Researching The Land Beyond the Sea was one of the easiest and yet most challenging tasks I’ve faced. It was easy because I’d been collecting books about the Holy Land and the Crusades for years, preparing to write Lionheart. So by the time I was ready to write about the Kingdom of Jerusalem, I already had an extensive library. It was still challenging because both the medieval chroniclers and subsequent historians all had their very own sharp axes to grind. There is something about the Levant that seems to make it impossible for people to be objective or dispassionate, and so I had to sort through a fair amount of propaganda in order to find a plausible version of what really happened.
There is one very reliable account of the history of the kingdom, written by the man considered to be one of the greatest historians of the Middle Ages: William, the Archbishop of Tyre. His A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea offers us a riveting glimpse into a bygone world, and it is filled with personal details that historical novelists rarely encounter: William’s graphic description of Amalric’s obesity, Guillaume of Montferrat’s fondness for wine, and William’s heartbreaking story of discovering that Baldwin might be a leper. Unfortunately, his chronicle ends in 1184; it is such a loss to history that we were denied William’s perspective on the events leading up to the fateful battle at Haṭṭīn.
William’s history was widely read during the Middle Ages and beyond. For a long time, historians tended to take his chronicle as gospel; today it is recognized that he was writing to convince the rest of Christendom that they had a vested interest in the survival of Outremer. With that aim in mind, he sometimes gave a spin to known facts; for example, he made it seem as if young Baldwin was the one solely responsible for their remarkable victory over Saladin at Montgisard, whereas the Saracen chroniclers all identified Reynald de Chatillon as the battle commander. Yet William never lied; any sins he committed were sins of omission. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea was translated into English in 1943, and for years it was very difficult to obtain. But, as I mentioned in the acknowledgments, it is now available from Amazon as an ebook.
After William’s death, a continuation of his history was written by a man named Ernoul; he is believed to have been Balian d’Ibelin’s squire, although nothing else is known about him. Unfortunately, Ernoul’s history was subsequently lost, and here is where the confusion set in. Later chroniclers wrote their own histories of the period, making use of Ernoul’s book with their own embellishments and additions. There are several of these “continuations” of William’s work, and we have no way of knowing how much was drawn from Ernoul’s history. They were written in the thirteenth century, too, and so it was inevitable that mistakes would be made. For example, we know that the number of the Acre garrison executed by Richard I after the fall of Acre was twenty-six hundred, as Richard himself mentioned that number in a letter to the Abbot of Clairvaux, and it was confirmed by a contemporary Saracen chronicler. Yet one of these continuations reports that sixteen thousand were slain at Richard’s order! So these accounts have to be approached with caution.
We do have several valuable Saracen chronicles of the period, which I relied upon for Lionheart and again for this novel. They offer a fascinating portrayal of Saladin written by men who actually knew him; details are given in the acknowledgments.
Mark Twain observed that “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” That is so true of the medieval accounts written after William’s death and true, too, of many of the modern histories of this period. I’ve been writing for more than thirty years and I cannot recall ever encountering so many biased sources. Let’s start with the portrayals of Agnes de Courtenay. William loathed her and delivered a devastating verdict, describing her as “a woman detestable to God.” He thought that she was power hungry, greedy, and ruthless. But he never even implied that she was sexually promiscuous. That was not the case with the thirteenth century “continuations” of his work, for they transformed her into the Whore of Babylon, claiming that she flaunted her lovers—among them Amaury de Lusignan and Patriarch Eraclius—and rewarded them with high offices.
There is no evidence for these claims, but subsequent historians accepted them without hesitation, including some of the most respected scholars of the era. Eventually, Bernard Hamilton took a hard look at these accusations; and in The Leper King and His Heirs, he argues convincingly that Agnes has been maligned. One reason historians accepted this view of Agnes is due to a misreading of a paragraph in William’s history. He was discussing the annulment of Amalric’s marriage to Agnes, but some historians erroneously thought that he was saying Agnes had been disavowed by her fourth husband, Renaud de Grenier, called Denys in my novel. This is not so; they were wed circa 1170 and were still married at the time of Agnes’s death in 1184. Had historians realized this, they would not have been so quick to believe that Agnes openly took lovers and lavished favors upon them. A medieval lord like Renaud would never have allowed himself to be publicly cuckolded like that. Agnes certainly had her flaws, but sexual sins were not among them. Other historians, Peter Edbury in particular, provide a more balanced analysis of the power struggle that would eventually doom the kingdom; I cite Edbury’s work at greater length in the acknowledgments. But earlier historians, such as Steven Runciman, offer an outdated and inaccurate image of Agnes.
