. “The Caliphate and the Arab States.” In History of the Crusades, edited by Kenneth Setton and J. Baldwin, 1:80–98. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. ———. “The Rise of Saladin: 1169–1189.” In A History of the Crusades: The First Hundred Years, edited by M. W. Baldwin, 562–89. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955. Giebfried, John. “The Mongol Invasions and the Aegean World: 1241–61.” Mediterranean Historical Review 28 (2013): 29–133. Giese, Wolfgang. “Untersuchungen zur Historia Hierosolymitana des Fulcher von Chartres.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 69 (1987): 62–115. Gil, Moshe. A History of Palestine, 634–1099. Translated by Ethel Broido. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ———. The Land of Israel During the Early Islamic Period. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1983. Gil, Moshe, and Ezra Flaisher. Judah ha-Levi and His Circle: Documents from the Genizah [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2001. Gilchrist, John. “The Lord’s War as the Proving Ground of Faith: Pope Innocent II and the Propagation of Violence, 1198–1216.” In Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, edited by Maya Shatzmiller, 65–69. Leiden: Brill, 1993.

Bibliography

261

Gillingham, John. “Roger of Howden in Crusade.” In Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, edited by David O. Morgan, 72–73. London: SOAS University of London, 1982. Glucklich, Ariel. “Sacred Pain and the Phenomenal Self.” Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998): 389–412. Goitein, S. D. “Did R. Judah ha-Levi Reach the Land of Israel?” Tarbiz 46 (1977): 245–50. ———. Ha-Yishuv be-Eretz Israel [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1980. ———. Jewish Communities in the Land of Israel [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1980. ———. Settlement in the Land of Israel in Early Islam and the Crusades in Light of the Cairo Genizah [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak ben Zvi, 1980. Goodich, Michael, Sophia Menache, and Sylvia Schein, eds. Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois. New York: P. Lang, 1995. Goss, Vladimir. “Introduction.” In Meeting of Two Worlds: The Crusades and the Mediterranean Context, edited by Priscilla Soucek and Christine Bornstein, 3–12. Ann Arbor, MI: The Museum, 1981. Gottesman, Shlomo. “The Rulings of R. Eliyahu of Acre: Newly Discovered Pages from a Halakhic Treatise” [in Hebrew]. Yeshurun 32 (2015): 30–43. Goudie, Kenneth. Reinventing Jihad: Jihad Ideology from the Conquest of Jerusalem to the End of the Ayyubids, c. 492/1099–647/1249. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Gouguenheim, Sylvain. “Les Maccabées : Modèles des Guerriers Chrétiens des Origines au XIIe siècle.” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, Xe-XIIe siècles 54 (2011): 3–20. Graetz, Heinrich. Geschichte der Juden von den altesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart. 11 vols. Leipzig: O. Leiner, 1856–1866. Grafton, Anthony, Glen W. Most, and Salvatore Settis. The Classical Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Greven, Joseph, ed. Die Exempla aus den Sermones seriales et communes des Jakob von Vitry. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1914. Gross, Henri. “Étude sur R Simson b. Abraham de Sens.” Revue des études juives 6 (1885): 167– 86; 7 (1886): 40–70. ———. Gallia Judaica: Dictionnaire géographique de la France d’après les sources rabbiniques. Paris: L. Cerf, 1897. Grossel, Marie-Geneviève. “La terre qui mange les hommes, ‘l’Orient,’ espace d’altérité chez Jacques de Vitry.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales (XIIIe–XVe siècles) 21 (2011): 87–101. Grossman, Avraham. “MaHaRaM’s Attitude Toward Immigration to the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. Katedra 84 (1997): 63–84. ———. “The Victories of Saladin and the Rise of Immigration Movements to the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. In Ve-Zot ll-Yehuda: Studies in the History of Eretz Israel Presented to Yehuda ben Porat, edited by Elchanan Reiner, 365–82. Jerusalem: Yad BenZvi, 2003. ———. “The Yeshiva of Eretz Israel: Its Literary Output and Relationship with the Diaspora.” In The History of Jerusalem: The Early Muslim Period: 638–1099, edited by J. Prawer and H. Ben-Shammai, 225–69. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1996. Grossman, Heather, and Alicia Walker. “Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture in the Mediterranean, ca. 1000–1500.” Special issue, Medieval Encounters 18, nos. 4–5 (2012). Grousset, René. Histoire des croisades et du royaume franc de Jérusalem. 8 vols. Paris: Plon, 1934–1936.

262

Bibliography

Grove, A. T., and Oliver Rackham. The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Halbertal, Moshe. By Way of Truth: Nahmanides and the Creation of Tradition. Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006. Halbertal, Moshe, and Avishai Margalit. Idolatry. Translated by Naomi Goldblum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Hames, Harvey. The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Hamilton, Bernard. “The Old French Translation of William of Tyre as an Historical Source.” In The Experience of Crusading: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, edited by P. Edbury and J. Phillips, 2:93–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Handyside, Philip. The Old French William of Tyre. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Har-Peled, Misgav. “Animalité, pureté et croisade: Étude sur la transformation des églises en étables par les musulmans durant les croisades (XII–XIII siècles).” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 52 (2009): 113–36. Harris, Julie. “Mosque to Church Conversions in the Reconquest.” Medieval Encounters 3 (1997): 158–72. Harris, W. V. “The Mediterranean and Ancient History.” In Rethinking the Mediterranean, edited by W. V. Harris, 20–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Hartmann, Angelika. “al-Muẓaffar.” In Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Brill Online, 2012. http://dx.doi.org /10.1163/1573-3912 _islam _ SIM _5684. Hartmann, Johannes. Die Persönlichkeit des Sultans Saladin im Urteil der abendländischen Quellen. Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1933. Hartmann, Richard. Eine islamische Apokalypse aus der Kreuzzugszeit: Ein Beitrag zur GafrLiteratur. Königsberger Gelehrte Gesellschaft 1, 3. Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1924. Heath, Peter. The Thirsty Sword: Sirat ‘Antar and the Arabic Popular Epic. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1996. Heck, Paul. “Jihad Revisited.” Journal of Religious Ethics 32, no. 1 (2004): 95–128. Hecker, Joel. Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2005. Heemskerk, Margaretha. Suffering in the Mu’tazilite Theology: ‘Abd al-Jabbar’s Teaching on Pain and Divine Justice. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Heigger, Michael. Halachot ve-Agadot. New York: De-be Rabanan, 1933. Heist, William. The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952. Heller-Talmon, Daniella. “Muslim Martyrdom and Quest for Martyrdom in the Crusading Period.” al-Masaq 14, no. 2 (2002): 131–39. Heng, Geraldine. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Hermes, Nizar. The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Herring, Basil. Joseph ibn Kaspi’s Gevia’ Kesef: A Study in Medieval Jewish Philosophic Bible Commentary. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982. Herzog, Thomas. “The First Layer of the Sirat Baybars: Popular Romance and Political Propaganda.” Mamluk Studies Review 7 (2003): 137–48.

Bibliography

263

———. “Francs et Commerçants à Alexandrie dans le roman de Baybars.” Alexandrie Médiévale 1 (2002): 181–94. ———. Geschichte und Imaginaire: Entstehung, Überlieferung und Bedeutung der Sirat Baibars in ihrem sozio-politischen Kontext. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. ———. “Mamluk (Popular) Culture: The State of Research.” In Ubi sumus? Quo vademus? Mamluk Studies: State of the Art, edited by Stephan Conermann, 131–59. Göttingen: Bonn University Press, 2013. Hillenbrand, Carole. “Ayyubid Jerusalem: A Historical Introduction.” In Ayyubid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1187–1250, edited by Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld, 1–20. London: Altajir Trust, 2009. ———. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999. ———. “Jihad Poetry in the Age of Crusades.” In Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict, edited by Thomas F. Madden, James L. Naus, and Vincent Ryan, 15–34. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Himmelfarb, Martha. “Sefer Zerubavel.” In Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Rabbinic Literature, edited by David Stern, 67–90. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990. Hirschler, Konrad. “The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative.” Crusades 13 (2014): 37–76. ———. Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006. Hirschman, M. “The Priest’s Gate and the Pilgrimage of Eliyahu ben Menahem” [in Hebrew]. Tarbiz 55 (1986): 217–27. Hodgson, Natasha. Women, Crusading, and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007. Hofer, Nathan. The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Hoffmann, Hartmut. Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei. MGH Schriften 20. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1964. Holt, P. M. The Age of Crusades: The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517. London: Longman, 1986. ———. Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290: Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian Rulers. Leiden: Brill, 1995. ———. “The Structure of Government in the Mamluk Sultanate.” In The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades, edited by P. M. Holt, 44–61. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1977. Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. ———. “The Mediterranean and the New Thalassology.” American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 722–40. Horowitz, Hayyim. Bet Ekked ha-Agadot. Frankfurt, 1881. Horsch, Sylvia. “Islam as Natu ral Theology in Lessing and the Enlightenment.” In Edinburgh German Yearbook: Cultural Exchange in German Literature, edited by Eleoma Joshua, 52–53. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007. Horswell, Mike. The Rise and Fall of British Crusader Medievalism: c. 1825–1945. New York: Routledge, 2018.

