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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:23]
Jonathan Phillips
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com Limu Ko and Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We save. That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [01:18]
William Dalrymple
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [01:29]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
- [01:31]
William Dalrymple
Anita Anand and me William Dalrymple.
- [01:34]
Anita Anand
And we continue our series on Gaza. With this episode we're going to be talking about the Christian conquests of the crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. And our very special guest is Jonathan Phillips, professor of Crusading history at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is the author of the Magnificent the Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin. Welcome to Empire. We're so happy to have you. Thank you.
- [01:58]
Jonathan Phillips
Thank you very much for asking me.
- [01:59]
Anita Anand
Now there's something with the Crusades and I can attest to this where people think they know all about it because it is covered at school. I mean I can't tell you, last year I made a shield for a then nine year old. Yeah, I don't know how that helped him imbibe the entire history of the region, but hot glue was involved. So I feel like I'm sort of part of this story now.
- [02:20]
Jonathan Phillips
Jonathan, you're rather good at that kind.
- [02:21]
William Dalrymple
Of thing, aren't you? You're very good at sort of making. I've seen your house full of sort of top flight shields and sort of industrial revolution factories and all sorts of stuff.
- [02:32]
Anita Anand
We're big believers in. Well, I mean I am. People quite like doing it with them. I think they've lost interest, but I'm thrilled when they have a make and do project.
- [02:42]
William Dalrymple
I also studied Crusades at school and I Remember, it was the thing that first directed me to the Middle East. And in fact, I walked when I was 20, in the footsteps of the First Crusade, followed the route of Robert Curthose through France, down Italy, into Greece, through Turkey, down through Syria. It was the most wonderful trip.
- [03:00]
Anita Anand
Yeah, but I did hot glue. So what are you trying to prove here? I mean, what I really want to know is, from Jonathan Phillips, what was it. What was it that first piqued your interest, Jonathan?
- [03:11]
Jonathan Phillips
My maternal grandfather actually was a cartographer and he was in the Middle east during the war. He used to be walking the countryside, Mount Hermon, mapping it like Lawrence of.
- [03:20]
William Dalrymple
Arabia in the First World War.
- [03:22]
Jonathan Phillips
Well, being around the campfire with the Bedouin and how kind they were to him, looking after him as he walked the hillsides. And that really struck a chord with me. It remained in my head as this probably very romantic view of the region.
- [03:34]
William Dalrymple
I had exactly the same. In fact, Jonathan, I remember when I arrived in Syria, on my first trip to Syria, walking the route of the Crusades. I think I was there for three weeks and I spent two nights only in the hotel. Every other night people took me in. Just a pre modern world. Which makes me all the more guilty when you think of how badly the Syrians have been treated as they travel through the West.
- [03:54]
Jonathan Phillips
I also read a great children's novel called Night Crusader by Ronald Welch. Very much of its time.
- [03:59]
William Dalrymple
Yes, absolutely.
- [04:01]
Jonathan Phillips
Yes, totally. I could recount the whole thing to you now, which I'm sure you don't want to hear, but that again, really was vivid in bringing out or suggesting to me what the place was going to look like.
- [04:13]
Anita Anand
Well, look, let's go from the inspiration to where we are in this storyline, because in our previous episode we were talking about Islam in Gaza. So the Arab Muslims had conquered Gaza and the surrounding area in the year 638, and they'd taken over control from the Christian Byzantines who'd ruled over it. They'd built the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque in nearby Jerusalem, both sites of pilgrimage for Muslims. And as Peter Cyrus was telling us in the last episode, this was not a massive revolution that some might imagine because Palestinians remain majority Christian for at least 600 years. It wasn't that kind of wholesale transfer of population that you sometimes see when a new power imposes its control over a region. But there certainly was a military elite that was present.
- [05:07]
William Dalrymple
And we've talked about the Umayyads, the first great dynasty of Islam ruling that rapidly expanding empire. That goes all the way from the Indus to Spain. And then we talked about the Abbasids, who replaced them, running their empire from Baghdad. And so, Jonathan, bring us up to speed. What's going on in Palestine just before the eruption of the Crusades. Who's in charge?
- [05:28]
Anita Anand
And give us dates, if you would, so we know where on the timeline we've traveled to.
- [05:32]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah. The first crusade is launched in 1095, so just, you know, three decades after 1066, the Norman conquest of England, which is the obvious kind of thing for people to kind of base their ideas around. But the late 1090s in the region, in the Muslim Levant, is a time of great turmoil. In the decades before, you've had strong, powerful rulers in Seljuk, Turkey, the Seljuk empires, these were Turkic steppe people who came in from Central Asia and have established a real power base across the region. You've also got the Fatimid Empire in Egypt. So these two big institutions are there.
- [06:07]
William Dalrymple
Tell us about the Fatimids, because they're Shia, aren't they? They're different from most of the rest of the Muslims in. In the Middle East.
- [06:13]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah. You have the basic Sunni, Shia, split within Islam and within Egypt. In. In the 9th centuries, this Shiite group, this dynasty, the Fatimids, named after Fatima the prophet's daughter, set themselves up and become a very wealthy, powerful institution through the 10th and into the 11th centuries. But just before the First Crusade turns up, there's a poet gives this lovely line. 1093 is the year of the death of caliphs and commanders.
- [06:42]
William Dalrymple
That's very nice.
- [06:42]
Jonathan Phillips
It's a great line. Powerful Seljuk rulers, and they all die in the same year or two. So you've had powerful leadership and then suddenly it all breaks down. And when you've had people in power for a long time, there's often quite a lot of turmoil afterwards. And the Crusaders are very fortunate. It's not deliberate, but it's just their good luck that they turn up at a time when the Muslim near east is very divided.
