A Turcoman dynasty in eastern Anatolia and Iraq, founded by Artûq, a chief of the Doger clan of the Oghuz tribe. Artûq fought for the Saljûq sultan Malik Shāh, established a power base in Upper Mesopotamia, and governed Palestine from 1086 until his death in 1091. In the early twelfth century, the Artûqids split into two branches: Artûq’s son, Suqmān, took power in Hisn Kayfa in 1102, and his direct line ruled there until 1232. This branch was eventually extinguished by the Ayyûbids. Another descended from Suqmān’s brother, īlghāzi; members of this branch governed Mardin and Mayyafariqin until 1408, when their rule was terminated by the Turcoman Qarakoyunlu confederation. A third, shortlived branch of the Artûqids (1185-1234) ruled at Kharput (mod. Harput, Turkey).
Between 1100 and 1130 Suqmān, his brother īlghāzi, and their nephew Balak ibn Bahrām stood out as redoubtable opponents of the Franks. These nomadic Turcoman chiefs were still under the nominal suzerainty of the Saljûq sultan, whose main power base was in Persia and Iraq. The threat of punitive action from the sultan prevented them from operating as independently as they might have wished.
Shortly before the arrival of the First Crusade (1096-1099), Suqmān and īlghāzi were governing the city of Jerusalem on behalf of the Saljûqs. Suqmān rallied to Karbughā, the atabeg of Mosul, in his attempt to relieve Antioch in 1098. That same year the Fātimid vizier, al-Afdal, captured Jerusalem from Suqmān and īlghāzi, who withdrew to Mesopotamia. Suqmān then became active against the Franks. In 1101 he tried unsuccessfully to take the town of Saruj from Baldwin I, count of Edessa. In May 1104, he joined Jekermish, the governor of Mosul, in defeating the combined Frankish forces of northern Syria in a battle near Harran. Although disunity between the two commanders prevented an expected attack on Edessa, their victory at Harran halted Frankish momentum and was a boost to Muslim morale. In 1105 Suqmān again proceeded to Syria, but he died suddenly, allegedly of quinsy, but possibly poisoned by Tughtigin, the atabeg of Damascus. Thus a vigorous opponent had been removed too early in the conflict with the Franks for him to make a real impact.
īlghāzi, however, came to the fore almost immediately after his brother’s death and had a much longer career. In April 1110, in the first military campaign sponsored by the Saljûq sultan Muhammad against the Franks, īlghāzi accompanied its commander Mawdûd to Edessa. The following year Mawdûd led a second expedition against the Franks with a new coalition, including Ayāz, īlghāzi’s son, but not īlghāzi himself. His neighbor, Suqmān al-Qutbi of Akhlat, died suddenly in the Syrian campaign, and īlghāzi, attracted by the short-term prospect of gain, attacked his funeral cortege on its route home, a deed that earned him opprobrium. In 1114, īlghāzi again refused to join the next campaign from the east under Aq-Sunqûr al-Bursuqi.
In 1115 īlghāzi’s disobedience to the Saljûq sultan became open hostility. When another campaign from the east came to Syria under Bursuq ibn Bursuq, it faced a Mus- lim-Frankish alliance amongīlghāzi, Tughtigin, and Prince Roger of Antioch, forged to defend local territorial interests. Roger’s subsequent victory over Bursuq at Tell Danith made this the last expedition sent by theSaljûq sultan. The cessation of this threat, and the death of Sultan Muhammad in April 1118, emboldened īlghāzi to take more personal initiatives against the Franks and to expand his power base. He followed his capture of Mardin and Mayyafariqin in 1118 by seizing Aleppo the following year. He then descended into the Orontes Valley. Tughtigin promised to join him, but in the event īlghāzidid not wait for him. Nor did Roger of Anti och wait for other Frankish princes. In the ensuing battle in May 1119, īlghāzī won a resounding victory at the battle of the Field of Blood (Lat. Ager Sanguinis), and the Franks sustained considerable losses. This triumph over Roger was the crowning moment of īlghāzī’s career, gaining him great prestige in the Muslim world. The caliph bestowed on him the honorific title Najm al-Dīn(Star of Religion); he had succeeded where semi-official Saljûq campaigns had not, and the glory fell exclusively to him. Yet the short attention span of his Turcomans, who, once satisfied with the plunder from a battle, were reluctant to embark straightaway on further fighting, and his own prolonged alcoholic celebration (which lasted three weeks), prevented him from following up this triumph in the obvious way with an attack on Antioch.
īlghāzī was, above all, opportunistic and would pursue whatever chances for plunder presented themselves. Accordingly, in 1121 he struck northward into the Caucasus. There he was roundly defeated by the Christian Georgian king, David II, and was lucky to escape to Mardin. He died in November 1122, but there was a dramatic epilogue to follow. His widow ordered two men to hold his corpse upright on his horse as it entered Mayyafariqin so as to secure the citadel for his son Sulaymān before his death was announced publicly.
