Ep 298 - Welcome to the Crusades 2.2 Mosul

0:01 Hey everyone, it's Luke, and I am here to give you some good news. Eleanor and I have once again combined with the fellows from American Prestige, Danny Bessner and Derek Davidson, and we are happy to bring you Season 2 of Welcome to the Crusades, and of course this time it is on the Second Crusade. Now, if you know much about this, you will probably know that the Second Crusade is less well-known than the other of the first four Crusades. And it ends in disaster and embarrassment for the Christians. But it is incredibly... important because it builds the framework that the Catholic Church would use going forward for Crusades all the way until, I mean, all the way until they stopped doing Crusades, I guess, when

1:04 it was back in the 1500s or so. Regardless, we have the first two episodes here for you today. They're coming out free on the main feed. The first one is episode one, Jerusalem. The second one is episode two on Mosul. And these episodes basically look back on how the Christian and Muslim powers have responded in the wake of the First Crusade, respectively. So we talk about how the Crusader states have fared, how the Byzantines have fared, the Western European Catholic Church. And then in episode two, we talk about how the Muslims have fared, how Muslim centralization goes after the First Crusade, and the state of the city of Damascus, which is the ultimate destination of the Second Crusade. Yeah, so we're really excited about this.

2:06 We had a lot of fun doing it. We put a lot of good work into it. And we really hope you like it. These first two episodes are available for free. If you subscribe, though, you get access to the other eight episodes for this season. That's ten episodes in all. And you can also go back and you can check out the first season, which had ten episodes plus several bonuses. We're going to have bonuses for this one as well. Check it out. You won't regret it if you go to welcometothecrusades.com. You can get each season for $ 15 each or you can get them both together for $ 25. And we will have a bonus discount for our patrons. And we'll send info about that out shortly.

2:56 It's as long as you purchase it before November 3rd, 2026. After that, you'll just be paying the regular price. But yeah, we had a lot of fun. uh, this one is incredibly interesting, uh, despite, uh, not being that well known, and really the more important third and fourth crusades can't happen the way that they do, uh, without this one going, um, just going so crazy, and, uh, and losing the plot, but yeah, um, We know you'll love it. Check it out.

3:32 Check out these first two episodes. Check out the rest of the season. And the bonuses will record. You know, we really appreciate it. And no, this is not in lieu of our regular episode. We will have our regularly scheduled episode that we talked about, the Army of Darkness review, will be out tomorrow. So that's Wednesday, November 28th. uh, 2026, that'll be out tomorrow for you to enjoy. So yeah. Um, thank y'all very much for listening. Check out, welcome to the crusades.com. Uh, enjoy the shows and, uh, yeah. Enjoy army of darkness tomorrow. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Crusades.

4:28 This is the second Crusade episode to Aleppo. And today we are talking about how the Muslim polities and their various armies and allies were arrayed in the 50-ish years between the end of the First Crusade in 1099 and the fall of Edessa in late 1144. So yeah, last time we started doing the table setting in Jerusalem and the Crusader States by talking about what's been going on with them, doing a little bit of catch up.

5:05 So we're staying in the region, but just talking about the other folks.

5:10 Exactly. We're switching over to that to give you a feel for it because there's even more various groups of Muslim polities in the area than there were before. And the politics are a bit confusing.

5:30 Oh yeah we have some catching up to do yeah.

5:32 Also we have to talk about this little thing called the fall of odessa which uh by the end of this uh series you'll be asking yourself wait a minute what's odessa i never heard anything about that again after a certain episode.

5:45 And that's just wash over you and go away because you'll never hear about it again.

5:51 That's correct all right yeah um So today, let's start out. Again, we are talking about the period from 1099 to about 1144. And Derek, let's turn to you here. So we're talking right here, there is... The Muslim forces are starting to become more— I love how.

6:17 Derek's the Islam explainer on this podcast.

6:20 That's true.

6:21 I mean, he is. I'm happy to do it.

6:25 If we want to talk very specifically about what was happening on the Iranian plateau, I did recently read a Cambridge or an Oxford textbook on that. But other than that, no, I'm out. Derek, yeah, so we are in what is northern Syria.

6:44 Yeah.

6:45 And parts of the Holy Land and Jerusalem and all that. Yeah.

6:51 I mean, we still have to go through Anatolia. We can talk about the.

6:53 Subjects, too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this area there, after the First Crusade, they realize they need to be more united, but they can't get there just yet. So, like, what are we looking at?

7:07 Yeah, there's some chatter about, now that they're aware of you know, who these people are and what they want. And they're not just like a roving band of Raiders or mercenaries who are coming through to, to tear some things up and going home. They are making their home in the middle of this region. Uh, there is a greater, uh, there does seem to be a greater degree of awareness on the part of, uh, Muslim writers at first. This, this becomes a political, uh, thing. You know, we'll, we'll talk about the, the Zangids, but, Among writers, at least.

7:44 And we do have a problem here of surviving sources, and there's not much. There's fragments of things that survive in later things, and it's hard to get a beat on exactly how much was being written in this period. So there's a sourcing problem here. But it does seem like you had calls emerging from people writing basically polemics or appeals to Baghdad, which is still nominally the center of everybody's political world in this part of the Levant.

8:22 The great Seljuk Empire, use all of those terms loosely at this point, is still capitaled in Baghdad. There is an Abbasid caliph who doesn't really have any temporal authority at this point, or very little. And they're sort of duking it out between, you know, the caliph and the Seljuk sultan who's supposed to be in charge here and who's taking orders from whom. So that's a whole, you know, another problem. That's for a different story, I guess. But people are still writing these kinds of appeals back to Baghdad. Like, we have to do something about this invasion. We have to drive these people out. And that kind of falls on deaf ears. But you do get these or emirs of particular cities or governors of particular cities who, like Caraboga,

9:18 and we'll talk more about this later, but like Caraboga, we talked about in the first season, try to establish themselves as sort of the main person pushing back against the crusaders to varying degrees of success. There's also... An emerging sense of jihad in some of these writings, at least we think so. Of course, like jihad as holy war is not an alien concept to Muslims at this period.