264

Bibliography

Hourihane, Colum, ed. Interactions: Artistic Interchange Between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period. Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, 2007. House, Roy Temple. “L’ordene de chevalerie: An Old French Poem.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1917. Housley, Norman. “The Crusades and Islam.” Medieval Encounters 13 (2007): 189–208. Humphreys, R. Stephen. From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977. Hunt, Lucy-Anne. Byzantium, Eastern Christendom, and Islam: Art at the Crossroads of the Medieval Mediterranean. London: Pindar Press, 1998. Husain, Adnan. “Conversion to History: Negating Exile and Messianism in Samaw’al alMaghribi’s Polemic Against Judaism.” Medieval Encounters 8 (2002): 3–34. ———. A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200–1700. Edited by Adnan Husain and K. E. Fleming. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007. Idel, Moshe. “Introduction.” In Messianic Movements in Israel [in Hebrew], by Aaron Ze’ev Aescoly. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1956. ———. Messianic Mystics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. Iriarte, Lazaro. Franciscan History: The Three Orders of St. Francis of Assisi. Translated by Patricia Ross. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982. Irwin, Robert. The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1382. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. Ish-Shalom, Michael. Kivre Avot: Le-Heker Mesorot ha-Kevarim ha-’Ivriyim be-Erets-Yisrael. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1948. Issa, Mireille. “La conception de la croisade dans l’Historiarerum in partibus transmarinaris gestarum de Guillaume de Tyr et dans l’Estoire d’Eracles.” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 119, no. 2 (2007): 347–59. ———. La version latine et l’adaptation française de l’ “Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum” de Guillaume de Tyr, livres XI–XVIII. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Jackson, D. “1193–1993: An Appreciation of the Career of Saladin.” In Egypt and Syrid in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk Eras, edited by U. Vermeulen and D. De Smet, 219–28. Leuven: Uitgeverij, 1995. Jackson, Peter. “The Crusade Against the Mongols: 1241.” Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991): 1–18. ———. “The Crusades of 1239–1241 and Their Aftermath.” Bulletin of School of Oriental Asian Studies 50 (1987): 32–60. ———. The Mongols and the West: 1221–1410. London: Routledge, 2005. Jacobs, Martin. Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Jacoby, David. “Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1187–1192.” In Atti del Congresso Internazionale “Dai feudi monferrini e dal Piemonte ai nuovi mondi oltre gli oceani,” edited by Laura Balletto, 187–238. Alessandria: Società di storia arte e archeologia, 1993. ———. “Society, Culture, and the Arts in Crusader Acre.” In France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, edited by Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney, 97–137. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Jotischky, Andrew. Crusading and the Crusader States. New York: Routledge, 2013. ———. “Ethnographic Attitudes in the Crusader States: The Franks and the Indigenous Orthodox People.” In East and West in the Crusader States: Context, Contacts, Confrontations, edited by Krijnie Ciggaar and Herman Teule, 1–20. Leuven: Peeters, 2003.

Bibliography

265

Jubb, Margaret A. The Legend of Saladin in Western Literature and Historiography. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. Kaegi, Walter. “Initial Byzantine Reactions to the Arab Conquest.” Church History (1969): 139–49. Kaeuper, Richard. Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Kahana, Kalman. “Addenda to Nahmanides’ Commentary on the Torah.” Ma’ayan 9, no. 1 (1969): 25–47. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. “ ‘ The Aliyah’ of the ‘300 Hundred Rabbis’ in 1211: Tosafist Attitudes Toward Settling in the Land of Israel.” Jewish Quarterly Review 76, no. 3 (1986): 191–215. ———. “Medieval Rabbinic Conceptions of the Messianic Age: The View of the Tosafists.” Me’ah She’arim (2001): 147–69. ———. Peering Through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000. Kartsonis, Anna D. “Protection Against All Evil: Function, Use, and Operation of Byzantine Historiated Phylacteries.” Byzantinische Forschungen 20 (1994): 73–102. Kastner, L. E. “Some Old French Poems on the Antichrist.” Modern Language Review 1, no. 4 (1905): 269–282; 2, no. 1 (1906–1907): 26–33. Katz, Marion. Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunnī Law of Ritual Purity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Kedar, Banjamin Z. “The Battle of Hattin Revisited.” In The Horns of Hattin: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, 190–207. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1987. ———. “Convergences of Oriental Christian, Muslim, and Frankish Worshippers: The Case of Saydnaya.” In De Sion Exibit Lex et Verbum Domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature, edited by Yitzhak Hen, 59–69. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. ———. “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades.” Crusades 3 (2004): 15–75. ———. “The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Thirteenth Century” [in Hebrew]. Tarbiz 41 (1972): 82–94. ———. “The Jews of Jerusalem and Nahmanides’ Role in Rehabilitating Their Community” [in Hebrew]. In The History of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages, edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, 122–36. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1979. ———. “Multidirectional Conversion in the Frankish Levant.” In Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, edited by James Muldoon, 190–208. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. ———. “On the History of the Jewish Settlement in Jerusalem” [in Hebrew]. Tarbiz 42 (1973): 82–94. ———. “The Patriarch Heraclius.” In Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans Eberhard Mayer, and R. C. Smail, 177–204. Jerusalem: Yad Isaac ben Zvi Institute, 1982. ———. “R. Yehiel of Paris and the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 2 (1976): 349–54. ———. “Some New Sources on Palestinian Muslims Before and During the Crusades.” In Die Kreuzfahrerstaaten als multikuturelle Gesellschaft, edited by Hans E. Mayer, 129–40. Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1997.

266

Bibliography

———. “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant.” In Muslims Under Latin Rule: 1100–1300, edited by James M. Powell, 135–74. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Kedar, Benjamin, and Jonathan Riley Smith. “Editor’s Statement.” Crusades 1 (2002): ix–x. Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984. Keller, Hans Erich. “Du Pseudo-Turpin au Novellino.” Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 109, nos. 3–4 (1993): 381–85. Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century. London: Longman, 1986. Khatib, Ibrahim Yasin. Al-Quds bayna Aṭmāʻ al-Ṣalībīyīn wa-tafrīṭ al-Malik al-Kāmil al-Ayyūbī. Amman: Dar al-Manahij, 2001. Kilani, Muhammad Sayyid. Al-Ḥurub al-ṣalibiyya wa-Atharuha fi-al-Adab al-’Arabi fi-Miṣr waal-Sham. Cairo: Dar al-Firjani, 1989. King, Geoffrey. “The Prophet Muhammad and the Breaking of the Jahiliyyah Idols.” Journal of Semitic Studies 14 (2002): 91–122. Kinoshita, Sharon. “Beyond Philology: Cross-Cultural Engagement in Literary History and Beyond.” In A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Karla Mallette, 25–42. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. ———. Medieval Boundaries: Rethinking Difference in Old French Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. ———. “Reorientations: The Worlding of Marco Polo.” In Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages, edited by John Ganim, 39–57. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Kjellman, Hilding. “Les Rédactions en Prose de l’Ordre de Chevalerie.” In Studier i Modern Sprakvetenskap 7 (1920): 137–77. Klawans, Jonathan. “Pure Violence: Sacrifice and Defilement in Ancient Israel.” Harvard Theological Review 9, no. 2 (2001): 133–35. Klein, Shmuel. The History of Jews in the Land of Israel from the Talmud to the Settlement Movement [in Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Mizpeh, 1935. Kleinhenz, Christopher, and Keith Busby, eds. Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbours. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Köhler, Michael. Alliances and Treatises Between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East. Translated by Peter Holt. Edited by Konrad Hirschler. Leiden: Brill, 2013. König, Daniel. Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Konowitz, Israel. Rabbi Shim’on b, Yohai: A Collection of His Sayings from Talmudic and Midrashic Literature. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1966. Konrad, Robert. De Ortu Tempore Antichristi: Antichristvorstellung und Geschichtsbild des Abtes Adso von Montier-en-Der. Munich: M. Lassleben, 1964. Kook, S. H. “R. Yehiel of Paris and Erez Israel” [in Hebrew]. Measef Zion 5 (1933): 137–41. Kraemer, Joel. “The Andalusian Mystic Ibn Hud and the Conversion of the Jews.” Israel Oriental Studies 12 (1992): 59–73. Krause, Kathy M. “Genealogy and Codicology: The Manuscript Contexts of the Fille du Comte de Pontieu.” Romance Philology 59 (2005–2006): 323–25. Krauss, Samuel. “L’emigration de 300 rabbins en Palestine en l’an 1211.” Revue des études juives 82 (1926): 343–46. ———. “Mansur in Otot ha-Mashiaḥ.” ha-Doar 21, no. 14 (February 1942): 215–16.

Bibliography

267

———. Studien zur byzantinisch-jüdischen Geschichte. Leipzig: G. Fock, 1914. Krey, A. C. “William of Tyre: The Making of an Historian in the Middle Ages.” Speculum 16, no. 2 (1941): 149–66. Kropacek, L. “Nubia from the Late Twelfth Century to the Funj Conquest in the Early Fifteenth Century.” In Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries, edited by D. T. Niane, 399–409. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Kruk, Remke. Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature. London: I. B. Tauris, 2014. Kuhler, Ch. “Review of Renaud de Châtillon, prince d’Antioche, by Gustave Schlumberger.” Revue de l’Orient Latin 6 (1898): 299–307. Langille, Edward. “L’Islam et du monde musulman chez Guillaume de Tyr.” PhD diss., Université Paris III, 1988. Langoise, Ernest. Table des noms propres de toute nature compris dans les chansons de geste imprimées. Paris: E. Bouillon, 1904. Lapina, Elizabeth. “Maccabees and the Battle of Antioch, 1098.” In Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith: Old-Testament Faith-Warrior, edited by Gabriela Signori, 147–60. Leiden: Brill, 2012. ———. “ ‘Nec signis nec testibus creditur’: The Problem of Eyewitnesses in the ‘Chronicles of the First Crusade.’ ” Viator 38 (2007): 117–39. ———. Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. Latiff, Osman. The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Leclercq, Armelle. Portraits croisés: L’image des francs et des musulmans dans les textes relatifs a la première croisade. Paris: Champion, 2010. Leclercq, Jean. “L’attitude spirituelle de S. Bernard devant la guerre.” Collectanea Cisterciensa 36 (1974): 195–225. Leemans, Johan. “ ‘To Bless with a Mouth Bent on Cursing’: Patristic Interpretations of Balaam Num. 24:17.” In The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam, edited by George van Kooten, 163–88. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Léglu, Catherine E. Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French and Catalan Narratives. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Lerner, Robert  E. The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of the Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Lev, Yaakov. “Infantry in Muslim Armies During the Crusades.” In Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, edited by John Pryor, 185–208. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. ———. Saladin in Egypt. Boston: Brill, 1998. Levanoni, Amalia. “The Mamluk’s Ascent to Power in Egypt.” Studia Islamica 72 (1990): 121– 44. ———. “Sagar ad-Durr: A Case of Female Sultanate in Medieval Islam.” In Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk Eras, edited by Urbain Vermeulen and D. De Smet, 3:209–18. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Leveen, Adriane B. “Inside Out: Jethro, the Midianite and a Biblical Construction of the Outsider.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34, no. 4 (2010): 395–417. Levine, Nachman. “The Gentile Priest, the Gentile Prophet: Two Biblical Narratives.” Jewish Thought 4, no. 2 (1996): 59–83.

