Usama ibn Munqidh: “A Muslim View of the Crusaders”

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Usama’s Family Delivered. The Franks Seize His Property

I then entered the service of Nur al-Din (may God have mercy upon him). He corresponded with Ibn Ruzzik about transporting my household and sons who had been left behind in Egypt, and who, I might add, had been treated very well. But Ibn Ruzzik sent the messenger back and begged off, claiming that he feared for their safety because of the Franks. He wrote to me, saying, “Come back to Egypt: you know what our relationship is like. If you are expecting any ill-will from the palace staff, then you can go to Mecca where I will send you a document granting you the city of Aswan, and I will send you all the reinforcements you need to combat the Abyssinians (for Aswan is one of the frontier-fortresses of the Muslims). Then I will let your household and sons come to join you.”

So I consulted with Nur al-Din, seeking his advice on the matter. He said, “You are not seriously considering, having just left behind Egypt and all her troubles, going back there! Life is too short for that! I’ll send a messenger to the king of the Franks to obtain safe-passage for your household, and I’ll also send someone along to conduct them here.” And so he (may God have mercy upon him) sent a messenger and obtained the safe-passage from the king, with his cross right on it, good for both land- and sea-travel.

So I sent along the safe-passage with a servant of mine, as well as a letter from Nur al-Din and my own letter for Ibn Ruzzik. Ibn Ruzzik then sent my family on to Damietta in one of his own personal launches, along with all the provisions and cash they would need, and his own letter of protection. From Damietta, they sailed in a Frankish ship. As they approached Acre, where the king was (may God not have mercy upon him), the king sent out a group of men in a small boat to sink the ship with axes, as my own companions looked on. The king rode out on his horse, stopped at the shore and took as pillage everything that was in the ship.

A servant of mine swam across to him, holding the safe-passage document, and said to him, “My lord king, is this not your document of safe-passage?”

“Indeed it is,” he said. “But this is the procedure among the Muslims: if one of their ships is wrecked off one of their towns, then the inhabitants of that town get to pillage it.”

My servant then asked, “So you are going to take us prisoner?” “No,” the king replied, and he had my family (may God curse him) brought to a building, where he had the women searched and took everything they had with them. In the ship there had been jewellery that had been entrusted to the women, along with cloth and gems, swords and other weapons, and gold and silver amounting to something like thirty thousand dinars. The Franks took it all and then sent my household five hundred dinars, saying, “You can get to your country on this,” even though the party totalled some fifty men and women.

As for me, I was at that very moment with Nur al-Din in the land of the king Mas‘ud, in the region of Ra‘ban and Kaysun. The news that my children and my brother’s children and our women were safe made it easier to take the news about all the wealth that was lost. Except for my books: they totalled four thousand bound volumes of the most precious tomes. Their loss was for me a heartache that lasted all my life.…

The “Wonders” of the Frankish Race

Glory be to the Creator, the Maker! Indeed, when a person relates matters concerning the Franks, he should give glory to God and sanctify him! For he will see them to be mere beasts possessing no other virtues but courage and fighting, just as beasts have only the virtues of strength and the ability to carry loads. I shall now relate something of their ways and the wonders of their intelligence.

The Franks’ Lack of Intelligence: An Invitation to Visit Europe

In the army of King Fulk, son of Fulk, there was a respected Frankish knight who had come from their country just to go on pilgrimage and then return home. He grew to like my company and he became my constant companion, calling me “my brother.” Between us there were ties of amity and sociability. When he resolved to take to the sea back to his country, he said to me:

“My brother, I am leaving for my country. I want you to send your son (my son, who was with me, was fourteen years old) with me to my country, where he can observe the knights and acquire reason and chivalry. When he returns, he will be like a truly rational man.”

And so there fell upon my ears words that would never come from a truly rational head! For even if my son were taken captive, his captivity would not be as long as any voyage he might take to the land of the Franks.

