A Curious Proposal for Inter-Faith Marriage to End the Third Crusade

 

One of the most bizarre diplomatic incidents of the Third Crusade was a proposal to re-establish a Kingdom of Jerusalem under Saladin’s brother al-Adil (as king) and Richard the Lionheart’s sister, Joanna (as queen). The idea of a marriage between the Muslim al-Adil and the Christian Joanna, who was the Dowager Queen of Sicily, has long captured the imagination of novelists. None less than Sir Walter Scott wove the incident (modified to Richard’s niece and Saladin himself) into his novel The Talisman. Meanwhile, serious historians have puzzled over Richard’s motives, while the idea of an inter-faith marriage that guaranteed a kingdom of tolerance and peace in the Holy Land has mesmerized modern advocates of peace in the Middle East.

But was there such a proposal? And if so, who originated it and why?

The Christian chronicles, notably the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi and the Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre, are completely silent on the proposal — as if it never happened.  John Gillingham in his excellent biography Richard I notes that many historians doubt that the proposal was made or dismiss it as a joke. He then notes that it is mentioned in two of the contemporary Arab sources (Baha ad-Din and Imad ad-Din) and suggests that “Richard’s proposals may have been intended as probes in the hope of finding and widening splits at Saladin’s court, perhaps above all between Saladin and the brother whom he [Saladin] admired, respected and trusted — yet who inevitably posed a threat to the peaceful succession of his own sons.” (Richard I, Yale University Press, 1999, p. 185).

The French historian Jean Flori sites Imad ad-Din as blaming “Christian leaders — in his opinion too ‘intolerant’ — to ‘deliver her body to a Muslim.’” Imad ad-Din suggests that Richard offered a niece in place of his sister, after claiming “the Christian people disapprove of me giving my sister in marriage without consulting the pope, the head and leader of Christianity.” Imad ad-Din says Richard even claimed he had sent a message to the pope requesting “permission.”

While it seems unlikely Imad ad-Din fabricated the whole thing, it still raises the question: Was Richard serious and why would he make this astonishing offer?

Gillingham thinks “there is nothing implausible” about Richard suggesting his sister marry a Muslim as such marriages “had occasionally, in eleventh century Spain for example, occurred.” With all due respect to Gillingham, what had occasionally happened in the previous century in a kingdom Richard hardly knew is not the same thing as Eleanor of Aquitaine’s son giving away his allegedly beloved sister. She was furthermore a widow, and widows could not legally be coerced into marriage against their will, and she was a Dowager Queen. She was not a handy piece of flesh to sell on the market. Yes, marriages at this time were made for political and dynastic reasons not for love, and later Joanna would prove an extremely valuable instrument for pulling the Count of Toulouse out of Philip of France’s camp and into Richard’s. That’s not the same thing as suggesting she join the harem of Muslim leader.

The proposal to re-establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem within the territories of the earlier Kingdom lost to Saladin after Hattin posed other serious challenges for Richard as well. First and foremost, the deal required Richard delivering all the territories in the former kingdom held by the Christians to his sister as her dowery, but Richard was in no position to do so. Aside from the fact that he did not control Tyre (Conrad de Montferrat did), he was faced with almost continuous rebellion on the part of the French crusaders led by the Duke of Burgundy, and last but not least, no peace would be viable without the consent of the local barons and the militant orders. Less than forty years later, when another Western king made a deal with the Saracens without taking into account the concerns of those who would be left to live with it, he was furiously criticized and pelted with rubbish and refuge as he made his way to depart on his waiting ships. Friedrich II’s deal with the Sultan al-Kamil was far less onerous or insulting than the deal allegedly proposed by Richard the Lionheart. It restored Jerusalem and Bethlehem entirely to Christian rule — it simply didn’t provide for their fortification, making it a fragile and indefensible, indeed, sham victory. It is quite hard for me to image that the Templars and Hospitallers, much less the lords of Outremer, would have accepted a settlement that placed the entire Holy Land under Salah ad-Din’s control, as the terms were that al-Adil would hold the kingdom as fief of his brother the Sultan.

Likewise, the idea that Richard would make a deal with Saladin that would be greeted with outrage by the local barons and the militant orders is not in keeping with Richard’s record on the Third Crusade. From the very start, Richard relied heavily on the militant orders not only militarily but for advice as well. He also listened to the advice of the barons of Outremer and it was on their advice that he twice broke off the attempt to regain Jerusalem. Richard, unlike Friedrich II, was not so arrogant that he thought he knew better than everyone else.

