Crusades [1] 9780754609186

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An Ashgate Book

Crusades Volume 1, 2002

Crusades Edited by

Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan S.C. Riley-Smith with Helen J. Nicholson Editorial Board Benjamin Z. Kedar (Editor; Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel) Jonathan Riley-Smith (Editor; University of Cambridge, U.K.) Helen J. Nicholson (Associate Editor; Cardiff University, U.K.) Christoph T. Maier (Reviews Editor; University of Zurich, Switzerland) Karl Borchardt (Bulletin Editor; University of Würzburg, Germany) Michel Balard (University of Paris I, France) James A. Brundage (University of Kansas, U.S.A.) Robert Cook (University of Virginia, U.S.A.) Jaroslav Folda (University of North Carolina, U.S.A.) Robert B.C. Huygens (University of Leiden, The Netherlands) David Jacoby (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel) Catherine Otten (University of Strasbourg, France) Jean Richard (Institut de France) Crusades is published annually for the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East by Ashgate. A statement of the aims of the Society and details of membership can be found following the Bulletin at the end of the volume. Manuscripts should be sent to either of the Editors, or to the Associate Editor, in accordance with the guidelines for submission of papers on p. 269. Subscriptions: Crusades (ISSN 1476–5276) is published annually in July. Subscriptions are available on an annual basis and are fixed, until after volume 3 (2004), at £65, and £20 for members of the Society. Prices include postage by surface mail. Enquiries concerning members’ subscriptions should be addressed to the Treasurer, Dr Tom Asbridge (see p. 271). All other orders and enquiries should be addressed to: Subscription Department, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hants GU11 3HR, U.K.; tel.: +44 (0)1252 331551; fax: +44 (0)1252 344405; email: [email protected]. Requests for Permissions and Copying: Requests should be addressed to the Publishers: Permissions Department, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hants GU11 3HR, U.K.; tel.: +44 (0)1252 331551; fax: +44 (0)1252 344405; email: [email protected]. The journal is also registered in the U.S.A. with the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, U.S.A.; tel.: +1 (978) 750 8400; fax: +1 (978) 750 4470; email: [email protected] and in the U.K. with the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE; tel.: +44 (0)207 436 5931; fax: +44 (0)207 631 5500.

Crusades Volume 1, 2002

First First published published 2003 2003 by by Ashgate Ashgate Publishing Publishing Published Published 2016 2016 by by Routledge Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Squar丸 Milton Park , Abingdon , Oxon OX14 4RN 2 Park Third Avenue, New York, 10017, USA 711711 Third A venue , New Y ork , NYNY 10017 , USA

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Contents Abbreviations

vii

Editors’ Statement

ix

A RTICLES AND S TUDIES De Jean-Baptiste Mailly à Joseph-François Michaud: un moment de l’historiographie des croisades (1774–1841) Jean Richard

1

Casualties and the Number of Knights on the First Crusade Jonathan Riley-Smith

13

Fiefs and Vassals in Twelfth-Century Jerusalem: a View from the West Susan Reynolds

29

Fiefs and Vassals in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: from the Twelfth Century to the Thirteenth Peter W. Edbury

49

Prudentes homines … qui sensus habebant magis exercitatos: a Preliminary Inquiry into William of Tyre’s Vocabulary of Power Miriam Rita Tessera

63

Coins at Vadum Jacob: New Evidence on the Circulation of Money in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Second Half of the Twelfth Century Robert Kool

73

Frisian Fighters and the Crusade Johannes A. Mol

89

The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings of the Shaykhs of the Holy Land by D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd al-Wa@@h¢id al-Maqdis¸@ (569/1173–643/1245): Text, Translation and Commentary Daniella Talmon-Heller

111

Languages in Contact in the Latin East: Acre and Cyprus Cyril Aslanov

155

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CONTENTS

Pope Pius II’s Letter to Sultan Mehmed II: a Reexamination Nancy Bisaha

183

R EVIEWS Malcolm Barber, The Cathars. Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages (Christoph T. Maier) Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Deborah Gerish) Christoph T. Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (James M. Powell) Kristian Molin, Unknown Crusader Castles (Denys Pringle) Alan V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. A Dynastic History, 1099–1125 (Jonathan Phillips) Helen J. Nicholson, Love, War and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance, 1150–1500 (Michael J. Routledge) Occident et Proche-Orient: Contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades, ed. Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon & B. van den Abeele (Laura Minervini) Jonathan Riley-Smith, Hospitallers: The History of the Order of St John (Jochen Burgtorf)

201

Short Notices: Dei gesta per Francos: Etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard — Crusade Studies in Honour of Jean Richard ed. Michel Balard, Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan Riley-Smith; Jerusalem im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung — Vorstellungen und Vergegen wärtigungen, ed. Dieter Bauer, Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert; Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, ed. Alfred Haverkamp; Uluslararas¸ Haçl¸ Seferlerli Sempozyumu, 23–25 Haziran 1997, Istanbul (AKDTYK Türk Tarih Kumuru yay¸nlar¸, XXVI. Dizi-Sa. 8).

213

Bulletin of the SSCLE

217

Guidelines for Submission of Papers

269

Membership Information

271

Abbreviations AOL

Archives de l’Orient latin

Autour

Autour de la Première Croisade. Actes du colloque de la Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East: Clermont-Ferrand, 22–25 juin 1995, ed. Michel Balard. Paris, 1996 Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, 1100–1310, ed. Joseph Delaville Le Roulx. 4 vols. Paris, 1884–1906 Le Cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades 15. Paris, 1984 Cartulaire général de l’ordre du Temple 1119?–1150. Recueil des chartes et des bulles relatives à l’ordre du Temple, ed. Guigue A. M. J. A. Marquis d’Albon. Paris, 1913 Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis Chartes de la Terre Sainte provenant de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de Josaphat, ed. Henri F. Delaborde, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 19. Paris, 1880 From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500. Selected proceedings of the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 10–13 July 1995, ed. Alan V. Murray. International Medieval Research 3. Turnhout, 1998 The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. John France and William G. Zajac. Aldershot, 1998 A History of the Crusades, general editor Kenneth M. Setton, 2nd edn, 6 vols. Madison, 1969–89 Crusade and Settlement: Papers read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and presented to R.C. Smail, ed. Peter W. Edbury. Cardiff, 1985 Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum The Horns of Hattin, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar. Jerusalem and London, 1992

Cart Hosp

Cart St Sép

Cart Tem

CCCM Chartes Josaphat

Clermont

Crusade Sources

Crusades CS

CSEL Horns

vii

viii

ABBREVIATIONS

Kreuzfahrerstaaten Die Kreuzfahrerstaaten als multikulturelle Gesellschaft. Einwanderer und Minderheiten im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Eberhard Mayer with Elisabeth Müller-Luckner. Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 3. Munich, 1997 Mansi. Concilia Giovanni D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MO, 1 The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. Malcolm Barber. Aldershot, 1994 MO, 2 The Military Orders vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare, ed. Helen Nicholson. Aldershot, 1998 Montjoie Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Jonathan Riley-Smith and Rudolf Hiestand. Aldershot, 1997 Outremer Outremer. Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans E. Mayer and Raymond C. Smail. Jerusalem, 1982 PG Patrologia Graeca PL Patrologia Latina PPTS Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society Library RHC Recueil des Historiens des Croisades Darm Documents arméniens Oc Historiens occidentaux Or Historiens orientaux RIS Rerum Italicarum Scriptores NS New Series ROL Revue de l’Orient latin RRH Reinhold Röhricht, comp., Regesta regni hierosolymitani. Innsbruck, 1893 RRH Add Reinhold Röhricht, comp., Additamentum. Innsbruck, 1904 RS Rolls Series WT William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. Robert B.C. Huygens, with Hans E. Mayer and Gerhard Rösch, CCCM 63–63A. Turnhout, 1986

Editors’ Statement It is not a dogmatic ‘pluralistic’ point, but a fact that scholars who perceive themselves to be working in the field of crusade history include not only those studying expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean region and the settlements of westerners established there, but also those writing on the Iberian peninsula, the Baltic region, crusades against heretics and opponents of the church, the military orders and trade, as well as on literature, art history, science, archaeology and numismatics. The range of interests encompassed by a field which is sometimes considered to be rather esoteric is wide, partly because it has changed almost out of recognition. It is quite common to hear complaints that it has become far too complicated to teach. It used to be far more narrowly defined and it ended in 1291, although sometimes a short coda on the fourteenth century was added. Since then it has expanded in time, space and depth, and our vision of our discipline, our presuppositions and our estimates of the possible are very different to those of half a century ago. Even thirty years ago, there was no international body to which crusade scholars could belong and no way of knowing, other than through hearsay, chance meeting or references to publications in bibliographies, who were involved in the discipline and what they were doing. Some groups were isolated until recently: it is only in the last few years, for example, that the work of the many good historians in Spain and Portugal, in central and eastern Europe and in Scandinavia has really come to the attention of scholars elsewhere. Since 1980, however, the disparate bodies of scholars have been coming together and most of them are now members of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. When in the six decades after the First World War the revival of the Society’s legendary predecessor, the Société de l’Orient Latin, was sporadically discussed, it seems to have been assumed that its journal, the Revue de l’Orient latin, would also be resurrected. But when in 1980 we began to plan the establishment of the Society, the publication of a journal was never seriously considered. Some of us were doubtful whether the enterprise we were embarking on would be a success and were even more doubtful whether there were the number of historians or the market for a periodical, given the fact that we could all be published in a wide range of existing and well-established serials. The large number of positive responses from all over the world to the original letter inviting membership came as a great surprise. They revealed not only the need for a society but the size of potential membership. In the twenty years which have elapsed since then the international community of crusade scholars has continued to grow and one of the most encouraging features is how young many of them are. It is perhaps too early to try to explain why so many scholars are now to be found working on the crusades, but contributory factors must be public interest fuelled by the end of empires and post-colonialism, the ix

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debates about the ethics of violence, particularly those associated with nuclear deterrence, and the establishment of the state of Israel and the Arab reaction. The recent re-emergence of Jihad may enhance intellectual interest still further. We feel the time has now come to launch this annual journal dedicated to our field of study. We believe that its publication is justified and that it will be welcomed by the members of the Society and by the wider academic world. Our editorial policy is simple. The remit of Crusades, like that of the Society, will be as inclusive as possible. This will give all those who consider they have something worthwhile to say a chance to be heard. The contents will include articles and book reviews, but there will be an emphasis on the publication of source-material in original languages, including Arabic, Armenian and Syriac, accompanied, if need be, by translations. The editors will encourage research on neglected topics and invite a number of contributors to deal with specific issues, such as the relations between crusaders and indigenous populations, in a comparative way. High standards will be set for the acceptance of contributions; not only because these are good in themselves but because we are conscious of the fact that our core audience, the Society’s membership, is knowledgeable and critical. This, we hope, will also encourage scholars to send their material to us in the first instance. Benjamin Kedar Jonathan Riley-Smith

De Jean-Baptiste Mailly à Joseph-François Michaud: un moment de l’historiographie des croisades (1774–1841) Jean Richard Membre de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, professeur émérite à l’Université de Dijon Quand le Tasse écrivait sa Jérusalem délivrée, l’histoire des croisades était encore bien proche de l’épopée. Mais l’histoire érudite était déjà à l’oeuvre, et la publication par Jacques Bongars de ses Gesta Dei per Francos, en 1611, en avait apporté la première grande réalisation. Le succès de l’Histoire des croisades pour la délivrance de la Terre Sainte du P. Louis Maimbourg, 2 vols (Paris, 1675–76), traduite en plusieurs langues et maintes fois rééditée, marquait une première étape dans le progrès de cette histoire: mais l’auteur se proposait avant tout de relater des exploits héroïques, des défaites glorieuses, sans trop s’interroger sur les motivations des acteurs de la croisade dont il ne doutait pas qu’elles fussent essentiellement religieuses. L’érudition poursuivait ses recherches: Du Cange, à côté de ses Familles d’Outre-mer, réunissait les matériaux de ses Dissertations. Et les Bénédictins de la congrégation de Saint-Maur, après avoir fait place aux historiens des croisades dans le Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, concevaient le plan d’une collection spécialement consacrée aux croisades: les 31 volumes du fonds dit de Dom Berthereau, conservés au cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, montrent l’étendue de ce projet, qui faisait place à des historiens orientaux comme Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Khallikan ou al-Nasawi.1 Jusqu’à la fin du 17e siècle, l’idéal des croisades n’était généralement pas mis en cause par les historiens, qu’ils fussent catholiques ou protestants. Le Siècle des Lumières allait au contraire passer ces mêmes croisades au crible de sa critique, en les englobant dans le mépris que les esprits éclairés témoignaient au Moyen-Age. L’hostilité pour le catholicisme qui animait le courant de pensée philosophique s’alimentait dans la contestation des “guerres saintes.” L’Histoire des croisades, publiée en 1751 par Voltaire, puis reprise dans son Essai sur les moeurs, en 1753, allait faire longtemps autorité. Le philosophe de Ferney déniait aux croisades tout effet bénéfique pour l’Europe, ne voyant comme apport de celles-ci que l’introduction de la lèpre. Et les Encyclopédistes renchérissaient. S’il restait encore quelques apologistes des croisades, ils se situaient en dehors du courant de pensée dominant; on doit toutefois remarquer 1 Paul Riant, “Matériaux rassemblés par les Bénédictins du 18e siècle pour la publication du recueil des historiens des croisades,” AOL 2 (1884), 105–30. 1

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que l’idéal de la chevalerie conservait son emprise sur le public, et que celui-ci restait attaché au souvenir des héros de ces grandes aventures: le Tasse avait toujours ses lecteurs et inspirait les artistes qui donnaient dans le genre “troubadour.” Un professeur au collège de Dijon, Jean-Baptiste Mailly (1744–94), quelque peu polygraphe, s’avisa que les croisades constituaient avec la Ligue et la Fronde un des épisodes majeurs de l’histoire de France et qu’il valait la peine de leur consacrer un des volets d’un triptyque. Ainsi entreprit-il un Esprit des croisades ou histoire politique et militaire des guerres entreprises par les chrétiens contre les mahométans pour le recouvrement de la Terre Sainte pendant les 11e, 12e et 13e siècles. Entamée en 1774, la rédaction n’avait pas dépassé la prise de Jérusalem quand furent imprimés les quatre premiers volumes, en 1784. Mais la suite ne parut jamais.2 Ce qui fait l’intérêt de l’entreprise de Mailly, c’est que l’auteur, tout en protestant de son admiration pour Voltaire, mettait en cause la méthode historique de celui-ci, en soulignant la nécessité de s’appuyer sur une documentation solide. Les “Notes historiques et critiques sur les auteurs cités dans cet ouvrage” n’occupent pas moins de 141 pages de son premier livre, et font place même à des auteurs byzantins et orientaux à l’égard desquels il partageait néammoins les préjugés du temps. Il affirmait sa volonté de se dégager d’une “fausse philosophie,” tout en restant prisonnier des idées en vogue: c’est ainsi que tout ce qui relève du merveilleux est pour lui fourberie ou supercherie, et que le mot de “fanatisme” revient sans cesse sous sa plume. Il comprend mal le facteur religieux auquel il lui arrive cependant de se référer. Mais il entend joindre au récit des événements un tableau des causes, des origines et des conséquences des croisades, ce qui l’amène à brosser un panorama de l’Europe, et il sait discerner les renouvellements qu’ont apportés ces expéditions, en particulier en ce qui concerne la liberté des hommes. Nous avons supposé que l’interruption de son Esprit des croisades pouvait être mise en rapport avec le départ de Dijon pour Clairvaux de la célèbre bibliothèque de Bouhier où il avait puisé son information. L’oeuvre avait eu un certain succès; elle avait connu une traduction allemande. Mais peut-être Mailly avait-il manqué de souffle pour mener son entreprise à terme. Celle de Friedrich Wilken, la monumentale Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, qui allait se poursuivre de 1807 à 1832, était partie d’un autre point de vue, celui de l’orientalisme: c’est par un commentaire du récit des guerres des croisades par Abu’l Fida que l’auteur avait, en 1798, inauguré sa recherche. Par contre, la nouvelle Histoire des croisades qui allait paraître en France n’était pas, dans son origine, très éloignée de celle de Mailly. L’auteur, Joseph-François Michaud, né en Savoie en 1767,3 avait comme son 2 Jean Richard, “Jean-Baptiste Mailly et l’Esprit des croisades,” in Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Dijon 136 (1997–98), pp. 343–53. 3 Sur Michaud, voir: Jean-Joseph Poujoulat, “Vie de Michaud,” en tête de la 6e édition de l’Histoire des croisades (Paris, 1841); Parisot, “Michaud (Joseph-François),” in

DE JEAN-BAPTISTE MAILLY A JOSEPH-FRANÇOIS MICHAUD

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prédécesseur, fait ses débuts dans le journalisme, tout en publiant des poèmes et des traductions. Il avait pris parti contre les Révolutionnaires, ce qui lui avait valu de courir de réels dangers. Sa première oeuvre historique, une Histoire de l’empire de Mysore, parue en 1801, relevait elle aussi du journalisme, en fournissant un aliment à la curiosité du public pour le fameux Tippou-Sahib. Mais il collaborait avec son frère, Louis-Gabriel, qui s’était associé à Guignet pour fonder une maison d’édition (celle qui publia la célèbre Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, dite Biographie Michaud). Or, en 1805, ce dernier, voulant publier un roman historique qu’avait écrit une femme de lettres alors en vogue, Mme Cottin (Sophie Ristaud, 1773–1807), demanda à son frère d’écrire une introduction historique à ce livre, qui avait pour thème un épisode romanesque de la Troisième Croisade, le projet de mariage du frère de Saladin et de la soeur de Richard Coeur de Lion.4 Ce “Tableau historique des trois premières croisades,” selon un de ses biographes, ne devait pas être retenu “comme un grand titre à sa louange.” Mais Michaud s’avisa qu’il n’y avait pas eu depuis longtemps de livre important sur les croisades et qu’il tenait là “un beau et riche sujet.”5 Il devait écrire plus tard: En commençant cet ouvrage, j’étais bien loin de connaître la tâche que je m’étais imposée: animé par l’intérêt de mon sujet, plein d’une trop grande confiance en mes forces, je croyais sans cesse toucher au terme de mon travail, semblable à ces pauvres villageois qui ... croyaient à chaque ville qu’ils rencontraient être arrivés à Jérusalem.6

Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, nouv. édition, 28 (Paris, 1843), pp. 206–14, Villenave père, Notice historique sur M. Michaud (Paris, 1840); Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi (Paris, 1851–53), 7:16–32; Henry Bordeaux, “Joseph Michaud, historien des croisades,” in Revue des Deux Mondes, 96e année, ler sept. 1926, pp. 59–90, repris dans Voyageurs d’Orient, 2 (Paris, 1926); Robert Delort, préface à la réimpression abrégée de l’Histoire des croisades (Les grands moments de l’histoire) (Paris, 1970). 4 Mathilde ou mémoires tirés de l’histoire des croisades (Paris, Guignet et Michaud, an XIII–1805). Souvent réédité, ce livre prend pour titre en 1859 Histoire de Mathilde et de Malek Adhel, épisode du temps des croisades. L’héroïne n’est pas la soeur du roi d’Angleterre, mais une figure imaginaire. Michaud estimait ce livre comme “rempli de peintures éloquentes et de sentiments héroïques puisés dans l’histoire de la chevalerie:” Histoire des croisades, 2:141. Sauf indication contraire, nous renverrons par commodité à l’édition de l’Histoire des Croisades en quatre volumes (Paris, 1849), sur laquelle ont été effectuées les rééditions suivantes, en l’abrégeant Hist. 5 Le jugement est de Parisot. En fait cette introduction, très développée (90 pages), signée “J. Michaud, éditeur,” esquisse déjà les thèses de l’auteur qui, comme Mailly, retient parmi les causes de la croisade le désir des serfs d’échapper à leur condition, des débiteurs de se dérober à leurs obligations, l’aspiration aux conquêtes et au butin, etc.; mais il attache plus d’importance au facteur religieux et il relève les effets bénéfiques de la croisade, notamment le coup d’arrêt donné à l’expansion musulmane. 6 Hist., début du livre XIII.

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Il avouait en 1829 qu’il n’avait pas eu alors l’idée de l’importance de la documentation qu’il allait lui falloir réunir, apprécier et mettre en oeuvre.7 C’est ce qui rend si attachant le personnage de cet homme qui, littérateur au départ, attiré par un sujet apparemment neuf, en découvre progressivement les exigences qu’il accepte, remettant sans cesse l’ouvrage sur le métier, tout en se passionnant pour l’objet de son oeuvre. “Le travail que je me suis imposé et qui m’a occupé sans relâche pendant tant d’années,” devait-il écrire, est devenu pour moi, je dois l’avouer, comme une habitude de vie à laquelle j’ai peine à renoncer. En quittant les croisés avec lesquels j’ai vécu et les vieux chroniqueurs qui m’ont servi de guides, il me semble ... que je me sépare des objets d’une ancienne amitié. J’ai commencé à les connaître dans ma jeunesse, je les ai suivis dans mon âge mûr. Et naguère ne m’a-t-on pas vu, en cheveux blancs, les suivre encore sur le chemin de Jérusalem?8

Inaugurée en 1811 par l’édition d’un premier volume, vite suivi d’un second, l’Histoire des croisades connut un succès immédiat et ouvrit à l’auteur, le 5 août 1813, les portes de la seconde classe de l’Institut de France, qui allait redevenir bientôt l’Académie française.9 C’est pendant les Cent Jours —son attachement à Louis XVIII l’avait obligé à quitter Paris — qu’il écrivit l’histoire des “quatrième et cinquième croisades” qui parut dans le troisième volume, en 1817.10 Le quatrième était annoncé pour 1818, mais l’auteur avait entre temps repris ses premiers volumes, qui parurent en une “nouvelle édition, revue, corrigée, augmentée,” en même temps que les volumes V, VI et VII, en 1822. Le quatrième volume s’était arrêté à la prise de Constantinople par les Turcs; le cinquième suivait la lutte des chrétiens et des Turcs jusque sous Louis XIV. Les deux volumes suivants constituaient une “Bibliographie des croisades,” autrement dit “l’analyse de toutes les chroniques d’Orient et d’Occident qui parlent des croisades.” Michaud s’était assuré de l’aide d’un jeune orientaliste, Amable Jourdain, qui devait mourir peu après. Il définissait sa “Bibliographie” comme “le complément d’une entreprise dont la collection de Bongars serait le

7 C’est ce qu’il écrit dans la préface à la Bibliothèque des croisades, où il livre le cheminement de sa pensée d’historien. 8 Hist., 4:100 (livre XX, 1). 9 L’autorité qu’il avait acquise lui permet dès 1812 de demander au gouvernement l’achat de manuscrits orientaux intéressant les croisades. 10 Dans sa dernière édition, Michaud nous dit avoir “écrit l’histoire de la quatrième et de la cinquième croisade (qui sont les expéditions de 1197 et de 1202) en 1815, au bruit d’une révolution nouvelle, d’une guerre formidable, dans les loisirs inquiets d’un second exil;” mais précédemment il avait écrit plus simplement “pendant la seconde usurpation de Bonaparte.” Il était alors engagé dans la lutte politique (bien qu’il eût célébré par un épithalame les noces de Napoléon et de Marie-Louise); il a raconté les Cent Jours dans un opuscule, Histoire des quinze semaines ou le dernier règne de Bonaparte, écrit d’actualité qui n’eut pas moins de vingt éditions en 1815. Elu député, il se retira bientôt de la vie politique, et le ton de ses écrits devient plus modéré.

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commencement,” mais il n’allait pas encore jusqu’à envisager d’en faire un recueil de textes.11 Les éditions se succédaient. La quatrième parut de 1825 à 1827, cette fois en six volumes, dont le dernier était consacré à la “physionomie morale des croisades,” envisageant dans une première partie ce qu’il appelle l’“esprit des croisés,” dans la seconde l’influence exercée par les croisades. La “Bibliographie” disparaissait: toutefois le titre de la nouvelle Bibliothèque des croisades était accompagné de la mention “seconde édition.” Mais il s’agissait en réalité d’un ouvrage différent, comprenant quatre volumes. Au lieu d’une analyse des ouvrages et collections utilisés, c’était un recueil d’extraits des auteurs ayant traité des croisades: chroniques de France, d’Italie, d’Angleterre, d’Allemagne, de l’Europe du Nord, suivies des oeuvres grecques et turques. Le quatrième volume, oeuvre de Reinaud, était consacré aux sources arabes. L’économie des premiers volumes s’était elle aussi modifiée. Dans les premières éditions, Michaud avait introduit, comme “pièces justificatives,” à la fois des documents illustrant le texte et des dissertations sur des questions particulières, parfois demandées à des spécialistes.12 L’édition de 1822, dans les quatrième et cinquième volumes, affecte un caractère spécialement composite : Michaud, nouvellement admis dans l’ordre de Malte et dans celui du Saint-Sépulcre, y a inséré jusqu’au prospectus d’une société de secours aux chrétiens d’Orient.l3 Tout ceci est revu dans les éditions suivantes, des excursus ont disparu; Michaud distingue les véritables pièces justificatives, souvent fort bien choisies (on y trouve même des documents comptables), des “éclaircissements” qui tiennent une moindre place que les dissertations antérieures. Au moment où s’achevait sa quatrième édition, Michaud ressentit la nécessité de compléter son enquête par l’examen du terrain où s’était déroulée l’histoire qu’il avait racontée. Sans doute y fut-il encouragé par la présence à ses côtés du jeune Jean-Joseph Poujoulat (né en 1808) qu’il avait pris en 1828 pour secrétaire, puis pour collaborateur, et qui allait l’accompagner. Royaliste fervent au début de la Restauration, Michaud avait pris quelque distance avec le pouvoir; s’étant associé à la protestation de l’Académie contre les lois sur la presse, il avait même été privé en 1827 de la charge de lecteur royal que lui avait donnée Louis XVIII. Néanmoins, quand il sollicita, par l’intermédiaire de Polignac, une allocation en vue d’un voyage en Orient, Charles X lui accorda 11 Ceci d’après la préface de la “Bibliographie des croisades.” Cette “Bibliographie” contient successivement une analyse des Annales ecclesiastici de Baronius, des Foedera de Rymer, etc. 12 C’est ainsi que Dureau de Lamalle traite des modifications introduites par le Tasse à sa Jérusalem délivrée pour en faire la Jérusalem conquise; Amable Jourdain, des Assassins et de la croisade des enfants; Raynouard réfute la thèse de Hammer sur le Baphomet des Templiers. 13 Dans ce tome 5 figurait un exposé très développée sur les attitudes opposées de Luther et d’Erasme à propos de la guerre contre les Turcs. On y trouve d’autre part un catalogue des monnaies des croisés, oeuvre de Cousinery.

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une somme de 25.000 francs qui permit aux deux hommes d’effectuer un voyage de presque deux ans.l4 Tous deux partirent en 1830 pour Smyrne, puis pour Constantinople, et suivirent ensuite la côte de la mer Egée, se séparant à Mytilène où Michaud, de santé fragile, demeura pendant que Poujoulat visitait le continent. Par Chypre, ils gagnèrent Jaffa, puis Jérusalem. Poujoulat entreprit alors de visiter Bethléem, le sud de la Judée, puis la Syrie et Antioche; Michaud se consacrait à l’Egypte.15 Les deux voyageurs échangeaient des lettres, en envoyaient d’autres à d’autres personnes, et ce sont ces lettres qui furent reprises pour constituer le recueil intitulé Correspondance d’Orient.16 Il s’agit d’un récit de voyage très vivant, émaillé d’anecdotes (Michaud raconte comment l’habit d’académicien qu’il avait revêtu pour impressionner les Turcs, qui avait fait merveille à Constantinople, lui valut à Jérusalem d’être importuné par les quémandeurs de bakchis), de témoignages sur un Orient en pleine évolution,17 qui prend honorablement place à côté de la relation de Châteaubriand. Mais Michaud n’y perd pas de vue l’objet du voyage; il écrivait à Polignac18 qu’après avoir travaillé vingt ans à l’Histoire des croisades, le moment aurait pu paraître venu de prendre du repos au lieu d’accomplir “un long pèlerinage.” Il aurait été “plus sage de voyager d’abord pour éviter ses fautes,” mais autant s’être préparé au voyage par de longs travaux! Et il entendait “corriger ses erreurs” en confrontant les textes avec les réalités du terrain, identifier les lieux, suivre les opérations sur place. Michaud avait été attentif à doter ses livres d’une cartographie adéquate; celle-ci, il s’en rendait compte, ne s’en révélait pas moins déficiente.19 Le résultat de cette enquête se révèle lorsqu’on compare la cinquième édition, 14 La mission de Michaud prit ainsi un caractère officiel. Nous apprenons par la Correspondance d’Orient que le ministère de la guerre lui avait attaché deux officiers ingénieurs pour lever la carte de l’itinéraire des croisés; l’un d’eux devait mourir à Alep. 15 Il y étudia spécialement l’expédition de Saint Louis; il reconnut le site de l’ancienne Damiette, identifia le lieu où s’était embusquée l’escadre égyptienne qui intercepta les communications du roi, et il s’attarda à la Mansoura pour démêler les récits contradictoires de la bataille (Hist., 3:144, 158). 16 J. Michaud et J.-J. Poujoulat, Correspondance d’Orient (Paris, 1833–35), 7 volumes et une carte. Ces lettres ont évidemment été reprises en vue de l’édition, mais paraissent bien avoir été écrites pendant le voyage (l’une d’elles est adressée à Madame Michaud). Poujoulat ramena du voyage l’idée d’un roman, La Bédouine, qui fut relu par Michaud. Son frère, Baptistin Poujoulat, visita en 1836 Nicée et la Cappadoce pour le compte de Michaud. Ce dernier bénéficia aussi d’informations provenant des consuls français. 17 Il s’amuse en particulier lorsqu’il revoit à Constantinople, revêtu de l’uniforme turc, un “Franc-Comtois philhellène” qui avait combattu trois ans avec les Grecs et qui servait alors comme sous-instructeur dans les “nouvelles milices” du sultan (Correspondance, 2:413). 18 Correspondance, 1:4. Michaud n’apprit qu’assez tard, en Turquie, la Révolution de Juillet. On ne s’étonnera pas que ses appréciations sur celle-ci soient prudentes, du fait de la date de la publication; les lettres originales étaient peut-être plus vives… . 19 Mas-Latrie, dans le compte-rendu cité plus loin, constate l’absence sur ces cartes de plusieurs sites notables. Mais les deux premiers tomes des premières éditions

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celle de 1838, avec les précédentes. Michaud explique qu’il n’a pas modifié ce qui a trait au déroulement des événements, ni son appréciation des croisades. Mais “ma conscience d’historien n’a été tranquille que lorsque j’ai pu suivre les pèlerins de la croix jusqu’en Orient.” Il a remanié ce qu’il avait écrit sur les pèlerinages; le récit de la bataille de Dorylée est “un morceau entièrement neuf;” les itinéraires des croisades de 1101, de 1147, de Frédéric Barberousse ont été revus. Et il estime avoir décrit avec plus de fidélité les deux campagnes d’Egypte.20 Il avoue qu’en comparaison de l’ “imposant spectacle” qu’offraient les croisades, il avait d’abord sous-estimé l’intérêt de l’histoire des états latins d’Orient.21 Encore son travail ne lui paraissait-il pas achevé: il préparait une sixième édition, qui devait paraître en 1841; lui-même avait revu les deux premiers livres, et Poujoulat acheva la révision des suivants “d’après les derniers travaux et les dernières intentions de l’auteur,” qui mourut en 1839. Il y a quelque injustice à écrire, comme l’a fait un contemporain, que “sa nouvelle édition est plus mercantile que littéraire,” ceci parce que ses besoins financiers poussaient Michaud à multiplier ses publications.22 En fait, l’édition qui parut au lendemain de sa mort représentait le dernier état de sa pensée sur une question qui l’avait retenu pendant tant d’années. Les éditeurs allaient faire paraitre en 1849 une septième édition, conforme à la précédente, mais en ramenant le nombre des volumes de six à quatre et en demandant à un jeune historien, lequel avait déjà traduit Mathieu Paris et allait faire paraître l’Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi, Huillard-Bréholles, trois appendices concernant les croisades contre les Sarrasins d’Italie du Sud, la principauté d’Achaïe et les Lusignan de Chypre, sujets que Michaud avait laissés de côté pour ne pas s’éloigner de son thème essentiel, la croisade pour la délivrance et la défense de la Terre Sainte, prolongée par la défense de la Chrétienté contre les Turcs.23 Mais Huillard-Bréholles ajoutait: “L’oeuvre de Michaud a été composée avec tant de maturité, écrite avec tant de goût, revue et refaite avec tant de prudence, de soin et de conscience qu’on ne saurait y toucher sans grande témérité.”24 Ainsi, sous une forme plus maniable (celle qui s’imposa aux éditions suivantes), comportent des appendices, signés C M F, concernant l’établissement de ces documents qui montrent le travail qu’ils nécessitaient. 20 Analyse de ces retouches par Poujoulat dans l’avertissement de la sixième édition (1841). 21 Hist., 2:343. Dans l’avertissement de 1841, Poujoulat écrit: “la plus importante amélioration du deuxième volume est celle qui touche à l’histoire du royaume de Jérusalem.” 22 D’après Parisot. Parmi ces publications figure la monumentale Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France qu’il publia avec Poujoulat, en 32 volumes, de 1836 à 1838, ainsi qu’un Abrégé de l’histoire des croisades à l’usage de la jeunesse, en deux volumes (Paris, 1836), signé de leurs deux noms. 23 Il s’est laissé aller à suivre Villehardouin pour la conquête de l’empire de Constantinople, en le complétant par Nicétas (2:327, n. 1), mais il s’interrompt sur ces mots: “je n’ai pas eu le courage de poursuivre cette histoire et de montrer les Latins dans l’excès de leur abaissement.” 24 Hist., 4:401.

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cette “nouvelle édition” restait la fidèle reproduction de celle qui était le résultat des dernières révisions de l’auteur. Sous sa forme définitive, l’Histoire des croisades comporte 22 livres. Le premier est consacré à la naissance et au progrès de l’esprit de croisade; les trois suivants à la première croisade; le cinquième à l’histoire des états latins jusqu’à la chute d’Edesse. La seconde croisade occupe le sixième livre et le septième s’achève sur la chute de Jérusalem, et la prédication de la troisième croisade. Cette dernière fait l’objet du huitième livre, tandis que les neuvième et dixième vont de 1193 à l’arrivée des croisés sous Constantinople, le onzième étant consacré à la fondation de l’empire latin. On reprend avec le douzième l’histoire des croisades jusqu’à la reddition de Damiette, en 1221; le treizième traite de la croisade de Frédéric II et de celle de Thibaud de Navarre. Le quatorzième s’ouvre sur l’apparition des Mongols pour narrer la perte définitive de Jérusalem, le concile de Lyon et la prise de croix de Saint Louis. Les deux croisades de celui-ci occupent les trois livres suivants. Avec le dix-huitième, on assiste à la fin des établissements francs de Syrie. Le dix-neuvième traite des “tentatives de nouvelles croisades,” jusqu’à la prise de Constantinople par les Turcs, et le vingtième des luttes contre ceux-ci, de 1453 à 1590. Quant aux deux derniers livres, ils sont intitulés respectivement “Tableau général des croisades” et “Influence et résultats des croisades;” ils constituent donc un essai de synthèse. Michaud, on le voit, a volontairement laissé de côté les guerres contre les païens, les hérétiques, les adversaires de l’Eglise qui, bien qu’enrichies de l’indulgence de croisade, lui paraissaient étrangères au principal objectif du mouvement qu’il décrivait. Il est d’ailleurs resté littérateur, et c’est ainsi qu’il laisse à Wilken le soin de traiter de la prédication de saint Bernard dans son ensemble, craignant qu’“un si long épisode ne nuisît à la rapidité du récit.”25 Mais il entendait ne rien négliger des sources accessibles, dont certaines se sont révélées au cours de sa rédaction; il fait place aux auteurs orientaux, et spécialement aux Byzantins (Kinnamos, Nicétas), aussi bien qu’ aux occidentaux. Sainte-Beuve a salué en lui “le premier de chez nous” qui ait eu “l’instinct du document original en histoires” et de “l’enquête historique au complet,” tout en regrettant qu’il n’eût pas incorporé à son récit des passages extraits de ses sources pour lui donner plus de vie, ce à quoi Reinaud répondait en insistant sur le “mouvement” et la “chaleur du récit” particulièrement sensibles dans les premiers livres.26 Ajoutons l’attention qu’il portait à la géographie historique, point de départ du voyage d’Orient. Michaud ne faisait point mystère de ses opinions politiques ni de sa foi de chrétien; mais il savait rester discret. Parlant de son séjour à Jérusalem, il écrit: “je ne suis ni un apôtre ni un docteur, je ne suis pas même un disciple bien fervent,” mais il avoue avoir été sensible à l’émotion religieuse, il s’efforce 25 Hist., 1:359, n. 1 et 410 n. 1 (il dit laisser à Wilken le récit de la croisade chez les Wendes comme susceptible d’intéresser surtout les peuples germaniques). 26 Sainte-Beuve, Causeries, p. 26.

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cependant toujours à l’impartialité.27 C’est ce dont le loue Sainte-Beuve: “Bien qu’il se prononce dans un sens plutôt favorable aux croisés et à l’inspiration religieuse qui les a poussés, l’auteur ne dissimule rien des désordres et des brigandages; il reste tout philosophique dans son mode d’examen et d’explication.” Michaud lui-même a écrit en préface à sa cinquième édition: “J’ai jugé les guerres saintes avec les hommes raisonnables de mon temps et je n’ait rien à modifier ni à changer dans mes appréciations.” Selon Parisot, “beaucoup de ses lecteurs ecclésiastiques et royalistes s’étaient plaints de ce que trop souvent, malgré son but bien évident de revenir sur les jugements exagérés et tranchants de la philosophie du 18e siècle, il eût accumulé dans les détails des épithètes des appréciations voltairiennes.” Michaud était conscient de la variation des “opinions sur les croisades;” il a dénoncé la “violence” des attaques des Encyclopédistes, donnant même un passage de l’Encyclopédie à l’appui;28 il n’en emploie pas moins des expressions (fanatisme, crédulité, barbarie, superstition) qui appartiennent au vocabulaire de ses devanciers, avec les oeuvres desquels il était sans doute familier. Il sait stigmatiser “l’injustice et la violence” qui accompagnèrent la prise de possession d’Edesse par Baudouin de Boulogne, et il ne se fait pas faute de critiquer ses sources.29 Mais, s’il est peu porté à admettre le merveilleux, il se garde de la tentation de voir des fourberies dans les récits d’apparitions; il souligne l’erreur de Jean-Jacques Rousseau qui ne voulait voir dans les croisés que des soldats de la Papauté et non des chrétiens en quête de leur salut.30 “On ne peut,” écrit-il, “qu’admirer un des plus beaux spectacles qu’aient offerts les sociétés humaines:” “une unité du sentiment religieux,” générateur d’un enthousiasme dont il regrette toutefois qu’il ait débouché sur des actions violentes.3l Il sait faire place aux aspirations à des réussites matérielles sans leur subordonner d’autres motivations. Et il s’interroge sur la cohérence des reproches que l’on a adressés aux croisades: Plus on admire le règne de Louis IX, plus on s’étonne qu’il ait deux fois interrompu le cours de ses bienfaits et quitté son peuple qu’il rendait heureux par sa présence. 27 On peut noter son éloge des historiens protestants qui ont su ne pas utiliser l’histoire de la croisade comme arme de polémique (2:210). Pour sa visite de Jérusalem, cf. Correspondance, 4:194: “Je suis venu à Jérusalem non pour réformer les erreurs de ma vie, mais pour corriger les fautes d’un livre d’histoire.” Il n’en avoue pas moins sa “vive émotion” et ses “religieuses pensées,” au Calvaire et sur la Via Dolorosa. 28 Hist., édition de 1822, 5. “Les opinions sur les croisés avaient changé plusieurs fois lorsque nous avons commencé notre histoire,” note-t-il au début du livre XX (4:198–99). On peut remarquer qu’il se rencontre avec Mailly pour faire l’éloge de Robertson qui avait “fait triompher une philosophe plus éclairée” que celle de Voltaire. 29 Pour Guibert de Nogent: il “ne paraît pas persuadé de tout ce qu’il raconte sur Pierre l’Ermite. Aussi a-t-il pris soin d’ajouter que son récit est moins fait pour la vérité que pour le peuple qui aime en général les choses nouvelles et extraordinaires” (Hist., 4:47, n. 1). Et (2:164): “Si des chevaliers ou des barons avaient écrit cette histoire, ils auraient sans doute fait d’autres raisonnements.” 30 Hist., 2:206–7. 31 Hist., 3:48.

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Mais en voyant les passions qui agitent la génération présente, qui oserait élever la voix pour accuser les siècles passés?

Et d’évoquer l’Europe s’enflammant, y compris “les disciples les plus ardents de la philosophie moderne,” pour le soulèvement de la Grèce chrétienne32 ou pour la destruction de “ce vieux et terrible repaire de la piraterie musulmane” qu’était resté l’Alger des Barbaresques. On admettrait volontiers, ajoute-t-il, “l’action de la providence qui pousse l’Europe chrétienne dans cet Orient musulman aujourd’hui vermoulu.”33 Michaud ne se posait pas, pour sa part, en apologiste d’une conception “colonialiste” de la croisade qui lui était bien étrangère.34 C’est le grand conflit entre l’Europe chrétienne et l’expansion musulmane qui le passionnait – on ne saurait oublier qu’au 18e siècle les Turcs ottomans avaient encore connu des succès militaires et que la piraterie pratiquée par leurs sujets d’Afrique du Nord avait obligé la jeune flotte des Etats-Unis à prononcer une démonstration devant Tripoli, antérieurement à l’expédition d’Alger. Mais il faut le citer: “Dans un siècle où l’on met quelque prix à juger les croisades, on nous demandera d’abord si la guerre que faisaient les croisés était juste. Sur cette question, nous’ avons peu de chose à répondre: tandis que les croisés croyaient obéir à Dieu lui-même en attaquant les Sarrazins,” ceux-ci, qui avaient conquis tant de terres chrétiennes et menaçaient déjà Constantinople, ne s’interrogeaient pas sur ce que les entreprises des premiers pouvaient être justes ou injustes, car, pour eux, le succès ou l’échec relevaient de la volonté de Dieu. Lui-même s’émerveillait que “la fureur des armes et la ferveur religieuse” eussent fait fleurir “au plus haut degré, parmi les croisés, la valeur, la résignation et l’héroïsme;” mais il estimait que l’historien se devait de se replacer dans le contexte d’une époque et non porter un jugement sur elle.35 Son objet, c’était de retrouver les croisés dans leur vie, dans leurs comportements, jusque dans leurs divertissements. C’était aussi de déterminer dans quelle mesure les croisades avaient contribué au développement du progrès humain, ce dont il était convaincu.36 Il était convaincu aussi que les croisades étaient un moment essentiel du 32 Hist., 3:257. Il est difficile de ne pas voir là une riposte à Voltaire qui écrivait, au chapitre 53 de l’Essai sur les moeurs: “la France eût été heureuse sous un souverain tel que saint Louis sans le funeste préjugé des croisades,” et qui plus loin donnait son approbation à une croisade qui eût libéré la Grèce des Turcs. 33 Il faut comprendre que les contemporains auraient admis là une intervention de la Providence. 34 Il est compté cependant parmi les historiens de l’âge colonial par Jean Flori, Pierre l’Ermite et la Première Croisade (Paris, 1999), p. 12. 35 Il fait sienne la remarque de Montesquieu: “Transporter dans les siècles reculés toutes les idées du siècle où l’on vit, c’est des sources de l’erreur celle qui est la plus féconde” (Hist., 1:86, n. 1). 36 “Les lumières, les lois, les moeurs, la puissance, tout doit marcher ensemble. C’est ce qui est arrivé en France; aussi la France devait-elle un jour devenir le modèle et le centre de la civilisation en Europe. Les guerres saintes contribuèrent beaucoup à cette heureuse évolution” (Hist., 1:269–70). C’est pratiquement là l’argument du dernier livre. Vu la date, on ne s’étonne pas du rôle dévolu à la France dans le progrès de la

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Moyen Age. “On ne peut avoir,” disait-il, “une idée juste du Moyen Age sans connaître à fond les croisades, de même qu’on ne peut connaître complètement les croisades sans avoir une idée approfondie du Moyen Age.”37 Poujoulat affirmait: “Il est le premier qui ait remis en honneur ce Moyen Age jusque là méprisé.” De fait, l’Histoire des croisades a été l’un des premiers ouvrages qui aient, en France, marqué le renouveau d’une vogue pour la période médiévale qui allait se maintenir. Académicien dès 1813, Michaud fut élu à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres en 1837, deux ans seulement avant sa mort. Les historiens de métier reconnaissaient ainsi pour un des leurs un homme venu de la littérature et qui avait donné un si magnifique exemple de travail persévérant. Son oeuvre allait subir l’épreuve du temps, face à la montée d’une histoire érudite plus exigeante. Paul Riant devait être sévère pour la Bibliothèque des croisades, qui ne fut même pas citée dans l’introduction du Recueil des historiens des croisades … . Mais un historien de la nouvelle école, Louis de Mas-Latrie, rendant compte de la dernière édition de l’Histoire des croisades, tout en regrettant certaines imperfections et la place insuffisante réservée à la “nouvelle nationalité chrétienne” issue des croisades, définissait l’ouvrage comme “l’histoire la plus complète et la plus intéressante que l’on ait encore écrite des plus grands événements du Moyen Age.”38 Les récentes réimpressions de l’oeuvre de Michaud témoignent qu’elle garde de son autorité.39 Mas-Latrie avait écrit, non sans quelque exagération: “L’auteur se propose uniquement pour but d’apprécier philosophiquement les faits et leurs conséquences;” M. Robert Delort, préfaçant l’une de ces réimpressions, répondait: “Nous avons, avec son étude sur l’esprit des croisés, un des premiers ouvrages de psychosociologie historique qui ait vu le jour en France.” Et c’est ici que nous en reviendrons à Mailly, lequel, trente ans avant Michaud, avait aussi conçu une étude de l’“esprit des croisades,” des mentalités, de la société, en accumulant des matériaux dans ce but. Michaud s’est-il parfois inspiré de son prédécesseur, dans un esprit différent du sien? Ce n’est pas impossible; mais il ne nous a rien confié de l’utilisation qu’il a faite des écrits antérieurs au sien. Tous deux ont procédé à un examen attentif des sources, que Michaud a poussé beaucoup plus loin. Ils ont esquissé un tableau de l’Europe au temps des croisades et cherché à déterminer quelles répercussions celles-ci ont eues sur l’avenir des sociétés. Tous deux ont voulu déceler dans les civilisation; il faut toutefois souligner que l’optique de l’ouvrage n’est cependant pas exagérément nationale. 37 Hist., 4:100. 38 Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 3 (1841–42), 409–12. Mas-Latrie souligne la supériorité de l’édition de 1841 sur les précédentes. 39 La Bibliothèque des croisades a été réimprimée aux Etats-Unis en 1978. Une réimpression complète de l’Histoire des croisades (Paris, 1966–78) a paru parallèlement à une réimpression abrégée, citée plus haut, n. 3. Celle-ci figure dans la collection “Les grands moments de l’histoire,” avec une introduction de M. Delort qui n’hésite pas à présenter Michaud comme “une sorte d’oracle en histoire.”

