Islam and the Crusades

The Crusades have remained one of the hotly debated topics in 21^st-century academia, as new studies continue to emerge exploring fresh themes and narratives, particularly from the Muslim perspective. Carole Hillenbrand’s The Crusades: Islamic Perspective (Edinburgh University Press, 1999) was a groundbreaking work that explored hitherto neglected aspects of how the Crusades were seen and understood by Muslims as presented in the medieval Arabic sources. In Islam and the Crusades: Collected Papers, a collection of 20 articles on different themes, Hillenbrand further aims to tell the story of the medieval Crusades from the Muslim perspective, since “the entire history of the Crusades,” according to Hillenbrand, was “colonized by Western historians” (xiv). In her preface, she also narrates her academic journey and details her interest in the Crusades.

Hillenbrand begins by examining the reception of Ta’rīkh Mayyāfāriqīn wa-Āmid (The History of Mayyafariqin and Amid), a 12th-century chronicle by Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqī (1116-1176), through a comparative study of its treatment by four selected authors: Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī (1185-1256), Ibn Wāṣil (1208-1298), Ibn Khalliqān (1211-1282), and Ibn Shaddād (1145-1234). Despite the lack of literary merit in Ibn al-Azraq’s work, Hillenbrand says that all four scholars borrowed from it for varied aims and in varied forms without acknowledging it. Hillenbrand notes that "Arab writers" often neglect concerns about plagiarism(26). Interestingly, Hillenbrand’s PhD thesis also deals with the contribution of Ibn al-Azraq to local history.

In her second article, Hillenbrand attempts to present a neglected episode of “Reconquista,” the fall of Lisbon during the Second Crusade, that she terms “Christian Success.” It is generally believed that the First Crusade was the only Crusade the Christian world considered truly “successful,” as Jerusalem was recaptured., but Hillenbrand writes that during the Second Crusade, Christian Europe successfully reconquered Lisbon from the Muslims of Spain. On their way to the Levant by sea route, the crusaders were allowed and in fact encouraged to plunder, loot, and massacre the inhabitants of Lisbon, and “even the crusaders were shocked” (37) Given the promises made to the Muslims by Afonso (1111-1185) and fueled by internal disagreements among the Crusaders, the chaos and disorder during the plunder exceeded beyond even their own expectations.. Hillenbrand further draws attention to the important historical fact that it was this episode that turned a tolerant, harmonious, and peaceful Muslim society into one where “intolerance and fanaticism prevailed” (38).

The third article, covering “Jihad Propaganda in Syria,” asserts that after the First Crusade, Muslim rulers resorted to a number of ventures to raise general awareness of and motivation for jihad, which, she argues, was largely ignored by Muslims. Particularly, she mentions epigraphic inscriptions on buildings, religious places, and endowments that were used in Syria but not in other places in the Muslim world, from Spain to Central Asia and India (48).

In the next article, Hillenbrand examines the First Crusade from an Islamic perspective. She reveals that the “Western Crusader historians on the Muslim dimensions” of the Crusade suffer from an overreliance on limited translated source material, despite the fact that there is a large corpus of unexplored Arabic sources (63). Moreover, Hillenbrand writes, except for a few voices, the Muslim understanding of and response to the First Crusade was full of chaos and confusion, for the Muslims were unable to “identify” and “understand” their enemy—the Crusaders. Hillenbrand further notes that Muslims call “the malefactors al-Rum, the usual Arabic term for the Byzantines” (60). However, as Hadia Dajani-Shakeel, also an authority on the Muslim perspective on the Crusades, has noted, the term “al-Rum” may have also referred to Latin Christians. So, it is not clear that the Muslims mistook all crusaders as ByzantinesIt is true, as Hillenbrand writes, that the Muslim response to the Crusades was initially poor, fragmented, and disorganized because they were preoccupied with internal disunity.

In the subsequent articles, some themes and subject matter are recurrent. For example, the sixth and eleventh chapters  both deal with Ayuybids. Similarly, chapters 3 and 8 investigate the use of Islamic inscriptions as jihad tools in various buildings and public places in Syria; chapters 12 and 17 focus on Jerusalem under the Ayyubids; and chapters 3, 13, and 15 attempt to present how Muslims use the concept of jihad for multiple reasons throughout history, during and after the Crusades, and down to the present time. In addition, articles 10, 16 and 19 are particularly devoted to highlighting the life, career, and legacy of Saladin, both for the West and for the Muslims.

In chapter 17, “The Holy Land in the Crusader and Ayyubid Periods,” Hillenbrand recounts positive engagements between the Crusaders and Muslims even during the war. Based on a 15^th-century Muslim chronicle by al-Maqrizi, she mentions “forced” conversion of Muslims to Christianity by the Crusaders; and she further writes that “a number of Franks are reported to have converted to Islam” (317). However, she does not mention anything about the latter, such as whether it was also a forced conversion. Christian conversion to Islam during the Crusades is an important research field, but no substantial work has been done on this topic so far. Hillenbrand also claims that Muslim Arabic chronicles exaggerated the scale of death, destruction, and massacre committed by the Franks during the 1099 fall of Jerusalem.

Chapter 19, “Saladin’s Spin Doctors,” is notable in that it recalls Saladin’s success in preserving his image as an inspirational hero and leader for future generations of Muslim politicians and military leaders. This was only possible, Hillenbrand writes, because three great court biographers surrounded Saladin: Qāḍī al-Fādil, Imād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī, and Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād, whom Hillenbrand dubbed “Spin Doctors”.

Islam and the Crusades brings together a number of interesting studies on the Muslim perspective of the Crusades. Though most of the articles offer nothing new, as she has already dealt with them in her previous 1999 book, the present volume offers afresh the Muslim perspective of the Crusades and will prove a handy tool for students, scholars, and those interested in the subject.

Muhammad Yaseen Gada is an assistant professor of Islamic Studies at the Department of Higher Education (J&K), Kashmir.                         

Mohd Yaseen Gada

Date Of Review:

September 13, 2024