In December of 1182, during a truce between Salah ad-Din and the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, pirate ships manned by an estimated 3,000 cut-throats suddenly started terrorizing trade and pilgrims in the Red Sea. It soon became clear that, to the astonishment of all, they were manned by “Franks” — that is Latin Christians. As such, they became the first Christian ships — lawful or otherwise — to be seen in the Red Sea in over 500 years. These became known as "The Red Sea Raids" and have long been used as examples of Christian perfidy -- or rather as evidence of the complete degenerate nature of one particular Christian baron: Reynald de Châtillon. Today I take a closer look at these "Red Sea Raids" and argues they were not mere piracy but intelligent strategy.
Because there had been no hostile ships
in the Red Sea for five centuries, the Muslim rulers of Egypt and Arabia had no
warships in the Red Sea to deal with the pirate threat. As a result, within a
very short space of time these ships had completely disrupted the rich and
vital trade between Egypt and India. Politically more dangerous: they had also disrupted
the pilgrim traffic that converged on Jedda from all over North Africa for the
final leg of the haj to Mecca.
The Frankish pirates first seized the
town of Aidhab on the Egyptian coast, a major embarkation port for pilgrims
from North Africa. Here they sacked the unwalled town, captured large stores
intended to provision pilgrims, and sent raiders inland to seize a caravan. The
fleet next crossed the Red Sea and sent a raiding party ashore between Medina
and Mecca, apparently looking for rich and undefended caravans, before for heading
for al-Haura, north of Jedda. During a sojourn in the Red Sea lasting about
three months, they succeeded in capturing roughly 20 merchant or pilgrim ships.
They plundered their prizes, then burned the slower ones, while converting the
faster vessels into auxiliaries for their own raiding activities. The number of
unarmed merchants and pilgrims, men, women and children, abused, slaughtered or
enslaved in the process went unrecorded but was undoubtedly significant. By
early February 1183, however, their luck had run out.
The governor of Egypt, Salah ad-Din’s
brother al-Adil, responded to the threat rapidly and vigorously. He ordered a
portion of the Egyptian fleet dragged across Sinai and launched in the Red Sea.
This Egyptian squadron began operating in mid-January 1183, and roughly two
weeks later caught up with and trapped the Frankish pirates in the harbor of
the Arabian port of al-Haura, north of Jedda. Unable to break out of the
harbor, the Franks abandoned their ships, captives and treasure to flee inland.
Five days later they were tracked down and caught in a narrow ravine. There most
of them were slaughtered, but 170 surrendered and were taken prisoner.
Not unsurprisingly, Salah ad-Din took a
very dim view of the activities of these raiders. Although Sharia Law prohibits
the execution of prisoners who voluntarily surrender, Salah ad-Din nevertheless
ordered the execution of the men involved in the Red Sea raids. Arab sources
site the need to eliminate enemies who had gained valuable knowledge of how to
navigate in the Red Sea, but the desire to make an example of these men and
satisfy public outrage probably also played a role in the Sultan’s decision. In
any case, the prisoners were dispersed across Salah ad-Din’s empire for public
execution in as many towns and cities as possible in order to “publicize [Saladin's] victory and exemplify his justice,” according to Bernard Hamilton in The Leper King and his Heirs (Cambridge
University Press: 2000, p. 183). Two of the prisoners were singled out for a
special punishment: they were taken to Mecca, where they were slaughtered like
sacrificial animals in front of the thousands of pilgrims come for the haj.
No account of the raids spares a word of
sympathy for the pirates. They preyed upon unarmed pilgrims and merchants
evidently only for their own enrichment. Arab accounts stress the terror struck
in the hearts of pilgrims accustomed to safe travel, and the psychological
impact of these raids must have been similar to the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2000. An entire region, long viewed as a safe — indeed
invulnerable — Muslim homeland, was suddenly the scene of appalling and
“unprecedented” acts of terror. Furthermore, this sudden sense of insecurity
was compounded by the fact that the raid between Medina and Mecca led many
Muslims to believe that the objective of the attack had been not so much
plunder as the destruction of the tomb of the Prophet Mohammad. Thus, in
addition to the very real threat to innocent people came the added threat to a
sacred site of incalculable religious significance.
The unsavory character of these raids
has led most historians and commentators to condemn them in the harshest terms.
