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ABSTRACT
The historian and Muslim religious leader al-Samʿani was well-known as a traveler, but his journey to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem during the summer of 535/1141 at the height of Frankish power has hitherto remained obscure. This article attempts, on the basis of his varied writings, to reconstruct his some three-month interlude in Syria, of which one month was a trip through the kingdom of Jerusalem. This visit was probably planned with the great Damascene historian Ibn ʿAsakir, who was al-Samʿani's life-long close friend; however, the element of traveling to Frankish territories apparently caused some friction between the two of them. Ibn ʿAsakir apparently at this point in his life very strongly opposed any fraternization with the Franks, no matter how innocuous. Al-Samʿani’s travels shed light upon what a very highly cultured Muslim traveler would have seen in Syria just prior to the Second Crusade, and supplies details concerning the historical geography of Damascus, as well as a number of Muslim sacred sites in the Latin kingdom. The reconstructed account provides the reader with confirmation of certain elements of Ibn Jubayr’s travels of some 40 years later, and details other Muslim travelers’ itineraries through the Latin kingdom.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. C.E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden, 1960–2000), s.v., ‘al-Samʿānī’ (by Rudolf Sellheim); Ibn ʿAsākir, Tā’rīkh madīnat Dimashq [= TMD henceforth], ed. ʿUmar al-ʿUmrawī, 80 vols. (Beirut, 1995–2000), 36: 447–9 (no. 4195); al-Dubaythī, Dhayl ʿalā tā’rīkh madīnat al-salām, ed. Bashshār Maʿrūf, 5 vols. (Beirut, 2006), 4: 202–5 (no. 2012); al-Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-zamān, ed. Kāmil Salmān al-Jabūrī, 29 vols. (Beirut, 2013), 14: 180–2; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. Yūsuf Ṭawīl and Maryam Ṭawīl, 6 vols. (Beirut, 1998), 3: 180–6 (no. 395); al-Dhahabī, Siyar a`lām al-nubalā’, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ūṭ, 25 vols. (Beirut, 1985), 20: 456–65 (no. 292); al-Dhahabī, Tā’rīkh al-Islām, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī, 53 vols. (Beirut, 1998), 39: 18–23; Ibn Kathīr, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfaʿiyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ Manṣūr, 2 vols. (Benghazi, 2004), 2: 619–21 (no. 660); al-Ṣafadī, al-Wafī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Aḥmad al-Arna’ūṭ and Turkī Muṣṭafā, 29 vols. (Beirut, n.d.), 19: 60–3 (no. 7213); Ibrāhīm b. al-Qāsim al-Mu’ayyad bi-llāh, Ṭabaqāt al-Zaydiyya al-kubrā, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Wajīh, 3 vols. (Amman, 2001), 3: 1713–25 (no. 899).
2 See now, Suleiman Mourad, Ibn ʿAsākir: Champion of Sunni Islam during the Crusades (Oxford, 2021); Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v., ‘Ibn ʿAsākir’ (by Nikita Élisséeff); biographical entries in al-Dubaythī, Dhayl, 4: 427–9 (no. 2285); Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabā’, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, 7 vols. (Beirut, 1993), 4: 1697–1703 (no. 743); Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 3: 270–2 (no. 441); al-Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt, 14: 262–4 (with a complete list of Arabic sources); al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 20: 554–71 (no. 354); idem, Tā’rīkh, 40: 70–82; Ibn Kathīr, Ṭabaqāt, 2: 642–7 (no. 688); and al-Ṣafadī, Wafī, 20: 216–22 (no. 309), among many sources. For contemporary studies, see James Lindsay, ed., Ibn ʿAsākir and Early Islamic History (Princeton, 2001), pp. 9–12; Steven Judd and Jens Schreiner, eds., New Perspectives on Ibn ʿAsākir (Leiden, 2017).
3 Between 494–555/1101–60, and then later 583–98/1187–94, with other descendants dominating until the end of the thirteenth century.
