In April 1117 the eunuch Lu'lu' was assassinated. According to Kamāl al-Dīn, the soldiers of his escort had hatched a plot against him. While he was walking east of the city one day, they suddenly drew their bows, crying, ‘After the hare! After the hare!’, to make him believe that they were hunting that animal. In fact, it was Lu'lu' himself who was riddled with arrows. After his death, power passed to another slave, who, unable to assert his authority, asked Roger to come to his aid. The subsequent chaos was indescribable. While the Franj prepared to lay siege to the city, the military officers continued to fight among themselves for control of the citadel. Ibn al-Khashāb also decided to act without delay. He assembled the principal notables of the city to propose a plan of action whose consequences were to be weighty. As a border town, he explained, Aleppo ought to be in the vanguard of the jihād against the Franj. It should therefore offer its government to a powerful emir, perhaps even the sultan himself, and should never again allow itself to be governed by a local kinglet who placed his personal interests above those of Islam. The qāḍī’s proposal was approved, though not without some reluctance, for the Aleppans were jealously attached to their particularism. The major candidates were then reviewed. The sultan? He refused to have anything further to do with Syria. Tughtigin? He was the only Syrian prince with some degree of personal strength, but the Aleppans would never accept a Damascene. Ibn al-Khashāb then proposed the Turkish emir Ilghazi, governor of Mardin in Mesopotamia. True, his conduct had not always been exemplary. Two years earlier, he had supported the Islamo-Frankish alliance against the sultan, and he was known for his frequent drunkenness. When he drank wine, Ibn al-Qalānisi tells us, Ilghazi would remain in a state of hebetude for days on end, not even rousing himself sufficiently to issue an order or directive. But a long search indeed would be required to find a sober military man. On the other hand, Ibn al-Khashāb argued, Ilghazi was a courageous fighter, his family had governed Jerusalem for quite some time, and his brother Sokman had won the victory of Ḥarrān against the Franj. A majority finally rallied to this view, and Ilghazi was invited to come to Aleppo. The qāḍī himself opened the city gates to him during the summer of 1118. The emir’s first act was to marry the daughter of King Riḍwān, a gesture that symbolized the union between the city and its new master and simultaneously asserted the latter’s legitimacy. Ilghazi then called his troops to arms.
Twenty years after the beginning of the invasion, the capital of northern Syria for the first time had a commander who really wanted to fight. The result was stunning. On Saturday 28 June 1119 the army of the new ruler of Aleppo confronted the forces of Antioch on the plain of Sarmada, midway between the two cities. A khamsīn, a hot, dry and sand-laden wind, was blowing in the eyes of the combatants. Kamāl al-Dīn describes the scene.
Ilghazi made his emirs swear that they would fight bravely, that they would hold their positions, that they would not retreat, and that they would give their lives for the jihād. The Muslims were then deployed in small waves, and managed to take up night-time positions alongside Sir Roger’s troops. At daybreak the Franj suddenly saw the Muslim banners approach, surrounding them on all sides. The qāḍī Ibn al-Khashāb advanced astride his mare, and gestured with one hand, urging our forces into battle. Seeing him, one of the soldiers shouted contemptuously, ‘Have we come all the way from our home country to follow a turban?’ But the qāḍī marched toward the troops, moved through their ranks, and addressed them, trying to rouse their energy and lift their spirits, delivering a harangue so eloquent that men wept with emotion and felt great admiration for him. Then they charged. Arrows flew like a cloud of locusts.
The army of Antioch was decimated. Sir Roger himself was found among the bodies, his head cleaved to the nose.
Word of the victory reached Aleppo just as the Muslims, all in rows, were coming to the end of the midday prayer in the great mosque. A great clamour was heard from the west, but no fighter entered the city before the afternoon prayer.
