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And this place is very dreadful and dangerous. Seven rivers flow from this town of Bashan and great reeds grow along these rivers and many tall palm trees stand about the town like a dense forest. This place is terrible and difficult of access for here live fierce pagan Saracens who attack travellers at the fords on these rivers. And lions are found here in great numbers. This place is near the River Jordan and a great watermeadow lies between the Jordan and the town of Bashan and the rivers flow from Bashan into the Jordan and there are many lines of that place.
Daniel, a Russian Abbot of the twelfth century, describing the dangers of Palestine to pilgrims.
The Templars emerged probably in the year 1118, and would within two years begin to provide active protection of the pilgrim routes that led to Jerusalem. William of Tyre tells us that the first knights to take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that marked out this unusual order of monk-soldiers were Hugh of Payns and Godfrey of Saint Omer. The two knights were blessed in their venture by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The King of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, granted the nascent movement a property on the south side of the Temple Mount. It is unclear whether the two knights meant simply to adopt a penitential way of life and that the role of warriors of God came later and or whether Baldwin recognised with some immediacy how useful such men would be in bolstering the stretched military resources of the Latin Kingdom. Even the small contingent of around thirty companions who joined Hugh and Godfrey would be of value during a period of considerable peril for the Crusaders as minor Muslim princes of the region finally began to take up arms against the invaders. In January 1120 an assembly of prelates and secular leaders held in Nablus issued a series of decrees that probably included the formalising of the Templar order.
Nothing quite like the Templars had existed in Christendom before. Certainly the Knights Hospitaller predated them, but their vows were directed at providing shelter and care for pilgrims rather than directly confronting the enemies of Outremer on the battlefield. One possible inspiration for the Templar order could in fact have been the ghazis of Islam. These fighters for the faith would leave safe homelands to fight on the borders of Islam against the pagan Turks or Byzantines, and live together as communities in ribats, fortified Muslim monasteries. In eleventh and twelfth-century Syria there were also futuwwa or brotherhoods such as the Nubuwiyya, whose central principle was the eradication of Shiism from the region. These brotherhoods were associations of young men, with distinct ranks and rites to mark the attainment of manhood. Most were followers of holy men and had cult practices.
The discipline that the Templars showed within their strict hierarchy was directly related to the religious nature of their brotherhood. This reflected the ecclesiastical discipline based on celibacy and rejection of worldly honours and desires that had been instilled by Urban II into the Church and by the Cluniac philosophy of Gregory the Great. The monkish lifestyles of the grand masters would have recommended itself to the clerics of Cluny. At the birth of the order these knights were the ideal Crusaders. They fought to free the Holy Land but also retained a higher ideal of the ‘other’ Jerusalem, the celestial city that existed above the ordinary gore and dirt of this earth.