The Arabs Versus the Turks

Painting of Sultan Bayezid I 

imprisoned by Tamerlane

The Arabs were the first conquerers of Islam, and they were also the first Islamic empire to be utterly devastated by other Islamic groups. Between 635 AD and 720 AD, the Arab armies cut through a series of kingdoms and they conquered an Islamic empire that stretched from Sind in the Indian subcontinent to North Africa and Europe’s Iberian Peninsula. 

The Arab success was impressive, but short-lived. By the tenth century, the Arabs had lost most of their conquests to new Islamic groups. 

The biggest devastation that the Islamic Turks unleashed was not in India or Europe but in the Arab heartland of the Middle East. The Turkish upsurge was so powerful and deadly that the Arabs were pushed back, permanently it seems, into the Arabian desert from where they had emerged in the seventh century. The Abbasid Caliphate went into decline after the tenth century, and it was utterly devastated by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. 

In the twelfth century, Egypt and large parts of the Middle East went into the hands of Saladin, who was a Kurd. After Saladin’s death his territories went to the Mamluks, who were originally from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. 

In the fourteenth century, before Tamerlane turned his attention to India, his army smashed into Mamluk Syria and Egypt. He devastated the Mamluks, and wiped out the last vestiges of Arab power. The military success of the Turks led to the rise of the Turkish Ottoman Empire which, at its peak in the sixteenth century, included Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.

In the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, the descendants of Tamerlane founded the Mughal (Timurid) Empire in the sixteenth century. The Mughals did not show any deference to the Arabs—why should they, since now the Arabs owned nothing except their traditional homeland, the desert of Arabia. The Mughal alliances were with the Persians and the Turks. Till 1924, when Ottoman Empire fell, the Turks were the dominant political power in Islam. They were also the dominant religious power, through the Ottoman caliphate.

In the twentieth century, when petroleum became a precious commodity, the Western powers started intervening in the Middle East. With Western (mainly American and British) military and economic assistance, the Arabs gained some clout. But their territory was restricted to the Arabian desert. The area outside the Arabian desert remained in control of Turks, Persians, and other non-Arab Islamic groups. 

The military power of the Islamic groups has been declining since the seventeenth century. The discovery of petroleum in the Middle East has not stopped the decline. In the twentieth century and the twenty-first, Islam, as a civilization, continues to retreat. I believe in the theory that the Islamic aggressiveness and militancy that is often highlighted in Western and Asian media is a consequence of the Muslims withdrawing from the world and retreating into Middle Age tribalism.

The Empires Versus the Colonies

It has been the fate of every great empire of the past to be subjugated and destroyed by powers which were once its vassals or colonies. 

The Persian Empire was captured by its former vassals, the Macedonians (led by Alexander the Great). The Roman Empire was captured by its former vassals, a coalition of Central Asian and European barbarian tribes led by the Visigoths. The last traces of the Byzantine Empire were captured by the Ottomans, who were once the vassals of the Byzantine Emperors. The Arab movements, which ruled Southwestern Europe (the Iberian Peninsula—Spain and Portugal) for almost six hundred years (711 to 1492), were initially being supported by the Byzantine Emperors and the political establishment in Italy. The Zengid Empire was replaced by Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty (the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din was responsible for the rise of Saladin). Ayyubid dynasty was replaced by the forces led by their former slaves, the Mamluks, who established the powerful Mamluk dynasty. The Mongol Empire was captured by the powers that arose in their former colonies of Russia and China. The Ottoman Empire was dismembered, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, by a series of coalitions in which its former vassals and colonies played an outsized role.

In the next 50 years, the colonial powers could get colonized by the people from their former colonies. Spain, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy could be captured by the forces from North and South Africa, the Middle East, China, Russia, and even South Asia. The American Empire, which has been dominating the world since 1945, could be captured by the forces belonging to South America, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Psychological Victories of the Conquistadors

Most of the early encounters between the European imperialist powers and the local powers were not conventional military confrontations in which two sides fight pitched battles and try to kill a maximum number of other side’s soldiers. The locals in these encounters were psychologically disarmed and were not mentally inclined to launch a full scale war on the Europeans.