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croisades un facteur de l’épanouissement des libertés. Mailly restait un “philosophe,” bien qu’en retrait par rapport à l’Encyclopédie; Michaud, qui se veut “raisonnable,” reste tributaire de la pensée du 18e siècle et n’a guère été effleuré par le romantisme. Mais il a su se dégager de la vision pessimiste de ses devanciers. Rien ne permet de dire que, s’il avait poussé son travail plus loin, Mailly aurait été amené à modifier ses perspectives de départ. Il n’avait sans doute pas les qualités qui ont permis à Michaud de réaliser une évolution dont nous avons pu suivre les étapes. Désirant au départ réaliser une oeuvre littéraire, celle d’un écrivain non spécialement préparé au travail historique, celui-ci s’est pris au jeu en devenant un véritable historien et ce n’est pas sans raison qu’on l’a appelé le “père de l’histoire des croisades,” titre qu’en bonne justice il doit partager avec Wilken, qu’il connaissait et appréciait. Une nouvelle génération était déjà au travail quand il achevait sa carrière; mais ces historiens auraient-ils été attirés par les croisades sans l’oeuvre de Michaud qui a redonné sa vraie place à l’un des grands moments de l’histoire? On continue à relire et à citer son Histoire. Après plus d’un siècle et demi, c’est un rare privilège.

Casualties and the Number of Knights on the First Crusade Jonathan Riley-Smith Emmanuel College, Cambridge University In this paper I will discuss two issues relating, one directly, the other indirectly, to the size of the crusading army which campaigned in Asia for two years from the summer of 1097. I will suggest an explanation for a contradiction in the material; and I will question present views on casualty rates, at least as far as they concerned nobles and knights. For a century historians of medieval warfare have been puzzled by a discrepancy between the very high global totals for the army reported by eyewitnesses and the much more modest figures given, sometimes by the same source, in respect of specific engagements.1 The smaller figures have generally been assumed to have been the more accurate, although there has been a steady inflation in the estimates: 2,900 knights present at the siege of Nicaea in May and June 1097 for Ferdinand Lot in 1946;2 4,200 to 4,500 for Steven Runciman in 1951;3 7,000 for John France in 1994.4 Now, however, the larger figures are being taken more seriously. Jean Flori has proposed that there were between 12,000 and 15,000 knights at Nicaea,5 while Bernard Bachrach has argued for 100,000 armed men (knights and others) in the Christian army before Antioch later in the year.6 Bachrach has argued vigorously that very large forces were not unknown in the period and, less convincingly in my view, that it would have been possible to provision 100,000 armed crusaders in northern Syria for eight months. For the evidence that there could have been as many as 100,000 armed crusaders assembled, or expected, outside Antioch he relies on a figure given in a letter addressed to the West in the autumn of 1097 by Adhémar of Monteil, the papal 1 Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War within the framework of political history, trans. Walter J. Renfroe, 4 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1975–85), 3:218–20; Ferdinand Lot, L’art militaire et les armées au moyen âge en Europe et dans le Proche-Orient, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), 1:128–30. 2 Lot, L’art militaire, 1:128–30. 3 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1951–54), 1:339. 4 John France, Victory in the East (Cambridge, 1994), p. 142. 5 Jean Flori, Pierre l’Ermite et la première croisade (Paris, 1999), p. 453. Flori has studied (pp. 425–57) the figures given in the chronicles exhaustively and believes he has discovered an inner logic to them, but as this seems to have very little relation to reality it does not in the end help us much. 6 Bernard Bachrach, “The Siege of Antioch: A Study in Military Demography,” War in History 6 (1999), 127–46. 13

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legate, and Patriarch Simeon of Jerusalem,7 which is supported in the narrative account of Raymond of Aguilers and, in a somewhat different context, in that of Fulcher of Chartres.8 Bachrach points out that military leaders were certainly capable of giving an accurate account of the size of the forces under their command. Adhémar of Monteil, whom he calls “the commander-in-chief of the entire crusade” had, moreover, just attended a council at which the military leaders could have reported the numbers of men at their disposal. Professor Bachrach imagines that Adhémar would have had a staff office which could easily have totalled the numbers with which he would have been provided. Although he is wrong in supposing that Adhémar was a commander-in-chief in the military sense — the cura Christiani exercitus entrusted to him by the pope was, it is generally agreed, the cure of souls — this does not weaken the thrust of his argument. Adhémar played a very significant part in councils-of-war and would doubtless have been interested in the realities, including the number of troops available. The issue is whether a figure cited in a letter of this sort should be taken at face value. Bachrach asks a series of questions, the first of which is “Were the responsible authorities ... generally aware of the magnitude of the forces they commanded.” To him this “must obviously be answered in the affirmative ... To think otherwise … is to undermine any notion of common sense.”9 Perhaps; but only if the same logic can be applied to the crusade as to other campaigns. A crusade was very unusual in that technically all, and in practice very many, of the knights were volunteers. They were not conscripts; nor were they performing service. They need have been no one’s direct responsibility and they were beholden to no one. They were free agents who could attach themselves temporarily to whichever commander could provide for them, and their immediate followers and animals.10 The nucleus of a force led by each magnate consisted of the permanent members of his household, possibly no more than twenty men, over which he clearly had quite a tight control, if an account of Robert II of Flanders exercising his right as lord to demand the goods of a castellan of Lille, who had died in the course of the crusade, is anything to go by.11 To the household could be attached other individuals on a more temporary basis. Ralph of Beaugency and Hugh of Chaumont-sur-Loire from central France were Bohemond of Taranto’s amici and familiares when he set them to guard a gate 7 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1901), p. 142. 8 Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, ed. John H. and Laurita L. Hill (Paris, 1969), p. 48; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), p. 183. 9 Bachrach, “The Siege of Antioch,” pp. 132–33. 10 Jonathan S. C. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), pp. 76–79. 11 See, for example, “Narratio quomodo relliquiae martyris Georgii ad nos Aquicinenses pervenerunt,” RHC Oc 5:251.

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

15

at Antioch on the night of general panic of 10 June 1098; they had presumably journeyed east with Stephen of Blois and they were to leave Bohemond because they both went on to Jerusalem.12 Then there was an everchanging body of followers, drawn into service of varying duration with the magnate from a pool of volunteer lords, each with his own smaller contingent, and from independent knights. The South Italian Norman Tancred, who had agreed in exchange for a sum of money to join Raymond of St Gilles’s contingent for the march south from Syria, had deserted Raymond and transferred his allegiance to Godfrey of Bouillon by the time the army reached Jerusalem; so may have the Gascon lord Gaston of Béarn.13 The forces any magnate recognized as being under his command could, therefore, expand and contract around a nucleus. And beyond those who were recognized, and acknowledged themselves, as being in the following of a particular lord there was an amorphous mass of warriors, drifting here and there and at times joining whomsoever they chose. When in July 1098 the lord of Alès, Raymond Pilet, who spent most of the time in Raymond of St Gilles’s contingent, organized on his own initiative a raid to the south, “plurimos retinuit homines, milites et pedites;” the body was described by the author of the Gesta Francorum as sua gens.14 In moments of crisis these men would be summoned by heralds to the combat and would be organized into groups as they arrived on the scene;15 Raymond of Aguilers reported that before the battle of Antioch of 28 June 1098 more lines of battle were formed than had been allowed for, obviously because of the number mustering.16 These free-lancers cannot have been easily countable and other features of the crusade made it anyway difficult to estimate their numbers. The crusading army was not a discrete body of men and women. It suffered desertions, especially from Antioch in June 1098. It was being joined throughout by reinforcements. There was, for example, a profectio secunda, an element of which was leaving Anjou in the autumn of 1097 and was presumably caught up in the Byzantine withdrawal from Philomelium in the summer of 1098; there were many crusaders with the emperor Alexius at that time and some of them eventually reached the army in Syria.17 On the march to Jerusalem “when news reached Antioch and Latakia and Edessa that the hand of God was with us many from the army who had remained there joined us at Tyre.”18 During the siege of Antioch crusaders were at times scattered in small parties over an area with a 12 Interpolation in Baldric of Bourgueil, “Historia Jerosolimitana,” RHC Oc 4:65 n. 4. See Jonathan S. C. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 7, 145. 13 Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, pp. 78–79. 14 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. Rosalind M. T. Hill (London, 1962), pp. 73–74. 15 See, for example, Raymond of Aguilers, pp. 79, 157; Fulcher of Chartres, p. 252; Gesta Francorum, pp. 46, 95. 16 Raymond of Aguilers, p. 82. 17 Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, p. 109. 18 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 170.

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radius of fifty miles. And anyway how were knights recognized as such once so many horses had died and so much armour had been lost? It is never clear whether the large numbers of poor included many knights, who had lost horses but might one day recover them.19 So the usual “fog of war” — over a decade later the reason why the two columns of the army had parted two days before the battle of Dorylaeum seems to have been still a subject of debate in Syria20 — would have been compounded by the leaders’ ignorance of the total resources at their disposal. Of course they would have been in a position to account for the number of men registered as being under their command and also, incidentally, their horses. When Raymond of St Gilles, who maintained a substantial following throughout and certainly would have known who was in it since he established a fund to replace their mounts,21 decided to march south in January 1099 his following apparently included “scarcely 300 knights”22 and Tancred was reported accompanying him with forty.23 My assumption is that these figures represent the knights known by Raymond and Tancred respectively to have been in their contingents, but not of course the total following of armed knights they led. I believe that the relatively small numbers referred to in relation to specific incidents comprised those whom the leaders could count, but they must have known that beyond them there were large numbers of knights who were not formally attached to anyone. So these they guessed, which explains the discrepancy between the global totals and the smaller figures. It is in the light of this that one should compare two figures given, possibly by the same eyewitness, for the number of knights at the battle of Ascalon. In his Historia Raymond of Aguilers gives strikingly consistent estimates of the knights in the whole Christian army in the summer of 1099: “scarcely 1,500 knights” at Ramla at the beginning of June; 1,200 or 1,300 knights at the siege of Jerusalem a week or so later; and 1,200 knights (and 9,000 foot) at the battle of Ascalon in August.24 These could represent those exercises in mathematics described by Bachrach, in which the countable forces in the service of the magnates were added up. But, as Flori has pointed out,25 they are contradicted in an encyclical letter sent from Latakia by Daimbert of Pisa and Raymond of St Gilles, and on behalf of Godfrey of Bouillon, in September 1099. The letter’s authenticity has been questioned and it was subjected to a detailed examination by Hagenmeyer, who was inclined to accept it as genuine and believed that Raymond of Aguilers was involved in, and was perhaps responsible for, its

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

See France, Victory in the East, pp. 125–26. Ralph of Caen, “Gesta Tancredi,” RHC Oc 3:620–21. Raymond of Aguilers, p. 55. Raymond of Aguilers, p. 101. Together with a large body of foot. Raymond of Aguilers, p. 102. Raymond of Aguilers, pp. 136, 148, 156. Flori, Pierre l’Ermite, p. 451.

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

17

composition.26 It stresses how small the crusading army was by the time it reached Palestine,27 but it also states that at Ascalon “there were in our army not more than 5,000 knights and 15,000 foot.”28 My belief is that the figure of 1,200 represented the knights who were countable; to that had been added an estimate of 3,800 free-rangers. It follows that the number of knights in the army in mid-August 1099 lay somewhere between 1,200 and 5,000; certainly more than the former and equally certainly less than the latter, perhaps significantly so. In estimating the size of the army at Nicaea in June 1097 it seems to have been fairly common practice to decide what were the numbers at the end of the crusade, to add a notional figure for those who had deserted or were garrisoning Syria, and to multiply the result by a factor that allowed for casualties. This is what France and, I think, Flori have done. France has assumed that the death rate was 75 per cent.29 Flori suggests 66 per cent.30 These are as nothing, incidentally, compared to the figures given by Raymond of Aguilers in his Historia. He wrote that in November 1098 the poor were saying that the crusade had lost 200,000 armed men in the previous year; in the following January he reported Tancred claiming that only 1,000 knights were left out of an original 100,000 and only 5,000 out of more than 200,000 armed footsoldiers: death rates of 99 per cent and 97.5 per cent respectively.31 There is, I believe, a contribution that can be made on this topic, although any discussion has to be limited to the knights and clergy. The method I have adopted was pioneered by James Powell in his study of the Fifth Crusade. Powell collected a list of more than 800 individuals known to have taken vows. He reduced this by applying two criteria: definite information about death or survival; and a context that left no room for doubt about knightly or ecclesiastical status. He was left with 261 persons, of whom rather more than a third (34.1 per cent) died.32 I had already compiled a list of all known first crusaders, divided into three categories: certainties, probables and possibles.33 For the figures that follow I made use only of the certainties, deleting those whom I know did not join the army and those about whom I could not be sure whether they were on the expedition of 1096–99 or that of 26 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 105–10. 27 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 170, 174. 28 Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 172. Flori (Pierre l’Ermite, p. 451) is inclined to believe

this figure, although he does not explain why he has rejected the obviously exaggerated estimate of 300,000 armed men reported in the same letter to have been in the army encamped before Nicaea two years earlier. Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 168. 29 France, Victory in the East, p. 142. 30 Flori, Pierre l’Ermite, p. 453. Runciman (A History, 1:340) is cautious, but assumes very heavy losses. 31 Raymond of Aguilers, pp. 94, 104. 32 James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 166–72. 33 Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pp. 196–238.

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1100–02. I was left with 403 names. Of these individuals, fifty-two are known definitely to have died in or as a result of combat (forty-eight knights, one armiger, three churchmen and one woman) and twenty-nine of disease or unknown cause, which might of course have been combat (eighteen knights, nine churchmen and two women). So I have eighty-one deaths. I have definite knowledge of 136 survivors (112 knights, twenty-two clergy and two women), to whom could be added the names of thirteen known fugitives or retirees who survived (bringing the total to 149). So of 217 (or 230) individuals, 37.3 per cent (or 35.2 per cent) died, a mortality which turns out to be not so very different from Powell’s for the Fifth Crusade. In place of France’s three-quarters and Flori’s two-thirds dead I am left with rather more than one-third, although we simply do not know what conditions were like among the knights’ supporters — grooms, squires and the rest — whom France rightly includes among the fighting element,34 let alone among the poor. Mine looks a surprisingly low mortality and I have no answer to give to anyone who argues that my statistical base is too small and coincidental to be trusted; it is certainly the case that deaths from sickness or unknown cause comprise a much lower percentage of the total mortalities (35.8 per cent) than I had expected.35 On the other hand further analysis suggests that some of my figures may at least reflect what was actually happening. Of the deaths in combat or through violence I have records of only two churchmen and one woman. She is a very doubtful case, but if she did indeed exist she was travelling across Asia Minor with her husband when their party was destroyed.36 Of the two churchmen who were indubitably priests, one was surprised during the siege of Antioch playing a game of dice with a beautiful woman in the presence of onlookers (judices) in a thicket;37 the other was in a foraging party ambushed by the Turks.38 So neither was technically in arms. Powell found no cases of clergy dying in combat during the Fifth Crusade.39 That would be expected for the thirteenth century, but at first sight the absence of evidence of clerical deaths in combat is surprising for the late eleventh, especially given Anna Comnena’s graphic description of a bellicose Latin priest.40 On the other hand, it may well be that the reformers’ insistence on the application of canon law — that priests should not carry arms or physically direct them — was beginning to bear fruit by the time of the First Crusade. In

34 France, Victory in the East, p. 126. 35 Less surprising is the fact that a high proportion of them (48.2 per cent) occurred

during the siege of Antioch and the epidemic that followed its capture. 36 Albert of Aachen, “Historia Hierosolymitana,” RHC Oc 4:377. 37 Albert of Aachen, pp. 370–71. 38 Albert of Aachen, pp. 375–76. 39 Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, p. 171. 40 Anna Comnena, Alexiade, ed. and trans. Bernard Leib, 4 vols. (Paris, 1943–76), 2:218–19.

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

19

fact there are many references to churchmen performing liturgical functions while the knights fought.41 Forty-eight of the knights died in combat and eighteen from disease or unknown cause. So I have sixty-six deaths, comprising 81.5 per cent of the total mortalities recorded. Adding to those who died the 112 knights, who did not take to flight and are nevertheless known to have survived, I have 178 individuals, of whom 26.9 per cent died in combat and 10.1 per cent of disease or unknown cause. A closer look at the deaths of knights in combat confirms what we know of the periods of fiercest fighting: 8 per cent of these mortalities occurred during the siege of Nicaea, 15 per cent during the battle of Dorylaeum, 23 per cent during the siege of Antioch, 10 per cent in the week or so immediately after the fall of Antioch, 8 per cent during the siege of ‘Arqa and 10 per cent during the siege of Jerusalem. The high figure for the siege of Antioch, representing losses over an eight-month period, comes as no surprise and that for Dorylaeum must reflect the intensity of that engagement. The large number of deaths in early June 1098, coinciding with the arrival outside Antioch of Karbuqa’s army on the 4th, suggests that the fighting at that time, both outside the town and inside, where the citadel was still in Muslim hands, was very heavy. This may explain the panic among the crusaders and the attempt at a mass break-out on 10 June.42 It may also help to explain the ability of the crusading army to sortie out of the city on 28 June in the face of the enemy, cross a single bridge and deploy in formation on the plain beyond, and the astonishing ease of its subsequent victory. Karbuqa’s forces may already have been broken. At any rate I would be very reluctant to go as high as 66 per cent for mortalities among the knights ever again; it should be remembered that of the nine acknowledged leaders of the expedition, who were often in the thick of the fighting and must have been as exposed as anyone to disease, even if protected to some extent by a better diet, none died in combat and only Adhémar of Monteil succumbed to the epidemic of July 1098. Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois deserted. Bohemond of Taranto, Eustace of Boulogne, Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of St Gilles, Robert of Flanders and Robert of Normandy survived. All estimates of the total number of knights in the Christian army are little more than guesses, but I am inclined to assume that there were c.2,500 knights at the battle of Ascalon in August 1099; that is to say the 1,200 countable knights together with a further 1,300, whose numbers were exaggerated in the minds of witnesses to 3,800. We know that the army advanced from Ramla in a box-like formation, consisting of nine squadrons in three rows of three squadrons each.43 I am supposing that each squadron consisted of around 270 knights; it 41 Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, pp. 82–84. 42 Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, pp. 71–72. 43 Raymond C. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193 (Cambridge, 1956), p. 156.

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would not have been hard for contemporaries to have imagined 550 knights in each squadron, which would account for the figure of 5,000 given in the letter of September 1099. France seems to me to give a reasonable estimate of between 300 and 500 knights left behind in Syria and Edessa,44 although it may be too large, given the numbers who had hurried down to join the crusade in Palestine. One has, of course, no means of knowing how many had deserted over the years or, conversely, how many had caught up with the army on its march, but if one assumes that there were c. 3,000 survivors from a body of knights which had suffered 40 per cent losses and that this therefore comprised c.60 per cent of the number who had begun the campaign, one has a figure of c.5,000 for the knights at Nicaea in June 1097. One would, of course, have to multiply that by a factor of four to include their supporters and would then have to add on something for the number of footsoldiers to reach an estimate of the total fighting element at Nicaea.

Appendix: Dead, Survivors and Fugitives, Autumn 1096 – Late Summer 109945

Killed in Combat or other Violence ARMSBEARERS

March across Europe Peter Raynouard Pons Raynouard Siege of Nicaea Baldwin Chauderon Baldwin of Ghent Walo of Lille William III of Forez Battle of Dorylaeum, 1 July 1097 Ansellus of Cayeux Geoffrey of Montescaglioso Hilduin of Mazingarbe Lisiard of Flanders 44 France, Victory in the East, p. 134. 45 For the references, see Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pp. 196–238. I have not

included in my calculations the visionary Peter Bartholomew, who died as a result of injuries sustained when undergoing an ordeal.

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

21

Manasses of Clermont Robert of Paris William Marchisus March across Asia Minor, summer 1097 Sven of Denmark Siege of Antioch and environs Arnulf of “Tirs” Aubrey of Cagnano Bernard of “Pardilum” Bernard Raymond of Béziers Garnier Marchio Geoffrey III of Roussillon Gerard of Roussillon Pisellus Rainald Porchet Walo II of Chaumont-en-Vexin June 1098: between the fall of Antioch and the battle Arvedus Tudebode Ralph Dolis Roger of Barneville Roger of Bétheniville Roger of Lille46 Battle of Antioch Arnald Tudebode Eudes of Beaugency Gerard the Old of Meleone Guarin of “Tanea” Heraclius I of Polignac Aftermath of the Battle of Antioch Baldwin of Mons, ct Hainault Fulcher of Bullion

46 Franco I of Mechelen and Sigemar of Mechelen were reported to be severely wounded at this time, but there is no record of their death.

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Siege of Ma‘arrat an-Nu‘man Engelrand of St Pol Siege of ‘Arqa Anselm II of Ribemont Guarin of “Petra Mora” Pons of “Balazun” (Balazuc?) William Pichard March to Jerusalem Walter of “Verra” Siege of Jerusalem and aftermath Achard of Montmerle Anonymous, armiger of Baldwin of Bourcq Everard III of Le Puiset Gilbert of Traves Peter Fortis Rainald, sen Hugh VI of Lusignan CLERGY

Adalbero of Luxembourg, archd Metz Gerard, household cl Baldwin of Boulogne Louis, archd Toul WOMEN

Florina of Burgundy, w Sven of Denmark

Died of Disease or of Unknown Cause ARMSBEARERS

“Died on the way” Bernard II of Bré Itier I of Toucy Ralph I of Gaël Riou of Lohéac

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

Siege of Nicaea Aimery of Courron Eudes of Verneuil Guy of Possesse Hugh of Rheims Siege of Antioch Alard of “Spiniacum” Arnulf of Hesdin Gerard of Buc, cast Lille Gozelo of Montaigu Hugh of “Calniacum” Udelard of Wissant Epidemic at Antioch, c.1 August 1098 Henry of Esch-sur-Sûre Peter Raymond of Hautpoul Reinhard of Hamersbach Jerusalem and aftermath Rainald III of Château-Gontier CLERGY

In Europe Eudes (Odo), bp Bayeux At Antioch and in epidemic Adhémar of Monteil, bp Le Puy Ermengald of Roussillon, bp Elne Gerbault of Lille, pr Gunscelin, pr, can Lille Roger, abb, chap Anselm II of Ribémont At Ma‘arrat an-Nu‘man William of Orange, bp Orange At Jerusalem and aftermath Gervase of St Cyprian, abb St Savin Philip the Grammarian of Montgomery, pr

23

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JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

WOMEN

Emma of Hereford, w Ralph I of Gaël Godehilde of Tosny, w Baldwin of Boulogne

Survivors ARMSBEARERS

Abo of St Bonnet Adam son of Michael Adelolf Adiutor of Vernon Ainard of La Croix Alan Fergent of Brittany Albert, kt Amanieu III of Albret Arnold II of Ardres Baldwin of Boulogne Baldwin of Bourcq Bartholomew Boel of Chartres Bencelinus of Brie Bohemond of Taranto Centule II of Bigorre Chalo VII of Aulnay Cono of Montaigu Dodo of Cons-la-Grandville Drogo I of Mouchy-le-Châtel Drogo of Nesle Durand Bovis Edgar Atheling Engilbert of Cysoing Eustace III of Boulogne Frumold, ministerialis of the archbishop of Cologne Fulcher of Chartres, kt Fulk I of Matheflon Fulk of Guines Galdemar Carpenel of Dargoire Garin of Gallardon Garnier of Grez Gaston IV of Béarn Geoffrey II of Donzy Geoffrey Le Râle Geoffrey of Issoudun Geoffrey of Riveray

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

Gerald Malefaide of Noailles Gerard I of Quierzy Gerard of Avesnes, kt Gerard of Gournay-en-Bray Gilbert Payen of Garlande, sen King Philip I of France Gilbert of Aalst Girbert of Mézères Godfrey of Bouillon, d Lower Lorraine Godfrey of Esch-sur-Sûre Gouffier of Lastours Grimbald Guigo of “Mara” Guy of Hauteville Guy of Pistoia Guy of Thiers, ct Chalon-sur-Saône Guynemer of Boulogne Hartmann of Dillingen-Kybourg Hugh I of Gallardon Hugh II of Empurias Hugh III of Juillé Hugh of Chaumont-sur-Loire, co-l Amboise Hugh of Guines Hugh of St Omer, l Fauquembergues Hugh II of St Pol Hugh Verdosius Ilger Bigod Lambert Lambert of Montaigu Manasses Robert of Guines Miles of Bray Nivelo of Fréteval Payen Peverel Peter Fasin Peter Jordan of Châtillon Peter Lombard Peter of Fay Pons the Red Raimbold Croton Raimbold II of Orange Raimondino son of Donnucci Ralph of Aalst Ralph of Beaugency Ralph of Fontaines Ralph the Red of Pont-Echanfray

25

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Raymond IV of St Gilles, ct Toulouse Raymond of Turenne Reinhard III of Toul Richard of the Principate, ct Salerno Richard son of Fulk the elder of Aunou Richard the Pilgrim Robert II of Flanders Robert II of Normandy Robert of Anzi Robert (of Buonalbergo) son of Gerard Robert (of Molise) son of Tristan, l Limosano Robert of Sourdeval Robert son of Godwin Roger of Rozoy Rothold Rotrou of Perche, ct Mortagne Simon of Ludron Stabelo, chamberlain of Godfrey of Bouillon Stephen of Aumale Stephen of Lioriac Tancred Marchisus Thomas of Marle Walker [Walter] of Chappes Wicher the German, ministerialis of Fulda William Amanieu II of Bezaume William de Bono Seniore William Hugh of Monteil William I Embriaco William I of Sabran William Jordan of Cerdagne William Peyre of Cunhlat William V of Montpellier CLERGY

Anonymous, author of the Gesta Francorum Arnulf, bp Martirano Arnulf, cl Arnulf Malecouronne of Chocques Baldwin, abb Bartholomew, cl Benedict, cl Bernard of Valence Bonfilius, bp Foligno Daimbert, archbp Pisa

CASUALTIES AND KNIGHTS ON THE FIRST CRUSADE

Everard, pr Fulcher of Chartres, pr Gerard, bp Ariano Herbert of Chaise-Dieu, prior of Prevezac Otto, bp Strasbourg Peter, abb Maillezais Peter of Narbonne Peter the Hermit Peter Tudebode Raymond of Aguilers Robert of Rouen Roger WOMEN

Elvira of Leon-Castile, w Raymond IV of St Gilles Hadvide of Chiny, w Dodo of Cons-la-Grandville

Retirals and Fugitives Alexander, pr, pl, chap Stephen of Blois Aubrey of Grandmesnil Gilbert, bp Evreux Guy Trousseau of Montlhéry Hugh of Toucy Hugh the Great, ct Vermandois Ivo of Grandmesnil Lambert the Poor Stephen of Blois, ct Blois and Chartres William of “Bernella” or “Archis” William of Grandmesnil William son of Richard William the Carpenter of Melun

27

JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH 28

Do 1 J rylae uly um 109 , 7

As J ia M u l y-O ino cto r, ber

109 7

An O tio c tob ch, er 109

An ear tioch ly -m, id 098

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Jun e

8

An 2 tio 8 Jun ch, e1 09 8

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8

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'A r Feb qa, rua ryber

De cem

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099

099

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As 1 cal 2 Au on, gus t1

Percentages of totals of deaths of knights on the First Crusade in combat, Autumn 1096 - Late Summer 1099 25

20

15

10

5

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Eu Ni 109 rope, Ma caea, y 6 Jun s aut p r ing umn e1 097 109 7

Fiefs and Vassals in Twelfth-Century Jerusalem: a View from the West1 Susan Reynolds London Beugnot, in his pioneering essay of 1853, described how the crusaders applied the primitive and pure principles of the feudal régime to the lands they occupied in the East. For him the principles were rigorous, the rules of feudal law absolute and invariable. In explaining how they worked in the Latin East Beugnot used the full panoply of the feudal vocabulary — fiefs, vassals, infeudation, subinfeudation, allods, franc-fiefs — as it was understood by learned historians of his time.2 Historians of the Latin East know better than I do what a great contribution Beugnot made to the study of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the study of feudo-vassalic relations in the West has moved on a good deal, leaving aside my own recent and debatable contribution, since his day. I must say that I have the impression that historians of the Kingdom of Jerusalem still start from assumptions about feudalism that have stayed rather closer to Beugnot’s than the evidence now available allows. In so far as some imply a rather sketchy knowledge of law and custom in the West, that is not surprising: “the West” was a large area and, as we now know, included more variation in time and space than Beugnot realized. As Jonathan Riley-Smith pointed out a few years ago, “we can no longer paint a clear picture of European society and institutions in the late eleventh century.”3 No one can keep up to date with everything. My knowledge of the literature and sources for the Latin East is correspondingly sketchy even if I restrict myself, as I do, to the twelfth century and to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, leaving out Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa. I have four reasons for nevertheless putting some of my suggestions for possible reinterpretation into print. First, comparisons with other areas or periods seem to me to promote critical thought about one’s own material; second, the nature of the kingdom makes comparisons with the crusaders’ lands of origin particularly necessary and fascinating; third, what I 1 This paper has been revised in the light of discussion at the workshop on the governance of the Frankish kingdom held at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the fifth conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East at both of which it was read in July 1999. I am grateful to all who made criticisms and suggestions, as well as to Peter Edbury for having told me beforehand about the microfiche concordance to William of Tyre. 2 A. A. Beugnot, “Mémoire sur le régime des terres dans les principautés fondées en Syrie par les francs à la suite des croisades,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 14 (1853), 529–45; 15 (1853–54), 31–57, 236–62, 409–29, especially pt. 2 (15, pp. 34–54). 3 “Symposium,” in Horns, p. 353. 29

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say may stimulate some useful rethinking; and fourth and last, I was asked to do it. In 1994 I published a book in which I argued that neither the relationship that medieval historians call vassalage nor the kind of property that they call fiefs took their shape from the warrior society of the earlier Middle Ages.4 So far as I can see, they owed it to the more bureaucratic governments and estate administrations that developed from the twelfth century, and to the arguments of the professional and academic lawyers who appeared alongside. In so far as some of the obligations and terminology that historians associate with fiefs are to be found in earlier sources, they are found chiefly in documents that record the relations of great churches with their tenants. This may be partly because so much of our information about the earlier period comes from records preserved by churches, but we need to consider how far it is right to use the relations of bishops or abbots with their tenants as evidence of relations between kings and lay nobles, or between the nobles and their own followers. They were surely different. Although we have less evidence about the property of laymen apart from what they held as tenants of churches, we have enough to show that the rights and obligations attached to land do not seem to have generally conformed to the feudal pattern, while such evidence as we have of political relations suggests that they were not based exclusively on individual, interpersonal bonds. Before the twelfth century nobles and free men, I maintain, did not generally owe military service because of the grant — or even the supposed grant — to them or their ancestors of anything like fiefs. However they had acquired their lands, moreover, they normally held them with as full, permanent and independent rights as their society knew. Whatever service they owed, they owed, not because they were vassals or tenants of a lord, but as what can better be called property-owners, normally in rough proportion to their status and wealth, because they were subjects of someone more like a ruler. The word subditus was used more often, and vassus or vassalus much less often and less widely, in earlier medieval texts than in modern works on medieval history. The idea that the relations of vassalage and fiefholding dominated early medieval politics can be traced back, not to sources from the period, but to academic lawyers and historians in the sixteenth century. It has been developed and extended ever since without serious revision. As a result medieval historians have come to take fiefs and vassalage so much for granted that they have barely worried about the confusion of words, concepts and phenomena that seems to be involved in most discussions of the medieval forms of property and political relations that the words supposedly reflect.5 Anglophone historians who discuss what they often call “the concept of the fief” often start by discussing the history of the word feodum, feudum, fevum, etc., which are the Latin forms of the word generally rendered as fief — except in England where 4 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994). 5 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 12 n. 33.

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“fee” is confusingly traditional. The words we translate as fief, Lehen, feudo etc. were used in a variety of contexts and senses in the Middle Ages, so that they seem to relate to rather different phenomena — that is, to different kinds of property bearing different rights and obligations. They therefore presumably reflected a variety of concepts or notions in the minds of those who used them. None of these need have been the same as the notions in the minds of historians who use the word now. The historian’s “concept of the fief” as discussed in modern works of history is a set of notions or theories about the essential attributes of pieces of property that historians have defined as fiefs, though some of them do not appear in the sources under any of the words that we translate as fief. There is nothing wrong with starting from our own concept or notion, any more than there is anything wrong with using our own words. It is, however, vital to notice whether we are talking about our concept or theirs, or whether we are really talking not about a concept at all, but about phenomena — that is, the rights and obligations attached to what historians call fiefs. Even if one is primarily interested in concepts or phenomena, it is moreover vital to start by noticing the words used, or not used, in the sources. In the quite rare references to vassals in eleventh- and twelfth-century sources from north of the Alps, the word does not generally seem to denote fiefholders. The great lords of eleventh- and twelfth-century France do not ever seem to have been called the king’s vassals. As late as the thirteenth century, as Jean Richard pointed out years ago, it is modern historians, not contemporaries, who use the terms les grands fiefs and les grands vassaux for the great lordships and lords of the kingdom.6 In twelfth-century French vernacular literature, vassal seems to have the sense of a warrior or valiant man, generally with no implications of relation to a lord.7 The use of the word by historians of the period therefore invites the question whether feudal structures exist rather in twentieth-century minds than in eleventh and twelfth-century society. I can find no evidence in western sources from before 1100 that the interpersonal, dyadic relation between lord and vassal was the main bond of lay society. On the contrary I can find a good deal of evidence that collective bonds and feelings of community were taken for granted, even if, as always, some people offended against the norms of solidarity and public spirit.8 So far as I can see, the idea of the supreme importance of the essentially interpersonal, affective, dyadic bonds between lord and vassal originated in the age of romanticism.9 The crusaders came, I suggest, from a world that was at once profoundly 6 Jean Richard, Saint Louis (Paris, 1983), p. 62. 7 T. Venckeleer, “Faut-il traduire VASSAL par vassal?” Mélanges de linguistique, de

litterature et de philologie médiévales, offerts à J. R. Smeets, ed. Q.I.M. Mok and others (Leiden, 1982), pp. 303–16. 8 Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1997), pp. xlv–lvi, et passim; Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 17–47, 124–33, 189–92, 199–201, 331–33, 403–15. 9 Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, pp. xvi–xxx.

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hierarchical and profoundly collectivist in its ideas about politics and law. All rulers, from emperors and kings down to the lords of villages, were supposed to rule justly and according to custom, by and with the advice and consent of the community they ruled, expressed by its older, wiser and most respected members, whether that meant the great lords of a kingdom or the least small landholders — what we might call the more prosperous peasants — of a village. Even in eleventh-century France, where royal control over much of the kingdom had lapsed — as it had not in much of the West — the idea of kings as supreme survived, and so did ideas about justice. Practice did not, of course, always conform to ideas of what was right, but consultation, collective judgement and respect for custom did not disappear in what used to be called the age of feudal anarchy. The obligation to consult their greater subjects did not mean that kings were on a level with them. Both learned treatises and vernacular literature suggest that for people of the time the archetypal ruler was a king, not a lord, and that kings were not just greater lords. Referring to a king as dominus did not assimilate him to a lesser lord any more than calling God dominus assimilated him to earthly lords. The words dominus and dominium were used for all levels and types of authority. I do not know where the phrase primus inter pares originated, but I strongly suspect that it is post-medieval. The twelfth-century English treatise called Glanvill declares, in passing and as a self-evident truth, that the lord king can have no peer, much less a superior.10 In the fourteenth century Baldus said that the emperor could not make someone equal to himself (Quod autem posset facere sibi parem, vel superiorem, ... impossibile est) and Professor E.A.R. Brown tells me that a fifteenth-century French treatise said the same about a king.11 The peers of England and France became known as peers of their kingdoms: so far as I know, they were not, during the Middle Ages, regarded as peers of their kings.12 10 Glanvill, ed. G. D. G. Hall (Edinburgh, 1965), p. 84 (VII: 10). The remark was repeated in Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, ed G. E. Woodbine and S. E. Thorne (Cambridge, Mass., 1968–77), 2:33. Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. A. Salmon (Paris, 1900), § 1043, says that li rois est souverains par dessus tous, but does not mention peers. 11 Baldus, In usus feudorum commentaria (Lyon, 1550), f. 4v (Proemium § 32–33); Professor Brown’s transcript from Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 6020, fol. 11r. 12 Les Assises de Romanie, ed. G. Recoura (Paris, 1930), chap. 43, say that nine great barons were li equali of the prince of Morea, but he was not a king: cf. Marino Sanudo Torsello, “Istoria del regno de Romania,” in Chroniques gréco-romanes, ed. C. Hopf (Berlin, 1873), p. 102, and the remark attributed to the prince in 1259–62 in Livre de la conqueste de la princée de l’Amorée: Chronique de Morée, ed. J. Longnon (Paris, 1911), § 314. The first reference to the king as the chief of the peers to whom he is equal that I have found is in J. de Basmaison Pougnet, Sommaire discours des fiefs et rierefiefs (Paris, 1579), fol. 47v, saying of the peers of France furent Pairs, come peres anciens et membres égaux desquels le Roy est le chef. My knowledge of material as late as this is, however, extremely slight. Any other references to kings either as unequal or first among equals would be welcome.

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Kings and other rulers had to consult, not because they lacked supreme authority (under God) but because that was how government was supposed to be conducted. Although an individual king’s failure to carry his point in assemblies could be a sign of personal weakness, charters, laws and chronicles all suggest that consultation in itself was taken for granted as the right and just way to make decisions, whether in judging crimes or disputes, in declaring laws or issuing privileges, or in making war or peace. All these matters were decided in assemblies that were supposed to be bigger for more important matters but might deal in one session with high politics, legislation and disputes between individuals. “Meetings” or “assemblies” seem to me better words than “courts,” even for meetings that dealt with disputes or crimes, since “court” suggests something more defined and legally specialized than these all-purpose and often amorphous occasions. That does not mean that they were not solemn occasions and that their members were not meant to take their decisions seriously. The settlement of disputes often involved oaths sworn both by litigants and those who judged cases. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time of much oath-taking, and not just between lords and those whom historians call their vassals. Apart from oaths taken by judges, guild-members and so on, rulers had, as I shall mention later, for centuries tried, at least on occasion, to make all those under their authority take oaths of fidelity or loyalty. Those who presided over assemblies pronounced and confirmed judgements on the disputes before them, and no doubt often influenced what was decided, but judgement itself was not supposed to be their business. Accounts of the settlement of disputes often imply that the judgement was made by all present, though people of high status presumably took the lead. Judgements by a panel of informed and responsible people could also be taken as authoritative, while in certain types of cases a judgement by the accused’s peers was considered most just. Thanks to its enshrinement in the academic treatise which became known as the Libri Feudorum, Emperor Conrad II’s constitution of 1037 became the classic text for judgement of peers, which historians came to think of it as peculiarly “feudal” and reserved to vassals. When it was first made, however, the constitution laid down procedures that conformed to generally accepted norms in a way that was apparently designed to settle a particular dispute between an archbishop and those who held his church’s lands — who were not, incidentally, described as vassals in the text.13 There were as yet no general rules for deciding which cases should be decided by peers alone or who was whose peer. Rules began to be made in the thirteenth century, when — not surprisingly — they differed in different places.14 Status was, in any case, much less rigidly defined than it would be in the late medieval and early modern age of written records and professional law — not that definitions even then were consistent. As yet, to be noble was less to have specific legal privileges than to 13 Discussed, with references, in Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 199–230, and see ibid. index sub peers. 14 e.g. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 304–06, 384–85, 456, 466.

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have the status to sway an assembly in one’s favour against the less noble. Drawing a line even between freedom and unfreedom depended on local custom and the context of a dispute. It was often difficult to do in individual cases. Eleventh- and twelfth-century law was customary law: it was anything but rigid, varying from place to place and time to time, so that norms can be deduced better from charters (including their preambles) and the records of disputes than from what appears to be formal legislation. Before the twelfth century there were few or no professional lawyers to cite precedents and produce ingenious arguments about them. During that century legal professions began to develop fast, first in Italy and then elsewhere, but the practice of law in many places remained strongly marked by old ideas of custom and collective judgement for a long time. That, at any rate, is what I have argued.

Vassalage and political relations in the Kingdom of Jerusalem The twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem seems, from my patchy reading of the sources, to fit into this pattern pretty well. The word vassal seems to be rare in contemporary sources. I have not found it in the charters, nor, though influence from the learned Law of Fiefs might make it more likely to occur in the thirteenth century, have I happened on it in my dips into the assises.15 Cliens occurs occasionally to denote followers of various kinds.16 Reading it either as a synonym for fiefholder or to indicate something as definite as “a vassalic relationship of people who did not belong to the knightly class” seems too narrow.17 In the chronicles I have found forms of the word vassal only once in Albert of Aix and once in William of Tyre.18 Albert says that Godfrey of Bouillon, with joined hands, made himself a vassal (in vassalum junctis manibus reddidit) of the emperor Alexius, and that the other leaders of the First Crusade did the same.19 Albert may have understood the word as it seems to have been used in eleventh-century Lotharingian cartularies, but he may have been influenced by its use in vernacular chansons. Either way, or whatever else he may have meant by it, his understanding of the relation between the emperor and the Frankish crusaders remains unclear. Whatever he meant, there does not seem to be much reason to suppose that he envisaged becoming a vassal either as implying the grant of a fief, as later lawyers would do, or as creating the 15 Beugnot used the word freely in his notes but did not index it or put it in his glossary though he did put in home, glossing it as vassal: A. A. Beugnot in RHC Lois 2:539–60, at p. 550. 16 E.g. Chartes Josaphat, no. 18; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), index rerum: cliens, clientela. 17 Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford, 1980), p. 313. 18 A search of the CD-ROM of the Patrologia Latina texts of Albert and of Fulcher of Chartres for vassalus, vassus etc. produced only this one reference in Albert and none in Fulcher. Microfiche Concordance to William of Tyre: R. B. C. Huygens, Instrumenta Lexicologica Latina, ser. A, fasc. 32 (Louvain, 1986). 19 Albert of Aix, “Historia Hierosolymitana,” 2.16, in RHC Oc 4:311.

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strongly affective bond envisaged by post-romantic historians.20 William of Tyre’s one mention of vassals comes when he tells how the sick King Baldwin IV made Guy de Lusignan procurator of the kingdom and ordered the great men of the kingdom and his (Baldwin’s) other fideles to become Guy’s vassals and do fidelity to Guy (precipiens fidelibus suis et generaliter principibus omnibus ut eius vassalli fierent et ei manualiter exhiberent fidelitatem).21 William may perhaps have picked up the word during his studies in Italy, where lawyers were beginning to use it to denote fiefholders, though they did not yet apply it to the great men of a kingdom. Irrespective of the word he chose, it looks as if what William thought Baldwin wanted was that his subjects should now owe to Guy the obedience and loyalty they would normally owe to himself as king.22 Historians refer to subjects of the kingdom as vassals much more frequently, often using “vassal” to translate homo or, in vernacular texts, hom. These words, however, sometimes denoted men who were not fiefholders, knights, or even Franks. Translating them automatically as vassal, and describing subjects of the kingdom, whether great or small, as vassals, risks implying, without argument, that they were all bound to their king or other lord simply by the interpersonal, dyadic, sworn relation that historians call vassalage. I have found no evidence that they were and, as in the West, a good deal that implies more collective regnal bonds.23 A twelfth-century king of Jerusalem was a king, not just a “chief lord” or primus inter pares whose authority was restricted to the area not contained in other lordships.24 Those who stayed on in Jerusalem after the First Crusade wanted a king because, even if they came from kingdoms where kings were remote, they still took kingdoms for granted as natural communities. Kingdoms needed kings. Quite apart from any polemical desire to play down royal power, the thirteenth-century jurists perhaps wrote mostly about “chief lords” rather than kings because the kingdom spent so much of the century under bailiffs or regents.25 “Chief lord” covered them all. It may be a mistake 20 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 405; Susan B. Edgington, “Albert of Aachen and

the Chansons de Geste,” in Crusade Sources, pp. 23–39; eadem, “The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence,” in The First Crusade, ed. Jonathan Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 55–77. 21 WT 22.26, p. 1049. Vavassor in ibid. 22.24, p. 1045 as yet probably had connotations of social rather than tenurial status: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 23. 22 Cf. the swearing of oaths (exhibite sunt ... universorum baronum cum solita iuramentorum forma manualiter fidelitates) to the child Baldwin V: WT 22.30, p. 1058; and the oaths to Raymond of Tripoli as regent: La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, chaps. 2, 6, ed. M. Ruth Morgan (Paris, 1982), pp. 19, 22. 23 For the use of the adjective “regnal” for what relates to a kingdom: Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, p. 254. 24 For kings of Jerusalem as primi inter pares: J. L. La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. xxii; Hans E. Mayer, “Herrschaft und Verwaltung im Kreuzfahrerkönigreich Jerusalem,” Historische Zeitschrift 261 (1995), 719. 25 Cf. the use of “king” in Le Livre au Roi, ed. Myriam Greilsammer (Paris, 1995)

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to see the term as a reflection of some deep-rooted feudo-vassalic ideology imported from the West. Suggestions of the usual sort of consultation and collective judgement abound in chronicles and charters. One striking example of collective judgement in the kingdom is Usamah’s story of how he took a plea against the lord of Banyas to King Fulk, who told six or seven knights to “arise and judge this case for him.” That the procedure was followed even in a plea brought by a Muslim makes the way that Franks took it for granted all the more obvious. It compares nicely with that followed in a dispute which Fulk’s son decided in Anjou at about the same date: the panel was differently constituted, with the count himself as one of its members, but both cases produced suitably consensual judgements. There may have been a similarly collective element to the judgements on the battle and ordeal which Usamah also reported.26 As in the West, the law and government of different groups were dealt with in different local meetings, and lords and castellans had a good deal of jurisdiction over people living in their patches. Usamah took his case to the king, but courts held in Jerusalem may not have been separated from each other at first, so that trying to decide what court it was heard in may, on western analogies, be to import clear distinctions into a period in which they may not have been made consistently, if at all. Unless the kingdom was far ahead of the West, the working out of boundaries between different jurisdictions and the formulation of rules about them would not have been anything like complete by 1187. If there was really no appeal to the king from seigniorial and other courts, as has sometimes been suggested,27 that would have contravened the accepted duty of kings to do justice to their subjects, including those, whether fiefholders or not, who claimed to have been treated unjustly by their lords. Usamah’s remark about the absence of appeal from the judgement of knights seems to mean that they made the judgement, which struck him as strange, rather than merely giving advice to the presiding judge.28 Since he brought his case in the king’s and, e.g., “Eracles” chap. 24, RHC Oc 2:224. John of Ibelin’s reference to chief lords, spiritual and temporal (Assises chap. 260, RHC Lois 1:415) suggests that “chief” did not have exclusively feudo-vassalic connotations. For its varying use in the West, even in tenurial contexts: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 226, 358, 359–60, 371. 26 Usamah ibn Munqidh, Memoirs, trans. P. K. Hitti (New York, 1929), pp. 93–94, 167–69; Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 27–28. Among other references specifying or implying collective judgement or legislation: e.g. Cart St Sép, nos. 74, 77 (postponement of a hearing propter plenioris consilii habendam sufficientiam), 121–22 (dispute settled and investiture made assistentibus ... in plenaria curia pretaxate ville burgensibus, in conspectu et audatia omnium); Livre au Roi, chap. 25, pp. 208–9. John of Ibelin’s story of the first establishment of courts assumes the rightness of collective judgement: chap. 2, RHC Lois 1:23–24 ; also e.g. John of Ibelin chap. 90, pp. 179–82 (esp. la court l’a fait, et noz aveuc, car noz i fumes), chap. 203–4, pp. 325–28; Philip of Novara, chap. 28, p. 502, chap. 40, p. 517, chap. 70, p. 541, and, of course, all the references both of them make to esgart et conoissance de court. 27 Prawer, Crusader Institutions, p. 40; Mayer, “Herrschaft und Verwaltung,” p. 725. 28 Usamah, p. 94.