4 He may have been inspired by meeting one Abū Maʿālī Muḥammad b. Hayyāj b. Mubādir b. ʿAlī al-Athāribī al-Anṣārī, the merchant, from the Syrian town of Atharib, who he says he met in Baghdad, and who had traveled ‘the coastlands’ (probably a euphemism for the Frankish states), Egypt, ‘and the furthest reaches of India’: see al-Samānī, al-Ansāb [= Ans henceforth], ed. ʿAbdallāh ʿUmar al-Bārūdī, 6 vols. (Beirut, 1998), 1: 82, s.v., athāribī.
5 The only exceptions to this that I have seen are with regard to locations in Muslim Spain.
6 The only place where he allows updated information is for the entry on Edessa, which notes that it ‘has been liberated from the Franks by the Muslims’ without mentioning Zangi. Al-Samʿānī did not visit Edessa.
7 Thanks to D.G. Tor for pointing this out.
8 Ans, 1: 474, s.v., tallʿafar. Al-Samʿānī is at pains to force this name into a proper Arabic construction.
9 al-Samʿānī, al-Muntakhab min Muʿjam shuyūkh al-imam al-ḥāfiẓ Abī Saʿd ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad b. Manṣūr al-Samʿānī al-Tamīmī [= MM henceforth], ed. Muwaffaq b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Qādir, 4 vols. (Riyāḍ, 1995), 2: 1010–11 (no. 562); Ans, 2: 84, s.v., al-raqqī.
10 Ans, 1: 268, s.v., bālisī.
11 Ans, 4: 476, s.v., qarqīsīyā. Today the town of Jarabulus on the Syrian-Turkish border.
12 However, with regard to Manbij, halfway between Aleppo and Qarqīsīyā, there is no such ‘it did not work out’. Perhaps it would be reading too much into al-Samʿānī’s comments to conclude that his detour to Qarqīsīyā would have followed the Euphrates River valley north prior to heading towards Aleppo, but that something he learned along the way, possibly in Bālis, changed his mind, so that he turned west. By the time he was in Aleppo, since he was no longer thinking of going northeast to Qarqīsīyā, Manbij along the way was also off the table. It is not entirely clear what al-Samʿānī was hoping to achieve in Qarqīsīyā, as the town was not a major Muslim center, unless he was thinking to use it for a northerly swing, before heading back to Aleppo. If such was his thought, the initial consideration might have been that this region was not subject to the raids so common to the east and south of Edessa. Perhaps his noting the destruction of Bālis changed his mind.
13 Ans, 3: 246, s.v., ḥalabī.
14 MM, 2: 1109 (no. 661).
15 MM, 2: 1236–9 (no. 783). A cousin to Ibn al-ʿAdīm’s great-grandfather. In Damascus al-Samʿānī was horrified to learn from Ibn ʿAsākir and others that he was better known as an astrologer than a traditionalist locally, and discounted the traditions he had collected using him as a source.
16 MM, 3: 1635–6 (no. 1136).
17 Ans, 1: 183, s.v., aṭrāblusī.
18 Ans, 1: 220, s.v., anṭākī. Convolvulus scammonia, or scammony, a variety of morning glory, is indeed native to the eastern Mediterranean, although its range is considerably beyond what al-Samʿānī conceived. One wonders what was the occasion that made al-Samʿānī aware of this product.
19 Ans, 5: 663, s.v., lādhaqī. Several other Antiochene locations, such as Baghrās (Ans, 1: 373, s.v.), and Bayyās (Ans, 1: 425, s.v.) are described indistinctly; al-Samʿānī thought the Anatolian city of Marʿash was probably along the Syrian coast, see, Ans, 5: 258, s.v., marʿashī.
20 Ans, 2: 19, s.v., jabalī. Jabala is nowhere near Ḥimṣ.
21 Ans, 4: 444, s.v., qibris; his understanding of Crete’s location is completely wrong, being ‘one of the western islands’ (bilād al-maghrib), Ans, 1: 200, s.v., aqrīṭishī.