The Europeans knew that they had arrived to conquer and plunder, but the locals were clueless about how to deal with the outsiders who had suddenly appeared on their land. In the initial period of the encounters, the locals would be in awe of the strange customs, language, food habits, dresses, weapons, and ways of fighting of the outsiders. Thus, the Europeans had a distinct psychological advantage. 

In some contests, 50 to 200 European soldiers, dressed in military costumes and riding horses, could psychologically disarm thousands of locals—in a conventional military battle this sort of feat would be impossible. But in South America, Hernán Cortés and his tiny band of Conquistadors could conquer large territories without any military style opposition from the other side.

Cortés was not a military commander. He never won a pitched military battle in South America. In his lifetime, he never fought or led an army in a pitched military battle against a powerful enemy. He won in South America due to psychological reasons. Cortés would not be effective in any military battle where the other side was not psychologically emasculated and was determined to fight back.

In Europe and the Middle East kind of conflicts, a man like Cortés would be a miserable failure. He would not have survived for an hour against Hannibal, Bohemond, Genghis Khan, or Saladin. Cortés was good at waging a psychological war against primitive and isolated communities. But he was no military commander.

The Old Man of the Mountain

Assassins were after Saladin in the 1170s while he was trying to subdue Syria. The assassins (hashashins) belonging to the sect run by the fearsome Iraqi leader Rashid al-Din Sinan, popularly known as the Old Man of the Mountain, came close to killing Saladin on at least two occasions. In the last three decades of the twelfth century, Sinan’s sect was an unpredictable and formidable player in the politics of the Levant—their assassins often proved as effective as a military force.

William of Tyre, twelfth century chronicler, believed that Sinan commanded absolute loyalty from his men. In his Chronicle on Jerusalem, William of Tyre wrote, “they [Sinan’s followers] regard nothing as too harsh or difficult and eagerly undertake even the most dangerous tasks at his command.” Saladin was forced to delay his Syrian conquests by several years because of the threat that he faced from Sinan’s assassins.

In early 1175, when Saladin’s army laid siege to Aleppo, a group of thirteen assassins managed to enter the inner circle of his camp. One of these assassins forced his way into Saladin’s sleeping quarter. He tried to strike Saladin with a knife while he was in his bed, but the royal bodyguards managed to cut him down. The assassination attempt was foiled. In May 1176, the assassins struck again. This time one of the assassins managed to strike Saladin on his chest with his sword. But Saladin was saved by the armor that he was wearing. From this time, Saladin did not allow anyone in his presence whom he did not personally recognize.

In August 1176, Saladin decided to wipe out the assassin sect. He laid siege to the assassin castle in Masyaf. But in less than a week, he broke off the siege and retreated to Huma. The chroniclers of that period assert that Saladin decided to lift the siege because the assassin sect had threatened an unrelenting campaign against him and his Abbasid clan.

In his book The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam, Bernard Lewis quotes a twelfth century source which gives a chilling explanation for Saladin’s decision to lift the siege. While the siege was on, an envoy of Sinan arrived to negotiate. The envoy was searched for weapons and then brought before Saladin. The envoy insisted that he wanted to talk to the Sultan in private. Saladin dismissed everyone except two of his most trusted guards whom he regarded as his sons. Here’s an excerpt from the passage that Lewis quotes from the ancient source:

“The envoy then turned to the pair of guards and said: “If I ordered you in the name of my master to kill this sultan, would you do so?” They answered yes, and drew their swords saying: “Command us as you wish.” Saladin was astounded, and the messenger left, taking the two guards with him. And thereafter Saladin inclined to make peace with him [Sinan].”

