Mongols and Mamluks: The Changing Face of the Middle East

By the mid-13th Century, the face of the Near East was in a state of transformation. On the one hand, the Mamluks replaced the heirs of Salah ad-Din. On the other, a new Asiatic power had intruded upon the already complex scene: the Mongols. 

 

The Mongols were unlike any previous invader in that they flatly rejected compromise and peace, demanding complete and unconditional surrender instead. When the pope asked why they were invading without provocation or grievance, the Mongols replied that they ‘did not understand his words’ — they conquered because they could and because ‘God’ had given the entire earth to them.[i] The savagery and brutality of Mongol conquests were unprecedented; they terrified Christians and Muslims alike. 

The Mongols invaded and laid waste to the Rus between 1236 and 1242, the climax being the capture and sack of Kiev in 1240. A year later, the Mongols obliterated a German army at the Battle of Leignitz and defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi. Further expansion into Europe was only prevented by internal rivalries among Mongol leaders, which ultimately resulted in them shifting their focus to Asia Minor and the Middle East. In 1243 they crushed the Seljuks at the Battle of Kosedag, leading to the conquest of Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia. The King of Cilician Armenia and the Prince of Antioch surrendered their independence and did homage to the Mongols to avoid destruction. In 1256, after a pause to deal with internal issues, the Mongols advanced again, this time eliminating the stronghold of the Assassins. In 1258, they captured and pillaged Baghdad in one of the most shocking excesses of violence known to history. The savage sack was characterised by wanton destruction that obliterated wealth as well as priceless cultural monuments and treasures, including mosques, palaces, hospitals and no less than thirty-six libraries. The Mongols executed the Caliph, allegedly by rolling him into a rug and trampling him with their horses, thereby ending the 500-year-old caliphate. The number of civilians slaughtered is estimated at over 100,000 and possibly twice that, leaving the city a shattered and depopulated ruin for generations afterwards. Two years later, the Mongols captured and sacked first Aleppo and then Damascus. The Ayyubid empire had been destroyed, and many of the survivors fled to the territories controlled by the Franks for safety. 

The Mongols, meanwhile, turned their eyes to the rich prize of Egypt. They sent ambassadors demanding submission, but the new rulers of Egypt, the Mamluks, were not inclined to submit. Instead, they sought an alliance with the Franks. The Franks declined to participate in a joint offensive but granted the Mamluks permission to march through Frankish territory to confront the Mongols. On 3 September 1260, the Mamluks met the Mongols southwest of the Sea of Galilee in what had once been part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Battle of Ain Jalut. After hours of fighting, the Mamluks feigned flight and lured the Mongols into a trap. The Mongol army was obliterated, and the Mongol threat receded. Yet in its place was a new, dynamic and triumphant power: the Mamluks. 

The Mamluks were slaves, purchased as children and trained rigorously to become elite troops. Ethnically they were predominantly Caucasian, increasingly drawn from the Turcomen tribes inhabiting the region north of the Black Sea, but they were indoctrinated in Islam from the time of their capture. Their education included rigorous religious instruction by Islamic scholars but did not extend much beyond religion. As they grew up, the amount of time spent training for war increased. They were drilled in horsemanship and mounted combat with the lance, sword and bow. They also learned hunting, wrestling, polo and rudimentary veterinary skills. Although freed at maturity, they remained soldiers for life. They made up the bodyguards and elite units of the various Ayyubid princes and emirs for generations. They were famed and feared for their loyalty, devotion to duty and religious orthodoxy. The latter did not stop them from murdering each other as unscrupulously as they broke treaties and broke their word. 