Aleppo spent days celebrating its victory. There was singing and drinking, sheep were slaughtered, people wandered about looking at the crossed banners, helmets, and coats of mail brought back by the troops, or watching some poor prisoner being decapitated—the rich ones were ransomed. People listened as improvised poems in honour of Ilghazi were recited in the city squares: After God, it is you whom we trust. For years the Aleppans had lived in terror of Bohemond, Tancred, and then Roger of Antioch, and many had come to expect that they, like their brothers in Tripoli, would some day inevitably be forced to choose between death and exile. After the Sarmada victory, they felt as though life had begun anew. Ilghazi’s exploit aroused enthusiasm throughout the Arab world. Never in past years has such a triumph been bestowed upon Islam, exclaimed Ibn al-Qalānisi.
These exaggerated words reflect the extremely low morale that had prevailed on the eve of Ilghazi’s victory. The arrogance of the Franj had indeed come to border on the absurd. At the beginning of March 1118 King Baldwin had sought to invade Egypt with exactly 216 knights and 400 foot-soldiers. He crossed Sinai at the head of his meagre forces, occupied the city of al-Faramā’ without meeting any resistance, and went as far as the banks of the Nile, where he bathed, notes Ibn al-Athīr mockingly. He would have gone further had he not suddenly been taken ill. Carried back to Palestine as quickly as possible, he died en route, at al-‘Arīsh in north-east Sinai. Despite Baldwin’s death, al-Afḍal would never recover from this fresh humiliation. Rapidly losing control of the situation, he was assassinated three years later in a Cairo street. As for the king of the Franj, he was replaced by his cousin, Baldwin II of Edessa.
The Sarmada victory, coming so soon after the spectacular raid across Sinai, seemed like revenge, and a number of optimists thought it signalled the beginning of the reconquest. They expected Ilghazi to march on Antioch without delay, for the city now had neither prince nor army. Indeed, the Franj themselves were preparing for a siege. Their first decision was to disarm the Syrian, Armenian, and Greek Christians of the city and to forbid them to leave their homes, for the Franj feared that they would ally with the Aleppans. Tension was running high between the Occidentals and their Oriental coreligionists, who complained that the former were contemptuous of their rites and had confined them to subordinate roles in their own city. But the precautions taken by the Franj proved unnecessary. Ilghazi did not even dream of pressing his advantage. Wallowing in drunkenness, he refused to leave the former residence of Riḍwān, where he seemed intent on celebrating his victory without end. So much fermented liquor did he consume that he was seized by a violent attack of fever. It took him twenty days to recover, just in time to be told that the army of Jerusalem, under the command of the new King Baldwin II, had that moment arrived in Antioch.
His health ruined by alcohol, Ilghazi died three years later, never having managed to exploit his success. The Aleppans were grateful to him for saving their city from the Frankish danger, but they were hardly distressed at his death, for they were already turning their attention to his successor, an exceptional man whose name was on everyone’s lips: Balak. He was Ilghazi’s nephew, but a man of quite another stamp. Within a few months he would become the adored hero of the Arab world, his exploits celebrated in the mosques and public squares.
In September 1122, through a brilliant manoeuvre, Balak succeeded in capturing Joscelin, who had replaced Baldwin II as count of Edessa. According to Ibn al-Athīr, he wrapped him in a camel skin, had it sewn shut, and then, rejecting all offers of ransom, locked him in a fortress. Following the death of Roger of Antioch, a second Frankish state had now lost its leader. The king of Jerusalem, uneasy at these developments, decided to go north himself. Some knights of Edessa led him to the place where Joscelin had been seized, a swampy area alongside the Euphrates. After a quick reconnoitre, Baldwin II ordered the tents pitched for the night. The next day he rose early to take part in his favourite sport, falconry, which he had learned from Oriental princes. Suddenly Balak and his men,
who had approached noiselessly, surrounded the camp. The king of Jerusalem threw down his arms. He, in turn, was taken into captivity.
In June 1123 Balak made a triumphant entrance into Aleppo, his prestige vastly inflated as a result of all these exploits. Following in Ilghazi’s footsteps, his first act was to marry the daughter of Riḍwān. Then, without suffering a single setback, he swiftly and systematically reconquered the Frankish possessions around the city. The military skill of this forty-year-old Turkish emir, his spirit of determination, his rejection of any compromise with the Franj, his sobriety, and finally, the roll of honour of his successive victories, were in sharp contrast to the disconcerting mediocrity of the other Muslim princes.