268

Bibliography

Levy, Israel. “L’Apocalypse de Zerobabel.” REJ 68 (1914): 129–60; 69 (1915):108–121; 71 (1917): 57–65. Lewis, Bernard. “An Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History.” BSOAS 13 (1949–1951): 308–38. ———. “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” Atlantic Monthly 266, no. 3 (1990): 47–60. Lewis, Kevin. “A Count of Counts: Parallel Loanwords and Channels of Communication Between Arabic, Latin, French, and Occitan in the Levant at the Time of the Crusades.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 2 (2015): 179–96. ———. The Counts of Tripoli and Lebanon in the Twelfth Century: Sons of Saint-Gilles. London: Routledge, 2017. ———. “Medieval Diglossia: The Diversity of the Latin Christian Encounter with Written and Spoken Arabic in the ‘Crusading’ County of Tripoli.” al-Masaq 27 (2015): 119–52. License, Tom. “The Templars and the Hospitallers, Christ and the Saints.” Crusades 4 (2005): 39–44. Lieberman, Max. “A New Approach to the Knighting Ritual.” Speculum 90, no. 2 (2015): 391–423. Liebes, Yehuda. “Hebrew and Aramaic as the Languages of the Zohar” [in Hebrew]. Proceedings of the Israeli Academy for the Hebrew Language 48, no. 3 (2009): 111–26. ———. “The Messiah of the Zohar: On  R. Sim’on bar Yohai as a Messianic Figure” [in Hebrew]. In The Messianic Idea in Israel, edited by Shmuel Re’em, 236–87. Jerusalem: National Academy for the Sciences, 1982. Lipton, Sara. “The Sweet Lean of His Head: Writing About Looking at the Crucifix in the High Middle Ages.” Speculum 80, no. 4 (2005): 1172–208. Little, Donald. “Jerusalem Under the Ayyubids and Mamluks: 1197–1516.” In Jerusalem in History, edited by Kamil Asali, 177–99. London: Scorpion, 1989. Livne-Kafri, Ofer. “The Muslim Traditions ‘in Praise of Jerusalem’ (Fadā’il al-Quds): Diversity and Complexity.” Annali 58 (1998): 165–92. Lobel, Diana. Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi’s Kuzari. Albany: New York State Press, 2000. Lomax, Derek. “Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Fall of Almohad Spain.” In God and Man in Medieval Spain: Essays in Honour of J. R. L. Highfield, edited by Derek Lomax and David Mackenzie, 37–48. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1989. Longère, Jean. “Introduction.” In Histoire occidentale = Historia occidentalis: Tableau de l’Occident au XIIIe siècle, by Jacques de Vitry, edited by Jean Longère and Gaston Duchet-Suchaux, 7–49. Paris: Cerf, 1997. ———. Œuvres oratoires de maitres Parisiens au XIIe Siècle: Étude historique et doctrinale. 2 vols. Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1975. Lourie, Elana. “The Confraternity of Belchite, the Ribat, and the Temple.” Viator 13 (1982): 159–76. Loutchitskaya, Svetlana. “L’image des Musulmans dans les chroniques de croisade.” Moyen Âge 105 (1999): 717–35. Lower, Michael. The Barons’ Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its Consequences. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ———. “The Papacy and Christian Mercenaries of Thirteenth-Century North Africa.” Speculum 89, no. 3 (2014): 601–31. Lowin, Shari. The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives. Leiden: Brill, 2006.

Bibliography

269

Lyons, Malcolm C. The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Story-Telling. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Lyons, Malcolm C., and D. E P. Jackson. Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Maccoby, Hyam. Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages. London: Associated University Press, 1982. MacEvitt, Christopher. The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. ———. “What Was Crusader About the Crusader States?” al-Masaq 30, no. 3 (2018): 317–30. MacGregor, James. “Negotiating Knightly Piety: The Cult of the Warrior-Saints in the West, ca. 1070–ca. 1200.” Church History 73, no. 2 (2004): 342–45. Maghen, Ze’ev. “Close Encounters: Some Preliminary Observations on the Transmission of Impurity in Early Sunni Jurisprudence.” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 348–92. ———. Virtues of the Flesh: Passion and Purity in Early Islamic Jurisprudence. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Maier, Christoph T. Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “Konflikt und Kommunikation: Neues zum Kreuzzugsaufruf Urbans II.” In Jerusalem im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung—Vorstellungen und Vergegenwärtigungen, edited by Dieter Bauer, Klaus Herbers, and Nicolas Jaspert, 13–30. Frankfurt: Campus, 2001. Major, Balázs. “Al-Malik al-Mujahid, Ruler of Homs and the Hospitallers: The Evidence in the Chronicle of Ibn Wasil.” In The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, edited by Zsolt Hunyadi and József Lszlovszky, 63– 76. Budapest: CEU, 2001. Major, Tristan. Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Makeieff, Jean-Pierre Serge. “La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu: Edition and Study.” PhD diss., UCLA, 2007. Mallette, Karla. European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean: Toward a New Philology and a Counter-Orientalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Man, Vivian B., Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilyn D. Dodds, eds. Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain. New York: G. Braziller, 1992. Mann, Jacob. The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine Under the Faṭimid Caliphs: A Contribution to Their Political and Communal History Based Chiefly on Genizah Material Hitherto Unpublished. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922. ———. “The Messianic Movements During the First Crusades” [in Hebrew]. Ha-Tekufa 24 (1978–1979): 335–58. Marmorstein, Arthur. “Les signes du messie.” Revue des études juives 52 (1906): 176–86. Martin, John Jeffries. “Crossing Religious Bound aries in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 41, no. 3 (2011): 459–62. Martinez, Francisco Javier. “Eastern Christian Apocalyptic in the Early Muslim Period: Pseudo-Methodius and Pseudo-Athanasius.” PhD diss., Catholic University, 1985. Martini, Giuseppe. “Innocenzo III ed il Finanziamento delle Crociate.” Nuov Rivista Storica 65 (1981): 191–208.

270

Bibliography

Mas-Latrie, Louis, “Essai de classification.” In La chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Tresorier, ed. Louis Mas-Latrie, 473–565. Paris, 1871. Massignon, Louis. The Passion of Al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated by Herbert Mason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Mastnak, Tomaž. Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Mayer, Hans Eberhard. The Crusades. Translated by J. Gillingham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. ———. “Latins, Muslims, and Greeks in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.” History 63 (1978): 175–92. McDonnell, Ernest W. The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, with Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1954. McGinn, Bernard. Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. ———. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Menache, Sophia. “When Jesus Met Mohammed in the Holy Land: Attitudes Toward the ‘Other’ in the Crusader Kingdom.” Medieval Encounters 15, no. 1 (2009): 66–85. Menocal, María Rosa. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. ———. “Pride and Prejudice in Medieval Studies: Eu ropean and Oriental.” Hispanic Review 53, no. 1 (1985): 61–78. Meri, Josef. The Cult of Saints Among Christians and Jews in Medieval Syria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. “Re-appropriating Sacred Space.” Medieval Encounters 5 (2000): 237–64. Meyer, Paul. “Légendes hagiographiques en français.” Histoire littéraire de la France 33 (1906): 328–457. ———. “Notice sur le Manuscrit fr. 24862 de la Bibliothèque Nationale Contenant divers Ouvrages Composé ou Ecrits en Angleterre.” Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale et Autres Bibliothèques 35, no. 1 (1895): 131–68. Meyerson, Mark, and Edward D. English, eds. Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Minervini, Laura. “Les emprunts arabes et grecs dans le lexique français d’Orient (XIIIe– XIVe siècles).” Revue de linguistique romane 76 (2012): 99–198. ———. “Les Français dans l’Orient Latin (XIIIe–XIVe siècles): Eléments pour la charactérisation d’une scripta d’Outremer.” Revue de linguistique romane 74 (2010): 119–98. Mir, Mustansir. “Irony in the Qurʼān: A Study of the Story of Joseph.” In Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʼan, edited by I. J. Boullata, 173–87. London: Routledge, 2000. Mizra, Younys. “Abraham as an Iconoclast: Understanding the Destruction of ‘Images’ Through Qurʼanic Exegesis.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 16, no.  4 (2005): 413–28. Möhring, Hannes. Saladin und der Dritte Kreuzzug: Aiyubidische Strategie und Diplomatie im Vergleich vornehmlich der arabischen mit den lateinischen Quellen. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980.

Bibliography

271

———. Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit: Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung. Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000. Morabia, Alfred. Le gihâd dans l’Islam médiéval: Le “combat sacré” des origines au XIIe siècle. Paris: A. Michel, 1993. Morgan, Margaret R. The Chronicle of Ernoul and the Continuations of William of Tyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. ———. “The Meaning of Old French Polain/Latin Pullanus.” Medium Aevum 48 (1979): 40–54. ———. “The Rothelin Continuation of William of Tyre.” In Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans Eberhard Mayer, and R. C. Smail, 244–57. Jerusalem: Yad Isaac ben Zvi Institute, 1982. Mortara, M. Catalogo dei manoscritti Ebraici della Biblioteca della Comunita Israelitica di Mantova. Livorno: Tip. I. Costa, 1878. Morton, Nicholas. Encountering Islam on the First Crusade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Mottahedeh, Roy, and Ridwan al-Sayyid. “The Idea of the Jihad in Islam Before the Crusade.” In The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, edited by Angeliki Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, 23–29. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001. Mourad, Suleiman. “A Critique of the Scholarly Outlook of the Crusades: The Case for Tolerance and Coexistence.” In Syria in Crusader Times: Conflict and Coexistence, edited by Carole Hillenbrand, 144–60. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. ———. “Jesus According to Ibn ‘Asakir.” In Ibn Asakir and Early Islamic History, edited by James E. Lindsay, 24–43. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2001. ———. “Poetry, History, and the Early Arab-Islamic Conquests of al-Sham (Greater Syria).” In Poetry and History: The Value of Poetry in Reconstructing Arab History, edited by Ramzi Baalbaki Saleh, Said Agha, and Tarif Khalidi, 175–83. Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 2011. Mourad, Suleiman, and James Lindsay. The Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in the Crusader Period: Ibn ‘Asākir of Damascus (1105–1176) and His Age. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Muessig, Carolyn A. “The ‘Sermones Feriales’ of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition.” PhD diss., University of Montreal, 1993. Munro, Dana Carelton. “The Speech of Pope Urban II at Clermont 1095.” American Historical Review 11, no. 2 (1906): 231–42. Murray, Allan V. “The Demographics of Urban Space in Crusade-Period Jerusalem (1099– 1187).” In Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, edited by Albrecht Classen, 205–24. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. ———. “Ethnic Identity in the Crusader States: The Frankish Race and the Settlement of Outremer.” In Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, edited by Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan Murray, 59–73. Leeds: Leeds Studies in English, 1995. Nehorai, Michael Zvi. “Erez Israel in the Thought of Maimonides and Nahmanides” [in Hebrew]. In The Land of Israel Medieval Jewish Thought, edited by Moshe Halamis and Aviezer Ravizky, 123–37. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak ben Zvi, 1991. Neumann, G.  A. “Review of Quinti belli sacri scriptores minores, edited by R. Röhricht.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästinavereins 3 (1880): 243.