The Mamluk regime in Egypt had been established through the assassination of Turan Shah — before the eyes of King Louis and the other French captives. It is described in detail by the eyewitness Joinville: 

[Turan Shah’s] bodyguard hacked and slashed… . one of these men gave him [the sultan] a lance-thrust in the ribs. He continued his flight with the weapon trailing from the wound… . So they came and killed him, not far from the place where our galley lay…  Faress-Eddin-Octay cut him open with his sword and took the heart out of the body. Then, with his hands dripping with blood, he came to our king and said: ‘What will you give me now that I have killed your enemy?[ii]

Furthermore, the Mamluks were not a dynasty, rather they were a professional elite. This meant that power belonged to the strongest. The initial beneficiary of the assassination of Turan Shah was a certain Aybeg, but he was murdered on 10 April 1257. His son briefly ruled, but by 12 November 1259, he had been replaced by the Sultan Qutuz. The latter won the battle of Ain Jalut, only to be stabbed to death shortly afterwards by a group of his emirs led by al-Din Baybars. 

 

Baybars managed to retain power for seventeen years from 1260-1277. He controlled both Syria and Egypt, but unlike his Ayyubid predecessors, he did not do so as the ruler of a loose coalition of princes and emirs whose loyalty had to be courted, but rather as the commander-in-chief of a highly centralised state dedicated to war. This state depended on the support of the religious elites to keep the government functioning, and it purchased their loyalty with religious bigotry. 

 

Yet there was no question in anyone’s minds that the Mamluks were usurpers — and former slaves. To stay in power, they needed to establish new legitimacy, and as soldiers, the most obvious means of doing so was to declare war, or more specifically, ‘jihad’. The Mamluks employed ‘jihad’ to distract their subjects from their illegitimacy and unite them against a ‘common enemy’. As a result, the Mamluk period was characterised by increased hostility to non-Muslims inside and outside the territories they controlled. Religious minorities in the Mamluk states, particularly Christians, suffered increasingly harsh discrimination and oppression. Once the Mongol threat was banished, the Mamluks turned their attention to active ‘jihad’ against the crusader states with the stated intention, as recorded by Baybars’  biographer Shafi bin Ali, of ‘waging war until no more Franks remain on the surface of the earth’.[iii] 

 

Breaking with the Ayyubids and placing religion above economic expediency, Baybar’s objective was the absolute destruction of the crusader states, including their economies. He pursued military tactics that explicitly targeted economic assets, destroying crops, orchards, livestock, aqueducts and other infrastructure. He slaughtered or enslaved the population of the territories he conquered, making no distinction between Franks (Latin Christians) and native Christians. When he succeeded in taking cities, as he did in 1265 with the capture of Caesarea, Haifa and Arsuf, he destroyed them so they could not be used as bridgeheads for future crusades — and in so doing, destroyed their economic value to his own state as well as the revenue that derived from them to his people.  

 

Having split the Kingdom of Jerusalem in half with the above conquests, Baybars next attacked the Templar fortress of Safed in 1266. Despite having promised to spare the inhabitants if they surrendered, he massacred them. In 1268, he captured Jaffa and again brutally sacked and razed the city after slaughtering and enslaving the population. The same year, he took Antioch. He ordered the gates of the city closed while his troops slaughtered every single living thing inside — and then sent a letter bragging about his brutality to the Prince of Antioch, who had been absent when the attack and sack occurred. This letter was very long, very detailed and very triumphant in tone. Below is only a tiny excerpt:

 The churches themselves were razed from the face of the earth, every house met with disaster, the dead were piled up on the seashore like islands of corpses… . You would have seen your knights prostrate beneath the horses’ hooves … your women sold four at a time and bought for a dinar of your own money … your Muslim enemy trampling on the place where you celebrate mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests and deacons upon the altars … your palace lying unrecognizable. [iv]

 The scale of destruction shocked the world, including the Muslim world. It was recognised at the time as the worst massacre in crusading history, similar in scope to the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols a decade earlier. It also ended the economic prosperity of the city, turning it into a ghost town for generations to come — indeed, reducing its status to that of a provincial backwater to this day. 