So I said, “By your life, I was hoping for this very thing. But the only thing that has prevented me from doing so is the fact that his grandmother adores him and almost did not allow him to come here with me until she had exacted an oath from me that I would return him to her.”

“Your mother,” he asked, “she is still alive?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Then do not disobey her,” he said.

The Marvels of Frankish Medicine

Here is an example of the marvellous nature of their medicine. The lord of al-Munaytira wrote to my uncle to request that he send him a physician to treat some of his companions who were ill. So my uncle sent him a native Christian physician called Thabit. He was barely gone ten days when he returned to Shayzar. So we said to him, “My, you healed your patients so quickly!” He explained:

They brought before me a knight in whose leg an abscess had formed and a woman who was stricken with a dryness of humours. So I made a small poultice for the knight and the abscess opened up and he was healed. For the woman, I prescribed a special diet and increased the wetness of her humours. Then a Frankish physician came to them and said, “This fellow don’t know how to treat them.” He then said to the knight, “Which would you like better: living with one leg or dying with both?” “Living with one leg,” replied the knight. The physician then said, “Bring me a strong knight and a sharp axe.” A knight appeared with an axe—indeed, I was just there—and the physician laid the leg of the patient on a block of wood and said to the knight with the axe, “Strike his leg with the axe and cut it off with one blow.” So he struck him—I’m telling you I watched him do it—with one blow, but it didn’t chop the leg all the way off. So he struck him a second time, but the marrow flowed out of the leg and he died instantly.

He then examined the woman and said, “This woman, there is a demon inside her head that has possessed her. Shave off her hair.” So they shaved her head. The woman then returned to eating their usual diet—garlic and mustard. As a result, her dryness of humours increased. So the physician said, “That demon has entered further into her head.” So he took a razor and made a cut in her head in the shape of a cross. He then peeled back the skin so that the skull was exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman died instantaneously. So I asked them, “Do you need anything else from me?” “No,” they said. And so I left, having learned about their medicine things I had never known before.

Now, I have observed in their medicine a case exactly the opposite of this. Their king named as treasurer one of their knights, called Bernard (may God curse him), one of the most accursed and filthy Franks around. A horse kicked him in his leg and his lower leg started to fester and open up in fourteen different places. Every time these wounds would close in one place, another would open somewhere else. I prayed that he would just perish. But then a Frankish physician came and removed all the ointments that were on him and had him washed with strong vinegar. The wounds closed up and he was well and up again, like the very devil.

Here is another wondrous example of their medicine. We had at Shayzar an artisan called Abu al-Fath, who had a son on whose neck scrofula sores had formed. Every time one would close in one place, another would open up in another place. Once Abu al-Fath went to Antioch on an errand and his son accompanied him. A Frankish man noticed him and asked him about the boy. “He is my son,” Abu al-Fath said.

The Frank said to him, “Do you swear to me by your religion that, if I prescribe for you some medicine that will cure your boy, you will not charge money from anyone else whom you yourself treat with it?”

Our man swore to that effect. The Frank then said, “Take him some uncrushed leaves of glasswort, burn them, then soak the ashes in olive oil and strong vinegar. Treat him, with this until it eats up the pustules in the affected area. Then take some fire-softened lead and soak it in butter. Then treat the boy with this and he will get well.”

So our man treated the boy as he was told and the boy got well. The wounds closed up and he returned to his previous state of health. I have myself treated people afflicted by this ailment with this remedy, and it was beneficial and removed all of their complaints.

Newly Arrived Franks Are the Roughest

Anyone who is recently arrived from the Frankish lands is rougher in character than those who have become acclimated and have frequented the company of Muslims. Here is an instance of their rough character (may God abominate them!):

Whenever I went to visit the holy sites in Jerusalem, I would go in and make my way up to the al-Aqsa Mosque, beside which stood a small mosque that the Franks had converted into a church. When I went into the al-Aqsa Mosque—where the Templars, who are my friends, were—they would clear out that little mosque so that I could pray in it. One day, I went into the little mosque, recited the opening formula “God is great!” and stood up in prayer. At this, one of the Franks rushed at me and grabbed me and turned my face towards the east, saying, “Pray like this!”

