The popular perception of the Holy Land in the era of the crusades is one in which a native Muslim population is ruled by a tiny, Christian elite. Indeed, leading historians of the last two centuries portrayed the crusader states as ‘proto-colonial’ in character. However, over the previous quarter-century, this picture has been profoundly altered by new archaeological finds, analysis of neglected sources and data mining of a variety of documents. To understand the demography of the Holy Land in the era of the crusades, it may therefore be useful to forget preconceived notions and begin with the basics.
When
Jerusalem fell to Muslim forces in 638, the population was entirely Christian;
the Jews had been expelled after supporting the Persian assault on the city a
quarter-century earlier. The establishment of a Muslim regime in the region did
not result in the instant conversion of the entire population to Islam.
On the contrary, the Quran condemns forced conversions, and while they are
known to have taken place wherever Muslim regimes were established, conversions
were neither wholesale nor instantaneous.[i]
The Arab conquests of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries did not result in
the spread of the religion of Islam so much as the spread of regimes ruled by
Islamic military elites.
Despite the
oppression and humiliation of non-Muslims under Islamic rule throughout the
Umayyad period (661-750), non-Muslims still constituted the majority of the
population throughout the Arab empire in 1000 AD, including in the Holy Land.
The Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi writing at the end of the eleventh century,
noted that the countryside around Jerusalem was entirely Christian. Indeed,
many towns in Palestine were still overwhelmingly Christian in 1922, nearly 1,300
years after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. In other words, although the
territory controlled and ruled by Islamic elites expanded dramatically between
634 and 1099, the number of people adhering to Islam grew at a much slower
rate.
Furthermore,
between the Muslim conquest and the First Crusade, the Holy Land changed hands
between Abbasids, Fatimids and Seljuks. To the natives of the Levant, the Arabs
and Egyptians were no less ‘alien elites’ than the Romans and Byzantines, who
had ruled the region before 638 AD, and the Turks and Franks, who ruled after
1099 AD. In all cases, the conquerors formed the political, military and, to a
lesser extent, the economic elites during their respective period of dominance,
but they did not replace the native population. Both Arabs and Turks relied
heavily on troops drawn from outside the region (e.g., Turcoman tribesmen) and
slave-soldiers (Mamluks), a factor that contributed significantly to their
unpopularity.
Levels of
oppression measured in terms of expropriations, massacres, deportations,
enslavement, suppression of religious establishments, harassment,
discrimination, social ostracism, labour conscription, taxation and other
financial burdens varied over the centuries depending on the individual ruler.
Accounts written by the natives — as opposed to those reported by the
Arab/Turkish chroniclers — catalogue the massacres, torture, wholesale
enslavement, financial oppression and humiliations that impoverished and
demoralised the Christian and Jewish populations, even under allegedly
enlightened and tolerant regimes.[ii]
These methods inevitably led to ‘voluntary’ conversions, often to escape death,
slavery, expropriation or the sale of children to the Muslim state, yet at a
much slower rate than was assumed in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.
Furthermore,
the minority Muslim population found in the Holy Land at the time of the First
Crusade was less the product of the gradual Islamization of the native
population than a result of immigration. Nomadic Arab tribes had been
encouraged to migrate to conquered territories, where land, infrastructure and
entire villages had been handed over to them after the slaughter, enslavement
and deportation of the native population. This immigration occurred unevenly
across the region so that concentrations of Muslim inhabitants were found in
some areas but not others.
Although the
crusaders did not seek either extermination or mass conversion of the Muslim
population, the numbers of Muslims population in the Holy Land shrank during
the Frankish conquest due to both casualties and voluntary emigration. Thus,
while the populace of cities such as Ascalon, Acre and Tyre had been
predominantly Muslim before the First Crusade, siege and assault took their
toll. Furthermore, terms of surrender enabled Muslim inhabitants to withdraw
with their movable property. Most ruling Muslim elites were not interested in
remaining in places where they had lost their power and status, and so
departed. Left behind were the poor and powerless. After the establishment of
Frankish rule, Muslims were prohibited from residing in selected cities such as
Jerusalem and Ascalon yet remained a significant minority in other cities such
as Acre, Tyre, Beirut and Sidon.