In 1271, Baybers captured the illustrious Hospitaller fortress of Crac de Chevaliers and the headquarters of the Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land, Montfort. In 1277, he died of poisoning; whether it was accidental is impossible to know. After two years of vicious infighting among the Mamluk emirs, Qalawun emerged as the new sultan. He had pushed aside two of Baybars’ sons to get there and immediately faced a revolt from a fellow Mamluk emir in Damascus, which he put down militarily only to ally himself with his rival to defeat a new Mongol threat. The Mongols were again defeated at the Battle of Homs on 29 October 1281. Thereafter, Qalawun turned his attention to dismantling the remnants of the crusader states with a combination of threats, extortion and outright force.

---

[i] See note 6, Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, 238.

[ii] See note 7, Joinville, The Life of Saint Louis, 252.

[iii] See note 4, Madden, The Concise History of the Crusades, 168.

[iv] Baybars’ letter, translated by Francesco Gabrieli in Arab Historians of the Crusades (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 311.

 

The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

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An escaped Templar, an intrepid, old crusader, and a discarded bride

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The Templars and the Saint

  It is unsurprising that the Templar relationship to a man who would later be sainted was significantly more friendly that with an excommunicate and possibly agnostic like Frederick II Hohenstaufen. It is perhaps also significant that King Louis vowed to liberate Jerusalem not ostentatiously at coronations (as Frederick had done) but rather a moment of profound desperation. In short, Louis IX of France crusaded out of conviction and that appealed to the Templars -- although it did not prevent tensions, or disaster.

 

The Templars in France, at this time were led by the Preceptor (Commander) for France, Renaud de Vichiers, took a leading role for the start. Vichiers promised not only that he would accompany the crusade with a large contingent of French Knights Templar, he undertook to negotiate the transportation of Louis’ crusading force. Whereas in the time of King Richard 100 ships had been needed to transport a crusading army, by now just 38 ships were sufficient ― not because the King Louis took fewer knights, men and horses with him than Richard I, but because ship-building had advanced so much that the “modern” vessels of the mid-13^th century were capable of carrying roughly 700 men and 100 horses each. 

13th Century Galley

On August 25, 1248 Louis’ large crusading army set sail from the newly constructed port of Aigues Mortes. He was accompanied by his three younger brothers, the Counts of Artois, Poitou and Anjou, as well as many other powerful noblemen such as the Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Flanders and St. Pol and de la Marche (the head of the French Lusignan family, with so many ties to the Holy Land.) He was also accompanied by his queen, Marguarite of Provence, and an English contingent of knights under the Earl of Salisbury.

The French/English fleet reached the port of Limassol on Cyprus without mishap on September 17, 1248.  Here the crusaders, particularly King Louis, were welcomed by the King of Cyprus, Henry I. The Cypriot King was a grandson of Aimery de Lusignan.  He had inherited the throne as an infant and been treated like a pawn by the Holy Roman Emperor during his brief sojourn in the Holy Land, but after coming of age at 15 in 1232, Henry had shown great spirit and independence. Notably, he had attained a papal decree ending Cypriot vassalage to the Holy Roman Emperor a year before the arrival of King Louis. He was at the start of the 7^th Crusade 31 years old, a man in his prime, and he, naturally, supported King Louis wholeheartedly.

In consequence, Louis’ army was strengthened by large contingents of troops commanded by the local barons, who generally held fiefs in both Cyprus and the remnants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Louis was also joined by a large contingent of Knights Templar commanded by the Master of the Temple, William de Sonnac. These Templars were drawn from the Templar fortresses and commanderies in the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus.

 

The Hospitaller Commandery at Kolossi, Cyprus

For this larger army, a new fleet had to be found, something that took most of the winter, so that it was mid-May of 1249 before the crusading army set sail to assault Damietta in Egypt, the opening volley of the 7^th Crusade. This army was estimated at 2,800 knights and “countless” infantry. It took, according to the participant and chronicler Jean de Joinville, 1,800 vessels (both large and small) to transport it.

