The Muslim World in the Age of the Crusades: History, Religion and Culture in the Service of Counter Crusading and Sunni Revivalism, Part 2
Panel 062, sponsored byMiddle East Medievalists, 2012 Annual Meeting
On Sunday, November 18 at 2:00 pm
Panel Description
The eminent scholar of the Crusades Jonathan Riley-Smith has argued, and he is followed by many, that the Crusades did not have a major impact on the Muslims' self-consciousness until the nineteenth century. The two proposed panels bring together the fruit of cutting-edge scholarship on the Muslim World in the Age of the Crusades that challenge this understanding by exploring cases where the Crusader conquests seem to have impacted Muslims' self-understanding, including perceptions of their history and sectarian dynamics, which gave rise to a Sunni revivalism that played an important role in shaping the course of Middle Eastern history in later centuries. The seven papers taken together address three broad questions that focus on Sunni religious and intellectual life in Syria and Egypt during the Crusades. 1) What aspects of Islamic history and religion were reconceptualized and disseminated during the periodr 2) What particular doctrines were reshaped to fit the Crusader challengee 3) What types of religious and historiographical works and traditions were "rediscovered" and transmitted to serve the Counter-Crusade and the revival of Sunnism in Syria and Egyptg
Panel 1 includes four papers that focus on examples of previous Islamic history and scholarship that were revived during the Crusader period, and the circumstances and agendas behind their dissemination. The themes discussed are: the resurrection and dissemination of the Futuh al-Sham (Conquests of Syria) literature, the reemployment of the Sahaba (Muhammad's Companions) in anti-Shiti polemics, the rediscovery of Ibn Sa d's Tabaqat of the "glorious founding fathers" in the project of Sunni revival and the changing perception of the holiness of Jerusalem.
Panel 2 features three papers and a discussant. The papers focus on religious and intellectual trends during the Crusader period. The themes examined are: apocalypticism and Sunni triumphalism, intensification of jihad ideology and preaching, and cultural life. The discussant will provide an extensive evaluation of each of the seven papers and critique whether or not the evidence presented necessitates a revision in modern scholarly perceptions of the impact--and the extent of this impact--of the Crusades on Muslims and on Islamic scholarship, identity and cultural trends in the medieval Middle East.
?Al? ibn ??hir al-Sulam? (d. 500/1107), a legal scholar and preacher at the Great Mosque of Damascus, offered his account of the early Crusades in his book Kit?b al-Jih?d (“The Book on Holy War”). As he saw it, the history of the early Crusades is divided into three distinct stages. The first stage was that in which the Normans “swooped down upon the island of Sicily”; the second that in which “town after town” in Islamic Spain fell to Christian forces; and, the third that in which the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem. A feature of al-Sulam?’s account that stands out is the way in which he tries to cast crusading into a theoretical form by identifying crusading with the events of the eschaton, the End of Days, or End Times, before Final Judgment. Al-Sulam? makes the Crusades intelligible by conceptualizing them, but that is not his only, or even his primary, goal. He links his theorizing to the practical political realities of his day—the alarming growth of Christian power in Sicily, Spain, and Syria—and engages in apocalyptic speculation in order to convince his intended audience—pious and virtuous sovereigns (sal???n; sing. sul??n)—that, despite repeated defeats, Islam now is moving inexorably towards a specific telos—triumph over all of Christendom—and now is the time to take action to realize this goal. Al-Sulam? evaluates the Crusades primarily in terms of the achievement of a goal—to reverse Islam’s losses and restore the Muslim community to its former preeminence. The historical continuity al-Sulam? claims between his day and the eschaton is made that much more poignant by his commingling of the End Times with the concrete and particular events of the Crusades. He explains Islam’s reverses by their necessary place in the events of the End Times, with decline and fall being crucial for ultimate growth and revival. Al-Sulam? provides systematic order to a range of activities and makes a case that the End of Days is not that far away, if only Muslims would “seize the opportunity quickly.”
Ibn ‘Asakir’s (1105-1176) al-Arba‘in Hadithan fi al-hathth ‘ala al-jihad (Forty Hadiths for Inciting Jihad), commissioned by his patron Sultan Nur al-Din, has survived in a unique manuscript. Based on a close examination of the manuscript’s eleven colophons and two ownership notes, this paper will demonstrate that Ibn ‘Asakir’s Forty Hadiths was taught to a large number of individuals in important Damascene schools and the Umayyad Mosque between 1170 and 1318. Several of these individuals were counted among the most significant scholars of the city when they attended these teaching sessions; others would be counted among their number later in life. Some of the colophons mention children who were brought by their fathers to hear a reading of the Forty Hadiths and receive a license (ijaza) to teach and transmit the text when they grew up and became scholars; one of these children was a five year old girl! It is noteworthy that the colophons and dates of teaching sessions 3 and 4–9 of the Forty Hadiths, held in 1221 and 1227–1230 at different important locations in Damascus, coincide with the Fifth Crusade and the Crusade of Frederick II, respectively. These teaching sessions demonstrate that Ibn ‘Asakir’s Forty Hadiths was not taught simply for the purpose of scholarly curiosity; rather, it was instrumental for the preaching of jihad as a direct response to renewed Crusader challenges well into the Ayyubid period when the local Sunni political and religious establishments were eager to rally the Damascene Sunni population time and again to fight new waves of Crusaders.
Profiles of book collection are a crucial source for the history of ideas. Yet, the study of libraries in the Arab lands prior to and during the Crusader period has largely relied on evidence from narrative sources, especially chronicles/biographical dictionaries, and to a lesser extent endowment records. This paper is based on the recently discovered library catalogue that documents the book collection of the Ayyubid Ashrafiya Mausoleum in Damascus. The Ashrafiya mausoleum was a comparatively minor institution in the educational landscape of the town, but it held more than 2.000 volumes. The only field of scholarship that the Ashrafiya’s endowment supported with a paid position was Koran recitation. However, the library had no distinct profile in this field, nor in any other of the ‘religious’ sciences, such as exegesis, law and hadith. Furthermore, this collection does not display any specifically ‘anti-Crusader’ profile. Rather the most prominent field was that of adab literature and especially poetry, so that the diwans of the famous pre-Islamic poets such as Imru? al-Qays b. Hujr, al-Mutalammis, Salama b. Jandal, 'Alqama b. 'Abada and Umayya Ibn Abi Salt as well as those of the early Islamic poets such as al-Mutanabbi, al-Buhturi, al-Sari b. Ahmad al-Raffa' and Abu Tammam were held in numerous copies. In the same vein, the Maqamat of al-Hariri and al-Tha'alibi’s Yatimat al-dahr were at the reader’s disposal in more than 10 copies each. The profile of the Ashrafiya library is particularly striking if compared to the collections of religious scholars for which we have some evidence from narrative sources. In these ‘private’ collections the religious sciences and the auxiliary sciences such as grammar, lexicography, morphology and history represented always the bulk of the titles. The social background of the library’s founder, a member of the civilian elite, as well as the distinct profile of its titles, including for instance manuals for traders, indicates the broad readership that this library was meant to serve.