A group of Templars hurried towards him, took hold of the Frank and took him away from me. I then returned to my prayers. The Frank, that very same one, took advantage of their inattention and returned, rushing upon me and turning my face to the east, saying, “Pray like this!”

So the Templars came in again, grabbed him and threw him out. They apologized to me, saying, “This man is a stranger, just arrived from the Frankish lands sometime in the past few days. He has never before seen anyone who did not pray towards the east.”

“I think I’ve prayed quite enough,” I said and left. I used to marvel at that devil, the change of his expression, the way he trembled and what he must have made of seeing someone praying towards Mecca.

When God Was Young

I saw one of the Franks come up to the amir Mu‘in al-Din (may God have mercy upon him) while he was in the Dome of the Rock, and say, “Would you like to see God when He was young?”

“Why yes,” Mu‘in al-Din replied.

So this Frank walked in front of us until he brought us to an icon of Mary and the Messiah (Peace be upon him) when he was a child, sitting in her lap, “This is God when He was young,” he said.

May God be exalted far beyond what the infidels say!

Franks Have No Honour or Propriety

The Franks possess nothing in the way of regard for honour or propriety. One of them might be walking along with his wife and run into another man. This other man might then take his wife to one side and chat with her, while the husband just stands there waiting for her to finish her conversation. And if she takes too long, he’ll just leave her alone with her conversation partner and walk away! Here is an example that I myself witnessed. Whenever I went to Nablus, I used to stay at the home of a man called Mu‘izz, whose home was the lodging-house for Muslims. The house had windows that opened onto the road and, across from it on the other side of the road, there was a house belonging to a Frankish man who sold wine for the merchants. He would take some wine in a bottle and go around advertising it, saying, “So-and-So the merchant has just opened a cask of this wine. Whoever wishes to buy some can find it at such-and-such a place.” And the fee he charged for making that announcement was the wine in the bottle. So one day, he came back home and discovered a man in bed with his wife. The Frank said to the man, “What business brings you here to my wife?”

“I got tired,” the man replied, “so I came in to rest.”

“But how did you get into my bed?” asked the Frank.

“I found a bed that was all made up, so I went to sleep in it,” he replied.

“While my wife was sleeping there with you?” the Frank pursued.

“Well, it’s her bed,” the man offered. “Who am I to keep her out of it?”

“By the truth of my religion,” the Frank said, “if you do this again, we’ll have an argument, you and I!”

And that was all the disapproval he would muster and the extent of his sense of propriety!

Here is another example. We had with us a bath-keeper called Salim, who was originally an inhabitant of Ma‘arra, and who served in the bath-house of my father (may God have mercy upon him). He told me:

I once opened a bath-house in Ma‘arra to earn my living. Once, one of their knights came in. Now, they don’t take to people wearing a towel about their waist in the bath, so this knight stretched out his hand, pulled off my towel from my waist and threw it down. He looked at me—I had recently shaved my pubic hair—and said, “Salim!” Then he moved in closer to me. He then stretched his hand over my groin, saying, “Salim! Good! By the truth of my religion, do that to me too!”

He then lay down on his back: he had it thick as a beard down in that place! So I shaved him and he passed his hand over it and, finding it smooth to the touch, said, “Salim, by the truth of your religion, do it to Madame!”—madame in their language means “the lady,” meaning his wife. He then told one of his attendants, “Tell Madame to come here.”

The attendant went and brought her and showed her in. She lay down on her back and the knight said, “Do her like you did me!” So I shaved her hair there as her husband stood watching me. He then thanked me and paid me my due for the service.

