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Rescuing Syria from the Infidels: The Contribution of Ibn ‘Asakir of Damascus to the Jihad Campaign of Sultan Nur al-Din

Suleiman A. Mourada (Smith College)
&
James E. Lindsayb (Colorado State University)
Pages 37-55 | Published online: 17 Feb 2023

  • On the text of al-Sulami, see Niall Christie, “Motivating Listeners in the Kitab al-Jihad of ʿAli ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106),” above pp. 1–14.
  • A range of these views are discussed in Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (New York, 1999), pp. 3–4. See also David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley, CA, 2005); idem, “Muslim Apocalyptic and Jihad,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996), 66–104; Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton, 1996); and Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT, 1985).
  • See Ibn Manzur (d. 1311), Lisan al-‘Arab, 15 vols. (Beirut, 1990), 3:135 (j-h-d).
  • See, for instance, verses 4.95, 8.72, 9.20, 9.41, and 9.88.
  • See Ella Landau Tasseron, “Jihad,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʿan, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden, 2001–2006), 3:35–43.
  • Fred M. Donner examines the relevant Qurʿanic passages on Jews and Christians in “From Believers to Muslims: Confessional Self-identity in the Early Islamic Community,” Al-Abhath 50–51 (2002–3), 9–53.
  • All Qurʿanic citations are from N. J. Dawood, The Koran, 5th rev. ed. (New York, 1999).
  • Al-Tibrizi (fl. 1337), Mishkat al-Masabih, trans. James Robson, 3 vols. (Lahore, 1963–65), 3:817. Ibn ‘Asakir includes a variant of this hadith in his Forty Hadiths, no. 12.
  • On the involvement of ‘Abbasid caliphs in jihad against the Byzantines, see Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab–Byzantine Frontier (New Haven, 1996); and Hugh Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate (London, 1981). On the caliph al-Ma’mun, see Tayyeb El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (New York, 1999), pp. 95–142; Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma’mun (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 24–69; and idem, al-Ma’mun (Oxford, 2005).
  • See Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, pp. 107–34.
  • On al-Shafi‘i’s discussion of jihad see Majid Khadduri (trans.), Al-Shafi‘i’s Risala: Treatise on the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudence (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 81–87.
  • On these civil wars, see Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, 1997); and Mahmoud Ayoub, The Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early Islam (Oxford, 2003).
  • On the ‘Abbasid revolution, see Jacob Lassner, The Shaping of ‘Abbasid Rule (Princeton, 1980); and Paul M. Cobb, White Banners: Contention in ‘Abbasid Syria, 750–880 (Albany, 2001).
  • On the Muslims’ view of the Byzantines, see Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA, 2004).
  • Five versions of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont are translated in Edward Peters, The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres & Other Source Materials (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 25–37.
  • On the Crusades in Europe and the Near East, see Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 2005); idem, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995); and Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999).
  • Al-Sulami develops this view of the greater jihad and the lesser jihad in his Kitab al-Jihad: see Christie, “Motivating Listeners.” See also Cook, Understanding Jihad, pp. 32–48.
  • Nikita Elisséeff, La description de Damas d’Ibn ‘Asakir (Damascus, 1959), xviii. (The date 1077 is given there as 1177, clearly a typo.)
  • It took some time before Saladin could establish himself as the legitimate and uncontested successor of Nur al-Din. On Saladin, see Malcolm Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of Holy War (Cambridge, 1997); and Yaacov Lev, Saladin in Egypt (Leiden, 1999).
  • Ibn ‘Asakir attended a class in 1111 with Abu al-Wahsh Subay‘ ibn al-Muslim ibn ‘Ali (d. 1115), and read parts of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’s Ta’rikh Baghdad with Abu Turab Haydara ibn Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari (d. 1112): Ibn ‘Asakir, Ta’rikh madinat Dimashq, ed. ‘Umar ibn Gharam al-‘Umrawi and ‘Ali Shiri (Beirut, 1995–2001), 13:466–67.