- [07:06]
William Dalrymple
Jonathan, tell us a little about Pope Urban ii, who launches the first great. Because this is an extraordinary movement from. Gathering troops from all over Europe, every class of people, from the great noblemen and the kings down to ordinary peasants with their staffs, all kind of heading. It sounds incredibly improbable. What inspired him to call it and how did he pull it off?
- [07:28]
Jonathan Phillips
It is improbable, actually. Kings are the only people who don't go, strangely, princes.
- [07:32]
William Dalrymple
Robert Curtis.
- [07:33]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, princes, but not kings.
- [07:35]
Anita Anand
Don't argue with our expert. Back up, Dalrymple. Right. As you were, Jonathan.
- [07:41]
Jonathan Phillips
I'm not going to be invited back, am I? The point is that the church in Western Europe is undergoing a sort of a reformation papal reform movement, we call it, trying to purify itself, but also the importance of Jerusalem is something that's a great part of religious life at the time. And there's a sense also Christianity pushing back against Muslims in Spain and in Sicily. There's an appeal from the Greeks which also is part of this. It's an effort to recover Christendom's most holy place. And I think that is the drive. The Pope wants to show leadership. He really wants to establish himself as the leader of the flock.
- [08:17]
William Dalrymple
And this is coming at a time when Europe is sort of growing and stronger. The economy is beginning to get going and merchant fleets in the Italian city states and this sort of thing. It's a good moment to plan a big military expedition.
- [08:29]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, it's just on the cusp of this kind of thing. I mean, Europe is still, you know, the great kingdoms haven't really emerged yet. It's very sort of localized in many respects. And yes, the First Crusade is an extraordinary idea. The idea of gathering knights and nobles and taking back Jerusalem thousands of miles away.
- [08:47]
Anita Anand
So that's what's going on on Pope Urban side. But what is it that he is peddling to get all these people to down tools, step out of their real lives and sign up for this battle for his God?
- [09:01]
Jonathan Phillips
That's a really interesting question. I mean, you know, you're asking people to go two and a half thousand miles, leave your home, your family, your loved ones, you going absolutely into the unknown. In most cases, it's got to be pretty powerful. What's drawing you there? It's a mixture of things. I mean, nobody ever does anything for one single reason. And he is offering them a spiritual reward. Medieval people are terrified of what? The consequences of sin. You as a knight and noble, you've been sinning your whole life. Greed, envy, lust, killing. And Urban II says, well, if you reclaim Jerusalem for Christendom, I will give you a remission of all your sins. A sort of get out of hell free card. If you complete this pilgrimage, which it is of course to the ultimate place of pilgrimage, Christ's tomb, you will deserve, you will merit a spiritual reward. And this is one of the things that draws people to this, the idea that they will escape the torments of hell.
- [09:58]
Anita Anand
There's that sort of carrot. But I mean, is there also sort of propaganda about what is happening to pilgrims who have tried to go before. Because the kind of picture that Peter Cyrus painted was, you know, that you had a transfer of power, but religions rocked along together even so. And he told us about, you know, majority Christian areas as well. And I know we're sort of focused in this series about Gaza, but let's look at Jerusalem and these places, which is the Holy Land, which is the place that is important to Jews, Muslims and Christians. What is he saying to people about any Christian who wants to go and make a pilgrimage before he feels the need to go in with an army?
- [10:35]
Jonathan Phillips
It's a push and a pull thing. They are also very much peddling what we would simply call propaganda. He's saying the Muslims are killing Christians, they're killing pilgrims, they're torturing them, they're tying them to posts and pulling their stomachs out. There is an awful lot of propaganda. As in any war, you demonize your enemy and there's a lot of that going on.
- [10:54]
William Dalrymple
And how much truth is there in it, Jonathan? Is there these kind of horrors happening?
- [10:58]
Jonathan Phillips
Very little. Very little truth to it. It is simply a way of motivating people to want to be aggressive towards others. It's a way of driving them towards the Holy Land and recovering Jerusalem. I'm always sort of struck by crusaders come from all across Western Europe. If you come from, say, Flanders or Northern Europe, you won't have met a Muslim. That's simply going to be beyond your experience. But people from the trading cities, like sort of Genoa and Pisa and things like that, they've got bases in Egypt and Jaffa, they're going to be much more familiar with Muslims and traders. So that kind of contradiction and complexity is part of the picture.
- [11:37]
Anita Anand
And what's also sort of quite interesting is that Urban gets very graphic and sort of revels in the descriptions of disembowelments and, you know, the way in which entrails are dragged out of people. I mean, that's part of the shtick, isn't it?
- [11:50]
Jonathan Phillips
I mean, yes, as I said, this is propaganda. Some of it's obviously written with the benefit of hindsight. We don't have his sort of speech from the Council of Clermont, but we do have letters that he wrote in which he's encouraging people to recover Christ City. There's also other reasons why people go on the Crusade. Nobles and knights want honour and prestige. They want to be the great man who gets over the walls first. People want some economic advantage. Perhaps the idea of the landless younger sons that's one of the great cliches of the Crusades. It's all these landless younger sons looking for adventure and things like that. It doesn't really work, not least because fathers, uncles, brothers all go. It's not just landless younger sons, but also most people come home. That's the obvious turnaround. About 90% of the Crusaders, once they've got Jerusalem back, assuming they haven't died along the way, would just go, we'd like to get home to our homes and families and loved ones. So it's a tiny proportion who want to settle and stay, but they do found what we then call the Crusader states.
- [12:50]
William Dalrymple
So, Jonathan, just very quickly, they. They leave Western Europe, they trudge across the Balkans that ferried past Constantinople, they fight battles in Anatolia and finally they get to Jerusalem and they actually take it. Now give us a picture of Jerusalem and Gaza and that world of Palestine just before the Crusaders get there and what do they do to it?