Nor was Richard a fool, as his later, highly successful and sophisticated diplomatic maneuvering against Philip of France was to prove. Yet, the proposal as outlined by the Arab chronicles would have been very foolish indeed. In exchange for placing his sister in al-Adil’s haram, he was to give up all the territory he had reconquered and then sail away with his entire army and leave the entire Holy Land in the “benevolent” hands of the Saracen Sultan. To be sure, the terms of the treaty were that Christians would be able to visit all the holy places, but only as unarmed pilgrims. So, as soon as all the crusaders had sailed away, what was to stop al-Adil from repudiating Joanna Plantagenet (all he needed to do was repeat the divorce formula three times), sending her in disgrace to beg in the streets or prostitute herself (since she had no male relatives to defend her honor or protect her) and then closing the pilgrim routes, making slaves of the Christians already in country and then trashing the churches?

For Richard Plantagenet to have made this proposal of marriage between his “beloved” sister Joanna and the brother of Saladin, he would have had to be: 1) completely ignorant of Sharia law, 2) completely disinterested in the opinion of those who would have to live with the consequences of his plan (his sister, his allies, the military orders, the lords of Outremer, and 3) stupid. I don’t think Richard was any of the above.

Which doesn’t mean the proposal was not made. Turning to the far more reliable of the Arab chronicles, Baha ad-Din we find the answer: that this proposal so obviously beneficial to the Saracens was proposed not by Richard but by al-Adil. Baha ad-Din states very explicitly: “On 22 ramadan/20 October al Malik al-Adil sent for me…and showed us proposals that had been sent to the King of England by his [al-Adil’s] messenger. He said that his plan was that he himself should marry the King’s sister, whom Richard had brought with him from Sicily where she had been the wife of the late King.” (Italics added.) Baha ad-Din could not have been more explicit. This plan did not originate with Richard.

As a proposal from ad-Adil it makes perfect sense. He carved out a large and very profitable fiefdom under his brother, ended the war that was wearing everyone down and absorbing resources, and got rid of the troublesome and far too successful crusaders — all for the price of adding one more woman to his harem that he could repudiate at any time without cause just by telling her he divorced her! At which point, as I noted above, there would be no one left to take her in or defend her honor. Could there be a better deal? Why shouldn’t he propose it and see if the Christian king was stupid enough to accept?

Baha ad-Din also provides the very telling information that when al-Adil sought his brother’s approval for the plan, Saladin approved “knowing quite well that the King of England would never agree to [the terms] and they were only a trick and a practical joke on his [Saladin’s] part.” Al-Adil might have dreamed of being king of a powerful kingdom that had for a hundred years maintained its independence; his brother had no intention whatsoever of giving his brother lands that valuable or self-sufficient. Saladin appears to have had a higher opinion of Richard’s intelligence than al-Adil.

And Saladin was right. Richard made excuses (like needing the pope’s approval, which is nonsense) or claiming “the Christian people” were against the proposal (impossible since he didn’t tell “the people” about it). Allegedly he even jestingly suggested al-Adil become Christian, to which al-Adil suggested Joanna become Muslim. It was, by then, clearly nothing but a joke between them. It remains to this day, however, a colorful incident perfect for novels.

The incident is incorporated into my novel “Envoy of Jerusalem” covering the Third Crusade and Balian d’Ibelin’s prominent role  in the negotiations with Saladin.

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Richard the Lionheart's "Noble" Adversary - Saladin

Richard the Lionheart was a man of war and he had many adversaries in his lifetime. He fought his father more than once in his early years and fought with his father against the rebellious lords of the Aquitaine and against the French King even more frequently. He spent the last six years of his life in a bitter struggle against King Philip II. Yet of all his adversaries few have captured the imagination of chroniclers, novelists or artists as much as the man he fought in the Holy Land - Sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, more commonly known as Saladin.

Saladin has long been viewed as the epitome of “chivalry.” His honesty and sense of honor are often compared favorably to the duplicity and dishonor of Richard's Christian foes such as the Holy Roman Emperor and Philip of France. Indeed, in the 19th century it became common to suggest that, while the crusaders (including Richard!) were treacherous barbarians, Saladin stood out as a paragon of virtue and honor, a shining light of decency and chivalry in an otherwise brutal age.  This is the view of Saladin that dictated the highly sympathetic portrayal in Ridley Scott's film “The Kingdom of Heaven.” 