A storm partially dispersed this great fleet, but St. Louis went ahead undeterred and with what ships he had established a beachhead. Interestingly, the first ships to land were not those of the Templars, but some of the crusaders such as Joinville and the local barons, notably the Count of Jaffa and Ascalon, John d’Ibelin. Joinville describes the arrival of Jaffa’ galley as follows:

As the galley approached, it seemed as if it flew, so quickly did the rowers urge it onwards with the powerful sweep of their oars; and what with the flapping of the pennons, the booming of the drums, and the screech of Saracen horns on board this vessel, you would have thought a thunderbolt was falling from the skies. As soon as this galley had been driven into the sand as far as it would go, the count and his knights leapt on the shore, well-armed, well-equipped, and came to take their stand beside us. (Joinville, p. 204)

As for King Louis,

When the King heard that the standard of Saint Denis was on shore he strode quickly across the deck of his ship, and in spite of all the legate, who was with him, could say, refused to be parted from the emblem of his sovereignty, and leapt into the sea, where the water came up to his armpits. He went on, with his shield hung from his neck, his helmet on his head, and lance in hand, till he had joined his people on the shore. When he reached land and scanned the enemy, he asked who they were, and was told they were Saracens. He put his lance under his armpit, and holding his shield before him, would have charged right in among them if certain sagacious men who were standing around him had allowed it.

Instead of charging on foot, the Frankish knights did as Richard the Lionheart had done before Jaffa: they thrust the points of their shields and the butts of the lances into the sand, with the tips of the latter pointed outwards. Behind this improvised wall, they withstood multiple charges by Saracen cavalry until crossbowmen and finally the horses could be off loaded from the ships. Eventually, enough horses were on hand for the Franks to launch a charge of their own.

To their astonishment, the enemy broke and fled behind the powerful walls of Damietta. In fact, as it turned out, they didn’t just take refuge in the walled city of Damietta but continued fleeing out the other side. What had happened was that the Sultan, who was dangerous ill in Cairo, had failed to respond to carrier pigeons requesting instructions and reinforcements. Thinking the Sultan was already dead, the defenders lost heart and fled in disarray. The crusaders, not knowing this, initially camped outside the walls expecting a long siege, but Coptic Christians came out of the city the following morning to report the city had been abandoned by the Saracens.  The crusaders moved into Damietta the same day.

This rapid victory took the crusaders by surprise. They had expected a long siege. Their unexpectedly rapid victory meant that they had control of the city while the Nile was still in flood. To attempt an assault on Cairo at this time would have been foolish, so the army settled in to await the ebbing of the waters. Louis sent for his Queen to join him, and the dying Sultan offered to exchange Jerusalem for Damietta. 

Unfortunately the Sultan made the suggestion via the Knights Templar. When King Louis learned that the Master de Sonnac had received secret communications from the Sultan of Cairo he was incensed.  He both rejected the offer (because he was determined to take Cairo and dictate a more ambitious settlement) and sharply rebuked the Templar Master, ordering him not to receive any further envoys from the Sultan without “permission” ever again.

This was the first but not the last instance in which King Louis asserted his authority over the Templars without legal basis. The Templars were independent, subordinate only to the pope, and certainly did not have to take orders from the French King. Yet, King Louis with his vast army was also the best (and arguably the only) hope for liberating Holy sites from Muslim occupation. So Master de Sonnac made no protest.

Finally, on or about November 20, 1149, with the flooding over, King Louis’ crusading army set out along the east bank of the Nile heading south for Cairo. Up to this point, except for Vichiers’ role in securing the Genoese transport fleet, the Templars had not played a conspicuous military role. Now, however, they claimed and won their traditional position in the van of the army. At once the Templars, showed their spirit ― this time in direct and open violation of King Louis’ orders. Joinville describes the incident as follows:

It happened, however, that when the army began to move forward, and the Turks realized that no attack on them was contemplated ― for their spies had told them that the king had forbidden it ― they grew bolder and flung themselves on the Templars, who formed the van. One of the Turks bore a Knight Templar to the ground, right in front of the hoofs of the horse on which Brother Renaud de Vichiers, at that time Marshal of the Temple, was mounted. On seeing this, the Marshal cried to is brother Templars: ‘For God’s sake, let’s get at them! I can’t stand it any longer!’ He struck his spurs into his  horse, and all the army followed. Now our men’s horses were fresh, and those of the Turks already weary; and so, as I have heard, not one of the enemy escaped, but all perished.

