ᠰᠠᠯᠠᠳᠢᠨ ᠠᠴᠠ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠤᠯ ᠬᠦᠷᠲᠡᠯ᠎ᠡ .pdf

' . . . . . . . . FROM SALADIN TO THE MONGOLS . . . . . The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-1260 . . . By R. Stephen Humphreys . . . . . . . . . . . . Upon the death of Saladin in 1193, his · -:: Tigris, fell into the hands of his Ayyu- .·.·_ : . :) bid kinsmen. These latter parceled . . _ . : ·-:: his domains into a number of . auto- · · · ·_::-:: . . . . nomous principalities, though some . · } common identity was maintained by · . . ·.- :- ·· . , But appearances to the contrary, . · . ; the obscure quarrels of Saladin's - ·· : !i' heirs embodied a political revolution · · _: . . :_.::;_:· of highest importance in Syro�Egyptian , ·· (::::·1 history. The seven decades of Ayyu.; : :� :�:,·);·: :; bid rule mark the slow and somethne$·· · .·:_ri��i violent emergence of a new admil#,s�·-· \, · �-·. tratlve relationship between Egyp�,- / � •. -.-.·· and Syria, one in which Syria W'a�·: ·· ._: . . • · subjected to close centralized con.tl'o!�:� �;{,: _ . . from Cairo for the unprecedented ·.·· __ ,···. period of 250 years. These yearS . • . · • : . · also the gradual decay of a. fol'Jil . :. . : ·, :. ' - . - . ' . . government -the family . · · · · · · · • · · -which had been the moat .· •. . . . . : : ' ' ' teristic political structure of · . . · · · . Iran and the Fertile .Crescent ··--·.· centuries, and its - . . . . . . . . . . . 25' t----14 5' Konya • • Asyut 25� •s· I VaS Aleppo • • Damascus .Jerusalem ' 40' ' . ' Mosul •Medina • Mecca 45' 55. T a briz Oazwin• • Rayy • Hamadhan • Isfahan • Shiraz 0 200 400 miles • I. The Middle East in the Thirteenth Century 40'1--t • • Samarqand Bukhara • Marw Nishapur • JS't---1 Ghazni • • Kirman • The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-I26o R. Stephen Humphreys State Un iversity of New York Press Alban y 1977 FIRS T PUBLISHE D IN 1977 BY STATE UN IV ERS IT Y OF NE W YORK PRESS ALBANY, NE W YORK 12246 ©1977 STATE UNI VE R SITY OF NE W YORK ALL RIG HTS RE SER VE D MADE AND PRIN TED IN THE UN ITED STATES OF AMERIC A Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Humphreys, R Stephen. Fron1 Saladin to the Mongc)ls. Bibliography: p. 1. Syria- History. 2. Ayyubids. 3. Dan1ascus- Hist()fY. 4. Islamic Empire- Politics and government. I. Title. DS97.3.H85 956.91'02 77-9955 ISBN 0-87395-263-4 TO MY PA R ENTS, IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE �on tents Preface and Acknowledgments xi Introduction I 1 The structure of politics in the reign of Saladin 15 2 The origins of the Ayyubid confederation 41 3 The rise of al-'Adil (589/ II93-598/I2oi) 87 4 Al-Mu'azzam 'I sa: The period of tutelage 125 5 f\1-Mu'azzam 'I sa: The period of independent • sovereignty 155 6 The reign of al-Ashraf Musa 193 7 The Third Civil War 239 8 Damascus as an Egyptian province 283 9 AI-Nasir Yusuf: Restoration and Ruin 309 Appendices 365 Sources and Bibliography 393 Notes 4 13 Index 4 75 Maps I. The Middle East in the Thirteenth Century ( Fro11t lining Paper) Ila. Egypt and the Fertile Crescent in tl1e Ayyubid Period lib. The Ayyubid Empire and its Neighbors at tl1e Death of al-' Adil ( 615/ I 218) III. Central Syria and Palestine: Damascus and its Sphere of Interest IV. Carte des Environs de Damas (by permission of N. Elisseeff and the Institut fran�ais d'etudes arabes de Damas.) (Pocket, Back Coller) Pre face and Acknowl edgm ents The pages that follow are thickl y strewn with names and dates, arranged in a loosely chronological order. Many of my readers may thus suppose that this book is merely a detailed account of the doings of some rather obscure princelin gs in thirteenth­ centur y Syria. It is not. It is rather a study of the value s and attitudes which underlay political behavior at a crucial period in the hi story of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent. It is true that I have cast this study in the form of a narrative, though it opens with a long discursus and is interrupted by sever al others. I have done so because I believe that no other framework is so well suited to the problems entailed by the topic at hand. These problems are basically two. First , we are dealing with a period in which neither the chief actors nor contemporary witnesses chose to spell out the idea s and assumptions whic h governed political conduct, so that these thin gs can be inf erred only through a close scrutiny of even ts. As it happens, even the major political events of this period are only poorly known to modern scholarship, and though the sources at our disposal are strikingly rich and var­ ied, they are ex asperatingly reticent even in regard to such consciously established and visible institutions as the army or the financi al administration. In this situation, where only the external phe nomena of politic s can be directly derived from the sour ces, narrative reconstruction provides the most reliable avenue to a level of un derstandin g which comprises not only immediate motives and goals, but also those