Mediterranean Notables and the Politics of Survival in Islamic and Latin Syria: Two Geniza Documents on the Frankish Siege of Tripoli

I would like to thank Tamer el-Leithy, Eve Krakowski, Marina Rustow, Gabrielle Spiegel, Oded Zinger, Moshe Yagur, Craig Perry and Jennifer Grayson for their comments on drafts of this article.

Abstract

Well over a hundred documents relating the experiences of Near Eastern people living, traveling and trading in the Frankish Levant – from the capture of Antioch in 1098 to the fall of Acre in 1291 – have survived in the Cairo Geniza. This article presents an edition, translation and discussion of one such document and a revision to the dating of a second one previously published by Moshe Gil. The two documents concern the period of the Franks’ successful campaign to seize the Syrian port of Tripoli in 1109. The first relays how the leader of the Palestinian Academy, Evyatar ha-Kohen b. Shelomo, petitioned the head of the Jews of Egypt, Mevorakh b. Se‘adya, to deploy his ties to the Fatimid navy to rescue Evyatar and his family from the besieged port. The second details how Evyatar successfully escaped the Frankish sack of Tripoli and subsequently found refuge in Damascus. The article contends that these Geniza documents elucidate Syrian notables’ lived experience of conquest and strategies for survival that both Latin and Arabic chronicles had obscured. It suggests that further study of such Arabic documentary sources may provide additional insight into how these Near Easterners – whom chroniclers who served (and often were themselves) state elites often overlooked – experienced the crusades to the Holy Land.

Notes

I would like to thank Tamer el-Leithy, Eve Krakowski, Marina Rustow, Gabrielle Spiegel, Oded Zinger, Moshe Yagur, Craig Perry and Jennifer Grayson for their comments on drafts of this article.