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Paradise has one-hundred grades which Allah has reserved for the Mujahedeen who fight in his cause, and the distance between each grade is like the distance between the heavens and the Earth.
From the Hadith. The Book of Jihad.
Tughtigin, the atabeg of Damascus, died in February 1128. During his final years he had involved himself with the Ismaili Assassins, even to the extent of employing hundreds of known Ismailis in his army. The Franks controlled the entire coast, Egypt was finished with the war and Damascus nearly fell to the Ismailis as Tughtigin breathed his last.
The Assassins failed to take control of Damascus simply because the Sunni revival in northern Syria, based around the embryonic jihad of Il-Ghazi and Balak, and the continuing involvement of the ulama in martial and government affairs, was now also taking place further south. Tughtigin’s heir Buri moved quickly following the old man’s death. He surprised and executed his father’s wazir, a known sympathiser with the Ismaili Assassins, and employed the city’s militia to purge the city of the creed. Ibn al-Qalanasi tells us that ‘by the next morning, the quarters and streets of the city were cleared of the Batinis and the dogs were yelping and quarrelling over their limbs and corpses’.
The Ismailis attempted to exact their revenge through Baldwin by gifting him their castle of Banyas, which lay close to Damascus on the Jerusalem road. Baldwin gathered together forces from Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch, the coastal cities and from the Knights Templar and began to plunder right up to Damascus’s walls. Buri scraped together a force formed from nomadic Turcomen and Arabs of the region, with his askari and that of the Prince of Hama as a core.
He intercepted the Franks at the wooden bridge six miles from Damascus. He managed to get his Arab auxiliaries on all sides of the Franks and tried to break up the Crusader column with flying raids. Baldwin held his position and refused to offer battle knowing his knights and regular infantry would be capable of repelling the lightly-armed Arab and Turcomen horsemen. He also despatched a detachment to Hawrun, south of Damascus, to collect provisions for a siege of Damascus. Buri quickly dispatched a large number of his Arabs and Turcomen along with the askari of Hama to surprise this force.
The ambush was perfectly executed and many of the Crusaders were killed before they could even mount their warhorses. The Crusaders were unable to organise a charge because they were encumbered by baggage and supply mules and were riding their palfreys rather than their chargers. Their resistance eventually broke under the repeated Muslim assaults and William, the Constable of Jerusalem, fled the field with a party of knights. The remaining men-at-arms and infantry were either slaughtered or taken as slaves.
Buri attempted to engage the Crusaders at the wooden bridge, but Baldwin had had word of the disaster at Leja. The Muslims found only abandoned wounded men and a mass of injured horses at the bridge. The askari of Damascus pursued the Crusader rearguard and they killed a number of stragglers, but Baldwin managed a generally well-ordered retreat, and even hazarded later in the year another attempt to take Damascus but appalling weather ruined his plans. Damascus was the home of Syrian steel, its core economy, and its finest swords. Its conquest, or acquiescence, was central to the Crusader Kingdom’s survival.