- [13:13]
Jonathan Phillips
It's. It's again, Jerusalem and Gaza is interesting. It's this effectively a frontier region between the. The Sunni Seljuk Turks and who are ruling what we might say Assyria and the Shiite Fatimids in Egypt. And control of Jerusalem itself changes two or three times in the months before the Crusade turns up. So it really is. If you're a sort of farmer in the field, you end up having three different rulers in the space of about 16 months. It's that level of turmoil and frontier society. And of course, when armies go through regions, they cause chaos.
- [13:45]
William Dalrymple
Tell us about that farmer in the field. Who are the farmers in the fields who have to face these Westerners suddenly turning up with their crosses all over their shields and all the rest of.
- [13:54]
Jonathan Phillips
It that the rural population, I mean, there's a limit about what we know about, about these people. Some of them are going to be Muslims, some of them are going to be Eastern Christians. They just have to adapt to whoever is basically in control. Obviously, they live in sort of villages. There's areas that are very much Eastern Christian, there's very much areas that are Muslim. So you find a very sort of polyglot society down there. And that again, is one of the fascinating things about this whole region.
- [14:20]
William Dalrymple
So after the First Crusade, which starts in 1095 and gets to Jerusalem, I think 1099, you have the foundation of something called the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. And this is this expat state. Suddenly you've got all these guys, you know, who start off in Western Europe ruling. It's Europe's first sort of medieval colony. As Jonathan said, a lot of the guys go back to France and to England and to Flanders, but a small minority stay on. There's a whole succession of different Crusades and the whole succession of different rulers of the kingdom. And we're going to focus in on the period just before and leading up to the Third Crusade, which is one of the most famous ones when you've got these very sort of celebrated characters like Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, who Jonathan's written his book about. So tell us about King Baldwin III and where does he come into the story?
- [15:10]
Jonathan Phillips
Baldwin III at the time of the Crusader, the Frankish capture of Gaza, is a young man, he's about 19 years old and he's co ruler with his mother, Queen Melisande. He came to the throne as a youth and she is his regent. But interestingly, she rather enjoys being ruler. She's very good at it and so she maintains control.
- [15:31]
William Dalrymple
Anita's smiling difficulty at this moment, I.
- [15:34]
Jonathan Phillips
Can see Melisande is an incredibly interesting, powerful figure who's already effectively shaken off a challenge to her authority from her late husband. And she's good at ruling. But Baldwin as A young man, 19, wants to begin to assert himself. The second crusade, a major expedition from Western Europe came over in 1148 was a complete failure. So there's a need to try and reset and boost morale a bit. So in 1149 he decides that Gaza is somewhere that he'd like to capture.
- [16:06]
William Dalrymple
Which brings us to the Knight Templar who again very much appeared in your children's book and my children's telly program and more recently our sort of Dan Brown fodder with the sort of secrets of the Templars and all the rest of it. Give us a portrait of who these guys actually are.
- [16:21]
Jonathan Phillips
The Knights Templar are a religious group. They're warrior monks. They are sworn to fight Islam, but they live in an institution. They take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They are absolutely that blend of warrior and monk. They're a very popular idea, they're very wealthy, but also in a sense they're a standing army. Those sort of things don't exist in medieval times. These guys live in barracks, they train, they've got a lot of resource. So if you want to give somewhere that is a difficult frontier region that is Gaza, give a castle to a group that's appropriate. They're the people you'd pick.
- [16:57]
Anita Anand
And just to join dots here, if you've ever been through London Temple Station, you might have stopped on, on the district line is named because of the Knights Templar.
- [17:05]
Jonathan Phillips
Well, even the Temple Church is very much the example of that in Lond, that's a round building that was consecrated in 1185, was their headquarters in London and is meant to replicate the Holy Sepulchre. So they have brought Jerusalem to London. It's a real statement of what their job description is, if you see what I mean.
- [17:26]
Anita Anand
So King Baldwin with his youthful ambition and overbearing mother and wanting to make his mark on the world, they're still telling me what to do and then turns around and says, you know what, these Knights Templar, they're quite handy, I could use them to stamp my mark on this land. So how does he do that?
- [17:45]
Jonathan Phillips
Well, once he's, once he's captured Gaza, he is then able to, three or four years later, they capture Ascalon. So in other words, the Crusader control of the coastline is complete and that allows them really to establish themselves much, much more firmly. And Gaza is really the southern border, if you want to put it like that.
- [18:04]
William Dalrymple
In every episode we've done now, it's the same thing, that Gaza is the last place, the last fertile place before the waste of the Negev and the Sinai. And it's the obvious frontiers. Everyone always, whether they're coming north to conquer Palestine or whether they're going south to try and keep an eye on Egypt or conquer it, they need to hold Gaza and Ascalon as the port beside it.
- [18:24]
Jonathan Phillips
Once the Franks have captured Ascalon in 1153, their control of the coast is really, really strong. And Gaza just south of Ascalon is very much the frontier city castle. You've got the Templars guarding it. And also now that you've got that security of the coastline, you can develop Gaza. And so, for example, a major church is constructed there. It's about 40 meters long. If you're building a church of that scale, you're investing in a region. The Franks, the Crusaders look as if they are there to stay and they really want to start bringing the place forwards.
- [18:59]
William Dalrymple
We should say that the church is still there, or was until this year. And there are these wonderful photographs of these very sort of Gothic looking arches I saw in this wonderful exhibition on Gaza in Paris that I saw recently, beautiful 1920s photographs of sort of French Franciscans in all their kit standing in front of these Crusader arches.