This positive view of Saladin in Western literature is largely attributable to a biography of Saladin published by Stanley Lane-Poole in 1898. This was arguably the first scholarly biography of the 12th-century Kurdish leader in the English language, and Lane-Poole made a major contribution to Western scholarship by drawing upon Arab sources for his work.  Unfortunately, he did so uncritically, adopting without scruple the purely adulatory descriptions of Saladin penned by the Sultan’s court biographers. Indeed, Lane-Poole is so completely under the spell of his Arab sources that he claims: “...civilization, magnanimity, toleration, real chivalry, and gentle culture were all on the side of the Saracens.”  With this statement, Lane-Poole dismisses Richard the Lionheart, the troubadour, and paragon of Western chivalry, without so much as a mention. 
  
Yet, as Andrew Ehrenkreutz meticulously documents in his biography of Saladin, far from being the embodiment of "magnanimity, real chivalry, and gentle culture," Saladin used deceit, hypocrisy, propaganda, bribery, extortion, murder and, ultimately aggressive war to establish an empire in the Near East.  Notably, Saladin spent much more time and many more resources fighting (and killing) fellow Muslims than he did fighting Christians, and that Saladin was responsible for the loss of many more Sunni Muslim lives than Christian ones. 

Furthermore, the many instances in which Saladin treated former foes with leniency, often awarding them new lands and titles within his growing empire, demonstrates not so much his “gentleness” and “chivalry” as his cynical opportunism. If fighting men, particularly the commanders of contingents of troops that offered effective armed opposition to Saladin, could be bought with the promises of riches and titles, then why fight? After all, the alternative (killing or enslaving his opponents on capture) would only have increased the tenacity and fervor of his opponents, and Saladin had a hard enough time subduing them as it was. His mild treatment of defectors is not so much a mark of “gentleness” and “chivalry” as of opportunism that was particularly effective against the fragmented and jealous feudal lords in northern Syria.

Against these documented cases of apparent “gentleness” and “chivalry” are a number of equally well-documented incidents of ruthlessness, brutality, duplicity and vindictiveness that are incompatible with the image of Saladin as the paragon of chivalry. To name only a few, Saladin played a key role in eliminating the Egyptian vizier Shawar. Then, having won the confidence and trust of the Fatimid Caliph, Saladin worked systematically to undermine his regime and carried out a bloody coup d’etat against the Fatimid elite as soon as the Caliph conveniently died. While it might be argued that this was justified by repeated Fatimid conspiracies against Saladin or by Sunni orthodoxy’s hostility to Shiism, the same cannot be said of the slaughter of the unarmed women and children of the Sudanese guard that the “gentle and chivalrous” Saladin ordered burned alive in their homes. And if that weren’t enough, Saladin ended the rebellion of their men by agreeing to spare their lives if they left Cairo — only to break his word and slaughter them after they had laid down their arms.

So, yes, Saladin did break his word when it suited his purposes -- as he did to Richard the Lionheart with regard to the surrender of Acre.

Saladin next distinguished himself by waging war against the heir of his feudal overlord Nur al-Din, the eleven-year-old al-Salih -- but only after first swearing humble and abject submission to al-Salih. When the young Sultan’s legal guardians refused to acknowledge Saladin’s bogus claims to be the “true” guardian of the young Sultan, Saladin gave up his pretense of serving the interests of al-Salih and demanded patents for his position as Sultan of Damascus from the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. He then spent the better part of the next ten years fighting bitter campaigns against the family of Nur al-Din and their supporters based in Aleppo and Mosul and all across northern Syria.

Which is not to say that Saladin did not fight the Christians too. In fact, Saladin undertook a number of campaigns against the Christians including the invasion of 1177 that ended Saladin’s complete humiliation at Montgisard, the invasion of 1179 that ended in the routing of the Templars and the capture of nearly 300 Christian knights and nobles on the Litani. The siege of Beirut in the same year, the campaign that ended in the draw at Le Forbelet in 1182, the equally indecisive campaign of 1183, and the sieges of Kerak in 1183 and 1184. This may sound like an impressive track record, but given Saladin’s overwhelming strategic advantages, and the fact that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was led by a youth slowing dying of leprosy, his lack of success has led some historians to suggest either strategic and tactical incompetence or anemic motivation. 

