36
This is war,
And the man who shuns the whirlpool to save his life shall grind his teeth in penitence.
This is war,
And the infidel’s sword is naked in his hand,
Ready to be sheathed again in men’s necks and skulls.
This is war,
And he who lies in the tomb at Medina seems to raise his voice and cry: ‘O sons of Hashim!’
Al-Abiwardi, a twelfth-century Iraqi poet.
It was a great victory and it seemed to herald the emergence of the kind of union between faith and military action that had brought Islam its early conquests. The Sunni world had lost this union during its subjugation by professional Turkish military men, and the Fatimids had fallen under the power of their own wazirs. Their state became both weak and yet, ironically, dominated by the military, losing all of its fervour.
However, Il-Ghazi’s men failed to follow up on their victory and dispersed for plunder, the prince himself dying in 1122 of alcoholic cirrhosis. It seemed as if nothing had changed but in fact Antioch had been crippled and Edessa’s existence began to look increasingly parlous. There was also a definitive hardening of attitudes towards the foe on both sides. This piece of Fatimid crystal would most likely have entered the West via Sicily or Venice rather than across the Palestine to Syria ‘front line’. Some Franks might take on oriental ways as we have seen with Tancred, but the Crusaders’ attitudes to Islam remained fixed, antagonistic and generally uninterested in comprehending the faith they opposed. Equally the Turks began more and more to take on the mantle of jihad and to be less accepting of the Crusader presence in lands that had been part of the Saljuq Empire.
Il-Ghazi’s son, Suleiman, was quickly removed by his cousin Balak, who usurped the Aleppan throne after a whirlwind campaign of blockade and crop burning. Balak soon gave his new subjects something to cheer when he captured Joscelin, the new count of Edessa, near the city of Saruj. Then in 1123, he went one better and bagged Baldwin II near the walls of Edessa. Joscelin was rescued by Armenians disguised as monks and then daringly crossed the Euphrates on inflated wineskins, but Baldwin II failed to escape and remained a captive.
In 1124 Balak, the new hero of Muslim Syria, received an appeal for aid against the Crusaders from a besieged Tyre, but was killed by an arrow shot from Manbj, a fortress of a rival emir that he was besieging. He is said to have pulled it from his neck with the words, ‘that blow will be fatal for all the Muslims,’ and then fell dead. His rule had been short but it helped nourish the lore of jihad that was continuing to grow in northern Syria and in the Jazira. His cenotaph was inscribed with his deeds in the Holy War and contemporary writers tell us of warriors who, ‘bravely make it their duty to fight with heroism … they spill their blood for the Holy War’.