9:50 But by this point, the fervor of the early conquest, it sort of, you know, died out and things had settled into uh something of a routine the main conflicts that have been going on really were in the levant between the fatimids and the seljuks or the fatimids and uh the abbasids whoever was protecting the abbasids quote-unquote protecting them at any given time so a lot of the like starch had gone out of this idea of you know we have to be fighting the the non-believers and that sort of thing. It's the crusaders who bring the idea of holy war into the picture with their campaign to get to Jerusalem and free the city of, the center of the universe, really, the city of Jesus and all of that. But in this, as it becomes, again,

10:38 clear who and what these people are, you do start to see the idea of jihad emerging again as a rallying cry to go to war against the Crusaders. There are a couple of writers, there are probably more, but there's at least a couple of note who we know about from this period. There's a man named Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami who wrote polemics, I think, essentially, but really tried to link what was happening in the Levant after the First Crusade to other conflicts, other border zones that Muslim political, you know, polities were experiencing or were clashing with or competing with Christians. So he linked it to Iberia, which is something that we'll come back to later on in the series on the Christian side, but Sicily, so

11:33 some other places kind of around the Mediterranean where this kind of stuff was going on. There's also a man named Hamdan ibn Abd al-Rahman who wrote The History of the Franks Who Invaded the Islamic Lands. This is one that doesn't survive We know about it through some fragmentary quoting and preservation. We don't know exactly what it is.

11:55 It may have been a chronicle just of the city of Aleppo, but it does seem like this was a first attempt at kind of putting down, chronicling what happened in the First Crusade from the Islamic perspective. And this is something I think we'll talk about on the European side next time. the writing and, you know, some of the cultural things that went on. But we do, I think, have some of that going on here if it's, you know, even though it's in a kind of a formative sense and not a lot of it kind of gets through to the present day.

12:32 So last season we talked about the Seljuks quite a bit. What are they doing now? What has happened since the First Crusade?

12:40 Yeah, they're not as big a deal in the Second Crusade, although the Crusaders will have to get through Anatolia and not terribly successfully to get to the Levant, to get to Jerusalem and Edessa, where they're trying to go. So they are a factor here. And mostly, the Seljuks of Anatolia, the Seljuks of Rum, not to be confused with the great Seljuks, in the great Seljuk emperor in Baghdad. But there is this branch of the Seljuk family that's carving out, in the process of carving out, a sultanate in Anatolia.

13:22 And Kilij Arslan is still in charge. We left him, you know, kind of having had his fill, I think, of the crusaders and decided to go fight another day. He's still there. And for a few more years after the first crusade ends, and is able to use sort of, this stuff I was talking about earlier, this awareness of the crusader threat and, you know, that these people aren't leaving, they're staying to.

13:52 Kind of.

13:54 Rally, I guess, to a certain extent, or cajole, maybe a better way to put it, some of the other Turkic principalities in Anatolia to sort of accepting Seljuk overlordship. He establishes a capital for his sultanate in the city of Konya, which becomes sort of the center of Islamic political life in Anatolia for some time to come. But even here, like the awareness of the crusader threat and the idea that we should all sort of work together to deal with this outside invasion is serving a greater purpose of like settling his petty beef with the other Turkic leaders of Anatolia and with rival branches of the Seljuk family. So he's actually killed in 1107 fighting a battle with the great Seljuk emperor, Muhammad I Tapar. So clearly, like,

14:59 you know, although this is the message that's starting to filter out, like we have to work together, they're not working together. They're using it to browbeat one another to sort of you know, accept my great rule, my wise rule over the rest of you. There is a, something of an interregnum here. The next ruler of this Seljuk entity in Anatolia is Malik Shah, and the reason I put it vaguely is because it's not really a sultanate yet.

15:29 They're not calling themselves sultans, but he assumes the power in 1110. And he's, I think, a cousin of Kilij Arslan. Kilij Arslan's son eventually seizes power from this guy, Mesud I, in 1116. And he rules, he'll rule all the way through the Second Crusade. He has a nice long 40-year reign. He dies in 1156. And he's able, over that period of time, to expand Seljuk power throughout central Anatolia from the base at Konya. And really what he leaves behind is basically the sultanate. His son and successor, Kilij Arslan II, is the first one to definitely use the title of sultan.

16:19 But it's Massoud who we'll be talking about here is sort of harassing the crusaders as they pass through. And it's still a political entity that's in flux and kind of coalescing.

16:34 Yeah, no doubt. when you're talking about the Sultanate forming, I presume you're talking about the Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia.

16:43 Right, right.

16:43 So yeah, this is distinct from the Emperor. There's a great Seljuk Empire that really emerges in like 1055 when they take Baghdad and kick out the Buyids and assume their protectorship over the Habassids. But that really doesn't hold together very long. Like they still keep the title and they still have sort of an empire structure. But it really starts to fray. And one of the ways that it frays is there's this cadet branch of the Seljuk family.

17:11 Kilij Arsalan is sort of a cousin of the royal dynasty that carves out its own basically independent. I mean, they will pay some nominal fealty to the great Seljuks, but they'll outlast the great Seljuks. They'll actually survive through even the Mongols as vassals of the Mongols. But Yeah, so that's one of the things that's happening here. The other things, you know, other kind of ways this is coming apart, we talked about in the first season in sort of, you know, Syria, cities are sort of, you know, working independently of each other. The Zengids, as we'll talk about in a few minutes here, we'll sort of try to stitch that back together. But yeah, the Great Empire is not like a coherent political thing for very long.