Not that Saladin didn’t demonstrate his hatred of the Franks.  When in August of 1178, less than a year after Saladin’s scalding defeat at Montgisard, Christian prisoners fell into Saladin’s hands he had them summarily executed, one by one, by members of his retinue. Aside from it being against Sharia law to kill men who had surrendered, it was hardly a demonstration of “chivalry.” Nor was it an isolated incident. When the Christians involved in the Red Sea raids were finally run-to-earth and captured, Saladin again ordered their execution. According to Bernard Hamilton in his excellent work The Leper King and His Heirs, the Christian prisoners were “taken to Mecca where, during the great annual pilgrimage, they were…slaughtered ‘like animals for sacrifice.’” Clearly these men were mercenaries and they had killed Muslim pilgrims and captured Arab shipping so perhaps they were not worthy of mercy, but the same cannot be said of the “unlucky common Christian soldier whom the sultan had slain when he noticed a minor facial scratch his son al-Afdal [by then in his late teens] sustained in the battle of Arsuf.” (Ehrenkreutz, p. 228.)

Last but not least, no discussion of Saladin would be complete without reference to the brutal execution of the Templars and Hospitallers taken captive at the Battle of Hattin. On July 6, these knights and sergeants, bound and helpless, were beheaded in public. Bartlett describes the scene in Downfall of the Crusader Kingdom as follows: “Saladin gave the task…to a group of religious Sufis, holy men largely untrained in the arts of war. Some of them took six or seven attempts to sever the heads of their victims…However justified the death of these men might have been in military terms, the cruelty and indignity of their death did Saladin no credit whatsoever. It was an act of violence, almost barbarism, which Saladin’s apologists have all too frequently glossed over.” (Bartlett, p. 204-205.) 

It is important to remember that this massacre preceded — and may indeed have helped instigate — the slaughter of the Muslim hostages at Acre by Richard the Lionheart four years later.  If Richard the Lionheart's reputation was sullied by the massacre at Acre, so was Saladin's by the massacre after Hattin. The 12th century was a brutal age, and empires were not built with kindness and "gentle culture" -- not in France, Aquitaine, Egypt or Syria.

Saladin in a character in my three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

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"Crusading Warfare 1097-1193" by R. C. Smail

Although first published sixty years ago, this is still a valuable book for those interested in the crusades and the crusader states. It is logically organized looking first at the strategic framework, the composition of the armies of both Christians and Muslims, then finally at the tactics employed.  By avoiding a chronological narrative, Smail highlights how certain features of warfare remained the same — or changed — over time. 

The book provides adequate footnotes for scholars, but the text itself does not often become bogged down in arguments with fellow scholars about details of little interest to the general reader. The book also provides some useful sketches and photos of some of the crusader castles. While the reader may not agree with all of Smail’s theses (more recent research casts doubt on his assumptions about the hostility of the native population, for example), his arguments are cogent and stimulate further thought an analysis.

Saracen Armies

The Army of Saladin as Portrayed in "The Kingdom of Heaven"

The crusader kingdoms consistently faced an enemy that significantly outnumbered them and it is often this sense of "massive hordes" that dominates descriptions of Saracen armies. Yet while the size of Saracen armies was certainly a factor in their success, it was by no means their only significant feature. On the contrary, Saracen armies were extremely complex and understanding them better helps explain Frankish tactics.

Perhaps the most important yet often forgotten characteristic of Saracen armies was their ethnic diversity. The term "Saracen" simply means "Easterner" and referred collectively to the Muslim opponents of the crusaders.  Yet while the use of this term is convenient, it plasters over and so disguises the ethnic differences within the "Saracen" armies. The "Saracen" armies included not only Arabs and Turks, the two largest ethnic groups engaged in warfare against the crusaders. They also included Kurds (Saladin himself was a Kurd), Nubians, and Berbers. Furthermore, the Arab elements need to be sub-divided into Syrians, Bedouins and Egyptians, and the term "Turk" actually covers a variety of Turkmenish tribes. 

Each of these ethnic groups had their own more or less distinct ways of fighting along with their own language, dress, and preferred weapons. In broad terms, the Nubians were famous infantry archers, who fought with large powerful bows but without shields of any kind, making them very vulnerable in close engagements.  The Arabs, Kurds and Berbers generally fought on horseback with lance, javelin and sword, but Bedouins fought more often as infantry archers. The Turks were the masters of mounted archery. 

