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The best life is that of the man who holds his horse’s rein in Allah’s way and flies on its back to the places from whence he hears a war cry or the clatter of arms, seeking martyrdom or slaughter on the battlefield …
From the Hadith, The Book of Jihad.
Roger of Antioch acted quickly upon the death of Ridwan and took all of the major fortresses ringing the city in preparation for its reduction in the same year. In response to this threat the now atabeg Lu Lu called on Il-Ghazi of Mardin for support. Il-Ghazi quickly occupied Aleppo and was supported by the Sunni ulama of the city. These same Sunni clerics had been the most voluble of all in their calls for jihad against the Franks ever since the first refugees from the coastal cities taken by the Crusaders had flooded into Aleppo. It was also these same men who had started the pogrom against the Ismailis of Aleppo of 1113.
Il-Ghazi’s experience as a cavalry soldier and leader was extensive, but what was happening at Aleppo was significant for other reasons. As at Maarrat al-Numan, the Sunni leaders of the ulama had taken control of a key resistance point to the Franj. A qadi’s religious authority was largely subordinated to the political authority of his Saljuq governor. Therefore calls for jihad from the ulama were always likely to fail against the indifference of a Turkish hegemony that had a strong disdain for the non-military intelligentsia. The difference here was that jihad was a perfect stalking horse for the territorial ambitions of a prince like Il-Ghazi, who was now free of fear of interference from Baghdad.
Roger of Antioch was beginning a siege of Aleppo as Il-Ghazi arrived in the city. The ulama of the city therefore made immediate calls for the whole city to follow them, along with Il-Ghazi, in jihad against the Crusaders. It was just the stirrings of a response, but a start had been made. Ibn al-Qalanasi wrote of how:
Il-Ghazi made his emirs swear that they would fight bravely, that they would hold their positions, that they would not retreat, and that they would give their lives for the jihad. The Muslims were then deployed in small waves, and managed to take up night-time positions alongside Roger’s troops. At daybreak the Franj suddenly saw the Muslim banners approach, surrounding them on all sides. The qadi, Ibn al-Khashab advanced astride his mare, and gestured with one hand urging our forces into battle. Seeing him one of our soldiers shouted contemptuously, ‘have we come all the way from our home country to follow a turban?’ But the qadi marched towards the troops, moved through their ranks, and addressed them, trying to rouse their energy and lift their spirits, delivering a harangue so eloquent that men wept with emotion and felt great admiration for him. Then they charged. Arrows flew like a cloud of locusts.
At the end of the battle, known in the West as Ager Sainguinis or the Field of Blood, Roger was dead and his men and horses, the entire field army of Antioch, according to Ibn al-Qalanasi, looked like stretched-out hedgehogs, such was the volume of arrows the men of Il-Ghazi had poured into them as they sped by on their steeds. Needless to say the horse was a revered beast among the Turks, and even the Turcomen had at least two warhorses in their retinue along with a palfrey for riding to war, and Il-Ghazi’s askari would have been aboard fleet mares. By the time of the Mamluk sultanate every trooper had stabled, well-fed horses capable of carrying a fully armoured cavalryman at high speed and of cantering without any need of rein control as its master shot arrow after arrow from the saddle.