In Sacred
Swords, the third work by historian James Waterson dealing
with the time of the Crusades from the Muslim perspective, Waterson works
to give a one-volume treatment of the period of the Crusades as
seen by the Muslims while using the dates that Western readers
would be familiar with (instead of the lunar year count used by
Muslims). The result is an insightful text that seeks to
present the Crusades and their repercussions as much as possible
through Muslims eyes so that the Muslim perspective may be comprehensible
to sympathetic Western readers. This works serves to fill
out his previously published books The Ismaili Assassins: A History of Medieval Murder (2008)
and The Knights of Islam: The Wars of the Mamluks (2007),
both of which overlap in content with the present work and are
cited as sources in it.
Sacred
Swords opens with a foreword from popular medieval historian
and Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones. In many ways, this
foreword and the epilogue to the book serve to frame the rest of
the book. The foreword presents the case that the need to
understand the Muslim perspective is necessary in our times, and
the epilogue provides a brief account of how the end of the Crusades
led to Islam in Egypt and to Syria closing itself off from the
West, ignoring the threatening rise of Spain, and leading the Middle
East to a growing brutality in its warfare. The epilogue
closes very pointedly: “The path back from such a place
of violence is a long journey. We have not returned from
it yet.” (195)
The
first three chapters of Sacred Swords are organized around
the initial response of the Muslim world to the Crusades, and an
examination of the shape that that response took. Chapter One, “An
Exhausted Distracted Land,”
discusses the state of the Dar-al-Islam in Syria when the Franj, or Westerners, invaded, examining the First
Crusade itself and the lack of understanding Muslims in the Middle
East had about the goals of the Crusaders or even the reason for
their invasion. This chapter ends with an account of the Crusader
victory at Antioch in 1098. Chapter Two, “Stirrings of
a Response,” examines the first efforts of the Shiite Fatimid
rulers of Egypt and the Sunni rulers of Syria to respond to the invasion
of the Crusaders. Chapter Three, “The Pen and the Sword,” examines
the fateful alliance between Sunni leaders and the clerical intelligentsia
of the Muslim cities of Syria, which allowed Muslim rulers to gain
propaganda value for practicing jihad against unbelievers,
even if most of their wars were in fact against other Muslims.
From
the end of Chapter 3 onward, the work focuses on the rulers or dynasties
that led the Muslim kingdoms of the Levant against the Outremer (Crusader
territories). Chapter 4, “The Martyr Zangi,”
discusses the career of the Muslim martyr who, despite his violent
life, became honored for his seizure of Edessa from the Crusaders
in 1144. Chapter 5, “The Pure King, Nur al-Din,” discusses
the life and career of Zangi's son, who
sought to greater unify Syria and Egypt, and who placed a Kurd of
the clan of Ayubb, a man by the name of Shirkuh, in control of Egypt. Though both Nur al-Din
and Shirkuh are unfamiliar to Western audiences, Shirkuh's nephew, Saladin, the subject of Chapter 6, is a
much more familiar name. Chapter 6, “Fortune Makes a
King,” focuses on the extraordinary and successful career of
Saladin, who ended up capitalizing on the disunity of the Crusaders
in the Kingdom of Jerusalem to conquer most of their kingdom after
the Battle of Hattin. Chapter 7, “Dètente and
Competition,” briefly examines the career of Saladin's disunited
and squabbling Ayubbid descendents. Chapter
8, the last chapter of the book (other than the brief epilogue), “Jihad
and Nemesis,” examines the Mamluk rise
to power, their defeat of the Mongols, and the Mamluk destruction
of the last remnants of the Crusader kingdoms during the late 1200s.
Though
the book is organized chronologically, there is a great imbalance
between the sizes of the various chapters. For example, a full
quarter of the book is devoted to covering the career of Saladin,
while less than half that space covers the reign of the rest of his
dynasty. Overall, the personages who come across the most clearly
through the book are the ruthless Baybars, founder of Mamluk power,
the idealistic Nur-al-Din, and the pragmatic
and careful Saladin. On the European side, it is the brave
leper king Baldwin IV of Jerusalem who comes across the fullest. These
individuals are well-drawn through first-hand accounts and (in the
case of the Muslim kings) Muslim hagiography that serve to explain
how these heroes of the jihad were remembered by contemporaries and
successors. Other individuals leave a more shadowy and less
distinct impression.
As
a whole, Sacred Swords can be compared to works like Thomas
F. Madden’s, The New Concise History of the Crusades (2006)
in terms of size and scope. Both books are about 200 pages
in length, both cover the Crusades in a chronological fashion, and
both are full of useful maps and occasionally rich descriptions of
individuals, battles, and sieges. The main differences are
a few: Sacred Swords gives scholarly footnotes, which
are useful in uncovering some of the fascinating research that supports
the judgments of the books (particularly useful when examining the
naval competition during the Crusades: an often neglected but pivotal
reason for the longevity of the Crusader state), while The New
Concise History of the Crusades does not include footnotes and
is organized by Crusade rather than by Muslim leader or dynasty. Otherwise,
both works appeal to a similar audience, one written from the point
of view of the Europeans and the other from the Muslims of Egypt
and Syria. As a result, the two books form a useful conversation
in how the Crusades were viewed by both sides.
Despite some lack of balance, and the obvious desire of
the author to share research tidbits from other works that are not
entirely relevant to the main topic of the work (this includes many
stories about the Assassins throughout the book), Sacred Swords is
an excellent effort in presenting the Muslim perspective of the Crusades
in manner that is accessible to the Western reader. Such a
task is very important for contemporary geopolitical reasons besides
being worthwhile from a historical perspective. Especially
touching are the book's frequent quotations of the Koran, Hadiths,
and medieval works by Muslim poets and historians, which introduce
every chapter and are also sprinkled liberally within. This
attention to detail of the literary and historical context of the
times allow those readers without access to the original texts to
gain some familiarity with the Muslim side in its own words as closely
as possible. As a result, in Sacred Swords James Waterson provides
both an accessible and a worthwhile explanation of the Muslim view
of the Crusades.