Part 25

It is, no doubt, impossible to regard the Crusades as entirely religious in their spirit and character, but it is equally impossible to ignore the fact that religious motives played a very large part in their history. We may venture to say that they commenced under the influence of the Cluniac reformation, and that most of those who took part in the First Crusade, if they had any regard for religion at all, accepted the Cluniac standards: whilst the Second Crusade was still more definitely associated with the Cistercian order, itself an after-math of the Cluniac reformation. The attitude of the Latin clergy towards the Greek Church was exactly the same as that of the Cistercian missionaries towards the native Keltic clergy of Ireland a few years later: wherever religion enters into the programme of the Crusaders it is always treated according to Cluniac standards, and everything is disapproved which does not conform to those standards. The Normans and Burgundians formed the most loyal contingent of those who contended for Cluniac ideals, and they, the Normans especially, formed the real nucleus of the First Crusade. The Crusading movement cannot be separated from the Cluniac reformation.

In referring to the Cluniacs we do not confine the term to those who were actually monks in the Abbey of Cluny, nor even to those in the priories which were in obedience to Cluny, but extend it to all those portions of the Latin Church which followed the leadership of Cluny in the way of church reform and saw the ideal Christianity in the Cluniac programme, an ideal of which we have the fullest expression in the writings of S. Peter Damian. These reformers were loyal to the Papacy, but to an idealised Papacy reconstructed on Cluniac lines; they were outspoken in their criticism of the actual Papacy and its entourage as it existed in the 10th cent. Incidentally Rome ceased to be the chief place of pilgrimage, not because there was any repugnance felt towards Rome or the Papal court, but because, in conformity with the spirit of Cluny, a greater emphasis was laid upon the suffering Christ, and thus greater prominence was given to the sites connected with the Passion: thus Palestine tended to become a “Holy Land,” and Jerusalem itself the chief object of the pilgrim’s devotion. Thus, early in the 11th century, the thoughts of the leading and most vigorous element in the Latin Church began to turn towards Jerusalem and predisposed men to regard the liberation of the holy sites of Palestine from infidel rule as a work of piety.

In 1074 Pope Gregory VII., himself a product of the Cluniac movement, laid a programme of reform before a council assembled at Rome; the liberation of Jerusalem did not actually figure in this programme, but later in the same year (on Dec. 7) we find it expressed in a letter to Henry IV. (cf. Gregor. Pp. VII. _Epist._ II. 31, in Jaffe: _Mon. Greg._, pp. 14415, but a previous suggestion had been made by Silvester II. as far back as 999). No doubt the news of the Saljuq advance into Asia Minor had something to do with his proposal, the report of vast numbers of “Christians living beyond the seas” slain by “the pagans” so that the Christian community was reduced to nothing (id. p. 145), but the chief point was that Gregory and his party looked at the world through a Cluniac medium and so to them Palestine was the “Holy Land,” and it was a terrible thought that the sacred sites of Christ’s passion were in the hands of unbelievers. The violent storms aroused by the reforming programme of 1074, however, prevented any action being taken in this direction.

(iii) _Third Period. Fatimid decline._ (A.H. 469-564 = A.D. 1076-1168.)

When Urban II. became Pope in 1087 events had moved forward with startling rapidity. In 1076 Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the Saljuqs, and the Byzantine Empire was practically deprived of all its Asiatic possessions, so that both Egypt and Byzantium were at bay. In this desperate crisis the Greeks made an appeal to the West, and this was laid before two councils assembled in the year 1095, the one at Piacenza in March, the other at Clermont-Ferrand in November, and from these councils proceeded the First Crusade.

At the moment the three great powers in the Near East were the Byzantine Empire, the Fatimid Khalifate, and the Saljuq Sultanate, but of these the two former were on the defensive and steadily losing ground; the Fatimids had just suffered the loss of Jerusalem, the Greeks had lost North-West Syria and practically all of Asia Minor. The Saljuqs were the leading military power and held the Khalifate of Baghdad absolutely in subjection, but they already showed signs of decline, their empire was beginning to be divided amongst provincial rulers known as _atabegs_, and these were getting to be more or less independent of the central authority: it was the old story of the Khalifate over again. Both in Cairo and in Baghdad the real power was in the hands of the wazir or prime minister.

In 1097 the First Crusade came east: its advent was hailed by Byzantium and by the Fatimids, both believing that it would prove a check to the Saljuqs. The Greeks were the first to be undeceived, and soon found that the Crusaders were extremely undesirable neighbours. The Fatimids were anxious to join in alliance with the Crusading forces but wanted to recover Jerusalem. It was a purely religious motive which prevented this,—the Crusaders were unwilling to leave the Holy Sepulchre in Muslim hands.