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court the question of appeal elsewhere did not arise. The case of Gerard of Sidon may imply an appeal to the king by the man Gerard had disinherited sans esgart et sans conoissance de court.29 Distinctions between default of justice and false judgement, which could have arisen in this case, would, I suggest, become significant only if or when they became the subject of legal argument. Philip of Novara thought that appeals from viscounts’ and lords’ courts had at some stage been deliberately made almost impossibly difficult (though not prohibited in principle) because they had earlier been too frequent and frivolous.30 Usamah thought that collective judgement by knights implied that knights held high status in the kingdom.31 If he imagined that the making of judgements by his subjects reduced a king’s authority in their eyes, that was a misunderstanding of western Christian ideas of custom and justice, but he was right that knights mattered. The non-military people who seem to have collectively ranked as burgesses did not, for instance, rank as peers of knights in criminal proceedings.32 Comparison with the West suggests that distinctions of status may have been less clear in the twelfth century than later. Differences between those whom John of Ibelin called the sons of knights and ladies, and those he called men and women may have been less important earlier on.33 Modern identifications of twelfth-century individuals as nobles, knights, or burgesses may depend on assuming later rules and distinctions.34 The rule of the thirteenth-century lawbooks that burgesses could not buy fiefs owing military service may not have been made yet, or at least not consistently applied.35 The twelfth-century sources I have read seem to stress the military skills, arms and duties of knights rather than their nobility as such. Before turning to property rights and fiefs, I wish to say something, however tentative, about the Assise sur la ligece and the causes of conflict between kings and barons in the twelfth century. Prawer was surely right when he suggested in 1954 that the oaths imposed by the assise were not very revolutionary.36 The evidence is too scarce to say that western rulers had normally or often made all their free subjects take oaths of fidelity to them, but they certainly sometimes 29 John of Ibelin, chap. 140, RHC Lois 1:214. 30 Philip of Novara, chap. 87, RHC Lois 1:560–62. 31 I have to bypass the question of the word Usamah for “knight” that he used in

Arabic and the problem of translation between cultures as well as languages. 32 Livre au Roi, chap. 17–20, pp. 185–94. 33 John of Ibelin, chap. 188, RHC Lois 1:300, chap. 269, pp. 418–19. The later addition of sergeants to the categories in Livre au Roi, chap. 17–20 may suggest more exact stratification: Philip of Novara, chap. 13, RHC Lois 1:486, chap. 28, p. 502; John of Ibelin, chap. 16, p. 459. 34 Prawer, Crusader Institutions, pp. 335–37; Hans E. Mayer, Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal (Wiesbaden, 1990), pp. 268–69. 35 John of Ibelin, chap. 187, RHC Lois 1:297–99; Philip of Novara, chap. 27, p. 500. Livre au Roi, chap. 3, pp. 141–42, does not mention this rule when referring to the king’s freedom to grant fiefs to anyone, nor indeed does John of Ibelin, chap. 141, pp. 215–16. 36 Prawer, Crusader Institutions, p. 43.

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did so.37 As in most of the instances recorded in the West, Amaury’s assise came after internal conflict and is therefore concerned to make clear and confirm the allegiance that everyone owed to the king — the chief seignor dou reaume being maybe John of Ibelin’s phrase rather than that of Amaury’s reign.38 This overriding duty to one’s king was surely not a new idea but a reminder. Loyalties are liable to be divided in any hierarchical system in which relations with an immediate superior are likely to be closer and more affective than relations with one who is more remote. The frequent reservation of fidelity to a king or other rulers recognized that, but there is plenty of evidence that the bond to an immediate lord did not always triumph in medieval kingdoms.39 Loyalty to an immediate superior was, however, liable to be especially strong among fighting men who were so often called on to fight in separate local wars, even if against a common enemy. One particularly close parallel to the assise was William the Conqueror’s demand of 1086, after rebellions and under the threat of war, that all men holding land (land sittende men) all over England, whosever men they were, should do allegiance (bugon) to him and swear to be his men and hold to him against all others.40 Amaury, like William, was no doubt primarily concerned with the loyalty of potential soldiers but, like Carolingian kings and William’s twelfth-century successors, he was also apparently interested in that of ordinary civilians: the king (as even John of Ibelin calls him here) could require people who lived ès cités, et ès chastiaus, et ès bors to swear fidelity to him and be bound to him in the same way as the fiefholders.41 The men of Sidon and Beaufort at least were apparently made to do this after Gerard of Sidon’s revolt.42 Though homes liges in the treatises generally seem to be men who held fiefs, that may be because the authors of the treatises were most interested in them: all free inhabitants of the kingdom could, at least in some contexts, be considered homes liges and femes liges, who were bound to the king just as the king was bound to them.43 The idea that the assise enabled those whom historians call rear-vassals to 37 See e.g. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 88–89, 129–30, 370–71; on Carolingian

oaths, also Reynolds, “Afterthoughts on Fiefs and Vassals,” Haskins Society Journal 9 (2001), 1–15. 38 Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 127. 39 E.g. Wipo, Opera, ed. Harry Bresslau (MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, 61, 1915), p. 40; Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. Virginia G. Berry (New York, 1948), p. 78; Cart St Sép, no. 117. On John de Blanot’s much cited remark that the man of my man is not my man: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 281–82; cf. John of Ibelin, chap. 195, RHC Lois 1:313. 40 Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle (Oxford, 1892), p. 217. For the varying ceremonies and the words homage, fidelity, etc: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, index sub homage. 41 John of Ibelin, chap. 1, RHC Lois 1:215. 42 John of Ibelin, chap. 199, RHC Lois 1:320; Philip of Novara, chap. 51, p. 527. 43 Livre au Roi, chap. 25, p. 209; John of Ibelin, chap. 196, RHC Lois 1:315. On mutual obligations in general: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 29–31.

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attend the king’s court for the first time seems to be derived from later rules of feudal jurisdiction.44 That it made “rear-vassals” or other subjects of the kingdom effective equals of great lords in the court seems a bit improbable. It is true that John of Ibelin associated the assise with the right of all liege men to call on each other as peers, but that was presumably for support in trouble: since he thought, for instance, that the four “great barons” should be judged in certain cases only by each other, he did not consider all liege men peers in all respects.45 Oath-taking may have reinforced solidarities and obligations, but it did not create them from nothing. The thirteenth-century jurists may have found it convenient to associate their arguments about solidarity with Amaury’s trouble with Gerard of Sidon, but I find it reasonable to think that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was always envisaged, like kingdoms in the West, as a community, whose ruler and subjects were supposed to act together por le proufit dou reaume and por le besoing de la terre.46 Subjects of kings, though great and small, were in general supposed to be bound to each other et toz ensemble.47 In reality, of course, neither kings nor subjects were always as public spirited as medieval political ideals demanded and the kingdom was not as harmonious. Kings in all kingdoms were tempted to take the law into their own hands, unduly influencing judgements or acting without them. Barons who were left to defend and rule their lordships were tempted to look after their own interests rather than those of the rest of the kingdom. In the later twelfth century, with enemies closing in and no obvious and qualified candidate to be king just when a competent king was most needed, there were plenty of reasons first for honest opinions to differ, and then for parties to form, conflicts to become embittered, and recriminations to be exchanged which would re-echo in the chronicles. But even then the principles and assumptions of their society did not favour disobedience or opposition. The barons continued to want a king. Kings needed powerful and cohesive nobles, especially when they faced threats from outside. Is there any need to postulate a structural conflict, as if royal and noble interests were normally opposed so that when one was down the other was up? The thirteenth-century kingdom can look like that and so, at times, can thirteenthcentury England and Germany, but they were exceptions, and unhappy ones by medieval standards. The idea that the weakness of the early Capetians was caused by feudal anarchy and the power of feudal barons pitted against it seems to have been a creation of eighteenth-century French historiography. I hope I am not being overpresumptuous in suggesting that historians of the Kingdom of Jerusalem might consider whether traces of these ideas from the Ancien

44 Beugnot, RHC Lois 1:320 n.; La Monte, Feudal Monarchy, pp. 21–22. But cf. a possible parallel in the court of Philip Augustus in 1185, both for attendance at court and for the implication of peerage: Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, p. 54. 45 John of Ibelin, chaps. 199, 269, RHC Lois 1:320, 418. 46 Livre au Roi, chap. 29, p. 217; John of Ibelin, chap. 217, RHC Lois 1:347. 47 John of Ibelin, chap. 140, RHC Lois 1:215.

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Régime may lurk behind some of the arguments about the twelfth-century kingdom, and whether such ideas deserve rethinking.

Fiefs and property rights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem Such of the evidence about France, Germany, England and Italy as I have seen suggests to me that those who acquired lordships or lesser properties in the East after the First Crusade cannot have brought with them ideas about fiefs and their rights that would only be worked out by later lawyers. The word fief (in any of its Latin forms) had various uses in the West at that time, as did benefice. The two were not always synonymous. In none of their uses did either as yet imply any particular rights and obligations, let alone a consistent set of either.48 So far as my reading of some of the sources of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem goes, I have the impression that the use of feodum/feudum may have spread there much as it did in the West. At first it was most often used of relatively humble properties with restricted rights, mostly held from churches. When lordships were called fiefs it was, as in the West, quite often in clauses of charters giving consent to gifts of property that was said to be in a lord’s fief in the sense of being under his lordship.49 The king’s fief in such clauses, as in similar western references, presumably meant the area under his direct control, obviously without any connotations of subordinate or reduced rights.50 Later, as the century wore on, though lordships were less regularly called fiefs or said to be held in fief in the sources than they are in the modern literature, the word came to be applied more often to them and to other free properties.51 Even when it was, however, it need not, on western analogies, have implied that they had less than what were then thought of as the full or normal rights of free or noble property.52 Sometimes it did, as when it was used of what was held ex officio, presumably on rather special terms, or of low-status property which had quite different rights and obligations from those historians associate 48 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 160–80, 193–207, 353–54, 428–340. 49 E.g. WT 14.1, p. 632; Cart St Sép, nos. 44, 50–51, 107; Cart Hosp, no. 258. 50 E.g. Cart St Sép, no. 88: consilio et consensu domini regis Balduini, de cujus feodo

fuit presentis venditionis possessio. 51 William of Tyre uses the word only in WT 14.1, 30, pp. 632, 671 (see Concordance cited above, n. 18). Search of the CD-ROM of the Patrologia Latina texts produced no references to feudum/feodum in Albert of Aachen or Fulcher of Chartres. Despite William’s reference to in beneficio quod feodum vulgo dicitur (14.30, p. 671), both he and Albert use benefice more often in the general sense of favour or gift (or ecclesiastical position) than as what could be a synonym for fief. Fulcher’s only use of it is in a reference to beneficia from God. 52 E.g. Tabulae ordinis Theutonici, ed. Ernst Strehlke (Berlin, 1869), nos. 5, 9–10, 14, 16, 21–22 (hereafter cited as Strehlke); Cart Hosp, no. 495. The treaty between the crusaders and Venetians in 1204 makes fiefs carry pretty full property rights: Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, eds. G. L. F. Tafel and G. M. Thomas, 1 (Vienna, 1856), pp. 447–48. Cf. the use of fiez for the property of li gentil homme grec in Chronique de Morée (above, n. 12), § 106.

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with noble fiefs.53 Altogether, it looks as if feudum/feodum in its twelfth-century use, both here and in the West, did not apparently imply any particular or consistent set of rights or obligations. In some cases it seems to make no difference whether it was used or not.54 The way that it is used in the modern literature suggests assumptions about the rights and obligations of the properties concerned which I therefore suggest need to be questioned. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that this invalidates most of the arguments of the historians concerned.55 Since, in any case, I remain puzzled about the way that the word came to be used in different parts of the West, my guesses about the way that its use developed in the Kingdom of Jerusalem remain very tentative. Two things I feel relatively sure about: first, that categories of property were not clearly or consistently defined in the West in 1099 or for most of the twelfth century, either according to their rights and obligations or in any other way. I therefore tend to doubt if they were in the East. Second, there was more difference between the early years of the kingdom and the time of the thirteenth-century lawbooks, in words, in concepts, and in phenomena, than the jurists realized, even — or especially — when they were writing about early customs and legislation. Beugnot thought that, though there were no allods under that name in the Latin East, there were francs-fiefs, which in his view came to the same thing. Prawer abandoned the qualification and maintained there were indeed allods. Neither, however, seems to have given examples of the use of either word here.56 If either word was used in the twelfth century, it may not have implied the kind of independence and absence of services that later lawyers would associate with allods.57 Both fiefs and other property could indeed be granted free of services in twelfth-century Jerusalem, but freedom from services in such grants may not have implied freedom from all obligations owed collectively to the kingdom — or to the town. Prawer’s contrast between feuda, as properties held in “feudal tenure,” and “property with full proprietary rights” assumes an 53 Chartes Josaphat, no. 14 (the chamberlain’s fief, 1126); Cart St Sép, no. 78 (mills

granted to three Syrians and their heirs in feodo villanie, 1140). 54 One estate granted to Joscelin of Courtenay was to be held in feodo et iure hereditario: Strehlke, no. 9, while the properties granted or confirmed in nos. 10–11, 13–14, 16–18, 21–22 are to be inherited but are not said to be fiefs or held in fief. The fiefs mentioned in nos. 14 and 16 seem to be subordinate estates, while the feudum de Chabor in no. 22 is mentioned in the same sense as those in n. 49, above. 55 As it does not in, e.g., Peter W. Edbury, “John of Ibelin’s Title to the County of Jaffa and Ascalon,” English Historical Review 98 (1983), 115–33, and Hans E. Mayer, “The Double County of Jaffa and Ascalon: One Fief or Two?” in CS, pp. 181–90. Both sometimes use the word where the documents cited refer to baronies, lordships, or counties, while Montréal is not, I think, itself called a fief in Strehlke, no. 3, discussed by Mayer, Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal (as n. 34), pp. 145–48. 56 Beugnot, “Mémoire” (as n. 2), pp. 52–54; Prawer, Crusader Institutions, pp. 11, 240, 351–52. 57 For the use of allod in France c.1100: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 135–36, 140, 145–60, 179–80. For later use: pp. 260–67, 288, 322.

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improbable consistency of words, concepts and phenomena, as well as their conformity to later feudal law.58 Francs-fiefs, like fiefs de reprise, were products of the new professional law of fiefs that was only beginning to be developed in the twelfth century.59 On the good medieval ground of Occam’s razor, it might be wise to postpone discussion of allods, fiefs de reprise, or francs-fiefs in the Latin East until the words themselves are found there. A good many subordinate holdings within lordships, and certainly many grants of revenue, may have been called fiefs from the start and so, perhaps, may some lordships. Whether this meant that they were all recognized at once as heritable is unknowable. In the West, records of later disputes show that when eleventh-century kings or lords gave fortresses into the charge of trusted followers, they seem not to have always thought out or made clear the terms on which they did so.60 Perhaps Godfrey or Baldwin I, in the stress of war, did not always do so either, so that the difference between a doubtfully heritable royal castellany and a rightly heritable lordship was not obvious.61 As in the West, the best way to establish rights of inheritance was to leave a reliable adult son.62 With time the trend to inheritance became clearer and encompassed less close kin.63 This was not just because the great men of the kingdom were becoming more confident and cohesive in asserting their rights against the king. The same thing was happening in the West, irrespective of royal power. The tendency of power to be turned by time into legitimate authority and of seisin to become right, like the claims to inherit one’s forebears’ property, were not necessarily the result of weak government. They reflected deeply held values. From the twelfth century, moreover, just as government became more systematic and effective, these values came to be expressed in more explicit rules and in charters that explained what was and was not granted in ever greater detail. 58 For the varying use of franc-fief (and its variants in other languages) in the West,

see sources cited in Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 262–63, 277, 280, 281. 59 On fiefs de reprise: Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 232–34, 260–67, but on the latter passage, see F. L. Cheyette’s review: Speculum 71 (1996), 1003–4. Hans E. Mayer and V.G. Schmitt in their review of Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordships in Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 245 (1993), 59–70, at p. 63, connect the phrase in augmentum feodi with the conversion of allods to fiefs. It certainly occurs in twelfth-century (and later) grants (including, e.g., Strehlke, no. 5), but I have not met it as implying such conversions. The Western charters they cite do not seem to concern them. 60 E.g. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 170–71, 242, 354, 375. 61 E.g. Albert of Aachen, RHC Oc 4:517–18, 538, 634, 656; Bartolf of Nangis, RHC Oc 4:524; Hans E. Mayer, “The Origins of the Lordships of Ramla and Lydda,” Speculum 60 (1985), 537–55, repr. in his Kings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Aldershot, 1994), at p. 540. 62 As castellans of the Toron family did at Hebron: Hans E. Mayer, “Die Herrschaftsbildung in Hebron,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins 101 (1985), 64–81 (repr. in Kings and Lords). 63 Ibid.; Mayer, Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal (as n. 34), pp. 88–138; M. Rheinheimer, Das Kreuzfahrerfürstentum Galiläa (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 41–42, 107–11.

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The distinction between fiefs and the holdings later classified as borgesies may also not have been drawn clearly and regularly at first. The most obvious, if not the only, difference was presumably that what came to be called borgesies did not normally owe military service. Urban landowners may well have shared collective obligations of some kind, but the military service owed by fiefs, or rather knights’ fiefs, was much more real and burdensome.64 It remained real and burdensome throughout the twelfth century in a way that it did not in England or Normandy — the significance of England and Normandy being that the traditional idea of “feudal military service” seems to be almost entirely based on the system worked out after 1066 in these two areas: most nobles in France (outside Normandy) do not seem to have had defined and formal obligations before the late thirteenth century.65 Military service is thus a good illustration of the probability that obligations in the Latin East were derived less from exact precedents in the West than from the way that western ideas of custom and justice shaped the response to the unprecedented military needs of the East. The working of custom and justice meant that rules were made and changed in response to doubtful cases and disputes — whether about inheritance, services, vacant properties, alienations, or confiscations. Since most rulings, whether intended to apply generally or not, may well not have been recorded, or, even if they were, were almost certainly not known to all those judging later cases,66 they were probably less consistent with each other than the thirteenth-century writers thought. There seems little reason to suppose that they conformed to the ideas of feudal law and justice concocted by historians from late medieval legal treatises and practice. In the West it was only in the twelfth century and later that rules about the need for seigniorial consent to alienations developed, along with restrictions on grants of land to churches and particular classes of people, and with what are misleadingly called feudal incidents. All differed, moreover, in different areas, and some did not apply everywhere. General rules about periods of military service may have started to be made even later. Rules about the alienation of property illustrate the problems that arise once one starts to question the existence of timeless feudal custom. The requirement of a lord’s consent to alienation may have become firmer during the twelfth century. At first, consent may have been recorded, as it originally seems to have 64 The thirteenth-century treatises may give the impression of assimilating “fief” to “knight’s fief” (feodum militis) in a way perhaps unsuitable to twelfth-century — and perhaps thirteenth-century — usage too. See e.g. the feodum villanie in n. 53, above, and the reference to a scribania and a dragumanagium as feodi: Strehlke, no. 16. On Western analogies, the equitatura owed by a dragoman (Strehlke, no. 14; Cart Hosp, no. 480) need not have been military or suggestive of “vassalage”: J. F. Niermeyer and C. van de Kieft, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1976), pp. 378–79. 65 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, index sub military service. 66 Peter W. Edbury, “Law and Custom in the Latin East: Les Letres dou Sepulcre,” Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995), 71–79.

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been in France, rather because the church receiving the property wanted a good title, and therefore asked an influential person or persons to confirm the transaction, than because one particular person had the sole authority to allow it.67 The twelfth-century charters from the kingdom that I have read give me the impression that, when rules became clearer, those with authority, “from whom” (or “of whom”) grantors were said to hold their property, were the lords of areas, as they were in France and elsewhere, rather than those from whom the grantor had acquired the property, as in England. This suggests that alienations of property by anyone except barons and castellans may have been made by what English historians call substitution, rather than subinfeudation.68 On the other hand, although in John of Ibelin’s discussion of the alienation of parts of fiefs owing military service he does not say whether those who acquired the parts owed homage and service to the alienators, Philip of Novara says that they did:69 perhaps John did not mention what he took for granted, or perhaps custom developed differently in Jerusalem and Cyprus. When sisters inherited property the jurists thought that the younger sisters should do homage and owe their services to the eldest, but this rule can only have developed after the practice of dividing property among heiresses had started, apparently “a long time” after the first assises were made.70 The position when male heirs divided property owing the service of more than one knight seems slightly less clear.71 Altogether, it seems likely that the “feudal” or “tenurial” hierarchy never became as deep and complex as in England — or in some historians’ models of it. I have not happened on the word “subinfeudate” in my forays into the assises, except in Beugnot’s footnotes. That is not to say that it was not used, but it is not just a matter of words. The distinction between subinfeudation and substitution may not have been drawn in the Latin East as firmly as it is drawn by English historians brought up on the statute Quia Emptores or French historians who absorbed English material into their composite model of feudal law. The use of the word “subinfeudate” for almost all grants of fiefs, even when the subsequent relation between grantor and grantee is not specified, tends to beg questions of the phenomena of rights and obligations in the Latin East, 67 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 146–52. The collective consents in Cart Hosp, nos. 74, 116, 140, multiple consents in ibid. 530–31, and consents by archbishops in ibid. 104, 115, are suggestive. 68 E.g. (leaving aside grants to churches, which pose different problems) Strehlke, nos. 4, 10–11, 16, 52, 63; Cart Hosp, nos. 480, 495. 69 John of Ibelin, chap. 182, RHC Lois 1:284–85; Philip of Novara, chap. 81, p. 553. 70 E.g. John of Ibelin, chap. 150, RHC Lois 1:225–27; Philip of Novara, chap. 71–72, pp. 542–43. Maurice Grandclaude, “Liste d’assises remontant au premier royaume de Jérusalem,” in Mélanges Paul Fournier (Paris, 1929), pp. 339–40, gives the date of the change more definitely as 1171 than does Beugnot, RHC Lois 1:408 n. It was presumably after 1165: Hans E. Mayer, “Carving up Crusaders,” in Outremer, p. 106 n.; Hans E. Mayer, “Die Seigneurie de Joscelin und der Deutsche Orden,” in Die geistlichen Ritterorden Europas, ed. Josef Fleckenstein and Manfred Hellmann, Vorträge und Forschungen 26 (Sigmaringen, 1980), pp. 184–85. 71 Le Livre au Roi, chap. 38; John of Ibelin, chap. 148, pp. 223–24.

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and the way that relations were conceptualized there, that deserve further investigation. Beugnot interpreted Philip of Novara and John of Ibelin’s discussions of the rules about the alienation of parts of fiefs as meaning that they both thought that anyone alienating part of a fief owing the service of more than one knight must retain more than he gave away. He derived this from what he saw as established principles of feudal law, though the ordinances and statements of custom that he cited from western sources all came from the twelfth century or later.72 It was surely always considered right that alienations of property should not result in a loss of services or dues that were owed from it, but in the West such loss was avoided, so far as it was, in a variety of ways, and not always by blocking the alienation of half the property. There does not seem to be any real evidence that this particular solution was adopted in the kingdom much before Philip and John referred to it. The only reason for supposing that it was, apart from a priori ideas about feudal custom, seems to be that Philip of Novara thought that an assise about it must have been made earlier than another which he thought overrode it and which, as Grandclaude pointed out, William of Tyre attributed to Godfrey of Bouillon.73 Quite apart from any doubts one may have about this kind of conjectural history, which may depend partly on assumptions about what is to be expected of feudal law, both Philip and John seem much less clear about the rule than Beugnot suggested. Both of them found it problematical, and cited varying opinions on how it should be applied. According to some whose views they thought deserved respect, the share retained by anyone alienating part of his fief need not be larger than all that he gave away, only larger than any of the separate bits.74 Perhaps a general rule for the kingdom had been formulated fairly recently and its implications and application were still being worked out. Rules about confiscation are also hard to work out, not surprisingly since confiscation of a free person’s property was politically sensitive, so that any case was liable to be a hard one. It is difficult to believe that it was ever generally thought to be right that property of any sort could be confiscated from a free man without judgement, but easy to believe that kings and other powerful people would sometimes be tempted to confiscate even if they did not or could not get a judgement. As legal expertise developed they may have found it easier to get advice to help them secure suitable judgements, but legal arguments can be made both ways. Those who concocted them were not all on the side of kings. The possibility that rulers were allowed to sentence (that is, decide the 72 Beugnot, in RHC Lois 1:64 n., 284 n., 285 n., 288 n., 554 n. 73 Grandclaude, pp. 334–35. 74 John of Ibelin, chap. 182, RHC Lois 1:284–85; Philip of Novara, chap. 81,

pp. 553–54. Le Livre au Roi, chaps. 38, 44–46, pp. 262–64, 267–71, does not give any rule on proportions to be given. Like the other references cited by Prawer, Crusader Institutions, p. 26 n., it deals with other issues, such as divisions of inheritances by sisters, alienations to churches etc, which might also endanger services.

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punishment) as distinct from judging about guilt or innocence, is intriguing.75 Pronouncement of sentence by a court’s president, however, need not imply his independent decision about it, and western evidence suggests the prevalence of a view that punishments ought to be decided by the fellows of the accused.76 If contemporaries had made the distinction in the context of causes célèbres, one might expect explicit argument about it.

Conclusions The Kingdom of Jerusalem offers fascinating material for comparison to social and legal historians of western Europe. That is partly because it can be seen as a melting-pot (or salad-bowl) of western custom which left just enough records to make comparisons possible, tantalizingly difficult though it is to separate the different local traditions that were combined and reshaped in new conditions. But there is more to it than that. The kingdom was established just as western Christendom stood on the threshold of great changes in law, government and politics — among other things. Taking the relatively obvious subject of politics first, I have been intrigued, even though I have barely ventured into the thirteenth century, by a few episodes, apart from the well-known communes, that invite comparison with different parts of the West. The speech of 1231 attributed to Balian of Sidon claimed that the land had been conquered not by any chief lord but by croisée et par esmuete de pelerins et de gent assembleisse, who then elected a king for themselves.77 This seems to reflect similar ideas to those of the French lords of 1248 who said that the kingdom of France had been won and converted not by the written law or the arrogance of clerks but by the blood and sweat of warriors. It is even closer to the story of the English earl later in the century who maintained that William the Bastard did not conquer the land by himself, but “our forefathers were partners (participes et coadjutores) with him.”78 In late thirteenth-century England, as in Cyprus, demands for allegedly excessive

75 Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Further Thoughts on Baldwin II’s établissement on the

Confiscation of Fiefs,” in CS, pp. 176–80, where the meaning attached to districtio seems questionable; Gordon A. Loud, “The Assise sur la Ligece and Ralph of Tiberias,” in ibid., pp. 204–12. 76 Magna Carta, chaps. 8, 20–22, with earlier references, suggests a general idea in twelfth-century England that lesser penalties, like judgements, ought to be imposed by one’s equals: J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1992), pp. 58, 332–34, 426, 456. Penalties were fixed in charters of liberties elsewhere, presumably so as to prevent arbitrary punishments by lords: e.g. the early (1058) charter of Nonantola: Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, 131 n. 77 “Eracles,” 33.24, in RHC Oc 2:389. 78 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 57 (London, 1872–83), 4: 592, 593; Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Society 89 (London, 1957), p. 216. Cf. also Chronique de Morée (as above, n. 12), § 222, 314, 861–62.

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military service evoked the image of serfdom.79 It is ironic that the future Edward I arbitrated in a dispute in Cyprus about military service outside the kingdom, especially when such service was alleged to be unknown in any province north of the Alps (d’outre les mons), and when the settlement of the dispute apparently provided only for service abroad in the company of the king or his son.80 When so many values were shared and there was so much coming and going between West and East, it may be pointless to ask who was influencing whom, but it is tempting. Legal history presents far more difficulties but is correspondingly more enticing, offering scope for masses of work by people younger than me who would be prepared to look at some of the evidence of western practice, various as it was, at the same time as studying the sources for the Latin East. The crusaders of 1099 came from societies governed largely by unprofessional customary law. During the lifetime of the kingdom higher courts in the West came to be increasingly dominated by professional or semi-professional lawyers, whose methods of argument were beginning to be influenced by academic habits of classification and distinction-making. More was being written down and more records were being kept. Rules and procedures became more formal and rigid. It was now that the amorphous mass of custom began to be divided and fossilized into different legal systems. The process has been obscured by the teleological tendencies of traditional legal history, which have tended to emphazise what came later and interpret earlier evidence either to contrast or to fit. Quite apart from the attraction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem as another area for comparison, what happened there has the peculiar fascination of having no distant future to invite such distortions of teleology — if only we can avoid interpolating rules from later feudal law in the West. How far did its law change like that of the West? If it seems to have developed differently, is that because it was genuinely different or because similar developments (or lack of development) in parts of the West have been missed? For what an opinion based on such slight use of the sources is worth, I have the impression that, as in the West, custom and structures had become more stable, and charters fuller and more systematic, well before 1187. On the other hand, those we often call the thirteenth-century jurists betray fewer signs of the new academic and professional law than, say, Eike von Repgow or Beaumanoir, let alone the authors of the Libri Feudorum or the works attributed to Glanvill and Bracton. Perhaps that says more about their social position and political preoccupations than about legal practice,81 but it would be interesting to know what academic 79 RHC Lois 2:430 (chap. 3); cf. P. R. Hyams, King, Lords and Peasants (Oxford, 1980), pp. 193–94. 80 RHC Lois 2:431 (chap. 5); “Eracles,” 34.17; Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 92–93. Cf. Michael Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), pp. 406–7, 416, 419–21. 81 References to Novel Disseisin (John of Ibelin, chaps. 64, 248, RHC Lois 1:103–7, 396, Clef, chaps. 76–81, p. 585) suggest closer comparisons (as would be expected) with

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influences, apart from that of canon law, can be traced in their work. In view of the way they have traditionally been interpreted it would be particularly interesting to try to identify influences from the academic and professional law that grew out of the Libri Feudorum. Benjamin Kedar’s exposition of a thirteenth-century academic text from the kingdom which draws on the Libri is extremely exciting.82 Further study of it should open up the history of law in the kingdom in an entirely new way, while Peter Edbury’s new edition of John of Ibelin should make it easier to attack the problem from the side of the jurists themselves. This paper has concentrated on fiefs, vassalage and property law, and what has been said in it leaves untouched most of the work by recent historians of the kingdom from which I have learned so much of what I know. Yet, in spite of all I have learned from them and what I still do not know, it still seems to me that some of the most learned and interesting books and articles that I have used in preparing this paper would be even more convincing if they did not seem to be fitting their material into an old model of feudalism in a way that the sources I have read do not seem to justify. The carefree use of words like “vassal” and “fief,” “subinfeudate” and “nobility” invites the carefree assumption of rules and values that need to be argued rather than assumed. Maybe the model fits. But the fit would be more convincing if it were treated less as a fashion model to be followed than as an engineer’s model to be tested. Words were used in different senses in different times, places and contexts in the Middle Ages as they have been ever since. Social and legal terminology and concepts need to be understood in the context of their time and place. For historians as opposed to philologists, words are often less important than the concepts and phenomena they denote: as in the history of the West at the same period, what need to be investigated are rights and obligations, and attitudes to them, irrespective of the words used. If what I have said suggests new lines of enquiry, I hope that, even if the result proves me wrong, they will be rewarding.

France than England: Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis (as n. 10), § 961–83; Jacques d’Ableiges, Le Grand Coutumier de France, ed. F. Laboulaye and R. Dareste (Paris, 1868), pp. 231–57. 82 [At the workshop on the governance of the Frankish kingdom (above, n. 1), B. Z. Kedar discussed a Liber de feudis written in the Levant. The text will be edited and commented upon in a future study. Ed.]

Fiefs and Vassals in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: from the Twelfth Century to the Thirteenth Peter W. Edbury Cardiff University Historians of the Middle Ages are used to the idea that social and institutional developments advance in a lineal fashion, even if at some periods the pace of change seems quicker than at others.1 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we would expect to find practice and precedent hardening into custom; we would expect to find social, legal and administrative ideas acquiring an ever greater degree of sophistication and we would expect to find a greater reliance on written instruments rather than on orality. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, however, presents a problem in this respect. After almost ninety years of existence the Frankish kingdom collapsed to the forces of Saladin in 1187. There then followed the Third Crusade and a partial recovery of its territory; after that a further hundred years until the final loss of Acre in 1291. One question that perhaps deserves greater consideration than it has received in the past is what effect the events of 1187–92 had on society and institutions. How did Frankish society differ subsequently? What changes can we detect in the ideas and institutions that underpinned that society? How far was there continuity from the so-called “First Kingdom,” and how far did the period of the Third Crusade mark a new beginning? Usually historians have simply assumed that after 1192 things were much the same as before 1187, albeit within much narrower borders. Otherwise the question has often gone unasked. Shortly after the appearance of Susan Reynolds’s Fiefs and Vassals in 1994, I tried to imagine how her ideas might apply to the Latin East, and a version of a paper I wrote at that time appeared in 1998.2 It concentrated attention on the closing years of the “First Kingdom” — the generation before 1187 — and I argued that in that period, whereas knights possessed estates or incomes, which in some sources are referred to as “fiefs,” in return for fixed quotas of military service, it could have been the case that the great lords did not have a formal obligation to produce a stipulated number of knights, even though the 1 My thanks are due to Benjamin Z. Kedar and the members of the workshop on the governance of the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem held at the Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 7–12 July 1999, which considered the views of Dr Susan Reynolds, the author of Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994). Particular gratitude is due to Jonathan Riley-Smith for reading an earlier draft of this paper. 2 ”Fiefs, vassaux et servise militaire dans le royaume latin de Jérusalem,” in Le Partage du Monde: échanges et colonisation dans la Méditerranée médiévale, ed. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris, 1998), pp. 141–50. 49

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king knew what military resources he could expect from them when they came to serve on campaign. I also suggested that the vocabulary used of the great lords and their lordships was more in keeping with the sort of terminology for “freehold” property that Dr Reynolds finds in the West at the same period. That paper focused on three very well known texts (or collections of texts) relating to the years just before 1187. Each has the great merit of being strictly contemporary: the lists of services and lordships preserved by John of Ibelin, count of Jaffa, at the end of his legal treatise;3 the charters relating to the so-called “Lordship of Count Joscelin,”4 and the celebrated history of William of Tyre who appears to have finished writing his magnum opus in 1184.5 It is my belief that the list of services from John of Jaffa can be dated to 1185 and the reign of Baldwin V.6 It provides the names of a hundred knights from the royal domain — about half of them known from other sources — owing specified quotas of service. The idea that a specific service was owed is confirmed by the Count Joscelin charters, some of which speak of particular numbers of knights owed in return for landed fiefs or fief-rents. These charters have frequently been discussed.7 They survive because in the thirteenth century many of the estates mentioned passed into the possession of the Teutonic Knights, who then preserved this earlier material concerning their title in their archive. For our purposes they are particularly precious since they form by far the most substantial assemblage of charters recording grants to laymen to have survived from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As mentioned, several relate to “fiefs” owing a fixed service, but in the grants of major lordships — Outrejourdain (1161) and Toron and Château Neuf (1186) — the lordship is not termed a “fief” and the service is not specified.8 Interestingly, the 1161 Outrejourdain document uses the word feodum several times of other, lesser properties. If indeed there was a distinction at that time between lay land-holders of moderate standing holding their property as fiefs and owing one or more knights to their lord, and the lords of the great lordships holding their property in outright ownership and with no specified servitium debitum, it is a point that is worth emphasizing. There is, however, a danger here of arguing ex nihilo: absence of evidence that lordships were regarded as fiefs, albeit on a grand scale, and that even the greatest lords were contractually bound to produce a fixed number of knights when summoned by the king is not evidence that such features did not exist. In another document preserved in the 3 Now re-edited in Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 118–24. 4 Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici, ed. Ernst Strehlke (Berlin, 1869). Reprinted with a new introduction by Hans E. Mayer (Toronto, 1975). Hereafter cited as Strehlke. 5 WT. 6 Edbury, John of Ibelin, pp. 129–31. 7 Notably Hans E. Mayer, “Die Seigneurie de Joscelin und der Deutsche Orden,” Die geistlichen Ritterorden Europas, ed. Josef Fleckenstein and Manfred Hellmann, Vorträge und Forschungen 26 (Sigmaringen, 1980), pp. 171–216. 8 Strehlke, nos. 3, 21.

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Teutonic Order’s archive, a charter of King Amaury dated 1169, the king announces that he has “given and conceded feodum c[entum] militum in Babilonia when God shall have given it to the Christians” to Joscelin Pisellus and his heirs.9 As is well known, 1169 was a key year in Amaury’s attempts to conquer Egypt, and here, in what is admittedly a provisional grant which anticipated a military success that in the event failed to materialize, we have the creation of feodum centum militum. Clearly this was a grant that would have catapulted the recipient into the highest rank of the kingdom’s aristocracy. In John of Jaffa’s list only the principality of Galilee is credited by itself with a hundred knights.10 But what did this phrase feodum centum militum mean? Is it that Joscelin Pisellus will henceforth be obliged to produce a hundred knights to serve in the royal host as the quid pro quo of his tenure? Or is it that the grant will be large enough for him to provide revenues for a hundred knights, men who would be needed to control the territory with its huge population that King Amaury hoped to conquer? William of Tyre is sparing in his use of “feudal” vocabulary. Vassals (vassalli) are referred to just once, and fiefs (feoda) twice, and this in a text that in its modern edition runs to over a thousand pages. In 1183 Guy of Lusignan became regent for the incapacitated Baldwin IV, and the king sought to secure Guy’s position, precipiens fidelibus suis et generaliter principibus omnibus ut eius vassalli fierent et ei manualiter exhiberent fidelitatem.11 The precise nuance conveyed by the word generaliter is open to some doubt, but I think we have to construe this sentence to mean that in 1183 the princes — and by this William means the higher nobility — were vassals and that they took a ritual oath manualiter, placing their hands in those of their lord as they repeated the formulae. It is important to remember that William was writing not more than about a year after these events took place, and so, even though he seems not to have been present on that occasion,12 it is likely that he had precise information as to what actually happened. As for the two references to feoda, one relates to western Europe and appears to relate to superior lordship,13 and the other to the prince of Antioch, Raymond of Poitiers, and his agreement with Emperor John Komnenos in 1137: Raymond was to surrender Antioch and in return he and his heirs were to hold Aleppo, Shaizar and other places in perpetuity in beneficio, quod feodum vulgo dicitur.14 Not too much should be read into this statement: Raymond was in a weak position; William was being disparaging about what was on offer. In any case his testimony was scarcely 9 Strehlke, no. 5. 10 Edbury, John of Ibelin, p. 118. The other units with a hundred knights: Jaffa,

Ascalon, Ramla, Mirabel and Ibelin; and Sidon, Caesarea and Bethsan were both made up of several lordships. 11 WT 22.26.22–24, p. 1049. 12 As indicated by William’s use of the verb perhibetur immediately after the passage quoted (p. 1049, line 25). 13 WT 14.1.50, p. 632; cf. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 271, 275. 14 WT 14.30.43, p. 671; cf. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 120, 165.

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contemporary. William’s equation of feodum and beneficium does, however, prompt us into considering his use of that term as well. The word beneficium can of course bear several meanings, but William does seem to use it a couple of times to denote fiefs — the property of ordinary knights, not great lords.15 More normally the greater lordships are referred to as the inheritance (hereditas) or the possession (possessio) of their owners, or were granted iure hereditario — terms which Susan Reynolds would associate with outright ownership, although whether William himself would have intended that they should carry this connotation is far from clear.16 There are problems in using William of Tyre. William clearly saw himself as a Latin stylist. On the whole he tries to avoid neologisms — we have seen already how he apologises for using feodum: “in beneficio, quod feodum vulgo dicitur.” A further indication that he was selective in his use of vocabulary is revealed by an analysis of how he employs the word “baro.” Professor Huygens’s concordance points us to a number of instances of its use, but on closer examination it turns out that a clear majority are not in William’s own writing but occur in the documents he inserted into his text — notably the Pactum Warmundi of 1123. Left to himself William preferred to use princeps or nobilis. The paucity of references to “fiefs” or “vassals” may therefore be explained by an unwillingness on stylistic grounds to use what may have been current terminology rather than by assuming that fief-holding and vassalage were little known in the East. Another problem in deconstructing William is that as an educated ecclesiastic and a lawyer he is exactly the sort of person who will want to make things look tidier and more schematized than perhaps they were. To take an example highlighted by John Gillingham: William recorded that in 1180 the king gave (tradit) his sister Sibylla as wife to Guy of Lusignan.17 This statement is no doubt true in the sense that William, the trained lawyer, is describing the legal formalities — after all, for a king to give away his sister in marriage was what was supposed to happen — but, as Gillingham points out, that was certainly not the whole story, and other evidence suggests that it was Sibylla who took initiative or, at very least, that Sibylla and Guy chose each other.18 So William tells the truth, but is it the whole truth? As Umberto Eco makes one of his characters say when referring to popular hostile perceptions of the Templars, “... it was William of Tyre’s fault, treacherous historiographer that he was.”19 Frankish society in the twelfth century was not tidy; nor was it schematized. 15 16 17 18

WT 14.16.41, 17.17.85, pp. 653, 785. For references, Edbury, “Fiefs, vassaux et servise militaire,” p. 148 n. 21. WT 21.1, p. 1007 rubric, cf. lines 16–18. John Gillingham, “Love, Marriage and Politics in the Twelfth Century,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 25 (1989), 293–95. Reprinted in John Gillingham, Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London and Rio Grande, 1994), pp. 244–48. 19 Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (London, 1989), p. 88.

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The settlers from the West would have brought with them a whole range of experiences and assumptions about relations between lords and men, rulers and ruled, families and neighbours. They arrived at different times during the century and from different parts of Europe. In the early twelfth century military obligation and patterns of inheritance cannot have been systematized, and the high mortality and the uncertain commitment to remaining in the East ensured that social custom and aristocratic structures would remain fluid. As Joshua Prawer proved many years ago, the Frankish conquest of the Holy Land at the start of the twelfth century did not entail the importation of a fully-fledged “feudal system” from the West.20 It was only gradually with the consolidation of royal and seigneurial authority and the establishment of custom and precedent that a recognizable and orderly system of land tenure and military obligation of a sort that historians delight in uncovering began to emerge. If by the 1180s ordinary knights held their lands as fiefs and owed a quota of service in return, it does not follow that such arrangements had been in place a generation earlier. By its very nature the evolution of custom in the twelfth century is difficult to trace in the sources. Doubtless landed men of moderate wealth would have been more susceptible to pressure from above and so more likely to accept closely defined obligations than would the nobles. It does not follow because a man holding one village or a rent worth a few hundred bezants annually accepted that he owed the service of one knight, that the great lords would have regarded their lordships in the same way, any more than their counterparts in France would have done at the same period. Quite how lords would have viewed their lordships was probably ill-defined, but if we think of the lordships in the “First Kingdom” being in practice more akin to outright property rather than treated as fiefs, that would help explain the rule which said that the lord led the vanguard of the royal host when it was campaigning within his own lordship. It might also explain the piece of bombast from the lord of Outrejourdain, Reynald of Châtillon, who is supposed to have told Guy of Lusignan when upbraided for breaking the truce with the Muslims that he would not return his booty and captives “for he was lord of his land just as he (Guy) was lord of his.”21 Maybe, in the years before 1187, there was pressure to get nobles to accept that their lordships should be put on the same footing as the fiefs of the lesser knights. If so, that might help explain the context of Baldwin of Ibelin’s refusal to do homage to Guy of Lusignan in 1186.22 It could even be that one reason for the resentment against Guy of Lusignan as regent in 1183 was that the nobles, in William of Tyre’s words, had been obliged to “become his vassals” (eius vassalli fierent) and that besides signalling their duty to obey Guy as the king’s surrogate it presaged a diminution of their own autonomy. So far I have been trying to build up a picture of how the sources allow us 20 Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford, 1980), pp. 3–45 passim. 21 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M. Ruth Morgan (Paris,

1982), pp. 36, 53–54. 22 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, p. 35.

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to perceive fiefs and vassals in the Kingdom of Jerusalem on the eve of Hattin. I now come back to my original question and ask what changed once the dust had settled on the events of 1187–92. What happened after 1192 has not attracted anything like the same degree of attention from historians as the generation before 1187. There are good reasons why this should be — the 1180s are, after all, extremely interesting — but it is also true that our sources for the later period are not so helpful, and it is inevitable that historians tend to follow where their materials lead. The comparative poverty of our sources is especially true of the narrative material. The Old French Continuations of William of Tyre and the associated text known as the Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier are patchy in their coverage and anecdotal, and only reached the form in which they have been preserved during the second quarter of the thirteenth century.23 They certainly fall far behind William of Tyre, who, despite my earlier strictures, was a very fine historian. It is true that we have one of the most informative of medieval travellers — Wilbrand of Oldenburg — but he was in the East twenty years after the end of the Third Crusade. The sparsity of the narrative materials is only partially offset by the presence of the earliest of the legal treatises, the Livre au Roi (c.1200), as well as the surviving charters and papal letters. There is no doubt that the years 1187–92 had a devastating effect on Frankish society in the East. For example, as Bernard Hamilton has pointed out, by 1192 only two of the bishops of the kingdom who were in office in 1187 — Joscius archbishop of Tyre and Monachus archbishop of Caesarea — were still alive.24 The effect on the nobility must have been of a similar order, with the carnage at Hattin and the deaths, many of them from disease, at the siege of Acre taking a heavy toll. But some members of the higher nobility who had taken part in the events leading up to Hattin survived the end of the Third Crusade: besides Guy of Lusignan (d. 1194) and Queen Isabella (d. 1205), mention might be made of Aimery of Lusignan (d. 1205), Maria Comnena (d. after 1207), Reynald of Sidon (d. c.1201), Balian of Ibelin (d. 1193), Ralph of Tiberias (d. c.1220), his brother Hugh of Tiberias (d. after 1204), and Humphrey of Toron (d. 1197).25 Doubtless there were others.26 But it is also noteworthy how readily newcomers to the East after 1192 could gain access to the highest positions. Among the new names that appear as frequent witnesses to the charters of 23 Peter W. Edbury, “The Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre,” in Montjoie, pp. 140–44. 24 Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: the Secular Church (London, 1980), p. 243. Hamilton repeats the frequent error in calling Monachus “Aimery.” 25 For Reynald, Balian, Ralph and Hugh, see Edbury, John of Ibelin, pp. 23, 25, 26, 30. For a notice of Humphrey’s death, Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, RS 51 (London, 1868–71), 4:78. 26 For example, of those listed as knights in the list preserved by John of Jaffa, Reynald of Soissons, Walter Le Bel and Milo of Colovardino. Edbury, John of Ibelin, pp. 148, 152.