18:03 I just think that this is a really important point to make as well, because I think, as you mentioned here, Derek, one of the big issues that we have from both sides when we are kind of getting into the Second Crusade is this paucity of sources that bedevils us as a general rule of thumb in the medieval period. And I know that from the standpoint of the Europeanists, we have this tendency to look at crusading rhetoric or talk about the way that crusaders decide to make the decisions that they do. And I'm often asked, oh, is this a genuinely religious movement or is there politics at play?

18:44 Are people just doing it entirely out of their own self-interest? And I always say, well, it's very difficult to untangle those two things and both can be true. But I think this is an important point because we don't consider the same thing is at play on the Islamic side of things. And it certainly, certainly is. These calls to unity, these calls to saying, oh, well, we really all need to unite behind one ruler, wink, wink, putting oneself forward.

19:13 It does amount more or less to a huge game of chicken. And it isn't unlike.

19:19 what we.

19:19 See from the crusaders in the first crusade as we will see um it will be slightly different this time round though um and and so much stupider which is really exciting this is a little foreshadowing for everyone.

19:36 Well it gets i mean it's sort of like once you get to the level of kings right you've got kings going on crusader emperors you know whatever uh the difference is at that point uh going on crusade it's harder to do that like jock for position. So instead, what you get are people who just hate each other's guts.

19:54 They can't work together. And that's a whole different set of problems.

20:00 Yeah. Next up are everybody's favorite rompies.

20:08 The tragic Caliphate Chia thing.

20:13 It's the Fatimids. They're still somehow here after the First Crusade.

20:20 Part of the reason they're still here is because the First Crusaders fumbled the bag. If people remember the first season, we ended with the Siege of Ascalon where the Crusaders won. And then because they were fighting with each other, they didn't take the city, right? Like they defeated Alaftal's army outside the walls and then they couldn't decide who would get to have it. So nobody got to have it.

20:45 And so the Fatimids are still there.

20:47 Yeah, they're still in Ascalon. They still control Acre for the moment. But yeah, the Crusaders could have taken Ascalon if they could have just agreed who was going to be the representative of it. But they were fighting so much at that point and they'll still hold Ascalon until 1153. Until after the Second Crusade.

21:09 Yeah, it's just.

21:12 Go ahead.

21:12 No, just a question because someone once said that they were Shia nominally. What does that mean, Derek?

21:19 I mean, the Fatimids are definitely Shia. They're not nominally.

21:22 The Fatimids themselves are. They don't convert.

21:26 They don't go to great extent to convert, or great effort to convert the Egyptian population, which is why egypt's from egypt remains uh sunni uh so in that sense the caliphate is you could say i guess nominally uh shia and the and that the ruling dynasty is shia but you know um it's it's a pretty thin uh thing yeah so that yeah they um i mean you know as we talked about last time they're ismaili so that's you know from a particular branch of shiism that uh split off from uh the twelvers the ones you may regard from from Iran kind of early on after the death of the sixth, uh, imam, um, over, over, you know, difference of opinion about who should be running, uh, the community, who should be the imam, uh, which is

22:15 a thing that happens quite a bit in Shiaism. And we'll even talk, I'll talk about a couple more schisms here, uh, in a moment. So yeah, there, there, um, nominally Shia, there is a, Sunni-Shia dynamic happening here with the Seljuks on the one hand and the Fatimids on the other, which is one of the things that the crusaders kind of luckily fall into when they show up, that there is this conflict going on. But the extent to which you could separate out Shia versus Sunni as opposed to just two empires clashing on their frontier and one trying to defeat the other is hard for It's hard for me to do, and I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of being like, oh, this was a sectarian thing, and it's the Sunnis and Shias continuing their,

23:05 I don't know, 8,000-year-old struggle or whatever people in certain political dispositions in the U.S. like to talk about. I think it's probably the real conflict is more mundane than that. It's two empires fighting a war or a series of wars with each other.

23:25 I love this. It's the opposite of the ordinary thing that historians say. We're constantly saying it's more complex than that, but Derek's got it. No, it's more boring.

23:34 I mean, it is older, though. I mean, it's older than Sunni Shia. It's just like people don't get along with each other. It's the oldest thing in the book.

23:43 It's a continuation of an old tribal beef that they've had, which happened all over the world. But yeah, it's particularly profound there.

23:52 Right. So, yeah, I mean, the Fatimids are still here, but they don't have a good run. We talked about this in, I think, the last bonus we did for the first season, the period in between the First Crusade and the Second Crusade. They lose a lot. They lose a lot of territory, a lot of cities to the Crusaders.

24:15 They lose the coastal Levant. You know, Raymond takes Tripoli, and they lose Beirut. They lose Sidon. They try a couple of times to attack Jerusalem and are defeated. So they don't have a very good run here. And a lot of the problem that they're experiencing is, as opposed to what's happening in Syria, where you've got atomization and people trying to figure out a way to counter the crusaders, or at least using the crusaders as a political tool.