One city in particular saw him as its providential saviour: Tyre, to which the Franj had again laid siege despite the capture of their king. The defenders’ position proved far more delicate than it had been during their victorious resistance twelve years earlier, for this time the Occidentals had control of the seas. An impressive Venetian squadron comprising more than a hundred and twenty vessels had appeared off the Palestinian coast in the spring of 1123. The Egyptian fleet, lying at anchor in Ascalon, was taken by surprise and destroyed. In February 1124, after signing an agreement with Jerusalem on the division of the booty, the Venetians blockaded the port of Tyre, while the Frankish army pitched its camp to the east of the city. The outlook for the defenders was not encouraging. The Tyrians, of course, fought on obstinately. One night, for example, a group of accomplished swimmers slid up to a Venetian ship guarding the entrance to the port and managed to draw it to the city, where it was disarmed and destroyed. But despite such stunning operations, the chances of success were minimal. The debacle of the Fatimid fleet made any rescue from the sea impossible. Moreover, it was becoming difficult to supply the city with drinking water. Tyre—and this was its major weakness—had no source within its walls. In peacetime, water was brought in from outside through pipelines. In time of war, the city relied on its cisterns and on intensive provisioning by small boats. But the tight Venetian blockade made this impossible. If the vice was not loosened, the city would be forced to capitulate within a few months.
Since they expected nothing from their usual protectors the Egyptians, the defenders turned to the hero of the hour, Balak. The emir was then laying siege to a fortress called Manbij in the Aleppo region, where one of his vassals had rebelled. When the appeal from Tyre reached him, he immediately decided, according to Kamāl al-Dīn, to turn over command of the siege to one of his lieutenants and to go to Tyre’s rescue himself. On 6 May 1124 he made a last tour of inspection before setting out.
Helmeted and with his shield on his arm, the chronicler of Aleppo continues, Balak approached the fortress of Manbij to choose the site for the placement of his mangonels. As he was giving his orders, an arrow shot from the ramparts struck him under the left clavicle. He wrenched the shaft out himself and, spitting in the air in contempt, murmured, ‘That blow will be fatal for all the Muslims.’ Then he fell dead.
Balak was right. When news of his death reached Tyre, the inhabitants lost heart. They now saw no course open to them but to negotiate the terms of their surrender. On 7 July 1124, Ibn al-Qalānisi relates, they filed out of Tyre between the two ranks of soldiers, without being molested by the Franj. All soldiers and civilians left the city, in which only the infirm remained. Some of the exiles went to Damascus, while the others scattered through the countryside.
Although a bloodbath was thereby averted, the admirable resistance of Tyre nevertheless ended in humiliation.
The people of Tyre were not alone in suffering the consequences of Balak’s death. In Aleppo power fell to Timurtash, the son of Ilghazi, a young man of nineteen who, according to Ibn al-Athīr, was interested only in having fun and was eager to leave Aleppo for his native city, Mardin, because he felt that there had been too many wars with the Franj in Syria. Not content merely to abandon his capital, the inept Timurtash hastened to release the king of Jerusalem in exchange for a ransom of twenty thousand dinars. He presented him with robes of honour, a gold helmet, and ornamented ankle boots, and even gave him back the horse he had been riding on the day of his capture. Princely behaviour no doubt, but completely irresponsible, since several weeks after his release, Baldwin II arrived at the gates of Aleppo with the firm intention of seizing it.
The defence of the city devolved entirely upon Ibn al-Khashāb, who had only a few hundred armed men. When he saw thousands of enemy fighters deployed around his city, the qāḍī dispatched a messenger to Ilghazi’s son. The emissary risked his life slipping through enemy lines by night. Upon his arrival in Mardin, he repaired to the emir’s dīwān and insistently implored him not to abandon Aleppo. But Timurtash, as impudent as he was cowardly, found the messenger’s complaints annoying, and ordered him thrown into prison.