It was the Turks with their highly mobile cavalry and mounted archers that most impressed the crusaders. Based on Christian descriptions, the crusaders found the infantry and even the heavy cavalry of their opponents unremarkable. The mounted archers on the other hand, with their tactics of pressing in close for a volley of arrows only to flee when challenged, frustrated and won grudging respect from the Franks. The Turkish tactic of pretending flight to lure Frankish cavalry into an ambush was well-recorded and highly effective--over and over again. The comparison to a pesky fly is colorful but somewhat deceptive since these "flies" could kill. 

The diversity of tradition in Saracen armies had advantages and disadvantages. Good commanders could exploit the strengths of their various troops and use them to complement one another. Less effective commanders found their armies disintegrating or the units operating independently of one another. It was easy for the infantry to get left behind, forgotten and slaughtered. Cavalry without infantry support was vulnerable when they stopped to rest and water their horses, and utterly useless in siege warfare--which was the dominant form of engagement in the crusader period.

In addition to the ethnic differences within the Saracen armies, there were different kinds of service as well. At the one extreme and completely unknown in the West, Saracen commanders always had a contingent of slave-soldiers completely devoted to them. These slave-soldiers or Mamlukes (also Mamelukes and Mamluks) formed the personal body-guard of commanders and lords. They were composed of men who had been acquired as children (carefully selected, one presumes, for their physical appearance and health) and trained meticulously and rigorously for years to make them crack troops. Although technically "freed" on completion of training, they remained emotionally and financially bound to their master. They were professionals, with no other interests or purpose other than to serving their master in war.

In contrast, the bulk of the troops in a Saracen army were similar to feudal levees in the West. They were men with land and families, who served in the army when called-up, or as volunteers, but who were not professional soldiers. The quality of such troops obviously varied widely. Some of them, young, virile and ambitious were undoubtedly very good. Others, aging, ailing or just disinterested, were not so good. One element that was undoubtedly of mixed value were the jihadists, who joined Saracen armies engaged in warfare against the crusader states. While often untrained and poorly armed, these troops could be used for particularly dangerous tasks like storming a breech in a wall or scaling a siege ladder.

Also as in the West, most of Saracen troops (like the Mamlukes) owed service to a lord or emir, not to the Sultan directly. Thus, as in the West, a Saracen army was composed of small, close-knit clusters of troops bound to a land-owner, who himself owed service to a larger land-owner, who owed service to an even larger land-owner etc. until one came to the top, the Sultan himself. Yet while all theoretically served the Sultan directly or indirectly, the reality was that men served the men they personally knew. If their immediate lord changed sides or just decided to go home, then they did so too. As a result, the only troops the Sultan could rely on 100% were his Mamlukes (until they too revolted, cut the Sultan to pieces and took control for themselves, but that wasn't until the mid-13th Century.)

In short, the Sultan, like a medieval King, was dependent upon the loyalty and support of his most powerful emirs, and the emirs had power similar to barons in medieval Europe, with one important difference: the emirs did not hold territory on a hereditary basis. They served as administrators of territory or other sources of revenue (such as customs, or markets) for the Sultan. In theory at least, the Sultans could dismiss them and replace them at whim.

While one might have expected this to make them more loyal, the evidence suggests the opposite.  Lack of tenure created a sense of insecurity and tended to make emirs more mercenary. Without a vested interest in a specific territory, they were always open to alternative opportunities -- from a different Sultan, or a brother, cousin or son willing to challenge the reigning Sultan. With no long-term perspectives, there was also a strong bias toward plundering one's current position, whether it was territorial or purely administrative.

Furthermore, the fact that emirs came and went (squeezing as much revenue as possible from those subject to them) undermined loyalty. Tenants farmers and peasants had little reason to identify with the ever changing cast of landlords sent to exploit them. This fact is reflected in the tendency of Saracen forces to dissolve comparatively rapidly. Saladin had consistent difficulty keeping his troops in the field for more than a  month or so. Even after his great victory at Hattin and the plundering of an entire kingdom, his troops faded away when the rains started. 

To compensate for the generally low levels of loyalty and morale among the conscripts, Saracen leaders depended increasingly upon mercenaries. These were predominantly drawn from the nomadic tribes of the Asian steppes, but included Armenians, further adding to the overall diversity of the Saracen force. 

Warfare in the crusader states at the end of the 12th century is an integral part of my biographical novels about Balian d'Ibelin. The first and second books in the series have already been released.

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