272

Bibliography

Neusner, Jacob. “History and Purity in First-Century Judaism.” History of Religions 18, no. 1 (1978): 1–17. Nichols, Stephen G. “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture.” Speculum 65, no. 1 (1990): 1–4. Nicholson, Helen. Love, War, and the Grail. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Nicolle, David. Hattin 1187: Saladin’s Greatest Victory. London: Osprey, 1993. Niditch, Susan. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. ———. “Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain.” American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (2002): 1065–93. ———. “Double Game.” London Review of Books 32, no. 18 (2010): 31–32. ———. “Figures of Thought and Figures of Flesh: ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’ in Late Medieval Spanish Poetry and Politics.” Speculum 81 (2006): 398–426. ———. “Islam and the West: Two Dialectical Fantasies.” Journal of Religion in Europe 1 (2008): 1–33. ———. Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. ———. “Sex and Violence Between Majority and Minority.” In Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, 127–65. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. ———. “Was There Race Before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain.” In The Origins of Racism in the West, edited by Benjamin Isaac, Joseph Ziegler, and Miriam Eliav-Feldon, 232–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ———. “What Benedict Really Said: Paleologus and Us.” New Republic, 9 October 2006, 21–24. O’Brian, Bruce. Reversing Babel: Translation Among the English During an Age of Conquests, c. 800 to c. 1200. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2011. Olyan, Saul M. “Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 35, no. 1 (2004): 1–16. O’Meara, Thomas. “The Theology and Times of William of Tripoli.” Theological Studies 69 (2008): 80–98. Omran, Mahmoud Said. “Truces Between Moslems and Crusaders: 1174–1217.” In Autour de la première croisade, edited by Michel Balard, 423–41. Paris: Sorbonnne, 1996. Orlemanski, Julie. “Philology and the Turn Away from the Linguistic Turn.” Florilegium 32 (2015): 157–81. Ott, Claudia. Metamorphosen des Epos: Sirat al-Mugahidin (Sirat al-Amira Dat al-Himma) zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. Leiden: Universiteit Leiden, 2003. Paris, Gaston. “La légende de Saladin.” Journal des Savants (1893): 284–99, 354–65, 428–38, 486–98. Paul, Nicholas. To Follow in Their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. Pedaya, Haviva. “Erez shel Ruah ve-Erez shel Mamash: R. Ezra, R. Azriel ve-ha Ramban” [in Hebrew]. In The Land of Israel Medieval Jewish Thought, edited by Moshe Halamis and Aviezer Ravizky, 233–89. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak ben Zvi, 1991.

Bibliography

273

———. Nahmanides: Cyclical Time and Holy Text [in Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2003. ———. “A Spiritual Land and a Real Land: R. Ezrah, R. Azriel and Nahmanides” [in Hebrew]. In The Land of Israel in Medieval Jewish Thought, edited by Aviezer Ravizky, 233– 50. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak ben Zvi, 1991. Pelliot, P. “Deux passages de la prophétie de Hannan fils d’Isaac.” In Prester John, the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes, edited by Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton, 113–37. Brookfield: Variorum, 1996. Originally published as “Mélanges sur l’epoque des croisades,” in Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1951), 73–97. Perry, Guy. John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pouzet, Louis. Damas au VIIe/XIIIe Siècle: Vie et structures religieuses d’une métropole islamique. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1988. ———. “De la paix armée à la négociation et à ses ambigüités: L’accord de Jaffa (1229/626) entre Frédéric II et al.–Malik al-Kamil.” In Chrétiens et musulmans au temps des croisades: Entre l’affrontement et la rencontre, edited by Louis Pouzet and Louis Boisset, 91– 116. Beirut: Presses de l’Université Saint-Joseph, 2007. Powell, James M. Anatomy of a Crusade: 1213–1221. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Prawer, Joshua. “Accounts of Jewish Travelers to the Land of Israel During the Crusading Period” [in Hebrew]. Katedra 40–41 (1986): 31–60, 65–90. ———. Crusaders’ Kingdoms: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 1985. ———. The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. ———. The History of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem [in Hebrew]. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 1963. ———. “The Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem During the Crusading Period” [in Hebrew]. Zion 11 (1946): 38–82. ———. “Jews in Jerusalem During the Period of the Crusades” [in Hebrew]. In The History of Jerusalem: The Crusading and Ayyubid Periods [Sefer Yerushalayim], edited by Joshua Prawer and Hagai ben Shamai, 194–212. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak ben Zvi, 1991. ———. “The Jews in the Kingdom of Jerusalem” [in Hebrew]. Zion 11 (1945): 38–82. ———. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972. ———. “On the History of the Jews in the Crusader Kingdom” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 2 (1946): 105–10. ———. “The Roots of Medieval Colonialism.” In The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange Between East and West During the Period of the Crusades, edited by Vladimir Goss and Christine Bornstein, 23–38. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986. ———. “Social Classes in the Latin Kingdom: The Franks.” In A History of the Crusades, edited by Norman Zacour and Harry Hazard, 5:117–93. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. ———. “Travel Accounts to Israel During the Crusading Period.” In Pilgrimage [in Hebrew], edited by Ora Limor and Elchanan Reiner, 78–90. Tel Aviv: Open University Press, 2005.

274

Bibliography

Purkis, William. Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187. Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2008. Qureshi, Emarn, and Michael Sells. “Introduction.” In The New Crusades: Constructing Muslim Memory, 1–47. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Rad, Gerhard von. Holy War in Ancient Israel. Translated by Marva Dawn. Grand Rapids: W. B. Erdmans, 1991. Rangheri, M. “La ‘Epistola ad Gerbergam Reginam de ortu tempore Antichrist’ di Adsone di Montier-en-Der e le sue Fonti.” Studi medievali 3rd ser., 14, no. 2 (1973): 677–732. Ravitzky, Aviezer. Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism. Translated by Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ———. “The Systematic Arguments for the Idea of Israel as the Chosen People in the Book of the Kuzari” [in Hebrew]. Sinai 80, nos. 5–6 (1977): 253–65. Ray, Jonathan. “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Convivencia.” Jewish Social Studies 11 (2005): 1–18. ———. “Reassessing Convivencia.” Jewish Social Studies 11 (2005): 1–18. Reeves, John. Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Régnier-Bohler, Danielle. “Figures féminines et imaginaire généalogique: Etude comparée de quelques récits brefs.” In Le récit bref au Moyen Âge, edited by Danielle Buschinger, 73–95. Amiens: Université de Picardie, Centre d’études médiévales, 1980. Reiner, Elchanan. “The History of the Tradition of Holy Sites in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. In Ve-Zot Li-Yehuda: Studies in the History of the Land of Israel and Its Settlement, edited by Yehoshua ben Arieh and Elchanan Reiner, 308–84. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak ben Zvi, 1999. ———. “A Jewish Response to the Crusades: The Dispute over Sacred Places in the Holy Land.” In Juden und Christen im Zeit der Kreuzzüge, edited by Alfred Haverkamp, 209– 32. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1999. ———. “ ‘Overt Falsehood and Covert Truth’: Christians, Jews, and Holy Places in TwelfthCentury Palestine” [in Hebrew]. Zion 63 (1998): 157–88. ———. “Pilgrimage and Immigration to the Land of Israel: 1099–1517” [in Hebrew]. Unpublished PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1989. Reinhart, Kevin. “Impurity / No Danger.” History of Religion 30 (1990): 1–24. Remensnyder, Amy. “The Colonization of Sacred Architecture: The Virgin Mary, Mosques, and Temples in Medieval Spain and Early Sixteenth Century Mexico.” In Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society; Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little, edited by Sharon Farmer and Barbara Rosenwein, 189–219. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. ———. “Pollution, Purity, and Peace: An Aspect of Social Reform Between the Late Tenth Century and 1076.” In The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France Around the Year 1000, edited by Thomas Head and Richard Landes, 280–307. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Reynolds, Dwight F. “Epic and History in the Arabic Tradition.” In Epic and History, edited by David Konstan and Kurt Raaflaub, 392–410. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Riant, Paul. “Inventaire somaire des manuscrits de l’Eracles.” Archives de l’Orient Latin 1 (1881): 247–56. Ribera y Tarragó, Julián. “El Arabista español.” In Disertaciones y opúsculos, 1887–1927, 1:468. Madrid: Impr. de Est. Maestre, 1928.

Bibliography

275

Richard, Jean. “An Account of the Battle of Hattin Referring to the Frankish Mercenaries in Oriental Moslem States.” Speculum 27 (1952): 168–77. ———. “The Adventure of John Gale, Knight of Tyre.” In The Experience of Crusading: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, edited by Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips, 2:189–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ———. “L’arrière-plan historique des deux cycles de la croisade.” In Les epopées de la croisade, edited by Karl-Heinz Bender and Hermann Kleber, 6–16. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1987. ———. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Translated by J. Shirley. 2 vols. New York: North Holland, 1979. ———. “The Mongols and the Franks.” Journal of Asian History 31 (1969): 45–57. Rieger, Dietmar. “Fiction litteraire et violence: Le cas de La Fille du Comte de Pontieu.” Romania 113, nos. 1–2 (1992–1995): 92–117. Riley-Smith, Jonathan. Crusades: A History. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. ———. “Crusading as an Act of Love.” History 65 (1980): 177–92. ———. The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem: 1174–1277. London: Macmillan, 1973. ———. The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050–1310. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967. Ritter, Hellmut. “Kreuzigung eines Knaben.” Oriens 25 (1976): 38–40. Robinson, Cynthia, and Leyla Rouhi, eds. Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Rodriguez, Jarbel. Captives and Their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Rosenfeld, B. Z. “RaSHBI: Wonder Worker and Magician Scholar.” Revue des études juives 158 (1999): 349–84. Rosenthal, Frank. “A Note on the Mandil.” In Four Essays on Art and Literature in Islam, 63– 108. Leiden: Brill, 1971. Ross, Linda. “Frederick II: Tyrant or Benefactor of the Latin East?” al-Masaq 15 (2003): 149–59. Róth, Ernst, and Hans Striedl. Hebräische Händschriften, vol. 6, Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland. 3 parts. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1965. Rothman, E. Natalie. Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects Between Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. Rotman, Youval. Les esclaves et l’esclavage: De la Méditerranée antique à la Méditerranée médiévale, VIe–XIe siècles. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2004. Rozenberg, Shalom. “The Link to the Land of Israel in Jewish Thought— Conflicting Views” [in Hebrew]. Katedra 4 (1976): 148–75. Rubenstein, Jay. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream: The Crusades, Apocalyptic Prophecy, and the End of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Rubin, Jonathan. “Benoit d’Alignan and Thomas Agni: Two Western Intellectuals and the Study of Oriental Christianity in Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem.” Viator 44, no. 1 (2013): 189–99. ———. Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191–1291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Ruggles, D. Fairchild, and Ousterhout Robert, eds. “Encounters of Islam: The Medieval Mediterranean Experience.” Special issue, Gesta 43, no. 2 (2004). Runciman, Stephen. A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951–1954.