- [19:20]
Anita Anand
Jonathan, with the Templars, as you say, guarding Gaza and more or less having taken over the coastline and being very much in charge, what is their behaviour towards non Christians? I mean, would it have been a beneficent rule by these conquering Crusaders, or what would it have been like for the people living there?
- [19:36]
Jonathan Phillips
If you're living in lands that are ruled by the Frankish kings, they have a choice to make when they conquer those territories. You can either in the initial burst of conquest, yes, there's a lot of massacres, 1099, 1100, 1101. But once you settle those lands, you've got a choice. You could carry on trying to do that, or you can try and work with the people in your lands. You'd need a tax base, you need people to farm the land. And you find that, in fact, the Muslims and the Eastern Christians under the control of the Frankish rulers do seem to have a reasonably comfortable, maybe be the wrong word, but they're not being persecuted simply because in some ways, the Crusaders and the Franks are yet another landlord in this region.
- [20:21]
Anita Anand
Also, it should be said that even if you have people who want the machine to keep rolling, you might feel a sense of a grievance against these people, because they've come in and they're running what was once your land. And that certainly feels like the ground, the fertile ground in which you find the roots of Saladin. Now, that, again, is a name that anyone who's read anything about the Crusades will know. Tell us the origin story of this man Saladin.
- [20:48]
Jonathan Phillips
Saladin, as you say, is one of the most famous figures of medieval history. He's a Kurd, ethnically, and he grew up in, largely grew up in the great city of Damascus, in a climate in which the counter Crusade, the jihad, was beginning to take shape under his great patron, a man called Nur al Din. So he is beginning to understand the potential of the jihad, linked with the military might of Damascus and Aleppo, to take on the Crusaders and to recover Jerusalem for Islam. So Saladin is growing up in that climate which hasn't really been there at the time of the First Crusade. It's emerged in the course of the 12th century, a sort of a focus to drive the Franks out. But there's other things about Saladin, in a sense of why he succeeds and why he's able to be so effective. And part of that is that he is an ambitious man. His dynasty called the Ayyubids, he wants to set up an empire for them and the base in which he does it. There's a competition to take control of Egypt in the 1160s, and Saladin at the head, effectively soon afterwards, at the head of an army, is able to make a base for his ayyubid dynasty. So I see him very much as a pious holy warrior and an empire builder.
- [22:00]
William Dalrymple
My great hero, Stephen Runciman, we need to bring in here. He calls him a chivalrous yet formidable adversary who earned the respect and sometimes the admiration of his enemies for his strategic brilliance, his reputation for mercy, fairness in negotiations, his generosity towards captives, and his skillful leadership in defending Muslim lands. We've always seen him as this rather chivalrous figure who always represents the best of the Islamic adversaries of the Crusaders. Is he that wonderful figure that, you know, that is romanticized in novels and movies?
- [22:35]
Jonathan Phillips
I think there's a bit of Walter Scott in what you were sort of channeling through Runciman there. I mean, the things that you said there are largely correct, but there's a lot more to him than that. And I would emphasize this driving ambition to build an empire. He ends up rebelling against his patron, Nur Al Din. There's about to be a civil war. Nur Al din dies in 1174, and Saladin spends the next 13 years fighting his fellow Sunni Muslims. That's not quite in the romantic image or the hero of Islam. He's doing it so he can consolidate his power base in Egypt and then Damascus, Aleppo and Wal. And once he's got all those things together, he's able then to take on the Crusaders.
- [23:19]
William Dalrymple
And just to clarify, we were talking about how Egypt had been ruled by the Shia Fatimids. Has Saladin overthrown these guys?
- [23:27]
Jonathan Phillips
Yes, Nur Al Din and Saladin's troops from Syria had invaded, and the Crusaders from Jerusalem had invaded, and they both are fighting to try to get hold of Egypt. Saladin's group wins. The Fatimids are effectively his prisoners. And after a couple of years, the young Fatimid caliph, aged about 21, dies of natural causes, I'm sure you understand. And that's the end of his dynasty. So Saladin there, as effectively being the leading warrior of Sunni Islam in the conflict with the Shiites, is able to pose as a hero of Sunni Islam in that respect.
- [24:02]
Anita Anand
So having consolidated his forces, having sort of felt now he has the strength, he turns his attention to the Crusaders. Now, the year is 1170. What is the first clash with the Crusaders like and where does it take place?
- [24:15]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, he's trying to show, as well as he's sort of feathering his own nest in Egypt, that he wants to take on the Christians, he wants to take on the Franks. And so he gathers a very big army and pushes up in towards Gaza. There's a fight at a place called Darum, or nearly a battle, near Darum, which is just south of Gaza.
- [24:35]
William Dalrymple
That's Deir al Balr in the modern map, and we've been hearing it on our news bulletins lately.
- [24:40]
Jonathan Phillips
He goes past Darum, where the King of Jerusalem has come down carrying the true cross, the great talisman of the Crusader armies, believed to be the cross upon which Christ was crucified. They're that worried by Saladin's incursion, but they don't end up fighting. And Saladin gets to Gaza itself, which is defended moderately well. He breaks into the edge of the city where, curiously, the noble in charge of it won't let the. The local inhabitants into the citadel, which seems a bit harsh. I think he thinks it'll encourage them to fight a bit. A bit more strongly. But Saladin's got a strong force and kills a lot of the Christian defenders, takes their property and their cattle and withdraws. Gaza is hit by a heavy raid in 1170, but it's not anywhere like a conquest.
- [25:26]
William Dalrymple
And then we have the famous great battles of the Horns of Hattin, which again, was something I remember learning about in my, in my school Crusades lessons. The Horns of Hattin, 1187, which is this crucial turning point.