Conrad of Montserrat, Italian nobleman who had fought in the Third Crusade, was assassinated in Tyre, a crusader held city, on April 28, 1192, by two assassins belonging to Sinan’s sect. One of the two assassins was caught by the crusaders, and under intense interrogation he confessed that Richard Lionheart of England had paid Sinan to get Conrad assassinated. But this accusation against Richard is impossible to prove.

The Battle of the Horns of Hattin

In the spring of 1187, Saladin began to amass his forces for an invasion of Palestine. His goal was to capture Jerusalem. Fighters arrived to join his army from all over the Islamic world. In June 1187, his army of 12,000 professional soldiers and 30,000 volunteers marched into the Frankish territory. They pillaged every Frankish settlement that they encountered, and set fire to the crops.

In 1174, the imperial throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem had gone to King Baldwin IV, a tragic figure who suffered from leprosy. Due to his debilitating disease, he could not do justice to his kingly responsibilities. He stayed on the throne of Jerusalem for eleven years, till his death in 1185. His sister Sibylla had married Guy de Lusignan, a foolish and overambitious adventurer from France, who became the next king of Jerusalem, only to lose the city in two years. 

When Saladin’s army began its march from Egypt, Lusignan ordered a general call to arms. He managed to amass 1200 knights and between 15000 to 20000 soldiers.

Saladin’s plan was to lure Jerusalem’s forces into the open, in a battlefield of his choosing, and defeat them in a pitched battle. He implemented his strategy on 2 July 1187, in the weakly defended town of Tiberias. The small Christian army, which was guarding the town, was quickly vanquished, and Saladin’s forces poured into the town, but they did not capture the citadel in which Eschiva of Bureswife, wife of Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, had taken refuge. Saladin allowed Eschiva’s call for help to slip through his guards and reach the crusader camp. He was using her as bait to lure the crusaders into marching towards Tiberias.

Though his wife was trapped in Tiberias, Raymond insisted that a pitched battle with Saladin’s massive army would be suicidal for the crusaders. He believed that he could ransom his wife from Saladin. But Lusignan had no faith in Raymond. He thought that Raymond was advising inaction because he wanted to have him branded as a coward. 

The enmity between Raymond and Lusignan went back to 1185, when Baldwin IV had died. Raymond had supported the claim of Sibylla’s sister Isabella and Isabella's husband, Humphrey IV of Toron, to the throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. A civil war between the factions led by the two sisters was averted when Isabella and her husband agreed to swear allegiance to Lusignan.

The Master of Knight Templars and a few other nobles urged Lusignan to ignore Raymond’s advice and move against Saladin. But the Knights Hospitaller was against provoking Saladin. Lusignan was persuaded by the advice of those who were favoring a direct attack.

On 3 July 1187, the crusader army marched towards Tiberias. A small contingent of knights was left behind to defend Jerusalem. When Saladin learned that the crusader army was on the move, he ordered his army to build a formation on the Galilean hills, from where they could dominate the battlefield. Saladin knew that access to water would play a role in the outcome of this battle. He ordered the wells in the region to be filled up. Only one source of water—the spring in the village of Hattin remained, but it was heavily guarded by Saladin’s soldiers.

It is unclear what Lusignan was thinking, or if he was thinking at all, as he marched his soldiers through the scorching desert landscape into the waterless kill zone that Saladin had established. Throughout the way, the natives demoralized the crusaders by beating drums, ululating, and singing. Hundreds were killed in the skirmishes between Saladin’s raiding parties and the flanks of the crusader army. If Lusignan had ordered a direct attack on the main body of Saladin’s forces, he might have had some chance of winning this battle. But his army was tired after the long march and, when it was late in the evening, he decided to pitch his camp in the waterless desert.

On the dawn of the coming day, the crusader army found that they were surrounded by the enemy. Saladin’s men lit dry scrub and the smoke went into the crusader camp blinding them. Around noon heavy bombardment with the arrows began—wave after wave of arrows descended into the crusader camp killing scores of soldiers and horses. Big gaps opened in the crusader army, and their formation was broken. Saladin’s army took advantage of the chaos in the crusader camp to lure several crusaders to their death. They would open gaps in their own formation. When the crusaders saw the gap in the enemy's side, they would rush into it hoping to escape from the kill zone, but they were encircled and slaughtered.