So far as the history of Western Asia is concerned the Crusaders produced very great results, but these were purely destructive in character. They checked the Saljuqs and effectively broke their power, though that power had already commenced its decline before the Crusaders’ arrival: but this only made way for a new Kurdish power. The Crusades as a religious war provoked an anti-Crusading movement, quite distinctly religious in its character, on the Muslim side,—a Holy War to resist the champions of the Cross. The first mover in this was Zengi atabeg of Mosul, and it was continued by his son Nur ad-Din. In the employ of these atabegs of Mosul was a Kurdish soldier named Ayyub who, at the death of Zengi in 541 (= A.D. 1146) moved to Damascus, and eight years later became governor of the city. From him were descended the Ayyubites, Shirkuh and his nephew Salah ad-Din, the instruments by which the Fatimid Khalifate was finally destroyed. It was not the rise of a new power but merely the development of one of the minor local states formed from the disintegrating Saljuq empire.

The immediate result of the Crusades lay in the formation of Latin states in Palestine and Syria, at Jerusalem, Edessa, and Antioch, and in the final exclusion of the Fatimids from Syria, but none of these states had any stable foundation. Only in quite minor issues can we find any permanent traces of the Crusaders’ presence in Asia. In the East their memory lives as a legend of tyranny and religious intolerance, whilst a few Arab tribes preserve a tradition of Crusading blood. In the West it may be possible to argue that only the Carmelite Friars show any enduring trace of the Crusades: almost every influence which has been traced to the Crusades seems to have been due to intercourse between Muslim and Christian in Spain, or to Frederick II. in Naples and Sicily,—though, of course, it might be argued that Frederick himself was a product of the Crusading age: yet it must be remembered that Frederick came more under the influence of Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain by the intolerance of the Muwahhid rulers.

The work of Salah ad-Din who put an end to the Fatimid Khalifate of Egypt and to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, restored the semblance of authority to the ʿAbbasid Khalifate of Baghdad, but the following period 567-656 (= A.D. 1171-1258) saw no real reconstruction of the Khalifate: existing conditions were merely bolstered up whilst internal decay proceeded on its course. In 656 (= A.D. 1258) the Khalif finally went down before the Mongol invasion which was simply destructive in its results. It was not until two centuries later that the Ottoman Turks sweeping westwards evolved a new order from these elements of decay and founded an empire which has lasted some 500 years, receiving from the last exiled representative of the ʿAbbasids such title as he could give to the historic Khalifate, and practically re-organising the Sunni Muslim world on strictly orthodox and traditional lines so that, in spite of occasional dissentients, it generally won the esteem and loyalty of the world of Islam.

XX.

THE LATER HISTORY OF THE ISMAʿILIAN SECT

The Fatimid Khalifate had its origin in a religious sect which professed to represent the true Islam transmitted through a line of seven Imams who alone understood the real meaning of the religion proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad: the first of these was the Prophet’s son-in-law ʿAli, and the last Ismaʿil the son of Jaʿfar as-Sadiq or his son Muhammad, with whom, according to the earlier teaching, the line ended as the Imam passed into concealment, the leaders of the sect keeping the teaching alive and preparing the way for his return to the visible world. At a later date the leaders claimed themselves to be the Imam’s descendants, the “concealment” being no more than a hiding from the persecuting Khalifs of Baghdad, and so they were the continuers of the sacred tradition, and on this claim rested the Khalifate of Kairawan and of Egypt. It is, of course, extremely difficult to make anything like a fair estimate of the religious work and influence connected with such a movement, and especially because it professed to cover its religious teaching with a veil of secrecy, and also because, during the duration of the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt, the historians are almost exclusively occupied with recording the political activities of the rulers and make only occasional and allusive references to the sect as a religious body. It seems possible to distinguish three different elements in the sect, (i) the philosophical element which is one of the results of Greek philosophy and especially of the teaching of Aristotle as interpreted by the neo-Platonists and represented in an oriental dress after passing through a Syrian and Persian medium. Such teaching is traditionally associated with Jaʿfar as-Sadiq, and seems to have been the real doctrine of the sect at its first formation, but that was revealed only to the initiated, and apparently it was never checked or restated in the light of the more accurate study of the text of Aristotle which was the work of the “philosophers” of the fourth century A.H. (ii) The definitely Shiʿite doctrine of the incarnation of the divine spirit in the Imam passed on by transmigration from ʿAli to his descendants. And (iii) the purely political element which cared nothing about philosophical speculation or Shiʿite doctrine, but saw in the sect promising elements of a conspiracy against the ʿAbbasid Khalifate. But it does not seem true to say that the whole movement was wholly political, as though there were no reality in the attachment to philosophical or Shiʿite ideas.