- [25:38]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, this is Saladin's huge bid. He spent all this time fighting his fellow Sunni Muslims. He's saying, you know, you've got to back me, you've got to join me. We are going to recover Jerusalem for Islam. He's pulled together Egypt, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, and he has to fight. And he sets a trap for the Crusaders by taking the town of Tiberius and saying that you have to rest the lady of Tiberius. And he exploits their divisions and they try and march about 32 kilometres across a blazingly hot, waterless plateau. And he has the army and the resources to defeat them. He captures the King of Jerusalem and the true cross and absolutely decimates the Crusader army.
- [26:19]
William Dalrymple
And I remember this image of at the Horns of Hattin, when it's blazing hot day, the Crusaders have no water. They're on the top of the hill, he's surrounded them, they're thirsty. He starts bushfires. Is that all true?
- [26:32]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, I mean, he's got so much water, his men can pour out buckets of water in front of the Crusaders just to show that we've got it and you haven't.
- [26:41]
Anita Anand
That's a proper mind game, that one, isn't it?
- [26:44]
Jonathan Phillips
It is. And also music and drumming and trumpets. It's all part of creating the pressure on Your opponents and that, I mean.
- [26:52]
Anita Anand
The reverberations from that, you know, the drum and the music, they will inevitably reach the places that have sent their sons to fighting Crusades previously. And they also then sort of carry Richard the Lionheart. Now we can bring Richard the Lionheart in here because that terror of Saladin taking the Holy Lands is really what becomes this wave that lifts Richard the King of England up to a new height. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [27:19]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, I mean, after the Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem is open to Saladin. And a couple of months later, he recovers it for Islam. And he's able to tell everybody, well, you know, you thought I was doing this for myself. No, I've got God's judgment on this. I have recovered the Holy City. So he's very good. One of Saladin's great secrets is propaganda. He's brilliant at churning out propaganda. And so he obviously exploits this. But the Pope in Europe has a heart attack when he hears of this. He's driven an absolute sort of stake through the heart of Christendom. And the response inevitably will be immense. And it's the Third Crusade, where the great rulers of England, France, Germany, all the nobles come out to try to recover Jerusalem.
- [28:02]
Anita Anand
Can you just tell us, what was he like, Richard the Lionheart? Because never has a man been so variously portrayed. Just, you know, who was he? Who was this guy?
- [28:13]
Jonathan Phillips
He's the son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of of Aquitaine. He's a complex character. He's incredibly thin skinned, I think he's brutal, he's vain. He's also a very cautious strategist. He's also somebody who is a good diplomat. He's a very contradictory character in many respects. I mean, he is a great warrior. If you get near him in battle, you're gonna be in deep, deep trouble. He's totally lethal, but he doesn't fight battles for the hell of it. He does it when he's pushed into battles. He's good at logistics and things like that. There's more to him than a sort of great big thug with a double handed sword.
- [28:52]
William Dalrymple
My great Stephen Runciman, who I learned all my crusading history from, he calls him a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king. But a gallant and splendid soldier. Again, a bit of Walter Scotty sort of effort.
- [29:06]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, very much, very much. I'm not sure Richard is gallant. He is very, very pragmatic. He's very brutal at times.
- [29:15]
William Dalrymple
He massacres people, doesn't he, in hideous moments.
- [29:18]
Jonathan Phillips
In Acre, the Great sort of set piece of the Third Crusade is the siege of Acre, which is a city now, Akko, in northern Israel. And it's been going on for years. Saladin's been trying to break this siege. Richard turns up and he is an incredibly effective warrior. And within a few weeks it's broken and he has two and a half thousand Muslim prisoners. Saladin is basically mucking him around about paying the ransom and trying to sort of spin the timeout. And Richard massacres them. A straight down the line war crime that horrifies everybody at the time and is something I think sort of still remembered today. But that is the very harsh, harsh, pragmatic side of Richard the Lionheart.
- [30:00]
Anita Anand
Well, I mean, that kind of massacre is going to, again, cause terror in the region. And it is also sort of giving Richard the kind of swagger where he can take whatever he wants. He turns his attention in, in 1191 to Gaza. Now, it is a fortified city. I mean, Saladin has taken it, but he's refortified this place. How vulnerable is it at the time when Richard puts it in his sights.
- [30:24]
Jonathan Phillips
What Richard is doing? He's looking to march down the coast and then go inland to Jerusalem. And Saladin is worried as to what Richard's next move is going to be. And so he doesn't really want him to consolidate the coastline. Saladin's really, really torn about this. Ascalon and Gaza have to be dismantled and destroyed. And that really is something painful to him, to break these places down, you might say. To his credit, he goes there himself in person to oversee this. And obviously the people are devastated. You know, you're breaking down our places, you're making us move out. He could have sent down, I suppose, a lieutenant or somebody to do it, but he, in a sense, again, one of his skills is with people. He, he actually supervises this sad moment himself.
- [31:10]
William Dalrymple
And do we get any actual meeting between Saladin and Richard the Lionheart? They're these two sort of archetypal figures, the ultimate crusader and the ultimate anti crusader. And again, in the kind of Walter Scott version of things, they're both these very chivalrous figures, but they never actually meet, do they?
- [31:27]
Jonathan Phillips
No, sadly not. I mean, much to the upset of television producers and dramatists everywhere. The person who Richard spends a lot of time with is Safadin, Saladin's brother. And I think a lot of the reputation of Saladin in the west is in part through Safadin, because Richard is a great diplomat as well as a great warrior. And to try to end the Crusade. He has multiple meetings with Safadin and they find they both like music, they like poetry, they like hunting, they like food. And people are like, hang on, you two are getting on a bit too well here.
- [31:58]
Anita Anand
You're a bit cosy.