Now, consider this great contradiction! They have no sense of propriety or honour, yet they have immense courage. Yet what is courage but a product of honour and disdain for ill repute?

Here is an example close to that one. I once went to the baths in the city of Tyre and took a seat in a secluded room there. While I was there, one of my attendants in the bath said to me, “There are women here with us!” When I went outside, I sat down on the benches and, sure enough, the woman who was in the bath had come out and was standing with her father directly across from me, having put her garments on again. But I couldn’t be sure if she was a woman. So I said to one of my companions, “By God, go have a look at this one—is she a woman?” What I meant was for him to go and ask about her. But instead he went—as I watched—and lifted her hem and pulled it up. At this, her father turned to me and explained, “This is my daughter. Her mother died, and so she has no one who will wash her hair. I brought her into the bath with me so that I might wash her hair.”

“That’s a kind thing you’re doing,” I assured him. “This will bring you heavenly reward.”

Another Example of Their Medicine

Another example of their wondrous medicine was related to us by William de Bures, lord of Tiberias and a man with some standing among the Franks. It happened that he travelled with the amir Mu‘in al-Din (may God have mercy upon him) from Acre to Tiberias, and I accompanied him. On the way, he related to us the following story:

In our land there was a highly esteemed knight who took ill and was on the point of death. We went to one of our notable priests and asked him, “Will you come with us and have a look at Sir So-and-So?” “Yes,” he replied and walked back with us. We were certain now that if only he would lay his hands upon him, he would recover. When the priest saw the knight he said, “Bring me some wax.” So we brought him a bit of wax, which he softened and shaped like a knuckle-bone. Then he inserted one in each nostril and the knight died. “He’s dead!” we remarked. “Yes,” the priest replied. “He was in great pain, so I closed up his nose so that he could die and find relief.”

Two Old Women Race

Let this go and bring the conversation back to Harim.

And let us stop discussing their medical practices and move on to something else.

I was present in Tiberias during one of their feast-days. The knights had gone out to practise fighting with spears, and two decrepit old women went out with them. They positioned the two women at one end of the practice-field and at the other end they left a pig, which they had roasted and laid on a rock. They then made the two old women race one another, each one accompanied by a detachment of horsemen who cheered her on. At every step, the old women would fall down but then get up again as the audience laughed, until one of them overtook the other and took away the pig as her prize.

Examples of Frankish Jurisprudence

I was an eyewitness one day in Nablus when two men came forward to fight a duel. The reason behind it was that some Muslim bandits took one of the villages of Nablus by surprise, and one of the peasants there was accused of complicity. They said, “He guided the bandits to the village!” So he fled.

But the king sent men to arrest the peasant’s sons, so the man came back before the king and said, “Grant me justice. I challenge to a duel the man who said that I guided the bandits to the village.”

The king said to the lord of the village, its fief-holder, “Bring before me the man whom he has challenged.”

So the lord went off to his village, where a blacksmith lived, and took him, telling him, “You will fight in a duel.” This was the fief-holder’s way of making sure that none of his peasants would be killed and his farming ruined as a result.

I saw that blacksmith. He was a strong young man, but lacking resolve: he would walk a bit, then sit down and order something to drink. Whereas the other man, who had demanded the duel, was an old man but strong-willed: he would shout taunts as if he had no fears about the duel. Then the vicomte came—he is the governor of the town—and gave each one of the duellists a staff and a shield and arranged the people around them in a circle.

The two men met. The old man would press the blacksmith back until he pushed him away as far as the circle of people, then he would return to the centre. They continued exchanging blows until the two of them stood there looking like pillars spattered with blood. The whole affair was going on too long and the vicomte began to urge them to hurry, saying, “Be quick about it!”