22 Ans, 1: 82, s.v., athārib. Morton notes that this may be one of the final mentions of Frankish occupation. Three days’ journey is an exaggeration; perhaps one should read ‘three leagues’.
23 Ans, 4: 549, s.v., qinnisrīnī.
24 Ans, 5: 342, s.v., maʿarrī; 5: 82, s.v., kafarṭābī.
25 Ans, 1: 474, s.v., tallmannasī.
26 Ans, 1: 151, s.v., iskandarānī. Al-Harawī, A Lonely Wayfarer’s Guide to Pilgrimage, ed. and trans. Josef Meri (Princeton, 2004), 16–17, lists this for the village of Shaḥshabū, which is no longer extant. Al-Iskandariya today is a suburb of the Syrian village of Maardes.
27 Ans, 2: 267, s.v., ḥamawī.
28 Ans, 3: 500–1, s.v., shayzarī. Al-Samʿānī had at least one contact in Shayzar – the poet Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Munayyar b. Mufliḥ al-Aṭrāblusī (Ans, 1: 183, s.v., aṭrāblusī). Perhaps he was deterred by the recent Byzantine siege of the fortress. Northern Franks carried out pillaging raids in this region regularly, so it is possible that these prevented him from making this short detour.
29 Ans, 1: 461, s.v., turmasī, characterized as ‘one of the Ḥimṣan villages’; Ans, 4: 343, s.v., fāmī, ‘a town in Syria’.
30 Ans, 2: 263, s.v. ḥimṣī.
31 The well-known poet and litterateur who had died in 1057, thus approximately 84 years previously.
32 MM, 3: 1293–5 (no. 837).
33 Ans, 1: 486, s.v., tanūkhī; and see TMD, 54: 117 (no. 6654). Ibn ʿAsākir’s cool attitude towards this family may have been due to their association with the Seljuq attempt to impose the Ḥanafi legal rite upon Damascus.
34 One of the unidentified locations listed is al-Qasṭal (Ans, 4: 499, s.v.) of which there are many in Syria. However, there is a Qasṭal located on the Damascus road immediately south of Nabk.
35 Ans, 1: 183, s.v., aṭrāblusī; ironically, his geographical description of where Libyan Tripoli is located is more exact than his location of Syrian Tripoli.
36 See Ans, 1: 222, s.v., anṭarṭūsī, ‘a town in Syria’; Ans, 4: 181, s.v., ʿarqī, ‘between Rafaniyya and Tripoli’.
37 Located to the east of Ḥimṣ, Ans, 3: 280, s.v., which he describes as ‘a village in Syria’ where the Prophet Job maintained a mosque.
38 Ans, 1: 370–1, s.v., baʿlbakī states ‘it did not work out’ for him to visit Baʿlbak. His material about the Beqaa Valley is indistinct: he lists the village of Kafarayā (probably the present-day central Lebanese town, see Ans, 5: 83, s.v., kafarīyī); however, Mashgarā, to its south, is said to be one of the Damascene villages, see Ans, 5: 305, s.v., mashgharā’ī – an inaccuracy most likely due to the fact that one of his scions is well-known as a Damascene traditionalist from a century prior to al-Samʿānī.
39 Ans, 4: 319, s.v., ghūṭa.
40 The Arab laws of marriage (kafā’a) dictated that a woman could not marry a man of lesser social status (unless occasionally when there was some strong off-setting factor such as wealth), but only a man of equal or higher status. When Ibn ʿAsākir’s father married his Ibn al-ṣā’igh wife (mid–480s/early 1190s), they were roughly of the same social status, but as the Ibn al-ṣā’igh had been the chief judges of Damascus for some 40 years by the 530s/1140s, their social status had been elevated considerably.
41 MM, 3: 1853 (no. 1348).
42 MM, 3: 1646–8 (no. 1144). Ibn ʿAsākir’s own biographical entry in TMD on his maternal uncle refers to him as Ibn al-ṣā’igh, and does not mention any Umayyad ancestry.