- [31:59]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah. And so, in a sense, that is all part of the diplomatic game. I mean, of course, you're trying to work out how strong the other guy is as well, or the other side is. But Richard and Saladin never met. Saladin said he would not meet somebody unless they'd made a full and formal peace agreement. Because he didn't want to meet somebody, he would then go on and fight afterwards.
- [32:19]
Anita Anand
So Safadin is doing this with Saladin's blessing, is he? So it's just he can't bear to be in the same room. But his brother, who has a sweeter tongue than him, can do this for him?
- [32:29]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, effectively. But Safadin is very much empowered to, to do all the talking.
- [32:34]
William Dalrymple
What language are they using? Have they got translators?
- [32:37]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, there's a whole, whole industry of interpreters. Some of the Frankish nobles who've grown up in the Crusader states do speak fluent Arabic. Some of them are known to Saladin, anyway. One of them, he had long arguments about Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet with. So there is a cultural linking there and poor El.
- [32:56]
William Dalrymple
Gaza, as ever, is going backwards and forwards between these different powers. And we've already seen it exchange hands, I think, three times already. What happens to it next?
- [33:04]
Jonathan Phillips
Well, after the end of the Crusade, it remains in Muslim hands and it remains in the hands of the Ayyubids, Saladin's dynasty. And then I suppose, relatively, you've got a few decades of peace. Saladin appoints an administrator. The Christian church is changed into a mosque. It becomes the Great Mosque. The population will probably start changing a little bit, and the. The start of the 13th century is a more peaceful phase. But then when you get to the 1240s, 1250s, 1260s, it becomes a war zone again. This idea of being the frontier region really, really kicks in.
- [33:41]
Anita Anand
Let's take a break there. Join us after the break where, after just having a pocket of peace, Gaza is once again plunged into war.
- [33:55]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back. So Jonathan left us with this brief and unusual peaceful period when there isn't a war going on in Gaza. But by the 1250s, the Ayyubid Sultanate founded by Saladin, is overthrown by a new group. And these are very important guys who we're going to hear a lot more of in this half this is the Mamluks liberated slaves, often of Central Asian origin, often raising the flag of jihad against the last bastions of the Crusaders. And particularly there's this character, Sultan Baibars, so ugly that allegedly one owner sent him back for his ugliness to the slave market. Tell us about all this lot, Jonathan.
- [34:36]
Jonathan Phillips
The idea of Mamluk's slave soldiers has been around for a couple of centuries. By this time, they're mainly Kipchak Turks from around sort of southern Russia, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea. And they're captured and they're brought and they used as warriors. They're trained, in a sense. Their loyalty becomes to their unit. They're often converted to Islam if they're not Muslims. And they become really good soldiers. You know, they're great warriors, they're good horsemen, they're good horse archers, they're good siege engineers. So as a sort of a tier of warriors, they're quite effective. There's one particular group of them, a regiment that the Ayyubids generate called the Bahariya. They have a barracks on the. On the River Nile, and they become, if you like, an elite. And it's out of that elite when Saladin's dynasty, the Ayyubids, start to fail, that the Bahariya emerge and start to take over control of Egypt. And as you say, the most prominent or the most famous amongst these is the formidable, deceitful, brutal Sultan Baibars.
- [35:35]
Anita Anand
You said they raised the flag of jihad. Is that because they're critical of Saladin's family for not being Muslim enough? I mean, what is their reason to turn on a fellow Muslim who has been in charge?
- [35:47]
Jonathan Phillips
I'm not sure they're turning on him for his religiosity. This is just simply a battle. Saladin's dynasty has sort of started fighting amongst itself and has really kind of run out of steam. And they just see an opportunity to take power for themselves and they squabble amongst themselves for a bit. But really we now then sort of start thinking them as a dynasty from really the reign of Baibars.
- [36:09]
William Dalrymple
So it's the 1260s now, and just when Palestine might be thinking that it's in for a bit of peace and quiet, having got rid of the Crusaders, a new bunch turn up who are, of course, the Mongols. And as we know, the Mongols manage to smash their way through China, through Persia, they burn Baghdad, they create havoc and chaos, and then, incredibly unexpectedly, it is the Mamluks who defeat them. Tell us about the battle of Ain Jalood.
- [36:38]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah. The Mongols have, over the previous decades, created the biggest land empire in the history of the world. And Syria is next on the stop, as you say, 1258, they took Baghdad, moving into northern Syria, and Egypt is there. They send out envoys to the Egyptians saying there's a divine mandate here, the world is ours. If you say no, you are rebelling against God, and if you do that, there's going to be trouble. And the Mamluks are just trying to establish themselves and, well, they could submit, I suppose, but they take a very brave, all or nothing approach and they murder the Mongol envoys, which is pretty well putting your cards on the table there.
- [37:19]
Anita Anand
It's a diplomatic message, isn't it, really?
- [37:21]
Jonathan Phillips
If you cut envoys in half, it is sending a particular message out that really then obviously is provoking a battle with the Mongols. They're quite fortunate. The great Mongol leader Hulegu has had to go back to Mongolia to help select a new khan. And the general Kit Bucher is left there. And so the Mamluks advance out past Gaza, which the Mongols briefly seem to have been certainly in control of at one point in 1260. So yet another rule, but really only a matter of weeks. They're very much sort of in the environ. And then there is a battle in 1260 in southern Galilee between the Mamluks and the Mongols. They're both quite similar in a sense of the form of their armies, their horse archers. So they're quite sort of evenly matched. But the Mamluks triumph and ethnically, not completely different.
- [38:09]
William Dalrymple
They're both sort of Central Asian people who are good with the bow and that kind of stuff and.