deeper-lying valu es and attitudes which shaped policy and action into a meaningful PRE FACE AN D AC KN OWLEDG MENTS structure of politics. For if the characteri stic vice of narrative is superficiali ty, at least this approach compels the historian to deal with the purposes, expectati ons, hopes, and fears of those whom he studies, and it is after all only a step from the thoughts of individua ls to the shared ideas of a group. Nor will a care­ fully made narrative, with its demand that the historian compre­ hend the totality of known event s as they unf olded in time and space, allo w him to restrict his attention to a few facts chosen in accordance with the standards of relevance laid down by a perhaps unsuitable or ana chronistic model of explanation. The second problem connected with our topic stems from a major thesis of this book viz. , that the structure of political lif e in Egypt and Syria suf fered a fundamental transformation in the first five deca des of the thirteenth centur y. If that is so, it follows that any valid analysis of the period requires as precise a portrayal of this chan ge as possible. Change can indeed be described by simply asserting its existence and citing a set of fact s in ill ustration. But narrative can produce a more adequate characterization in a case like the one at hand, where a major political transformation seems the product not of any vast social and ideologica l upheaval, but of a cla sh of inter ests and ambitions among a restricted and defin able group of men. In the case of Ayyubid Syria and Egypt, change is best understood when it is perceived from a narrative perspective as the prod­ uct (often unconscious and in voluntary) of innum erable small acts, done most often to serve some immediate, even trivia l end. In preparing this book I ha ve trie d to stick close to my sources. But since these are so taciturn in regard to my real interests values, attitudes, patterns of behavior any state­ ments on such matters are necessari ly an extrapolation from the expli cit testimony of the texts. But extrapolations of thi s kind must be made if Ayyubid history is ever to be brought within the mainstream of modern historical enquiry rather than relegated to the marginal statu s of an “ex otic society.“ Thus even in those areas where my documentation is ina dequate or incomplete, I ha ve often decid ed to ventur e interpretive hy-PREFA CE AND AC KN OWLE DGMENTS potheses, on the gro unds that an explici t hypothesis open to empirical testing is more useful than silence. The latter may be more becoming or even more scholarly , but from a scienti fic point of view it is worthle ss. I have tried to make a clea r distinction between surmise and documented statement; on the whole I thin k I have succeeded. Many readers may well feel le ss offended by an exce ss of hypothe ses than choked by a constant succession of wars and conspiracie s in the pages that follow. If I claim that these were by far the most visible forms of politica l activity in that period, they may protest tha t to concentrate on them is misleadin g and superf icial, that this approach cannot represent the reality of Ayyubid political lif e. I must demur. In tha t age the state was run lar gely by and for the benefit of a military cla ss a cla ss whose fundamental social function was fighting. Moreover there were no regular in stitutions (e.g. , parliaments or admin­ istrative courts) for resolving confli cts within the rulin g group peaceably. The incessant wars and conspiracies of the age merely reflect these realities. Not ever ythin g was decided on the field of battle or in whispered conversations, and negotia­ tion and compromise were far from alie n to the Ayyubid mind. Nevertheless, an adequate history of the Ayyubids must recog­ niz e that violence was not incidental, but an inte gral part of the political process. The preparation of thi s study ha s occupied me for many year s and I have naturally incurred many debts of gratitude along the way. I should first thank those teacher s and col­ leagues whose advice and criticism have materially improved this work and who have encouraged me to have it publi shed : Prof. An drew Ehrenkreutz, who supervised it in its fir st inc ar­ nation as a dissertation at the Unive rsity of Michigan (1 9 69) ; Prof. George Scanlon; Prof. Oleg Grabar of Har vard; and Prof. George Makdisi of the University of Pennsylvan ia. I would also thank Mr. Norm an Mangouni, Direct or of the State University of New York Press, for his willingness to take on a book of the size and complexity of this one; and Margaret Mirabelli, for her astute and sympathetic editin g of the manuscript. PRE FACE AND AC KN OWLEDGMENTS Much of the research for this book was made possible through the financial assistance of several organizations. It is a plea sure to cite them here: the Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, Univer sity of Michigan; U.S. Off ice of Educa tion, for a Fulbright-H ays grant in 19 68-6g ; the State University of New York Research