Hawting - Muslims, Mongols and Crusaders

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Editorial matter 2005 G.R.Hawting Contributions The School of Oriental and African Studies

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One notable feature of the period in the history of the Middle East with which the articles collected in this volume are concerned is the migration into the region, or its invasion, by peoplesTurks, Franks and Mongolsoriginating outside it. These groups ruled over and settled among an already existing population which was diverse but by this time probably predominantly Muslim, and Arabic or Persian speaking. It may be useful to begin with a summary account before proceeding to reflect on the way in which academic scholarship on the period has developed.

During the ninth and tenth centuries, Turks became the most important element in the armies of the eastern Islamic world. Some achieved positions of power to the extent that they were able to establish and maintain dynastic states independent of the authority of the caliphs in Baghdad. Frequently, the Baghdad caliphs were little more than figureheads, with real power in the hands of Turkish generals and commanders.

The Turks had first come into the Islamic world as individual slaves, selected for training as soldiers and conversion to Islam, to be followed by manumission and service in the armies of the caliph or other powerful figures. Islam had not yet spread among the Turkish tribes of Central Asia and they were still legitimate targets for Muslim raiders and slave traders, their reputation as fighters high. The institution of the slave soldier (ghulm, mamlk) was to remain a characteristic feature of Muslim armies in pre-modern times, and so long as there were still non-Muslim Turkish populations they were to remain a favoured source of military manpower.

During the second half of the tenth century, however, Islam began to spread among some groups of Turkish tribes in and beyond what were then the eastern border regions of the Islamic world. The reasons for, and the nature of this process of Islamization, are to some extent obscure but, given the earlier willingness of groups of Turks to adopt religions associated with the settled cultures with which they were in contact, not too difficult to envisage. One of the groups which became Muslim at this time was that of the Oghuz tribes, and in the first half of the eleventh century they began to migrate west under the leadership of the Seljuk family.

By 1055, they had won control over most of Persia and Iraq, including Baghdad, the residence of the caliphs who were the nominal leaders of Sunni Islam. Subsequently, groups of Turks continued to move west into Syria, over most of which they established control in the 1070s, and northwest into Asia Minor. There, their victory at Manzikert near Lake Van in 1071 over the Byzantine army led by the emperor Romanus Diogenes opened up Asia Minor for the first time to Islamization and Turkification. That region, before Manzikert largely Christian and Greek speaking, is now the heart of the country known as Turkey.

These free Turkish migrants into the Islamic Middle East came as Muslims, and their progress from Central Asia to Baghdad and beyond was relatively slow. This enabled them, or at least their leaders, to adapt and assimilate to the predominantly Perso-Islamic culture of the eastern regions of the Muslim world but without losing their own Turkish identity. The Christian Franks who came as crusaders from western Europe and who arrived in Syria at the end of the eleventh century, in contrast, had no interest in assimilation, although inevitably during the nearly 200 years of their presence in the region they had to adapt to many of the features of the local way of life.