43 MM, 2: 984–5 (no. 544).
44 Correcting from TMD, 63: 364–5 (no. 8073).
45 Ans, 5: 282, s.v., mizzī; the poem of Ibn ʿAsākir’s own composition is missing from the text.
46 MM, 2: 984.
47 MM, 3: 1329 (no. 863).
48 Today almost on the border between Syria and the Golan Heights. Fawwār would be the best place for a caravan running through Baniyas to proceed onwards toward Tyre, or to turn to the southwest for Tiberias.
49 Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab fī tā’rīkh Ḥalab, ed. Mahdī ʿĪd al-Rawadiyya, 10 vols. (London, 2016), 3: 447.
50 It is possible that al-Samʿānī heard Usāma’s poetry in Damascus, and upon meeting him, introduced himself.
51 His entry for the more northerly caravan crossing of Bānīyās, used later by Ibn Jubayr, which is convenient for proceeding to Tyre, merely says that ‘it is under the control of the Franks’ (which it was during 1141 briefly) without any description, indicating that he did not use that crossing, see Ans, 1: 273, s.v., bānīyāsī.
52 Ans, 3: 42, s.v., ṭabarānī.
53 Ans, 4: 338, s.v., fāsī. Even though this al-Fāsī passed through Damascus, he went unrecorded by Ibn ʿAsākir. Although it is possible that oversight was due to ignorance, it may once again have been Ibn ʿAsākir not recording those people such as al-Ḥalḥūlī associated with al-Samʿānī’s visit to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Throughout the later sections of TMD Ibn ʿAsākir frequently noted travelers and pilgrims from Muslim Spain, Morocco and North Africa with whom he usually entertained close connections, although it is impossible to know how many casual visitors to Damascus he missed. It is also unusual for al-Samʿānī not to record Abū al-Qāsim’s first name, as from his writings he was very careful to record full names of anyone with whom he came into contact.
54 TMD, 51: 21–2 (no. 5881). He is referred to as a merchant.
55 It is unclear what al-Samʿānī means here by Filasṭīn; perhaps a generic term for the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Filasṭīn as al-Samʿānī defines it later (Ans, 4: 397–8, s.v.) is the traditional Muslim province comprising the region south of Nablus, including Jerusalem, al-Ramla and Hebron, which is precisely the section of the trip for which al-Āmidī did not join al-Samʿānī.
56 Ans, 1: 66, s.v., āmidī.
57 TMD, 43: 238–40 (no. 5092), and see Ans, 3: 501, s.v., shayzar. Ibn ʿAsākir also taught Ibn Munqidh the classical Ibn al-Mubārak, Kitāb al-jihād, of which he already had a copy.
58 In western Iran.
59 MM, 2: 785–6 (no. 345). In Ans, 2: 235, s.v., ḥiṭṭīn, al-Samʿānī says: ‘Ḥiṭṭīn is a town (qarya) between Arsuf and Caesarea in Syria. I entered it, spent some time (sāʿa) there, and visited the Tomb of Shuʿayb there’. The phrase ‘between Arsuf and Caesarea’ is the most geographically inaccurate of all al-Samʿānī’s characterizations of those places he actually visited on the Syria trip. Caesarea is not a good geographical marker for Ḥiṭṭīn, and yet it is plainly visible in the manuscript: see D. Margoliuth, ed., Kitāb al-ansāb (ms. fasc.) (London, 1912), p. 171a. As noted below, al-Samʿānī did not actually visit Arsuf, and the word ‘Arsuf’ in the ms. looks more like arsūq. I am tentatively understanding this to be a corruption of al-Urdunn (for Tiberias). If this were the case, then perhaps a copyist mistook that for Arsuf and then (hypothetically) changed Kafr Kanna (= Cana), which was al-Samʿānī’s next stop, into Caesarea. Or it is possible that al-Samʿānī genuinely confused Ḥiṭṭīn with another location, although none associated with Shuʿayb are known along the coastal plain.