Ibn al-Khashāb then turned to another potential saviour, al-Borsoki, an old Turkish officer who had just been named governor of Mosul. Renowned not only for his rectitude and religious zeal, but also for his political skill and ambition, al-Borsoki quickly accepted the qāḍī’s invitation and set out forthwith. His arrival at the besieged city in January 1125 surprised the Franj, who fled, abandoning their tents. Ibn al-Khashāb rushed out to meet al-Borsoki, urging him to pursue the fleeing Franj, but the emir was weary from his long ride, and more important, was impatient to visit his new possession. Like Ilghazi five years earlier, he dared not press his advantage, and thus allowed the enemy time to recover their wits. Nevertheless, his intervention assumed great significance, because the union of Aleppo and Mosul in 1125 became the nucleus of a powerful state that would soon be able to respond successfully to the arrogance of the Franj.
We now know that the astonishing perspicacity and tenacity of Ibn al-Khashāb not only saved the city from occupation, but also contributed more than anything else to preparing the way for the great leaders of the jihād against the invaders. But the qāḍī would not live to see these events. One day in the summer of 1125, as he was leaving the great mosque of Aleppo after the midday prayer, a man disguised as an ascetic leapt upon him and sunk a dagger into his chest. It was an act of revenge by the Assassins. Ibn al-Khashāb had been the sect’s most intransigent opponent, had spilled buckets of its adherents’ blood, and had never repented of his actions. He must have known that some day he would pay with his life. For a third of a century, no enemy of the Assassins had ever managed to elude them.
This sect, the most terrifying ever seen, had been founded in 1090 by a man of immense culture, a devotee of poetry profoundly interested in the latest advances of science. Ḥasan Ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ was born around 1048 in the city of Rayy, close by the site where the town of Tehran would be founded a few dozen years later. Was he really, as legend claims, an inseparable companion of the young poet Omar Khayyam, himself a devotee of mathematics and astronomy? It is not known with certainty. On the other hand, the circumstances that led this brilliant man to dedicate his life to organizing his sect are known in detail.
At the time of Ḥasan’s birth, the Shi‘i doctrine, to which he adhered, was dominant in Muslim Asia. Syria belonged to the Fatimids of Egypt, and another Shi‘i dynasty, the Buwayhids, controlled Persia and dictated orders at will to the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad itself. During Ḥasan’s youth, however, the situation was radically reversed. The Seljuks, upholders of Sunni orthodoxy, took control of the entire region. Shi‘ism, triumphant only a short time before, was now only a barely tolerated, often persecuted, doctrine.
Ḥasan, who grew up in a milieu of religious Persians, was indignant at this state of affairs. Towards 1071 he decided to settle in Egypt, the last bastion of Shi‘ism. But what he discovered in the land of the Nile was hardly cause for elation. The aged Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir was even more of a puppet than his ‘Abbasid rival. He no longer dared even to leave his palace without the permission of his Armenian vizier, Badr al-Jamālī, the father and predecessor of al-Afḍal. In Cairo Ḥa
san met many religious fundamentalists who shared his apprehension and sought, like him, to reform the Shi‘i caliphate and to take revenge on the Seljuks.
A movement soon took shape, headed by Nizār, the older son of the caliph. The Fatimid heir, as pious as he was courageous, had no intention of abandoning himself to the pleasures of the court, nor of acting as a puppet in the hands of some vizier. When his elderly father died, which could not now be long, he meant to succeed him and, with the aid of Ḥasan and his friends, to inaugurate a new golden age for the Shi‘is. A detailed plan was prepared, of which Ḥasan was the principal architect. The Persian militant would return to the heart of the Seljuk empire to pave the way for the reconquest that Nizār would most assuredly undertake upon his accession to power.
Ḥasan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, but by methods very different from those imagined by the virtuous Nizār. In 1090 he took the fortress of Alamūt by surprise. This bastion, the ‘eagle’s nest’, was situated in a practically inaccessible region of the Albruz Mountains near the Caspian Sea. Once he commanded this inviolable sanctuary, Ḥasan set about establishing a politico-religious organization whose effectiveness and spirit of discipline would be unequalled in all history.