24:51 What you have with the Fatimids is it's still a coherent caliphate, but it's rotted out from the inside, and that's led to a huge rivalry between the caliphs and the viziers. So Alaftal was the second really powerful vizier in a line of powerful viziers who usurped authority from the caliphs. His father, Badr Jamali, and these guys were Armenians actually were brought in to take over in Cairo because of the incompetence, basically, of the caliphs. But yeah, there's sort of this back and forth. And al-Afdal, you know, after this series of defeats, he eventually, he dies. He's succeeded by al-Mamun al-Bata'ihi, who is another powerful vizier. The string of bad luck continues. The string of, you know,

25:44 this bad run continues. He loses Tyre. to the Crusaders and is eventually removed in a little resurgence of Caliphal authority by the Caliph Al-Amir bin Akham Allah, removes him in 1125. And from that point on, you get, for a few years, you get this sort of struggling between the bureaucracy and the imperial ruling house. that really doesn't end until after, or kind of on the tail end, I guess, of the Second Crusade, al-Hafiz, who is the Fatimid caliph. And, you know, these guys aren't going to be a huge factor either, like the Seljuks, they're sort of passing mention, but, you know, I figured we should catch up with them. But al-Hafiz rules from 1132 to 1149 and actually seems to be fairly in control or

26:44 asserts some level of caliphal authority. But then he's succeeded by three children, basically, in a row, which is kind of a death knell for any royal line, really. And the viziers reassert power, and it's eventually one vizier named Saladin who will overthrow this whole thing and say, why am I even bothering with these caliphs? That's a story for next season. on Welcome to the Crusades. But yeah, he will eventually just put an end to the farce and declare himself Sultan of Egypt. And that'll be the end of the back and forth.

27:27 Derek, is it true you've once referred to Saladin as a Jafar-like figure?

27:33 Have I?

27:34 Have I done that? I'm not even sure I know what that means.

27:38 I think that– I'm just so excited to– when we do eventually get to the Third Crusade to do Saladin because I think that what you can certainly say about him from the European standpoint is he's the same as that Norwegian football player that all men want to see.

27:55 Yes.

27:55 Oh, my God.

27:56 For medieval people.

27:57 Haaland. Haaland. Yeah, he's the.

28:00 Haaland of the medieval period.

28:01 Yeah, yeah.

28:02 Yeah.

28:04 Yeah, it's just a hunky guy.

28:05 Just a hunky guy that dudes have a crush on.

28:08 Yeah.

28:10 The other thing that I thought maybe we should talk about with the Fatimids was, as I said, there are more schisms. I think we talked about the emergence of the assassins last season, but this happens in 1090, just before the first crusade. Again, over a succession dispute, there's a... Alaftal wants to put a child on the throne and...

28:33 because children are easier to manipulate, but the elder son of the deceased, Caliph Nizar, rebels and holds out at Alexandria for a little while before he's eventually killed. But his followers migrate out, and they particularly migrate to the north, into Syria, and out to the east, into Iran. One of the features of Ismailism was Even though, as I said, they don't go to great extent to convert the population of Egypt or forcibly convert anybody, they do send out missionaries, which is somewhat unusual for Islam. So they have this whole dawah institution, or they send out what are called da'is to preach the message and convert. And that winds up being very useful to the followers of Nizar when

29:24 they kind of escape Egypt, because they have this whole network of like castles and operatives basically in different parts of the region that they're able to glom onto, and this eventually coalesces into the assassin.

29:44 Movement.

29:46 They are responsible for a number of incidents. They're tangentially involved in the Second Crusade, the Battle of Hinnab, we may talk about in 1149. They actually fight on the side of the crusaders. So they're, you know, they're, they're not, they're a little heterodox, shall we say. But they are, they carry out a number of assassinations. Nizam al-Mulk, the great vizier of the Seljuk empire is one of their first high profile victims. I think, again, we talked about this last season and that's one of the reasons why the great Seljuk empire starts to come apart is Nizam al-Mulk was like the glue that held this thing together.

30:23 He was the vizier. He was brilliant. political mind, and they killed him, and it was really downhill from that point on. But they kill al-Aftal in 1121. They wind up killing al-Amir. I mentioned the caliph who removed al-Ma'mun, the vizier from power. I mentioned him a few minutes ago in 1130. So they're taking their pound of flesh, and they'll be actually even more relevant during the Third Crusade.

30:53 We'll talk about Richard's dalliance with them, I think. The other schism that happens here in 1132, there's another dispute over the succession when Alhafiz, who I mentioned had this long reign and reasserted califal authority. When he takes power, there's another faction that breaks off that, that supported, I think his brother, uh, Taibbi, uh, they, the Taibbi faction, they wind up, um, mostly in Yemen, but it's, it's all part of kind of just this internal, uh, decoherence, uh, of the Fatimid caliphate. So not only do you have the viziers and the caliphs feuding with each other, you, you have this continuing problem of, uh, different segments of the ruling family or the ruling movement and its followers

31:48 kind of, you know, deciding they don't like whoever's in charge or, uh, you know, being schismatic and that just weakens things even, even more.

31:57 If you have read ahead or been otherwise spoiled, you know that the Second Crusade culminates outside the city walls of a place called Damascus. We've mentioned it before, but Damascus is, look, it's really important in the region. It's important biblically, which means it's important to all three of the major world faiths that are in the region at the time for various reasons. And it is just outside of the Crusader States for the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli. It is just northwest of, I believe, Tyre.

32:42 And it has an extremely powerful reputation. It's an extremely wealthy city. It has very elaborate and sturdy walls. And so. But it's also not part of, really not part of any of these other wider groups that we're going to talk about, and they have their own thing. So Derek, can you talk Tekken and his son's formation of the Burid dynasty in Damascus?