276

Bibliography

Rustow, Marina. Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. Ryan, James. “Conversion or the Crown of Martyrdom: Conflicting Goals of Fourteenth Century Missionaries in Central Asia.” In Medieval Cultures in Contact, edited by Richard Gyug, 19–38. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. ———. “Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages: Martyrdom, Popular Veneration, and Canonization.” Catholic Historical Review 90, no. 1 (2004): 1–29. Sabato, Mordechai. “Addenda to Nahmanides’ Commentary on the Torah.” Megadim 42 (2005): 61–124. Sachedina, Abdulaziz. “The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History.” In Cross, Crescent, and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Traditions, edited by J. T. Johnson and J. Kelsay, 35–50. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. Sackson, Adrian. Joseph Ibn Kaspi: Portrait of a Hebrew Philosopher in Medieval Provence. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Sadan, Yosef. “R. Judah al-Ḥarizi as a Cultural Cross-Road” [in Hebrew]. Pe’amim 68 (1986): 16–67. Safran, Janin. “Rules of Purity and Confessional Boundaries: Maliki Debates About the Pollution of the Christian.” History of Religions 42, no. 3 (2003): 197–212. Salinger, Gerard. “Was Futūwa an Oriental Form of Chivalry?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 94 (1950): 481–93. Sanders, Paula. “Fatimid Court Dress.” In Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, edited by Josef Meri, 180. New York: Routledge, 2006. ———. “Robes of Honor in Fatimid Egypt.” In Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, edited by Stewart Gordon, 225–39. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Sarachek, Joseph. The Doctrine of the Messiah in Medieval Jewish Literature. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1932. Sarfatti, G. B. “Pious Men, Men of Deeds, and the Early Prophets” [in Hebrew]. Tarbitz 26 (1956–1957): 126–53. Savage-Smith, Emilie. “New Evidence for the Frankish Study of Arabic Medical Texts in the Crusader Period.” Crusades 5 (2006): 99–112. Schein, Sylvia. “The Crusading Movement as a Messianic Movement” [in Hebrew]. In Messianism and Eschatology, edited by Zvi Baras, 177–90. Jerusalem: Shazar, 1983. ———. Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West, 1099–1187. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Scheindlin, Raymond. The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Schenk, Jochen. Templar Families: Landowning Families and the Order of the Temple in France, c. 1120–1307. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Schirman, Hayim. The History of the Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995. Schneyer, Johannes Baptist. Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350. Münster: Aschendorff, 1969–1990. Scholem, Gershom. ‘Od Davar: Pirḳe Morashah u-Tehiyah. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 1989.

Bibliography

277

———. “Understanding the Messianic Idea in Israel” [in Hebrew]. In Devarim be-Go: Pirke Morashah u-Tehiyah, edited by Avraham Shapira, 155–90. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 1975. Schon, Peter M. Studien zum Stil der Frühen Französischen Prosa. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1960. Schwam-Baird, Shira. “The Romance Epic Hero, the Mercenary, and the Ottoman Turk Seen Through the Lens of Valentin et Orson (1489).” Medievalia et Humanistica 34 (2008): 105– 27. Schwartz, Dov. The Messianic Idea in Medieval Jewish Thought [in Hebrew]. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1997. Schwartz, Yossef. “Three Rings or Three Cheats: Revealed Religion and Pluralism Between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment.” In Streams into the Sea: Studies in Jewish Culture and Its Context, edited by Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal and Elchanan Reiner, 268– 82. Tel Aviv: Alma College, 2001. Schweika, Aaron. “An Episode from the History of the Jewish Community in Thirteenth Century Jerusalem Based on the Epistles of R. Yechiel the Frenchman” [in Hebrew]. Sefunot 25 (2017): 13–55. Seidensticker, Tilam. “Responses to Crucifixion in the Islamic World.” In Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline, and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th–19th Centuries  C.E., edited by Maribel Fierro and Robert Lange, 203–16. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Sells, Michael A. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Septimus, Bernard. Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of Ramah. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Shachar, Uri. “Ecumenical Mysticism: On Conversion in the Eastern Tradition of Ordene de Chevalerie.” Medieval Encounters (forthcoming). ———. “ ‘Re-Orienting’ Estoires d’Outremer: The Arabic Context of the Saladin Legend.” In The French of Outremer: Community and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean, edited by Nicholas Paul and Laura Morreale, 150–78. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. Shalem, Avinoam. “Objects as Carriers of Real or Contrived Memories in a Cross-Cultural Context.” Mitteilungen zur spätantiken Archäologie und byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte 4 (2005): 101–19. Shatzmiller, Joseph. “Provençal Chronography in the Lost Pamphlet of Shem-Tov Schanzolo” [in Hebrew]. Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 52 (1985): 43–61. Shaw, Brent. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Sherman, R. “La pourtraicture de Guillaume d’Orange et Ysoré en Murailles.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 (1943): 311–17. Shiffman, Yair. “The Differences Between the ‘Translations of Maimonides’ and ‘Guide of the Perplexed’ by Falaquera, Ibn Tibbon, and Al-Ḥarizi, and Their Textual and Philosophical Implications.” Journal of Semitic Studies 44, no. 1 (1999): 47–61. Shirley, Janet. Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre with Part of the Eracles or Acre Text. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Shoshan, Boaz. “High Culture and Popular Culture in Medieval Islam.” Studia Islamica 73 (1991): 67–107.

278

Bibliography

Silman, Yohanan. “The Earthliness of the Land of Israel in the Kuzari” [in Hebrew]. In Eretz Israel in Medieval Jewish Thought, edited by E. Rvitzky, 79–89. Jerusalem: Yad Yizhak ben Zvi, 1991. ———. “The Systematic Arguments for the Idea of Israel as the Chosen People in the Book of the Kuzari” [in Hebrew]. Sinai 80, nos. 5–6 (1977): 253–65. Sinclair, Keith V. “The Translations of the Vitas Patrum, Thaïs, Antichrist, and Vision de Saint Paul Made for Anglo-Norman Templars: Some Neglected Literary Considerations.” Speculum 72, no. 3 (1997): 741–62. Sivan, Emmanuel. L’Islam et la croisade: Idéologie et propagande dans les réactions musulmanes aux croisades. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1968. Sizgorich, Thomas. Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Skemer, Don. Binding Words and Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Skotkki, Kristin. “Medieval Western Perceptions of Islam and the Scholars: What Went Wrong?” In Cultural Transfers in Dispute: Representations in Asia, Europe, and the Arab World Since the Middle Ages, edited by J. Feuchter, 107–34. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011. Smail, R. C. Crusading Warfare: 1097–1193. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956. ———. “The Predicaments of Guy of Lusignan, 1183–1187.” In Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans Eberhard Mayer, and R. C. Smail, 159–76. Jerusalem: Yad Isaac ben Zvi Institute, 1982. Smarandache, Bogdan. “Re-examining Usama ibn Munqidh’s Knowledge of ‘Frankish’: A Case Study of Medieval Bilingualism During the Crusades.” Medieval Globe 1 (2017): 47–85. Smith, G. R. The Ayyubids and Early Rasulids in the Yemen. 2 vols. London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, 1978. Smith, Jonathan Z. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. ———. “What a Difference a Difference Makes.” In “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, edited by Jacob Neusner and Ernst S. Frerichs, 3–48. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985. Smith, Katherine Allen. “The Crusader Conquest of Jerusalem and Christ’s Cleansing of the Temple.” In The Use of the Bible in Crusade Sources, edited by Elizabeth Lapina and Nicholas Morton, 19–41. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Smith, Thomas. “Oliver of Cologne’s Historia Damiatina: A New Manuscript Witness in Dublin, Trinity College Library MS 496.” Hermathena 194 (2013): 37–68. Soetens, S. “Sagarat ad-Durr: A Comparative Study of Three Historical Sources.” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 30 (1999): 97–112. Soifer, Maya. “Beyond Convivencia: Critical Reflection on the Historiography of Interfaith Spain.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1, no. 1 (2009): 19–35. Sommerfeldt, John. “The Bernardine Reform and the Crusading Spirit.” Catholic Historical Review 86, no. 4 (2000): 567–78. Soucek, Priscilla, and Christine Bornstein, eds. The Meeting of Two Worlds: The Crusades and the Mediterranean Context. Ann Arbor, MI: The Museum, 1981.

