- I would like to thank the participants in the conference on Crusading & Against Whom? Holy Violence in the Middle Ages, held at Middlebury College in October 2004, for their comments on the earliest incarnation of this article. Suleiman Mourad and Deborah Gerish, in particular, gave invaluable advice and suggestions, for which I am extremely grateful.
- Emmanuel Sivan, “La génèse de la contre-croisade: un traité damasquin du début du XIIe siècle,” Journal Asiatique 254 (1966), 204–5, and Nikita Elisséeff, “The Reaction of the Syrian Muslims after the Foundation of the First Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller, The Medieval Mediterranean 1 (Leiden, 1993), pp. 162–72, here p. 163.
- For more information on the impact of al-Sulami and those who followed him, see Sivan, “Génèse,” pp. 204–6, and Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 108–16.
- Al-Sulami, Kitab al-Jihad, unpublished manuscript, Asad Library, Damascus (no cataloguing information available), formerly kept at the Zahiriyya in Damascus under the numbers 3796 and 4511. I would like to acknowledge gratefully the contributions of Professor Carole Hillenbrand of the University of Edinburgh and Dr ‘Ammar Amin of the Juma‘ al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage in Dubai, who provided me with copies of the original manuscripts.
- Extracts from the Kitab al-Jihad are translated and edited in Sivan, “Génèse,” pp. 197–222. The author of this article is currently in the process of producing a full text, translation and study of al-Sulami’s manuscript. References below to al-Sulami’s work refer to the manuscript, and folio page numbers indicate either the right-hand page (a) or the left-hand page (b).
- See, for example, Sulami, Jihad, fol. 193a and fol. 222b.
- Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-Jihad, ed. Nazih Hammad (Beirut, 1971), pp. 27–29.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 174a. It will not be the function of this article to trace the textual origins of the hadiths that al-Sulami cited. For the purposes of the argument presented here, it is more important to note that he chose to use the hadith material as support for his exhortations.
- Ibid., fol. 174b.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., fol. 190b. The quotation is from Qurʿan 49.15.
- On the jihad in the tenth century and Ibn Nubata, see Hillenbrand, Crusades, pp. 101–2.
- Recueil de textes relatifs à l’émir Sayf al-Daula le Hamdanide, ed. M. Canard (Algiers, 1934), p. 130.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 177b. “Lords recently acquired from wealth and passed as inheritance among intimates, families and close friends, who follow them” refers to the mamluks, essentially soldiers who were bought as slaves, educated in Islam and the arts of war, then freed upon reaching adulthood. By this period many mamluks had risen to important positions in Muslim governments, though it would be almost 150 years before the mamluks would stage a takeover and become rulers of the region.
- Ibid., fol. 177a.
- Ibid., fol. 177b.
- Ibid.
- Qurʿan 4.95, 9.81, 9.88 and 9.111.
- Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, Kitab al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya wa’l-Wilayat al-Diniyya, ed. Ahmad Mubarak al-Baghdadi (Kuwait and al-Mansura, 1989), pp. 22–23; and Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah, trans. Asadullah Yate (London, 1996), p. 28.
- Mawardi, Kitab, pp. 40–41, and Ahkam, p. 48.
- Mawardi, Kitab, p. 44, and Ahkam, pp. 52–53. Al-Mawardi actually devoted an entire chapter to laying out in detail the regulations affecting the conduct of an amir charged with waging the jihad. See Mawardi, Kitab, pp. 47–73, and Ahkam, pp. 57–82.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 175a and fol. 188a.
- Ibid., fol. 210a.
- Ibid., fol. 175b. Sivan suggests that al-Sulami attended the lectures given by al-Ghazali during his visit to Damascus in 1095–96, but it is also possible that he instead (or also) met the eminent scholar on another occasion during the latter’s time in the city; see Sivan, “Génèse,” p. 223.
- The term used by mediaeval Muslim writers to refer to the region roughly corresponding to the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian autonomous areas and the edge of south-east Turkey.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 175b.
- The first jurist to formalize the doctrine of fard kifaya was al-Shafi‘i, the founder of al-Sulami’s legal school. On this see Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War (New Haven, CT, 1996), p. 40.
- Sulami, Jihad, fols. 175b–177a.
- Ibid., fol. 174b.
- For a full discussion of this issue, see Niall Christie, “Religious Campaign or War of Conquest? Muslim Views of the Motives of the First Crusade,” in Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities: Warfare in the Middle Ages, ed. Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), pp. 57–72.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 175a.
- It is interesting to note that the Spanish scholar, Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1148), who traveled in the Muslim east between about 1092 and 1100, perceived Muslim disunity as having facilitated the Frankish conquest of Jerusalem, although he did not specifically read any divine plan into this. On Ibn al-‘Arabi see Joseph Drory, “Some Observations During a Visit to Palestine by Ibn al-‘Arabi of Seville in 1092–1095,” Crusades 3 (2004), 101–24, here p. 120.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 189a–b.
- Ibid., fol. 189b.
- Ibid., fol. 177a.
- Canard, Recueil, pp. 131–32, 159 and 164.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 177b.
- Ibid., fol. 181a.
- Ibid., fol. 175b.
- Ibid., fol. 176b.
- Ibid., fols. 222b–237a.
- Ibid., fols. 178a–179b.
- Ibid., fol. 180a.
- Ibid., fol. 180a–b.
- On Muslim views of the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople, see also Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA, 2004).
- See Niall Christie, “Levantine Attitudes towards the Franks during the Early Crusades (490/1096–564/1169)” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of St. Andrews, June 1999), pp. 17–20 and 64.
- For example, on the identity of the ones who will fight until the Day of Judgment, see one hadith in Sulami, Jihad, fols. 178a–b, and three hadiths in ibid., fols. 179a–b.
- For examples, see ibid., fols. 179a and 180a.
- On the development of the greater jihad, see Alfred Morabia, Le Gihad dans l’Islam Médiéval (Paris, 1993), pp. 256–57 and 293–336.
- Qurʿan 22.77.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 180b. See also Qurʿan 22.78.
- Ibid., fol. 177b. See also Qurʿan 47.31.
- Sulami, Jihad, fol. 176b–177a. This is again a recognition of realities in the region by al-Sulami that was apparently not shared by other writers from the period.
- Ibid., fol. 220a.
- Ibid., fol. 220b.
- Ibid., fols. 221a–222b. See also Ibn al-Mubarak, Jihad, pp. 118–20.
- Ibid., fols. 182a–b.
- Ibid., fol. 182b.
- Choose new content alerts to be informed about new research of interest to you
- Easy remote access to your institution's subscriptions on any device, from any location
- Save your searches and schedule alerts to send you new results
- Export your search results into a .csv file to support your research