33:16 Yeah, the Burids emerge, I mean, not that long before we get into this story. The Burids are a fairly new their post-First Crusade, kind of early 1100s, I guess. And they are, like everybody else here, like the Zengids and everybody else who's ruling these cities, they get a disposition from the Seljuks to rule a particular city. And they turn it into, if you are able to kind of turn that into an inherited governorship, Then this becomes a family business and you become a little petty dynasty and you have your own fiefdom. We talked about Dukak last season, who was the ruler of Damascus at the time, who participated in the aborted attempt to relieve Antioch and didn't get along with any of the other rulers of

34:16 these cities in the region, Aleppo and so forth. Uh, so, uh, it's, it's similar to that. I mean, Dukak, when Dukak died, it was, in fact, that was the point, uh, uh, at which, uh, Tog Tekin, uh, was appointed, uh, by the Seljuks to replace him. And then he's able to, uh, carve out a little, a little dynasty, the Burids. But yeah, Damascus is important. Uh, it's, it's well positioned, uh, for anybody who wants to, challenge the crusaders and the crusaders know it. It's a vulnerability for them. So they're interested in it. They're also, I think, as Eleanor said last time, interested in Damascus because Damascus is in the Bible. And a lot of these places aren't. But Damascus, we remember from the Bible, is a big deal. So we would

35:03 like to have that city. And for the Muslims, it's also important. There's also symbolic importance to Damascus from Muslims. It was one of the first cities that the Arabs conquered. outside of Arabia. They took it from the Byzantines, the Romans. It was the first capital outside of Arabia of the Caliphate, of the Umayyad Caliphate. So, I mean, you do have people who refer to Damascus as like the fourth most holy city. There's a great mosque there, the Umayyad Mosque, like the fourth most holy city of Islam after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. So it matters to the Muslims for symbolic reasons as well, but it also is like a little dagger that you could point at any of the Crusader states, given where it's positioned.

35:51 It's the place where Saul was going and the scales fell off his eyes. He was better and he changed the first letter of his name from an S to a P and they have it and we don't. Can you believe it? What are we going to do? What am I supposed to do? Just leave it out there for them to have it? When Saul changed his name there, he went down to the constable and changed his name with the Roman authorities at the time and they have it?

36:18 Absolutely not, Derek. How dare you, sir? How dare you?

36:22 I mean, the trouble is it's not more complex than that either.

36:25 No, it's not at all.

36:27 It really isn't. And I mean, of course, obviously, I think when you're in the higher echelons of the church, if you are the papacy, you have a much more nuanced idea about religion. But I can't stress how much every single member of the nobility in Europe has CTE. And, you know, like their relationship.

36:51 Well, they get hit on the head a lot.

36:53 A lot.

36:54 And they're basically like, oh, no, I've heard of that one. We've got to have it. It just simply is that simple.

37:01 I think we can also kind of tie this into the idea of the crusade as the holy war that eventually ignites jihad. And part of that, I think, is that when you have these, these crusader states and they're not good, they're, they're colonial entities. They cause all of these problems, but, but they are there like that. They, they, they are there. It's true. They aren't good, but they are there.

37:41 And it's just like, just he's done.

37:43 It's perfect. I'm out there. There, you got to deal with it. No, they're on the ground. And so, When you're on the ground there, the idea that this is a complete civilizational struggle at all times and you cannot coexist with Muslims is a complete and utter fiction that does not work. Because even if you believe that to your very core and you wanted to kick every single one of them out of your kingdom or your principality, you couldn't do it because you need them as the peasantry to do the work that you and your nobles and the former nobles who still live there are not going to do. So even if you were like that, you have to be by them by the material circumstances. However, when this is taught in Europe and when they talk

38:33 about it in Europe, it is talked about as civilizational struggle The battle of good and evil, of all versus all, etc., etc. And you have these competing ideas that come across because a big shock for a lot of these Europeans is how much the crusader states and the Christians work with Muslims hand in hand in a lot of ways. And they may actually hate each other, but that doesn't matter because you still have to have crops to eat. So I think it's one of those things. And that's what I meant by the crusader states are there. Actually physically being in this area and being close to these people.

39:18 It forces you to make some choices.

39:22 Thank you. Yes, exactly. It forces you to make choices and your choice is going to be to survive for for 98% of all people. The choice is going to be to survive over a fundamentalist, uh, extremist doctrine of all versus all. And that's why, I mean, that's why Antioch is, uh, working with various Muslim factions and they have, and, they didn't steal all the land from the Muslims and kick them out when they got there because those Muslims are the ones who bring in the grain or make the, they cobble the shoes or, you know, whatever it is.

39:58 And maybe just, this is a basic question, but I imagine a syncretic culture is developing there. So, like, as these crusader states over time, what is their relationship to, you know, the old world of Europe? I mean, obviously, we're covering over time.

40:13 Yeah, sorry, Derek.

40:15 We're not, I don't think we're there yet. but that does happen. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think we're well established enough yet to really be talking about.

40:24 Okay.

40:25 Yeah.

40:25 I think that's probably a culture, but I think that's probably a third crusade thing.

40:31 Yeah.

40:31 It's too early now.

40:32 Yeah.

40:32 It's like two generations. It's too soon.

40:34 Yeah.

40:34 You're, you're still, I mean, yeah, you literally, I mean, the first generation of crusaders dies. Like, well, I mean, when does Baldwin the first die? Like, 1130 something or 1120 1126.

40:46 So yeah so.

40:49 I mean you're you're really like just barely into the second generation the second generation at this point there's still a fairly close relationship to to Europe and I think that we tend to see in sources at the time when you see especially the francophones writing back and forth they're just like oh the altremia right.

41:11 Like this RR outpost over there right you know they don't sure yeah okay they're crusader states but the the way that they are related to is just it's an extension of what they see is kind of a natural patrimony that comes with their normanness their their francophoneness the the tendency of these individuals to sort of proliferate generally so yeah yeah they do get to a point where they are something else entirely and they're they're a new sort of animal but we just haven't got there yet.

