The First Crusade to ‘free’ the Holy Land was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II. From the outset, the Crusade was seen as a way of achieving earthly as well as spiritual gain: someone, after all, would have to take over once the Holy Land had been cleansed of unbelievers and their Muslim rulers. Many of the sweeping statements that used to be made about the Crusades are now commonly disputed. It used to be said, for example, that Europe had a surplus of younger sons trained in war and the Crusades were a good way of using them up. This view no longer seems valid. The old view of a monolithic Islam has also largely been dispensed with. When the Crusaders invaded, they found a Muslim world that was torn apart by the great sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia, a world, indeed, with some leaders who initially seemed to have hoped that the Crusaders could be allies against fellow Muslims.
Since the 18th century, western historians, and novelists such as Sir Walter Scott, have portrayed the Crusades as a clash between brutal and largely uncultured barbarians from the west on the one hand, and an older, more tolerant Muslim civilisation on the other. This is still not a greatly contested view, certainly not between Protestant and secular historians. though perhaps it has led to an over-rosy view of some Muslim rulers, such as the great Kurd Saladin. Saladin’s main opponent in legend (and at least partly in history) was of course Richard I of England, the so-called Lionheart. The two were opponents during the Third Crusade of 1189-1192, and never actually met despite their wonderfully flowery exchanges in Scott’s novel The Talisman (Richard’s wife Berengaria, forced to stay in her tent, sounds the only dissident note in the book: ‘This superstitious observance of Oriental reverence to the fair sex called forth from Queen Berengaria some criticisms very unfavourable to Saladin and his country’.
Richard had arrived in the Holy Land trailing a reputation for brutality, and reinforced it by killing over 2700 Muslim hostages in 1191 after the capture of Acre. For some reason, however, Saladin took to Richard, as many people did. During one battle, he sent Richard two horses when his own was killed under him. He also once sent him sherbet when he was sick and offered him his personal physician. The two were also linked in a surprising way by the dreaded Shia Assassin sect: Assassins made at least two attempts on Saladin’s life, and one of the Assassins who killed Conrad I of Jerusalem claimed Richard had paid for the murder (the case against Richard is unproven).
Richard then proposed – out of the blue – an aristocratic compromise solution to Saladin, that would bring about an end to the Crusades: a marriage between the families. Saladin’s brother, Al-Adil, could marry Richard’s sister Joanna. Joanna had been Queen of Sicily, and when her husband died, the new king, Tancred, imprisoned her. But when Joanna’s scary brother turned up in Sicily in 1190, he released her. Al-Adil and Richard met, but while Joanna loved her brother. she had no intention of marrying a Muslim, nor did Al-Adil want a Christian wife. It is probable also that Al-Adil knew of the widely believed story attached to both Richard and Joanna, that their mother Eleanor of Aquitaine was, as a member of the Angevin dynasty, descended from the Devil and that occult powers ran in the family. Al-Adil was possibly not all that pious, but there was no chance of a wedding here. Marriage to a Christian descended from Satan was bad enough; the rumoured ability of a recent forebear to fly in and out of windows was very likely a dealbreaker.
An unenthusiastic Al-Adil reported back to his big brother, who mischievously kept Richard waiting for six weeks before replying that the marriage was a great idea and should take place immediately. Richard, facing outright rebellion from his beloved sister. then asked Saladin if his niece Eleanor, the ‘Fair Maid of Brittany’ would do, and Saladin decided he had had enough. Richard and Saladin would never be in-laws.
What Happened Next
Saladin died in 1193. Al-Adil skillfully brokered peace among Saladin’s succession-squabbling nephews, and ended up ruling Egypt and Syria for many years. and also established good relations with the crusader kingdoms. Al-Adil has never really had due credit from posterity, either from Arab historians, who perhaps feel one Kurdish hero is enough, or from western historians,. who perhaps feel one Muslim hero is enough. Joanna married Raymond VI of Toulouse in 1196. The marriage was not a happy one, and Joanna, pregnant with a second child travelled to seek Richard’s protection in 1199, but found him dead of a crossbow wound in Chalus. She (and the baby) died in childbirth at Rouen. Her surviving son became Raymond VII of Toulouse, who. like his father before him, was forced to take part in the merciless Albigensian Crusade against his Cathar subjects. The Albigensian Crusade in southern France was fought with greater ferocity than the crusades against the Muslims. The Cathars were accused of being devil-worshippers, appropriate subjects, it was said, for an Angevin descendant.