Lusignan made his last stand at Hattin, where there was the geographical feature of two hills which created the impression of horns rising from the ground. He could not defend his position and was overrun by Saladin’s men. Thousands of crusaders were killed, a few were taken captive. Lusignan was captured along with the Grand Master of the Templars, and Reynald of Châtillon. Saladin killed the last two with his own hands. His victory over the crusader army was decisive. On the Horns of Hattin, he constructed a triumphal arch, the ruins of which exist till this day.

On 2 October 1187, Saladin’s soldiers captured Jerusalem after a small siege. Those inside the city decided to accept the peace terms that he was offering, and most of them were allowed to leave the city after the payment of a small ransom. Having fulfilled his pledge of conquering Jerusalem, Saladin took the title of Sultan of Egypt and Syria.

The Rise of Saladin

Saladin was not an Arab or a Turk. He was a Kurd. His real name was Yusuf bin Ayyub. He was the nephew of Shirkuh, a Kurdish lieutenant in the army of Emir of Damascus Nur ad-Din. Saladin began his career as Nur ad-Din’s chief of police in Damascus. The contemporary chroniclers have reported extensively on Saladin’s deeds as a ruler, but they have little to say about the early days of his life, and no description of his physical features has survived. It was not in Damascus but in Egypt that Saladin attained the status of a world-historical Sultan.

In the 1160s, the Egyptian government was in chaos. A conflict had broken out between the vizier of Egypt and the Fatimid caliph. There was a spate of coups and assassinations. Power was being nominally wielded by Fatimid Caliph al-Adid, an eleven year old boy who was a puppet in the hands of various strongmen in Cairo. The political situation was unsustainable. The Fatimid caliphate was collapsing, and Egypt was up for grabs.

Both Nur ad-Din and Amalric, King of Jerusalem, were trying to take advantage of the chaos in Egypt. Amalric marched his army of crusaders to Egypt in 1163. His army met the Egyptian army at Pelusium, a city on the eastern side of Egypt’s Nile delta. Amalric was victorious, but the Egyptian army opened the Nile dams flooding the river, making it impossible for Amalric’s forces to cross into Egypt. Amalric was forced to retreat.

Shawar, the former vizier of Egypt who had been deposed in a power struggle, went to the court of Nur ad-Din and pleaded for assistance. In April 1164, Nur ad-Din dispatched Shirkuh with a sizable army to Egypt with orders to restore Shawar on the throne of Egypt. In the fighting that followed, Dirgham, the vizier of Egypt was killed, and Shawar became the new vizier.

Once he had attained power, Shawar refused to remain subservient to Nur ad-Din. He tried to bribe Shirkuh with 30,000 gold dinars in return for his departure from Egypt. When Shirkuh refused to accept the money, Shawar turned to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He requested Amalric to help him in destroying the army of Shirkuh. Amalric agreed to join Shawar. In the summer of 1164, Amalric’s forces besieged Shawar’s forces at Bilbais. The siege lasted for three months after which a cessation of hostilities was negotiated—both Amalric and Shirkuh departed with their forces, and Shawar was left in control of Egypt.

In 1166 and 1167, Nur ad-Din and Amalric made several attempts to intervene in Egypt. When Shirkuh marched into Egypt with his troops (this time with his 29 years old nephew Saladin), Amalric arrived with his own troops. Shirkuh was forced to withdraw. Shawar agreed to pay tribute to Amalric (an amazing sum of 400000 gold dinars), and allowed the Kingdom of Jerusalem to station its troops in Cairo.