The Artûqid threat to the Franks of Syria was not, however, finished. īlghāzī’s dynamic but overextended energies were now replaced by those of his intrepid nephew, Balak, who controlled Melitene (mod. Malatya, Turkey) and Kharput. Balak captured Count Joscelin I of Edessa in 1122 and King Baldwin II of Jerusalem in 1123; both languished in his pit at Kharput. The seizure of the Frankish king gave Balak great prestige. He then took Aleppo, but on hearing that Joscelin had escaped from prison, he hastened to Kharput, seized the castle, and threw all the inhabitants, except for Baldwin, over the battlements. Balak was killed by a stray arrow while besieging Manbij in May 1124. He had indeed been a formidable opponent of the Franks in the north. The inscription on his tomb speaks of him as a martyr and carries a quotation from the Qur’ān (3/169): “Think not of those who are slain in the way of God as dead. Nay, they are living” [J. Sauvaget, “La tombe de l’Ortokide Balak,” Ars Islamica 5 (1938), 207-215].
The strength of the early Artûqids had lain in the raiding skills of their bellicose Turcoman cavalry, and īlghāzī had relied latterly on his alliance with Tughtigin of Damascus.
Between 1100 and 1130, the northern Syrian towns were under constant pressure; threatened by vigorous Frankish expansion, they turned for protection to Muslim commanders such as the Artûqids. But such protection was a mixed blessing. The proximity of the undisciplined Turcomans, whom the Artûqids could not always control, threatened the safety of the cities. Indeed, īlghāzī’s troops had previously terrorized the citizens of Baghdad, and Balak’s lieutenant in Aleppo forcibly (and illegally) turned churches into mosques.
With Balak’s death, the Artûqids relinquished Aleppo and ceased to operate as vigorous, independent opponents of the Franks in northern Syria. Henceforth their role would be to answer calls to arms from more powerful Muslim rulers in Syria and Egypt. Otherwise, they entrenched themselves in their lands in Upper Mesopotamia, involved in local power struggles. Once the career of the Muslim leader Zangī, governor of Mosul, was fully launched in the 1130s, both īlghāzī’s son Timûrtash, who succeeded him at Mardin, and his Artûqid cousins at Hisn Kayfa lived in Zangī’s shadow, threatened by his growing power and fearsome reputation. They had a stark choice: send troops to reinforce Zangī or risk his personal reprisals in their own territories. Their perceived misdemeanors were dealt with firmly on several occasions; for example, just before besieging Edessa in 1144, Zangī attacked the Artûqid ruler of Hisn Kayfa, Qara Arslān, who had allied himself with Joscelin II of Edessa.
By the time of Nûr al-Dīn, Zangī’s son, the Artûqids had learned their lesson, and they knew their place. When called upon, they provided troops for Nûr al-Dīn, as, for example, at Artah in 1164. Saladin too relied on his Artûqid vassals, whom he kept under tight control and in whose domestic squabbles he sometimes intervened. In 1182, Saladin captured Amid, handing it to Nûr al-DīnMuhammad, the Artûqid ruler of Hisn Kayfa (d.1185). When Saladin unsuccessfully attacked Kerak in Transjordan in 1184, Artûqid troops were with him. Under Saladin’s direct successors, the Ayyûbids, Artûqid power was further reduced, and they lost Amid, Hisn Kayfa, and Mayyafariqin in turn. In the thirteenth century the sole remaining Artûqids of the Mardin branch were successively vassals to the Saljûqs of Rûm, the Khwarazm-Shāh Jalāl-Dīn, and finally the Mongols.
Muslim medieval sources rarely mention the crucial fact that the Artûqids ruled predominantly Christian towns. However, as a small military elite, they established a modus vivendi with local notables, giving the citizens military protection in exchange for the payment of taxes. Beginning as nomadic chiefs, the Artûqids, as early as the second generation, became attached to the territories they governed. In administration, they ruled a Saljûq successor state in microcosm. Timûrtash was more interested in peace than war, and he invited scholars to Mardin. That witty observer of Frankish mores, Usāma ibn Munqidh, speaks warmly of the three years he spent at the Artûqid court in Hisn Kayfa (1170-1173), and Timûrtash’s son, Najm al-Dīn Alpī (d. 1176), ordered a translation of the Syriac version of Dioscorides’s De materia medica. Artûqid copper coins, with figural imagery, based inter alia on ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine models, have suggested a classical revival to some scholars. Moreover, the Artûqids were vigorous patrons of architecture, building mosques, bridges, tombs, and caravanserais, and renovating the walls of their cities.
After the Artûqids lost Aleppo, their territories were situated too far from Outremer to pose a serious threat to the Frankish territories. But their early leaders had indeed proved tough opponents for the Franks, and the simulated cavalry flights and sudden raids of their Turcomans were justifiably feared. However, īlghāzī and Balak lacked the iron discipline of Zangī, and they came too early to benefit from the heightened atmosphere of jihād (holy war) and the support of the religious classes later enjoyed by Nûr al-Dīn and Saladin.