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Henry of Champagne and Aimery of Lusignan were Thierry of Dendermonde, Milo Brebenz, Thierry of Orca and Villein of Alneto.27 Count Berthold of Katzenellenbogen had arrived by 1200, and he was soon to be joined by two other western nobles who had dissociated themselves from the army of the Fourth Crusade: Guy of Montfort, the brother of Simon the Elder, and Walter of Montbéliard.28 The fact that in the wake of the destruction and the territorial losses these and other western nobles could still make careers in the East and, as in the cases of both Guy and Walter, marry into the local Frankish nobility is itself suggestive. Despite the catastrophic losses, there must have been sufficient military and political stability in the Latin East after 1192 and sufficient economic resources to attract them to stay. Their presence would also seem to suggest that in the 1190s and early 1200s the older Frankish noble families were either unable or unwilling to monopolize power for themselves by excluding such newcomers from their ranks. By 1200 the survivors from the “First Kingdom” would have formed only a small minority of the men in attendance on the king, and these westerners together with the new generation of the surviving nobility would have had to come to terms with the fact that the restoration of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to its former glory could not readily be achieved. So what was the Latin East like after 1192? We know that much of the kingdom’s territory remained in Muslim control and that there had been widespread devastation. The sources tell us little about the process of reconstruction, and so, for example, we know nothing about the investment needed to restore the gardens and vineyards around Acre which must have been destroyed in the course of the two-year siege of 1189–91. It is quite likely that much of the land notionally in Christian hands after 1192 remained derelict or exposed to petty brigandage. It was only at the time of the Fifth Crusade that Caesarea and ‘Atlit were fortified, and we have to wait until the late 1220s for the refortification of Sidon (held for much of the intervening period in some form of condominium with the Muslims) and Jaffa (which changed hands in 1197 and again in 1204 and was noted as being desolate in 1217)29 and the building of the castle of Montfort. The charters issued in the aftermath of the Third Crusade show rulers regularizing the position of the Italian mercantile communities whose presence was still much needed in the East but whose privileges, granted at times of military crisis and political turmoil between 1187 and 1192, needed to be curtailed.30 Other charters survive in favour of the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights which show them being given sections 27 RRH, nos. 707, 709–10, 713, 716–17, 720–22, 724, 735, 743–44, 746, 773–74, 776,

812.

28 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (London and Basingstoke, 1973), p. 23; Edbury, John of Ibelin, pp. 25, 27. 29 Thietmar, Mag. Thietmari Peregrinatio, ed. J.C.M. Laurent (Hamburg, 1857), p. 24. The same author (pp. 23–24) also notes desolation at Arsur and Ramla. 30 RRH, nos. 707, 713, 721, 724.

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of the town walls at Acre or Jaffa — presumably to be repaired and then defended — together with other properties, perhaps intended as douceurs to persuade them to bear this added responsibility.31 Early in 1192, even before the crusade was over, Guy of Lusignan gave the Hospitallers substantial property within Acre.32 Charter evidence only survives when the recipients were in a position to preserve it, and so what does remain is extremely fragmentary and by its very nature gives a distorted picture. Even so, this material points to trends clearly discernible in the thirteenth century: the increasing political and military role of the military Orders, and the greater economic power of the Italians. Historians have frequently commented on these developments. But the corollary of enhanced power for the Orders and the Italians is also significant: in terms of the total sum of power and wealth in the Latin East, the secular nobility was correspondingly diminished. The Livre au Roi, which dates to the reign of King Aimery of Lusignan (1197–1205), provides a commentary on the status and assumptions of the nobility at that time. We are in a world in which the king or the queen can give fiefs comprising land, vines or villages, with or without service, can create liege men and can remit their service. Title to land is enshrined in sealed charters.33 The chevalier houme lige, which in the modern edition is translated “vassal,” is clearly important. Service is demanded; fiefs can be confiscated for various reasons; there are rules about rights of inheritance and the wardship of minor heirs; widows need their lord’s permission to remarry, and so on. The details may vary, but we are in the classic thirteenth-century feudal world in which the rights of the king and the chevaliers houmes liges are held in balance. Even so — curiously in view of its treatment by later writers in the thirteenth century — there is no reference to King Amaury’s Assise sur la ligesse which was to prove such a fertile starting point for considering the status of the vassals of the nobility and, more particularly, the rights to the vassals to limit the power the monarch.34 Whereas the Livre au Roi can be read simply as a description of legal custom as it existed at the time of writing, the author would certainly have had a propagandist intent. He had much to say about the royal power and the institutions of monarchy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.35 Some of the most interesting sections are those dealing with the royal succession, and it is here that the internal evidence for the dating, with its allusion to the situation at the time of Aimery of Lusignan’s reign, is to be found.36 The modern editor, Myriam Greilsammer, is undoubtedly right to conclude that the book was connected with Aimery’s programme of re-establishing strong monarchy in the 31 32 33 34 35 36

RRH, nos. 701, 709, 710, 716, 717, 744, 746. RRH, no. 698. Le Livre au Roi, ed. Myriam Greilsammer (Paris, 1995), chap. 3. Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, pp. 145–84 passim. See Greilsammer’s analysis. Livre au Roi, pp. 71–76. Livre au Roi, chaps. 5, 6. cf. pp. 83–86.

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kingdom. The title by which it is known, Le Livre au Roi, finds only tenuous support in the surviving manuscripts,37 but it ought perhaps to be regarded as the dedication: “The Book dedicated to the King.” Most likely it was the work of a member of Aimery’s entourage. There is no doubt that the Livre au Roi is an attempt to describe royal rights as tempered by the rights of the liege men and other inhabitants of the kingdom: the question is how tendentious is it. Later in the thirteenth century Aimery of Lusignan was remembered as an accomplished lawyer in his own right. Philip of Novara, and, drawing on his writings, a later thirteenth-century redactor of John of Ibelin’s treatise, credited Aimery with wanting to reconstruct the pre–1187 laws only to be frustrated by Ralph of Tiberias who declined to co-operate.38 Maybe Aimery did invite Ralph to work on just such a codification, but, even if he did, it was never written. Philip’s tale belongs with his story of the Letres dou Sepulcre, which, as I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, is a later legal fiction designed to explain away the inadequacies of Jerusalemite customary law as exposed by the exponents of French or Roman law.39 No doubt the exercise of royal authority and the administration of justice needed reasserting in the aftermath of the Third Crusade, and no doubt lawyers with experience of the working of the courts from before 1187 would have been in demand. But even if we reject the story of the Letres dou Sepulcre and place a question mark against Aimery, Ralph of Tiberias and the codification of the laws, the very fact that the Livre au Roi was written when it was should be seen as a contribution to the process of reconstruction and consolidation after 1192. One particular passage in the Livre au Roi is clearly connected to the losses in 1187. From chapter 36 we learn that if fiefs in territory currently in Muslim hands are recovered by the Christians they must pass immediately to the closest heir of the last in seisin.40 John of Ibelin was later to use the phrase force de Turs ne tolt seisin — forcible occupation by Turks does not affect seisin — in this context.41 Clearly it was a sensitive issue. As the Third Crusade had shown, crusaders from the West were often reluctant to respect the rights of the former owners. Indeed the French Continuation of William of Tyre tells of the burgesses of Acre complaining loudly after the surrender of Acre in July 1191 that they had been prevented from regaining their former homes and properties.42 Thirteenth-century evidence confirms that ownership of recovered 37 Livre au Roi, pp. 30, 97, 135. 38 Philip of Novara, “Livre de forme de plait,” RHC Lois 1:522–23; John of Ibelin,

“Livre,” RHC Lois 1:429–30. 39 Peter W. Edbury, “Law and Custom in the Latin East: Les Letres dou Sepulcre,” in Intercultural Contacts in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of David Jacoby, ed. Benjamin Arbel (London, 1996), pp. 71–79. Reprinted in Peter W. Edbury, Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Aldershot, 1999), IX. 40 Livre au Roi, pp. 239–40. 41 John of Ibelin, pp. 107–9. 42 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 125, 127. See Raymond C. Smail, “The International Status of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1150–1192,” in The Eastern

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lands was a contentious matter, and it is not surprising that the Syrian Franks were insistent on their rights. Each new crusade held out the prospect of recovering territory, and it was probably in anticipation of the crusade of the Emperor Henry VI that in February 1196 the canons of the Holy Sepulchre had Pope Celestine III confirm their properties in the East, most of which were then in Muslim hands.43 It is not known whether they approached the secular rulers in the East for a similar confirmations — if they did they have not survived — but it may be that the canons reckoned that a papal confirmation would be more effective in vindicating their claims to recovered properties against the crusaders than a charter from Henry of Champagne or Aimery of Lusignan. The principle force de Turs ne tolt seisin was clearly an attempt by the Latin Syrian Franks to protect their own interests. It also enshrined the hope that one day the clock would be turned back and the rest of the kingdom would once more be in Christian hands. John of Ibelin decided to include the list of services as they had been “before the land was lost.”44 By the time he was writing — the mid–1260s — hopes of a restoration must have faded, and we are in the world of antiquarianism, hankering after the memory of a long-lost golden age, but earlier, and for much of the first half of the thirteenth century, it is my belief that people really did believe that the whole of the kingdom would one day be restored to its rightful owners. Successive crusading expeditions from the West coupled with the Ayyubids’ concessions in 1229 and 1240–41 would have fuelled such hopes. Even as late as the mid–1250s it was believed in the Muslim world that the sultan of Damascus was ceding the Christians everything west of the Jordan.45 It is against this background that we should see Aimery of Lusignan’s 1198 coronation oath as preserved in the cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre, and in particular the provision that the king would maintain laws and customs as they related to both the Church and the whole people of the land, “just as King Amaury and King Baldwin his son had ... and I shall abolish novelties chiefly introduced since the destruction of the land ... .”46 The oath was presumably drafted by members of the clergy — perhaps by Patriarch Monachus himself — and it could well be that in writing of the customs to be maintained and the novelties to be abolished they were thinking primarily in terms of ecclesiastical issues, not least the protracted and acrimonious circumstances of Monachus’s

Mediterranean Lands in the Period of Crusades, ed. Peter M. Holt (Warminster, 1977), pp. 23–43. The translator of William of Tyre into Old French who was at work sometime in the early decades of the thirteenth century appears to have believed that the principle force des Turs ne tolt seisin was applied at the time of the Christian recovery of Banyas in 1140. John Pryor, “The Eracles and William of Tyre: an Interim Report,” Horns, p. 285. 43 Cart St Sép, no. 170. 44 Edbury, John of Ibelin, p. 117 line 65 (= John of Ibelin, p. 421 cf. p. 24). 45 Edbury, John of Ibelin, p. 90. 46 Cart St Sép, no. 172.

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own election as patriarch in the time of Henry of Champagne.47 The reference to Amaury and Baldwin IV is repeated in the coronation oath as recorded by John of Jaffa about seventy years later,48 and so it presumably became an accepted part of the oath as used subsequently. There seem to me to be two ways of reading this text. One is to see it as an attempt to expunge the years between the death of Baldwin IV in 1185 and the accession of Aimery in 1198 from the legal memory. The minority of Baldwin V, the catastrophic reign of Guy of Lusignan, the problematic authority wielded by Conrad of Montferrat, and then the rule of the uncrowned Henry of Champagne who had been in conflict with the Church over the election of the patriarch who was to administer the oath in 1198 could all be set aside. The other approach is to see the 1198 oath as looking back to the last kings of the “First Kingdom” as major legislators and upholders of good custom — and indeed that is how the reference to these kings in the version of the oath to be found in John of Jaffa’s treatise should be understood. But however we approach it, the coronation oath can be placed alongside the principle force de Turs ne tolt seisin in pointing to the conclusion that people in the East were consciously trying to minimize the legal consequences of the events of 1187–1192. Many years ago, in 1977, I published a paper with the title “Feudal Obligations in the Latin East.”49 In it I relied appreciably, though by no means exclusively, on the works of the mid thirteenth-century legal writers, chiefly Philip of Novara and John of Jaffa. I argued that military service in the East owed from fiefs was heavy and, after the loss of Latin Syria in 1291, it continued to be exacted in Cyprus late into the fourteenth century. I still believe this to be true, and accordingly I would maintain that Susan Reynolds’s remark that “Outside England the obligation to military service ... was generally nominal”50 needs at very least to be modified by making an exception for Jerusalem. More problematic are other aspects of my paper. Expanding a point made by Jonathan Riley-Smith in his Feudal Nobility which had appeared a few years earlier,51 I reviewed the evidence indicating that the assortment of rights that historians of medieval England refer to collectively as “feudal incidents” were almost non-existent. In the East lords could not charge heirs relief or entry fines; they had no right to primer seisin; they did not exercise the wardship of the lands of minor heirs (unless there was no kin); they had limited control over the marriage of heiresses and only minimal rights to demand aids. What was more, in the East there was no institutionalised system of commuting military service to a money payment — nothing equivalent to the English scutage. In 47 Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, “William of Tyre and the Patriarchal Election of 1180,” English Historical Review 93 (1978), 14–17 (reprinted Edbury, Kingdoms of the Crusaders, II); Hamilton, The Latin Church, pp. 244–45. 48 John of Ibelin, p. 30. 49 Byzantion 47 (1977), 328–56. Reprinted in Edbury, Kingdoms of the Crusaders, III. 50 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 69. 51 Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, pp. 38–39.

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other words military service was exacted, but the fiscal potential of feudal tenure familiar to all English-trained medievalists from Magna Carta of 1215 was not available to kings and lords in the East. I used to think this absence of “feudal incidents” in the East was rather odd — I am now prepared to believe that it was England that was odd — and I sought to explain this phenomenon by putting forward the thesis that the pattern I have described — heavy military service exacted but next to no incidents — dated from early in the kingdom’s history and had come into being at a time of acute manpower shortage. Kings and lords were desperate for knights to serve them; any knight worth employing could demand a permanent, heritable fief; the last thing a lord would want to do was to deter the heir from taking over his ancestor’s land by demanding a relief or claiming the right to assume charge during a minority and so on. As a hypothesis this view has an internal consistency, but it begs some important questions. Projecting thirteenth-century evidence back into the twelfth century in trying to describe tenure and its associated duties and other implications is perilous. In consequence I assumed that feudal institutions were fixed far earlier than now would seem to be the case. But the problem I sought to address is still there. The thirteenth-century evidence presents us with an orderly, schematised picture of tenurial relations in which fief holding is the norm and in which detailed custom is established. There is no reason to doubt that the tenurial customs described by the mid thirteenth-century lawyers were applied in the thirteenth century. However, the question remains: when and how did they come into being? It is well nigh impossible to trace the evolution of custom, not least because contemporaries tended to assume that what was then customary had remained unchanged since earliest times. From what it tells of the rights of the closest heirs of the last in seisin to inherit land recovered from the Muslims and from other evidence, the Livre au Roi indicates that inheritance custom was well-established and essentially immutable by around 1200. From thirteenth-century evidence we learn that property could be held on the basis of a grant to a man and all his heirs or a grant to a man and his heirs descended from his espoused wife only, thus disqualifying collateral members of the family from inheriting. Whereas grants to the recipient and all heirs had been normal in the beginning, this more limited form of grant was known to the author of the Livre au Roi and was employed exclusively in Lusignan Cyprus, settled in the 1190s.52 The implication appears to be that by the start of the thirteenth century this type of grant was normal in Jerusalem as well. But was it? And if it was, when did this change come about? Joshua Prawer found an instance of a grant with this limitation dating from 1152, and two more, issued by King Amaury, from 1169 and 1174.53 In 1178 Prince Bohemond III of 52 Livre au Roi, p. 282; Philip of Novara, p. 504; John of Ibelin, p. 235. 53 Prawer, Crusader Institutions, p. 35 and note 56. Cart Hosp, 2:903, no. XI;

Strehlke, nos. 5, 7.

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Antioch made a grant to Count Joscelin III, again with this limitation,54 but not one of the charters issued in Joscelin’s favour in the Kingdom of Jerusalem between 1179 and 1186 which speak of Joscelin’s heirs as the eventual beneficiaries specify that these heirs have to be those descended from Joscelin and his wife.55 The clear implication is that these grants were intended to be inherited by any heir. We might reasonably conclude from this that there was a lengthy period of overlap when donors sometimes gave grants to the recipient and any heir and sometimes to the recipient and his heirs by his espoused wife only, but it is also possible that Joscelin, a powerful man who was closely related to the king, could well have been receiving these grants on more advantageous terms than was normal at the time. Occasionally we are more fortunate. For example, in the thirteenth century it was believed that the rule that heiresses divide inheritances instead of the eldest acquiring the entire property was established by a precedent apparently dating from 1171 following the death of a prominent nobleman named Henry Le Bufle.56 But more commonly enquiries only raise more questions. Thus Philip of Novara tells us about seigneurial control of the marriage of heiresses: originally heiresses married whoever they wished; Philip then says that as this was a far from satisfactory state of affairs the lords intervened to take full control; this in turn displeased the kinsmen of the heiresses, and the current arrangement whereby the king or the lord nominated three candidates and the heiress (or her family) selected one came into being as a compromise.57 It is an extremely interesting story and has obvious importance for questions such as the status of women in the East and the development of seigneurial control. The problem is that there is no indication as to when these changes took place, and, given the importance of heiresses in the East, it is striking that outside the thirteenth-century legal treatises there is no evidence whatever for lords preparing short-lists of three candidates from which the heiress or her kin would chose. Indeed, what little evidence there is for the disposal of heiresses, suggests that at least by the mid-thirteenth century the woman’s family made a financial proffer to the king or the lord who then agreed to let her marry the man of their choice.58 I want to end by saying something about the mediatization of public justice. According to John of Jaffa lords of significant lordships all enjoyed the rights known as cour et coins et justise and controlled the cour des bourgeois within their lordships. What these rights added up to was complete juridical autonomy within each lordship, with the consequence that, while the lord could control the courts and the patronage that that control afforded and help himself to the

54 55 56 57 58

Strehlke, no. 9. Strehlke, nos. 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22. For references, Edbury, John of Ibelin, p. 9. Philip of Novara, pp. 558–59. Also John of Ibelin, pp. 359–65. Edbury, “Feudal Obligations,” p. 347.

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profits of justice, the royal law officers had no jurisdiction there.59 This sort of judicial franchise is common enough in the West. What is striking about the situation in the East is the implication that the devolution of public juridical authority had been made systematically. John of Jaffa says that a chief purpose in writing his treatise is to try to educate his fellow owners of these legal franchises into applying the same procedures and principles as in the High Court.60 John’s evidence would indicate that these franchises operated before Hattin, and presumably dated from the foundation of Latin rule. Whatever the origins of this situation, we might assume that the king, inspired perhaps by the example of a Henry II of England or a Philip Augustus of France, would want to curb the juridical authority of his nobility and centralise the administration of justice in his own hands. The events of 1187–92 and the need to reconstruct the kingdom almost from scratch provided the ideal opportunity to do just that. It was an opportunity that was allowed to pass by.

59 Edbury, John of Ibelin, pp. 115–17, 155–62. 60 John of Ibelin, p. 27.

Prudentes homines … qui sensus habebant magis exercitatos: a Preliminary Inquiry into William of Tyre’s Vocabulary of Power1 Miriam Rita Tessera Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan In his Historia Hierosolymitana, covering the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the foundation of the kingdom in 1099 to King Baldwin the Leper’s troubled years, William archbishop of Tyre emphasizes the presence of prudent men in the royal circle as if it could assure stability and strength to the monarchy of Jerusalem.2 William’s vocabulary lays special stress on prudentia among the system of values reflected in his history. I have found 251 terms related to prudentia (209) and its antithesis imprudentia (42, shared among the readings imprudentia and inprudentia), enough to suggest that the author chose them deliberately. Moreover, William concentrates most of them (40 per cent) in books 16–23, where he was reporting the events he himself lived through,3 from the coronation of Baldwin III and Queen Melisende in 1143 to Raymond III of Tripoli’s appointment as regent of the kingdom in 1184. It is noteworthy that the concept of imprudentia appears only once in those books devoted to King Amaury, William’s patron, with reference to the Frankish fleet which lost a ship imprudenter during the Egyptian campaign in 1168.4 Not surprisingly, during Baldwin IV’s reign imprudentia becomes very frequent, occurring nearly as many times as prudentia.5 This seems to underline the difficult situation — survival or catastrophe — the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem had to face at the end of the twelfth century. Is this a sheer coincidence or is William intending 1 I am grateful to my professors Annamaria Ambrosioni, Mirella Ferrari and Pietro Zerbi for advising and supporting me during the preparation of this paper, which has been made possible thanks to a scholarship granted by Fondazione Confalonieri, Milano. The present text was read at the fifth SSCLE Conference, Jerusalem 1999; a longer Italian version was published with the title “Prudentes homines: ricerche sul lessico del potere nell’Historia Hierosolymitana di Guglielmo di Tiro,” Aevum 74 (2000), 493–509. 2 All quotations come from William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. Robert B.C. Huygens, CCCM 63–63A (Turnhout, 1986), henceforth WT. On William’s life and works: Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, William of Tyre. Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988) and Hans E. Mayer, Die Kanzlei der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, Schriften der MGH 40, 1 (Hanover, 1996), pp. 166–253 with extensive bibliography. 3 Miriam Rita Tessera, “Guglielmo di Tiro e Bernardo di Clairvaux: uno sguardo da oltremare sulla seconda crociata,” Aevum 73 (1999), 247–72. 4 WT 20.8.16, p. 921. 5 In books 21–23 prudentia occurs 18 times, imprudentia 13 (but in book 21 we find only 4 prudentia against 7 imprudentia). 63

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to give his opinion on the policies of kings and nobles in the first hundred years of the Crusader kingdom by means of a selected vocabulary?

Prudentia in William’s history: a secular virtue We have to examine carefully what William really means when he makes use of the word prudentia, and, in the first place, the sources of the term. In the Historia Hierosolymitana, prudence is described with obvious reference to the biblical ideas of phronesis and sophia, recurrent in the books of Wisdom and in St Paul’s letters.6 Prudentia is also embodied in some characters like Pharaoh’s governor Joseph or the fidelis et prudens servant mentioned in the Gospel. William is inclined, however, to consider prudentia as a virtue of secular origin and qualifications, which belongs especially to the curia regis. This attitude is not to be found in contemporary monastic literary production or in the most important crusade chronicles the archbishop of Tyre used. It rather mirrors the debate arising in the schools of Chartres and Paris, where, while commenting on Cicero, prudentia was classified among intellectual virtues, with no reference to morality.7 It is also based upon the courtly literature of the specula principum, as in the writings of Gerald of Wales and John of Salisbury, which began to change the idea of spiritual wisdom into one which was ethical and social, spreading the image of rex litteratus.8 William regarded prudentia as practical wisdom, resulting from experience guided by reason; it allows a man to distinguish between right and wrong and to foresee the consequences of his own actions. He apparently took up this idea from Cicero’s De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium:9 during the first half of the twelfth century, Thierry of Chartres commented on these texts and 6 In the Vulgate version of the Bible, prudentia is used to translate very different Greek words, such as phronesis (most commonly), synesis, sophia and even techné, but it retains the original meaning of practical wisdom. Claudio Gancho, “Prudenza,” in Enciclopedia della Bibbia, 5 (Turin, 1971), cols. 1019–20; Henri Lesêtre, “Prudence,” in Dictionnaire de la Bible, ed. F. Vigoroux, 5.1 (Paris, 1922), col. 803. 7 Philippe Delhaye, “La place de l’éthique parmi les disciplines scientifiques au XIIe siècle,” in Miscellanea moralia in honorem Arthur Janssen, 1 (Louvain and Gembloux, 1948), pp. 29–44; François Dingjan, Discretio. Les origines patristiques et monastiques de la doctrine sur la prudence chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Assen, 1967), pp.155–58, 172–74 and 187–91. Cf. Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Monaci, chierici e laici al crocevia della vita evangelica,” in his La teologia nel XII secolo, Di fronte e attraverso 169 (Milan, 1986), pp. 273–74; Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 3.2.1 (Louvain and Gembloux, 1949), pp. 99–106. 8 Charles Brucker, “Prudentia / prudence aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” Romanische Forschungen 83 (1971), 464–74; Wilhelm Berges, Die Fürstenspiegel des hohen und späten Mittelalters, Schriften der MGH 2 (Leipzig, 1938), pp. 131–50 on John of Salisbury and Gerald of Wales. 9 Cicero, De inventione, 2.53.160, ed. Guy Achard (Paris, 1994), p. 225: “Prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum neutrarumque scientia;” Rhetorica ad Herennium, 3.3, ed. Guy Achard (Paris, 1989), p. 89: “Prudentia est calliditas quae ratione quadam potest dilectum habere bonorum et malorum.”

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his works were carefully read and taken over by Petrus Helias, who was one of William’s teachers.10 In particular, the French schools whose lectures William attended ascribed to the virtue of prudentia a strong ethical and social meaning following Plato and Aristotle’s theories. According to Calcidius’s translation of Timaeus, it was addressed “in dispositione rerum mortalium” and, as was shown in widespread texts like Macrobius’s Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, it was considered a virtue which was essential if a country was to be effectively governed and preserved.11 When in 1138 a popular rising stirred up on purpose prevented the Byzantine garrison from taking possession of Antioch, Prince Raymond’s envoys played on the notion of prudence when justifying the crusaders’ ambiguous behaviour in the presence of John Comnenus. The Latin envoys asserted that prudentia and disciplina, qualities required to rule towns and peoples, had to distinguish everyone’s merits and responsibilities in order to act with justice. Hiding his own indignation, the emperor proved to be well acquainted with this secular virtue — in William’s opinion dissimulatio is always considered a distinctive feature of prudence — and he was requested to profess it to the end and to acquit the lords of the populace’s crimes.12 In the example quoted above and in many passages of the Historia, William of Tyre considers prudentia as the harmonious whole of all the intellectual qualities required in a prince in order to carry on his own political duties, in the same way as Gerald of Wales says in his De principis instructione: “(prudentia) caeterarum quasi lima virtutum esse videtur, tanto principi magis accommoda, quanto plures per hanc virtutem regere tenetur et moderari.”13 In 10 For Petrus Helias and Thierry of Chartres see Karin M. Fredborg, ed., The Latin Rhetorical Commentaries by Thierry of Chartres (Toronto, 1988) and Karin M. Fredborg, “Petrus Helias on Rhetoric,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Age grec et latin 13 (1974), 31–41; for William’s studies: Robert B.C. Huygens, “Guillaume de Tyr étudiant. Un chapitre (XIX, 12) de son ‘Histoire’ retrouvé,” Latomus 21 (1962), 814–15 and 825–29; Rainer C. Schwinges, Kreuzzugsideologie und Toleranz. Studien zu Wilhelm von Tyrus, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 15 (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 24–28. 11 Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. J. H. Waszink, Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi 4 (London and Leiden, 1975), p. 209; Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, 1.8, ed. Jacob Willis, 2 (Leipzig, 1970), pp. 37–38 (prudence is included among virtutes politicae). See also John of Salisbury, Policratici sive De nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum libri VIII, 6.22, ed. Clement Charles Julian Webb, 2 (Oxford, 1909), pp. 62–63. 12 WT 15.5, pp. 680–81. William of Tyre regards prudentia and disciplina as the foremost qualities to rule a country or an army: see also John of Salisbury, Policratici, 6.14–16, pp. 37–44. The expression prudenter dissimulare, often used in the Historia Hierosolymitana (for instance WT 2.15.36–37, p. 181; 7.11.34, p. 357; 22.10.39–40, p. 1020), comes from Prov. 12.16: “Qui dissimulat iniuriam ... callidus est” (Septuagint version: aphron). Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux’s negative attitude: “Prudentiae (est), non dissimulare, sed sollicite ut mala desinant providere.” Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq and Henri Marie Rochais, 6.1: Sermones de diversis, 113 (Rome, 1977), p. 391. 13 Gerald of Wales, Opera, ed. George F. Warner, RS 21, 8: De principis instructione liber, 1.11 (London, 1891), p. 39; on the prince’s prudence see also ibid., pp. 40–43.

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the secular princes’ portraits prudentia is associated with the physical strength — that is, the warlike skill — and it refers to the classical pattern of fortitudo/sapientia expressed in the ancient and medieval epics and in the biblical vir sapiens et fortis.14 Together with the coupling of prudentia and strenuitas, which allowed Godfrey of Bouillon to rule the new-founded Kingdom of Jerusalem,15 we can find in the Historia Hierosolymitana all the distinctive features of prudence listed in the pre-Scholastic treatises: Tancred’s circumspectio, Baldwin I’s calliditas, Joscelin I’s providentia, Stephen of Blois’s magnum consilium and, with reference to many (including Muslims), industria, which is the quality that allowed the biblical Joseph to become Pharaoh’s governor.16 In particular, William of Tyre defines the group of the prudent men by an expression taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews “qui sensus habebant magis exercitatos,” that is to say, those people who are prominent among men because they are able to distinguish between good and evil.17 Prudentia is the peculiar science of human affairs, proceeding first of all from a proper use of one’s own senses.18

Who are the prudentes in the Historia Hierosolymitana? The archbishop of Tyre assigns the virtue of prudentia to one specific social class. It belongs exclusively to the milites and principes, the greatest feudal lords and churchmen in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, who are called to direct other men and to rule the whole of society in conformity with God’s plan. Because of prudence, it is the duty of the nobles to educate the multitude and to guide their passions towards order and justice; otherwise, the people will know no limits and will be led by every impulse of the moment, desiring only immediate self-gratification. When in the Historia Hierosolymitana the people refuse to be guided or when the lords incite them to evil instead of correcting 14 Prov. 24.5: “Vir sapiens fortis est, et vir doctus robustus et validus.” Many pairs of

adjectives used by William of Tyre — as prudens / robustus — come from this passage, because in the Historia William turns sapientia into a mere synonym of prudentia, with no references to its theological meaning (sapientia, that is wisdom, is usually devoted to divinis rebus). See Charles Brucker, Sage et sagesse au Moyen Age (XIIe et XIIIe siècles). Étude historique, semantique et stilistique, Publications romanes et françaises 175 (Geneva, 1987). 15 WT 9.13.39–42, p. 437. See also WT 9.19.4, p. 445 (Tancred); 17.18.15–16, p. 785 (Walter of Saint-Omer) and 22.17.14–15, p. 1030 (Raymond III of Tripoli). 16 WT 11.16.32–33, p. 520; 10.6.5–6, p. 459; 10.23.22–24, p. 483; 10.11.15–16, p. 465; for industria see WT 10.11.37–38, p. 466 (Raymond of St.Gilles); 2.2.47–48, p. 163 (Godfrey of Bouillon); 19.14.16, p. 883 (Shawar); Gen. 41.33 (Septuagint version: Joseph is phronimon and syneton). 17 Heb. 5.14: “Perfectorum autem est solidus cibus: qui pro consuetudine exercitatos habent sensus ad discretionem boni et mali.” In the Historia Hierosolymitana, it occurs 13 times — one as antithesis: “qui sensus habebant minus exercitatos” (WT 20.22.10–11, p. 941) — to describe military campaigns and battles or diplomatic missions. 18 See John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 4.12–13, ed. John Barrie Hall, CCCM 98 (Turnhout, 1991), pp. 150–52.

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their sinful behaviour — as Count Emicho did during the First Crusade19 — imprudentia comes to the fore: chaos, defeat and social disorder are bound to follow. On the road to Jerusalem in 1096, for instance, the massacre of the Jews in the Rhineland was due to the crowd advancing “sine rectore passim et imprudenter;”20 and, during the wars fought by the kings of Jerusalem, decisive defeats were caused many a time by the foot-soldiers, that is to say, the lower classes.21 In the same way, Peter Bartholomew was reluctant to reveal St Andrew’s message about the Holy Lance in the presence of Count Raymond of Toulouse and the papal legate because, as William clearly states, he was “pauper et nullius prudentie.”22 In other words his social status prevented him from being trustworthy, as he lacked the necessary qualities of learning and wisdom.23 Even if to William of Tyre’s mind the category of prudent men is marked by rigorous class boundaries, it is not restricted to the Christian Western world, but also embraces the Byzantine and above all the Muslim leaders. The Historia Hierosolymitana reflects Alan of Lille’s theoretical speculation which recognizes the existence of the political virtues among the pagans, the infidels and the Jews because of the inner natural law of every human being,24 but the archbishop of Tyre goes further: more than once he contrasts the prudence shown by the enemy with the Christians’ foolish and superficial behaviour. When in 1157 Baldwin III inprudenter pitched his camp not far from Meleha Lake, the crusader army fell into an ambush and was routed by the Muslim troops led by Nur al-Din, whose cunning and skill in taking advantage of the Christians’ mistakes is emphasized by William.25 As we can see in the example mentioned above, the archbishop of Tyre attaches great importance to prudentia in strategy and in the military field. In 19 WT 1.29.16–20, p. 156: “Vir potens et nobilis comes Emico, in eadem regione preclarus, eorum cetibus cum multo se adiunxit comitatu, non solum prout eius decebat generositatem nec morum censor nec correptor enormitatis, sed maleficiorum particeps et flagiciorum incentor.” 20 WT 1.29.3–4, p. 156. 21 For instance WT 13.26.30, p. 621 (Baldwin II’s defeat in 1129). 22 WT 6.14.14–15, p. 325. Peter’s portrait turns upside down the biblical image from Eccles. 9.15: “inventusque est...vir pauper et sapiens.” It is noteworthy that Raymond of Aguilers’s version of this episode does not mention prudence but only poverty to justify Peter’s reticence: Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, ed. John H. and Laurita L. Hill (Paris, 1969), p. 70. 23 Cf. Ralph of Caen, “Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana,” RHC Occ 3:678. Ralph says that Bohemund, who was “non imprudens,” did not believe to Peter’s discovery at all, because he was a poor man who was said “cauponas frequentare, fora percurrere, nugis amicum, triviis innatum.” 24 Odon Lottin, “Le Traité d’Alain de Lille sur les Vertus, les Vices et les Dons du Saint-Esprit,” Mediaeval Studies 12 (1950), 33; Philippe Delhaye, “La vertu et les vertus dans les oeuvres d’Alain de Lille,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 6 (1963), 19. 25 WT 18.13: King Baldwin III behaved “longe aliter quam disciplina militaris exigeret et inprudenter” and “imprudentius aliquantulum.”

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the continuous state of war which is peculiar to the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, prudence allows one to escape the snares laid by the enemy and, as Flavius Josephus, one of William’s sources, was made to say: “plurimum in bello prudentia valet, quae acuta semper et perspicax incertorum providet casus.”26 In the Historia Hierosolymitana the expressions relating to prudence are often employed to illustrate military campaigns, raids, sieges and the conquests of towns, approach marches and scouting expeditions, castle building and defence, and also diplomatic missions.27 Moreover, when its meaning is restricted to “technical skill,” prudentia also stands for the knowledge required by the military engineers to build siege-engines and mine walls.28 When the king of Jerusalem and his lords are doubtful about risking a pitched battle, prudence helps them not to make mistakes, because it suggests when the right opportunity to launch an attack had come. So, in 1177, Baldwin IV’s small army decided not to pitch camp outside the walls of Ascalon following the advice of those barons who “sensus habebant magis exercitatos in talibus” and prudenter withdrew into the town, allowing the Leper King to keep his forces untouched for the decisive clash with Saladin at Montgisard.29 In the same way, prudentia is a characteristic of an experienced commander, who is ready to avoid rash actions but also effective in his decisions; William is likely to have drawn this from Livy’s history. As in the Historia Hierosolymitana, Livy’s definition of prudence is closely connected with experience — that is, the knowledge and wisdom coming from experience and opposed to temeritas, audacia and stultitia — and is used to portray military leaders, not only the Roman ones, but also their enemies.30 So it is that in the army of Jerusalem, the most prudent men belonging to the royal council — the prudentiores — take upon themselves definite tasks, which turn out to be indispensable to the success of military operations. In 1167, during the Egyptian campaign, on the eve of the battle between Amaury and the Kurd Shirkuh, those noblemen who were experienced and well-trained in warfare took care of the squadrons in order to prepare the men for the fight, even from the psychological point of view. They drew up the troops in battle array, marshalled the untrained soldiers in accordance with the rules of tactics 26 Hegesippus, Historiae, 5.30, ed. Vincenzo Ussani, CSEL 66 (Vienna and Leipzig, 1932), p. 369; he summed up Iosephus’ Bellum Iudaicum in Latin: Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, p. 34. 27 Among others, see WT 14.7.21, p. 639; 11.19.27, p. 524; 9.12.32, p. 435; 5.22.1–2, p. 300; 15.25.15, p. 708; 10.13.10, p. 468. 28 For instance WT 18.19.47–55, p. 839 (siege of Harim in 1157). 29 WT 21.19.32–41, p. 988. 30 Timothy J. Moore, Artistry and Ideology: Livy’s Vocabulary of Virtue, Beiträge zur Klassichen Philologie 192 (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 110–14. It is highly probable that William of Tyre read Livy’s fourth decade at Chartres: on Livy’s tradition see Giuseppe Billanovich, La tradizione del testo di Livio e le origini dell’Umanesimo, 1: Tradizione e fortuna di Livio tra Medioevo e Umanesimo, Studi sul Petrarca 9 (Padua, 1981), pp. 123–75.

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and exhorted the warriors, promising booty and spiritual benefits.31 In this regard, it is remarkable that Thierry of Chartres’ commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a text that William probably knew thanks to Petrus Helias’s teaching, explains the passage about prudentia with an image of the “miles strenuus et in bellicis artibus educatus” who stirs up his fellows to attack and defeat the enemy because of his experience and knowledge of the proper means to do so.32 The prudent men do not only defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem during war-time. Their political rôle is absolutely necessary for all aspects of government, because they are devoted to the king and they are able to urge him to the welfare of the country. As advisers enjoying the king’s confidence, they do not only answer to their sovereign’s demands, but they also take the initiative in suggesting how to solve the problems of the reign. When in 1124 Baldwin II was released from the Muslim prison, “those men who were the most prudent in the kingdom” persuaded him to besiege Aleppo in order to get his hostages back again without paying the ransom.33 In the same way, after considering the difficult political situation and observing Nur al-Din’s growing threat in 1169, these prudent men suggested to Amaury that he sent an ecclesiastic embassy calling on the Western rulers for help.34 According to William of Tyre, the relationship between the prince and his vassals should be similar to the pattern of the fidelis servus et prudens mentioned in the Gospel, who manages his master’s goods in a proper way.35 The “prudent men” have to take care of the safety and the peace of the crusader kingdom without being involved in party strife and without having an eye to their own profit, as when, in 1152, the patriarch of Jerusalem and those prudentes “qui pacem regni diligebant” strove to avoid a ruinous civil war between Baldwin III and his mother Melisende.36

A model and its antithesis: the Princeps Prudens and the Princeps Imprudens As already pointed out, for William the prince’s prudence — also called prudentia secularis — is not devoted to the religious and moral sphere, but chiefly to human affairs, because it pursues what is profitable for the country and considers how to use its own forces in the best way. By employing this “secular prudence” wisely a king can strengthen his own power and he can surmount every crisis which threatens the stability of his crown. The archbishop of Tyre dwells upon the 31 32 33 34 35

WT 19.25.15–21, p. 898. Rhetorica ad Herennium, 3.3, p. 89; The Latin Rhetorical Commentaries, p. 278. WT 13.15.8–16, p. 603. WT 20.12.5–17, p. 926. Matt. 24.45: “Quis putas est fidelis servus et prudens.” In William’s history this expression — or the equivalent prudenter / fideliter — is quite common to describe diplomatic missions and loyal vassals. 36 WT 17.13.40–46, p. 778.

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portraits of King Amaury, “vir experientia preditus seculari, prudens admodum et in agendis circumspectus” and Queen Melisende, “mulier prudentissima, plenam pene in omnibus secularibus negociis habens experientiam.”37 In this passage Queen Melisende is praised with echoes of the biblical Abigail, the cunning and far-sighted lady (mulier prudentissima) who became the wife of King David, who in the Middle Ages was regarded as the ideal model of kingship.38 On the contrary, the shadow of the imprudent prince (princeps inprudens) darkens the last books of the Historia Hierosolymitana, where William develops this pattern at his best in his portrait of Guy of Lusignan.39 When appointed lieutenant by his brother-in-law Baldwin IV, Guy is described foolishly rejoicing at the task he has received, although his strength, and his prudentia as well, are unequal to it.40 Guy, moreover, aroused Baldwin’s anger over the doubtful battle at the fountains of Tubania in 1183, where he behaved “minus strenue minusque prudenter,” which was just the opposite of the perfect knight’s behaviour.41 According to William, the Kingdom of Jerusalem seems to be doomed to ruin thanks to Guy’s imprudentia, so much so that in the preface to book 23 of the Historia the archbishop of Tyre states that he cannot find anything in the deeds of the Christian lords which deserves to be handed down to posterity.42 Even the circle of the prudent men, as a rule unanimous, was divided when judging the value of Baldwin V’s coronation, because some believed that it was no use having two kings — the leper and the child — incapable of ruling, while others attached great importance to Baldwin IV’s decision, which they believed could avoid a civil war on his own death.43 This notwithstanding, the archbishop of 37 WT 19.2.1–2, pp. 864–65; 16.3.10–11, p. 717. William is always very positive about Queen Melisende, praising her wise rule: WT 16.3.10–27, p. 717; 17.1.39–41, p. 761 (Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre. Historian, pp. 80–82). Bernard of Clairvaux shares the same ideas, pointing out the queen’s duties: “Ita prudenter et moderate oportet te cuncta disponere, ut omnes, qui te viderint, ex operibus regem te potius quam reginam existiment” (Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, 8: Epistolae, ep. 354, p. 298). 38 1 Kings 25.3: “Eratque mulier illa prudentissima et speciosa”; Bianca Kühnel, “The Kingly Statement of the Bookcovers of Queen Melisende’s Psalter,” in Tesserae: Festschrift für Josef Engemann, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 18 (Munich, 1991), pp. 340–57; Joanne S. Norman, “The Life of King David as a Psychomachia Allegory: A Study of the Melisenda Psalter Bookcover,” Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa Quarterly 50 (1981), 193–201 (but the medieval datation of the ivory bookcovers has been challenged by Jean Brodahl at the fifth SSCLE conference, Jerusalem 1999). 39 Other outstanding examples of this group are Bohemond III of Antioch (WT 22.6.42–43, p. 1015) and Milo of Plancy (WT 21.4.22–27, p. 965). 40 WT 22.26.49–57, p. 1050. 41 WT 22.30.1–6, p. 1057. 42 WT 23, prol., 16–25, p. 1061 (here William quotes the prophet Jeremiah: Jer. 18.18). See D.W.T.C. Vessey, “William of Tyre: Apology and Apocalypse,” in Hommages à André Boutemy (Brussels, 1976), pp. 390–403. 43 WT 22.30.34–48, p. 1058. For Baldwin IV’s reign see now Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs. Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 2000).

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Tyre insists on appealing to those regni prudentiores whose political judgement is not yet dimmed to return to their historic rôle for the sake of Jerusalem. That is why in 1184 the Historia Hierosolymitana ends with a gleam of light: well-advised by the prudent men — among whom William’s voice echoes — King Baldwin IV appoints Raymond of Tripoli regent of the kingdom, even if he personally dislikes him, “in eius prudentia simul et magnanimitate spem habens.”44

Conclusion: Prudentes to save the Kingdom As he wrote the Historia Hierosolymitana, William became aware of the uncertain future the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem had to face. He was therefore likely to show that contemporary rulers were increasingly required to have prudence as one of their main political qualities. In his “vocabulary of power,” prudentia becomes absolutely necessary for the salvation of the kingdom; it is conceived as a secular virtue, to be exercized without scruples and capable of sacrificing everything to the state welfare.

44 WT 23.1.52–53, p. 1064. In this passage Raymond of Tripoli is endowed with the classical knightly virtues of wisdom (prudentia) and strength (magnanimitas, that is an element in magnificentia / fortitudo, according to Gerald of Wales’ speculum: Gerald of Wales, De principis instructione, 1.9, p. 30).

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Coins at Vadum Jacob: New Evidence on the Circulation of Money in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Second Half of the Twelfth Century Robert Kool Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem

Introduction Excavations conducted between 1993 and 1998 by Ronnie Ellenblum and Adrian Boas have uncovered the remains of the Frankish castle of Vadum Jacob, Jacob’s Ford, also known under its thirteenth-century French name Chastelet (Figure 1).1 King Baldwin IV and the Knights Templar jointly erected the castle in October 1178 on a strategic site that overlooks virtually the only crossing of the Jordan between the kingdom’s territory and the hinterland of Damascus, then ruled by Saladin. For our purposes the most important detail of the castle’s history is its extremely short existence. It was only eleven months, from October 1178, when Baldwin IV gathered his entire army at Jacob’s Ford and initiated the construction of the castle, until 30 August 1179 when the forces of Saladin successfully mined its unfinished walls, stormed the castle, and captured or killed the Templar garrison of approximately fifteen hundred men. The brief existence of the castle is amply recorded by both contemporary Muslim and Frankish sources and has been backed up by the recent archaeological finds. 2 Among these are approximately 160 coins of which half belong to the medieval period and which form the basis for my discussion here. For the student of Frankish period numismatics, the extremely short existence of the castle — barely ten months — offers a snapshot in time, a “frozen picture,” which presents us with a rare opportunity not only to research the use of money at a particular site at a particular point in time, but also to reach some valuable conclusions about the circulation of coinage in the Latin Kingdom during the second half of the twelfth century, up to the battle of Hattin.

1 Ronnie Ellenblum, Adrian Boas et al., The Excavations at Metzad Ateret — ‘Vadum Jacob’ (1993–1998) (forthcoming). 2 For a detailed survey of the historical sources see Ronnie Ellenblum, “The History of the Frankish Castle of Vadum Jacob,” in Ellenblum, Boas et al., The Excavations at Metzad Ateret. 73

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Figure 1. General view of Vadum Jacob, looking South East (Photo: Buki Boaz).

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Vadum Jacob and its contribution to the study of coins from the Frankish period The study of the coinage used in the Frankish East is not a new discipline. De Saulcy, who pioneered many numismatic studies, published his Numismatique des Croisades in 1847.3 He in turn acknowledged that he had borrowed substantially from an essay written by another French savant, Marie Cousinèry, which was to have formed part of Michaud’s Histoire des Croisades but was never fully published.4 However, Frankish numismatics has remained at large on the margins of modern crusader historiography. Except for a handful of medieval numismatists utilizing state-of-the-art methodologies such as stylistic analysis, die-studies and hoard comparisons, the crusader research community has chosen largely to ignore the potential contribution of this field to the economic, cultural and art history of the period.5 Curiously enough, this was not so more than a century ago. The nineteenth-century historian Eugène de Rozière, the French historian of Lusignan Cyprus, not only regarded the study of coins of the Frankish period as an important branch of the historical métier, but he also wrote his own work on the Lusignan coinage.6 True, the identification and the study of this coinage was then largely done with simple means of quoting crusader chronicles, dating dynasties and individuals, something which from today’s perspective of the modern trained historian and numismatist looks quite outdated. This perception of Frankish coinage as a branch of dynastic history has been remarkably persistent, particularly since Schlumberger’s Numismatique d’Orient latin, published in 1878, remained the dominant work in the field for more than a century.7 Only quite recently was his work superseded by Michael Metcalf’s Coinage of the Latin East of 1983, substantially re-edited and enlarged in 1995.8 3 Louis Félicien de Saulcy, Numismatique des Croisades (Paris, 1847). 4 Esprit Marie Cousinèry, “Catalogue raisonné de la collection des medailles de M.