60 Q7:85–93, 11:84–95, 29:36–7, although he is identified with Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law (Ex. 3:1).
61 Which was the Cathedral Church of the Holy Cross: see Pringle, Churches, 4: 35–6 (no. 371).
62 Ans, 4: 220, s.v., ʿakkāwī.
63 See Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. Roland Broadhurst (London, 1952, reprint), 318.
64 Written sīnāristān, corrected from Margoliuth, ed., Kitāb al-ansāb (ms. fasc.), p. 396b.
65 Ans, 4: 225, s.v., ʿakkī.
66 Ans, 1: 428, s.v., bayrūtī; Ans, 1: 227, s.v., awzāʿī he states that the Syrian Muslim legal scholar al-Awzāʿī’s tomb (d. 774) is still visited in Beirut. Presumably al-Samʿānī heard that from travelers in Damascus, and may have considered traveling in that direction.
67 He may have passed by a location which he calls al-qaṣr, perhaps Athlit, ‘between Hayfa and Caesarea along the coast’, see Ans, 4: 513, s.v., qaṣrī, which he said was the home of Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAlī b. Sa`īd al-Qaysarānī, known as al-Qaṣrī, d. 537–8/1141–3, another refugee he interviewed in Aleppo.
68 Ans, 5: 129, s.v., lajjūn.
69 Ans, 4: 575, s.v., qaysarānī.
70 None of the southern coastal town entries, such as those for Arsuf, Jaffa, Ascalon, or Gaza indicate al-Samʿānī visited them.
71 Ans, 4: 441, s.v., nāblusī.
72 MM, 1: 501–2 (no. 192).
73 And then actually cite the person in his own Muʿjam al-shuyūkh. The Muʿjam al-shuyukh is a collection of Muslim traditionalists; it is surprising that he would cite a non-Muslim there.
74 It is also possible that the Nablus site for Joseph’s Pit was not kept up at this time, as during the Fāṭimid period Joseph’s Pit had been identified with a site close to the Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters on the upper Jordan River.
75 Ans, 5: 363, s.v., maqdisī.
76 Ans, 4: 372, s.v., faranjī.
77 Ans, 2: 429, s.v., khayrānī.
78 MM, 2: 984–5 (no. 544).
79 al-Dhahabī, Tā’rīkh, 37: 149 (no. 154).
80 al-Harawī, A Lonely Wayfarer’s Guide, 76.
81 Ans, 4: 271, s.v., ʿaynūn.
82 Ans, 2: 18, s.v., jibrīnī. King Fulk had constructed the castle of Beth Gibelin around 1135. The references to al-Ramla (Ans, 3: 91, s.v., al-ramlī), and to several villages around al-Ramla, such as Dājūn (Ans, 2: 435, s.v.), and Bārūdh (Ans, 1: 255, s.v.) indicate that al-Samʿānī did not proceed towards the coast from Jerusalem. The Ra’s al-ʿAyn in Filasṭīn (Ans, 3: 65, s.v.) is probably the present-day Rosh ha-ʿAyin at the head of the Yarkon River, to the north of al-Ramla. Al-Samʿānī only knew of it from literary sources.
83 Ans, 1: 430, s.v., baysānī. The phrase, ‘the earth’s tongue’ seems to be a curious one, and perhaps indicates that the valley in which Baysān is situated is a continuation of the Jezreel Valley.
84 Ans, 2: 287, s.v., ḥawrānī.
85 Ans, 4: 236, s.v., ʿammānī.
86 Barza to the northwest (Ans, 1: 320, s.v.), and Dārayyā (Ans, 2: 436, s.v., dārānī) are listed, though the Barza trip might have been the same outing as the one to al-Mizza described above. The Dārayyā day-trip, to see the shrine of Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī, seems to have been done by al-Samʿānī unaccompanied (Ans, 1: 361, s.v., bishkānī).