When the Ismaʿilian sect emerged first into the open arena in the Qarmatian rising the doctrinal element, especially (i), had effectively undermined all adherence to orthodox Islam; how long the Qarmatians remained attached to Shiʿite claims we do not know, but they do not seem to have attached much importance to them. In history the Qarmatians appear as simply anti-Muslim and offensively irreligious: they give evidence of no ideals whatever beyond the ordinary aspirations of brigands, though we must bear in mind that the only account of them is such as their enemies have given us. In fact they seem to have been simply a robber band released from all pretence of religious beliefs and inspired by a hatred of Islam due, no doubt, to oppression at the hands of Muslim rulers.

The Khalifate at Kairawan and Cairo presents a much better test of the religious tendencies of the Ismaʿilian sect. In this case the sectarian leaders established a strong government and, on the whole, ruled well. The government was founded by those who seem to have believed sincerely in the Fatimid claims, but the great majority of the subject population had no sympathies in that direction: they were quite willing to be ruled by Shiʿites, but had no inclination to turn Shiʿite themselves. The extravagant claims of incarnation etc. which made so strong an appeal to the Persians found the Berbers and Egyptians irresponsive. The Ismaʿilians made an attempt to press them into their sect when first the Mahdi was established at Kairawan, but this policy was soon abandoned and very rarely tried again, though it seems that the regular meetings of the sect and the instructions given by the duʿat were continued until some time after the reign of Hakim. For the most part the Fatimids were quite content with political power and did not interfere with the religious convictions of the people. The condition seems to have been that the Ismaʿilians formed a kind of free-masonry which was, to some extent, the “power behind the throne,” though it was by no means necessary for the officers of state to be members of that brotherhood themselves, and in later times, when the wazirs were practically independent princes, cases occur in which the official government is actually unfriendly towards it. In the later part of the Fatimid period the only mark which distinguished its rule from that of the orthodox Khalif at Baghdad seems to have been that the _khutba_ before the Friday sermon was said in the name of the Fatimid, and that of the ʿAbbasid was not mentioned. The whole sectarian teaching seems to have evaporated steadily in an Egyptian atmosphere which was one of steady indifference. The philosophical teaching which had been the first object of the sect, died away in Asia, and was then transmitted to Spain which formed a kind of _orbis ulterior_ of Islam, leaping over Egypt altogether, as though its premature development in the Ismaʿilian sect had inoculated the Fatimite community against it. The characteristically Persian doctrines of incarnation and transmigration took no hold in Egypt or Ilfrikiya: when they were vigorously preached by Persians in Hakim’s time they only provoked a riot.

We can hardly treat religion as a matter of race, for there seems no good evidence for extending heredity so as to include matters of cultural development: culture, which includes religion, is transmitted by contact not by descent, it is learned not inherited: and it is very doubtful how far psychological pre-dispositions can be inherited. But culture exists in different areas with distinctive characteristics so that it is not easy for persons of one culture-area to appreciate the outlook of those of another, although there is a constant culture-drift passing between the two. In North Africa there is a tendency to pay exaggerated honour, which might be described as actual worship, to the _murabits_ or saints, but it is quite independent of the incarnation theories which prevail in Persia and India, and so we may say that this, the characteristic tenet of the Ismaʿilis as Shiʿites, found itself in Egypt and North Africa in an unsympathetic atmosphere, and was gradually starved out. Perhaps we may take the accession of al-Hafiz in A.H. 524 = A.D. 1131, when the wazir in office was antagonistic to the Ismaʿili doctrines, as the probable date by which the doctrines of the Ismaʿili sect had ceased to have any meaning in Egypt, and consequently that in which the parent Ismaʿili sect was practically obsolete. Whatever may have been the sincerity of its first founders, of those whom we credit with a desire to spread the philosophical theories learned from Greek philosophers and formed into a body of doctrine subversive of the traditional teaching of Islam, or of those who were attached to the incarnation theories of the Persians, it is clear that the purely political element finally gained the upper hand, and in due time discarded all the religious and philosophical thought which, from their point of view, had outlived its utility. In Fatimid Egypt the sect was rather like a free-masonry under royal patronage, and when this patronage came to an end the sect died a natural death. That the teaching of Duruzi and Hamza in the reign of Hakim met with such violent opposition is convincing that Shiʿite teachings were uncongenial to the Egyptians, though it does seem that under Fatimid rule Cairo was much frequented by Persian visitors and pilgrims.