Cousinèry, ancien consul de France en Turquie, qui ont été frappées en Orient, par les princes croisés; medailles totalement inconnues jusqu’a ce jour”. (Extrait du 5ème volume de l’Histoire des Croisades de Michaud, edition 1822.) 5 Historians like Joshua Prawer, Jonathan Riley-Smith and Hans Mayer noted the importance of cash money in the kingdom’s urban-based economy but avoided a more in-depth analysis of the use of coinage in the kingdom. Of the large numbers of articles published in the congresses organized by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East since 1983, very few deal with coinage of the Frankish Kingdom. There exist studies dealing with the financial resources mobilized for the crusades, but virtually none of them makes any connection with the use of coinage in the kingdom proper. See Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The General Tax of 1183 in the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem: Innovation or Adaptation,” English Historical Review 89 (1974), 339–45; Giles Constable, “The Financing of the Crusades in the Twelfth Century” in Outremer, pp. 64–88; James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade: 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986). 6 Eugène de Rozière, Numismatique des rois latins de Chypre (Paris, 1847). 7 Gustave Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient latin (Paris, 1878). 8 D. Michael Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean

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Metcalf’s research, in particular his meticulous publication of Frankish coin hoards, has done much to rehabilitate this field of study and make it part of modern crusader historiography. His efforts to combine modern numismatic methodologies with a critical reading of historical sources has given the study of Frankish coinage a solid scientific and historical basis. However, it is still very much a work of classification of types primarily minted by Frankish rulers in the Latin East, and less a monetary history. As a result, questions regarding the use of regular coinage in the Frankish Kingdom, the role of other means of payments and questions related to the integration of Muslim and European use of money are hardly touched upon. In this respect it is important to focus on two new directions of research. First, to survey comprehensively coins discovered in recent years in archaeological contexts dating to the Frankish period. Secondly, to chronicle the possible use by the inhabitants of the kingdom of less well-known coin types, such as Muslim bronze coinage or lead token money, in parallel to the kingdom’s regular coinage. Well-documented excavations such as Vadum Jacob can provide us with the exact context and dating tools which have been lacking up to now in the study of the coin circulation of the Frankish kingdom. Indeed, the coin material from Vadum Jacob forms an important instrument to test and compare the present state of knowledge, until now largely based on hoard material.

The present state of knowledge Most of what we know of twelfth-century monetary circulation is based on barely a dozen smaller and larger published hoards, while stray-finds are virtually non-existent for the period.9 In fact, until recently site finds came exclusively from three major coastal sites: Acre, Caesarea and ‘Atlit (Pilgrims’ Castle) and are mainly of the thirteenth century. The above material draws the following picture of currencies circulating during the second half of the twelfth century. From the 1140s onwards gold and billon issues minted by the kings of Jerusalem dominated the currency. The gold coins, or “bezants” as they were known to the kingdom’s inhabitants, consisted primarily of imitation dinars of the Fatimid caliph al-‘Amir (1101–30). These coins were characterized by faulty epigraphy and lower weight; also, they contained close to 80 per cent gold, instead of the 90–95 per cent standard used in the Fatimid mints. Numerous contemporary charters that document transactions involving landed properties and goods indicate that these gold imitations formed the backbone of the kingdom’s monetary system. The Latin kings supplemented these large currency units with two series of petty billon coinage. These were modeled on Museum, Oxford (2nd edn, London, 1995). 9 For a recent exposition of the model see D. Michael Metcalf, “ ‘Describe the Currency of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’,” in Montjoie, pp. 191–94. For the hoards mentioned see Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades, pp. 309–23, hoards nos. 3, 7, 9, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27.

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the European billon denier, a thin coin weighing about one gramme, containing less than 50 per cent silver. The first was the Tower of David denier issued by Baldwin III (1143–63), which circulated between the 1140s and late 1160s. Presumably it was withdrawn when a new type showing the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre was issued during the reign of Amaury (1163–74). The later type was issued in large numbers and remained in circulation as a type immobilisée until the mid-thirteenth century. In addition, a small number of anonymous types depicting religious symbols like the True Cross or Christ’s Tomb were minted, but not much is known about the circulation of these rare types.

Numismatic methodology of an archaeological site Strictly speaking, the coins excavated at Jacob’s Ford are random site finds, single coins in use at the castle that were lost while the site was active. As a rule, their random quality renders site finds statistically secure evidence, whereas single coin losses, as opposed to hoards whose chronology can be precisely established by its latest coin, usually cannot be dated accurately, nor used to establish a chronological order of different coin types. However, the above finds come from a well-known and controlled excavation, explored intensively for several seasons. Consequently the coin material behaves much like conventional hoard material, adding substantially to the quality of the conclusions below about currencies circulating during this period. In addition, the abundant documentation by both Muslim and Frankish chroniclers, describing almost month by month the events surrounding the rise and fall of Vadum Jacob, allows us to establish quite accurately who used the coins found on the site. To what extent do the finds at Vadum Jacob enrich present knowledge? For purposes of analysis I have divided the finds into four categories: gold bezants, billon deniers, lead token money, and Muslim copper fals (Zandjid and Ayyubid), each of which I will briefly present.

The Finds at Vadum Jacob 1. Two al-‘Amir bezants were discovered in the castle’s ground: one came from the northern castle-wall, while another coin was excavated in situ from under a tabun, outside the fortifications of the southern main gate. Both display clearly the illegible pseudo-kufic script so typical of the imitation dinars minted by the kings of Jerusalem at Acre and Tyre. The dinars are of the types classified by Balog and Yvon as “crude” imitations.10 Similar types of imitation dinars have been previously dated by the metrological studies of Gordus and Metcalf to the period from 1148–59 to 1187.11 The finds of these bezants at Vadum Jacob 10 Paul Balog and J. Yvon, “Monnaies a légendes arabes de l’Orient latin,” Revue Numismatique 6.1 (1958), 133–68. The coins here are classified by Balog and Yvon as nos. 27a and b. 11 A. Adon Gordus and D. Michael Metcalf, “Neutron Activation Analysis of the Gold

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AT VADUM JACOBconfirms and further refines1 securely dated to the years COINS 1178–79 now firmly their suggested chronology.

Context

Gate area

Nos. Weight

Diam. Reference

Comments

1

3.82

22

Balog and Yvon 1958: Reddish glow; annulets 151, No.27a. between inner rings.

On the 2 Northern Wall

3.79

22

Balog and Yvon 1958: Whitish; rough script. 151, No.27b.

Figure 2. Frankish bezants excavated at Vadum Jacob (see Plate 1). These “Saracen bezants” appear frequently in surviving charters of the Frankish Kingdom that chronicle sale of landed property and houses. In contrast, gold coins in general and those of the Frankish period in particular are extremely rare among site finds in controlled excavations. Such coins were deemed too valuable by contemporaries to be discarded accidentally. Finds of Frankish gold therefore usually appear in the form of hoards deliberately concealed by their owners. Two such hoards which are dated to the second half of the twelfth century, are the bezants excavated in 1932 in the Nativity Church in Bethlehem and a group of bezants found with cut gold pieces excavated in 1942 in the manor house in the Frankish village of Parva Mahumeria (el-Qubeibeh), in the vicinity of Jerusalem.12 The discovery of two isolated site finds at Vadum Jacob is therefore even more remarkable. Or is it? A similar coin was excavated in the nearby site at Mount Berenice above Tiberias, recently identified as the site of the late twelfth-century settlement of St George.13 It is tempting to suggest that new Coinages of the Crusader States,” Metallurgy in Numismatics 1 (1980), 119–50. 12 Robert W. Hamilton, “Excavations in the Atrium of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem,” Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities of Palestine 3 (1934), 1–8; Bellarmino Bagatti, I monumenti di Emmaus el-Qubeibeh e dei dintorni (Jerusalem, 1947); see also idem, “The Coins at Emmaus-el-Qubeibeh: More Evidence,” Holy Land (1987), 8–13. Both the bezants and the cut pieces were studied and described by George C. Miles, “Some Hoards of Crusader Bezants,” American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 13 (1967), 189–203 and D. Michael Metcalf, “Some Provenanced Finds of Crusader Bezants,” Numismatic Chronicle (1975), 198–99, Pl.19. 13 The site was excavated by Yizhar Hirschfeld for the Israel Antiquities Authority. See his “The Anchor Church at the Summit of Mt Berenice, Tiberias,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot 101 (1994), 29–32 [in Hebrew]. For the identification with the Frankish period settlement of St George see Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998). A charter of the monastery of Our-Lady-of-Josaphat in Jerusalem dated to 1178 hints to the existence of a settlement that included both Syrian “local” Christians and Latin settlers around a parochial church. Two earlier charters show that the settlement’s origins date back to the early twelfth century: see Chartes Josaphat, p. 40, no. 14 and “Chartes de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de la vallée de Josaphat en Terre Sainte (1108–1291). Analyse et extraits,” ed. C. Kohler, ROL 7 (1889), 113–14, no.2. For the coins of the site see Gabi Bijovsky, “The Coins of Mount Berenice,” ‘Atiqot (forthcoming). I would like to express my thanks to Gabi

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excavation material like ours may indicate that these coins circulated on a much larger scale in rural Frankish sites than is presently thought. As for Vadum Jacob itself, the coins’ provenance near the walls of the castle possibly indicates that they were lost by one of the castle’s defenders during the final battle with Saladin’s forces in August 1179. 2. The second major discovery, twenty-two billon coins, were all excavated within the castle’s grounds and all of them are exclusively Amalricus-type deniers (Figure 3). The majority of the coins were uncovered in sealed contexts dating to the Frankish occupation within the castle’s perimeter near the main gate. The concentration of billon coins of the same type in such a small excavation area is by any measure an extraordinary large quantity. These do not really fit the label of “accidental” losses — petty coins that may have slipped unintentionally out of their owner’s hand during the life-cycle of a site. In fact, the detailed context of the coins suggests that they were lost during some catastrophic event, most likely an attack by the Ayyubid forces on the Frankish defenders in this area.14 They were found below the collapsed remains of a barrel-vaulted structure together with the remains of horses and human skeletons, or lay strewn on the Frankish living surface together with remains of pigs, cattle, metal tools, ceramics and numerous Ayyubid arrowheads. Only of four coins the contexts remain unclear: two coming from the section fill of a trench dug near the south-eastern corner of the castle and two others whose exact provenance cannot be established. All of the twenty-two coins except one belong to the good quality, heavy weight Amalricus type (c.0.80–1.00 gram) minted as type immobilisée at least till 1187. The only specimen weighing below the 0.80 range is a coin in the collection of Kibbutz Gadot, located nearby, weighing 0.35 grams (plate 3, no. 22). This coin, a surface find, was collected by members of the kibbutz on the site many years before the excavation. It is a “cut Amalricus type,” resembling the early thirteenth-century mauvais denier types described in the Tripoli and Kessab hoards and the recently published material from Pilgrim’s Castle.15 However, in this case the coin, because of the narrow dating of the Frankish occupation of the site, undoubtedly belongs to the late twelfth century. Possibly the bad condition of the coin was caused by its exposure to a combination of chloride salts and moisture of the upper soil, whereas the other Amalricus coins found in the burned layers below remained virtually intact. Could this imply that many of the low-weight Amalricus type found in Bijovsky and Yizhar Hirschfeld for allowing me to use the above information. 14 Adrian Boas, “Metzad Ateret/Vadum Jacob 1994–1995 Seasons Preliminary Reports” in Ellenblum, Boas et al., Excavations at Metzad Ateret. 15 Dorothy H. Cox, The Tripolis Hoard of French Seignoral and Crusader Coins, Numismatic Notes and Monographs 59 (New York, 1933); Henri Longuet, “La trouvaille de Kessab en Orient latin,” Revue Numismatique 4.38 (1935), 163–81; D. Michael Metcalf, Robert Kool, Ariel Berman, “Coins from the Excavations at ‘Atlit,” ‘Atiqot 37 (1999), 89–164.

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Context

Weight

Diameter

No.

0.96

18

1

18; 17

2–3

Series with chevron-barred A Main Gate area (?)

South East Gate: section fill of 0.83; 0.94 a trench. Main Gate area: fill below collapsed vault, above floor. Northern inner section of castle: surface level.

0.99

18

4

1.17

18

5

Main Gate area.

1.04

18

6

1.02, 0.94, 0.85, 0.94, 1.00

17, 17, 17, 18, 17

7–11

In Northern Gate.

0.82

19

12

Main Gate area: in burnt living surface level.

0.99

18

13

Series with double-barred A

Center of Main Gate.

0.83

18

14

Idem

Main Gate area: fill.

0.86

18

15

Idem

Main Gate area: in burnt living 0.90 surface level. In living surface below 0.94, 0.85 collapsed stones.

18

16

18, 18

17–18

Main Gate area: fill below collapsed vault, above floor. Series with single-barred A

Idem Idem

Main Gate area: fill below collapsed vault, above floor.

0.99

18

19

Idem

1.05

18

20

Unidentifiable (bent)

Fill near inner part of the Main gate. Northern inner section of castle.

1.00

13

21

Idem

Surface: stray-find.

0.35

14

22

Figure 3. Amalricus denier types excavated at Vadum Jacob (see Plates 2–3).

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hoards and excavations dated securely to the thirteenth-century were in fact minted in the First Kingdom up to 1187? If so, these coins remained in VADUM circulation for an extended COINS periodATand wereJACOB not the product of a new mint3 situated in early thirteenth-century Acre. Weight of coins

Nos. of coins

Below 0.85 gr.

1

0.80–0.84 gr.

3

0.85–0.89 gr.

3

0.90–0.94 gr.

5

0.95–1 gr.

4

Above 1 gr.

6

Figure Figure 4. Weight distribution of Amalricus deniers at Vadum Jacob. 4. Weight distribution of Amalricus deniers at Vadum Jacob. Ten different varieties of the Amalricus coin were found at the site. They divide into two main stylistic groups according to the parameters established by Metcalf (see figure 5):16 eleven chevron-barred A and nine single/ double-barred A types (one bended coin remained illegible). The single largest group of coins is the double-chevron type combined with REX followed by one centered anullet, which is also the most plentiful series in the contemporary “Jerusalem YMCA hoard.” The chevron and double-barred types appear in virtually even quantities (9 versus 11). Their weights do not indicate any significant differentiation between the two types. This seems to rule out any definite conclusions about the relative chronology of these two types based on the material of the Vadum Jacob excavation. The only remarkable fact is the absence at Vadum Jacob of the A chevron-with-dot variety which were tentatively identified as a separate mint or workshop. Could this imply that these coins simply did not reach Vadum Jacob or were of an issue that circulated later (1179–87) than the castle’s short existence? A comparison with the existing hoard material tends to confirm the latter: both the Tel Jemmeh and the Red Tower hoards which can be dated to an earlier pre-1179 phase of the Amalricus coins — both contain still European deniers as opposed to the Vadum Jacob finds — do not contain these types. However, more research on this subject is needed to give a sound base for this conclusion. In sum, the presence of these Amalricus deniers, virtually all datable to the last days of the castle’s existence (the summer of 1179) seems to confirm Metcalf’s observation that Amaury’s successors continued the minting after 1174 of good quality, heavy weight Amalricus type (c.0.80–1.17 gram) as type immobilisée at least up to the battle of Hattin. Moreover, they possibly indicate that the Amalricus type were widely distributed in the kingdom’s hinterland and not just in the urban and commercial centres along the coast. 16 Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades, pp. 57–71.

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Type of coins 1. Chevron-barred A

Nos. of coins Total: 11

REX without stop and Cross with two annulets.

1

REX with stop and Cross with two annulets.

4

REX with annulet and Cross with two annulets.

2

REX with two annulets and Cross with two pellets. REX with three annulets and Cross with two pellets or with one pellet and one annulet.

2

2. Single-barred A types REX without stop and Cross with two annulets. REX with annulet and Cross with two annulets. 3. Double-barred A types

2

Total: 2 1 1 Total: 7

REX without stop and Cross with two annulets.

1

REX with annulet and + Cross with two annulets.

6

Chevron-with-dot variety. Unknown.

None 2

Figure 5. Distribution of Amalricus types at Vadum Jacob. Figure 5. Distribution of Amalricus types at Vadum Jacob. As interesting as the dominant presence of the Amalricus type is the absence of other billon types. There are none of the earlier Tower of David deniers of Baldwin III. Presumably by 1178–79 these ‘older’ types had been called in, and all but disappeared from circulation. Moreover, no European billon brought to the Frankish kingdom during the first half of the twelfth century was found. Presumably by the time of the construction of the castle European deniers had ceased to circulate actively within the kingdom. There is a marked absence of rarer types like the anonymous Moneta Regis deniers, although finds of these coins were made in the near vicinity (20 km perimeter) of the castle.17 This seems to reinforce the assumption that these “royal” coins, possibly minted in Acre, belong to the period before Baldwin III’s reform of 1140.18 Finally, the absence of billon from the Northern principalities is a fact. No Antiochene ‘Helmet’ type or Civitas Tripolis deniers were discovered at the site, which is 17 Three hoards containing “Moneta Regis” deniers were found in the vicinity of Vadum Jacob. Seven deniers were discovered in a lump near the ruins of a fortified building at Qal’at-esh-Shuna (Nahal ‘Amud). Another five deniers and an obole were found in a lump at Capernaum. Four additional deniers in a corroded lump were excavated at the Frankish citadel of Beth-She’an. See: Augustus Spijkerman, Cafarnao III: le monete della città (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 47–48; Levi Y. Rahmani, “Two Hoards of ‘Moneta regis’ Coins Found in Northern Israel,” Israel Numismatic Journal 4 (1980), 72–76; Ariel Berman, “The Numismatic Finds from the Citadel,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot 103 (1993), 38–42 [in Hebrew]. 18 Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades, pp. 76–77.

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consistent with the behavior of other hoard and excavation material from the territory of the kingdom. Very few of these abundantly minted coinages circulated in the kingdom proper during the twelfth century. 3. The most remarkable numismatic find from the site are four lead denier-sized5 COINS AT VADUM JACOB tokens bearing the name of the castle. Context

Nos.

Weight

Diam.

Inscription

South East Gate: fill above floor.

1

3.65

18

[- - -] : IACOB:

North Gate.

2

3.66

18

+ VΛD[I: ] IACOB:

Main Gate: fill below vault stones, above floor.

3

2.00

17

+

VΛDI: IACOB:

Main Gate.

4

2.68

19

+

VΛDI: IACOB:

Figure 6. Vadum Jacob tokens (see Plate 1). Figure6. Vadum Jacob Tokens During a first inspection these “coins” seemed somewhat enigmatic since they did not fit into any of the known categories of numismatic material usually found in excavations. The obverse resembled an ordinary denier with a cross patée surrounded by a legend. Only a few letters of the inscription were legible. The reverse in contrast clearly displayed the form and iconography of a medieval token or seal. It showed a blazon-type shield bordered by nine small anullets positioned in symmetrical fashion around the shield with no inscription. Two better preserved specimens were found during the third and fourth season (1995–96), together with a group of Amalricus deniers below the remains of the collapsed structure in the main gate area mentioned above. These allowed us to decipher and reconstruct the entire legend of the “coin-tokens:” +VADI IACOB i.e., “of(?) Jacob’s Ford.”19 This was the Latin name the Franks commonly used for the castle. William of Tyre writes that the castle was erected in eo loco qui vulgo Vadum Iacob appellatur, alluding to the Christian tradition which identified this spot with Jacob’s crossing of the Jordan to meet his brother Esau (Gen. 32.10).20 The tokens provide the sole epigraphic evidence that identifies the excavated site with the medieval castle of Vadum Jacob. This in itself makes them objects of great archaeological and historical importance. In addition, the tokens shed light on hitherto unknown aspects of the use of money in the late twelfth-century 19 The inscription is written in the genitivus locativus commonly used on medieval coins. It is improbable that a local craftsman who produced the mould or die for these tokens mixed up the Arabic wadi with the Latin vadum, for the first signifies a stream whereas the second distinctly carries the meaning of a “river-crossing,” which the site is in fact. 20 WT 21.25, p. 997.

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kingdom. The fact that these “coins” are made of lead and that the castle existed only for eleven months clearly indicate some kind of short-period expediency issue, a type of local money to pay the large numbers of craftsmen labouring to complete the castle’s defences. Alternatively, these beautifully crafted and well-struck or cast specimens may have had some internal use among the Templar garrison. Interestingly, they do not stand alone. There exists a similar type of “lead coin” with a cross patée in a circle but with a different inscription in which one can read the letters: (C?)AST(R?)V M[...].21 Presumably the use of supplementary lead “money” within the kingdom’s estates during both the second half of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries was more widespread than previously thought. Similar material was found in excavations at Belmont Castle near Jerusalem and in the faubourg of Pilgrims’ Castle.22 This seems to point out that some of the seignorial rulers, faced with a temporary shortage of money, attempted to circumvent the royal prerogative of coinage by minting tokens that resembled money.23 However, more material from other seignorial sites in kingdom is needed to better understand this phenomenon. 4. The combination of a well-dated archaeological context and abundant historical sources furnishes us with precise knowledge on the sequence of events at the castle within a very limited period (less than a year). Datable Muslim coins (appearing with the name of the ruler and date) further provide us with exact tools to distinguish which of these coins were used during the Frankish occupation (1178–79) and which during the Ayyubid settlement thereafter up to the second half of the thirteenth century. Four Zandjid coins minted under Nur al-Din at Damascus (1146–74) were found at the site. Two of them belong to a Frankish context: one coin was found with four Amalricus coins in the burnt remains of a Frankish-period living surface. Another coin was found under a collapsed vault adjoining the main gate. A third specimen was excavated from the remains of medieval settlement constructed after the destruction of the castle while a fourth was collected as stray-find. Zandjid coppers are regularly found in other Frankish period sites, and appear to have 21 My thanks to Shraga Qedar of Jerusalem for allowing me to study this rare specimen of his private collection. 22 At Belmont (Zova) a large cache of 436 identical tokens was discovered within the central courtyard of the castle. See D. Michael Metcalf, “The Coins and Tokens,” in Robert P. Harper, Denys Pringle et al., Belmont Castle: The Excavation of a Crusader Stronghold in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 2000), pp. 81–85. A dozen or more were recovered from the faubourg of Pilgrims’ Castle excavated by Cedric N. Johns in the 1930s. See: Metcalf, Kool, Berman, “Coins from the Excavations at ‘Atlit,” pp.109–10. 23 For a detailed analysis of these enigmatic tokens see my article: “The Crusader Mint of Vadum Jacob: New Implications for the Minting of Coins in the Latin Kingdom during the Second Half of the 12th Century,” in I luoghi della moneta. Le sedi delle zecche dall’antichità all’ età moderna. Convegno internazionale, Milano, Università degli Studi — 22/23 ottobre 1999 (Milan, 2001), pp. 329–33.

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circulated abundantly in Frankish-held territory. Apparently these fals were used as small change together with deniers in Frankish rural and urban settlements. The site also yielded seventeen Ayyubid coppers, all from the mints of Damascus and Aleppo. These coins seem to have circulated in settlements in the kingdom during the thirteenth century, as in stratified finds from material excavated in the faubourg of Pilgrims’ Castle attest. Still, a systematic survey of this material has yet to be accomplished.24 An intriguing question is how did these Ayyubid coppers become part of the money system of the kingdom. Was this a gradual process which started during the 1170–80s before Saladin conquered most of the Frankish territory? Or did this transpire with the sudden demise of royal authority following the defeat at the Horns of Hattin? The finds at Vadum Jacob seem to favor the latter scenario. Except for one coin, dating to Saladin’s early rule under the overlordship of the Zandjid ruler al-Salih Isma‘il (1174), all the Ayyubid coins postdate the destruction of Vadum Jacob. This excludes their use during the short Frankish occupation of the site. Saladin started minting coppers in his own name at the mints of Damascus and Aleppo in 1174, five years before the destruction of the castle. If Ayyubid coins did circulate in Frankish settlements, they certainly would have been present at the castle, located relatively close to Ayyubid territory. As it stands, the bulk of the Ayyubid money from Vadum Jacob was minted after 1195, more than fifteen years after the site was destroyed by Saladin’s army. This also excludes the possibility that this money was used by the soldiers of the Ayyubid host. Presumably the outbreak of the plague at the castle three days after the final battle and the resulting hasty departure of the Ayyubid army left too little time for a significant quantity of stray losses of the money used by Ayyubid soldiers. Clearly the coins date to the period when the destroyed castle was reoccupied by villagers at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Coins from al-Aziz ‘Uthman (1195–98) and al-‘Adil (1199–1218) were discovered in the remains of houses constructed adjacent to the east wall. Most of the other Ayyubid period coppers were found in nearby areas. The latest coin belongs to the last part of the reign of the Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo, al-Nasir Salah al-Din Yusuf II (1242–58).

Conclusion The medieval coin finds of Vadum Jacob seem to confirm to a large degree Metcalf’s proposal — based on hoard material — with regard to the circulation of gold and billon issues in the twelfth century. However they also provide new information. First, that the presence of gold and billon in military outposts, and possibly in rural sites, was much more widespread than previously thought. Secondly, that seignorial rulers may have started, already in the twelfth century, to mint lead money in order to circumvent the royal prohibition of minting 24 This subject is currently being studied within the framework of my PhD. dissertation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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money. Thirdly, the appearance of Muslim petty coinage in Frankish period sites must be acknowledged. To what extent this was a widespread phenomenon needs to be studied further. The material at Vadum Jacob seems to indicate that Zandjid fals were used during the Frankish occupation whereas the Ayyubid coppers found there must have circulated later, after the site was resettled by villagers. COINS AT VADUM JACOB

Figure 2

1

2 Figure 6

Plate 1

1

2

3

4

1

COINS AT VADUM JACOB

1

87

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11 Plate 2

2

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ROBERT KOOL

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

21

20

22 Plate 3

3

Frisian Fighters and the Crusade Johannes A. Mol Fryske Akademij, Leeuwarden

Introduction In 1250, with Louis IX still residing in Acre after the disastrous end of his expedition in Egypt, Pope Innocent IV sent a special message to the Frisians. He asked them to come as quickly as possible to the Holy Land to help the French monarch defending the Latin Kingdom. He reinforced his appeal with the remark that Frisians were known to be successful in the lands overseas.1 This was not an isolated compliment. Long before and after 1250 the Frisians were much sought after as crusaders of great value.2 Now, the saying is that nothing breeds success like success. The Frisians must have owed their reputation by then at least in part to their nautical and military contribution to the Damietta expedition in 1218–19. That their achievements in the Nile Delta became more generally known is of course due to the report of their preacher, Master Oliver of Cologne, in his Historia Damiatina.3 Yet, the Frisians participated in earlier crusades.4 Had they not already acquired some fame in assisting the Portuguese at the conquest of Alvors in 1189, for example, Master Oliver would not have come directly to Frisia to preach the Cross to them. With some exaggeration, one could say that there were virtually no crusades in which the Frisians did not take part. They not only joined most of the classical expeditions overseas, but also played a role in many a political crusade. Many Frisians, for example, responded to the call of their bishops of 1 Quod solent Frisones in Transmarinis partibus prosperari: Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. E. Berger, 4 vols. (Paris, 1884–1921) 2: no. 4927, 29 Nov. 1250. 2 See, for example, the appeal of Emperor Frederick II in 1226 (1 Feb.): Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina Oliverus, ed. H. Hoogeweg, Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins Stuttgart 202 (Tübingen, 1894), pp. 54–74, 391. The appeal refers to the Frisian successes at Damietta. Compare the letter of Pope Honorius III of 14 October the same year: ibid., and Th. C. Van Cleve, “The Fifth Crusade,” in Crusades 2:377–429. In 1268, according to Abbot Menko van Wittewierum, King Louis himself invited the Frisians to join forces with him: Kroniek van het klooster Bloemhof te Wittewierum, ed. H. P. H. Jansen and A. Janse (Hilversum, 1991), pp. 422–23. 3 Published by Hoogeweg, Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters. See particularly the epilogue in chap. 82 for the honour that was accorded to the Frisians as an “obedient and energetic nation.” 4 The following overview is based on Herbert Brassat, Die Teilnahme der Friesen an den Kreuzzügen ultra mare vornehmlich im 12. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Seefahrt im 12. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1970). 89

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Utrecht, Münster and Bremen to take the Cross against the neighbouring but rebellious Drents and Stedinger people on various expeditions in the fourth decade of the thirteenth century. And in 1248, with the approbation of the pope, they supported the Roman King William of Holland in his siege of the city of Aachen in 1248. Reading the sources it strikes the eye that Frisians are nearly always mentioned as a collective force. The one Frisian warrior who is widely known by name is a certain Hayo of Violgama5 who, in the assault on the Damietta chain tower, managed to seize the yellow banner of the sultan. In the prosopographical appendix of James M. Powell’s book on the Fifth Crusade, he figures as the only Frisian among more than 800 other European crucesignati, most of them being knights.6 This raises the question of what background the Frisian crusaders had, how many were they, and from what regions and from what layers of society did they come. The second observation that we can make on Frisian crusaders — unmistakably connected with the foregoing — is that they are almost never called knights, at least not in the military sense of the word. As we shall see, Frisians were not good at fighting on horseback. Since heavily armoured horsemen played the leading part in most crusading expeditions,7 it can be asked in what military area the Frisian warriors could have been so valuable, aside from their performance in the field of maritime logistics. It is well known, after all, that they were good with ships and transporting large quantities of men and supplies. Master Oliver did not fail to note such things. But the famous preacher also called the Frisians to the battle for Christ because they were well-known as a gens bellicosa, “a warlike people who had not shown fear of any lord and who were determined to achieve victory or sacrifice their lives for eternal glory.”8 As for the sources, two Frisian monasteries have left us contemporaneous 5 Reinhold Röhricht, “Die Belagerung von Damietta (1218–1220): ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters,” Historisches Taschenbuch 5.5.6 (1876), 61ff. 6 J. M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), p. 226. 7 On the conduct of war in and around the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades see, in general, Raymond C. Smail, Crusading Warfare (1097–1193) (Cambridge, 1956), and C. Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291 (Cambridge, 1992). Although more and more attention has been going to infantry in recent years, most war historians still emphasize the role of knights in “mounted shock combat.” 8 “Gens illa naturaliter bellicosa est, nullius principis materialem gladium timens, nullum extra terram suam in expeditionem sequitur nisi solum Christum, Sarracenis formidolosa, quia in terra promissionis fugere erubescit, sed aut vincere aut corpus corruptibile pro eterna gloria liberaliter dare.” Master Oliver wrote those words shortly after his visits to the Frisian lands in a letter to his fellow preacher, Cardinal Robert van Courson: Rudolf Hiestand, “Oliver Scholasticus und die Pariser Schulen zu Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts. Zu einem neuen Textfund,” Jahrbuch des Kölnischen Geschichtsvereins 58 (1987), 32. A few years later he characterised the Frisians, in a letter to the abbot of Prémontré, as a people ... fide stabilis et in armis strenua: Kroniek Bloemhof, p. 180.

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chronicles with information on the crusading activities of the Frisians. They have been known for a long time but have not been well analysed in this respect. Both were written by Premonstratensian canons: the chronicle of the monastery of Floridus Hortus in Wittewierum, probably better known as the chronicle of the abbots Emo and Menko, and the Gesta abbatum Orti Sancte Marie, that is, the deeds of the abbots of Mariëngaarde (Mary’s Garden), near Leeuwarden, the oldest Premonstratensian house in Frisia.9 Since the abbey of Wittewierum lay in Fivelgo, north of Groningen, in what the Germans call Mittel-Friesland, and Mariëngaarde more to the west in the present-day Dutch province of Friesland, these sources complement each other geographically. As for the period involved, they cover a good part of the thirteenth century. I analysed these chronicles, in combination with several other scattered reports and various iconographical sources, to establish the fighting style the Frisians used in their own lands. The analysis was done on the assumption that their manner of fighting in Portugal, Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia was no different than in Friesland itself. Therefore, in this paper, an effort will be made to explain Frisian “success” in the crusades on the basis of Frisian fighting style in general. This is a roundabout approach, but one that does have possibly surprising prospects. Before I come to that, however, something has to be said about what kind of a nation Frisia was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Frisia in the High Middle Ages Since Roman times the Frisians had been known as seafarers and farmers, living on the low “Wadden” shores of the North Sea. In the High Middle Ages their lands ran from the northern part of Holland up to the east as far as the mouth of the Weser.10 Settlement there was originally confined to the long but narrow strip of fertile clay soils along the sea, strips that were intersected by many estuaries and river outlets. They were separated from the hinterland by large peat bogs. Politically speaking, fragmentation is the key word. In Frisia there never developed a centre of power that took in the separate sub-regions. The Christianization and conquest by the Franks had the long-term effect of bringing the whole area into the hands of different lords outside Frisia, a situation that is reflected in the division of the various Frisian lands over four dioceses: Utrecht, Münster, Osnabrück and Bremen. However, because of the distances involved, the possessors of comital rights in Frisia (the archbishop of Bremen, the bishops of Utrecht and Münster and the count of Holland) were 9 Gesta abbatum Orti Sancte Marie. Gedenkschriften van de abdij Mariëngaarde, ed. A. Wybrands (Leeuwarden, 1879); Kroniek Bloemhof. The non-contemporaneous late medieval Frisian historiography can be left out of consideration. For this see Geert H. M. Claasens, “The Image of the Frisians in the Crusade Stories,” in Aspects of Old Frisian Philology, ed. R. H. Bremmer jr., G. van der Meer and O. Vries, Estrikken 69 (Amsterdam and Groningen, 1990), pp. 69–84. 10 B. H. Slicher van Bath, “The Economic and Social Conditions in the Frisian Districts from 900 to 1500,” A. A. G. Bijdragen 13 (1965), 97–133.

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impeded from developing their Frisian jurisdictions into real dominions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. No feudalization occurred, which opened up the way for the native nobility in each region to organize a kind of semi-communal government. The result was the development of a series of independent miniature republics, called terrae, which were not subject to overlords. People from these different lands recognized one another as Frisian, speaking the same language and living under the same sort of laws. They fostered a sense of togetherness, cherishing the memory of Charlemagne giving them their freedom. They also had some knowledge of common boundary marks.11 Division was more the rule amongst them, however, than unity. About 1200 a tota Frisia confederation in embryo was organized: the Confederation of the Upstalsboom, but it never really came to life, as most terrae had conflicting ambitions. Only in 1323 and 1338 was it temporarily revived when some Frisian lands were threatened with conquest by foreign powers. One important binding factor was monasticism. In the middle of the twelfth century, at nearly the same time, four orders gained a foothold in Frisia: the Benedictines, the Regular Canons of St Augustine, the Cistercians and the Premonstratensians. After 1200 they were to be followed by the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Order. Each of them succeeded in founding a series of dependent houses. By 1250 more than eighty abbeys, priories and commanderies had come into being throughout the Frisian coastal area, connecting the terrae along their own institutional lines. Patronized by the nobility, they were inhabited by native Frisians. It is not difficult to imagine that the heads of these new monasteries played a crucial role in propagating the crusades, even after the mendicants appeared on the stage.

Numbers How many Frisian crusaders were there and what regions did they come from? Let us first have a quick look at the numbers involved in the various crusades, except, however, for the First Crusade. The Frisian privateers that arrived more or less by coincidence in Tarsus in the last month of 109712 belonged to a Flemish fleet that had already been on the seas for many years. Nothing indicates that this fleet was specifically brought together for the purpose of crusading. About the Second Crusade we know little more than that some Frisians together with crusaders from England and the Rhineland assisted the Portuguese Count Alfonso in conquering Lisbon. The memory of this glorious activity was cherished by the Frisians who put into port at Lisbon in 1217 on the journey 11 Almuth Salomon, Friesische Geschichtsbilder. Historische Ereignisse und kollektives Gedächtnis im mittelalterlichen Friesland. Abhandlungen und Vorträge zur Geschichte Ostfrieslands 78 (Aurich, 2000), p. 27ff. 12 A detailed account of their actions is in Brassat, Teilnahme der Friesen, pp. 18–55.

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that would ultimately bring them to Damietta. According to an anonymous travel report that Abbot Emo van Wittewierum included in his chronicle, the Frisian peregrini then commemorated the deeds of their forefather, Poptetus Ulvinga, who died as a martyr in the siege of Lisbon seventy years earlier.13 Far more is written on the Frisian contribution to the Third Crusade. Abbot Emo and his successor Menko both consider this one as the first peregrinatio, because they interpreted it as the first crusade since the fall of Jerusalem.14 According to an English report, in the early spring of 1189 a Frisian squadron of fifty ships with 12,000 men raised anchor and joined in a combined fleet with Flemish, Holland and Rhineland ships. Whilst the burghers of Cologne stayed in Portugal after the conquest of Alvors in May, the Frisians, together with some Danes, decided to leave directly for the Holy Land, where they arrived on the first of September — early enough to be of some use in the siege of Acre.15 On the interim expedition of 1197 we can be brief. Emo and Menko date it as the second peregrinatio.16 The Frisians probably joined the fleet of forty-four ships that sailed under the command of Archbishop Hartwig of Bremen.17 The next crusade, of course, was the fifth, which was called the third by Emo and Menko.18 Thanks to some miraculous signs that appeared twice in the heavens during his preaching campaign,19 Master Oliver managed to have 13,000 Frisians take up the Cross. In his letters he proudly mentions the numbers of 8,000 scutarii (shield-bearers) and 5,000 loricati (men in armour).20 They sailed to Dartmouth, to join the English crusaders and those from Holland and the Rhineland. All in all a fleet of no less than 300 ships is said to have left this harbour in May 1217. In reality the fleet amounted to hardly 200 cogs, of which — and this is quite certain — no less than eighty came from the Frisian lands.21 This time the seafaring crusaders were explicitly forbidden by the pope 13 Y. Poortinga, De Palmridder fan Lissabon (Leeuwarden, 1965). Compare the older

work of F. Kurth, “Der Anteil niederdeutscher Kreuzfahrer an den Kämpfen der Portugiesischen gegen die Mauren,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 8 (1911), 154ff. See also Brassat, Teilnahme der Friesen, pp. 73–80. 14 Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 226–27. 15 Brassat, Teilnahme der Friesen, p. 107. 16 Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 226–27, 326–27. The editors are wide of the mark when, in note 124, they link the second peregrinatio (which Emo and Menko both date eight years after 1189) with the Fourth Crusade (of 1204). 17 Brassat, Teilnahme der Friesen, pp. 123–33. 18 Cf. note 16. 19 On this, see J. J. van Moolenbroek, “Signs in the Heavens in Groningen and Friesland in 1214: Oliver of Cologne and Crusading Propaganda,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987), 251–72. 20 Hiestand, “Oliver Scholasticus,” p. 32. 21 J. J. van Moolenbroek, “Dreihundert Schiffe für das Heilige Land. Oliver von Köln und die Kreuzzugskampagne der Jahre 1213–1217,” Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 201 (1998), 38–42.

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to fulfil their vows in Portugal. All the same, once they had arrived in Lisbon, most of them were persuaded to give military assistance to the Christians there. Only the Frisians sailed further on, just in time to arrive in Acre the next spring after wintering in Italy. Not long after the failure of the Damietta expedition, Master Oliver appeared anew in Frisia, in 1224, to preach the crusade. He did not meet as much enthusiasm as in 1214, but he and his fellow preacher succeeded in getting enough men together to send them to the east. Abbot Emo says that a fleet departed from the isle of Borkum in 1227.22 The next expedition of the Frisians, leaving aside their crusades against the rebellious Drents and Stedingers in the early 1230s, led them to the imperial city of Aachen in the summer of 1248.23 Abbot Menko tells us that warriors from tota Frisia participated successfully in the siege. How many there were is not known. Before winter set in, they returned home, released from their vows by the Roman King William of Holland. The Frisians were still not tired of crusading. On the expedition of St Louis into Tunisia, they were present again in relatively large numbers.24 Their voyage was very well organized. Fifty cogs, four of which came from the region around the abbey of Wittewierum, sailed off from the harbour of Borkum. Abbot Menko hints that a lot of fighters were on board. He writes that the whole region faced a famine, which was worsened by the fact that people had no money to buy corn elsewhere because the crusaders had taken most of the silver out of the country. Because of some setbacks these crusaders arrived too late in Aigues Mortes to sail with the king, but they found their way to Tunis, where they joined Charles of Anjou after the king had died. Summarizing the data, we only have ship figures for four of the six Frisian transmarine crusades: fifty cogs in 1189, half, or less than forty-four, in 1197, eighty cogs in 1217 and fifty in 1270. If we assume that in 1217 the number of men and ships were extraordinarily great, thanks to the signs in the heavens evoked by Master Oliver, then it is not too bold to suppose that, seventy years earlier and ten years later, forty to fifty ships sailed from the Frisian harbours. That would mean that, on most expeditions, at best 4,000 to 5,000 Frisian crusaders were on board — estimating that hundred men was the very maximum a Frisian cog could carry.25 22 Cf. note 16. 23 Christoph T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades. Mendicant Friars and the Cross in

the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), p. 65; Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 365–59. 24 On this (seventh) crusade, see R. Sternfeld, Ludwigs des Heiligen Kreuzzug nach Tunis 1270 und die Politik Karls I. von Sizilien (Berlin, 1896, reprint Vaduz 1965), p. 280; cf. Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 422–39. 25 It is out of place here to discuss the value of the numbers of seafarers. In the literature on the crusades, the estimates of the numbers of crew on board are rather varied. For the galleys and two-masted sailing ships that saw to the transport of crusaders across the Mediterranean, however, reliable analyses have already been made. For these see John H. Pryor, “The Naval Architecture of Crusader Transport Ships: A

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Regional origins As for the regional origins of the Frisian crusaders, the conclusions are equally crude but clear. It is possible that, for the first half of the twelfth century, the Hollanders have to be counted as Frisians. Until about 1150 the name Frisia was used for practically the whole west and north of the present-day Netherlands as well as for the bordering coastal region of northwest Germany.26 It is doubtful, however, whether the Hollanders let themselves be called Frisians in 1189 and 1197. In the last decades of that century the count of Holland was already fighting several border wars with the Frisian peasants north of his territory. The recruitment area of the Frisians can, at least for the archdiocese of Cologne, be deduced from the reports on the preaching missions of Master Oliver in 1214 and 1224. Oliver started his campaign in 1214 in Groningen and went into the Frisian terrae north of this city. Afterwards he turned to the regions west of the river Lauwers and preached in Surhuizum and the small city of Dokkum, where St Boniface had been murdered some 450 years earlier. Ten years later his travel scheme was nearly the same.27 From Groningen and Fivelgo he went this time first to the Emden region. There he turned, travelled again to Frisia west of the Lauwers and crossed the river Boorne to visit the populous region of Westergo. Subsequently he turned back, after having ended a feud in the region of Dokkum. In this way, he preached in all Frisian regions between Vlie and Jade; regions that belonged to three different dioceses. The coastal territory east of Norden up to the mouth of the Weser, that belonged to the archdiocese of Bremen, must have been part of the recruitment area too. Not long after 1270, the Frisian terrae Astringen and Wangerland proudly stated in a letter to King Philip III of France (in which they asked him to grant commercial facilities to their merchants) that they had fought two weeks at the side of St Louis near Tunis.28 The sources give us the impression that the Frisian crusaders, notwithstanding their different regional origins, continuously acted as a collective force. Apart from other crusading units, they consulted one another for each important decision — about travelling further, choosing a commander, starting the fight or turning back. They chose their military leaders only when they were Reconstruction of Some Archetypes for Round-hulled Sailing Ships,” The Mariner’s Mirror 70 (1984), 171–219, 275–92, 363–86. As to the capacity of the North Sea fleets, there has not yet been any thorough-going research. I tend to hold to the cautious estimate of Kurth that one “... höchstens etwa 80 bis 100 Kreuzfahrer für jedes Schiff rechnen darf”: Kurth, “Anteil niederdeutscher Kreuzfahrer,” p. 172. Compare P. Heinsius, Das Schiff der Hansischen Frühzeit (Weimar, 1956), pp. 94–103, 244. 26 D. P. Blok, “Holland und Westfriesland,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 3 (1969), 347–61. 27 See the description of Abbot Emo in Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 166–69. 28 P. J. Blok, “Oorkonden betrekkelijk Friesland en zijne verhouding tot Frankrijk in de 13e en 14e eeuw,” De Vrije Fries 19 (1898), 323–24.

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approaching the battlefield.29 In Acre, for example, they chose King John of Jerusalem as their commander on the advice of Master Oliver.

Social background Stressing the collective war behaviour of the Frisian crusaders leads us to their social background. What kind of people were they and by whom were they led? Are they to be seen as marines avant la lettre or do we rather have to compare them with the Swiss pikemen, organized commune-style, of the Late Middle Ages? As I wrote in the introduction, the non-Frisian sources cite only one name. The Frisian chronicles of the Premonstratensian abbeys of Mariëngaarde and Wittewierum are not very informative either, but they offer us some details that have been overlooked until now. These bear upon noble families that contributed to the foundation and growth of the above-mentioned monasteries and their dependent sister convents and managed to get several sons and daughters placed in them as canons and nuns. In the Vita Fretherici, the biography of the founder of Mariëngaarde, many pages describe the efforts of Frederic, when he was still a parish priest, to pacify the nobles in his village and the surrounding region. It cannot escape the attention of the reader of these chronicles that their writers lived in a feuding society, no less violent than in feudal regions like Flanders or Burgundy.30 In Frisia, too, the mighty often bared their swords and made victims to defend their honour and property. Revenge was the order of the day, notwithstanding the many truces and peaces of God that were regularly proclaimed by the judges of the land.31 Clerics like Frederic tried, of course, to limit the exercise of violence and to convert the bellatores. One of Frederic’s successes touches upon the nobleman Asego of Blija, who was impoverished by the many feuds he had fought.32 This prominent man tried to conceal this state of affairs at his wedding by giving counterfeit money to the poor. As he was subsequently punished by God through the loss of his young wife, Father Frederic sent him to Jerusalem, in the hope that he would come back a better man and thus be a help in 29 For instance, the group that journeyed to Acre in 1189 chose the Hainault knight James of Avesnes as leader during their sojourn in Messina: Brassat, Teilnahme der Friesen, p. 84. 30 See, for example, J. J. van Moolenbroek, Mirakels historisch. De exempels van Caesarius van Heisterbach over Nederland and Nederlanders (Hilversum, 1999), nos. 38–39. 31 On the importance of the feud in medieval Friesland see: P. N. Noomen, “De Friese vetemaatschappij: sociale structuur and machtsbases,” in: Fryslân, staat en macht 1450–1650. Bijdragen aan het historisch congres te Leeuwarden van 3 tot 5 juni 1998, ed. J. Frieswijk et al. (Leeuwarden, 1999), pp. 44–54. For an analysis of the place of the feud in Frisian criminal law: R. His, Das Strafrecht der Friesen (Leipzig, 1901), p. 201ff. 32 Gesta abbatum, chap. 31, pp. 34–37.