At this point Amalric overplayed his hand. He had a treaty with the Byzantine Empire to attack Egypt jointly. But Amalric decided to attack Egypt on his own with some help from a newly arrived contingent of crusaders from France. He did not want to share the Egyptian loot with the Byzantines. This time Shawar turned towards the benefactor that he had earlier betrayed, Nur ad-Din, who immediately dispatched Shirkuh and Saladin with a large army. Amalric’s forces were decisively defeated, and he had to retreat from Egypt.

Having driven the crusaders out of Egypt, Shirkuh and Saladin invited Shawar to their camp for a meeting. Shawar thought that it would be a traditional meeting and he rode to their camp, but on the way he was confronted by Saladin and his men. They forcibly unhorsed Shawar and beheaded him. Later they presented Shawar’s head to the caliph as a proof of their success. Shirkuh was appointed the vizier of Egypt, but he died in two months due to a throat infection.

Being Shawar’s nephew, Saladin had a claim to the throne, but there were several more powerful claimants. Saladin displayed remarkable political acumen in playing other claimants against each other, and he emerged as a compromise candidate. In March 1169, 31-years-old Saladin’s appointment as vizier and commander of the army was confirmed by the Fatimid caliph.

This was a big step upwards for Saladin. But his hold on power was tenuous. He was a Sunni Kurd in a Shia country. He was commanding the Sunni army of Nur ad-Din but the nominal head of the country was the Shia Fatimid caliph. He could easily become a target of a coup or assassination. Saladin proved to be a ruthless and fearsome ruler. He crushed every entity that could threaten his life and throne. He maintained a respectful attitude towards Nur ad-Din, paying regular tributes to him and promising his loyalty to him. But he refused to allow Nur ad-Din’s family members to enter Egypt.

When Nur ad-Din died in 1174, Saladin immediately moved to take advantage of the power vacuum that had been created in the Near East. He positioned himself as Nur ad-Din’s successor. The members of Nur ad-Din’s Zengid dynasty saw Saladin as a usurper. They wanted Nur ad-Din’s empire to go to his lone son As-Salih Ismail al-Malik who was eleven year old when his father died. Saladin claimed that he was there to protect the rights of As-Salih. But his real intention was to cement his own rule. By applying coercion, Saladin managed to peacefully grab Damascus, and he solidified his position by getting the Abbasid caliph to recognize him as the overlord of Egypt and southern Syria.

There were several assassination attempts on Saladin—all failed. He had a knack for survival. In 1176, he married Nur ad-Din’s widow Ismat ad-Din Khatun to strengthen his claim to Nur ad-Din’s legacy and empire. He continued to take measures against the Zengids to weaken their resolve to oppose him. When Nur ad-Din’s son As-Salih died in 1181, the Zengids lost their rallying point. By using threats, bribery, and force Saladin made the Zengids to give up Aleppo and Mosul. In 1187, he defeated a crusader army in the battle of the Horns of Hattin, and was proclaimed the Sultan of Egypt and Syria.

Napoleon and the Making of Modern Egypt

After the fall of Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty in the thirteenth century, the Mamluk Sultanate became the masters of Egypt. The Mamluks were overthrown by the Ottomans in the Ottoman–Mamluk war of 1516 and 1517. But the victorious Ottomans retained the Mamluks as an Egyptian ruling class. The Mamluks were allowed to rule Egypt as the vassals of the Ottomans. 

When Napoleon attacked Egypt in 1798, the country was out of direct control of the Ottomans and was being dominated by the local Mamluk elite. In the Battle of the Pyramids, fought on 21 July 1798, Napoleon’s French forces decisively defeated the Mamluk cavalry. The battle was over in an hour, with the French suffering just 300 casualties while inflicting more than 6000 casualties on the Mamluk cavalry. Mamluk power was finished in Egypt. The Mamluk survivors moved into Syria, leaving Egypt in the hands of Napoleon who, three days later, triumphantly marched his troops into Cairo.

