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Verily, a Berber had entered into our presence even though we all hold him in contempt and despise his people …
The Ansari or Helpers of the Prophet Muhammad in conversation with Muhammad’s mother, Aisha. From an unlikely Prophetic Hadith originating in medieval North Africa.
The Fatimids reopened the war with the Crusaders again in July 1101 by attempting to take Ramla and thereby to cut off Jerusalem from Jaffa. The Crusader force which met them was small, with only 260 knights divided into six squadrons, which were dispatched from behind a curtain of infantry into the Fatimid army as paired units. The Fatimid centre held and Fulcher of Chartres tells us that Baldwin had to ride with his last squadron into the massed ranks of the Muslims in order to break them. The wings broke with the shock of this last charge, but the Fatimids held in the centre and came close to winning the battle through simple attrition. However, their emir was killed and the army’s resistance then collapsed. The main army was also failed by indiscipline from its Berber cavalry, which had ridden out wide during the early Crusader charges and had surprised their infantry line. They rode down the infantry but then left the battle and rode on to Jaffa in search of loot. Their desertion allowed Baldwin to launch his last charge without fear of encirclement, despite the loss of his supporting infantry.
It is possible of course that the Berbers just didn’t feel capable of taking on the Crusader knights. They did not have the deadly archery fusillade of the Turcomen to rely on and they were not heavily armoured like the askari Mamluks. They carried a lance and sword only, and it is notable that the Muslims’ lances lengthened over the period of the Crusades, as if every soldier was reluctant to get within reach of the knights’ battle swords. The Berber cavalry’s reluctance to continue the fight was also symptomatic of the deep-rooted problems of Fatimid leadership and finance: Egypt had not fully recovered from the famine that had affected it from 1066 to 1073, and the revenues of Syria had now, of course, also been lost. Low army morale and internecine arguments among its commanders over allocation of lands and revenues were common.
The Fatimids took on the Crusaders again in May 1102 at Ramla under al-Afdal’s son, Sharaf. They defeated Baldwin’s small force but they were unable to dispatch enough of his army to make the victory immediately valuable. They also failed to take Jaffa, which made their victory a very hollow one. Once again, Baldwin had charged at the centre of the Fatimid force, but this time it had held firm and the Crusader charge shattered. Baldwin fled from the field and hid in a reed bed. He was badly burnt when the reeds were set on fire by his pursuers, but escaped to Arsuf. Sharaf was unlucky not to take Jaffa, where the Latin infantry set up a fierce defence. A Frankish fleet smashed through the Fatimid naval blockade of the city and a bloody battle then broke out between the Fatimid army and its own fleet’s marines. The Egyptians carried out a wholesale slaughter of the survivors of the Battle of Ramla, but when Baldwin led fresh forces out from Jaffa and engaged Sharaf once more the Fatimid troops broke under his charge and fled the field.