Bibliography

279

Southern, Richard. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Spiegel, Gabrielle M. “Maternity and Monstrosity: Reproductive Biology in the Roman de Mélusine.” In Mélusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France, edited by Donald Maddox, 100–24. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. ———. The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. ———. “Reflections on the New Philology.” In Rethinking the New Medievalism, edited by Howard Bloch, Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, and Joachim Küpper, 39–50. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Spies, Otto. “Über die Kreuzigung im Islam.” In Religion und Religionen: Festschrift für Gustav Mensching, edited by Rudolf Thomas, 143–56. Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1967. Steinschneider, Moritz. “Apocalypsen mit polemischer Tendenz.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 28 (1874): 627–59. Stern, Joseph. “Maimonides on Wars and Their Justification.” Journal of Military Ethics 11, no. 3 (2012): 245–63. Stetkevych, Suzanne. The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Stewart, Devin J. Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998. ———. “The ‘Maqamat’ of Ahmad b. Abi Bakr al-Razi al-Hanafi and the Ideology of the Counter-Crusade in Twelfth-Century Syria.” Middle Eastern Literatures 11, no. 2 (2008): 211–32. Strack, Hermann Leberecht, and Günter Stemberger. Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. Translated by Marcus Bockmühl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. Strayer, Joseph R. “The Crusades of Louis IX.” In The Later Crusades, vol. 2, A History of the Crusades, edited by Robert Wolff and Harry Hazard, 487–518. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962. Strickland, Matthew. War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Swift, Louis. The Early Fathers on War and Military Service. Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1983. Szpiech, Ryan. Conversion and Narrative: Reading Authority in Medieval Polemic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Taragan, Hana. “The Tomb of Sayyidyna ‘Ali Arsuf: The Story of a Holy Place” [in Hebrew]. In The Encounter of Crusaders and Muslims in the Land of Israel, edited by Israel Roll, O. Tal, and M. Vinter, 105–24. Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibutz ha-Me’uhad, 2007. Ta-Shema, Israel. “The Attitude of Medieval Ashkenaz Toward Immigration to the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 6 (1992): 315–18. ———. “The Immigration of Provencal Sages to the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. Tarbitz 38 (1969): 398–99. ———. “Matters of the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 1 (1974): 81–95. ———. “A New Chronicle Pertaining to the Period of the Tosafists” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 3 (1981): 319–24. ———. Zerahia ha-Levi Ba’al ha-Maor and His Circle [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1993.

280

Bibliography

Thorau, Peter. The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century. Translated by P. M. Holt. London: Longman, 1992. Tolan, John V. “Introduction.” In Religious Minorities in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Law (5th–15th Centuries), edited by Nora Berend, Youna Hameau-Masset, Capucine NemoPekelman, and John V. Tolan, 17–23. Turnhout: Prepols, 2017. ———. “Mirror of Chivalry: Salah al-Din in the Medieval Eu ropean Imagination.” In Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World Before 1700, edited by David Blanks, 7–34. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1997. ———. Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. ———. “Using the Middle Ages to Construct Spanish Identity: 19th- and 20th-Century Spanish Historiography of Reconquest.” In Historiographical Approaches to Medieval Colonization of East Central Europe, edited by Jan Piskorski, 329–47. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Tor, Deborah. Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ‘Ayyār Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World. Wurzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2007. Torrey, Charles C. The Jewish Foundation of Islam. New York: Jewish Institute of Religious Press, 1933. Tottoli, Roberto. “Shu’ayb.” Encyclopedia of the Qurʼan, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 605–6. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Trembinski, Donna. “Insensate Saints: Contextualizing Non-Suffering in Early Dominican Legendaries.” Florilegium 23, no. 2 (2007): 123–42. Trotter, D. A. Medieval French Literature and the Crusades: 1100–1300. Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1988. Twersky, Isadore. “Introduction.” In Rabbi Moses Naḥmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, edited by Isadore Twersky, 1–10. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. ———. “Joseph ibn Kaspi: Portrait of a Medieval Jewish Intellectual.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish History, edited by Isadore Twersky, 231–57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. ———. Rabad of Posquières: A Twelfth Century Talmudist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Tyerman, Christopher. The Debate on the Crusades. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. ———. God’s War: A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Tyler, Elizabeth, ed. Conceptualizing Multilingualism in Medieval England: 800–1250. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Urbach, Ephraim E. “Jewish Messianic Expectations Towards 1240 and Christian Reactions.” In Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Wako, edited by Peter Schaefer, 105–22. Leiden: Brill, 1998. ———. “A Messianic Midrash from the Period of the Later Crusades” [in Hebrew]. Eretz Israel 10 (1971): 58–63. ———. Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1971.

Bibliography

281

———. The Tosafists: Their History, Literature, and Methodology [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 1980. Van Ess, Joseph. “Abd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock: An Analysis of Some Texts.” In Bayt al-Maqdis: ‘Abd al-Malik’s Jerusalem, edited by Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns, 89– 103. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Van Seters, John. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975. Vat, Odulphus van der. Die Anfänge der Franziskanermissionen und ihre Weiterentwicklung im nahen Orient und in der Mohammedanischen Ländern während des 13. Jahrhunderts. Werl: Franziskus-Druckerei, 1934. Verhelst, D. Adso Dervensis: De ortu et tempore Antichristi necnon et tractatus qui ab eo dependunt. Turnhout: Brepols, 1976. ———. “Le préhistoire des conceptions d’Adson concernant l’Antichrist.” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 40 (1973): 52–103. Vermes, Geza. “Hanina ben Dosa: A Controversial Galilean Saint from the First Century of the Christian Era.” Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (1972): 28–50; 24 (1973): 51–64. Vilnay, Ze’ev. Tombs in the Land of Israel: Descriptions of Holy Shrines with Illustrations and Photos [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Ahi’ever, 1985. Vitz, Evelyn B. Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology: Subjects and Objects of Desire. New York: New York University Press, 1989. Völkl, Martin. Muslime, Märtyrer, Militia Christi: Identität, Feindbild und Fremderfahrung während der ersten Kreuzzüge. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2011. Vose, Robin. Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Vries, Hent de, ed. Religion: Beyond a Concept. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Weever, Jacquelin de. Sheba’s Daughter: Whitening and Demonizing the Saracen Woman in Medieval French Epic. New York: Garland, 1998. Welsby, Derek A. The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia: Pagans, Christians, and Muslims Along the Middle Nile. London: British Museum, 2002. Welter, Jean-Thiébaut. L’exemplum dans la littérature religieuse et didactique du Moyen Âge. Paris: Occitania, 1927. Werblowsky, R. J. Zvi. “Messianism in Jewish History.” In Jewish Society Through the Ages, edited by H. H. Ben-Sasson and S. Ettinger, 30–45. New York: Shoken Books, 1971. Wheeler, Brannon M. Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis. London: Routledge, 2002. White, Hayden. “Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination.” History and Theory 14 (1975): 48–67. Ya’ari, Eliezer. Mas’ot Eretz Israel. Tel Aviv: Gazit, 1946. Yahalom, Yosef. “Judah ha-Levi Between Christians and Muslims, Between Spain and Eretz Israel” [in Hebrew]. In Zion and Zionism Among Spanish and Eastern Jews, edited by Ze’ev Harvey, 21–30. Jerusalem: Misgav, 2002. ———. “Judah ha-Levi’s Pilgrimage to Israel” [in Hebrew]. Shalem 7 (2002): 33–45. ———. Masʻe Yehudah: Five Versed Travel Poems by Judah al-Ḥarizi [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Yad ben Zvi, 2002. Yarbrough, Luke. “Upholding God’s Rule: Early Muslim Juristic Opposition to the State Employment of Non-Muslims.” Islamic Law and Society 19, no. 1 (2012): 38–41.

282

Bibliography

Yuval, Israel J. “Jewish Messianic Expectations Towards 1240 and Christian Reactions.” In Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, edited by Peter Schäfer, 105–22. Leiden: Brill, 1998. ———. Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2003. Zeitler, Barbara. “Cross-Cultural Interpretations of Imagery in the Middle Ages.” Art Bulletin 76, no. 4 (1994): 680–94. Ziolkowski, Jan. Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750–1150. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Zussman, Ya’akov. “Beraita de-Tehume Eretz Yisrael.” Tarbiz 45 (1976): 213–57.

Index

‘Abd al-Muttalib, 163 ‘Abd al-Wāḥid b. Isma‘il b. Ibrāhīm, 152 Abraham, 174–75 Abraham ben David of Posquieres, 101 Abu Shamah, 53, 57–58 Abu Tammam, 172 Acre: apocalyptic/messianic associated with, 99, 108–21, 131–51, 186; in Fils d’Agap, 161; holy war rhetoric in, 2, 11; Jacques de Vitry’s comments on, 39; Jewish immigrants in, 1–2, 6, 11, 59–61, 97–98, 102, 112–15; siege on, 17 al-‘Adil, 20–23, 26, 153–54 al-‘Adil II, 26–27 Adso of Montier-ed-Der, 156–58 al-Afdal, 19–21 Ali ibn abi Talib, 91 Amalric, 15, 17–18, 140, 141, 160 Amalric II, 21–22 Ambriose, 82 al-Amjad, 20, 22 Andalusia, 197–98 Andrew II of Hungary, 38 Antichrist, 156–59, 162, 165 apocalyptic literature, 11–12; Bodleian Signs and, 148–51; Christian, 155–65; and immigration to Palestine, 119–29; interreligious context for, 130–33, 151–66; Jewish, 132–51, 162; and Jewish-Christian relations, 122–31; and Jewish-Muslim relations, 130–31; in medieval West, 155–59; Muslim, 152–55, 159–64; political-cultural uses of, 130, 146–48, 151, 159; popularity of, 155; The Prayer of RaSHBI and, 133–48; purposes of Jewish, 131. See also messianic literature Armand of Peragors, 28 Armylus, 122–27, 149–51, 157

‘Arnus, Muhammad Sayf al-Din, 90–92 Arwa of Yemen, 83 al-Ashraf Musa, 22–26, 107, 154 Assassins, 17–18, 41 Ayyub, Salih, 88 Ayyubid Sultanate: collapse of, 14, 25, 97, 103; Franks’ alliances with, 27–35, 146; Jerusalem under rule of, 1; post-Saladin, 3, 7, 14, 19–26, 103–7; in The Prayer of RaSHBI, 145–46; purification rhetoric in literature of, 170–78, 185–86 al-‘Aziz, 19–21 Babylonian Talmud, 122, 126 Baer, Yitzhak, 134, 140, 143 Baldwin IV (“leper king”), 15–16 Baldwin V, 16 Baldwin of Ramlah, 51 Balian of Ibelin, 11, 72, 75, 83, 93 Barons’ Crusade, 26–31 Baybars, al-Zahir Rukn al-Din, 11, 33, 59–62, 88–92 Beaufort, conquest of, 55–58 Bedouins, 41, 162–63 belligerent rhetoric. See holy war rhetoric Benjamin of Tudela, 99–100 Bernard of Clairvaux, 63 Bernard of Corbie, 77 bilingualism: deceptiveness linked to, 55–61; al-Harizi and, 104; in La Fille du Conte du Pontieu, 79, 83; Leon and, 60, 62; and militant piety, 55–63; Reynald and, 56–59 blood, and purity/pollution, 167–70, 175–83, 188–89 Bodleian Homily, 132, 135, 138–39, 142–43, 146–48 Bodleian Ten-Signs, 132, 148–51, 162 Bohemond III, 18