With his quick victory in Egypt, Napoleon had created the impression in Western Europe that he would achieve what all the crusades of the past had failed to achieve. But ten days later, the British Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson shattered Napoleon’s dream of founding a French Empire in North Africa and the Middle East. In the Battle of the Nile, between 1st and 3rd of August 1798, Nelson destroyed Napoleon’s navy at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast. With most of his ships destroyed, Napoleon was cut off from France and stuck in Egypt with his 35,000 troops. He remained in Cairo for three years, till 1801. 

Napoleon’s three year stay in Cairo wrought profound, long-term consequences for Egypt. He had not arrived in Egypt to merely conquer and loot—he believed that it was his destiny to liberate, reform, and bring modern ideas to the backward nations of the world. He had brought with him a team of more than 160 scholars. In three years, he gave Egypt the kind of reforms that this country had not seen for several centuries. He turned the traditional Egyptian society on its head. 

Egypt got a postal service. In Cairo and other urban areas street lighting and sanitation was created. A modern mint was established. A French trading company came up. There was creation of plague hospitals, and printing presses with typescript for French, Greek, and Arabic. Slavery was abolished. The dhimmi system was abolished, and the Ottoman and Mamluk social hierarchy came to an end. Though the Egyptian elite remained unconvinced of Napoleon’s intentions, many of his reforms worked so well that they were not abolished after he left the country. 

It can be argued that Napoleon led to the rise of Egyptian nationalism through his support of Egyptian scholarship. He encouraged the study of Egyptian culture before the time of the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire. He funded several scholarly works on ancient Egypt. This led to the rise of the new discipline of Egyptology. In July 1799, a young engineering officer, Pierre-François-Xavier Bouchard, who had arrived in Egypt with Napoleon, discovered the Rosetta Stone, which played a significant role in the deciphering of ancient Egyptian language.

On Richard Lionheart’s Crusade

After mentioning that Richard Lionheart’s life came to a close when he was hit by a stray arrow shot from a rebel castle in France on 26 March 1199, Steven Runciman uses a single sentence to deliver his judgement on Lionheart’s life: “He was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier.” (A History of the Crusades III: The Kingdom of Acre; Chapter III, “Coeur-de-Lion”)

Lionheart was not fully committed to the war for the Holy Land—his first priority was to safeguard the interests of his empire in England and France. He arrived in Acre on 8 June 1191 and departed for Europe on 9 October 1192. During his sixteen months that he spent in the Levant, Lionheart acted like a shrewd political operator and a pragmatic military commander. He carried out long negotiations with Emperor Saladin even as they were trying to defeat each other in a series of battles. He and Saladin delighted in being respectful and generous to each other. Lionheart realized that with the kind of military commitment that Western Europe could make in the Levant, Saladin and other oriental forces could not be defeated. 

After a siege that lasted for about two years (started by King Guy in August 1189), the crusaders conquered Acre on 12 July 1191. Lionheart played a decisive role in the success at Acre. In September 1191, Lionheart defeated Saladin in a battle north of Arsuf. Towards the end of May 1192, the crusaders had taken all the coastal areas that they had lost to Saladin. In January 1192, and then for the second time in June 1192, the crusaders were just ten to twelve miles from Jerusalem, which was largely undefended since most of Saladin’s forces were committed to other parts of the battlefield. On both occasions, Lionheart refused to besiege Jerusalem. He believed that even if the crusaders managed to conquer Jerusalem, they would not be able to hold it while Saladin was the ruler of Egypt and Syria. 

Lionheart’s struggle to make it back to England proved to be as perilous as his struggle against Saladin. The ship in which he left Acre was wrecked by a storm near Venice, forcing him to continue his journey overland. To evade his European enemies, he was traveling in disguise, but he was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria. Leopold accused Lionheart of the murder of Conrad of Montferrat and locked him in a castle. On 28 March 1193, Lionheart was handed over to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, who imprisoned him in a castle in Germany. After the payment of a ransom, Lionheart was released on 4 February 1194. On his release, King Philip of France sent a message to John, Lionheart’s brother: “Look to yourself; the devil is loose"