Another historical figure whose reputation has fluctuated as much as Agnes’s is Raymond, the Count of Tripoli. Historians like Runciman and Marshall Whithed Baldwin saw the civil strife in the kingdom as a struggle between hawks and doves, and cast Raymond as the hero. The hawks were Agnes and her brother, Joscelin; Reynald de Chatillon; Gerard de Ridefort; and Guy de Lusignan, seen as aggressive newcomers who scorned the Saracens as evil infidels. The doves were the native-born barons, the Poulains like the d’Ibelins and the lords of Sidon and Galilee and Caesarea, led by the Count of Tripoli, men more knowledgeable about life in the Levant, understanding that survival was possible only through accommodation. In this reading, the doves were the good guys and the hawks were the villains. And Baldwin? He was more or less overlooked, dismissed as the invalid king whose mortal illness made him vulnerable to manipulation by his mother and her allies.
Reality is never this simple, of course. The pendulum may swing widely in its historical arc, but eventually it swings back; and in recent years, historians have followed the lead of Bernard Hamilton and Peter Edbury, recognizing Baldwin’s remarkable courage and arguing that the court factions were not so clearly drawn. Raymond’s actions were stripped of that heroic haze and he was viewed in a less-admiring light. I personally think he was a man motivated mainly by self-interest; and his credibility was so damaged by his past actions that his enemies were not willing to listen when he did act selflessly, trying desperately to convince them that it would be madness to take Saladin’s bait at Haṭṭīn. They saw his charge with the vanguard as an act of treason, many sure that he was still conspiring with Saladin. It would have been impossible for Raymond and his men to fight their way back up that steep slope to rejoin the battle; any doubts I may have had were dispelled as soon as I looked upon that rocky terrain for myself. There is confusion, too, as to whether he was acting on his own or at Guy’s behest when he led the vanguard in that final charge, as the chroniclers tell differing stories. Whatever the truth, I do not see it as treachery; had he succeeded in scattering Taqī al-Dīn’s men, the rest of the Franks could have followed him as the infantry tried to do.
While researching the history of Outremer, it struck me that there were few villains, that most of them were flawed people doing what they thought was best for their homeland and for themselves. That cannot be said of the Templar grand master Gerard de Ridefort, whose vengefulness and arrogance did so much to bring about the kingdom’s downfall. As king, Guy de Lusignan must bear the ultimate responsibility for riding right into Saladin’s trap, but their fatal march was Gerard’s doing. A few of the historians who have rejected the hawks-versus-doves scenario have gone even further and attempted to rehabilitate Guy’s reputation, arguing that his decision to venture into an arid wasteland without water was not as mad as it seems. For example, one of them sought to excuse Guy’s refusal to halt at Tur‘an by citing modern statistics to argue that the spring at Tur‘an would not have had enough water for such a large army. But Saladin thought otherwise; we know that he was greatly relieved when he heard that the Franks had bypassed Tur‘an and were marching on to their doom. The most scathing verdicts come from fellow soldiers, from the military historians I cited in my acknowledgments. The battle of Haṭṭīn is considered to be one of the great battlefield blunders of all time, right up there with the Little Big Horn and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
Readers will be interested to know that my description of the end of the battle comes from an eyewitness, Saladin’s son al-Afdal, who later related the day’s events to the Saracen chronicler al-Athīr. I was able to use some of the actual dialogue in the confrontation between Reynald de Chatillon and Saladin in the latter’s tent and again at other times during the battle. We do not know how Balian managed to break free with the survivors of his rearguard, but the suggestion of the historian David Nicolle made the most sense to me—that he took advantage of the distraction of the Blue Wolf’s men.
