The
Crusades: The Fall Of Jerusalem
By Tamim
al-Barghouti
How the concept
of jihad has changed
The Daily Star
05 August, 2003
After Jerusalem's fall to
Crusaders in 1099, a massacre was conducted against Muslims, Jews and
Orthodox Christians living in the city. While the numbers given by historians
can be doubted, they are still indicative of the horrific impression
the massacre had on contemporary observers. People were killed in their
homes, in the streets and, when they tried to take refuge in the Al-Aqsa
Mosque, they were followed and slaughtered. Synagogues were burned with
Jews hiding inside, and the sacred relics of Orthodox churches were
taken away.
A few survivors, however,
managed to save one of the most ancient copies of the Koran and escape
to Damascus. They reached it during Ramadan, went to the mosque and
put the copy in front of Abu Saad al-Harawy, the grand judge of the
city and the highest religious authority in the princedom. Next Friday,
the judge went to the mosque, dressed in black, not wearing his turban
and with his head shaved as a sign of grief. He mounted the preacher's
platform in the mosque and started to eat bread in public. Breaking
the fast of Ramadan by the highest religious authority was a great crime
doing it in public was a declaration of mutiny. When the guards
came to arrest him, he shouted to his audience of believers: "Jihad
to regain Jerusalem is more of a religious duty than praying and fasting
in Ramadan," and the point was made. A sweeping wave of anger and
calling for jihad against the invaders swept the Muslim world, especially
the Arab parts. Harawy went to Baghdad, taking his call for jihad to
the caliph. The mission failed and the caliph answered with little more
than tears. Nevertheless, and maybe because of this mild reaction, the
call from the judge of Damascus was eternalized, romanticized and spread
through the Arab world.
It is worth noting that since
that Friday, the concept of jihad has greatly transformed. Before the
Crusades, jihad had two essential meanings. The first indicated the
inner conflict between good and evil within the human soul a good
believer had to fight a jihad against his own desires; this was called
al-jihad al-akbar (the greater jihad). The second notion referred to
the expansionary wars fought by the early Umayyad Empire against the
non-Muslim nations in Persia, Turkistan and North Africa. However, after
Jerusalem's fall, jihad became the medieval Islamic equivalent of the
modern concept of national liberation. It became a war of self-defense
against foreign invaders. It is mainly the effect of the Crusades that
the concept was so much romanticized and glorified beyond its original
meaning. In fact, the notion of jihad as an expansionary war of missionary
imperial dimensions has been almost totally abandoned since that famous
Friday in Damascus.
It is also worth noting that
the deaf ears upon which the first call of defensive fihad fell became
part of the tradition of calling for jihad. Very few times has that
call been answered, for it takes more than an over-charged public opinion
to start a regional war. Since the time of the Crusades, jihad was an
asset of poets and a burden of kings. The balances of power during the
first phase of the European invasion of Lebanon, Syria and Palestine
did not allow for a quick reaction. The region's people had to wait
another 50 years before the Zingids established their strong state with
its two capitals in Aleppo and Mosul, and started pressing the attack
southward toward Jerusalem. The actual liberation of the city, however,
took more than a united Syria; another resourceful state had to be added
to the equation: Egypt.
The Shiite Fatimid caliphate
in Cairo was living its last hours, a 13-year-old caliph was a prisoner
is his own palace, while Egypt witnessed a civil war between two of
his viziers. One of the two made the mistake of asking for the help
from the Crusaders. The young caliph, seeing the Christian armies advancing,
and under the influence of the other vizier, called for the help of
the Zingids, the only force in the Levant that could balance the Crusaders.
To make sure Nour al-Din Mahmoud Ibn Zingi, the prince of Aleppo, Mosul
and Damascus, would answer the caliph's call, the later sent him a silver
box, where the caliph's women had put some of their hair. In the symbolic
language of the time, the caliph was telling Mahmoud, "Either you
come to save us, or my women will be unveiled by the Crusaders."
The help came from Aleppo,
through Jordan, under the leadership of one Youssef Ibn Ayyoub, later
known to the world as Saladdin. He reached Cairo before the Crusaders.
They were defeated and the Fatimid caliph was saved. However, to the
Shiite caliph, the Sunni commander sent by the prince of Aleppo was
a mixed blessing; soon after the Crusaders had withdrawn, Saladdin,
who became the strongest man in Egypt, declared the end of the Shiite
Fatimid rule and that the country was now a Sunni princedom following
the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, and one of the provinces of the Zingids.
After the death of his Zingid
master, Saladdin could easily unite Egypt, Syria and Jordan, strategically
cornering the Crusaders in western Palestine and Lebanon. At last, the
balance of power allowed for someone to head the call of the Damascene
judge.
Except for Tyre, Saladdin
was eventually able to destroy all the Frankish princedoms and regain
Jerusalem. That he had to unite Syria, Egypt and Iraq to do it further
developed the concept of jihad. Now the word also implied unity. Looking
at the political discourses of governments and oppositions in the contemporary
Arab world, one can recognize how powerful are the memory of the crusades
and the concept of jihad a memory kept alive not only by the extent
of the trauma caused by the original experience, but also due to the
repetitive colonial attacks on the region, from Napoleon Bonaparte to
George W. Bush.
Tamim al-Barghouti, a Palestinian
poet who lives in Cairo, is a doctoral candidate at Boston University.
This is the second of a series of his articles that will appear every
Saturday in The Daily Star