Although this charge was also in flagrant disobedience of King Louis’ orders, the Templar success apparently mollified Louis’ disapproval and no action was taken against the Templars. The next time they disobeyed similar orders proved catastrophic ― but the blame does not lie with them.

The crusaders had advanced up the Nile until they reached a wide and well-defended canal north of the Egyptian city of Mansourah. To reach Cairo they had to pass his last bastion and after bloody losses and a long stalemate, Bedouins showed the Franks a ford far to the east and out of sight of the defenders of Mansourah. The ford was deep and treacherous. The horses had to swim part of the way and the landfall was very slippery, causing some horses to fall and crush their riders. Nevertheless, the vanguard of the army consisting of the Templars, the English and the King of France’s brother, the Count of Artois, succeeded in making the crossing.

King Louis’ orders had been very explicit: the vanguard was to secure the beachhead for the rest of the army. But the Count of Artois, thinking that they had surprise on their side, charged forward. The Templars, according to all accounts, tried to stop him, urging caution. They were insulted for being cowards, and ― either goaded by this slander or simply unwilling to stand-by and watch the slaughter of a Prince of France with his knights ― joined the charge. 

This charge was initially successful, over-running a Saracen camp that was indeed taken by surprise and so in disarray. However, the Mamluke commander rapidly turned his disadvantage into a trap. He pulled his troops back inside the walled city of Mansourah and intentionally left the doors open inviting. Apparently, at least according to one chronicle, at this point the Franks regrouped and consulted again. Allegedly, Artois wanted to pursue, and both the Earl of Salisbury and the Master of the Temple, William de Sonnac, urged caution. It was perhaps at this point that the accusations of cowardice were brandished. Perhaps more seriously, Artois allegedly claimed the whole of the Holy Land would long have been liberated if the military orders had not hindered the crusaders for the sake of their own profit. (Barber, p. 150.) If such a charge was leveled, it would certainly have forced Sonnac’s hand.

The result was a catastrophe. The Frankish knights were lured deep into the city by a lack of resistance, and then once they were already divided up and slowed down by the narrow, winding streets, they were pounced upon from all sides, particularly the rooftops.  Beams were thrown down to block their retreat. Boiling oil and missiles rained down on them. Their horses were stabbed in the belly and otherwise cut down by men darting out from the houses. The entire vanguard was slaughtered in the streets of Mansourah, including the Earl of Salisbury and the Count of Artois. Master de Sonnac escaped with a handful of Templars and a wound to his head that robbed him of sight in his right eye. Louis had no need to reproach him; the defeat was both reproach and punishment enough. 

Meanwhile the main body of the army had set up camp in front of Mansourah ― where they could see the body of the Count of Artois swinging from the ramparts. Saracen attempts to dislodge them by force failed, but in one of these Master de Sonnac was again wounded in the head, losing his other eye and dying in camp shortly afterwards. Having failed with assaults, the Saracens resorted to cunning. They sent ships down the Nile that intercepted all the Frankish ships taking the wounded back to Damietta and bringing food, supplies and reinforcements back to the crusader camp. The crews and wounded were slaughtered, the supplies stolen. Soon the crusader army was starving and suffering from scurvy.

As the health of the army seeped away, King Louis had to concede defeat and tried to retreat back towards Damietta. Halfway there, the pursuing Saracens launched an attack that, although resisted by the military orders (now mostly Hospitallers) forming the rearguard, was successful. After killing the bulk of the rearguard, King Louis of France, suffering from such severe dysentery that he could not ride, was captured in his tent. What was left of the entire crusading army surrendered.