As always, historical novelists must fill in some of the blanks. We do not know the exact death dates for many of the major characters, including Balian, Baudouin, Maria, William, Agnes, and even Baldwin. Nor do we know the year of Balian’s birth, with historians estimating it at between 1143 and 1150. I thought the German scholar Hans Mayer made the most convincing argument for 1150 and adopted that one. We do not know the name of Amalric and Maria’s second daughter, who died very young, so I gave her the name of Amalric’s mother. And we do not know the cause of death for many of the characters, which is a common problem for historical novelists. William reported only that Sybilla’s first husband, Guillaume of Montferrat, sickened and died within two months. Nor do we know the ailment that claimed Baldwin’s life. Because kidney failure was so common among lepers, I chose that as a likely cause of his death. And we do not know what killed Baldwin’s nephew, the young king. After learning that Saladin’s eldest son suffered from asthma, I selected this as the fatal malady for that unlucky little boy.
I faced a greater challenge when it came to William of Tyre’s last years. According to the later continuations of his history, he fell victim to the machinations of his political rival, Patriarch Eraclius. William was supposedly excommunicated by Eraclius and was poisoned at the patriarch’s orders as he traveled to Rome to appeal to the Pope. But no source contemporary with William made any mention of this rather lurid tale, neither the Saracen chroniclers nor any of the English or French chroniclers who had a keen interest in the Holy Land. While most historians have dismissed the entire story out of hand, Peter Edbury and John Gordon Rowe, authors of William’s only biography, think that it is possible he was excommunicated by Eraclius, for it was often used as a political weapon in the Middle Ages. I’ve found no historians who believe the claim that William was murdered. Nor was I convinced that he was excommunicated, finding it unlikely that no one would have reported the disgrace of so prominent a churchman, who was both an archbishop and a highly regarded historian. There is confusion, too, about the exact year of William’s death. We know it occurred on Michaelmas, September 29, but we cannot be sure if it happened in 1184, 1185, or 1186. I thought 1185 was the most likely year under the circumstances.
Now a word about Jakelin de Mailly. He was identified as the marshal of the Templars in contemporary sources and none thought to question it. But a letter eventually surfaced, written by Gerard de Ridefort to the Pope, reporting the death of his Templar brethren and the grand master of the Hospitallers at Cresson Springs; he mentions several men, Jakelin being one of them, but the title of marshal appears behind the name of another Templar. So in recent years, some historians have concluded that the medieval sources must have been in error. I do not agree. Obedience was the cornerstone of the Templar order and its members were pledged to follow their grand master without question; this is why the Templars surrendered their castles at Gaza and Latrun to Saladin after being commanded to do so by Gerard de Ridefort. We have a vivid account of the bitter quarrel before the battle at Cresson Springs, when Jakelin argued against making an attack because they were so outnumbered and Gerard impugned his courage. I cannot imagine an ordinary knight daring to challenge his grand master like that. It makes sense only if Jakelin was indeed their marshal, for he’d then have been in charge of military matters. So if a mistake was made, I think it is more likely that it was made by a papal clerk when he copied de Ridefort’s letter for the papal archives, putting the title of marshal after the wrong man’s name.
Balian and Maria’s marriage is a remarkable one because of the disparity between her rank and his. By medieval standards, he was definitely not a worthy husband for a former queen, the kinswoman of the Emperor Manuel. We know nothing of the circumstances leading up to this unlikely pairing, only that their marriage seems to have been a happy one. There are only two logical explanations for the marriage. Either it was a love match in which Maria was prepared to defy her own kinsman, King Baldwin, and the social mores of the time in order to wed Balian. Or the marriage was meant to be a disparaging one for Maria. I think it was a punitive act that boomeranged badly, a suggestion that Peter Edbury also made in his biography of Maria and Balian’s eldest son, John, Lord of Beirut.
I always clear my conscience in my author’s notes, alerting my readers if I have taken any liberties with known historical facts. Because I am obsessive-compulsive about historical accuracy (one reason my family and friends will no longer go with me to see historical films, tired of hearing me muttering into my popcorn from the first scene to the last), I try to keep these liberties to the bare minimum. In this novel, I twice allowed al-‘Ādil to venture from Egypt to visit his brother Saladin when I needed to bring him to the reader’s attention. Since he certainly did visit Saladin from time to time, I did not have any conscience pangs about this. I took another small liberty in letting Baldwin learn of the results of Reynald’s audacious raid into the Red Sea. We cannot be sure if even Reynald knew what happened to the men who were captured and subsequently executed.