- [38:14]
Jonathan Phillips
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:15]
Anita Anand
But with all of this going on, this violence in a pretty short period of time, again, focusing on Gaza, which we've talked about in previous episodes in this series, had a very proud mercantile trade place in the world. You know, it was incredibly wealthy. But with this much violence going on for this amount of time, what is it left with and what is it left like?
- [38:39]
Jonathan Phillips
I think, particularly say the 1240s to the early 1260s, there's just armies passing by or located there for weeks on end. These Mongol armies, or some of the Mamluk armies are very, very big and you've got tens of thousands of horses around the place. The land is going to be, I think, worked pretty hard because they have to feed them.
- [38:59]
Anita Anand
So, I mean, they're basically sort of garrisoned there. So you've got horses, horsemen or soldiers, that feeling of kind of Being quite, quite oppressed and then having to work the land till it sort of dies under your feet. Because you've got to feed them all. You've got to feed all.
- [39:12]
Jonathan Phillips
They're going to feed themselves. Yeah, they're going to take it from you. So I do sort of see it as being an incredibly difficult time, 1240s to 1260s. But with the victory Ain Jalut, the Mamluks are first of all. The Mongols have barely ever been defeated before and this gives them a legitimacy and Baibars builds on that, pushes them north and this begins to create some stability for Gaza.
- [39:37]
Anita Anand
So how quickly does Gaza get back on its feet? Does it ever regain its past prosperity, would you say?
- [39:42]
Jonathan Phillips
I think the decades after that, Gaza does become prosperous. It becomes one of the three administrative centres of the Mamluk region, along with Safed and Damascus. It is prosperous. There's money coming into it, there's military people coming into it, endowing mosques, endowing madrasas, there's inscriptions showing that there is wealth definitely arriving there.
- [40:05]
William Dalrymple
Yes, I mean, I think, you know, just like you and I were brought up on the Crusaders and we watched these television programs and saw the films and read the books, none of us learned about the Mamluks. They're completely absent from the Western curriculum. And yet actually on the ground, they are one of the greatest builders of this region. I've got on my bookshelf at home this enormous two volume hardback set of all the buildings they built in just Jerusalem. And it's two vast volumes with the whole sort of photo spread of about 70 pages of these fountains and mosques and caravans, shrines and Sufi shrines. And the same sort of thing happens on a slightly less of a huge scale. But the same sort of thing happens in Gaza, doesn't it? You get. You get the Great mosque built in 12 6, you've got all sorts of stuff turning up at this period.
- [40:52]
Jonathan Phillips
Yes, it becomes a much more Islamic city. There are more Islamic religious buildings. You've got to imagine, certainly a population increase as well. I mean, peace and not being a war zone is going to encourage people to arrive there. You've got Gaza no longer as the frontier region. Peace is finally established with the Mongols in the early 14th century and so this enables trade to flourish as well.
- [41:16]
William Dalrymple
I had a friend to dinner the other day and he brought a book with a description of Gaza at this time of a bunch of European pilgrims turning up during the Mamluk period in Gaza with a very full description of it. And, you know, so much of the history of Gaza seems to be just conflict. But at this point we've actually got a really detailed snapshot.
- [41:37]
Anita Anand
Oh, go on, share with class. I was desperate to hear what it was like.
- [41:40]
William Dalrymple
This is a record left by a man called Friar Felix Fabbri, who was a Swiss born Dominican and he came twice on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And this is a little bit later than Baibars. This is now the 1480s. The Mamluks are still in control. This is a long period of stability. Trade has absolutely returned. It's a prosperous port. And he describes the city as being surrounded. And this is one of the great surprises because we're so used now to seeing these dreadful pictures of Gaza as this desert and destruction. But a lot of the medieval descriptions describe like this, and he says, surrounded by pleasant groves of fruit trees, almond palms and figs, which so crowded thickly around Gaza as to make it like a city set in a wood, but with a peaceful sound of lapping waves in the distance. When all was quiet, we heard in our courtyard the noise and the roar of the sea. And he says it's unwalled, it's bigger than Jerusalem. You see, this is the surprise. We think of it as this sort of place of conflict. It's a really prosperous port and he says its houses are made mostly of mud brick. It has some very fine mosques, exceptionally good public baths. While all provisions here were in such plenty and so low in price that the town had the nickname of the Butter Ditch. And the pilgrims were warmly received here, were able to wander around and never heard an ill word, while the governor granted all that. We asked and treated us very kindly, although he was a heathen, says the friar. And then there's this fascinating moment when the Mamluk army turns up. There's drums and there's kettle drums and suddenly these horses are coming up from the Sinai and heading on in. Everyone locks up their shops and hides because these guys are so predatory. A regiment of Mamluk soldiers turned up from Egypt and announced by eight musicians banging kettle drums. Immediately the townsmen locked up their shops. They come and wherever they like, they grab and take away without paying. And there is no man that dare deny them. The people ever kept their livestock in their houses, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats because they would have been carried off by the soldiery. Next day the Mamluks departed and Gaza came to life again. And then they all go and have this wonderful time in the baths where they get massaged and there's this Ethiopian masseur who mends all their sort of sore bits and they have a lovely time. So we have this sort of snapshot of this very prosperous, very attractive town, but the locals don't seem to like. They're almost sort of colonial rulers.
- [44:04]
Anita Anand
So you have sort of prosperity, sure, but you also have this collision of two major religions in the region. And you've had Christianity and Islam going at each other during the Crusades, also during the Mamluk period. What is happening to the Jewish population that we've talked about that has been also in this region for a very long time?
- [44:25]
Jonathan Phillips
Yes, there is certainly under the Mamluks, evidence of a Jewish population. I suspect they weren't there during the time of the Crusades.
- [44:33]
William Dalrymple
They're massacred by Crusaders, aren't they?