They are described as acts of perfidy and piracy, and usually depicted as the
brainchild of the notoriously avaricious, unscrupulous and brutal Reynald de
Châtillon, the lord of the crusader barony of Oultrejourdain. Châtillon was infamous for attacking and
sacking the Christian island of Cyprus, for torturing the Patriarch of Antioch
to extract treasure from him, and later for breaking truces to attack
caravans. He would eventually meet his
just end at Salah ad-Din’s own hand following the Battle of Hattin, when the
Sultan personally executed him.
While there is little doubt that Châtillon
was the mastermind behind these raids, Hamilton points out that the launch of
five warships manned by three thousand men was beyond the resources of Châtillon
alone. The ships could not have been built in Châtillon’s desert lordship, crouching
as it did along the Dead Sea. Instead, the ships had almost certainly been
constructed in a port with a shipbuilding industry and tradition such as Sidon. They have to have been disassembled and
transported on the backs of camels to the Gulf of Aqaba. Here they could only
have been reassembled into seaworthy craft by highly trained shipwrights, who
again could not have come from Oultrejourdain. And they would have needed
pilots familiar with the Red Sea, almost certainly men from the Sultan’s own
territories. In short, Châtillon may have been the instigator of the raids or
the man immediately responsible for them (although he was personally involved
in a land siege of Aqaba and did not personally participate in the raids), but
almost certainly he was not acting alone.
If he was not acting alone, then these
raids were not just another act of banditry and lawless aggression on the part
of a “rogue” baron. Rather, they served another purpose for a wider
constituency, and that purpose cannot have been plunder alone. After all, only
the pirates themselves enjoyed the fruits of their "labor" — both the three
months of plunder, rape and pillage, and slaughter or execution when their luck
ran out. Since the pirates themselves were even less in a position to finance
and organize the operation, someone else had to be behind it — behind Châtillon.
So who might that have been and what was their real purpose?
Hamilton argues that the raids served a
clear strategic purpose: namely discrediting Salah ad-Din as the “defender
of Islam.” Furthermore, he notes, the timing of these raids underlines this
purpose. The Red Sea Raids occurred during one of Salah ad-Din’s campaigns
against the Sunni Muslim city of Mosul.
In short, while Salah ad-Din was killing his fellow Muslims in a war
whose sole purpose was the expansion of his personal empire, innocent Muslim
pilgrims and merchants were left unprotected at the mercy of murderous Frankish
(Christian) marauders.
The instigators of the Red Sea raids may
even have hoped that the raids would force Salah ad-Din to break-off his
operations against Mosul and return to Egypt to deal with the raiders himself.
This would have helped Mosul retain its independence and delayed (if not
prevented) Salah ad-Din from further expanding his empire, wealth and power. In
short, the most obvious immediate beneficiary of these raids was the ruler of
Mosul. Given Châtillon’s mercenary bent and his willingness to attack even
fellow Christians on Cyprus, it is not entirely inconceivable that he might
have been willing to take gold from Muslim paymasters. Furthermore, a Mosul
connection would help explain where the pilots for the ships came from.
However, northern Syria is not famous for
its shipwrights and sailors, and this fact suggests another architect for the
raids, namely the King of Jerusalem. King Baldwin IV may have hoped the raids
would both preserve the independence of Mosul and discredit Salah ad-din in the
Muslim world. He almost certainly hoped the raids would undermine the Sultan's authority in Egypt, which was most
directly affected by the “terrorists” in their “backyard.” These seem to be
perfectly legitimate policy objectives for an embattled kingdom, particularly
since the king found (in the shape of Reynald de Châtillon) a man with no
reputation to lose and no scruples about carrying out the attacks. The
Christian king’s conscience about attacks on unarmed pilgrims and traders was
undoubtedly eased by the knowledge that nothing Châtillon’s pirates did was
truly unprecedented; Muslim pirates had preyed upon Christian merchantmen and
pilgrims in the Mediterranean for centuries.
Whether the Kingdom of Jerusalem
ultimately profited or lost as a result of the raids is more debatable. Hamilton
argues that Salah ad-Din lost credibility, while most historians argue that the
raids only “hardened” Muslim attitudes towards the crusaders, and united Islam
against the crusader states. (See, for example, W.B. Bartlett in Downfall of the Crusader Kingdom or
Andrew Jotischky in Crusading and the
Crusader States.) It is, however, hard to see how much more “hardened”
Islam could be than it was already under Salah ad-Din. He had, after all, already
declared his intention to push the crusaders into the sea and obliterate their
states.
Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.
She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.
She
is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction
and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total
of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the
founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at:
http://crusaderkingdoms.com
The Red Sea Raids and the political and military environment that led up to them is described in award-winning:
A divided kingdom, a united enemy, and the struggle for Jerusalem.