The subsequent influence of the Ismaʿili sect shows itself in off-shoots which do not connect with Egypt or North Africa. So far as we know the first Ismaʿili propaganda in India took place about A.H. 460 = A.D. 1067, about the time when the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt was just coming to the end of its flourishing period. At that time a missionary named ʿAbdullah came from Yemen and preached in North-West India, and is claimed as the founder of a sect known as the Bohras which is found scattered through many of the trading centres of the Bombay presidency, though some attribute its foundation to a later teacher, the Mullah ʿAli. Many of the Bohras, however, have become Sunni (cf. Nur Allah ash-Shushtari, quoted in Arnold: _Preaching of Islam_, pp. 275-7).

The Khojah sect proper was founded by a daʿi named Nur ad-Din who was sent from Alamut about A.H. 495 (= A.D. 1101), or perhaps later, and so is an off-shoot of the Assassins (cf. p. 214 supra), Nur ad-Din changed his name to the Hindu Nur Satagar and made many converts from the lower castes of Gujerat. About A.D. 1430 the head of this Khojah sect was Pir Sadr ad-Din who adapted its teachings to suit Hindu ideas; according to him Muhammad was Brahma, ʿAli was Krisna in his tenth incarnation (avatar), thus accepting the previous nine incarnations of Hindu mythology and adding this extra one as an adaptation to Shiʿite ideas, and Adam was Siva. This Hindu rendering of Ismaʿilian ideas was detailed in a book which he produced and called the _Dasavatar_, which serves as the sacred book of the modern Khojahs and is read beside any member of the sect on his death-bed. In this semi-Hindu teaching it is difficult to trace any real continuity with historic Islam, and it is rather grotesque to find that the members of the sect, numerous in the chief trading towns of western India, have in recent years taken a leading part in Islamic agitations against British rule.

These Indian Khojahs represent the Assassin branch of the Fatimite wing, but there are other representatives of the same branch scattered all over the Muslim world, though nowhere forming an established community quite in the same way as in West India. The Bohras, or such of them as have not turned Sunni, represent the older parent stock of the Ismaʿilians. The Druzes of Mount Lebanon maintain the off-shoot formed during the later years of al-Hakim, and these show a clearer continuity than any other relic of the sect which set the Fatimid Khalifate upon the throne of Egypt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(A.) Original authorities accessible in translations or extracts.

Abraham the Syrian.

Leroy: Histoire d’Abraham le Syrien patriarche copte d’Alexandrie. (In “Revue de l’Orient Chrétien”: 1909, pp. 380 sqq.)

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Ed. Fluegel, Leipzig, 1871. Written circ. 378 (= A.D. 988), invaluable for earlier Shiʿite history. Many authors such as Akhu Muhsin, Ibn Razzam, etc., are known only by citations in the Fihrist.

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d. A.D. 1286. His great history was planned in three parts, of which part i. “the history of the dynasties” deals with political history. Syriac text edited by Bedjan, Paris, 1890. The Arabic translation by the author is enriched with matter which does not occur in the Syriac, ed. Pococke, Oxford, 1663; Arabic text Beirut, 1890.

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d. 681. Wrote Wafiat ul-Aiyan (Biographical Dictionary), strongly anti-Fatimid. Ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1835. Eng. Trans. (cited in references) by De Slane, 1835-40.

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Chief authority for the history and antiquities of Cairo. Favourably disposed towards the Fatimid Khalifs from whom he claimed descent.

Ed. Bulaq, A.H. 1270. Portions translated in De Sacy’s Chrestomathie. Part by Bouriant (but nothing relating to the Fatimids as yet reached in this translation. Pub. 1895, etc. in progress). Ed. Wiet, Cairo, 1911, etc. (a corrected text).

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Only portions accessible, no full text published.

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Osama.

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al-Qalqashandi.

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(B). Modern Writers.

De Goeje: Mémoires sur les Carmathes du Bahrain et les Fatimides. Leide, 1886.

Dozy: Essai sur l’histoire de l’Islamisme. Leide, 1879.

Dussand, R.: Histoire et religion des Nosairis. Paris, 1900.

Guyard: Fragments relatifs à la doctrine des Ismaélis. Paris, 1874.

Von Kremer: Kulturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen. 1875-7.

Lane Poole: Story of Cairo. Lond., 1906.