284

Index

Bohemond IV, 21–22 Braudel, Fernand, 194 al-Bundari, 53 Cairo Genizah, 141–42 Castro, Américo, 193, 197 chivalry: cross-cultural tradition of, 7–8, 11, 77, 82–83, 93–94, 96, 192, 203n29; Estoires d’Outremer and, 11, 67–68, 77, 93; La Fille and, 66–67; Ordene de Chevalerie and, 93–94; Saladin and, 7, 10–11, 53, 70, 82–83, 93–94, 96, 192 Christian-Muslim relations: and bilingualism, 55–63; interdependence in, 48–51, 96; Jacques de Vitry’s comments on, 39–41; political, 13–15, 24–25, 27–35, 97; in The Prayer of RaSHBI, 145–47; prevalence of, 2–3; purity/pollution and, 168–86 Christians: apocalyptic literature of, 155–65; Jacques de Vitry’s comments on, 39–40. See also Christian-Muslim relations; Church; Jewish-Christian relations Church: apocalyptic interpretation of events of, 155; dual nature of, 45–46; Military Orders as protectors of, 43–46; in the Near East, 42; reformists in, 37, 43 ha-Cohen, Jonathan, of Lunel, 1, 101, 110 Colbert-Fontainebleau version of the Eracles, 72, 76 Conde, José Antonio, 197, 198 Conrad (son of Frederick II), 18 Conrad of Mainz, 18 Conrad of Montferrat, 16–18 Conrad V (Conradin), 18 crusades: nationalist histories of, 3–4; scholarship on, 3–4, 193. See also individual crusades, e.g., First Crusade Damietta, 23, 38, 90, 154, 174–75, 183–85 deception, bilingualism and, 55–61 De Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum Libellus, 181 Dhu al-‘Urf, 152 Douglas, Mary, 167 Edbury, Peter, 71, 72 Edomites, 119, 121, 122, 124, 127–28, 147 Elijah (prophet), 158 Enoch (prophet), 158 Eracles, 72–73, 75–76 Eraclius, 16

Ernoul, 72, 216n17 Ernoul-Bernard, 50–51, 66, 70–73, 75–77 Estoires d’Outremer, 66–80, 96; and chivalry, 11, 67–68, 77, 93–94; and ChristianMuslim interrelation, 10–11; La Fille and, 77–83; and militant piety, 51–52; Ordene de Chevalerie and, 93–94; scholarly assessments of, 69–71; sources used for, 66–77, 191; and William of Tyre tradition, 69–71 Eurocentrism, 193–94 Even-Shemuel, Yehudah, 134, 137, 140 Ezra (prophet), 118 Faḍā’il al-Quds, 171 Fa’iz Ibrahim, 22 Fidentio of Padua, 35, 60, 164–65 Fifteen Signs tradition, 156, 162 Fifth Crusade: Ayyubids and, 22–23; Damietta besieged in, 23, 38, 154, 174, 183–85; events of, 23, 38; failure of, 18, 23, 38; Fils d’Agap and, 160; Jacques de Vitry and, 10, 36–39; Jerusalem and, 1; Jewish perspective on, 107; in Muslim apocalyptic literature, 153–54; Muslim victory in, 174 Filangieri, Richard, 30 La Fille du Conte du Pontieu, 66–69, 77–84, 87, 191–92 Fils d’Agap, 133, 155, 159–65 First Crusade, 1, 15, 168, 179 Fourth Crusade, 18, 117 Fourth Lateran Council, 117 Franks: apocalyptic literature of, 154–55; Ayyubid alliances with, 27–35, 146; Jacques de Vitry’s comments on, 41–42; and Jerusalem, 3, 15, 20–21, 97; Jews and, 99–101; jihad literature aimed at, 170–78; purification rhetoric in literature of, 168–70, 178–86 Frederick II, 18–19, 23–25 Fulcher of Chartres, 179, 237n12 Geffroi de Paris, 157 Genizah Ten-Signs, 148–49, 157 Gerard of Ridefort, 15, 16 Gerberga, Queen, 156 Gesta Francorum, 179 Gog-and-Magog, 153–54 Graetz, Heinrich, 133–34 Green Knight, 73–74

Index Gregory IX, Pope, 24 Gross, Henri, 102–3 Grousset, René, 4 Guy of Lusignan, 15, 16–17, 75 al-Harizi, Judah, 1, 103–8; Book of Taḥkemoni, 103–8, 129 Hanina b. Dosa, 115 Ḥasan al-Baṣri, 171 Henri d’Arci, 156–58 Henry of Champagne, 17–18 Henry VI of Germany, 21 Heraclius, 75, 148 Herzog, Thomas, 88 Hisham (Umayyad Caliph), 137–38 historiography, of premodern culture and literature, 192–200 Holy Land. See Jerusalem holy war rhetoric: al-‘Adil’s use of, 20; in Ayyubid jihad literature, 170–78; changes in thirteenth-century, 14–15, 36; financial contributions included in, 116–17; in Frankish literature, 168–70; Homily of the King Messiah and, 124–29; immigration justified by, 124–30; intersecting cultural discourses in, 4–6, 8–10, 12, 35, 129, 166; literary forms containing, 6; prevalence of, 2, 5–6, 97–98; purification as theme of, 167–90; purity as subject of, 114, 121. See also apocalyptic literature; messianic literature; militant piety Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, 99, 108–30, 150, 155; on ages of the world, 110–11; dating of, 108; holy war rhetoric in, 108; and immigration to Palestine, 108, 111–30; on the messiah, 111–29; purification rhetoric of, 186–87 Honorius III, Pope, 38 Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 194–95 Hospitallers: jihad rhetoric aimed at, 175–76; military actions of, 22; Near Eastern forces of, 29–31; Templars in conflict with, 29–31, 62. See also Military Orders Hugh of Burgundy, 30 Hugh of Tabarie, 93–94 Hulegu Khan, 35 Ibelin family, 16–18, 72, 75, 76 Iberia. See Spain

285

Ibn al-Furat, 13, 33–34, 61–62 Ibn al-Munir, 173–74 Ibn ‘Arabī, Muḥī al-Dīn, Muhādarāt al-Abrār wa-Musāmarāt al-Akhyār, 132, 152–55 Ibn ‘Asakir, 170–71 Ibn Ḥazm, 171–72 Ibn Hisham, 163 Ibn Nabih, 174–75 Ibn Shaddad, 58 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 104 Ibn Wasil, 49, 153, 177–78 ‘Imad al-Din al-Zengi, 15 immigration: in Acre, 1–2, 6, 11, 59–61, 97–98, 102; causes of, 102–3; financial support for, 116–17; holy war rhetoric used to justify, 124–30, 186–87; messianic impulses behind, 108–30, 186–87; to Palestine, 101–3 Innocent III, Pope, 37, 117 Isaac b. Abraham (RiZbA), 108, 110, 127 Isaac b. Samuel of Dampier, 102 Isabella (sister of Baldwin IV), 16, 17 Isaiah (prophet), 46, 117 al-Isfahani, ‘Imad al-Din, 53–55, 175 Isma‘il, al-Salih, 26–29, 31–33 Israel. See Land of Israel Izz al-Din Aybak, 88 Jacobites, 39–40 Jacques de Vitry, 10, 36–50; and apocalyptic liter ature, 159, 164; changes in conception of militant piety, 37, 43, 48–50; on the crusades, 42–43; early life of, 37; Historia Hierosolimitana abbreviata, 39; Historia occidentalis, 37, 39; Historia orientalis, 39–42; on instability of the Near East, 39–43; on intercultural relations, 39–43, 48–50; on militant piety, 42–43, 49–50, 63–64; in the Near East, 38–43; Sermones ad status vel vulgares, 43; sermons for Military Orders, 43–50, 63 Jalal al-Din, 23, 33 al-Jawad Yunus, 26 Jean de Nivelles, 37 Jellinek, Adolf, 132–34 Jellinek-Prayer version of Prayer of RaSHBI, 132–35, 137–41, 143–48, 229n17 Jeremiah (prophet), 113, 116

286

Index

Jerusalem: Ayyubid, 1; crusaders’ capture of (1099), 99–100, 179; fall of, to Ayyubids (1187), 3, 14, 180–83; Frankish, 3, 15; Jews and Muslims banned from, 1, 99, 221n9; Jews’ return to, 103–7; Latin kingdom of, 15–19, 25, 97, 99; messianic-inspired immigration to, 108, 111–30; purification rhetoric concerning, 171, 174–83, 186–89; Treaty of Jaffa’s granting of, to Christians, 25 Jesus Christ: in late medieval polemics, 124, 126; Military Orders as followers of, 45–48; in Muslim apocalyptic literature, 153–54 Jewish-Christian relations: apocalyptic literature and, 122–31; prevalence of, 2–3 Jewish-Muslim relations: apocalyptic literature and, 130–31; al-Harizi and, 104; prevalence of, 2–3 Jews: apocalyptic literature of, 132–51, 162; as chosen people, 119, 126, 128; cohesion of, 130, 146–48, 151; in early Frankish period, 99–101; holy war rhetoric of, 98; messianism of, 108–65; pilgrimages of, 100; purification rhetoric in literature of, 186–89; return to Jerusalem of, 103–7. See also immigration jihad: al-‘Adil’s use of rhetoric of, 20; and purification rhetoric, 170–73, 176; women forbidden from, 83 Joachim of Fiore, 155 John Gale, 52–55 John of Brienne, 18, 38 John of Ibelin, 19 Joscelin, 16 Joseph b. Baruch, 102 Jubb, Margaret, 71, 77 al-Kamil, 21–26, 38, 107 Karmun Agha, 62 Keen, Maurice, 7, 203n29 Khwarizmians, 13, 23, 32, 33 knights. See chivalry; militant piety; Military Orders Krauss, Samuel, 103, 148 Land of Israel: immigration to, 1, 98–105, 107–8, 111–19; messiah’s conquests of, 111–12, 119–28; precepts associated with, 101–3, 110; purification of, 114, 119, 187 Leon (Templar knight), 60, 62 Leopold VI, 38