- [44:35]
Jonathan Phillips
In 1099, 1099, when the Crusaders break into Jerusalem, the Muslim defenders and the Jewish population are massacred by the Crusaders. As you say, the Jews weren't allowed to live in the holy city by the Crusaders. You do find them in some ports engaging in trade. When you get to the Mamluk era and the prosperity of Gaza is beginning to increase, you find Jewish families. We hear of 60 Jewish families living in Gaza in the 14th century. They're engaged in trade. They're also in wine making, which certainly pleases the pilgrims when they're moving through. So it's. Yes, it's one of the other crops, vineyards, that is able to be produced down there. So, again, this seems to be all part of the seeming prosperity of Gaza and Sufis.
- [45:20]
William Dalrymple
There's a big Sufi brotherhood. Tell us about them.
- [45:22]
Jonathan Phillips
The Islamic mystic brotherhood under the Mamluks. There is certainly a Muslim majority in the city of Gaza. And one indication, I suppose, of the level of religiosity, the level of Islamization that's coming on, as well as all the mosques that are being built, the presence of Sufi lodges, Sufi mystics, who are an important part of the Islamic faith, are being established there by some important religious thinkers.
- [45:46]
Anita Anand
It's been really fascinating and thank you very much, Jonathan, for walking us through this. We leave Gaza now under Mamluk rule. It's flourishing, as Jonathan has said, but there is a powerful army on the horizon, the army of the Ottomans. And that's where we're going to go. Next time on Empire. If you want to unlock the full Empire experience, then do join the Empire Club today@empirepod uk.com that's empirepoduk.com you get early access to main episodes, a weekly newsletter and exclusive bonus episodes, including. William, what's the Next exciting bonus that.
- [46:20]
William Dalrymple
We'Ve got, we've got the wonderful Selma Dabag talking about Palestinian literature. I think when we talk about Gaza, as in this episode, so much of it is the story of conflict. And we thought it was very important to talk about the literature scene in Palestine generally, but also specifically in Gaza, because I think, unknown to most of us in the west, it is a major center of poetry and fiction and writing today. So we're gonna have go in a slightly different direction in this bonus episode and talk to Selma about the writers of Gaza.
- [46:49]
Anita Anand
But our thanks for now to Jonathan Phillips, professor of crusading history at Royal Holloway College. It's an awfully huge expanse of time we've asked you to cover and you've done it so well for us. Thank you so much. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon, and goodbye.
- [47:04]
William Dalrymple
From me, William Durimple.
- [47:15]
Jonathan Phillips
Hey, it's Anthony Scaramucho and I want to tell you about my podcast, Open Book, which just joined the Goal Hanger network, which we're all very proud of. In my latest episode, I interviewed Goal Hanger's very own James Holland. We spoke about World War II and what World War II teaches us about today. Here's a clip. Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Well, I think he was a great man. I think he was a man of vision. He was a man of. Of enormous geopolitical understanding, and he was a man who offered possibilities. When you're in a life and death struggle, you need people that can persuade you. You need people that can bind you. You need men of vision, of charisma. That's the problem with the moment, is we haven't got those guys. I mean, he's flawed, of course, all the great men are. But thank goodness for the developed world and the democratic world that he was political leader of Great Britain in 1940 and throughout the whole of Level 2. He literally, in, in so many different ways, man of the century. I think because Roosevelt was a charmer. Roosevelt was a great strategist. He pulled the Americans through the Depression and helped to manage the war. But without Churchill holding ground in May and June of 1940, it would have been a much darker, much worse world. There would have been not a lot that the Americans could have done without Churchill's steadfastness and his inspiration to his fellow citizens. If you want to hear the full episode, just search open book, wherever you get your podcasts. You are not luminous, Watson, but you are a conductor of light. Here they are. Dr. Mortimer, I presume yes. Hi, John. Dr. John Watson. Who is your client? He was my client, sir. Charles Baskerville. Keep reading. A local shepherd. Noted. I saw first that of the maid. Hugo Baskerville passed me thence on his.
- [49:17]
William Dalrymple
Black mare, and there behind him, running.
- [49:19]
Jonathan Phillips
Mute upon his track, such a hound.
- [49:22]
William Dalrymple
Of hell that, God forbid, should ever.
- [49:24]
Anita Anand
Be at my heels.
- [49:25]
Jonathan Phillips
Hills. I wish I felt better in my mind about it. It's an ugly business once, an ugly, dangerous business. And the more I see of it, the less I like it. I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street Pass Mall. Hello. Gohanger presents the.
- [49:51]
William Dalrymple
You're not Sherlock Holmes.
- [49:52]
Jonathan Phillips
I'm Henry Baskerville. From one of the biggest audio dramas of all time. Does it bother you? Like in a creepy kind of way? Like in there's an evil giant hound.
- [50:02]
William Dalrymple
That likes the taste of Baskerville some.
- [50:04]
Jonathan Phillips
Kind of way, the seminal gothic novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. They're watching. Who?
- [50:09]
William Dalrymple
Who are watching?
- [50:11]
Jonathan Phillips
It's not safe. I could just make out its pitch black form. Welcome to deepest everything, a hellish void. Darkest.
- [50:21]
William Dalrymple
Who are you to this piercing yellow glow of eyes?
- [50:26]
Jonathan Phillips
Dartmoor. What do you want of giant fangs? No.
- [50:32]
Anita Anand
Sherlock and Co, the hound of the Baskervilles. Listen now.
- [50:40]
Jonathan Phillips
Five stars, says the Eye Paper. Hugely popular, says the Guardian. A successful reinvention of Holmes for a younger generation, says the Times. Search Sherlock and Co, wherever you get your podcasts.