41:43 Yeah, I think that's fair. So, I mean, let's talk about the Zengids. Because they're the real enemy, right? They're the antagonists for this season. And the Zengids are... The most successful. They start out as a local dynasty like the Burids, one of these governors, essentially, of a city, rulers of a principality given a grant to rule by whoever's in Baghdad at that point, who just puts down roots and establishes themselves and then is able to expand from that. A lot of these guys try that. Kerboga was trying to do that in the first season. He failed miserably. But, you know, there are other examples like Ilghazi.

42:49 We talked about him, Ilghazi of Mardin. We talked about him, I think, in the bonus episode, the commander of the Muslims at the Field of Blood. These guys who sort of poked their heads up from this crowd of undifferentiated city rulers and try to say, hey, everybody follow me. And then nobody does, and it all kind of falls apart.

43:11 But the Zengids have better success, and that's due mostly to the founder of the dynasty, excuse me, Ahmad ad-Din Zengi. He was actually raised for part of his childhood by Karboga. He eventually came into the service of the Seljuks in Iraq and served as governor there. of part of Iraq for the Seljuks in Baghdad. He gets appointed the Adebay of Mosul in 1127. And Adebay is an elevated governorship.

43:41 It's basically someone who is trusted enough and high status enough that they can foster a royal prince from the main line. So if you want to send one of the little princelings out to get some real world experience somewhere outside of the capital, This is, you know, this is somebody you trust enough to put them with. So it's an important position. It's set apart from, you know, just sort of the regular city rulers. He's then appointed, after he gets Mosul in 1127, the governor of Aleppo dies in 1128, and he's given that appointment as well.

44:22 This makes him very powerful, quite a bit more powerful than anybody we've seen yet to this point. you know, of these local dynasts. And then spends the next few years really, like, using the things we talked about at the beginning of the episode, the calls for unity, the calls for jihad, using those as cudgels to beat up on other Muslim leaders, Muslim rulers in the area. So he makes an attempt to, he takes Hama eventually. He makes attempts at the cities of Homs and Damascus. He really wants Damascus. This is a recurring theme for Ahmaduddin.

45:02 He even makes a play to go back and kind of establish himself as the effective ruler in Baghdad in the early 1130s. He's driven off from that. But he does emerge by virtue partly of the fact that he controls these two very powerful cities. He becomes somewhat the focus of this jihadist, emerging jihadist sentiment or this emerging sentiment of unity. He is successful in a couple of battles against crusader armies. There's a Jerusalem Damascus army, actually, a Damascene army that he defeats at the Battle of Montferrand in 1137. There's a Byzantine Antioch Edessa campaign or attack on his territory that he fends off in Aleppo the following year. and he's the one who will take Edessa.

46:00 We'll talk about that a bit later. He's the one who will take Edessa in 1144, only to be unceremoniously murdered by one of his slaves in 1146. I guess that's how it goes when you're reaching for the stars. He's effectively succeeded by his son, Nur ad-Din Zengi, who becomes the Emir of Aleppo. He doesn't have Mosul, but he is the Emir of Aleppo or succeeds to the Emirate of Aleppo and is the main antagonist for the Second Crusaders when they turn up. He tries a different approach where Imad ad-Din was more militaristic in his approach toward the other Muslim polis, especially toward Damascus. Nur ad-Din adopts a little bit more conciliatory approach approach toward damascus and some of these other places that will come back

46:56 around at the end of the second crusade when the crusaders make the foolish decision to to attack damascus in part because they're worried that noradine will worm his way into uh to control of that city eventually he does capture he captures an 1154 uh after the crusade is over But he really does achieve what his father had been trying to achieve. He does become, eventually recognizes the overlord of Mosul. He continues to make a lot of trouble for the crusaders. And as I said, captures Damascus in 1154. And then will eventually turn his attention toward Egypt, which proves to be a huge mistake. because he basically creates the guy who will destroy the Zengids for all intents and purposes in Saladin. So, yeah, again, kind of

47:55 a mixed bag, I guess, rise and fall.

47:58 Yeah, so that brings us up to a little event that is known as the Fall... of Odessa. And, uh, look, I would love to tell you that this involved some, uh, spectacular battle, some, some huge set piece thing. Uh, but it didn't, um, never lied. Yeah. Yeah.

48:32 Look, I'm not saying there's, there's a nice, like, I think there's a nice foreshadowing here of how the crusaders will eventually, uh, lose jerusalem in that it's just their own stupidity going out to fight a battle that they shouldn't have fought and leaving the city undefended behind them uh is is basically how it.

48:49 Goes yeah um look odessa it's the first one founded in 1098 but it has certain disadvantages that the others don't that we've talked about a couple times before it's not on the coast It is stuck in a really awkward position between a lot of polities that it doesn't fit with necessarily. There's salesians the byzantine empire antioch uh aleppo and mosul and uh eastern what is now eastern armenia like all of these places are all around it and it's just it has to deal with all this stuff it's also the weakest in terms of military strength the least populous and the least wealthy there is a reason that baldwin discarded it like you know like like trash uh to one of his random cousins what can i.

49:52 Have jerusalem okay bye here you.

49:54 Take this i mean fundamentally and also i i hate to keep banging on about it but i'm not going to stop it ain't in the bible none of them words are in the bible yeah county of edith ain't in the bible and so you know like Yeah, what.

50:09 Are you going to do?

50:12 It's sort of a stroke of bad luck, right? Edessa is dependent on both the Byzantines and Jerusalem. It doesn't have a great relationship with Antioch or Tripoli. And then the rulers of both of them die in 1143, John II dies. and like just uh okay you're on your own i guess like good luck well yeah it's really just bad stroke of luck.