The blacksmith benefited from the fact that he was used to swinging a hammer, but the old man was worn out. The blacksmith hit him and he collapsed, his staff falling underneath his back. The blacksmith then crouched on top of him and tried to stick his fingers in the old man’s eyes, but couldn’t do it because of all the blood. So he stood up and beat the man’s head in with his staff until he had killed him. In a flash, they tied a rope round the old man’s neck, dragged him off and strung him up. The blacksmith’s lord now came and bestowed his own mantle upon him, let him mount behind him, on his horse and rode away with him.

And that was but a taste of their jurisprudence and their legal procedure, may God curse them!

On one occasion, I went with the amir Mu‘in al-Din (may God have mercy upon him) to Jerusalem, and we stopped at Nablus. While there, a blind man—a young man wearing fine clothes, a Muslim—came out to the amir with some fruit and asked him for permission to be admitted into his service in Damascus. The amir did so. I asked about him and I was told that his mother had been married to a Frank, whom she had killed. Her son used to attempt various ruses on their pilgrims, and he and his mother used to work together to kill them. They finally brought charges against him for that and made him subject to the legal procedure of the Franks, to wit:

They set up a huge cask and filled it with water and stretched a plank of wood across it. Then they bound the arms of the accused, tied a rope around his shoulders and threw him into the cask. If he were innocent, then he would sink in the water and they would then pull him up by that rope so he wouldn’t die in the water; if he were guilty, then he would not sink in the water. That man tried eagerly to sink into the water when they threw him in, but he couldn’t do it. So he had to submit to their judgment—may God curse them—and they did some work on his eyes.

The man later arrived in Damascus, so the amir Mu‘in al-Din (may God have mercy upon him) assigned him a stipend to meet all his needs and said to one of his attendants, “Take him to Burhan al-Din ibn al-Balkhi (may God have mercy upon him) and tell him to order someone to teach the Qur’an and some jurisprudence to this man.”

At this the blind man said, “Victory and mastery be yours! This wasn’t what I was thinking!”

“Then what were you thinking I would do?” asked the amir.

“That you would give me a horse, a mule and weapons, and make a horseman out of me!” the man answered.

The amir then said, “I never thought that a blind man would join the ranks of our cavalry.”

Franks That Are Acclimatized Are Better

Among the Franks there are some who have become acclimatized and frequent the company of Muslims. They are much better than those recently arrived from their lands, but they are the exception and should not be considered representative.

Here is an example. I sent one of my men to Antioch on an errand. At the time, Chief Tadrus ibn al-Saffi was there, and his word had great influence in Antioch; there was a mutual bond of friendship between us. One day he said to my man, “A Frankish friend of mine has invited me to his home. You should come along so you can observe their ways.” My man told me:

I went along with him and we came to the home of one of the old knights who came out in one of the first expeditions of the Franks. He was since removed from the stipend-registry and dismissed from service, but he had some property in Antioch off which he lived. He presented a very fine table, with food that was extremely clean and delicious. But seeing me holding back from eating, he said, “Eat and be of good cheer! For I don’t eat Frankish food: I have Egyptian cooking-women and never eat anything except what they cook. And pork never enters my house.” So I ate, though guardedly, and we left.

After passing through the market, a Frankish woman suddenly hung onto me while babbling at me in their language—I didn’t understand what she was saying. Then a group of Franks began to gather around me and I was certain that I was going to perish. But suddenly, who should turn up but that knight, who saw me and approached. He came and said to that woman, “What’s the matter with you and this Muslim?”

“This man killed my brother ’Urs.” This ’Urs was a knight in Apamea whom someone from the army of Hama had killed.

The knight shouted at her and said, “This man is a bourgeois (i.e., a merchant), who neither fights nor attends battle.” And he yelled at the assembled crowd and they dispersed. He then took me by the hand and went away. Thus, the effect of that meal was my deliverance from death.

 

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Source: Reprinted from Paul M. Cobb, trans., The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades by Usama Ibn Munqidh, Penguin Books, 2008. Copyright © Paul M. Cobb, 2008. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.