Ha-Levi, Judah, 100–101 Lewis, Bernard, 134–35, 137, 140 Liber Clementis, 133, 164–65 Louis IX, 34, 157 Lyon Eracles, 56, 72–73, 75 magic, 84–87 Maimonides, 100, 103, 134, 158; Guide of the Perplexed, 104 al-Malik al-Ashraf, 174 al-Malik al-Mu‘azzam, 50, 97, 102, 153 Mallette, Karla, 198, 200 Mamluk Sultanate, 11, 33–35, 49, 59, 87–89, 91 Mansur, 148, 157 al-Mansur Ibrahim, 22, 32, 33 al-Mansur Muhammad, 20, 23 Marmorstein, Arthur, 148 Martin, Sanche, 73 Maryam al-Zunariyyah, 90–92 Mas-Latrie, Louis de, 69–70, 77 Mediterranean, studies of, 194–95 Meir al-Dabi, Shevile Emunah, 116–19 Meir b. Baruch of Rothenberg, 102, 108 Meir of Clisson, 102 Menahem. See Messiah-son-of-David (Menahem) Menocal, Maria Rosa, 197 Messiah-son-of-David (Menahem), 119, 125, 128 Messiah-son-of-Joseph (Nehemiah), 119–21, 123–24, 127–28, 149–51, 158, 187 messianic literature, 2, 11, 98–99, 108–65; Bodleian Signs and, 148–51; Homily of the King Messiah and Magog m’Gog, 108–29, 186–87; and immigration to Palestine, 108–29; intercultural sources for, 166; The Prayer of RaSHBI and, 133–48; purification rhetoric in, 111–12, 114, 119, 121–22, 186–89. See also apocalyptic literature Midrash Lekaḥ Tob, 141–42, 146 militant piety: Estoires d’Outremer and, 94, 96; intercultural relationships and, 4–5, 9–10, 35, 49–55, 61–65, 67–68, 83, 96, 191–92; Jacques de Vitry on, 42–43, 49–50, 63–64; political affinities and, 50–52, 55–59; women’s role in conceptualizing, 65–66, 92–93, 96. See also holy war rhetoric militant purity: in The Prayer of RaSHBI, 132, 143–48; in Ten Signs tradition, 148–51 Military Orders: Jacques de Vitry’s sermons for, 43–50, 63; psychological model of

Index knights, 45–48; relationship of, to the Church, 43–45; and Treaty of Jaffa, 25. See also Hospitallers; militant piety; Templars Mongols, 32, 35, 59 Morgan, Margret, 75, 77 Mount al-Tur, 153–54 al-Mu‘azzam, 1, 21–24, 107, 154 Muhādarāt al-Abrār wa-Musāmarāt al-Akhyār, 132, 152–55 Muhammad (prophet), 40, 56, 91, 153, 163, 184, 238n30 al-Mujahid Shirkuh, 20 multiculturalism, 193 multilingualism, 199–200 Munro, Dana, 4 Muslims: apocalyptic literature of, 152–55, 159–64; Christian criticisms of, 56–57, 213n96; enemies of, 92; impurity of, in Franks’ view, 168–70, 178–86; Jacques de Vitry on, 40, 48–49; purification rhetoric of, 170–78; in Spain, 197–98; Templars in relation to, 49. See also Christian-Muslim relations; Jewish-Muslim relations al-Mutanabbi, 172 al-Muzaffar, 23 al-Muzaffar Ghazi, 23 al-Muzaffar Muhammad, 31 Nahmanides, 98, 102, 187–88 al-Nasir, 23 al-Nasir Da’ud, al-Malik, 24–27, 29–30, 32–33, 177–78 al-Nasir Yusuf, 34–35 Near East: interreligious exchange in, 2–5; Jacques de Vitry’s comments on, 39–43. See also Jerusalem Nehemiah. See Messiah-son-of-Joseph Nirenberg, David, 198 Nur al-Din, 170–71, 173–74, 176–77 Occitan troubadours, 196–97 Oliver of Paderborn, 183–85 Ordene de Chevalerie, 7–8, 66, 93 Orosius, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, 185 ‘Otot ha-Mashi’aḥ, 119–20 Outremer. See Estoires d’Outremer Palestine, 100–103 Paris, Gaston, 70–71

287

Parma-Prayer version of Prayer of RaSHBI, 132, 135–48, 161–62, 229n17 Pesikta de-Rav Kahanah, 122 Petahia of Regensburg, 99–100 Peter the Cantor, 37 Peter the Venerable, 63 Philip-Augustus of France, 18, 53, 157 Philip II Augustus, 17 Philippe de Nanteuil, 29 philology, 198–200 pious warfare. See militant piety Pirenne, Henri, 195 politics: Muslim-Christian alliances in, 13–15, 24–25, 27–35; rivalries of coreligionists, 15, 30–35 pollution. See purity/pollution Prawer, Joshua, 4 The Prayer of RaSHBI, 132–48, 229n17. See also Bodleian Homily; JellinekPrayer; Parma-Prayer premodern culture and literature, theories of, 192–200 Pseudo-Methodius, 155–56 Purcell, Nicholas. See Horden, Peregrine purity/pollution: in Ayyubid literature, 170–78, 185–86; belief linked to, 169, 170, 172–80, 185, 189, 237n12; blood associated with, 167–70, 175–83, 188–89; communal boundaries linked to, 12, 167, 189–90; in early crusade literature, 168–70; in Frankish literature, 168–70, 178–86; interreligious context for rhetoric of, 12, 114, 167, 180–91; in messianic literature, 111–12, 114, 119, 121–22, 186–89; Muslim concerns with, 170–78, 181–82, 238n30; of Muslims, in Franks’ view, 168–70, 178–86; in The Prayer of RaSHBI, 132, 143–48; rhetoric about, 12, 167–90; space associated with, 169–86, 238n30; in Ten Signs tradition, 148–51 al-Qaysarani, 176–77 Quran, 54, 91, 163, 171, 174–77 Raimond of Aguilers, 168, 179 Raous de Santiers, 73–74 RaSHBI. See Simon b. Yochai Raymond of Tripoli, 15, 16 Reconquista, 192–93 Reeves, John, 120, 137 Reiner, Elchanan, 100, 103

288

Index

Rey, Emmanuel, 4 Reynald of Chatillon, 16, 77 Reynald of Montfort and Sidon, 56–59 rhetoric. See holy war rhetoric Riant, Paul, 76 Ribera, Julian, 197–98 Richard I the Lionheart, 10, 82 Richard of Cornwall, 29–30, 32 RiZbA. See Isaac b. Abraham Robert the Monk, 168, 179 Rodulf of Germany, 102 Röhricht, Reinhold, 162 Rothelin Continuation, 159–60 Rukn al-Din al-Hijawi, 27 Sa’adia Ga’on, Beliefs and Opinions, 113–14 sacred violence. See militant piety Safed, siege on, 59–62 Saladin: and chivalry, 7, 10–11, 53, 70, 82–83, 93–94, 96, 192; and conquest of Beaufort, 55–58; death of, 3, 7, 14, 103, 106; in Estoires d’Outremer, 10, 67, 69–71, 73–74, 76, 78–79, 82–83; in Fils d’Agap, 161; images of, 74, 95; and Jerusalem, 1, 16, 104–6, 181–82; and jihad, 171, 175, 178; knights in ser vice of, 51–54, 57–58, 74; in Muslim apocalyptic literature, 153; in Ordene de Chevalerie, 93–94; origin story of, 10, 82, 90, 93; political appointments by, 19, 106; The Prayer of RaSHBI and, 134; rule of, 15; Western attitudes toward, 215n3 al-Salih Ayyub, 26–27, 30–34 Samson b. Abraham of Sens, 102, 110 Samuel b. Samson, 101 Saracens. See Muslims Sayf al-Din Qutuz, 88 Second Crusade, 170 The Secrets of RaSHBI, 132–38 Sefer Zerubavel, 119, 122 Seventh Crusade, 34, 49, 88, 90 Shahanshah, 53–55 Shajar al-Durr, 83, 88–89, 92, 96 Shams al-Din Mawdud, 26 Shema Israel, 126 Sibylla (sister of Baldwin IV), 16 Simon b. Yochai (RaSHBI), 132–48 Sirat Baybars, 87–92 Sirat Sayf ibn dhi Yazan, 85–87 siyar literature, 83, 87–88, 92 Smail, R. C., 4

Spain, 193, 197–98 al-Sulami, ‘Izz al-Din ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, 28 Tabernacle, 118 Talmud, 102, 110, 113, 125. See also Babylonian Talmud Taqi al-Din ‘Umar (al-Malik al-Muzaffar), 53–54 Templar of Tyre, 59–61 Templars: and apocalyptic literature, 158, 234n89; in Estoires d’Outremer, 78, 81; Hospitallers in conflict with, 29–31, 62; Jacques de Vitry on, 46–49; military actions of, 13; Muslims in relation to, 49; Near Eastern forces of, 28–32; and siege on Safed, 59–61. See also Military Orders Ten Signs tradition, 119–23, 125, 127, 132, 136, 138–39, 148–51, 156–58, 162, 188–89 Thibaut of Champagne, 26–29, 31 Thibaut of Dombart, 78–84 Third Crusade, 16, 17, 20, 53, 72, 82, 134, 138, 143, 181 Torah, 111, 119, 123–25, 127, 136, 149–50, 187, 188 Tosafists, 110 Treaty of Jaffa, 24–26 True Cross, 75 Turanshah, 34, 88 Urbach, Ephraim, 132, 135, 138, 143–44 Urban II, Pope, 42, 168, 169, 180 William of Préaux, 79, 82–83, 90, 93 William of Sicily, 73 William of Tyre, 69–72, 75–76, 159, 169–70, 178–80 women: in Arabic literature, 69; and conceptualization of militant piety, 65–66, 92–93, 96, 191–92; dual nature of, 87; intercultural relationships embodied in, 79–80, 83–85, 88, 90, 92; and magic, 84–87; and pious violence, 11; as warriors, 66–67, 83–84, 93 Yehiel b. Joseph, 102 Yolanda (daughter of John of Brienne), 18, 24 Zachariah (prophet), 46 al-Zafir Khidr, 20 al-Zahir Ghazi, 20–22 Zephaniah, 147