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establishing and maintaining peace in his homeland. This example makes clear that Jerusalem, even before the founding of Mariëngaarde in 1163, was considered to be the ultimate destination of Frisian pilgrims, especially those who were major sinners. Such a chieftain, living about sixty years later, is also described in the vita of the fourth abbot of Mariëngaarde, which covers the early decades of the thirteenth century. His name was Dodo Kempinga, grandson of the famous warrior Kempo of Kempingaburen near Leeuwarden, who had also been pacified by Father Frederic. Dodo is said to have participated in three peregrinationes transmarine in the time that Master Oliver preached the Cross.33 On the last expedition he was accompanied by his sister’s son Thitard Ethelgera who, unlike his uncle, returned safely from the crusade and, after a long life in the world, took Holy Orders in Mariëngaarde. Dodo was closely related to the most prominent monks and nuns of Frisia. His brother-in-law was abbot of the great Cistercian abbey of Klaarkamp, his nephew Ethelger Ethelgera was to become abbot of Mariëngaarde, and his childless son Wibrand entered the Cistercian order after a long secular career and even managed, in 1249, to be elected as abbot of the newly-founded monastery of Gerkesklooster. Recent research has shown that Dodo Kempinga was one of the ancestors of the noble Cammingha family that still dominated the Oostergo region in the fifteenth century.34 Men like him, of high descent, with influential relatives and with a lot of military and political experience — originally the names Asego and Kempo are derived from the functions of respectively “lawsayer” and “ordeal fighter” — were probably chosen as leaders of the small terra armies. We meet them not only in Frisia west of the Lauwers but also in the regions north of Groningen. Abbot Emo describes such a leader in the person of Eltet of Middelstum, who accompanied Master Oliver on his second tour through the Frisian lands in 1224.35 Because he carried no weapons during this mission — being under a Peace of God — he could not defend himself and Master Oliver when he was attacked by an angry Frisian whose feud had been ended by the preacher in an — apparently — unsatisfactory way. So he died even before he got the opportunity to sail to the Holy Land. According to Caesarius of Heisterbach, who elaborated on these facts in one of his miracle stories, he was the richest of all.36

33 Ibid., p. 189: “Qui Dodo pro amore ac reverencia Ihesu Christi Domini nostri tempore predicacionis magistri Olyveri scolastici Coloniensis crucesignatus trina vice mare pertransiens [...].” 34 P. N. Noomen, “De familie Cammingha in de middeleeuwen: haar relatie met de stad Leeuwarden and haar positie in Oostergo,” Leeuwarder Historische Reeks 6 (1997), 17–20. 35 Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 168–69. 36 Van Moolenbroek, Mirakels historisch, no. 48.

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Milites et pedites Eltet was called a miles christianus because he had taken crusade vows. He and the men of his class, however, are almost never referred to as milites. They were noble, powerful and trained in the handling of weapons. And they certainly were rich enough to buy themselves the armour of knights, if they had possibly wanted that. Why then do we never meet them as knights in the sources? Why does Bartholomeus Anglicus, in his encyclopaedia of around 1240, mention, as one of the peculiarities of the Frisians, that they refuse militares dignitates?37 The simple answer, or at least the direction in which I want to seek it, is that they were not used to fighting in heavy armour on horseback. It can be taken for granted that most crusaders from the North Sea region who sailed by ship were foot-soldiers. Men who wanted to fight as knights, and thus had to have three or four horses at their disposal, had to take the land route, up to the great harbour cities of Marseilles, Genoa or Venice. The knights of Guelders, for example, always took this route.38 Italian and French freighters could ship horses to the Holy Land in their stable galleys.39 But their route was much shorter than that of the North Sea fleets. The crusaders in these fleets were therefore mainly infantrymen: spear-bearers, sword-fighters, archers and balistarii.40 This assessment of course does not explain why the Frisians were specialized in fighting on foot. Had they been used to fighting on horseback, they could have taken the land route too. But they did not. Both from the narrative and iconographical sources it can be concluded that the typical Frisian warrior of the Middle Ages was a foot-soldier. This is most clearly visible from the great seal of the Upstalsboom Confederation that dates in its oldest form from 1324 (Figure 1).41 The seal shows us two foot-soldiers with small round shields, standing at the flanks of the Mother of God, pre-eminently the patron saint of the Frisian lands, with the Christ Child. One warrior has a sword in his hand, the other a spear. An even older illustration in the same style is known from 37 A. E. Schönbach, “Des Bartholomaeus Anglicus Beschreibung Deutschlands gegen 1240,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 27 (1906), 72. 38 H. Hardenberg, De Nederlanden and de Kruistochten (Amsterdam, 1941), pp. 152, 175. 39 John H. Pryor, “The Transportation of Horses by Sea during the Era of the Crusades,” The Mariner’s Mirror 68 (1982), 9–27, 103–25; and idem, “Crusader Transport Ships.” 40 “Ir quam zu fûze vil/ der Frisen, als sie des haben siten,/ der minner teil was der geriten.” This is said in the poetical work dating from the early fourteenth century Die Kreuzfahrt des Landgrafen Ludwigs des Frommen of the Frisians who took part in the siege of Acre: Voorwinden, N., “Friesland und die Friesen in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters,” in Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, ed. R. H. Bremmer jr., T. S. B. Johnston and O. Vries (Amsterdam 1998), pp. 309–11. 41 G. Sello, “Vom Upstalsboom und vom Totius-Frisiae-Siegel,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 21 (1925), 65–137, appendix.

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the seal of the land of Rüstringen, from 1312 (Figure 2).42 It shows Charlemagne flanked by two warriors, each with a spear in his hand. The warrior on the left carries a small round shield in addition to his spear and has a sword hanging from his belt. One finds similar drawings of foot-soldiers armed with sword, spear and shield — sometimes flanking the Holy Virgin or another saint, sometimes standing on their own, on a large number of land seals, including those of Rüstringen (1341, Figure 7) and Hunzingo-Oosterambt (1372, Figure 8).43 It already says a lot in itself that not only the Upstalsboom Confederation, as a general union of Frisian lands, but also different districts separately, chose a seal showing one or more foot-soldiers with their patron saint. It is entirely convincing to equate the Frisian and the Frisian warrior in the “logo” of a feudal ministeriales family with the name Friso (later also called Von Frese), which was already established in the lands of Osnabrück and Oldenburg since the thirteenth century.44 The name shows that this family originally came from Friesland. Not all its members used the same heraldic coat of arms, but it is remarkable that, on all their seals from the fourteenth century, a Frisian warrior is shown, either his head alone (featuring a wild hair-do in the form of a cockscomb), or in full figure, with a spear in his right hand held in the attack position, and carrying a shield in his left hand (Figures 3, 4 and 5). It is clear that this is a case of “speaking” heraldry. For family members from Osnabrück and Oldenburg, a “wild Frisian” was evidently considered in these times as an aggressive foot-soldier with a Red Indian-type head. As far as hair style is concerned: Bartholomaeus Anglicus noted as early as around 1240 that Frisian men cut off their hair evenly all around (thus retaining a shock of hair on top).45 He says they considered this as a status symbol: “the higher they ranked in esteem, the higher the hair is shaved off around.” This fashion acquired an ideological motivation in the course of the thirteenth century, in the sense that it was taken as a sign that Charlemagne had bestowed 42 K. -E. Behre and H. van Lengen, Ostfriesland. Geschichte und Gestalt einer

Kulturlandschaft (Aurich, 1996), p. 115. 43 G. Sello, Studien zur Geschichte von Östringen und Rüstringen (Varel, 1898), pp. 97–98; Hunzingo: Oorkondenboek van Groningen and Drenthe, ed. P. J. Blok et al., 2 vols. (Groningen 1896–99), 1: fig. III; 3: pp. 232–33. Also compare the seals of Wonseradeel (1271): P. N. Noomen, “St. Magnus van Hollum en Celdui van Esens. Bijdrage tot de chronologie van de Magnustraditie,” De Vrije Fries 69 (1989), 23–24; Opsterland (1418): S. J. van der Molen, Opsterlân. Skiednis fan in Wâldgritenij (Drachten, 1958); Mormerland (1435): H. Schmidt, Politische Geschichte Ostfrieslands, Ostfriesland im Schutze des Deiches 5 (Leer 1975), p. 49; and Oostergo (1494): J. A. Mol, “Graaf Willem IV, de Hollands-Friese oorlog van 1344/1345 and de Friese kloosters,” in: Negen eeuwen Friesland-Holland. Geschiedenis van een haatliefdeverhouding, ed. Ph.H. Breuker and A. Janse (Zutphen/Leeuwarden 1997), p. 103. 44 Sello, Östringen und Rüstringen, pp. 91–95. 45 “... in habitu autem et in moribus plurimum differunt a Germanis, nam viri fere omnes in coma circulariter sunt attonsi, qui quanto sunt nobiliores, tanto altius circumtonderi gloriosus arbitrantur:” Schönbach, “Beschreibung Deutschlands,” p. 72.

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freedom on the Frisians.46 In the well-known forged privilege of Charlemagne dating from the end of the thirteenth century, it is said in so many words that Charlemagne permitted the Frisians, who did not want to be knights, to have their hair shaved to above their ears so as to be able to demonstrate their freedom in this way.47 Let us return now to the seal illustrations mentioned. They are not the only ones. The other surviving depictions of armed men from the Frisian coastal area also show warriors on foot, equipped with spear, sword and round shield. The oldest was found on the so-called ‘Friesenbild’ that, before the Second World War, decorated the north wall of the west transept of the dome of Münster (Figure 6). It, too, dates from the second half of the thirteenth century.48 Not quite as old are the interrelated scenes of fighters from the churches of Westerwijtwerd and Woldendorp, north and east of Groningen. They may be allegories of the battle between good and evil, but they could also be depictions of a judicial duel.49 The somewhat “cartoon”-like wall paintings of Westerwijtwerd (Figure 9) date from the second half of the thirteenth century, because the church itself dates from this period.50 Those of Woldendorp (Figure 11), where the warriors are shown somewhat more attractively and in greater detail but are otherwise precisely the same iconographically as those of Westerwijtwerd, would date from around 1350. Both illustrations leave little to be desired in the way of clarity. Two warriors, wearing long, presumably leather scale jackets or hauberks, are fighting each other on foot. They are equipped with the same weapons, that is, spear, sword and round shield. And they appear to have their hair shaved. The man on the right fights with his sword. He has already used his spear, because it looks as if it has ricocheted off the shield of 46 Salomon, Friesische Geschichtsbilder, pp. 94, 126. This notion, it should be said, must have been generally known in northern Germany around 1260, as testified to by the report in a version of the Kaiserchronik, included in the Sächsische Weltchronik, that the Frisians, before Charlemagne gave them their freedom, had bonds around their necks and wore their hair long: nu sin se aver hôbescoren to bilede erer vriheit: Sächsische Weltchronik, ed. L. Weiland, MGH Deutsche Chroniken 2 (Hanover, 1876), chap. 138, p. 152. Compare Voorwinden, “Friesland in der deutschen Literatur,” p. 315. 47 “Et statuimus ut Frisones nolentes militare sint, usque ad summitatem aurium circumtonsi, si facere voluerint, ut per hoc etiam valeant ostendere libertatem, ipsis, ut dictum est, a nobis esse collatam:” A. Janse, “De waarheid van een falsum. Op zoek naar de politieke context van het Karelsprivilege,” De Vrije Fries 71 (1991), 20–21. 48 See the 1861 engraving by H. Walde in Historie van Groningen, Stad and Land, ed. W. J. Formsma et al. (Groningen, 1981), p. 151. Additional references in W. Ehbrecht, Landesherrschaft und Klosterwesen im ostfriesischen Fivelgo (970–1290) (Münster, 1974), pp. 1–5. 49 H. Halbertsma, Terpen tussen Vlie and Eems. Een geografisch-historische benadering, 2 vols. (Groningen, 1963), 2: 109. 50 J. Kalff, “De muurschildering te Westerwijtwerd,” Groningse Volksalmanak 1899, pp. 84–101; G. J. Hoogewerf, De Noord-Nederlandsche schilderkunst, vol. 1 (The Hague, 1936), pp. 46–50. Compare, however, D. Bouvy, “Aantekeningen bij de onlangs ontdekte schilderingen in Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe,” Katholiek Bouwblad 18 (1950–51), 406.

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his opponent, thereby breaking. The warrior on the left is trying to attack his opponent with his spear. If these illustrations are not accurately placeable in time, the case is otherwise for the so-called Eppo stone from the church of Rinsumageest, just outside Dokkum (Figure 10).51 It is a tombstone of red sandstone showing the figure of a young nobleman, Eppo, of whom it is said in the legend that, on Simon and Judas Day (28 October) of the year 1341, he was snatched away from his family by death. As depicted, he has a spear in his right hand, while it is very evident that a sword with a rosette-shaped butt hangs from his belt along with a knife and a purse. All these illustrations of foot-soldiers with the same equipment, from the same period and from all parts of the Frisian coastal area, match up very well with the well-known clause from an all-Frisian law codification from Rüstringen that “the Frisians must defend their land” ...mith egge and mith orde and mith tha bruna skelde.52 As can be gathered from most of the illustrations discussed, the Frisian fighter typically wears no helmet. He is armed with a sword (egge = sharp edge or cutting side, as pars pro toto), a spear or lance (oerde = sharp point, also as pars pro toto) and a brown shield. For the latter, though, one should think of a very simple construction — leather stretched over a wooden frame. Although this amounts to standard fighting equipment,53 it can be concluded from the situation in other regions that not every Frisian fighter commanded such armament in actuality. Elsewhere a real distinction was made according to wealth, for example, in the twentieth statute of the old West Frisian Skeltana Riucht.54 It classified wealth into four categories. Of the wealthiest, those who had more than thirty pounds worth of property, it was demanded that, for defence of the land, they come up with horse and wepne, — with horse and “weapon.” What should be understood by “weapon” is not explained. Men with possessions worth between twenty and thirty pounds will carry a truchslayn wepen — a sword. Men in the third category, with possessions worth between twelve and twenty pounds, must be battle-ready with spere ande skeld. And those who had less than twelve pounds in possessions were expected to defend the land with bow and quiver. From the description of the first category, it could be concluded that the richest Frisians were indeed able to fight on horseback. In any case, the sources 51 H. M. van den Berg, Noordelijk Oostergo, Dantumadeel. De Monumenten van Geschiedenis and Kunst (The Hague, 1984), pp. 133–34, 162. 52 W. J. Buma, ed., De eerste Riustringer codex, Oudfriese taal- and rechtsbronnen 11 (The Hague, 1961), p. 121; W. J. Buma and W. Ebel, Das Rüstringer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen: Texte und Übersetzungen 1 (Göttingen, 1963), p. 90. 53 Compare the arms prescriptions for Swedish farmers at this time: Sven Ekdahl, “Die Bewaffnung der schwedischen Bauern im Mittelalter,” Fasciculi Archaeologiae Historicae 11 (1998), 20–24. 54 S. Fairbanks, The Old West Frisian Skeltana Riucht (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 80–83.

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leave no doubt at all that noble Frisians and abbots rode horses whenever they could. In the Frisian lands, riding a horse was also a privilege of the rich.55 This is testified to in the first quarter of the eleventh century in the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium. Here, Bishop Adelbold of Utrecht (1010–27) tells how, in a Frisian village in his diocese, a maior villulae who still held to heathenism incited his people to shun the Last Supper and drink beer in a tavern instead, which they did; then, mounting his horse drunk, he rode home with his armiger, only to fall dead to the ground as punishment for his blasphemy.56 That, then, was not in a war situation but, from later sources, it can be gathered that Frisian chieftains also regularly climbed into the stirrups for military expeditions. Sir Hessel of Leeuwarden, the deacon who led the Frisian army that attacked the Drents behind Bakkeveen in September 1232, was pulled from his horse in the fighting.57 And when, in the same year, in an extension of the same battle between Frisians and Drents, Hunzingo’s men attacked the Fivelgo allies of the Drents, a large group of equites or horsemen rode off from Groningen to Westeremden. Once arrived they panicked, turned back and, according to Abbot Emo, were attacked on the dike while fleeing and were brutally killed.58 If one looks at their style of making war, it has to be noted that these warriors on horseback did not fight as knights. Nowhere is there mention of a shock attack by armoured knights equipped with long lances. In such cases, the horse seems to have served as a convenient and luxurious means of transport. It was, however, a means of transport that could only be used in favourable conditions. The conditions were the crux of the matter. The Frisian land, from Alkmaar to the Danish border, is criss-crossed with ditches, canals and watercourses that can only be crossed with difficulty by horses.59 And the land itself was often too boggy to ride through. This applied not only to the peat regions reclaimed after the year 1000, but also to the clay lands brought under cultivation along the sea as far back as the start of the Christian era. There is scarcely any solid ground in the Frisian lands. What this means for an army of knights that tries to move forward over narrow clay and peat dikes, and has to break formation to do so, is well known from the attack by knights from Bremen in the land of Wursten on 10 September 1256.60 The bishop’s men could get nowhere with 55 Compare A. S. de Blécourt, “Peie Eelkema,” in idem, Oldambt en Ommelanden. Rechtshistorische opstellen met bijlagen (Assen, 1935), p. 46. 56 Extensively paraphrased by H. Schmidt, “Adel und Bauern an der Nordseeküste,” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 45 (1973), 52–53. See also J. R. G. Schuur, “Een weinig bekend bericht over weerstanden tegen het christendom in het middeleeuwse Friesland,” It Beaken 46 (1984), 198–200. 57 Wybrands, Gesta abbatum, p. 159, chap. VII; Quaedam narracio de Groninghe, de Thrente, de Covordia et de diversis aliis sub diversis episcopis Traiectensibus, ed. H. van Rij (Hilversum, 1989), pp. 96–97. 58 Kroniek Bloemhof, p. 236. 59 I. H. Gosses, De Friesche hoofdeling (Amsterdam, 1933), p. 40. 60 B. U. Hucker, Das Problem von Herrschaft und Freiheit in den Landesgemeinden

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their battle charges and, one by one, they were isolated and stabbed to death by the lightly armed Frisians from Wursten. Clay and peat ground simply do not lend themselves to large-scale warfare by knights. At the slightest shower of rain, after all, a horse with a heavily armed knight slips and slides away in the mud.61 This can be different in winter, if the ground is frozen solid. But it does not freeze all that severely or even very severely along the North Sea coast — as it does, for example, in the Baltic regions. In 1256, the Roman King William of Holland was killed in a battle against the West-Frisians near Hoogwoud when he and his knights fell through the ice. Thus, due to the water, the Frisian lands were poorly negotiable with horses, to say nothing of conquerable with horses, for the greater part of the year. For this reason, fighting here was almost always a question of combat on foot. As foot-soldiers, the Frisians also acquired some fame in the battle of Staveren in 1345. United in the same way as during the crusades, they cut up the army of knights of William IV, Count of Holland and Hainault, whose goal it was to conquer Frisia west of the Lauwers.62 A Hainault reporter informs us that they did this in a very unchivalrous way, sans pitié ne nulle merchy, as if they were fighting Saracens. According to the reporter, they were not interested in ransom, and killed everyone who fell into their hands, even Count William himself. The reporter also describes how these rude Frisians were armed and dressed: with grosses picques et longes glaves, with big boots and long coats of heavy fabric.63 It is a description that corresponds remarkably well with the picture of the men represented on the Totius Frisiae grand seal (Figure 1).

The pole pike There is more to say about these long and heavy pikes or spears.64 The Hainault chronicler found them apparently worth mentioning. Why were they so long? The answer is given by a mercenary captain of Duke Albrecht of Saxony in a report on his victory over a Frisian army in 1498.65 He found that the pikes of the und Adelsherrschaften des Mittelalters im Niederweserraum (Münster, 1978), p. 395. 61 As late as 1530 the East-Frisian chronicler Henricus Ubbius wrote about his country that its unusual structure was its best protection against enemies: rain made many areas so inaccessible that they could only be negotiated over a kind of wickerwork underfoot: “Henricus Ubbius Frisia Descriptio,” ed. F. Ritter, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst und väterländische Altertümer zu Emden 18 (1913), 94; compare ibid., p. 97. 62 On the battle of Staveren: R. de Graaf, Oorlog om Holland, 1000–1375 (Hilversum, 1996) pp. 273–97; Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th Century (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 145–55; Mol, “Hollands-Friese oorlog,” pp. 102–8. 63 Recits d’un bourgeois de Valenciennes (XIVe siècle) ed., Kervyn de Lettenhove, (Leuven, 1877), p. 203. 64 For the following I am indebted for a great deal of information to Mr Johannes Goehler of Ringstedt (Germany). 65 J. A. Mol, “Het militaire einde van de Friese Vrijheid: de Slag bij Laaxum, 10 juni

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Frisians were a few feet longer than those of his German Landsknechte, which already had a length of twelve or thirteen feet, and he noted that the Frisian pikes were provided with a small thick disk at the foot.66 He could also explain why. The Frisians used their pikes not only as weapons but as poles to leap over ditches and watercourses. The pole really had to have a disk, block or fork at the foot to prevent the jumper sinking in and becoming mired in the mud of the ditch. A picture of a Frisian peasant warrior from the mid-sixteenth century shows us that the description of the mercenary captain was correct (Figure 13).67 The spear, of which the steel point is not shown because it is outside the composition, is provided with a gaff at the foot. It is clear that this thrusting weapon was very long. The poles were still used in this way in the sixteenth century, both in Friesland and Holland. The sources refer here to a verrejaagher,68 schavelijn or vaulting pole.69 Was this an innovation from the fifteenth century, a modified version of the well-known Swiss pike? Or had the jumping pole-spear been in use among the Frisians much longer? It is very probable that the latter is the case. Many older illustrations of Frisian fighters from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show that the lance or spear with a gaff or trident at the base had already been in use for a long time. Here, reference can be made to the seals already described above, the “Friesenbild” of Munster, the wall paintings of Westerwijtwerd and Woldendorp and the Eppo stone of Rinsumageest. All these illustrations show a stylised gaff or trident at the base of the lance, pole or spear. As Georg Sello has already noted in his study on Östringen and Rüstringen,70 this gaff or trident had the same function as the disk of Schaumburg. This function could actually have been two-fold. It is not unthinkable that the spear with the trident or gaff was also set firmly in the ground and held tilted forward defensively as a way to counter an enemy advance. When, in 1397, the Westlauwers Frisians had to do battle with the troops of Duke Albrecht van Beieren at Kuinre, they waited for the Holland attack, according to an observer, behind a dike into which they had driven steel-tipped poles with the points facing upwards at a slant.71 These poles could well have been jumping pole-spears. 1498,” Millennium 13 (1999), 13. 66 “Der [= Schaumburg] besach sie selbst, liess sich bedunken dat er einen walt sehe, den die in dem lant gar vil und vier schuech lenger spis den die unsern lantsknecht haben, heisen sie schotten; haben am undern ort schuben, damit sie in die mosigen graben setzen wen sie uberspringen, das sie niet bestecken:” Die Geschichten und Taten Wilwolts von Schaumburg, ed. A. von Keller (Stuttgart, 1859), p. 169. 67 Cornelius Kempius, De origine, situ, qualitate et quantitate Frisiae, et rebus a Frisiis olim praeclare gestis (Keulen, 1588), p. 82. 68 J. J. Kalma, “Mei de pols der op út ...,” It Heitelân 33 (1955), 73–74. 69 A. J. Andreae, “Bijlage, aanteekeningen en register op het verzet der Friezen tegen de Spaansche dwingelandij,” De Vrije Fries 17 (1890), 98. 70 Sello, Östringen und Rüstringen, pp. 91–100. 71 A. Janse, Grenzen aan de macht. De Friese oorlog van de graven van Holland omstreeks 1400 (The Hague, 1993), p. 83.

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No mention of such weaponry is made anywhere in the literature on military history.72 Of the thousands of miniatures, paintings, drawings, etc., devoted to the conduct of war throughout the Europe of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, there are no examples whatever of a pole weapon with a trident, gaff or block at the base — beyond those discussed in the illustrations. This leads inescapably to the conclusion that this weapon was only used in the Frisian coastal areas.73 There are a few other indications that this was indeed the case. The first appears in the account that the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus gave in his Gesta Danorum around 1200 of the battle fought in 1151 between the Danish King Sven and the North-Frisians. After saying of the Frisians in general that they surround their land with ditches that they can then jump across, the account goes on to say — not without admiration — how recklessly a number of impatient young Frisian warriors go into battle. According to the chronicler, they leapt over the waterway between their camp and the Danish fortification “in the usual way” and then charged into the Danes without any order of battle.74 Perhaps even more convincing is the word used for the jumping pole-spear in a Rüstringen law codification from the twelfth century. There — in a prohibition on bearing arms — the spear is not denoted with the usual words spere or oerde (which means pointed stick, as a pars pro toto) but as a kletsie.75 Recent etymological research has shown that this word — meaning fork or claw, and thus also a pars pro toto, but then for the other end — does not have Germanic or Indo-European roots and has to be considered as a substratum, taken over from an earlier non-Germanic population by the tribes that settled in these coastal regions in the fourth and fifth centuries.76

72 See, for example, the recent works of John France, Western Warfare in the Age of

the Crusades 1000–1300 (London, 1999); and Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Ont., 1992). Compare J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. From the Eighth Century to 1340 (Amsterdam, New York and Oxford, 1985); Philippe Contamine, La guerre au moyen âge (Paris, 1980); and C. H. Ashdown, European Arms and Armor (New York, 1995). 73 For Frisians, fitting a trident or gaff to the spear was evidently so self-evident that the only time they depicted a knight in battle (fig. 12) they showed his lance so equipped. 74 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum 14.7, 1–4, ed. J. Olrik and H. Raeden (Copenhagen, 1931), pp. 384–85: “Agros scrobibus cingunt, saltus contulis edunt. [...] Interea quidam ex Frisica juventute, sive morae impatientes sive vegetioribus animis virtutis cupidi, provocandi gratia rivum, qui inter castra medius erat, consueta arte transiliunt vagique eminus hostem incessunt.” Compare A. Panten, “Die Nordfriesen im Mittelalter,” in Geschichte Nordfrieslands, ed. A. Bantelmann et al. (Heide, 1995), p. 62. 75 Buma and Ebel, Riüstringer Recht, pp. 82–83. 76 F. Holthausen and D. Hofmann, Altfriesisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., (Heidelberg, 1985), p. 58.

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Conclusion From a military point of view, the value of the jumping pole-spear did not depend on this claw device. It was the length that mattered. Nowadays the average pole used by Frisian egg-hunters to jump across local water ditches measures at least fourteen feet, that is, about four metres. Possibly the medieval specimen was a bit shorter. But even with a length of twelve feet the pole-spear was at least four to six feet longer than the ordinary infantry spear of the Middle Ages.77 The conclusion therefore has to be that the Frisians were already using such spears long before the Swiss dominated the battlefields with their pikes. This being so, we have to ask whether these Frisian foot-soldiers fought in the same manner in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the Swiss would fight later on: that is, tightly grouped in phalanxes and very disciplined in an orderly array. I don’t think this was the case.78 In combat, the pole-spear obviously was used as a thrusting weapon. The specimens on the Totius Frisiae seal and on the wall-paintings mentioned are depicted with a sort of knob in the middle to prevent the spear slipping through the hand when thrust. The warriors in the paintings have their right arms stretched back to make a heavy thrust or a short throw, the fighters on most seals are depicted in a trotting attitude, holding their spears forwards above their heads with cocked arms. In both cases, however, the pictures suggest that the man is attacking his opponent. Attacking is what Frisians liked to do in battle. Nearly every medieval text in which their military actions are described presents them charging forward with speed and fury. In amente prevolans (flying madly ahead) as it says of the Frisian warriors in a letter Emperor Frederick I reportedly sent to Saladin in 1188, to warn him against the mighty army that would be fighting him if he did not get out of Jerusalem.79 “Impatient in combat” is how their behaviour is described elsewhere.80 At the raid on the Moorish city of Faro in South Portugal in 1217, after raising their banners and singing in praise of the Virgin Mary, 77 France, Western Warfare, p. 22; DeVries, Military Technology, p. 15. 78 At the end of the fifteenth century, they had to acknowledge the superiority in battle

of the well-trained German Landesknechte operating in close-knit formations: J. A. Mol, “Hoofdelingen and huurlingen. Militaire innovatie and de aanloop tot 1498,” in Fryslân, staat and macht, ed. Frieswijk et al., pp. 82–84. 79 Hans E. Mayer, Das Itinerarium peregrinorum. Eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt, Schriften der MGH 18 (Stuttgart, 1962), p. 281; Helen Nicholson, Chronicle of the Third Crusade. A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (Aldershot, 1997), p. 51. See also Hans E. Mayer, “Der Brief Kaiser Friedrichs I. an Saladin vom Jahre 1188,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 14 (1958), 494. The Frisians stand here on a list between the Istriërs, who never retreat, the Saxons, extremely skilled with the sword, the agile fighters of Brabant, etc. 80 Feroces [...], morae impatientes (1151): Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, pp. 384–85; impatientes more (1218 at Damietta): Hoogeweg, Schriften des Oliverus, p. 179; Et cum, more Frisonum impatientes more, Frisones accelerarent ad bellum contra paganos, ... etc. (1271 in the battle of al-Bahira near Tunis): Kroniek Bloemhof, pp. 434–35.

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they succeeded in putting their enemy directly to flight. So, the military speciality of the Frisians was the charge on foot, of which the purpose was the same as that of mounted shock combat: “not just to hit one’s opponent but to storm through the enemy ranks so as to make them panic and flee.”81 The unusually long spears of the Frisians must have contributed to the success of their charges, as well as their Red Indian-like appearance and their physical height. Described by Dante as the giants of Europe,82 I guess they made an overwhelming impression on the Saracens when they met them on the battlefield in Portugal, Egypt and Tunisia.

81 DeVries, Military Technology, pp. 10–11. 82 The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine, cantica I Hell (l’Inferno), Canto 31,

trans. Dorothy L. Sayers (Harmondsworth, 1949), p. 61. Compare J. Terlingen, “Dante and de mythe fan de Friezen,” Us Wurk 19 (1970), 73.

The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings of the Shaykhs of the Holy Land by D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd al-Wa@@h¢id al-Maqdis¸@ (569/1173–643/1245): Text, Translation and Commentary Daniella Talmon-Heller1 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva The text of The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings2 of the Shaykhs3 of the Holy Land4 (Ms. al-Z¢a@hiriyya, Damascus, H¢adith 238, part 3, fols. 91b–99; now in al-Asad Library, no. 1039)5 was composed in Damascus by the H¢anbal¸@ scholar D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd al-Wa@@h¢id al-Maqdis¸@ (569/1173–643/1245). The author, whose parents emigrated from the Palestinian village of Jamma@‘¸@l to Damascus a few years before his birth, grew up in the predominantly H¢anbal¸@ neighborhood of al-S¢a@lih¢iyya, where he established a madrasa for the study of h¢ad¸@th. He is often quoted in chronicles and biographical dictionaries of historians of the late Ayyubid and Mamluk 1 The text was made available to me by Benjamin Z. Kedar in 1989, when I was preparing my Master’s thesis. He has guided and encouraged my work ever since. My late teacher, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, read the text with me then, and the hours I spent with her were some of the most enjoyable learning experiences I have had. Etan Kohlberg, Butrus Abu Manneh and Sharif Kanaana patiently reread parts of the text with me. Shaun Marmon and Michael Cook commented upon my English translation and introduction. I am indebted to them all. 2 The term kara@ma@t (kara@ma literally — God’s grace) is used for wondrous deeds performed by holy men (awliya@), as opposed to mu‘jiza@t, miracles which prophets perform in order to prove the divine origin of their message. See Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, ed. and trans. E.R. Barber and Samuel M. Stern (London, 1971), 2:336; Christopher S. Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziya@ra and the Veneration of Saints in Late Medieval Egypt (Leiden, 1998), pp. 128–29. 3 Shaykh may be translated as “elder” or “religious teacher,” or “holy man,” depending on context. I will use the Arabic word. 4 In the Qur’a@n Al-Ard¢ al-Muqaddasa — the holy land — designates the land ordained for the people of Moses (sura 5:21). The term was in use in early Muslim texts for Palestine, or parts of it, until dropped in favor of al-Sha@m: see Shlomo D. Goitein, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine in Early Islam,” in his Studies in Islamic Religious and Political Institutions (Leiden, 1968), pp. 143–48. In the crusading period it evokes the theme of the pollution of Muslim sacred space by the Franks and its purification by Saladin’s reconquest: Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 297–301. 5 Fihrist Makht¢ut¢a@t Da@r al-Kutub al-Z¢a@hiriyya: al-Maja@mi‘, ed. Ya@s¸@n M. al-Sawwa@s (Damascus, 1984). 111

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period, mainly as an informant on H¢anbal¸@s and on Damascus. His own literary work includes treatises on h¢ad¸@th and Qur’a@@n, and fad¢a@íil (praise) of jihad, al-Sha@@m (Syria and Palestine) and various Islamic figures.6 The text presented here has survived, to the best of my knowledge, in an autograph unicum. It is appended by two folios in the handwriting of the ninth/fifteenth-century Yu@suf ‘Abd al-Ha@@d¸@, with a list of people who had read the text or had been present at its reading, including family members of the compiler (males, females and young children).7 The text takes the form of a hagiographical dictionary,8 with alphabetically ordered entries, of which less than a third has survived. Each entry is composed of short anecdotes, told in the first person by relatives and neighbors of the author, most of whom were born and bred in villages around Nablus in the sixth/twelfth century, and claim to have been eyewitnesses to the wondrous deeds of the shaykhs. Their tales take us to the homes, mosques, fields and vineyards of sixth/twelfth and early seventh/thirteenth-century villages of Northern Palestine, and to Jerusalem, Ramla and Damascus. They reveal a rich and fascinating “local dialect” of medieval Islamic life. Nablus and its vicinity came under Latin rule in 496/1099. Most of the local rural population, mainly Muslim by that time,9 remained on its land and accommodated to government by Frankish lords, in a mode described by Benjamin Kedar as “rare resistance, limited collaboration.” Even if taxation was particularly high on Mt Nablus, and its lord, Baldwin of Ibelin (1133–86) exceptionally harsh, the economic situation of peasants was fair most of the

6 For information on the author and his writings see M. M. al-H¢a@fiz¢, introduction to

D¢iya@' al-D¸@n al-Maqdis¸@, Fad¢a@’il Bayt al-Maqdis (Damascus, 1985), pp. 9–22; Stephan Leder, “Charismatic Scripturalism. The H¢anbal¸@ Maqdis¸@s of Damascus,” Der Islam 74 (1997), 279–304. 7 A few additional passages from an otherwise lost entry are quoted by Ibn Rajab in his Dhayl T¢abaqa@t al-H¢ana@bila, ed. M. H. al-F¸@q¸@ (Cairo, 1952–53), 2:101–2, in an “edited” form: i.e., more indirect speech, less fragmentation of narrative by “qa@la” (said), no ending-phrases (such as “or something to this effect,” “or as he had said,” “and this is the gist of what he told me,”) that conclude most of the anecdotes, to indicate the possibility of an error in transmission on the part of the author or his informants. 8 Reminiscent of the sufi hagiographical treatise of the Egyptian Ibn Ab¸@ al-Mans¢u@r, also written in the thirteenth century. See La Risa@la de S¢af¸@ al-D¸@n Ab¸@ al-Mans¢u@r ibn Z¢a@fir, trans. Denis Gril, Textes arabes et études islamiques 25 (Cairo, 1986). 9 See Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” in Muslims under Latin Rule 1100–1300, ed. James M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), pp.135–74; reprinted in Benjamin Z. Kedar, The Franks in the Levant, 11th to 14th Centuries (Aldershot, 1993), Article XVIII, p. 149; Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 263–68; Milka Levy-Rubin, “New Evidence Relating to the Process of Islamization in Palestine in the Early Muslim Period — the Case of Samaria,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43 (2000), 257–76.

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time,10 and their religious freedom was respected.11 In 583/1187 the region was recaptured by Saladin, and remained in the sovereignty of the Ayyubids until 658/1260, some time after the author’s death.12 In the light of the text, the shaykhs (and their followers) emerge as adherents of a H¢anbal¸@ pietistic shade of Islam.13 Their piety is manifested in such acts as prayer at night, preoccupation with ritual purity and rejection of food they do not consider h¢ala@l (lawfully acquired). They are virtuous — forbearing, forgiving, modest and excessively generous towards the poor and needy. Though not full-fledged Sufis, they are markedly ascetic.14 They use their spiritual authority and power, which is held to result from their unusual closeness to God, to command right and forbid wrong15 and bring to penance, as well as to protect — be it from hostile Franks or from God’s wrath and punishment. The text does not shed much light on the religious education of most of the shaykhs. A few are cited quoting Qur’a@@n or h¢ad¸@th and addressing matters of religious law and theology. In one case an ima@m (prayer-leader) of one of the villages boasts of being more learned than the shaykh (only to be humbled by the shaykh’s spiritual powers); in another case a shaykh is consulted about the qualification of an aspiring prayer-leader.16 Yet, the authority of the shaykhs 10 On agriculture and rural administration see Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions

(Oxford, 1980), pp. 143–200 (with a detailed survey of the lordship of Tyre); Jean Richard, “Agricultural Conditions in the Crusader States,” in Crusades 5:251–66; Yehoshua Frenkel, “The Impact of the Crusades on Rural Society and Religious Endowments: the Case of Medieval Syria (Bila@d al-Sha@m),” in War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, 7th–15th Centuries, ed. Yaacov Lev (Leiden, 1997), pp. 237–48. 11 Kedar, “Subjected Muslims,” pp. 154–71; idem, “Some New Sources on Palestinian Muslims Before and During the Crusades,” in Kreuzfahrerstaaten, p. 137. 12 For a detailed account of its history during that period see ‘Abd Alla@h S¢. Kalbu@na, Ta’r¸@kh Mad¸@nat Na@blus (Nablus, 1992), pp. 48–58. 13 On the different aspects of the religious life of the villagers of Jabal Na@blus see my “The Shaykh and the Community — Popular H¢anbalite Islam in 12th–13th Century Jabal Na@blus and Jabal Qasyu@n,” Studia Islamica 79 (1994), 103–20. On H¢anbal¸@ values see Nimrod Hurvitz, “Biographies and Mild Asceticism: A Study of Islamic Moral Imagination,” Studia Islamica 85 (1997), 41–66. 14 The text is devoid of discussion of sufi doctrine and hardly employs strictly sufi terminology. Equivocal term such as zuhd, baraka, s¢uh¢ba, awliya@’, fuqara@’, dayr, t¢ar¸@qa and abda@l appear, sometimes woven into the speech of villagers. This shows, I believe, how widely those concepts penetrated into the world of commoners. On the affinity between H¢anbal¸@s and sufis see George Makdisi, “The H¢anbali School and Sufism,” Bolétin de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas 15 (1979), 115–26; idem, “H¢anbalite Islam,” in Studies in Islam, ed. and trans. Merlin L. Swartz (Oxford, 1981), pp. 216–74. 15 That is, to fulfil the religious obligation of al-amr bi-l-ma‘ruf wa-l-nah¸@ ‘an al-munkar. See Michael Cook’s extensive Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2000), esp. chapters on H¢anbal¸@s. 16 The villages of Jabal Na@blus bred a surprising number of scholars from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. Al-Dabba@gh, relying on medieval sources, lists them, noting with sorrow the decline of Muslim learning, and even literacy, in those villages in more recent times. See various entries in Mus¢tafa@ M. al-Dabba@gh, Bila@duna Filast¢¸@n, 9 vols.

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was recognized as superior to that of those holding more formal positions of knowledge or power in their locality: the ima@m and the ra’¸@s (village headman). Men and women travelled to visit them, bringing them presents, seeking their advice and help, praying in their company, partaking in their food and heeding their preaching. In another composition of D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n, he presents an anecdote that illustrates the fine line between virtue and holiness, and the process of the “making” of holy men. It also helps us understand the somewhat perplexing multiplicity of shaykhs in as small a region as Jabal Na@blus. “We were attending a class by al-H¢a@fiz¢ [the muh¢addith ‘Abd al-Ghan¸@ al-Maqdis¸@] outdoors, on a very hot day,” he reports. “He said: ‘Let us go into the mosque.’ Just as we were ready to go, a cloud covered the sun, and he told us to sit down again. I saw our friends looking at each other, the word spreading among them: ‘Why, this is a kara@ma! There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky!’”17 The attribution of supernatural abilities to local, rather humble religious persons, is detected by Peter Brown regarding late antique Syria, and by Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana in contemporary Palestinian society.18 The kara@ma@t attributed to the shaykhs include taming fire and heat, the miraculous appearance of light, crossing distance in no time, enjoying the kindness of wild beasts and communication with domestic animals, conversing with devils, and — most important — influencing deeds and destinies of fellow humans. Especially frequent among their wonders is the reading of minds and hearts of others, and the possession of knowledge regarding future or faraway events, from the very banal to the fantastic. A shaykh may sense the sadness of his visitor, or identify the inner righteousness of an infamous sinner, or foresee the end of the Frankish occupation.19 The creation or multiplication of water and food is another recurrent wonder: the authority, hospitality and generosity of the shaykhs is expressed by their giving and sharing of food.20 (Amman, 1985). It is interesting to make a comparison with another pre-modern Muslim rural society, as presented in Nico van den Boogert’s The Literary Tradition of the Sous with an edition and translation of ‘The Ocean of Tears’ by Muh¢ammad Awzal (d. 1749) (Leiden, 1997). He points out the existence of a network of Qur’a@nic schools in that southern region of Morocco, the earliest dating back to the fifth/eleventh century. The schools, apparently attended by most young boys in every village, taught mainly the recitation of the Qur’a@n, but also produced a large number of ‘ulama@’ throughout the ages. These have been making an effort to transmit their knowledge to the illiterate population and have insisted on adherence to what they considered to be orthodox Islamic practice (ibid., pp. 9–28) just like the shaykhs of our text. I thank Michael Cook for having brought this book to my attention. 17 Ibn Rajab, Dhayl, 2:17. 18 Peter Brown, “Arbiters of Ambiguity: a Role of the Late Antique Holy Man,” Cassiodorus 2 (1996), 126–27; Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana, Speak, Bird, Speak Again (Berkeley, 1989), p. 42. 19 For a classification of kara@ma@t see Gril, Risa@la, pp. 56–58. 20 As in contemporary Palestinian Arab folktales (Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, pp. 37–40).

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All these themes may be well known to the student of medieval hagiographic literature, Islamic and non-Islamic. Indeed, the portraits of the shaykhs and some (though by no means all) of the tales of their wonders (kara@ma@t), as of those of most holy men, are made up of the topoi and literary conventions of the genre.21 Yet, in its very precise rural setting, specific location in time and wealth of detail on everyday life in Muslim villages under Frankish rule and after its termination, D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n’s text is unusual, if not unique. His stories are a treasure of information on the history, demography and geography of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and its aftermath.22 He supplies full names and genealogies, places of residence and locations of wonders (though no dates23 and very few biographical details), as well as insights on much broader issues, such as the religious life and social organization of rural communities, the grammar and lexicon of Palestinian Middle Arabic, and popular literature. In order to determine the audience for whom D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n collected and wrote the Kara@ma@t, and define its genre, several characteristics of the text should be taken into consideration. Some anecdotes clearly resemble the style of a folktale, although the narrative devices do not conform to that genre (lacking the typical opening and closing formulas, invocations, curses and exclamatory remarks).24 Most of the people who narrate the text and figure in the stories are peasants, but also jurisconsults (fuqaha@") from Damascus, and even from faraway Isfahan, are “interviewed” for information about the shaykhs. The text is written in low literary Arabic, with many colloquial insertions. Actually, some of the irregularities of its language seem to result from an awkward attempt to impose literary style on the speech of peasants. Dialogue, rather than narration, is prominent. The didactic purpose of stories about exemplary religious men is obvious, but 21 See Peter Brown, “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” Representations 1:2

(1983), 15. Since my previous work on the representation of the holy man in the text (“The Shaykh,” pp. 108–12; “Arabic Sources on Muslim Villagers under Frankish Rule,” in Clermont, pp. 109–10), the discussion of models, roles, perceptions and presentations of holy men in different societies has multiplied to an almost wondrous extent. For recent works see Sandro Sticca, ed., Saints. Studies in Hagiography (New York, 1996), pp. 1–22; The Journal of Early Christian Studies 6:3 (1998); The Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Jonathan Howard-Johnston and P. A. Hayward (Oxford, 1999). 22 Presented in my “Arabic Sources,” pp. 103–17. 23 The only historical event referred to explicitly is the reconquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. Dates of birth and death of some of the shaykhs and informants may be found in other biographical dictionaries. This information is valuable inasmuch as it allows the location (and interpretation) of the stories either under Frankish, or under Ayyubid rule. The stories of shaykhs Ray‘a@n (fol. 91b), Sa@lim (fol. 92a), Sala@ma of Saffa@r¸@n (fol. 92b), ‘Abd Alla@h of Funduq (fol. 94a–96a), ‘Abd Alla@h of Salmiya@ (fol. 96b–97b) and probably also‘Abd Alla@h of Dayr Is¢t¢iya@ (fol. 96b) belong to the first category; those of Sala@ma b. Nas¢r (fol. 92a), Sa‘diyya (fol. 92b), ‘Abd Alla@h al-T¢a@’¸@ (fol. 98a), ‘Abd Alla@h al-Badra@’¸@ (fol. 99a) and Shaykh Dhayya@l (fol. 120a) — to the second. I cannot date shaykhs Sa‘d (fol. 92a), Sha@fi‘ (fol. 93a) and Shu‘ayb (fol. 93a). 24 See Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, pp. 5–6, 417.

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then, some stories do not seem to convey any particular edifying message. The main merit of those stories seems to be a sense of humour (even of a risqué type) and a bit of suspense and surprise (the effect of a meeting with a devil, or a search after a lost beast) — sure devices for keeping the audience alert. None of the anecdotes, however, tell a truly dramatic, violent or exciting plot, one that can carry the audience far from the realities of ordinary life (as folktales usually do). Clearly, the narrators aim at telling a “true” story25 and do not intend to supply a primarily amusing pastime. Yet, the compiled information about the shaykhs can hardly be regarded as useful “reference material” for ‘ulama@', since the shaykhs were not transmitters, let alone authors, of religious texts. All in all the inclusion of the Kara@ma@t in the category of popular literature, recently defined in the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature as originally oral, fixed in a mixture of classical and middle Arabic, aiming primarily at uneducated members of the urban and rural middle classes,26 seems appropriate. However, following Evelyn Patlegean, who contested the supposition that early Byzantine hagiography was produced for the lower orders,27 I would speculate that the text was not created only for the consumption and edification of an audience of inferior social status. It is a text that could well have been shared by various members of the H¢anbal¸@ community of Jabal Qa@@syu@n (Damascus), men and women, learned and illiterate, who must have had a common and very personal interest in the deeds of the shaykhs. After all, their grandmothers and grandfathers, if not counted among the shaykhs, had emigrated from the villages of Jabal Na@@blus and resettled in the outskirts of Damascus under the leadership of one of them.28 That shaykh — Ah¢mad ibn Quda@@ma of Jamma@@‘¸@l (491–558/1098–1163) — was the author’s grandfather.29 The kara@ma@t of the shaykhs of the Holy Land had served concrete and 25 A popular technique of creating a semblance of “authenticity” is the use of

dialogue, rather than narration. See Rina Drory, “Dialogue in literature, medieval,” in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. Julia S. Meisami and Paul Starkey, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1998), 1:191. 26 Ulrich Marzolph, “Popular literature (al-adab al-sha‘b¸@),” in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature 2:610–11. 27 Evelyn Patlagean, “Ancient Byzantine Hagiography and Social History,” in Saints and their Cults. Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Stephen Wilson (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 101–22. See also P. Rousseau’s suggestion that such texts were actually targeted at an educated urban readership who liked to be transported in imagination into an exaggeratedly alien rural world: The Cult of the Saints, ed. Howard-Johnston, p. 8. 28 For the story of this hijra see D¢iya@" al-D¸@n al-Maqdis¸@, Sabab Hijrat al-Maqa@disa ila@ Dimashq, in Ibn T¢ulu@n, Al-Qala@’id al-Jawhariyya f¸@ Ta’r¸@kh al-S¢a@lih¢iyya, ed. M.A. Duhma@n (Damascus, 1949), pp. 26–39; Joseph Drory, “H¢anbalis of the Na@blus Region in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Asian and African Studies 22 (1988), 93–112. On the émigré community in Damascus see Leder, “Charismatic Scripturalism,” pp. 279–303. 29 I speculated on D¢iya" al-D¸@n’s personal motives in my “The Shaykh,” p. 106.