Foundation, for faculty re­ search grants in the summer of 19 71 and autumn of 19 73; the Social Scien ce Research Counci l , for awards in 19 71 and 19 72- 73; the National Endowment for the Hum anities, for a Younger Hu manis t Fellowship for the academic year 19 72 -73; Dean William Kruskal and the Divi sion of Social Science s, Univer sity of Chica go, for un derwriting the cost of the maps which appear in this book. I must also thank the staffs of several libraries whose manu­ script holdi ngs are the foundatio n of this work and where I met with unfailing fr iendli ness and cooperation: the Biblio theque Nationale, Paris; the British Museum; the Bodleia n Library, Oxf ord ; the Nationalbibli othek, Vienna; the Topkapi Saray and the Siileymaniye Kiitiiphanesi, Istanbul. / I am grateful to the Institut Franc;ais d'Etudes Arabes de Damas an d to Prof. Nikita Elisseeff of the Universite de Lyon for their permission to reproduce the map of Damascus and its environs. Mr. John Hanner, cartogr aphic assistant in the Dept. of Geography, Univ ersity of Chicago , ably prepared the other maps. Toni Hoef elmeier gave devoted and skillful assis­ tance in the hateful tasks of proofreadin g and indexing. Finally, there is my family. My children have not really understood what their father ha s been up to all these year s; still, they ha ve generally been willin g (though with some skep­ ticism) to take my word that it is “important,“ and have been very good about letting me ha ve enough time to get it finished. To my wife I owe not only a vigorous criticism of many pages in the book, but also an ener gy and sense of purpose which saw me through many mom ents of frustration and discouragement. R. Stephen Humphreys Introduction At the time of Saladin's death in s8g/ I 19 J, the empire which he had founded was but one of many powerful and expanding kingdoms in the Islamic world. In spite of the disproportionate attention which Saladin's wars ag ainst the Crusader s have earned him, it would be dif ficul t to prove that Ha ttin was a more fateful battle than Myriokephalon, that his conque sts were vaster or more durable than those of his Almohad, Ghur id, and Khwarizmian counterpar ts , or even that the issues at stake in his struggles in Egypt and Syria were truly of greater moment for Islam than those which underlay contemporary events in North Afr ica, Anatolia, and Eastern Iran. And if such is the case with the achievemen ts and his toric role of the great Sal­ adin, what are we to say of his Ayyubid epigoni, even of such considerable figures as al-'A dil, al-K amil, and al-S alih Ayyub, le t alone the dynasties of minor kinglets among whom Syria was divided'! De spite the in evitable impact of Sala din's fame on our think­ ing, it is never theless true tha t his reign in troduced no essen­ tially new elemen t in to the politica l lif e of hi s age; rather, it represents the culmina tion of a process already a half -century old when he first came to power. It is to tl1e obscure quarrels of hi s successors that we must look to discover a profound trans­ formation in the ver y structure of Syro-Eg yptia n politics, one which divide s quite abruptly the la ter Middle Ages from all that preceded it. In this li ght the Ayyub ids occupy a place of highest importance as yet la rgely unrecognized in the political his­ tory of the Nile Valley and the Fertile Crescent. I INTRODUC TION As to the period of time during which the Ayyubids held sway, few wo uld c-ontest its immense intrinsi c interest. The sixty-seven years from 58 9/ I 19 3 to 65 8/ I 260 saw the great crusades against Damietta, not to mention the fascinating ex ­ pedition of Frederick II or the lesse r ventures of the Emperor He nry VI and Theobald of Champagne; they witnessed the apo­ gee of the Georgian and Rum Se ljukid kingdoms and the in­ evi table repercussions on Syria of their exp ansion in to the upper Jazira; finally, they beheld the terrible impact of the Mongols, at first as reflected in the incursions of Jalal al-O in Mingburnu, and then directly, with the expedi tion of Hi ilegi.i , which simultaneously completed the ruin of the Ayyubids and sanctioned the authority of the new Mamluk regime. This same era, for all its violence, was one of a great cultur al efflor­ escence in Ayyubid lands, the continuation and zenith of the Syrian renaissan .ce inaugurated under Zangid auspices . Though the Abbasid caliphate was still alive, Damascus (and to a le sser extent Cairo and Aleppo) were more and more supplantin g Baghdad as the chief centers of Sunni thought in the Arab world. But if, in these terms, the importance of the period has never been in dispute, the internal history and structure of the Ay­ yubid polity have attracted much less interest. Perhaps we have been too seduced by the martial splen dor of the reigns of Saladin and Baybars to think of the Ayyubid domination as anything more than a sort of disorderly interregnum, a period of politica l regression which reintroduced the territorial frag­ mentation and pe