  • Elisséeff, La description de Damas, xix–xx.
  • Ibid., xviii.
  • His first trip lasted from 1126 to 1131, and his second lasted from 1134 to 1141. Ibid., xx–xxii.
  • See Sam Gellens, “The Search for Knowledge in Medieval Muslim Societies: A Comparative Approach,” in Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatory, Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 50–68.
  • See Ibn ‘Asakir, Mu‘jam al-shuyukh, ed. Wafa’ Taqiy al-Din, 3 vols. (Damascus, 2000).
  • Elisséeff, La Description de Damas, xxii.
  • On the career of Zangi, see Carole Hillenbrand, “‘Abominable Acts’: The Career of Zengi,” in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, ed. Jonathan Phillips and Martin Hoch (Manchester, 2001), pp. 111–32.
  • On the career of Nur al-Din, see Nikita Elisséeff, Nur ad-Din: Un grand prince musulman de Syrie au temps des croisades (511–569 H./1118–1174), 3 vols. (Damascus, 1967); and Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 117–70.
  • See Elisséeff, Nur ad-Din, 3:735; and Hillenbrand, The Crusades, pp. 119–22.
  • On the function of these buildings and monuments, see Hillenbrand, The Crusades, pp. 122–31; and Yasser Tabbaa, The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival (Seattle, 2001).
  • See Yasser Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message: Propagation of Jihad under Nur al-Din,” in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades, ed. Vladimir P. Goss and Christine Verzár Bornstein (Kalamazoo, 1986), pp. 223–40.
  • Elisséeff, La description de Damas, xxii–xxiii.
  • See Qutayba al-Shihabi, Mu‘jam Dimashq al-tarikhi, 3 vols. (Damascus, 1999), 1:274.
  • On the Tales of the Prophets, see The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisa’i, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Boston, 1978) and ‘Ara’is al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiya’ or “Lives of the Prophets” as Recounted by Abu Ishaq Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Tha‘labi, trans. William Brinner (Leiden, 2002). See also James E. Lindsay, “‘Ali Ibn ‘Asakir as a Preserver of Qisas al-Anbiya’: The Case of David Son of Jesse,” Studia Islamica 82 (1995), 45–82.
  • On Ibn ‘Asakir’s Ta’rikh, see James E. Lindsay, ed., Ibn ‘Asakir and Early Islamic History (Princeton, 2001); and Elisseéff, La description de Damas, xxix–liii.
  • On Ibn ‘Asakir’s treatment of Jesus, see Suleiman A. Mourad, “Jesus According to Ibn ‘Asakir”, in Ibn ‘Asakir and Early Islamic History, ed. James Lindsay (Princeton, 2001), pp. 24–43. For a range of traditions on the Second Coming of Jesus, see Suleiman Mourad, Sirat al-sayid al-masih li-Ibn ‘Asakir (Amman, 1996), pp. 234–82.
  • Mourad, Sirat al-sayid al-masih, pp. 257–61.
  • Abu Dawud, Sunan Abu Dawud, ed. Muhammad M. ‘Abd al-Hamid, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1951), 4:156 (no. 4291).
  • It was Tyre’s resistance to the attempts of Saladin to capture it in 1187 that allowed the Franks to regroup and launch a counter-offensive with the Third Crusade, and consequently remain in the Near East for an additional 105 years, until 1291 when the Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf brought an end to the Frankish military presence.
  • For a discussion of this prophecy, see Mourad, “Jesus According to Ibn ‘Asakir,” pp. 31–35.
  • On the version of Guibert of Nogent, see Peters, The First Crusade, pp. 33–37. We are not suggesting a connection between Guibert and Ibn ‘Asakir, for there was none. We are only pointing to the similarity between Christian and Muslim religious literature at the time of the crusades.
