43
Tamer of the infidels and polytheists, leader in the holy war, helper of the armies, protector of the Muslims.
A contemporary dedication on an Aleppan building to the Mujahid Zangi.
Baldwin II was cursed with daughters. The usurping of his line’s claim on the holiest throne in Christendom seemed the most likely outcome of the marriage of his oldest daughter Melisende to any magnate or king from Europe. He attempted to thwart this by investing her before his death, and after Melisende had given birth to a son, making her joint ruler along with the infant boy and her husband Fulk of Anjou. He also made Melisende the sole guardian for the future Baldwin III. This was a severe blow to the prestige of King Fulk when he ascended the throne as joint ruler with his wife in 1132, and in their reign we see significant cracks appearing in the unity of the Crusader state which a wily and forceful foe such as Zangi could exploit.
Zangi also had designs on Damascus. Tughtigin’s mad son had taken the throne and was causing chaos but the emirs of the city frustrated Zangi in the field and a swift judicial murder of the insane prince and his replacement with a puppet put paid to any political opportunity that Zangi could act upon.
Zangi therefore switched to the easier option of grabbing cities and land from the Crusaders. By 1135, he had taken Atharib and Maarrat al-Numan without having to engage any Crusader field armies. He besieged the Frankish castle of Barin as part of a campaign against Muslim Homs. King Fulk and Raymond of Tripoli attempted to break the siege, but ran into a perfect ambush. Raymond was killed and the king fled for the cover of Barin. Zangi pressed the siege with a fierce mangonel bombardment and Fulk was captured as the castle fell.
Zangi released the king on easy terms as he needed to mobilise quickly to meet a new threat. As we have seen above, Byzantium was resurgent and pressing on Zangi’s northern possessions.
In many ways the Crusaders were a huge advantage to Zangi in the campaign against John. He met the invasion of Muslim lands by the Byzantine-Tripoli forces with a rapid, wide-ranging and effective diplomatic operation, and an impressive local military response. He stirred up the Anatolian Turkish emirs into assaults on the emperor’s recently regained territories, and ensured that there was enough turmoil produced in Baghdad by its ulama, to ensure that the sultan was chagrined into sending troops to his defence. His military clerks then sent letters to all the major cities still under Muslim control in Syria to come to his aid. He was able to do this because, despite his skulduggery against Damascus and his long campaigns against his Muslim neighbours over the last few years, he was now the hero of resistance to the Franj and to the emperor of the Rum, the Muslims’ oldest enemy.
Jihad is a discrete action in Sunnism. Zangi was engaged in a project that was pan-Islamic, as the alliances he sought to form were aimed at defeating the Franj. Such coalitions were central to jihad. Zangi also got his propagandists to extol his virtues as a ghazi and Mujahid. Another key element of jihad is that social justice must be exercised by its leaders. Zangi controlled his army through iron discipline, and crucified transgressors of his laws. Al-Isfahani tells us that Zangi was, ‘tyrannical and indiscriminate’, which in fact probably meant that he was harsh but fair and impartial in his justice.
So much for the ideological aspect of jihad: the Crusaders were about to feel its physical fury.