In 1239 the ten-year truce had run out, but there was no immediate threat to Outremer. Al-Kamil had died the year before and Egypt was riven by factions, while the bitterness between the Cairo and Damascus branches of the Ayyubid family had increased. Nevertheless the Templars remained opposed to the rapprochement between Outremer and Egypt brought about by Frederick II, and with good reason: Templar emissaries sent to Cairo in 1243 were held as virtual prisoners for six months, and the Egyptians would still not return Gaza, Hebron and Nablus in accordance with the truce.
The Templars saw this as a delaying tactic by the new Egyptian Sultan al-Salih Ayyub, giving him time to overcome Damascus and other Muslim rulers, and then to overwhelm Outremer. Templar policy was to favour Damascus, and this showed some results: the Christian kingdom gained by negotiation all the land west of the Jordan except Hebron and Nablus, and the Franks were given a free hand to celebrate Christian services in every former church throughout Jerusalem, and to expel the Muslims from the Temple Mount and to reconvert to Christian use the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
When war broke out again between Cairo and Damascus in spring 1244 the Templars persuaded the barons of Outremer to intervene on the side of the Damascene ruler Ismail. The alliance was sealed by the visit to Acre of al-Mansur Ibrahim, a Muslim prince of Homs, who on behalf of Ismail offered the Franks a share of Egypt when al-Salih Ayyub was defeated. The continuing factionalism in Cairo meant that al-Salih could not rely on the regular army, but he had taken steps to counter that by purchasing Mamelukes in large numbers.
These military slaves were mostly Kipchak Turks from the steppes of southern Russia; bought, trained and converted to Islam, they became al-Salih’s powerful private army. Also al-Salih had bought the help of the Khorezmian Turks, ferocious mercenaries then based In Edessa, who had been displaced from Transoxiana and parts of Iran and Afghanistan by the expansion of the Mongols. In June the Khorezmian horsemen, twelve thousand strong, swept southwards Into Syria, but deterred by the formidable walls of Damascus they rode on Into Galilee, captured Tiberias, and on 11 July broke through the feeble defences of Jerusalem and brutally massacred everyone who could not retreat into the citadel. Six weeks later the defenders emerged, having been promised safe passage to the coast. The garrison together with the entire Christian population, six thousand men, women and children, left the city but were cut down by Khorezmian swords, only three hundred making it to Jaffa. For good measure the Khorezmians ransacked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tore up the bones of the Kings of Jerusalem from their tombs, set the place alight and burnt all the other churches of the city, pillaged its homes and shops, then left the smoking wreckage of Jerusalem to join al-Salih’s Mameluke army at Gaza.
The Mamelukes
The Mamelukes as seen through the eyes of Ibn Khaldun, fourteenth-century North African historian:
It was God’s benevolence that he rescued the faith by reviving its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslims in the Egyptian realms, preserving the order and defending the mils of Islam. He did this by sending to the Muslims, from this Turkish nation and from among its great and numerous tribes, rulers to defend them and utterly loyal helpers, m/?o were brought from the House of War to the House of Islam underthe rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine blessing. By means of slavery they learn glory and blessing and are exposed to divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with the filth of pleasure, undefiled by the ways of civilised living, and with their ardour unbroken by the profusion of luxury. The slave merchants bring them to Egypt in batches, like sandgrouse to the watering places, and government buyers have them displayed for inspection and bid for them.. .Thus, one intake comes after another and generation follows generation, and Islam rejoices in the benefit which it gains through them, and the branches of the kingdom flourish with the freshness of youth.
From Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammed to the Capture of Constantinople, Oxford
University Press, 1987
World History
