In 1092 when the Seljuk Sultan Malik Shah died, Seljuk central authority stretched from Anatolia to north-west India and from the Caucasus to the Arabian Sea. But this authority was fragile, and internecine squabbles soon destroyed it. The successes of the First Crusade may be ascribed at least in part to this lack of unity and to the rise of competing power-centres in the region, indeed the ‘Franks’ were frequently drawn in on one side or another in internecine Muslim conflicts. Under the emir of Aleppo and Mosul, Zengi (1128-1146), some stability was restored from the 1130s, based around the idea of unifying the disparate Islamic forces and launching a counter-attack against the Crusader states. The recovery of Jerusalem was presented as a key goal, but it remained an ideal, in view of Zengi’s preoccupations in maintaining his own power in the Jazira. Nevertheless, he was able to take Edessa in 1144 and extinguish the Crusader principality of the same name, and his son and successor, Nur ad-Din (1146-1174) was able to build on this initial success. But his enemies were not just the Crusaders: he also saw the heretical Shi’a regime of the Fatimids in Egypt and North Africa as a threat to Islam, and he placed no trust in the ability or willingness of the other local emirs in Syria to support his cause. In 1154 he seized Damascus and incorporated it into his own territory, bringing all Syria under his control.
The Fatimid power was already on the brink of collapse, riven by competing factions, and the struggle for control over
Map 11.8(a) The Islamic Middle East c. 1100-1140.
Map 11.8(b) The Islamic Middle East c. 1170-1180.
Map 11.8(c) The Islamic Middle East c. 1230.
Map 11.8(d) The Islamic Middle East c. 1355.
Map 11.8(e) The Islamic Middle East c. 1401.
Map 11.8(f) The Islamic Middle East c. 1430.
(After Kennedy, Historical Atlas of Islam and McEvedy, New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History.)
Egypt was thus between the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem (invited to assist one side or the other in the internal fighting) and the Zengid emir. In 1168 the Fatimids called on Nur adDin to help repel another Crusader attack, and the result was a Zengid administration in Egypt, formal re-establishment of the Abbasid Caliph, and the end of the Shi’a regime. The Kurdish commander Shirkuh who had achieved this on Nur ad-Din’s part died in 1169, and was succeeded by his nephew, Salah ad-Din b. Ayyub, better known as Saladin. Saladin maintained only a very loose relationship with Nur ad-Din, however; and when the latter died in 1174, Saladin seized control of Syria, so uniting the two regions and establishing a new power in the Middle East, the Ayyubid Sultanate. Within 20 years he had recovered Jerusalem and reduced the Crusaders to the coastal fortresses of Palestine, but after his death in 1193 the sultanate began to fall apart, as the emirates of Hama, Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, as well as Egypt, ruled by his relatives and successors, competed amongst themselves for dominance.
The Ayyubid system was constantly under pressure. Apart from the faction-fighting between the emirs of the dynasty, there were attacks from the Khwarizmians, who were able to penetrate as far as the Syrian coast on occasion, driven west by the Mongol attack on their shahdom. In Egypt the emir Malik al-Kamil recruited large numbers of Turkish slave soldiers to support his regime; and when threatened by the Sixth Crusade in 1228-1229 (led by the Emperor Frederick II, excommunicated by the pope), he agreed to restore Jerusalem and the holy places to the Kingdom of Acre in return for their non-aggression thereafter. But this gain was short-lived, and in 1244 the city fell once more into Muslim hands, this time permanently. In 1248 the King of France, Louis IX, at the head of the Seventh Crusade, attacked Egypt from his base in Cyprus, and although successful at first - Damietta was taken - he was defeated at Mansura and captured along with most of his army. But the attack encouraged further unrest in Egypt; and in 1249 a group of military slaves (Mamluks), seized power and established a state that quickly swallowed up the remaining Ayyubid emirates. The Sultan Baybars (1260-1277) was one of their greatest rulers, inflicting a defeat on the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260, which put an end to Mongol attempts to conquer Syria and Palestine, and during the period up to 1291, when Acre finally fell, all the remaining Crusader strongholds were taken by the Mamluk armies. Mamluk rule over Syria as far north as the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia (the last outposts of which fell finally in 1375) was secured by the 1360s, and along with Egypt formed a polity that lasted until the defeat and conquest of their armies by the Ottomans in 1517.
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