In short, the
demographics of the crusader states were highly complex and varied considerably
from region to region. Nevertheless, some features are clear. The urban
populations of most cities, with the notable exceptions of coastal Antioch
(Latakia and Jabala), were predominantly Christian, in some cases with small
Jewish and Samaritan minorities. The rural population in Edessa, Antioch and
Cyprus was predominantly Orthodox Christian, with Christians accounting for
two-thirds of the population in Edessa and Antioch and 95 per cent in Cyprus.
Tripoli was probably 50 per cent Christian, while the Kingdom of Jerusalem was
the most ethnically and religiously diverse crusader state. Altogether,
historians now estimate that when the kingdom was established, native
Christians made up more than 50 per cent of the populace, while Muslims formed
a sizeableminority and Jewish and Samaritan communities represented smaller
minority groups.
During the
first half-century of Frankish presence, however, the balance tipped in favor
of Christian dominance. An estimated 140,000 predominantly Christian immigrants
from Western Europe settled in the region, and their offspring were also
Christian. In addition, the Kings of Jerusalem pursued a policy of encouraging
(Orthodox) Christian immigration from neighbouring Muslim states. Melkite
Christians are known to have left the Sultanate of Damascus to resettle in
Jerusalem and possibly other cities, while Coptic Christians from Egypt settled
in Ascalon.
Furthermore, when Nur al-Din’s forces overran
the County of Edessa between 1144 and 1150, tens of thousands of Armenian
refugees fled to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Here they formed a large, dynamic
and loyal community. In 1172, this Armenian community was enlarged when the
Armenian Patriarch in Egypt relocated to Jerusalem, bringing many of his flock
with him. Finally, many Muslims converted to Christianity in this period. Some
converts may have been nominal Muslims, men and women who had adopted Islam to
avoid being killed, enslaved or impoverished and humiliated as ‘dhimmis’.
Another motive for conversion was the draconian punishment for interfaith
marriage, which put many women under pressure to convert to marry a Christian.
Estimating numbers, much less motives, is nearly impossible, yet some sources
claim that conversions were ‘extensive’.[iii]
On the mainland, roughly half of the total
population lived in the large urban centres, while on Cyprus, the inhabitants
were 90 per cent or more rural. Although urbanization was greater in the Holy
Land than in Western Europe in the same period, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was
not a predominantly urban society until the hinterland was lost in the wake of
Saladin’s conquests.
Altogether,
the total native population of the mainland crusader states is estimated at
approximately 600,000, of which 450,000 were in the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
100,000 in Antioch and about 25,000 in Edessa and Tripoli each. In Cyprus, the
population probably numbered about 100,000. Added to the native people were the
140,000 immigrants from Western Europe. Unaccounted in the above numbers are
the Franks born in the Holy Land, predominantly the children of mixed
marriages. Given the fact that the Franks were cultivating land that had become
depopulated and lost to desertification by building irrigation systems and other
infrastructure, it is probable that significant population growth occurred
during the Frankish era. While no precise estimate of the population growth is
possible, the combined population of the crusader states by 1187 might well
have reached one million people.
[i] The myth of Muslim tolerance is so embedded and widespread in modern Western views of Middle Eastern history that it cannot be addressed adequately in this book. The documentary evidence of Islamic oppression and religiously-rationalised exploitation, humiliation, enslavement and extermination are, in fact, vast. Readers interested in the topic should start with Bat Ye’or’s books such as The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996) for the situation in the Near East or Dario Fernandez-Morera’s The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2016). For specifics on forced conversions, see Ye’or, 88-91. Both book provide ample bibliographies for pursuing further study on the topic.
[ii] See note 1, Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (for the situation in the Near East) or Dario Fernandez-Morera’s The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise for Islamic Spain.
[iii] Yuval Harari, ‘The Military Role of the Frankish Turcopoles: A Reassessment’, in Mediterranean Historical Review: 12:1:105.
Dr.
Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land
in the Era of the Crusades.