Despite the losses already incurred, thousands of men were now at the mercy of the Saracens. These were no commanded mostly by Mamlukes, who had no scruples about killing any prisoner to sick to walk; all the sick were slaughtered except King Louis. The negotiations began at once, and Louis agreed to the return of Damietta as his own ransom, and a payment of 500,000 livres (or 1 million bezants) for the rest of his army, both great men and small. That is a highly significant gesture: he did not leave the commoners too poor to pay a ransom to slavery, nor did he leave his nobles to negotiate their own ransoms and beggar themselves in the process. He bore the financial burden for his entire army without quibbling.

There was only one small problem. After the Mamlukes had murdered the new Sultan (before Louis’ eyes), they renegotiated the deal. While reducing the overall ransom by 100,000 livres, they insisted on an up-front payment of 200,000 livres. When the king’s officers tried to find this enormous sum, they came up 30,000 livres short. Eyes turned toward the Knights Templar, who had sent reinforcements by ship to Damietta ― including considerable cash.  The French demanded a loan of 30,000 livres, and the Templar Treasurer refused on the grounds that the bulk of the money was not Templar funds, but deposits placed with the Temple by other people; i.e. these were deposits which could only be released at the request of the depositor. At this point, Joinville grabbed an ax and threatened to take the treasure by force, and Renaud de Vichiers (who had somehow survived the slaughter) stopped him, with the words that since he was prepared to use force the Temple would yield. The 30,000 livres were paid toward King Louis’ ransom.

 

It was perhaps for this service, that King Louis used his influence to ensure that Renaud de Vichiers was elected the next Master of the Temple. At first their relationship was excellent. The Queen of France lived in the Templar castle of Athlit and gave birth there to a son, Peter. When the Assassins attempted to blackmail Louis into paying them tribute, he let the Masters of the Temple and Hospital deal with them; the result was a non-aggression pact between King Louis and the Assassins that secured his northern flank.

 

Unfortunately, the following year, the Templar Master made a grave mistake. Like Sonnac before him he attempted to negotiate an independent peace, this time with the Sultan of Damascus, who was still an Ayyubid. Louis, however, still owed money to the Sultan of Cairo. As a result, thousands of crusaders were still in Mamluke hands. Almost certainly it was fear of what would happen to these men, for whom Louis felt profound responsibility, that led to the draconian character of his response on learning of these separate negotiations.  Instead of a mere rebuke as had sufficed for Sonnac, Louis insisted on humiliating the Templars for their “insubordination.” The Knights Templar were required to assemble barefoot before the King and publicly renounce the treaty, then knelt before him and begged his forgiveness. Furthermore, Vichiers offered to Louis all the wealth of the Temple, so that he could choose what he wanted as retribution. Although Louis took nothing, he ordered the knight who had done the negotiating banished ― and Vichiers complied.

That was a long step down from the days when the Templars had not allowed the Kings of Jerusalem to arrest a member of the Order even when the latter had committed murder. Robinson suggests in his history of the Templars that this humiliation “shattered” Templar morale (Robinson, p. 318.) Howarth suggests in contrast that it reflects the exceptional status of King Louis IX ― a man considered saintly even in his own lifetime.  

Sources:

Barber, Malcolm. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Joinville, Jean de. The Life of Saint Louis. Translated by M.R.B. Shaw, Penguin Books, 1963.

Howarth, Stephen. The Knights Templar. Barnes and Noble, 1982.

Pernoud, Regina. The Templars: Knights of Christ. Ignatius, 2009.

Robinson, John J. Dungeon, Fire and Sword: The Knights Templar in the Crusade. Michael O’Mora Books, 1991.

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"The Tale of the English Templar" is a fictional work that depicts the destruction of the Knight's Templar. 

An escaped Templar, an old knight, and a discarded bride embark on a quest for justice in the face of tyranny. 

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