50:40 Yeah well in 1143 so sorry let me back up real quick when baldwin abdicated he left it to one of his cousins who his jaw it became jocelyn the first so he wasn't a great ruler let's say uh he was a kind of he was not kind of he was meatheaded and he thought they were like more powerful than they were blah blah blah they they came to be like uh overawed by jerusalem at this point uh but when uh jocelyn the first died his uh son jocelyn the second took over and while he's not the brightest uh you know the the sharpest tool in the shed he did understand that he couldn't do that alone, and so he does, he gives these two alliances, tributary alliances, out.

51:32 He gave one to the Byzantines under John II Komnenos, the son of Alexios I, who took over when Alexios died, and Baldwin down in Jerusalem, and I'm sorry, this would have been folk when folk of Anju took over in Jerusalem. And so he's got these things. So whenever someone comes to mess with Edessa, he can be like, hey, hey, hey, John, John Comnenos, come help me. You can get here quicker.

52:06 And they did because the Byzantines were gaining more power incrementally at this point and getting and projecting more power into the area. However, as Derek said, in 1143, John II and Folk of Anjou die very close to one another. And this leaves Edessa in the complete lurch because they had a terrible relationship with Raymond of Poitiers in Antioch.

52:39 They had had a bad relationship with Antioch for a long time. And they had a bad relationship with Tripoli and Raymond II down there. So they were adrift. And as Derek said, our good buddy Ahmad Al-Din was at the top of his game. He was at his most power. And he looked out from Mosul, saw Edessa, and said, Hey, that looks like a great place. And then Jocelyn II did something very stupid. Just incredible. Mind-boggling.

53:14 Yeah.

53:15 He does an alliance with.

53:18 The Artukids. Exactly.

53:20 Go ahead, please. Yeah.

53:22 So he makes an alliance. I mean, maybe he was panicking because his two sponsors were dead.

53:29 I don't think that him making the alliance is a stupid thing. The Artukids weren't exactly going to be helpful.

53:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

53:36 I agree.

53:36 They weren't great.

53:37 Yeah. Yeah.

53:44 Anyway, what I was saying is he. So he makes this alliance and the R2 kids are like, OK, we're going to go down and make war south of the county, south of Turbessel. You need to come help us out.

54:01 Let's go.

54:03 OK, I'm bringing everyone. I'm taking the entire army out of the city Which is.

54:09 Like Okay Ben Good luck with that Don't worry I left the door unlocked You know And a couple of the windows So just come on in I wouldn't.

54:22 Worry about it Here's the alarm code And that's it I mean yeah like Imanuddin sees this And I mean it's Like leaving candy out for him He just says okay great thanks.

54:37 Go ahead eleanor sorry.

54:38 Well i just think that this is an incredibly important point um from just for the historiography because you know as we say and i mean i think in many ways the the entire point of of us doing these series is there there is this historiographical tendency especially in the global north to say oh it's a clash of civilizations and then you just look at what just yeah Just look at what the Islamic side is up to. Like, dog, you're telling me that this is like a unified front against Christianity? They're literally like, oh, those guys went to go fight the Christians.

55:13 I'm going to take their kingdom.

55:15 It's incredible. It's great stuff, you know. And I just think that it very much proves our point is all I'm saying.

55:22 Yeah.

55:23 So he– Jocelyn II moves his army out. He moves them to Turbessel. They start moving south with the Artukids, and Zingy waits until the point where they move far enough south that they can't get back that easily, encircles the city, builds siege engines. The city actually does have very formidable walls, but it would have taken like four or so months for Jocelyn to get back, and it took less than a month for them to get into the city. The defense of the city... was led by an archbishop and two other bishops. Hell yeah. They armed the people of the city, and it was bad. Mining and counter-mining happened, and on Christmas Eve, they undermined a part of the wall, and a whole section fell, and the soldiers rushed in. It said that.

56:24 Zingy tried to, to, to contain his men and, and after a few hours was able to, and, and the remaining Christians who lived there were, were allowed to keep their, their money and, and their lands and stuff like that. Um, so it definitely wasn't a civilizational thing, but there was some slaughter and a lot of people died in a panic as the, uh, Zingy's armies broke in, and... There was some slaughter.

56:49 There was some light slaughter.

56:52 Light slaughtering. Just very minimal slaughtering. It's still a war.

56:56 The streets only ran partially red. They ran pink with blood.

57:00 Yeah, there you go. That's right.

57:03 Anyway, yeah, Zingy takes half of the county up to the Euphrates, he couldn't take more because his army was, uh, thinned out at the time. And by the time he got near Turbessel, uh, Jocelyn, the second had been reinforced with, um, from, right.

57:22 He got some help from Jerusalem.

57:24 Yes, exactly.

57:25 Yeah. Yeah. They, they kind of drove him up, but this is, I mean, this is a huge thing for Ramon Hedin. Like he's, he's wiped out an entire crusader state. So now he's famous for that. He's being hailed as a great, uh, Islamic hero. Um, And this really establishes his bona fides, which, as I said, he'll only get to enjoy for a couple of years before his slave offs him in 1146. But it's still a feather in the Zengid cap, for sure. The thing that I like about the aftermath of this is that Raymond of Poitiers, who was the ruler of Antioch, who couldn't have given less of a shit what happened to Edessa. Like, really, it's obvious, did not care. Immediately after this, he sends a delegation back to Rome saying, oh, my God, they're

58:13 coming for us. You have to help us. Send help.

58:16 Like, dude, what.

58:17 Were you doing, man? Like, what were you doing while this was happening? So, yeah, that's funny.

58:22 Jerusalem called for aid and Jerusalem couldn't get there in time.

58:26 Right.

58:27 And in Antioch, they were like, man, look at the time. Our soldiers are engaged elsewhere.