I occasionally have to alter the names of minor characters, given the lamentable medieval tradition of recycling the same family names over and over; I can assure you no author wants to have to keep track of half a dozen Edwards or Eleanors or Henrys in the course of one book. To make it easier for my readers, I was asked to change the name of Agnes’s husband and Baldwin’s stepfather, Renaud de Grenier, because there were two other major characters named Reynald and Raymond. So he became Denys for this book. I often resort to variants of a name in different languages, like Henry and Heinrich. This time I let the young king Baldwin lay claim to that name, and went with the French version for Baudouin. The same was true for Eschiva and Esquiva, Hugh and Hugues, Agnes and Agneta. I called Taqī al-Dīn’s son Khālid because he shared the name Ahmad with al-‘Ādil, and I slightly altered the name of the elderly Patriarch of Jerusalem to Emeric. I also referred to Hugues by his title, calling him Hugues of Galilee rather than Hugues de St. Omer, his family name.
We know Baldwin had a spymaster; all medieval kings did. We do not know his identity, since secrecy was an essential element of his job description. I gave Baldwin’s chief spy the name of one of the Lionheart’s agents who was famed for his ability to spy on the Saracens and avoid detection. While Anselm is my creation, the real Baldwin must have had an Anselm of his own as his health deteriorated.
For readers who guessed that Saladin’s favorite game of mall is today known as polo, you are quite right. And al-‘Ādil’s children really did have a pet giraffe, which they brought with them from Egypt to Syria.
The cover of The Land Beyond the Sea is a depiction of a painting by the nineteenth-century French artist Charles-Philippe Larivière, celebrating Baldwin’s victory over a much larger Saracen army at Montgisard. Sharp-eyed readers may notice that there are two archers in the foreground and that Baldwin has a beard. The artist did not know that the Frankish army used crossbowmen, their only archers being mounted turcopoles, or that noblemen in the kingdom were clean-shaven. We decided, though, that the dramatic impact of the scene far outweighed these minor anachronisms.
Finally, a few comments about the last chapters. It is usually said that Conrad of Montferrat reached Tyre on July 15, 1187, but he actually arrived in mid-August. Some historians say that Prince Bohemond’s eldest son briefly became Count of Tripoli after the death of Count Raymond, but Jochen Burgtorf, author of “The Antiochene War of Succession,” a chapter in The Crusader World, edited by Adrian J. Boas, effectively refutes that. Because it was reported that Stephanie de Milly and Isabella entreated Saladin to free Humphrey, I assumed this occurred right after the surrender of Jerusalem to the sultan. I’d already written the final chapters when I discovered a passage in ‘Imād al-Dīn’s chronicle that said the women came to see the sultan on Humphrey’s behalf in November of that year. So we cannot say with certainty whether Isabella remained in the city during the siege or if she departed with Maria and the younger children.
Sometimes the most credible information comes from hostile sources. For example, I’d have been skeptical if Christian chroniclers had been the ones to report that Richard had ridden in front of the Saracen army after the battle of Jaffa and none had dared to accept his challenge; it sounds too Hollywoodish, doesn’t it? But that story came from several Saracen chroniclers, who were mortified that no one had been willing to take on the Lionheart in single combat. In the same vein, I’d probably have been hesitant about accepting stories of the kind treatment of the Jerusalem refugees by Saladin’s men had they come from Saracen sources. They were reported, though, by Christian chroniclers, who also spoke admiringly of the generosity and magnanimity of al-‘Ādil and the sultan to their defeated foes. And Balian’s desperate ultimatum to Saladin was quoted by all the Saracen chroniclers, so I was able to draw upon his actual words in that dramatic scene.
I’d like to end by saying a few words about Balian d’Ibelin. For more than thirty years, I’ve been blessed, able to research and then to write about some of the most remarkable men and women of the Middle Ages. Most of them are better known than Balian, who was slandered by the chroniclers of the Third Crusade because he was allied with Conrad and hostile to Guy. History then seems to have forgotten about him. His one brush with fame came in Kingdom of Heaven, where he was magically transformed into an illegitimate French blacksmith who still managed to bedazzle a queen, only she was Sybilla, not Maria. The filmmakers did get one thing right: Balian truly was the savior of Jerusalem, rescuing thousands of civilians who faced death or slavery. I’ve written about men of great courage in past books, but I do not think any of them showed the courage of Balian d’Ibelin, who could not turn away from the terrified citizens of the Holy City, even if it meant sacrificing his own life in an attempt to save them.
SKP
January 2019
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