  • On Ibn ‘Asakir’s presentation of the Umayyad caliph Yazid, see James E. Lindsay, “Caliphal and Moral Exemplar? ‘Ali Ibn ‘Asakir’s Portrait of Yazid b. Mu‘awiya,” Der Islam 74 (1997), 250–78.
  • For other discussions of the way Ibn ‘Asakir treats his subjects, see the studies in Lindsay, Ibn ‘Asakir and Early Islamic History. On Muslim literature on the holiness of Syria, see Paul M. Cobb, “Virtual Sacrality: Making Muslim Syria Sacred Before the Crusades,” Medieval Encounters 8.1 (2002), 35–55.
  • For studies on these works by Ibn ‘Asakir, see August Ferdinand Mehren, Exposé de la réforme de l’islamisme commencée au IIIème siècle de l’Hégire par Abou-’l-Hasan Ali el-Ash‘ari et continuée par son école avec des extraits du texte arabe d’Ibn Asâkir (Leiden, 1878); and Justin MacCarthy, The Theology of al-Ash‘ari (Beirut, 1953).
  • Fadl ‘Asqalan is unfortunately lost; but a few excerpts from it have survived in Ibn ‘Asakir’s History of Damascus.
  • Elisséeff, La description de Damas, xxii–xxiii; and Hillenbrand, The Crusades, p. 127.
  • On the authenticity of this hadith, see An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith, trans. Ezzedin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies (Jakarta, n.d.), p. 21.
  • See Ibn ‘Asakir, Forty Hadiths, Damascus, Zahiriyya Library, MS Majmu‘ Lugha No. 40, fol. 68a. See also al-Badr, Kitab al-Arba‘in fi al-jihad wa-l-mujahidin, p. 19; An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith, trans. Ibrahim and Johnson-Davies, pp. 19–21.
  • On these authors and their forty hadiths collections, see Abu Bakr al-Ajurri, Kitab al-Arba‘in hadithan wa-yalih Kitab al-Arba‘in min masanid al-mashayikh al-‘ishrin ‘an al-ashab al-arba‘in, ed. Badr ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Badr (Kuwait, 1987); and Abu al-Faraj al-Wasiti, Kitab al-Arba‘in fi al-jihad wa-l-mujahidin wa-yalih Kitab al-Arba‘in al-‘ushariyya, ed. Badr ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Badr (Beirut, 1992).
  • See An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith, trans. Ibrahim and Johnson-Davies.
  • Ibn ‘Asakir, Forty Hadiths, fol. 67b.
  • The Khatuniyya school was built by the widow of Nur al-Din, al-Khatun ‘Ismat al-Din, in 1175, and is located inside old Damascus; it should be distinguished from another Khatuniyya school outside the city: see al-Shihabi, Mu‘jam Dimashq al-tarikhi, 2:180–81. As for the Zawiya of Nasr al-Maqdisi, it is located, according to the colophon, to the west of the Umayyad mosque.
  • See Ibn ‘Asakir, Forty Hadiths, fols. 79b–81a.
  • On the Kallasa school built in the reign of Nur al-Din in 1160, see al-Shihabi, Mu‘jam Dimashq al-tarikhi, 2:206.
  • Ibn al-Muhibb was brought by his father to study the Forty Hadiths with al-Qasim ibn al-Muzaffar ibn Mahmud Ibn ‘Asakir, a descendant of Ibn ‘Asakir’s elder brother Hibat Allah. On Ibn al-Muhibb, see Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, al-Durar al-kamina fi a‘yan al-ma’a al-thamina, 4 vols. (Beirut, 1993), 3:465. On al-Qasim Ibn ‘Asakir (d. 1323), see ibid., 3:239–40.
  • On the trend of bringing children, especially to attend seminars by aging scholars, in order to receive ijazas, see Jonathan Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton, 1992).
  • See Simon Lloyd, “The Crusading Movement, 1096–1274,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), pp. 49–50.

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