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immediate needs, and did not result in durable objects or sites for cult.30 The carefully collected stories of those wonders are, however, reminiscent of relics. Preserving the memory of the shaykhs and their villages for later generations, they also served the purposes of promoting Islamic devotion, strengthening H¢anbal¸@ group solidarity and morality, enhancing the sanctity of Palestine, and kindling the spirit of resistance to Latin occupation.

Villages and towns mentioned in the text.

30 Cf. pp. 142, 148 below.

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DANIELLA TALMON-HELLER

Al-H¢ika@ya@t al-Muqtabasa f¸@ Kara@ma@t Masha@yikh al-Ard¢ al-Muqaddasa – Arabic Text Note on Arabic transcription: I added and standardized diacritic marks, shaddas, hamza@s (only in those places I considered necessary to facilitate reading; otherwise I left the original spelling, that is without hamza@s) and punctuation marks, and divided the text into paragraphs, according to my understanding of the content. Vocalization marks appear in the transcription only if found in the original (that is, very sparsely). I did not correct what seemed to me to be grammatical errors or spelling mistakes.

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 The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings of the Shaykhs of the Holy Land Note on English translation and transliteration: I have tried to find the linguistic tone that conveys the spirit and atmosphere of the original and remains faithful to it, yet reads well in English. The result is a translation that follows the original very closely, but is not a word-for-word translation.31 It is accompanied by comments on a variety of subjects that arise in the text. I leave the linguistic and literary analysis to experts in those fields. In the transliteration of names of whose pronunciation I was uncertain (since the text is very rarely vocalized) I followed the variation, or one of several variations suggested in The Treasury of Arab Names.32 31 I consulted the notes on translation of Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, pp. 51–52; and Raphael Patai, Arab Folklore from Palestine and Israel (Detroit, 1998), pp. 4–7. 32 Sijill al-Asma@" al-‘Arab, ed. M. al-Zubayr et al., 4 vols. (Muscat-Oman, 1991). On the nomenclature in the society presented in the text (a subject I have not addressed) see

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Key to symbols: … = undeciphered word; word followed by [?] = not sure of the reading; word followed by (?) = not sure of translation. Alternative translations or explanations are offered within regular brackets ( ); additions to clarify text come within square brackets [ ].

[91b] In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise belongs to God alone. God bless Muh¢ammad and his family and grant them peace. With a ra@'.33 Ray‘a@@n. The old shaykh Abu@ Najm Sa‘d b. Khal¸@l b. H¢aydara b. H¢affa@@z¢ al-H¢a@rith¸@ — who was old, perhaps a hundred years old or more, but apart from being blind was in his full senses — told me in the village of Daja@@nya34 in the province of Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis):35 “A man from Aleppo came to my father, to Daja@@nya, with a load of silk and silver bowls. He said to my father: ‘O Abu@ Sa‘d,36 Shaykh Abu@ al-H¢usayn, the ascetic from Damascus,37 sent me to you so that you would accompany me to Asqalon, and I will sell my load there.’38 My father agreed. There was at our place a man called Ray‘a@@n. He lived in the village of Jaryu@t,39 and was one of the chaste, namely — righteous. He said to my father: ‘O Abu@ Sa‘d!’ He said: ‘At your service (labbayka)’. He said: ‘You shouldn’t go. I see the donkeys grazing and the camels resting on the ground.’ My father asked: ‘What should I do with this man?’ Then my father talked with the man, that is, with the owner of the cargo, who said: ‘I must go.’ Shaykh Benjamin Z. Kedar and Muhammad al-Hajjuj, “Muslim Villagers of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem: Some Demographic and Onomastic Data,” in Itinéraires d’Orient. Hommages á Claude Cahen, ed. Ryka Geselen (Bures sur Yvette, 1994) = Res Orientales 6:145–56. 33 The tenth letter of the Arabic alphabet. 34 Either Bayt Dajan, ten km southeast of Nablus (grid reference 185.177), or perhaps Ja@niya in the vicinity of Ramallah (grid reference 162.149). Detailed information about all the villages of the vicinity of Nablus in past and present times may be found in al-Dabba@gh, Bila@duna Filast¢¸@n 2/2:275–583. 35 Since one-third of the revenues of the villages of Jabal Na@blus were assigned to Jerusalem by Saladin in 558/1192, they were considered to be of the province (‘amal) of Jerusalem. R. Stephen Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols: the Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260 (Albany, 1977), p. 426 n.78. 36 Individuals are rarely referred to by their ism — first names (even by their spouses), but by their kunya as “Father/Mother of (name of first-born son, that is also the name of the paternal grandfather).” That is so even if their first-born is a female, or before they actually have children (Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, p. 14). 37 For a biography of Abu@ al-H¢usayn b. Ab¸@ ‘Abd Alla@h al-Maqdis¸@ (d. 548/1153–4) see Dhahab¸@, Siyar A‘la@m al-Nubala@", ed. B.‘A. al-Ma‘ru@f, 25 vols. (Beirut, 1986), 20:380–84. He was a well-known holy man, a performer of many kara@ma@t. The year of his death was also the year of the fall of Muslim Asqalon. 38 For other examples of transit commerce between the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the neighboring Muslim principalities and its hazards, see Hillenbrand, The Crusades, pp. 398–403. 39 Today pronounced Qaryu@t, seventeen km south-east of Nablus (grid reference 177.164).

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Ray‘a@@n repeated his words to my father, but my father said: ‘I am ashamed to let him down [literally: in front of this man].’ The man had with him a servant and two beasts, loaded with the silk and the silver. They travelled by night, and in the morning arrived at a place he named for me. My father said: ‘I went first, to be on the lookout, leaving both of the men and the beasts by trees [prepared, or suitable] for a limekiln.40 Two men, I mean Franks, came for firewood.41 They did not fail to notice the two men and the beasts, while I had missed them. When I saw them again, they were with the Franks, tied up, and the beasts with the cargo had been taken. I went back. Ray‘a@@n, who was in our house, said: Didn’t I tell you? Or something to this effect.’” [92a] Al-S¸@n.42 Sa@@lim b. Ab¸@ ‘Abd Alla@@h b. ‘Abd Alla@@h b. Sa@@lim b. Ab¸@ al-Fath¢ b. H¢asan b. Quda@@ma b. Ayyu@b b. ‘Abd Alla@@h b. Ra@@fi‘ Abu@ Ah¢mad al-Marda@@w¸@ al-Maqdis¸@, may God have mercy upon him. Abu@ Yah¢ya@@ Muh¢ammad b. Ab¸@ al-Maka@@rim b. Shukr b. Ni‘ma b. ‘Al¸@ b. Ab¸@ al-Fath¢ b. Ab¸@ al-Ghana@@’im al-Marda@@w¸@ told me there [in Marda@@],43 that Sa‘d b. Muh¢ammad, who was a shepherd, told him the following: “I saw in Sa@@lim’s vineyard two vines covered with excellent fruit,” and he described their abundance and quality, “so I told someone, and we went there at night. But all we found on these vines was one pecked grape. I took one of the branches and passed my hand over it, hoping to find something on it. My friend said: ‘May God punish you! There’s nothing on them!’ I said: ‘At suppertime the fruit was still there. It may have been picked after supper.’ Then we left. On the next day I returned to the vineyard to check the vines again, and there they were, overloaded with fruit. I said: ‘By God, this is a wondrous doing (kara@ma) of Shaykh Sa@@lim!’ I went to the well to water the flock, and on my way I met Sa@@lim. I was very much afraid of him. He said to me: ‘O Sa‘d, you came to the vineyard yesterday, but all you have found was one pecked grape! Isn’t it so?’ I said: ‘Yes. I repent through your good offices, O Shaykh.’” This is the gist of what he told me.44

40 Latu@n is a colloquial pronunciation of al-atu@n — limekiln. 41 According to Ellenblum’s survey, Franks did not actually reside in most of Jabal

Na@blus — a densely Muslim region: Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, pp. 222–29, 243–52. 42 The twelfth letter of the Arabic alphabet. 43 Fourteen km south of Nablus (grid reference 168.168). 44 Tales about holy men who cancel theft (often after death) are common in Christian and Muslim hagiography; e.g. Aaron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 47–48; Taufiq Canaan, Muslim Saints and Sanctuaries (Beirut, 1927), p. 256. Unlike many of those saints, the shaykhs depicted by D¢iya@" al-D¸@n al-Maqdis¸@ do not take vengeance; they move the transgressors to repentance. To borrow Peter Brown’s words, “dramatically stirring to contrition of the sinful human heart” was no small wonder in itself (Brown, “Arbiters of Ambiguity,” p. 139).

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Sa‘d b. ‘Abd Alla@@h b. Sa‘d Abu@ Muh¢ammad from the village of Q¸@ra,45 may God have mercy upon him.46 I heard the ima@m Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. Sa‘d b. ‘Abd Alla@@h [the shaykh’s son] say: “I saw Shaykh Abu@ ‘Abd al-Sala@@m, that is, Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd al-Rah¢ma@@n b. Isma‘¸@l, in my sleep after his death, and I asked him: ‘How are you?’ I don’t know what he said — I am in doubt. I asked him about my father and he said: ‘Your father is of the people of this cemetery?’ He said this as if he considered him fortunate on account of that. ‘He was written [or: assigned to be] a muezzin[?], but he did not stick to it(?).’” Abu@ Muh¢ammad Yu@nus b. ‘Abd al-Rah¢ma@@n b. Khad¢ir al-Maqdis¸@ [the shaykh’s grandson] told me that his mother, Fa@@t¢ima bint Sa‘d, told him that she saw her father praying at night with a pillar of light in front of him.47 I heard Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. ‘Amr b. ‘Abd Alla@@h say: “I saw my uncle Sa‘d in my sleep and said to him: By the name of God, other than whom there is no deity, are you my uncle Sa‘d? He said yes. I asked: What have you found with your Lord? He said: ‘Only good.’ I asked: Are you saved? He said: ‘I am.’ I asked: Are Munkar and Nak¸@r real?48 He said yes. I asked: Does the Qur’a@@n reach the dead?49 He said yes. I asked: How are the people of virtue [or: of good fortune] in their graves? He said: ‘Like a sleeper whom nothing disturbs.’ And the people of evil [or: of bad fortune]? I asked. ‘The opposite,’ he said. I asked: If a man is buried next to a righteous man, is it of benefit to him? He said: ‘Only his deeds can be of benefit to him.’”50

45 Fifteen km southwest of Nablus (grid 166.170). 46 His name appears in an audience certificate (sama@‘) of a text read in a study-session

in Damascus in 571/1176: Stephan Leder et al., Mu‘jam al-Sama‘a@t al-Dimashq¸@ya al-Mukhta@rah min sanati 550 ila@ 750H/ 1155 ila@ 1349M (Damascus, 1996), p. 144. Whether he made Damascus his permanent residence, we cannot ascertain. 47 A typical sign of holiness. On the sufi motif of light see Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Studies in al-Ghazza@li (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 267–69. 48 Two angels who question the dead about their God, their faith and their Prophet, and punish them if they do not answer correctly. 49 He may be referring to one of two questions: can the dead hear the Qur’a@n being read? Can they benefit from the reward due to the person who recites on their behalf? While the recitation of Qur’a@n in cemeteries was common practice, both questions were debated in medieval scholarly literature (see my “Funeral, Burial and Ziya@ra in Ayyu@bid Syria,” forthcoming [in Hebrew] in a memorial volume for Hava Lazarus-Yafeh). 50 The shaykh’s insistence on personal accountability of the dead and his denial of the desirability of burial next to saints’ graves, seems to be at odds with the popular belief of his day (see Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous, pp. 47–52). Still, the same view is voiced in a dream by the deceased ‘Abd Alla@h b. ‘Abd al-Ghan¸@, the uncle of our author (Ibn Rajab, Dhayl, 2:187).

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Sala@m @ a b. Nas¢r b. Miqda@@m Abu@ ‘Abd al-Wa@@hi¢ d al-Maqdis¸@51 from the village of Jamma@@‘¸@l,52 may God have mercy upon him. Shaykh Abu@ Ka@@mil Khad¢ir b. Ka@@mil al-Dala@@l al-Mu‘bid told me in Damascus: “A member of my family told me that Shaykh Sala@@ma — or perhaps he said Abu@ ‘Abd al-Wa@@h¢id — was sick, and he wanted to see me. So I took a piece of sugar53 and hid it in my sleeve. I went to see him and asked: ‘What is it you need?’ He said: ‘I need what you brought me in your sleeve, or as he said it.’” This is the gist of what he told me. I heard my mother say: “Abu@ ‘Abd al-Wa@@hi¢ d, God’s mercy upon him, and your father, often used to read in our old mosque.54 Your father said that whenever Abu@ ‘Abd al-Wa@@hi¢ d came to the verse ‘And verily the hereafter will be greater in degrees and greater in preferment’ [17:21] he would cry bitterly.”55 [92b] Sa‘diyya bint al-Shaykh Sa@@lim b. Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Umm Ish¢a@q, may God have mercy upon her.56 I heard Abu@ Muh¢ammad Ish¢a@q b. Khad¢ir say: “Once — I was just a child then — we were having a cold dish. I came to my mother, and said: ‘Why have you not warmed it?’ She went to the kitchen and I heard her lighting a fire. Then she brought it in quickly, and it was hot. I ate two bites and got up to see, and saw no fire there at all.” This is the gist of what he told me. And I heard him say: “My father told me: ‘There was no blessing (baraka) in my home after your mother [died].’” He also told me the following: “My father told me that once he came back from town to the mountain and entered the mosque57 to pray, and I joined him. He asked: ‘Who told you [that I am here]?’ I said: ‘My mother told me: Your father is in the mosque. Go to him.’ This is the gist of what he said.”58 51 He arrived in Damascus with his wife and four children in 568/1173 (J. Drory,

“H¢anbalis,” p. 111). His name also appears in the audience certificate mentioned above. 52 Eleven km south-west of Nablus (grid reference 168.170), home to the clan of Banu@ Quda@ma, and probably one of the most important villages in the region. Today pronounced as Jamma@‘¸@n. 53 On the production of sugar in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, see Richard, “Agricultural Conditions,” p. 259. 54 Al-Masjid al-‘At¸@q on the slopes of Jabal Qa@syu@n (Ibn T¢u@lu@n, al-Qala@’id, p. 41). 55 Typically, the pious man is moved to tears by Qur’a@nic passages. 56 Most likely the daughter of Shaykh Sa@lim of Marda@ (above), and the sister of Ah¢mad b. Sa@lim al-Marda@w¸@, whom Ibn Rajab mentions as a man of learning and wonders, quoting a lost entry of D¢iya@" al-D¸@n’s Kara@ma@t (Ibn Rajab, Dhayl 2:103; Leder, Mu‘jam, p. 174). 57 The town is probably Damascus and the mountain Jabal Qa@syu@n. 58 Sa‘diyya is the only shaykha in the extant text, but women appear in it in various other roles: as informants, admirers of the shaykhs, regular worshippers and female Genie. On holy women in Islam see Annemarie Schimmel’s introduction to Margaret Smith, Ra@bi‘a the Mystic (Cambridge, 1984), pp. XXVII–XXXII, 1–3. On the cult of female saints in early twentieth-century Palestine, see Canaan, Muslim Saints, p. 236.

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Sala@m @ a of Saffa@@r¸@n,59 one of the villages of Na@@blus. I heard the venerable shaykh Abu@ ‘Abd al-Rah¢¸@m ‘Uthma@@n b. ‘Umar b. ‘Al¸@ b. ‘Umar b. ‘Uthma@@n, known as Ibn al-‘Ajam¸@60 say: “My father told me that Shaykh Sala@@ma of Saffa@r¸@n asked his mother to make him an omelet, so she did. That day was the day of ‘Arafa,61 and he put the omelet between two pieces of bread, wrapped it in a piece of cloth and went to ‘Arafa@t@ . A group of people from the villages saw him there and greeted him, and he shared his bread and omelet with them. He stayed three days until he had completed the h¢ajj, and then he came back. When those who had seen him there returned, they said: ‘Let’s go to Shaykh Sala@@ma, to see him.’ So they went to him and bestowed upon him the greetings for the h¢ajj and for the traveler returning from a journey.62 He asked: ‘What h¢ajj?’ and they said: ‘But we saw you there and ate with you on ‘Arafa@@t?!’ Or something to this effect.”63 And I heard him relate what his father had told him, that eleven men were busy harvesting at some place near Saffa@@r¸@n, fearing the infidels (kuffa@r), and a party of them actually arrived. They said: “We were afraid and said: ‘O God, for the sake of the shaykhs [or: we seek the protection of the shaykhs] — save us from them!’64 And we stayed where we were, and they passed near us and did not disturb us, as if they hadn’t seen us,” or something to this effect. I asked: “Who are the shaykhs [you mentioned]?”65 And he named Shaykh Sala@@ma, for he is known among them. [93a] Al-Sh¸@n.66 Sha@@fi‘ from the village of Lisa@@n al-Wa@@d.67 I heard the old shaykh Abu@ Shahwa@@n Khad¢ir b. al-Sayya@@r b. Mula@@‘ib of the people of Kafr H¢a@ris,68 may God have mercy upon him, there [in Kafr H¢a@ris], say: “One of the people of Lisa@@n al-Wa@@d, a village near Wa@@d al-J¸@b, Sha@@fi‘ was his name, was blessed with kara@ma@t.” I asked him: Have you seen any of his kara@ma@t? He said: “One day I was at his place, when a woman brought him 59 Fifteen km northwest of Nablus (grid reference 160.185). Today pronounced

Saqqa@r¸@n. 60 Al-‘Ajam¸@ signifies a non-Arab. 61 The second day of the h¢ajj, on which the pilgrims gather to listen to a sermon on Mount ‘Arafa@t, fifteen km east of Mecca. 62 Usually, “May God make your reward great,” and “Praised be God for the safe return.” 63 This story seems to indicate that under Frankish rule pilgrimage to Mecca was possible, as indeed was travel in general. 64 In Arabic: bi-h¢urmat al-masha@yikh. For a discussion of the root h¢rm (sacred, forbidden) see Shaun Marmon, Eunuchs & Sacred Bounderies in Islamic Society (New York, 1995), pp. 6, 12. It is worth noting that the people who cry out the names of their shaykhs invoke God for help, thus designating the holy men merely the role of intercessors. 65 Note the author’s technique of interviewing. 66 The thirteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet. 67 Perhaps Silwa@d (grid reference 174.154), or Khirbat Burj al-Lissa@na, near Sinj¸@l. 68 Fifteen km southwest of Nablus (grid reference 165.169). Today pronounced as Kafl H¢a@ris.

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a basket of grapes. She emptied it in front of him, and he turned it over, took a cluster and said: ‘O Mother of So-and-so, why did you pick this cluster?’ She said: ‘O Shaykh, I picked it from a vineyard of our relatives[?]; I saw that it was pretty, and we are at ease(?) with them.’ He said: ‘O Mother of So-and-so, don’t do such a thing again’, or something to this effect.”69 Shu‘ayb al-Muqaffa‘, who lived in Ramla, may God have mercy upon him. The venerable shaykh Abu@ al-‘Abba@@s Ah¢mad b. Mas‘u@d al-Yama@@n¸@ told me in Jabal Mashhad Dayr ‘Amma@@r70 in the Holy Land (Ard¢ Bayt al-Maqdis) that trustworthy people had told him about a man called Shu‘ayb al-Muqaffa‘, who had a shriveled hand.71 “One of his friends came to him and said: ‘My wife has just given birth, and is craving for khab¸@s (sweet made out of dates and butter).’72 He said: ‘Go to the market and collect watermelon rinds you will find there.’ So he went and brought a basketful. He said: ‘Go and wash them well.’ So he went and washed them. He said: ‘Bring me a pot.’ He put the rinds in the pot and lit a fire. Once it was boiling, he put his hand in, and I think that he said that he stirred with his hand. Then out came the finest khab¸@s, and he sent it to her. One of his disciples said: ‘This is an easy thing to do.’ So he went and did what the shaykh had done and put his hand into the pot and got it burnt. When he came to the shaykh with a bandaged hand, the shaykh asked: ‘What happened to your hand?’ He said: ‘Nothing. It hurts.’ He said: ‘You reckoned that all hands are like this shriveled hand of mine?!’” This is the gist of what he told me. I heard this Shaykh Ah¢mad say: “We were told that in Ramla there was a righteous man called ‘Al¸@ al-Khawwa@@s, who was blessed with kara@ma@t. There had been a dispute between him and Shu‘ayb al-Muqaffa‘. Once, in some place, Shaykh Shu‘ayb suddenly came upon Ibl¸@s who was holding a piece of cotton. He put it in his mouth, chewed on it, and then spat it out. The shaykh asked: ‘Accursed One, what are you doing?’ Ibl¸@s said: ‘This, whoever steps on it with his bare feet annuls his prayer,’73 or perhaps he said: ‘His feet will be defiled and his prayer annulled.’ Then he added: ‘As for the dispute between you and 69 The anecdote portrays three merits of the shaykh: his “second sight” (he knows that the grapes are stolen), his virtue (he refuses food that is considered h¢ara@m — forbidden, in pious circles), his performance of al-amr bi-l-ma‘ru@f (applying the “soft” method of qawl bi-l-lisa@n — oral rebuke). See Cook, Commanding Right, pp. 96–97, 106. 70 Twenty-two km northeast of Ramla (grid reference 159.152). 71 That is the meaning of muqaffa‘. 72 Also today, pregnant women and women after childbirth may expect to be pampered with special foods (see Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, p. 28). 73 The devil; often associated with defilement (here he attacks the man who stands barefoot, ready for prayer), temptation and provoking strife. See Peter J. Awn, Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in Sufi Psychology (Leiden, 1983), pp. 51–52, 79–90; A. J. Wensinck, “Ibl¸@s,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn, 10 vols. (Leiden 1960–2000), 3:669. The folktale-like opening of the anecdote is atypical of our text; most anecdotes are located with precision. It is, however, very appropriate for a meeting with the devil.

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Shaykh ‘Al¸@, whenever people like the two of you quarrel, I hasten to make peace between them.’ The shaykh said: ‘There is no good in peace made by you,’ or something to this effect.” [93b] Al-‘Ayn.74 Those whose name is ‘Abd Alla@@h. [94a] ‘Abd Alla@@h b. Ah¢mad b. Muh¢ammad b. Bukayr75 of Funduq,76 may God have mercy upon him. What he said about things hidden from the eye (mughayyaba@t) and things of that sort. I heard the venerable shaykh Abu@ Ah¢mad ‘Abd al-Ha@@d¸@ b. Yu@suf b. Muh¢ammad b. Quda@@ma al-Maqdis¸@ say: “We were told about Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq that his disciples came to him and said: ‘O Shaykh! Shaykh ‘Uthma@@n b. al-Yama@@n¸@ … … and he has [or: he can do] this and that.’ The shaykh did not answer. Afterwards they went to the village of [email protected] The shaykh was in a good mood and he said: ‘If their shaykh can judge things according to their appearance, I can judge things hidden from the eye. So-and-so belongs to the people of paradise, and So-and-so — to the people of hell.’ Then he bit his finger, as if regretting what he had said. And the man about whom he had said that he belonged to the people of paradise was a rascal; I think he said that this man was known to drink wine; while the man about whom he said that he belonged to the people of hell was a muezzin[?], who used to pray. After some time it became known that the man about whom he had said that he belonged to the people of hell entered a church and became a Christian,78 while the other man made the pilgrimage to Mecca and returned to God,” or something to this effect. I heard the ima@m Abu@ T¢a@hir b. Abu@ al-Fad¢l al-Funduq¸@ say: “My father told me that once, when he was at Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h’s, someone said to him that Ibn al-Yama@@n¸@ could see things hidden from the eye [or: can expose theft(?)]. Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h said: ‘If only he could distinguish between the people of paradise and the people of hell!’ or as he had said it.”79 The venerable shaykh Abu@ al-H¢asan ‘Al¸@ b. Nas¢r b. Ibrah¸@m, the ima@m of the village of Sinj¸@l,80 told me: “My brother Ibrah¸@m told me that there was a Maghrib¸@ called Abu@ al-Qa@@sim — I think he said that that man lived in 74 The eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet. 75 One of his descendants, ‘Al¸@ b. ‘Abd al-H¢am¸@d al-Funduq¸@ (d. 707/1307–8), was a

jurisconsult in Nablus (al-Dabba@gh, Bila@duna Filast¢¸@n, 2/2:369). 76 Twelve km northwest of Nablus (grid reference 163.177). 77 Fifteen km west of Nablus (grid reference 159.182). 78 This is the only case of conversion to Christianity mentioned in the text, unfortunately with no detail. For cases of religious conversion under the Franks see Benjamin Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission. European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), pp. 74–84. 79 It seems as if the main purpose of the story is to establish the spiritual hierarchy of the shaykhs. 80 The large Frankish fortified village of Castellum Sancti Egidii, twenty km south of Nablus (grid reference 175.160). See Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, pp. 103–9.

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‘Aru@ra@@81 — who did not follow the sunna (the way of the Prophet), or followed an undesirable path. He used to ask the people: ‘Don’t you want me to feed you bread crumbs with honey and olive oil?’82 The people did not answer. He made a sign with his hand, and a tube came from his finger flowing either with honey or with olive oil. The people were seduced, and a large crowd began to follow him. The shaykhs gathered and said: ‘Whom have we but Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq to complain to?!’83 So they went to Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq and found him performing ablutions. Usually, he would not to talk to anyone until he was done,84 but when he saw them he said: ‘The Prophet, God’s blessings upon him, said: The day of judgement shall not come until many Dajja@l (Antichrists) and many swindlers appear.’85 The shaykhs said: ‘This, coming from the shaykh, is sufficient for us.’ When he finished his ablutions he asked them: ‘What has brought the shaykhs?’ They said: ‘We have come to greet the shaykh and visit him,’ or something to this effect. He said: ‘Haven’t you all gathered for some purpose?’ They said: ‘O Shaykh, we shall not conceal from you the case of this man.’ Then he signalled with his hand: ‘Wait patiently for a little while.’ And in a short time that man could no longer do anything [extraordinary].” ‘Al¸@, our shaykh, said: “My brother Ibrah¸@m told me that he saw that man making baskets and selling them and living off the work of his hands. I myself asked him about it, and he explained: ‘I was married to a woman of the jinn (genii),’86 he either said that she was a sister of an angel or The textual evidence about an ima@m (prayer-leader) in that village in the first half of the thirteenth century combines nicely with the archaeological evidence of the conversion of its Frankish church into a mosque, to attest to the quick resettlement of the Frankish village by Muslims after its conquest by Saladin in 1187. That is, if indeed there had been no mixed Muslim-Latin villages in the area, as claims Ellenblum (ibid., p. 283). 81 Twenty-two km south of Nablus (grid reference 166.161). 82 Today honey is still a rare and expensive food (Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, p. 56), and olive oil is Jabal Na@blus’s most important agricultural product. See Bashara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine. Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Na@blus, 1700–1900 (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 33 and 132. 83 Note that the Maghrib¸@’s extraordinary powers are perceived as trickery, not as kara@ma@t. D¢iya@" al-D¸@n’s implied explanation is the man’s lack of piety, but we may speculate that his specific ethnic origin, or merely his foreignness, made him an unwelcome competitor with local shaykhs (who also competed among themselves, as in the previous anecdote). On the Maghrib¸@ as sorcerer and master of the jinn see Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights – a Companion (Harmondsworth, 1994), pp. 185–86; Patai, Arab Folklore, p. 103. It should be mentioned that Maghrib¸@s enjoyed also a contrary image, that of devout Muslims: see Louis Pouzet, “Maghrébins à Damas au VIIe/XIIIe sieŸcle,” Bulletin des études orientales 28 (1975), 167–71. 84 Total concentration in the performance of any religious duty is a desired trait of the sufi and ascetic. 85 An impostor, or Antichrist. The shaykh quotes a h¢ad¸@th attributed to the Prophet, of which there are many versions. See for example Ibn H¢anbal, Musnad, ed. Muh¢ammad S. I. Sama@ra et al., (Beirut, 1993), 2:16. 86 On the jinn in religious and literary medieval Arabic sources see Duncan B. Macdonald, “Djinn,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn, 2:542–48; Irwin, Arabian Nights, pp. 202–6.

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his daughter, ‘and her helpers used to pour honey or oil on my hand whenever I wished it. When she died it all stopped.’” This story is verified by what Abu@ Ah¢mad ‘Abd al-Ha@@d¸@ b. Yu@suf had told me. He said: “Baraka@@t al-Qawwa@@l (lit.: the reciter) al-Dumya@@t¸¢ @ told me that a Maghrib¸@ came to ‘Aru@ra@.@ The people said: ‘We shall not pray behind this man until we consult Shaykh Ah¢mad of Jamma@‘¸@l.’87 So they went to consult him, and he said: ‘Until we consult Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq. Let us go to him, O Baraka@@t, you and me.’ So we went to him and found him performing ablutions under his palm tree. We greeted him and he turned to us and said: ‘The Prophet, God’s blessings upon him, has said: ‘The day of judgement shall not come until that many Dajja@l appear.’ We said: ‘This, coming from the shaykh, is sufficient for us’.” I heard Shaykh Abu@ Ah¢mad Muh¢ammad b. Ab¸@ ‘At¢t¢a@f al-Maqdis¸@ say that Abu@ Wah¢sh¸@ from Majdal88 had told him that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h from Funduq — here our shaykh hesitated and said: “or Shaykh Muh¢ammad” — had said to the ra’¸@s (headman) of the village:89 “O So-and-so, I would like you to go to Nablus to buy me a water-jug for ablutions.” The ra’¸@s asked: “Don’t you need anything but the purchase of the water-jug?” The shaykh said no, and the ra’¸@s set off. I think he said that it was in the afternoon, so he went quickly. He kept saying to himself: “The shaykh has sent me just for a water-jug. I may make it to town before they close the shops.” He arrived and found one shop still open. He bought the jug and said to himself: “I shall spend the night in the Friday-mosque and not go to anyone, until I leave tomorrow morning.” He sat down in the western side of the Gharb¸@90 Friday-mosque. There were three fuqara@’ (poor men, or sufis) there, and he sat with them. Since nobody came to bring them anything, he went to the market and spent there a dinar he had with him, to buy them bread and something to go with it. He came back and said: “Eat and pray for me,” and they ate. When morning came, he went back to the village, to the shaykh, who said: “O So-and-so, I know that you had tired yourself and that on your way you were wondering why had I bothered you only for a water-jug. However, I had sent you because of the three men for whom you spent the dinar and bought bread. I have chosen you for that. Those

87 On Shaykh Ah¢mad Ibn Quda@ma (491–558/1098–1163), the author’s uncle, see reference in n. 28 above. Note that villagers ask for a fatwa@ (legal opinon) when in doubt as to the correct religious practice. 88 Most likely Majdal Ban¸@ Fad¢l, twenty km southeast of Nablus (grid reference 184.165). 89 See Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Lesser Officials in Latin Syria,” English Historical Review 87 (1972), 9–15; Yehoshua Frenkel, “Agrarian Society in Palestine in the Mamluk Period,” Cathedra 77 (1995), 25–30 [in Hebrew]. Ellenblum estimates that most of the holders of the office of ra’¸@s were local Christians: Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, p. 203 n. 22. Note that the ra’¸@s is prepared to go on errands for the shaykh. 90 One of the neighbourhoods of Nablus.

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three are of the people who uphold the earth,”91 or something to this effect. The ra’¸@s was gladdened and kissed the shaykh’s hand. The venerable faq¸@h (jurisconsult) Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. Ah¢mad b. Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd Alla@@h b. Ah¢mad b. Muh¢ammad b. Bukayr told me in Nablus that his father had heard the following story from a man who used to serve the shaykh, his grandfather ‘Abd Alla@@h. He described that man, whose name was Ah¢mad and his nickname was Ju@lah (or Jawlah), as righteous.92 He said: “The shaykh’s she-ass disappeared. The shaykh asked me to bind the saddle on the she-ass. I said: ‘O Shaykh, it got lost.’ He said: ‘So saddle the donkey for me.’ I did. He rode on it and I followed, walking behind him, until we arrived at a wadi called wadi T¢afsha@@, where he diverted the head of his donkey away from the road, and there was the she-ass, devoured by a beast of prey. The shaykh returned to the road and continued riding towards Zayta@@.93 I said to myself: ‘He is going to Zayta@@.’ But the shaykh did not get off there. ‘He will get off in Jamma@@‘¸@l’, I said to myself. But he did not get off there either. ‘He is going to Ruwaysu@n,’94 I said to myself, and he actually did. He said to me: ‘Go to that house and cry out: O Abu@ So-and-so!’ I went there and called the man, and he came out to him. The shaykh said: ‘O So and-so, tell the man who is in your closet to come out to me.’ I think that he said: ‘He isn’t there,’ but the shaykh said: ‘He is, and he is wounded.’95. And there actually was a thief in his home. The man went to him and said: ‘Get up and come out.’ He said: ‘Do you want to destroy me and yourself?’ He said: ‘You must come out.’ So he came out and went up to the shaykh. The shaykh said: ‘O So and-so, what have you done? You have taken my beast, and while you gained nothing by it, you caused us harm.’ He said: ‘O Shaykh, I had not known that it belonged to you.’ The shaykh said: ‘This conduct of yours will bring you no good.’ And indeed, some time later he was captured by the infidels and killed.” [95a] Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Muh¢ammad b. Ah¢mad b. Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd Alla@@h al-Maqdis¸@ told me a story about a man who was the ima@m of his village, who upon seeing the people coming to visit the shaykh — that is Shaykh ‘Abd 91 Namely, of the second rank of awliya@" (literally: friends of God) — righteous men of whom the world is never destitute. Hierarchies of awliya@" and stories of their wonders appear in sufi literature as early as the third/ninth century. Typically, their holiness is hidden from the eyes of ordinary men, but recognized by their own kind: see D. Carra de Vaux, “Wal¸@,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 10 vols. (Leiden, 1913–36, repr. 1987), 8:109–111. For a formulation of this doctrine by the prominent H¢anbal¸@ scholar Muwaffaq al-D¸@n ibn Quda@ma (d. 620/1223) see George Makdisi, Ibn Quda@ma’s Censure of Speculative Theology (London, 1962), p. 23 of the Arabic text. 92 Kha@dim is either a household servant or a servant of a sufi master or community — a temporary or life-long designation (Gril, Risa@la, p. 41). 93 Near Jamma@‘¸@l (grid reference 167.171). 94 Most likely nearby Khirbat Ruwaythu@n (grid reference 171.171). 95 Probably by the beast that attacked the ass. The shaykh’s knowledge of this detail adds credibility to his claim that the man is indeed there.

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Alla@@h — would say: “I am more learned than he is, and better!”96 but he did not see the people stop visiting97 the shaykh. So he said to himself: “I shall go and see this shaykh for myself.” So he set off, taking a basket of cheese with him, and when he arrived at the shaykh’s village he left the basket on a tree, or a bush. Then he went in and greeted the shaykh. The shaykh said: “O So-and-so, an animal came and ate from the cheese that you had brought us and had left in some place. Go and bring it before it is all gone.” He went and saw that two or three pieces had already been eaten. He brought the rest to the shaykh and said: “I repent to God, O Shaykh. Never again shall I say but anything but good about you!” I heard the ima@m Abu@ T¢a@hir b. al-Fad¢l say: “My uncle ‘Abd al-Wal¸@ said: ‘Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h told me: Go to a certain place; you will find there a present that someone has brought us, with honey in it. I went and found it, just as he had said.’” Abu@ T¢a@hir told me that his father heard Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h from Funduq say that people complained to him about what they suffered from the Franks, and said: “When shall we be liberated from them?” He said: “Before the end of this century, and the proof is that if they do not return that what has been entrusted to their care, perfidy will appear amongst them,”98 or something to this effect. I heard the ima@m Abu@ Ah¢mad ‘Abd al-Ha@@d¸@ say: “We were told about many kara@ma@t that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq had performed — that whenever he would say that such and such would happen, it would be just as he had said. For example, they say about him that he said that vines would be planted in Wa@@d¸@ al-J¸@b, while it was still scrub country, serving as a passage for bandits, or something like that. And indeed we have seen vines there.”99 The faq¸@h Abu@ al-Fath¢ b. [empty space] told us in Baysa@@n:100 “We heard that one day, when Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h was harvesting with two men with a sickle[?]101 They said: ‘The days of the occupation by the infidels … …, and 96 Erudition was greatly admired in the community we are dealing with — needless to say by the author, who was a scholar — but it was not a prerequisite of sainthood, as we see here. That is not to say that ‘ilm and kara@ma@t were mutually exclusive in the mind of contemporaries, on the contrary: see the biography of the jurisconsult Muwaffaq al-D¸@n ibn Quda@ma (Ibn Rajab, Dhayl 2:138–140) and the author’s interesting discussion about the difference between ulama@" and masha@yikh (ibid., 16). 97 Literally — performing a ziya@ra, that is — a pilgrimage to a holy site or holy man. 98 The shaykh seems to be alluding to sura 4:58 “Lo! Alla@h commandeth you that ye restore deposits to their owners, and, if ye judge between mankind, that ye judge justly.” (trans. Marmeduke M. Pickthall). Since Latin rule ended in Mt Nablus in 583/1187, that is before the end of the sixth/twelfth century, we may credit the shaykh with being cautious but correct in his prophecy. 99 On vineyards in Outremer see Richard, “Agricultural Conditions,” p. 260. 100 The town of Beit She‘an (Scythopolis) in the Jordan valley. On Baysa@n in the early Muslim and Crusading periods see Moshe Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae, 2 (Leiden, 1991), pp. 198–204. 101 Note that the shaykh works in the fields, like other villagers. The same phenomenon was described in mid-twentieth century Morocco by Ernst Gellner,

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remember[?] this day.’ And indeed, the hour on which he had spoken was their last.” Abu@ al-Fath¢ told me, also in Baysa@@n, that once when he had guests he said to his son: “Go to the vineyard and bring us the best grapes.” He found grapes and brought them and ... [the rest is missing]. I heard Shaykh Abu@ Ah¢mad Nas¢r in Marda@102 @ say: “My mother told me that her brother Yu@suf b. H¢asan said: ‘Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h from Funduq told me that this village, Marda@@, will grow and expand, but a man of Banu@ Jahm will destroy it. And he saw [in a dream?] men flying in the air, and said: ‘There will be no survivor, but one man,’ or something to this effect.”103 I heard Z¢ar¸@fa bint Ibrah¸@m say: “There was in Marda@@ a woman of the Banu@ Ayyu@b who would each year turn sixty yards (dhira‘) of her spun yarn into mantles (maya@zir), thirty of them for the shaykhs.104 Once she gave one to Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq, but he gave it back saying: ‘Take it, it appears to me to be full of scorpions,’ and I think he said: ‘That is because you had asked a t¢a@’if (associate of the devil?) to hand the spindle over to you, and he did.’”105 The ima@m Abu@ al-T¢a@hir b. Abu@ al-Fad¢l al-Maqdis¸@ said: “My father told me that he heard from a man from …, whose name was ‘Abduh, that he had gone with shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h to a place he named. The shaykh was riding a donkey. When they arrived at some place, he asked the man to help him off the donkey. While doing so, part of his thigh was exposed. He [‘Abduh] said: ‘I said to myself: I wish the shaykh had a pair of pantaloons (sharwa@l).’ The shaykh said:

regarding mid-twentieth century Morocco: See his Saints of the Atlas (Chicago, 1966), p. 156. See discussion of the various models of relationships between holy men and the society around them in Peter Brown, “The Saint as Exemplar,” pp. 11–13; idem, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, 1971–1997,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6:3 (1998), 368–69. 102 Two km south of Jamma@‘¸@l (grid reference 168.168). 103 The story is enigmatic, especially the men flying in the air. Perhaps the shaykh foresees the destruction of the village by a Bedouin from the clan of Banu@ Jahma. On Bedouins in medieval Northern Palestine see (al-Dabba@gh, Bila@duna Filast¢¸@n, 3/2:502); Abraham N. Poliak, “L’Arabisation de l’orient sémitique,” Révue des études orientales 12 (1938), 56, 60. 104 According to Doumani a dhira‘ of fabric was 68 cm long in the eighteenth century. Even if weights and measures vary from region to region and even from village to village (Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, pp. 247–48), it seems a big job for one woman. The word mayzar has various meanings besides mantle: see R.P.A. Dozy, Dictionnaire détaillé de noms des vêtements chez les arabes (Amsterdam, 1845). 105 Enigmatic. Scorpions apparently stand for something repugnant, as in the anecdote about Ziya@da al-muwallah (the holy fool) who recoiled at the touch of money “as if it were a scorpion or a snake’s head” (Gril, Risa@la, p. 87 of Arabic text). An alternative translation of ‘aqa@rib (scorpions) may be “offspring of Ibl¸@s” (see Toufic Fahd, “Anges, démons et djinns en Islam,” in Sources orientales VIII: Génies, anges et démons [Paris, 1971], p. 178) and the dubious helper, the t¢a’@ if, may also be connected to the devil. Hence the woman’s extraordinary output.

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‘O So-and-so, I have two at home, but they bother me, or something to this effect.’” Those who said that he was one of the friends of God (awliya@') [95b] The jurisconsult (faq¸@h) Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h b. Ah¢mad b. Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd Alla@@h told me in the town of Nablus what he had heard about his grandfather ‘Abd Alla@@h. “One day, after he had prayed in public with his nephews, a man dressed in rags entered. The shaykh looked at him and signalled to him: ‘Will you eat something?’ The man nodded his head: ‘O, Yes’. So the shaykh said to someone: ‘Go and bring him something.’ He brought bread and a stew, and the man ate. Then the shaykh signalled again: ‘Will you eat?’ And the man nodded again. This happened four times. On the fifth time, the man said no and went away. They began to talk, and one of them said: ‘This man has fire in his belly!’ Another said: ‘The devil!’106 The shaykh heard them and said: ‘Say nothing but good of this man, for he is one of the forty “substitutes” (abda@l)107 and he hadn’t eaten for forty days until this time. Go after him and ask him to pray for you.’ So they followed him and caught up with him. He said: ‘Did you … on me?’ and they said ‘Yes.’ He prayed for them and said: ‘Go back to your shaykh. If I am one of the forty, he is one of the three.’”108 Some of his kara@ma@t, God’s mercy upon him. I heard Z¢ar¸@fa bint Ibrah¸@m in Jabal Qasyu@n, may God have mercy upon her, say: “‘Abd Alla@@h b. ‘Askar told us that he was with Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Funduq in S¢art¢a,109 and there was no water in its … The shaykh asked: ‘Can you keep a secret?’ We said yes, and water began to flow in the threshing-floor. We used it for ablutions, and then it stopped.”110 The faq¸@h Abu@ T¢a@hir b. Ab¸@ al-Fad¢l b. Ab¸@ T¢a@hir b. Ab¸@ al-Fad¢l al-Maqdis¸@ told me that his father had heard from Ju@lah (Jawlah?), a man from his village, that he had been with Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h in H¢abla,111 and they returned to the village at dawn and wanted to pray. “We said: ‘We don’t have water.’ He said: ‘But yes. Go to a certain place.’ I did, and I found a pool of water and drew from it for our ablutions. We stayed in the village, and later on I returned to 106 Insatiable appetite is a known to be a characteristic of devils (see Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, p. 88). 107 Righteous men belonging to the hierarchy of the awliya@’. On the abda@l’s special connection to Syria see Goitein, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem,” p. 144; Amikam Elad, “The Caliph Abu@ ’l-‘Abba@s al-Saffa@h¢, the First ‘Abba@sid mahd¸@,” in Mas’at Mosheh. Studies in Jewish and Islamic Culture Presented to Moshe Gil, ed. Ezra Fleischer et al. (Tel-Aviv, 1998), pp. 38–49 [in Hebrew]. 108 That means that he is classified higher in the hierarchy of saints. 109 Twenty-one km south west of Nablus (grid reference 158.167). 110 The miraculous appearance of water is a recurrent theme in hagiographical literature. Note, however, that here — as in most other anecdotes in the text — the miracle serves a practical immediate need, and is discontinued once having fulfilled it, without creating a site for the cult of the holy man (as far as we can tell from the text). 111 One of the neighbourhoods of Nablus.

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that place, but found no water there — it was a threshing-floor with dirt in it, or something to this effect.” This is the gist of what he told me. I heard the ima@m of Sinj¸@l, Abu@ al-H¢asan ‘Al¸@ b. Nas¢r b. Ibrah¸@m, in Nablus, say: “My father told me that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of the Banu@ Bukayr would see devils. One day he saw the devil passing, and asked him: ‘Where are you going, O Accursed?’ He said: ‘What have you against me, to prevent me from walking down the roads?’ And after an instant he suddenly said: ‘You have arrived.’ And he added: ‘I went to the people of Jims¢a@fu@t¢,112 who were preparing fr¸@ka (roasted green wheat),113 and I had left them blackening each others’ faces and killing each other.’ The Shaykh said to the people of Funduq: ‘Rise and go to the people of Jims¢a@fu@t¢, for they are killing each other.’ They went there and found that it was so, and the reason was the fr¸@ka, as he had said,” or something like that. The faq¸@h Muh¢ammad b. Ah¢mad b. Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd Alla@@h told me about his grandfather ‘Abd Alla@@h. He said: “One of the people of Na@@blus came to him once, carrying dried fruit as a present for the shaykh.114 The shaykh asked him: ‘How are you getting along?’ The man said: ‘In a year I manage to make enough for six months [only], and for the rest — God the Almighty will help.’ The shaykh gave him two kaylajas115 of wheat and said: ‘Put it on your wheat,’ or perhaps he said ‘in your cellar (or pestle).’116 The man brought the wheat home, and put it on his own grain and they ate from it for eight full months. He asked his wife: ‘What …?’ She said: ‘There is baraka (blessing) in the wheat’. They ate from it during the whole year, and there still was some left over. The following year the man went to the shaykh again and received two more kaylajas to put on his wheat. Each year, for seven years, the shaykh gave him wheat with a blessing, and his wheat did not run out. Then his wife said: ‘If only we would celebrate the circumcision of the children and rejoice!’117 He said to his wife: ‘Don’t do that. [96a] You have seen what we were going 112 Fourteen km south west of Nablus (grid reference 162.176). Today pronounced

Jinsa@fu@t. 113 The roasted kernels are separated from the shaft with the hands. People sometimes jokingly smear each other with the black soot, and once in a while the playful occasion ends in violence. (I owe this information to Butrus Abu Manneh.) Here, the devil brags that he is the cause of strife. 114 Note that a man from town comes to the village to seek the shaykh. I believe that this does not necessarily testify to the greatness of the shaykh, but rather to the continuum between rural and urban settlements (see discussion of this issue in Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, pp. 12–13; Ira Lapidus, Middle Eastern Cities (Berkeley, 1969), pp. 55–68), particularly the strong ties between Nablus and its hinterland (Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, p. 21). 115 Approximately eight kilograms: see the dictionary of ‘Abd Alla@h al-Busta@n¸@, Al-Busta@n — Mu‘jam Lughaw¸@ (Beirut, 1930). 116 Cf. similar practice in villages of the Atlas (Gellner, Saints of the Atlas, p. 138). 117 On circumcision in Islam see A. J. Wensinck, “Khita@n,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn, 5:20–22.