58:33 That sucks to be you, I guess.

58:35 Sucks to suck.

58:36 Uh, and yeah, like Jocelyn, you know, he, he makes his attempt to take it back, but Nora Dean, I think is, uh, is able to, uh, to drive him off. And that's really where things sit at that point. Uh, for, uh, crusades to, uh, back to the hood or whatever. My face. That's too good. That's where we are folks.

59:00 Uh, next episode.

59:01 Yeah.

59:02 Uh, next episode is crusades 3. Let's talk about an ideological project. Yeah.

59:12 So before we move on to the next episode, I do think we've been talking about the Muslim side of things this entire episode. Now that we've gotten to the end of Edessa, I think it makes sense to reverse the lens for a few minutes and talk about the Crusaders in the aftermath, the Crusader states in the aftermath.

59:30 of the fall of Odessa. There are like a couple of things I think maybe to explore here briefly. Uh, one being the dysfunction within the crusader States that helped to create this mess, you know, in the sense that Jocelyn after he, uh, did his, uh, boneheaded error, uh, was unable to, to get help from Antioch was unable to get help from Tripoli because they're, they're just not getting along. Uh, so there's that. And then in the aftermath of Edessa, what does that do to the remaining Crusader states? Is that a wake-up call for the rest of the guys that, hey, we're actually in trouble here.

1:00:12 Maybe we need to stop squabbling with each other and work together. Do we see any sort of galvanizing effect? And is there a universe where Edessa doesn't happen and the politics of the Crusader states are much different And who knows how long everybody would survive under those circumstances.

1:00:30 I think it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Because I would say that on the whole, what we see is a wake-up call for the concept of Christendom writ large. I think if you asked Rome, Rome would tell you that this is a really obvious case wherein this means that we all need as Christians to be pitching together because we stand in serious... danger of losing the Holy lands altogether. Now, if you ask the individual crusader States, I think that, uh, they are a lot less interested in perhaps, uh, pooling resources because they still see themselves, um, in much in the way that I, I think that Norman, uh, States see each other back in Europe.

1:01:21 They see each other as rivals.

1:01:23 They see each other as potential places to get more land and more power from. And so, you know, it just all really depends on who's asking.

1:01:34 But I don't know. Luke, how do you feel?

1:01:36 Do you think that if Dessa hadn't fallen, we would see some sort of different response from the church?

1:01:43 I mean, I think that... if it does, it doesn't fall when it does. Let's just say Jocelyn, Jocelyn stays there and.

1:01:54 Just doesn't do anything. Like that's what's so simple about this. Like if he just didn't do anything, probably the city's fine because Imada Dean Zangie was not after Edessa. He was at war with the Artukans. Like this was a target of opportunity for him.

1:02:06 Yeah.

1:02:06 And so if you do that and Bernard of Clairvaux still dies in, 1153, I believe. I think that, as we'll talk about next episode, I think that a lot of how this turned out could be very different because Bernard has such an outsized importance on crusading theory and the crusader ideology that comes up. And so if Odessa stays around for a little while longer, I definitely think it could have um, a very different, uh, effect, uh, given that, um, you know, the, the guy who's going to be the, uh, the, the brains behind this, uh, and, and the heart as we'll talk about, cause he's a very poetic guy, but, uh, you like me for real. Well, a lot of preachers weren't as poetic back then, which seems kind of weird to, to me anyway, but like it, it,

1:03:16 As for or the way that they talk about Bernard makes it seem like it was a very like different kind of poet. It doesn't matter right now. Anyway, if it lasts beyond his death, I think you could have a very different thing, a very different look about it. However, I do think like at some point Odessa is going to be swallowed up by Aleppo. or Mosul. It's too exposed.

1:03:45 It's too exposed. It's between too many. And I mean, to be honest, as we talked about earlier in this episode, the reason that they turn away from Edessa is because Edessa isn't really important to Christendom in this way. It's not Antioch or Damascus or Jerusalem. Tripoli, by virtue of being sandwiched right in between Antioch and Jerusalem, it gets more protection, especially because it is a direct vassal to Jerusalem basically the whole time.

1:04:26 Which sort of feels like, to just expand that, it sort of feels like a symptom of the fact that these states couldn't work together. Because if you look at it strategically... If you're all, you know, fighting the holy war against the Muslims, Edessa's vulnerability also is a weapon, right? It's jutting into all of these principalities, like right there to be used as a place to go on the offensive.

1:04:54 But everybody's like happy with their little fiefdom, right? I'm like, I got mine. I don't really care about the rest of this. Let's just, you know, call it a day.

1:05:03 And that's why this response has to be directed from Rome. because in this case, Rome is a somewhat more neutral arbiter and can look at the situation from outside and not from petty parochial views on border regions and vassaldoms and all that sort of thing. So it's like... Yeah, I mean, as we'll talk about next time, you've got to have direction from Rome and from Western Europe in this case because the Crusader states are too parochial in that regard.

1:05:42 That's excellent foreshadowing. Thank you.

1:05:45 And I think, yeah, what we will generally find is one of the things that is true about the church, particularly at this point, I mean, they're very much, this is sort of the zenith of the church's powers in the medieval period. And what we are sort of seeing here is the fact that they are much more able to think about international diplomacy and statecraft and what it takes in order to run large enterprises such as this.

1:06:18 than the Crusaders themselves are. The Crusader states are much more looking at things from an individualistic level and what they can get out of the scheme, whereas the Church is playing a much larger and longer game. And fundamentally, these are highly trained legal minds, and they have... the way of learning and thinking about these things that the guys with CTE over simply, they simply lack.

1:06:49 So that's, what's coming up next time, folks.