87 Ans, 5: 549, s.v., nayrabī, describing the village of Nayrab, immediately to the west of Damascus ‘a half a league from it, on the way to al-Rabwa, with waters and greenery. I entered it more than once, passing through’. Al-Rabwa was at the entrance to the mountain pass, through which Damascenes would escape the summer heat. Passing through this area may indicate that al-Samʿānī spent some time in the mountain area, where he could have obtained his information on the town of Manīn (see, Ans, 5: 401, s.v.), and perhaps considered his abortive trip to Baʿlbak in Lebanon, which he said ‘did not work out’.
88 Balāṭ (Ans, 1: 424, s.v.), Ḥarastā (Ans, 2: 280, s.v.), al-Jawbar (Ans, 2: 108, s.v.), Kafarbaṭnā (Ans, 5: 82, s.v.), Muqrā (Ans, 5: 366, s.v.) and Zamalukā (Ans, 3: 165, s.v.) are listed, and Bayt Lihyā is alluded to in the entry on Mashgharā (s.v.).
89 MM, 2: 869 (no. 425). Al-Samʿānī was sufficiently friendly that he recorded the name of his Bedouin protector, Ṭaʿʿān al-Ghazawī, see Ans, 4: 292, s.v., ghazawī. Not very many elite of his time would have been so generous – ‘I even managed to extract some small amount of poetry from him’. He said that the Ghaziyya tribe at that time was the dominant tribe in the region between Syria and Iraq.
90 Ans, 1: 452, s.v., tadmurī. The ‘stones’ would have been the ruins of the great Temple of Palmyra.
91 One might reasonably ask why Ibn ʿAsākir would include notices of these travelers to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem when he probably cut out those like Faḍā’il and al-Ḥalḥūlī who did the same, and refrained from mentioning al-Samʿānī’s trip in his TMD biographical entry. All of the entries Ibn ʿAsākir lists are for those who traveled to Jerusalem or sought to travel to Jerusalem during the Zangid period. Perhaps the explanation for the difference might have been that Ibn ʿAsākir’s attitude towards travel to the Latin kingdom changed with the rise of Nūr al-Dīn, and the growing Muslim ascendency. Perhaps he felt that those earlier travelers during the 1130s and 1140s, traveling at the height of crusader power, and Damascene Muslim subservience to that power, were traitors, while the later travelers had more the character of scouts. If this attitude change was the case, then al-Samʿānī’s biographical entry – written in two different phases, one early stating that al-Samʿānī was ‘currently’ the premier traditionalist in eastern Iran, while the later one giving his death circumstances without apparently changing the earlier characterizations – could make sense. The earlier part of the entry would have reflected Ibn ʿAsākir’s 1140s attitude, choosing to gloss over al-Samʿānī’s trip, while later he never updated that entry until news of al-Samʿānī’s (comparatively early) death arrived in 1166.
92 He was probably already married in Baghdad prior to the Syria trip, but did not bring his wife with him.
93 In al-Samʿānī’s al-Taḥbīr fī al-muʿjam al-kabīr, ed. Khalīl al-Manṣūt (Beirut, 1997), his epitome of his Muʿjam al-shuyūkh, all of the figures associated with the trip to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, such as al-Ḥalḥūlī and al-Urmawī, are omitted.
94 The time-line below is conjectural in a number of places. No single date can be held to be confirmed. It is offered to the reader to give a sense of al-Samʿānī’s travels in Syria, based upon the assumptions that all of his stops have been located in his writings, and that he took the most plausible and easily reconstructed routes between locations. His departure date from Damascus for Baghdad, said to have been end al-Muḥarram 536, is probably the firmest date listed, but even that date could easily be generic. I am also assuming that when al-Samʿānī could, he would try to spend Fridays in a larger city so as to attend the group Friday prayers. This would have been of value to a devout Muslim and such an approach can be seen through his writings.