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through each year to make a living until God has relieved us from that, and now we are at ease,’ or something like that. But she said: ‘We must arrange a celebration for [lit. rejoice with] the children! Go to the shaykh, and he will give you two more kaylajas of wheat, from which we will eat for the rest of our lives.’118 So they celebrated the circumcision of the children and offered their guests [food made from all their] wheat, and rejoiced. Afterwards, he took some dried fruit and went to the shaykh, only to discover that he had died, may God have mercy upon him. He kept saying: ‘You evil woman (i.e. ill-omened).’ And they returned to their former situation.”119 The faq¸@h Muh¢ammad also told me the following story: “Someone brought my grandfather, Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h, a kid as a present. As it was their custom to share anything brought to him by the people of the village, when his son asked: ‘O Father, should we slaughter it?’ he said: ‘We shall let the people of the village enjoy it. Wait until I tell you to slaughter it.’ The man who had brought the kid stayed there for the night. Some time during the night the shaykh said to his son: ‘Get up now. See what we have inside the house and slaughter it.’ And there was a crane in the house! He couldn’t do it alone, so the shaykh woke up the man who had brought the kid and said to him: ‘Get up and help Muh¢ammad, and don’t tell anybody about it. Kill both the bird and the kid and mix their meat. Now there will be enough for everybody.’ They did as he said, and there was enough.”120 The faq¸@h Muh¢ammad told me another story about his grandfather Muh¢ammad: “One evening, when he was a little boy, he cried because he craved for roasted meat. They said to him: ‘Where can we get roasted meat for you now?’ At midnight someone suddenly knocked on the door. The shaykh said: ‘O mother of So-and-so, go open the door, here comes what Muh¢ammad is craving for!’ What had happened was, that the ra’¸@s of the village — he named him — who was … and generous, said to one of his friends: ‘Take this head of cattle and roast it. By midnight it must be in the hands of the shaykh.’”121 118 As in many contemporary Palestinian folktales, the woman is not subordinate to her spouse; rather she is the dominant partner, who takes the initiative to better the family’s situation (Patai, Arab Folklore, pp. 13–15; Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, p. 36). But since the initiative failed here, it is more likely that the story was regarded as evidence to the popular assertion that women always give bad advice. 119 I was reminded of the literary motif of greed, especially that of a woman, that corrodes gains: see Hasan M. El-Shamy, Folk Traditions of the Arab World. A Guide to Motif Classification, 2 vols. (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995), 2:327, 390; A. Aarne Thompson, The Types of the Folktales (Helsinki, 1961), pp. 200–1. 120 This is a fine example of the reciprocity of the relationship between the shaykh and the community, or, to use Peter Brown’s expression: an unusually uncensored presentation of the “other side of the gift exchange”: P. Brown, Authority and the Sacred (Cambridge, 1995), p. 63. It also gives a “behind the scenes” view of miracle making. 121Another example of the superiority of the shaykh over the ra’¸@s, this story also hints to the modest economic situation, or frugality of the shaykh, who apparently did not enjoy meat very often.

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[96b] ‘Abd Alla@@h b. ‘Al¸@ b. ‘At¢t¢a@f al-Maqdis¸@ Abu@ al-Mufarrij of Dayr Is¢t¢iya122 I heard Umm Abu@ al-M‘a@@l¸@ Fa@@t¢ima bint ‘Abd al-Rah¢ma@@n b. Ra@@m¸@s[?] in Dayr Is¢t¢iya — who, so I was told, was very old and righteous — say: “Shaykh Abu@ al-Mufarrij ‘Abd Alla@@h b. ‘Al¸@ would hold fire in his hand. When asked: ‘Aren’t you afraid of burning your hand?’ He said: ‘Fire shall not burn a hand that was touched by the hand of the Messenger of God [i.e. Muh¢ammad], God’s prayers upon him.’ And he said: ‘There are three H¢ouris in paradise for me.’”123 Those are the things that I heard from her. I heard Ibrah¸@m b. Muh¢mmad b. H¢asan b. H¢usayn in Dayr Is¢t¢iya say: “One day we saw Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h, that is b. ‘Al¸@ b. ‘At¢t¢a@f, God’s mercy upon him, in the mosque, crying bitterly. When we asked him he explained: ‘In my dream, I saw hell opening for the people,’ or as he said it. And that year prices soared, so that it had been called the year of leanness (sanat al-hawbar¸@).”124 [96b] ‘Abd Alla@@h b. ‘Umar Abu@ Mu@sa of the village of Salmiya@@ in the Holy Land,125 may God have mercy upon him. What he said about things hidden from the eye and similar matters, and his baraka (blessing) of food. I heard Shaykh Abu@ Tamma@@m H¢amad b. Turk¸@ b. Ma@@d¸¢ @ b. Mu‘arraf in al-Mushayrifa near Jerusalem126 say: “I once came to Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@h @ , that is Abu@ Mu@sa@@ of Salmiya@@. His son asked: ‘Father, should I bring lunch?’127 The shaykh said: ‘Wait until another man comes to us.’ A man passed by, and the son asked again: ‘Should I bring lunch?’ The shaykh said: ‘Wait, Abu@ H¢a@zim will arrive shortly.’ Our shaykh explained that Abu@ H¢a@zim was a weaver from Jifna,128 of whom the shaykh spoke well. And indeed, Abu@ H¢a@zim arrived and brought lunch with him — a tray with four or five flat loaves of bread. He took the bread, divided it and put it back on the tray, and we ate. There were ten of us, and we all had our fill. Then others sat to eat from it and had their fill, then

122 Fifteen km south west of Nablus (grid reference 163.170). Today spelled Dayr

Istiya@.

123 Fair black-eyed nymphs, mentioned in the Qur’a@n (e.g. sura 44:54). 124 Several years of drought and scarcity of food were recorded during the relevant

period: see N. A. Faris, “Arab Culture in the Twelfth Century,” in Crusades 5:6. 125 Most likely the village of al-Sa@wiya, 16 km south of Nablus (grid reference 174.165). 126 Mushayrifa is unidentified in the vicinity of Jerusalem, but there are villages by that name in Transjordan and near Jenin. 127 Ghada@ — the main meal of the day, eaten in the early afternoon. 128 A Christian village with a Frankish settlement by the name of Jafenia (Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, pp. 135–136), between Jerusalem and Nablus (grid reference 170.152). The man’s name does not indicate his religious affiliation, but it seems safe to assume that he was a Christian. For another Christian who had close relations with Muslim shaykhs see p. 150 below, and J. Drory, “H¢anbalis,” pp. 95–96.

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he gave his children, and they ate too. I glanced at the tray and said: ‘Why, it looks as if nothing had been taken from it!’” The ima@m Abu@ Yu@suf ‘Amma@@r b. Sa‘d b. Khal¸@l told me the following story in Daja@@nya: “Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h told me: I was sitting one day, when I suddenly burst out laughing. My wife, who was next to me, said: ‘What are you laughing at?’ I said: ‘Something.’ She said: ‘Maybe you are laughing at me.’ I said: ‘No.’ She said: ‘You must tell me what made you laugh,’ and she made me swear that I tell her. So I said: ‘I am marvelling at ‘Abd al-‘Az¸@z who slept yesterday with his wife and then went out to wash himself. He drew water from the pit of a cistern129 and washed himself, but it did not suffice. He went to another. Mud showed on his body and adhered to his skin, so he took his clothes in his hand, and naked as he was, started looking for more water. My wife said: You can’t be laughing because of that! or as she said it. So I went to ‘Abd al-‘Az¸@z’s house and said to him: O So-and-so, surely you will not repeat what you have done?! ‘Abd al-‘Az¸@z replied: O Shaykh, what am I to do? God reveals all of our secrets to you. And my wife went to him and asked: Is what the shaykh told me about you true? and he said: Yes, true, or something like that.’”130 I heard Abu@ ‘Al¸@ Qas¢a (Qus¢s¢a?) b. ‘Al¸@ b. al-‘Alaw¸@ say: “Many people used to visit Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h, and the people of his village were annoyed by hosting them. So the shaykh made an oath that no one from his village should any longer feed those who come to him, or something to this effect. One Friday I went with my mother to take part in the public prayer in their village. There were lots of people there. The shaykh brought bread wrapped in a cloak and a small bowl of stew. I was hungry and I said to myself: ‘I [alone] could eat all that.’ Then the shaykh broke up the bread and put his finger in the stew, and a group of people sat to eat. Then another group sat to eat. This happened three times, until they all had their fill, and still it seemed to me as if the bread and stew remained untouched. Then the food was taken up to the women, and both outsiders and the women-folk of the village ate from it, or something like that.”131 [97a] Umm Shibl Raf¸@‘a bint Mujall¸@ told me in Bayt Yu@na of the province of Jerusalem,132 that a man called Abu@ ‘At¢a@ Alla@@h had told her that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h had once sent his son to the coastal plain (al-Sa@h¢il) to bring his 129 Maqarr [al-b¸@r], is the pit in the floor of a cistern, where the last drops gather. 130 I suspect that such a risqué story was not edited out because it served to keep the

audience amused and ready for more. 131 Apparently, women of Mt Nablus participated in public prayer. This was noted earlier by the Maghrib¸@ traveler Ibn al-‘Arab¸@, who visited the region between 486/1093 and 488/1095 (see J. Drory, “H¢anbal¸@s,” p. 100), and approved of by contemporary H¢anbal¸@ scholars (see for example in Ibn Quda@ma, al-Mughn¸@ (Cairo, 1987) 3:38; Ibn Rajab, 2:196). Note that they got their meal only after the men have finished eating, probably in an upper floor. 132 Perhaps Baytu@niya northwest of Jerusalem (grid reference 166.144).

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grain.133 He said: “His beast of burden got stuck in the mud, so he went to a man called Khad¢ir, who used to declare that he is a friend of the shaykh, and asked for his ass so that he could put the load on it. Khad¢ir said: ‘My ass is pregnant (or: loaded).’ The shaykh, who was in Salmiya@@, said to his friends: ‘My son’s ass got stuck on the way, so he went to Khad¢ir who wouldn’t give him his own. I see my son and the locks of his hair(?) blown by the wind.’ So they went and found the ass, and all the men who were there helped carry the load, and they came back. When Khad¢ir heard that, he came to the shaykh to apologize. The shaykh said: ‘Go in peace. May God be forgiving to us and to you. A man shouldn’t claim to be a friend and then, when he is needed, refuse to give help.’” In Jerusalem, in the mosque of al-Murabba‘a,134 I met Mas‘u@d b. Muh¢aysin b. Mas‘u@d, son of Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h’s sister. I asked him about his uncle, and whether he had seen anything [extraordinary] that the shaykh had done. He told me: “When I was young, there were twenty-two or twenty-four men at his place and he served them six or seven loaves of bread and a medium-sized bowl. I had thought that I and three other people could eat it all up, but everyone there ate and had his fill, and still there was some left over. I said: ‘Perhaps it hadn’t diminished at all,’ or something like that.” Abu@ Yu@suf ‘Amma@@r b. Sa‘d b. Khal¸@l b. H¢aydara al-H¢a@rith¸@ told me in Daja@@nya that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h of Salmiya@@ performed many kara@ma@t. “He had a son named ‘Abd al-Malik, whom the Franks, may God curse them, took to Jerusalem. They said: ‘This is the son of their priest (ibn qas¸@sihim), they shall give for him any sum of money we demand.”135 But the shaykh said: ‘By God, I shall never pay even one dinar for him and support them thereby,’ and he remained in their hands for a period of time. A year before the reconquest, we heard that he was free. I went with another man to convey the news to the shaykh. He said: ‘May God bring you good tidings,’ or something like that, ‘who told you?’ We said: ‘We heard.’ He said: ‘I know that you are trustworthy men, but by God I shall not live to see ‘Abd al-Malik anymore,’ and he wept. We said: ‘O Shaykh, don’t,’ but he said: ‘It will be as I had told you.’ We went back and found out that in truth he had not been released. Indeed he was not released before the shaykh’s death,” or something like that. Mas‘u@d, the son of the shaykh’s sister, told us that his mother, Burdiyy[?] bint ‘Umar, told him the following: “My brother said: ‘Each year I would dream 133 Most of the villages in Northern Palestine were located in the hilly region. The coastal plains are more fertile than the hills, but were more prone to attack, tax collectors and disease (Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, p. 32). 134 Perhaps al-ribba‘iyya in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, mentioned in Richard J. H. Gottheil and William H. Worrel, Fragments from the Cairo Geniza in the Freer Collection (New-York, 1927), pp. 116–29. 135 Note the shaykh’s heroic resistance to the Franks. On Muslim prisoners held by the Franks, and their ransom (usually considered to be a very desirable pious deed) see Kedar, “Subjected Muslims,” p. 144; Hillenbrand, The Crusades, pp. 549–52.

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that I had been entrusted with two shares,136 and this year I saw nothing [in my dream] — and my son was taken. He has not been hurt, but he and I will not meet again,’ or however he had said it. And between the shaykh’s death and his son’s release there were only five days, which means that the shaykh died five days before the re-conquest of Jerusalem.” So he said. 137 Some of his kara@ma@t, may God have mercy upon him. ‘Amma@@r b. Sa‘d al-Dajja@@ni told me that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h had two calves. One would tend his cattle, and the other — his sheep. The one that tended the sheep had two symmetrical horns, and whenever a wolf would come to seize an ewe, it [the calf] would follow it and strike it with its horns until it gave back what it had taken. I asked him: “Have you seen those calves with your own eyes?”138 He said: “Yes, [97b] and I heard the shaykh say: ‘This tends the cattle, and that tends the sheep.’139 I myself had not seen them at work, but Shaykh ‘Ubayd Alla@@h of Dayr ‘Amma@@r told me that one day he saw the cattle walking through a sown field along the spaces between the plants, and whenever one of them wanted to eat from the plants, the calf stopped it by striking it with its horns. And they say that whenever a … came, the calf would take pity on it (or: turn to it) and bring it to the water to drink.”140 I heard Mas‘u@d b. Muh¢aysin b. Mas‘u@d, son of Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h’s sister in Jerusalem say: “My mother told me that a lion came to her brother twice, and he slaughtered a sheep, roasted it and brought the meat out for it. She also said: ‘Once, when the shaykh slept at our home, he got up and went out and found it [the lion] asleep, surrounded by three or four gazelles(?), as if he had five or six brothers(?).’” I heard the ima@m ‘Amma@@r b. Sa‘d in Daja@@nya say: “Zayd, shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h’s disciple, told me that a man from Jaryu@t came to the shaykh and said: ‘O Shaykh, I intend to celebrate a wedding, and I want you to come.’ The shaykh said: ‘And what if you will have something loathsome there?’ The man said: ‘No, it is my wedding (or: I am in command of this celebration).’ The shaykh said: ‘Others may prevail, beware!’ The man said: ‘No.’ I went there with him, and as we came to a place overlooking the village we heard a tambourine. The shaykh stopped, and then we heard a piping of a reed. He emitted a cry, and by God, I saw stones rolling off the mountains into the wadis.

136 Perhaps this is an allusion to the h¢ad¸@th dealing with inheritance laws, assigning two shares in the estate to the father of the deceased (“wa-li-l-ab sahma@n”: see al-Da@rim¸@, Sunan, kita@b al-fara@’id, ba@b 3/3) or some mystical interpretation of it. 137 Some 5,000 Muslim prisoners were liberated in Jerusalem by Saladin on 28 Rajab 538/3 October 1187 (see Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims,” p. 153). 138 Again, note the author-historian at work. 139 Tending livestock is considered to be a low-status job. Perhaps that it why it is performed for the shaykh in a miraculous manner. 140 Sufi biographies are replete with stories of the miraculous behaviour of animals towards holy men. See for example Far¸@d al-D¸@n At¢t¢a@r, Muslim Saints and Mystics — episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Awliya@", trans. A. J. Arberry (London, 1966).

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The people of the village hurried out, frightened, and the music-players fled. I think he said that he did not enter the village.”141 Abu@ ‘Al¸@ Qas¢a b. ‘Al¸@ b. ‘Alaw¸@ told me that he heard Isma‘¸@l b. Mas‘u@d say: “One day I went with the shaykh to some place — he mentioned its name — and the shaykh came up to a pear tree and we picked fruit and ate plenty of it. After the shaykh had gone his way I returned to that place, but could not find the tree again. The shaykh saw me looking for it and said: ‘You are looking for it in vain; you will not see it,’ or something to this effect. And that happened when the fruit was out of season.” The venerable faq¸@h ‘Abu@ Muh¢ammad ‘Abd al-H¢am¸@d b. Muh¢ammad b. Ab¸@ Bakr b. Ma@@d¸¢ @ al-Maqdis¸@ told me in Nablus: “I went to see Shaykh Ah¢mad b. Mas‘u@d with a cousin of mine. We were told that he was in Salmiya@@, so we went there and met him at Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h’s place. I heard Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h tell the following story: ‘I went to al-B¸@ra142 with my son and with a friend of ours. We came across a group of Franks, I mean those who had arrived from across the sea. We were afraid of them and sat by the road.143 They passed without addressing a word to us. Following them, was a man with a stick, I mean leaning on a stick, and he touched one of us with it. Just then we realized that they had not seen us.’” This is the gist of what he told me. I said: “They say about those infidels who came from across the sea, that whenever they see a Muslim they cause him harm.”144 I heard Mas‘u@d b. Muh¢aysin in Jerusalem say: “My mother told me that Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h used to commit many sins when he was young. Hearing the muezzin recite the call for prayer, he would curse and argue with the people who were praying. During the year of leanness (sanat al-hawbar¸@), a time of severe hunger, he went to the coastal plain (al-sa@h¢il) and filled his bag with barley. He brought it to his father and mother and sisters, who made porridge out of it. He poured some honey on it and all those present ate. His father and his mother prayed for him at that meal, and he stayed for several days. Later, 141 Musical instruments were a favorite target of H¢anbali moralists: see Cook,

Commanding Right, pp. 90–91, 148–49. Tambourines, however, were allowed on weddings according to the mainstream view (ibid., p. 119 n. 32, p. 145 n. 2). Clearly, the method chosen here by the shaykh is intimidation of the offenders (see ibid., p. 97). 142 Latin Magna Mahomeria (grid reference 170.145), fifteen km north of Jerusalem (Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, pp. 73–77). After its destruction by Saladin, a mosque was established on the site (Sharon, Corpus, 2:236). 143 Cf. the similar scene, but with reversed roles — pilgrims from the West filled with fear by the clamour of Muslims whom they encounter on the road leading from Jerusalem to Nablus (Kedar, “Some New Sources,” p. 136). For more off-the-battlefield encounters between common Muslims and Franks (gleaned from other sources) see my “Arabic Sources,” pp. 109, 113. 144 Since the Franks are usually referred to as Faranj (or kuffa@r — infidels), we may assume that here the speaker means “newcomers,” much like Usa@ma ibn al-Munqidh, who speaks of the “uncultivated” Franks who had only recently arrived: Usa@ma ibn al-Munqidh, Kita@b al-I‘tiba@r, ed. Phillip K. Hitti (Princeton, 1930), p. 135. On Arabic terms designating the Franks see Hillenbrand, The Crusades, p. 303.

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he went into the mosque with two men, and started to shout until the people said: ‘The son of So-and-so has lost his mind and he does not have another one, that is — another male offspring.’ So his father and mother came, and his father began to laugh, and his mother began to cry, saying: ‘This has happened to my son and you are laughing?’ But he said: ‘Wish him complete repentance.’145 And since then, no wine or music playing or anything forbidden appeared in that village again,” or something like that.146 And we already mentioned that the shaykh, may God have mercy upon him, had died five days before the reconquest of Jerusalem. [98a] ‘Abd Alla@@h b. ‘Abd al-Jabba@@r Abu@ Muh¢ammad al-T¢a@’¸@, known as al-Badaw¸@,147 may God have mercy upon him. He lived in Jerusalem for some time,148 and he had a convent (dayr)149 on the outskirts of the city. I haven’t seen anyone among the ascetics (zuhha@d) of our days who follows his way. He used to preach against dancing and against the company of dancers, about whom he said: “These are people who neglect the Qur’a@@n and busy themselves with nonsense.” He knew many prayers (or: invocations) by heart and used to exert himself, praying beautifully. When I was a little boy I would see him on Fridays in the Great Mosque of Damascus, praying the whole day — or perhaps whenever I saw him he was praying — and I thought then that he was doing that so as not to miss the hour of the public prayer. I heard one of our friends tell about Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h al-Badaw¸@, that he once said to his cat:150 “Go show us your kittens,” and the cat actually went and brought one of its kittens. A Christian who was at his place then151 was very impressed. When I asked the shaykh about it in Jerusalem, he said: “In my convent there was a cat that grew accustomed to me. One day, when there was a Christian at my place, it came and sat on my lap. I said to the cat: ‘I heard that you have had kittens. Won’t you show them to us?’ and it got up from my lap while I was talking with the Christian. When he saw it going he 145 This enigmatic story is the only allusion to the youth of a shaykh and the only instance of “conversion” leading to “shaykh-hood.” 146 Note the enforcement of strict H¢anbal¸@ norms in the village. 147 On the tribe of Banu@ T¢a@‘ in Palestine see Poliak, “L’Arabisation,” p. 61; al-Dabba@gh, Bila@duna Filast¢¸@n, 9/2:618. 148 Most likely post-1187, since hardly any Muslims resided in Frankish Jerusalem. 149 Dayr usually means a Christian convent, but here it clearly designates an abode for ascetics. See reference to Dayr al-H¢ana@bila on Jabal Qa@syu@n: Ibn T¢u@lu@n, al-Qala@’id, p. 40. 150 On the favorable attitude towards cats in Palestinian folklore see James E. Hanauer, Folklore of the Holy Land, Moslem, Christian and Jewish (London, 1907), pp. 265–70. 151 Nas¢ra@n¸@ (Christian) probably means a local Christian and not a Frank. On Eastern Christians in Jerusalem see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, p. 92. On the use of Arabic by local Christians see Sidney H. Griffith, “The Monks of Palestine and the Growth of Christian Literature in Arabic,” The Muslim World 78 (1988), 3–4.

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said: ‘Why, it has understood your words!’ He [ should be: I] said no, but the cat brought its kitten and put it on my lap. The Christian was very impressed and said: ‘Truly, had you been of our religion, we would have made you our head,’ or something like that.152 I said: ‘It’s just a coincidence.’ He said that to me too, but I say that the righteous are reluctant to show what [extraordinary powers] they have.” Once, when I came to Jerusalem, I went to his place. After some time I came again, on a visit to the holy places (ziya@ra). I said to myself: Maybe nobody will know that I am here. I sat in the courtyard of the Friday mosque for a while, then it occurred to me to move to the northern part of the courtyard. When I did that, I saw Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h standing there. I came up to him and greeted him and said: “What are you doing here?” He said: “I went out because of you, saying to myself that I would meet you, and then someone told me that he had seen you in the market.” I was impressed, and stayed with him for a few days, may God have mercy upon him. And I heard the am¸@r Abu@ Ibrah¸@m Burghush b. ‘Abd Alla@@h al-Jahm¸@(?), their mawla@ (governor?), in Nablus, say: “The shaykh cursed someone and he died.” I asked: “What did he do?” and he said: “He didn’t do good,” or something to this effect.153 [99a] ‘Abd Alla@@h b. H¢usayn al-Badra@’¸@ He lived in Jerualem for some time,154 and became known as the muja@wir,155 since he had also lived in Mecca for some time. He led a virtuous life, engaged in prayer, and his words touched the heart. He said: “I lived in Jerusalem for some time, and I used to go out and glean [wheat?], and I gathered a lot. There was another man — he named him — gleaning with me, and he suggested that we share our gleanings. I said no, because I would glean more than he would, and I used to take from it, grind it and bake bread for the poor each Thursday, while he kept everything for himself.156 Once, the two of us went to … and left [unattended?] what each one of us had. A fire consumed his share, while I found mine intact,” or something like that. I thought of something I meant to do, but had not done. He once asked me: “Why don’t you do that?” Isma‘¸@l al-Sanja@@r¸@, a man who stayed with us and used to serve him 152 A literary topos: compare with similar laudatory phrases regarding Muslim holy men, uttered, as it were, by Christians in Dhahab¸@, Siyar, 20:383; Subk¸@, T¢abaqa@t al-Sha@fi‘¸@yya al-Kubra@, ed. ‘A. M. al-Julu@‘ and M. al-Tana@h¸¢ @ (Cairo, 1964–1971), 8:244. 153 This seems to be the only anecdote in which a shaykh’s powers prove deadly. As a rule, the shaykhs are non-violent and reproach in a peaceful manner, in line with Ibn H¢anbal’s quietistic attitude (not with the militant urban H¢anbalism more typical of their own times). See Cook, Commanding Right, pp. 96–97, 106. 154 Again, post-1187. 155 A pious man living in the proximity of a holy shrine. 156 This comment seems to hint at a negative attitude towards gleaning, found also in Ibn Quda@ma’s Al-Mughn¸@ (Cairo, 1989), 8:291: “al-afd¢al tark al-iltiqa@t” (it is better not to engage in gleaning).

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sometimes, told me that one night he went with Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h to the cave, to sleep there, and found that it was locked. So they came back, but I had not known that they had returned.157 It was during Ramad¢a@n, at night, after the prayer of al-tara@w¸@h¢.158 He said: “The shaykh said: ‘Take this money and buy me bread.’ I said to myself: ‘People had already closed their shops.’ I went to one of the fellows of the madrasa159 and asked: ‘Does anyone have bread?’ Someone said yes. I said: ‘Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h hasn’t had his supper yet, so take this money and give me some, if you have any.’ He said: ‘I have a loaf. Take it for nothing and bring it to him.’ When I told the shaykh about it, he became angry and said: ‘Take it back and go and buy for me.’ So I went and found that the shops had been closed. I called someone and asked him if he had any bread, and he said no. A man called me and gave me a large loaf. I gave him the money and returned to the shaykh, who said to me: ‘I told you to go and buy, and you disobeyed me.’”160 I heard Shaykh ‘Al¸@ al-Badra@@’¸@ in Isfahan161 say: “Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@h @ went with me to Mecca. I had an amulet (h¢arz),162 which I wanted to sell. When someone who was interested in it came, I couldn’t take it out of the garment(?) quickly,” or something like that. “I said so to Shaykh ‘Abd Alla@@h, and I don’t know how, but he immediately took it out.’” [120a]163 The virtues (mana@qib) of Shaykh Dhayya@@l Abu@ ‘Umar164 Praised be God the Almighty. The following is from the writing of al-H¢a@fiz¢ D¢iya@@' al-D¸@n al-Maqdis¸@, may God have mercy upon him. He said: “I heard Abu@ Zakariya@@ Yah¢ya@@ b. Abu@ ‘Al¸@ b. ‘Al¸@ say: ‘I heard Shaykh Dhayya@@l say: I had a cow that would go through a sown field without eating from it anything but

157 There seems to be some confusion between narrator and speaker here. For some

other examples of H¢anbal¸@s going to caves in the vicinity of Damascus for prayer or seclusion see Abu@ Sha@ma, Tara@jim Rija@l al-Qarnayn (Beirut, 1973), p. 71; Ibn al-‘Ima@d, Shadhara@t al-Dhahab (Cairo, 1931), 5:28. 158 A public prayer customary (but not obligatory) on the nights of Ramad¢a@n: A. J. Wensinck, “Tara@w¸@h¢,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., 10:222. 159 This may have been in Jerusalem, where Saladin founded a madrasa shortly after the re-conquest (for mada@ris predating the First Crusade see Kedar, “Some New Sources,” pp. 130–31), or on Jabal Qa@syu@n, where many mada@ris were founded in the 13th thirteenth century. In any case the story must be located in the post-1187 period. 160 There may be two explanations for the shaykh’s displeasure: either he objected to presents (unlike other shaykhs in the text, but like many shaykhs portrayed in sufi biographical dictionaries) or else he demanded total obedience from his disciple. Also, he was probably hungry after a day’s fast. 161 The testimony of a shaykh from Isfahan comes as an indication to shaykh ‘Abd Alla@h’s fame, or else to the author’s diligence in collecting his source material. 162 See Taufiq Canaan, The Decipherment of Arab Talismans (Beirut, 1938). 163 Although this folio is written in a different handwriting and has a separate sama@‘ (audience certificate) and introductory phrases of its own, it seems to be part of the kara@ma@t rather than a separate composition of the same author. 164 On Shaykh Dhayya@l (d. 613/1217) see also Dhahab¸@, Siyar, 22:83.

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weeds. Whenever she would enter cultivated land, she would eat from it as you had heard.’” He said: “My father was on his way to Karak. Rain began to pour. Someone said: ‘May God help him in this mud!’ and Shaykh Dhayya@@l said: ‘Now he will arrive,’ and he did.” A Maghrib¸@ met me and said to me: “I wish you would ask Shaykh al-‘Ima@@d165 whether he has a piece of Shaykh Dhayya@@l’s bread for me. My body is aching, and it has been prescribed to me.” I spoke to Shaykh al-‘Ima@@d about that and he said: “Indeed it has been tried by several people and found to be beneficial.” And our shaykh, so I heard, was of those who … at these [things]. And I saw someone taking a piece of our shaykh’s bread, enjoying it and asking for more.166 Shaykh Abu@ ‘Al¸@ Qas¢a b. ‘Al¸@ al-Maqdis¸@, a friend and companion of Shaykh Dhayya@@l, said: “Shaykh Dhayya@@l told me on the night of … ‘I went out one night and those two mountains were …, and it sounded like a sigh of a sick man.’” Shaykh ‘Al¸@ also told me, when we mentioned the shaykh’s baraka: “All the people of those villages are praying now, and the governor of Jerusalem comes to him [to his sermon?] every Friday.” I heard Abu@ al-‘Abba@@s Ah¢mad b. Bila@@l b. ‘Abd al-Rah¢ma@@n al-Ruwaishaw¸@ say: “When Shaykh Dhayya@@l became hard of hearing, he would hear people only if they raised their voices. But if the Qur’a@@n was recited to him, even if read in a soft voice, he would hear well and repeat,” or something to this effect.167 I heard the venerable faq¸@h Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@@h Yu@suf b. ‘Abd al-Man‘am b. Ni‘ma al-Maqdis¸@168 say: “One night we stayed at Shaykh Dhayya@@l’s place. Cooked food was brought in, and yogurt, and we sat to eat. I had a craving for the yogurt — I like it very much — but I felt shy to be the only one to eat from it. I said to myself: ‘I wish the shaykh would invite me to it.’ He then said to me: ‘If you don’t like our dish, eat from the yogurt.’” I also heard him say: “Shaykh Qas¢a told me: ‘I once bought some sumack169 165 An uncle of the author, and a central figure in the life of the community in Damascus. He died in 614/1218 (Dhahabi, Siyar, 22:47–52). Ibn Rajab’s entry about ‘Ima@d al-D¸@n includes a quotation from the otherwise lost part of the Kara@ma@t (Ibn Rajab, Dhayl, 2:101–2). 166 Compare with the “free circulation of healing substances” in the same part of the world in late antiquity, as described by Peter Brown (Authority and the Sacred, pp. 61–62). For later times see discussion of healing baraka in Jonathan P. Berkey, “Tradition, Innovation and the Social Construction of Knowledge in the Medieval Islamic Near East,” Past and Present 146 (1995), 38–40. 167 Another topos of bibliography: a handicap that bars from partaking in the mundane but not in the sacred, as a sign of piety and heavenly grace. 168 Ima@m of al-Masjid al-Gharb¸@ (also known as Masjid al-H¢ana@bila) in Nablus. He died in Nablus in 638/1241 (al-Dabba@gh, Bila@duna Filast¢¸@n 2/2:130). 169 Ghenus Rus. Used for seasoning food, tanning and dyeing. The export of sumack from Syria to Egypt is mentioned also in one of the Geniza documents: See Shlomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as

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to sell in Egypt. The shaykh said: Don’t go. If you do, you will not see me again. I stayed and sent my son with it to Egypt, and indeed the shaykh died before my son’s return.’” And he said: “‘Uthma@@n b. Qas¢a told me that when the shaykh was very ill, before his last illness, he [‘Uthma@@n] sat there and cried. The shaykh said: ‘Nothing will happen to me this time,’ or something like that, and indeed he got well again.” I heard that Shaykh ‘Ima@@d said that a visit (ziya@ra) to Shaykh Dhayya@@l is better than a pilgrimage (ziya@ra) to Jerusalem. When I met our shaykh I asked him about it and he said: “I had indeed said that, and my proof is that visiting brethren (ziya@rat al-ikhwa@n) is permitted without restriction, while pilgrimage is limited to the three mosques.”170 I heard the faq¸@h ‘Abd al-H¢am¸@d b. Muh¢ammad b. Ma@@d¸¢ @ say: “I saw Shaykh Dhayya@@l after his death, when they brought his body so that we could pray for him. He recited aloud “Say he is one”171 [the text ends in the middle of the entry].

Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967–1987), 1:213. 170 This is an unusual interpretation of a famous h¢ad¸@th, often quoted by adversaries of the worship of holy sites: “You shall only set out for three mosques — al-Masjid al-H¢aram [in Mecca], my mosque [in Medina] and al-Masjid al-Aqs¢a@ [usually interpreted as Jerusalem]” (Ibn H¢anbal, Musnad 2:313). See Meir J. Kister, “‘You shall only set out for three mosques’ — A study of an Early Muslim Tradition,” in Le Muséon 82 (1967), 173–96. 171 Sura 112:1: “Say, he is Alla@h, the one.”

Languages in Contact in the Latin East: Acre and Cyprus Cyril Aslanov The Hebrew University, Jerusalem The term lingua franca has undergone so many semantic changes that the historical existence of such a language is often confused with the application of this term in reference to similar phenomena in other places and other times. Since the same term lingua franca has been applied to the Sabir spoken in North Africa as well as various kinds of contact vernacular,1 some scholars assumed that the linguistic situation of the Latin East was similar to that which prevailed in the western Mediterranean in modern times. It has been asserted that the Levantine lingua franca was a pidgin2 or a Sabir.3 Perego declares that the medieval lingua franca of the Levant has left no traces. This, however, is far from being true if we assume that the lingua franca is in fact Levantine French or colonial Venetian.4 Actually, we do find here and there traces of a Levantine French from the time of the crusades. The fact that this Francophony has not been very much studied5 does not mean that it is not extant at all. A comparison of two occurrences of Levantine French at the time of the crusades breaks down certain myths and accepted truths associated with the term lingua franca. We shall examine two specimens of Levantine French in two cases of cultural contact: between Arabic, French and Italian in Acre in the thirteenth century; between French, Italian and Greek in Cyprus during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although these two kinds of contact belong to different times and places and although they differ in their manifestations, it is tempting to look for common points that allow us to speak about a single underlying concept of Levantine French in the Latin East. 1 Henry and Renée Kahane-Roberta Ash, “Linguistic Evidence in Historical Reconstruction,” in Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl, ed. Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr (The Hague, 1979), pp. 89–92, repr. in Henry and Renée Kahane, Græca et Romanica. Scripta Selecta (Amsterdam, 1986), 3: 83–6. 2 Rebecca Posner, Linguistic Change in French (Oxford, 1997), p. 35; the same confusion appears in Michael Metzeltin’s study, “Las lenguas francas del Mediterraneo,” in Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, ed. Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin and Christian Schmitt (Tübingen, 1988–), 7: 601–10. 3 Pierre Perego, “Les sabirs,” in Le Langage, ed. André Martinet (Paris, 1968), p. 598. 4 In her study of the Lingua Franca in the late middle ages-early modern times, Laura Minervini has succeeded in making a nuanced distinction between the contact vernacular and languages in their own right. See Laura Minervini, “La lingua franca mediterranea. Plurilinguismo, mistilinguismo, pidginizzazione sulle coste del Mediterraneo tra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna,” Medioevo Romanzo 20.2 (1996), 252–53. 5 Jean Richard, Documents chypriotes des Archives du Vatican (Paris, 1962) p. 229. 155

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The Levantine French in Frankish States In order to reconstruct a dead language, linguists usually rely on either literary or documentary sources. With regards to the French of the Franks, the transmission of literary texts in the manuscripts may have erased the Levantine colour of works composed in the East. It is possible that texts like the Chronicle of the Templar of Tyre or Philip of Novara’s account of the war between the Ibelins and the Imperials reflect the language of the transmitters rather than that of the authors. Nevertheless, these testimonies of a literary kind need not be jettisoned if we take the trouble to verify the data provided in other kinds of documents. On the other hand, documentary texts like charters or legal compendia such as the Assises de Jérusalem provide us with a more reliable image of the language spoken in Outremer.6 However, such texts are often written in a conventional language that represents a compromise between Latin and vernacular or between a local dialect and the growing influence of Francien, the dialect of Paris and Île de France, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.7 This scripta (chancery — written language common to speakers of several different dialects) does not always fully reflect the specific Levantine colour of the French spoken in the crusader states. However, the situation in the Latin East was not identical to that of France. Even though we may agree with Dees’s8 scepticism about the existence of a unified scripta or koiné before 1300, the lasting contact between Franks of various origin in the Kingdom of Jerusalem may have led to a process of “koineization”, that is, a levelling between various dialectal sub-systems as described on a theoretical level by Jeff Siegel.9 It is inadvisable, therefore, either to underestimate the testimony of literary texts or to overestimate that of documentary sources, although both of them may prove reliable when compared with a third kind of evidence, that of the French words preserved in Oriental texts. These French words preserved in Oriental sources represent a valuable opportunity for the reconstruction of the local French vernacular, because they sometimes offer a phonetic notation of the way the word was actually pronounced, with little interference from the spelling rules customary in that language. The various Oriental alphabets (Greek, Arabic, Armenian and Coptic) were used only exceptionally for writing French words, so that the gap between 6 A selective list of these sources is to be found in Joshua Prawer’s Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, trans. Gérard Nahon (Paris, 1969–70), 1:25–7. 7 Charles-Théodore Gossen, “Graphème et phonème: le problème central de l’étude des langues écrites au Moyen Age,” Revue de Linguistique Romane 32 (1968), 1–16; idem, Grammaire de l’ancien picard (Paris, 1970), pp. 42–45; Pierre Guiraud, Patois et dialectes français (Paris, 1968), pp. 41–43. 8 Anthonij Dees, “Dialectes et scriptae à l’époque de l’ancien français,” Revue de linguistique romane 49 (1985), 94. 9 Jeff Siegel, “Koinés and Koinéization,” Language in Society 14 (1985), 364–78.

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the letters and the sounds, which is inherent to most of the graphic systems, had less opportunity to manifest itself. It may be objected that the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Armenians and the Copts to whom we owe this occasional notation of the lingua franca were pronouncing this language with a peculiar accent. However, when a datum is attested not only in the literary and/or documentary sources but also in the vestiges of Levantine French that are conserved in Oriental texts, we may consider it authentic. The confrontation between the different kinds of evidence mentioned above guarantees that a French word spelled with Arabic, Greek, Coptic, or Armenian letters does not reflect any individual deformation due to ignorance of French. The fact that the French word has been written in an alphabet not usually used for the notation of French gives us a genuine echo of the language as it was spoken, outside the conventions of the Latin spelling system. It also allows to identify some dialectal features characterizing the French spoken in Outremer. An instance of intertextuality between Frankish literary sources and Oriental sources appears in Philip of Novara’s Estoire de la guerre des Ibelins contre les Impériaux (written during the second half of the thirteenth century). In the text recently edited by Silvio Melani, the /s/ before a consonant, which was about to disappear, is sometimes noted with the grapheme (the symbol < means that a sound or a form is the result of another sound or form), especially before a voiced consonant:10 for example aihnés /e/. If so, lasteleH lasteleh is probably a notation for la stele. It could, therefore, reflect either the second element of the diphthong /oe/ or the vocalic nucleus of /we/, which is the result of the reduction of the diphthong 27 Anthonij Dees, Atlas des formes et constructions des chartes françaises du XIIIème siècle (Tübingen, 1980), p. 203. 28 Ibid., p. 194.

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/oe/ since the second half of the thirteenth century. Another interpretation consists in ascribing the preservation of /e/ in words like qele theleh = tele or steleH steleh =stele to a pressure of the Italian dialects: singular tela, stella or plural tele, stelle. Let us note that in Italian, the continuation of the Latin /e/ in stressed syllable is still /e/, whereas in French, this phoneme became /ei/ >/oi/ > /oe/ > /we/ and lastly /wa/ in modern French. Whatever the reason for the conservation of /e/ may be, it is striking to find a similar phenomenon in the Assises de Haute Cour and in the Abrégé du Livre des Assises des Bourgeois edited by Comte Beugnot. In this text that seems to have been compiled in Acre, the spelling is far more frequent than the spelling : for example borgeis, dreit, lei instead of de borgois, droit ou loi. Another parallel of the use of /e/ or /ei/ instead of /oi/ in a Levantine context appears in the Chronicle of the Templar of Tyre,29 a text that has been written in the Frankish East. – /oin/ >/ein/: This shift, which is well attested in Picard,30 seems to be represented in the lemma feine pheine =peine. This form seems to be a French reinterpretation of the Provençal word pena “pelt, leather mat,” so that the closed /e/ of the Provençal has been adapted as a diphthong /ei/ resulting from /oi/ under the influence of the subsequent nasal. – /ue/ >/ö/: This shift, which took place during the twelfth century in Picard and Francien (but not in Norman), seems to be attested through the lemmata neeb neew = nuef “nine” and bep wep = buef “ox.” – /ou/ > /ö/: Another matter of spelling could be viewed as sufficient evidence that the diphthong /ou/ had already been levelled to /ö/ in the Old French words represented in the Coptic document. Indeed, the digraph ou could be a way of representing /ö/ due to the new value of the French grapheme , since it began to represent /ö/ instead of the diphthong /ou/. The equivalence between the digraph ou and /ö/, central /´/ (for example, patriarSouH patriaršuh =patrïarche “patriarch”) or even closed /e¢/ (for example, foure phure =pe¢re “father”) is frequently attested throughout the manuscript. In the lemma sourmour surmur = semeur “sower,” the first occurrence of ou in the first syllable necessarily represents a central /´/, that is, the reduced vowel that appears in unstressed syllables. Therefore, we shall ascribe the same value to the second ou or more precisely the value of /ö/, since the central /´/ and the /ö/ may have been confounded by Arabic-speaking people. This phonetic equivalence confirms the value of ou in the lemma penqour penthur =vendeur “seller,” which contains a noun of action from the same morphological class. The levelling of the diphthong /ou/ allows us to situate the dialect represented here outside the western area of Oïl. However, the lemma liloub liluw =li lou “the wolf” does not seem to share the switch from /ou/ to /ö/ (cf. leu). This is not a reason for considering this exception a western feature, for the preservation of /ou/ is also attested in some 29 Cronaca del templare di Tiro, p. 26. 30 Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, pp. 68–69.

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eastern parts of Oïl. We could therefore ascribe this form lou to a Lorrain influence, many examples of which appear in the phrase-book. – /eau/ >/iau/: This evolution seems to be witnessed through aniwH anio¤h =aniaus “ring” and mankaniwH mankanio¤h = mangoniaus “mangonel.” Even the spelling xaziouH khaziuh could be brought back to gaziaus “gazelle,” if we assume that the first element of the diphthong /au/ has developed in /ou/ as a result of a process of velarisation (shift from the front range of vowels to the back one). This diphthong /ou/ could represent an intermediate stage before the monopthongization in /o/ that affected the diphthongs /au/ during the fourteenth century and brought words like chasteau/chateau “castle” or chevaus/chevaux “horses” to be pronounced /šato/ and /š´vo/ in Modern French. By itself, the reduction of the thriphthong /eau/ in /iau/ is not exclusively characteristic of the north-eastern dialects, even though it is frequently attested there. At least, it is very frequent in other sources of Levantine French.31 – /ai/ >/a/: We find at least two instances of this reduction of the diphthong after the fall of its second element: raGin rac#hin = ragin/rasin /i/: This typically Picard feature can be observed in the name Pierre, which appears as Pire in the lemma sampire sampire =saint Pire “Saint Peter”. – /e/ > /ei/ :We find one instance of the secondary diphthongization of /e/ continuing the Latin vowel /a/ in an open stressed syllable. It appears in the verb xouzei khuzei =couseiz “sew!”. This switch from /e/ to /ei/ is a typical feature of Walloon and Lorrain. The pieces of evidence found in the Coptic document are quite unequivocal, except for the diphthong /oe/. It is not certain that this is represented by the spelling e, which could likewise reflect the monophthongised /e/ /ka/ or /kie/ vs. /c#a/ or /c#ie/: The lemmata show a little variation in the treatments for the Latin syllable /ka/, the reflex of which is /ka/ in Picard34 and Norman and /c#a/ >/ša/ in the other dialects. However, there is a clear predominance of the latter evolution. For besides xalemeleH khalemeleh = calemele “sugar cane” that is also attested in this form in Philip of Novara,35 xalemar khalemar = calemart “ink pot” and parxen parkhen =barque “boat” used instead of barche, we find qSarpanqer thšarpanther =charpentier “carpenter;” tSar tšar =char “meat;” qSamel thšamel = chamel “camel.” In calemele and calemart the preservation of the /ka/ may be due to the Italian origin of the words (cannamele and calamaro). The lemma laparxen laparkhen that renders the Arabic words al-markab, al-ghurA@b, “corvette” may be also of Provençal, Catalan or Italian origin. In the system of correspondance between Coptic spelling and Old French phonetics, x can represent the unvoiced velar stop /k/. Therefore, the lemma laparxen laparkhen may not correspond to the forms barge or bargue, the Old French words for “boat.” We should rather consider it the Provençal, Catalan or Italian word barca adapted to the phonetics of langue d’Oïl. A possible Picardism is xaroH kharoh in diraHxaroH dirahkharoh, if we assume that xaroH kharoh represents kier/kiere, the Picard counterpart of chier/chiere “expensive.” As for the first element diraH- dirah-, it seems to represent a verbal form, perhaps duirent, the preterit of duire “bring” or “led.” If we compare this lemma with its Arabic gloss labasuhu jilat al-haykal “they dressed him in chancel vestments,” it appears that something is missing after xaroH kharoh, probably a word like robe “vestment.” As far as xaroH kharoh is concerned, the vowel /a/ in xaroH kharoh may contradict the identification of this form as Picard kier/kiere “expensive.” Although a often stays for /e/ in the French words dressed in the garb of a Coptic spelling system, it never represents the diphthong /ie/ resulting from the law of Bartsch, according to which Latin /a/ developed in French /ie/ in a stressed open syllable when preceded by a palatal consonant. Due to the difficulties involved in the equivalence xaroH kharoh =Picard kier/kiere, it may be preferable to see in this word a cross-formation between Old French 33 Pieter Van Reenen, “Comment distinguer les espaces dialectaux?” Revue de linguistique romane 55 (1991), 481. 34 Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, p. 95. 35 It could be an Italianism or an Occitanism rather than a Picardism. See Philip of Novara, Guerra, p. 298.

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chier/chiere and an Italian form caro/cara. Examples of such contamination between French and Italian dialects are quite frequent in the manuscript. Furthermore, had the dialect represented here been pure Picard, we should have found also /c#i/ and /c#e/ as the continuation of the Latin syllables /ki/ and /ke/. Indeed, there is a correlation between the evolution that brought the Latin syllable /ka/ to the Picard /ka/ and that which brought the Latin syllables /ki/ and /ke/ to /c#i/ and /c#e/ respectively. The predominance of /c#a/ at the expenses of /ka/ and the reflection of the Latin syllables /ki/ and /ke/ through /si/