Salahadin's army

[Rivkin]

As most of you probably aware in the thread "Movies ..." we have a heated discussion with Mr.Carter on who were the soldiers of Saladin - I stand behind the theory that they were turkish tribesman (seljuks and others), plus black and white mamluks, Mr.Carter stands behind the theory that they were arabs.

I think it's better to discuss this issue separately (it's not exactly movie related):
To bring some legitimacy to my point I have to cite:

To prove my point that the army at the time of Saladin was composed of turkish tribes and mamlukes, I can cite:

Ambroise on the Saladin's siege of Acre:
"With numberless rich pennons streaming
And flags and banners of fair seeming
Then thirty thousand Turkish troops
And more, ranged in well ordered groups,
........."

French Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae:
" the Templars in the rear came under a crushing Turkish attack"
Old French Continuation of William of Tyre (Lyon Eracles version) (first half of XIII century account on the battle of Hattin:
"Saladin asked, 'Prince Reynald, by your law, if you held me in your prison as I now hold you in mine, what would you do to me?' He replied, 'So help me God, I would cut off your head.' Saladin was greatly enraged at this most insolent reply and said, 'Pig, you are my prisoner and yet you answer me so arrogantly.' He took a sword in his hand and thrust it right through his body. The Mamluks who were standing nearby rushed at him and cut off his head. Saladin took some of his blood and sprinkled it on his own head in recognition that he had taken vengeance"

Encarta Encyclopedia on Africa:
"In 1171 a Kurdish military officer named Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, also known as Saladin, seized the Egyptian throne and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. His action was prompted by the threat to Egypt posed by Christian Crusaders from Western Europe who had seized control of much of Palestine (see Crusades). Saladin reformed the army, imported more Mamluks, and placed the land estates and the collection of taxes in the hands of successful Mamluk officers."

The siege of Acre according to Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs, :

" Acre was hemmed in on all sides, besieged by an infinite multitude of people, people from every Christian nation under heaven, people chosen from all the Christians, people well fitted for war and unremitting labor. The people had now besieged Acre for a very long time and they had been troubled by many afflictions, by constant labors, by shortages of food, and by many adversities, as has in part been pointed out above.

There appeared beyond them, furthermore, an innumerable army of Turks, who covered the mountains and valleys, bills, and plains. Here and there they fixed their tents, made of various patterns of flowing colors."

From De Expugatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum:
The Capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, 1187:

"The Turks unceasingly hurled rocks forcefully against the ramparts."

From William of Tyre:
Latin Disarray - Politics in the Latin Kingdom, 1150-1185:

"Shirkuh was succeeded by Saladin, the son of his brother, Najm-ad-Din. Saladin was a man of keen intelligence. He was vigorous in war and unusually generous. The first sign of the character of his rule came when he visited his lord, the Caliph, to Pay him the customary homage. It is said that when he entered he knocked the Caliph to the ground with a stick that he held in his hand and killed him. [note: William's account of the Caliph's death is not supported by other sources and it would appear that the Caliph Adid died a natural death on September 13, 1171, bringing the Fatimid caliphate to an end in Egypt.] He then put all of the Caliph's children to the sword, so that he might be subject to no superior but might rule as both caliph and sultan. He was afraid, since the Turks were hated by the people, that sometime when he went to visit the Caliph, the Caliph might order his throat to be slit. He therefore anticipated the Caliph's design and inflicted upon the unsuspecting Caliph the death which, it was said, the latter intended for him."

J. J. Saunders. A History of Medieval Islam.:

" The Fatimid regime had, in fact made a surprising recovery from what had seemed certain ruin. A dreadful six years' famine had paralysed Egypt from 1067 to 1072; the civil government virtually broke down; thousands fled from the country, and the misery of those who remained was heightened by the brutal lawlessness of the Turkish, Berber and Sudanese slave soldiery who killed and robbed in quest of food and plunder. The Fatimid Empire all but vanished."


Bernard Lewis. Race and Slavery in the Middle East:
"In recruiting barbarians from the "martial races" beyond the frontiers into their imperial armies, the Arabs were doing what the Romans and the Chinese had done centuries before them. In the scale of this recruitment, however, and the preponderant role acquired by these recruits in the imperial and eventually metropolitan forces, Muslim rulers went far beyond any precedent. As early as 766 a Christian clergyman writing in Syriac spoke of the "locust swarm" of unconverted barbarians -- Sindhis, Alans, Khazars, Turks, and others -- who served in the caliph's army."

"In Egypt, the manpower resources of Nubia were too good to neglect, and the traffic down the Nile continued to provide slaves for military as well as other purposes. Black soldiers served the various rulers of medieval Egypt, and under the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo black regiments, known as 'Abid al-Shira', "the slaves by purchase," formed an important part of the military establishment. They were particularly prominent in the mid-eleventh century, during the reign of al-Mustansir, when for a while the real ruler of Egypt was the caliph's mother, a Sudanese slave woman of remarkable strength of character. There were frequent clashes between black regiments and those of other races and occasional friction with the civil population. One such inci- dent occurred in 1021, when the Caliph al-Hakim sent his black troops against the people of Fustat (old Cairo), and the white troops joined forces to defend them. A contemporary chronicler of these events describes an orgy of burning, plunder, and rape. In 1062 and again in 1067 the black troops were defeated by their white colleagues in pitched battles and driven out of Cairo to Upper Egypt. Later they returned, and played a role of some importance under the last Fatimid caliphs.

With the fall of the Fatimids, the black troops again paid the price of their loyalty. Among the most faithful supporters of the Fatimid Caliphate, they were also among the last to resist its overthrow by Saladin, ostensibly the caliph's vizier but in fact the new master of Egypt. By the time of the last Fatimid caliph, al-'Adid, the blacks had achieved a position of power. The black eunuchs wielded great influence in the palace; the black troops formed a major element in the Fatimid army. It was natural that they should resist the vizier's encroachments. In 1169 Saladin learned of a plot by the caliph's chief black eunuch to remove him, allegedly in collusion with the Crusaders in Palestine. Saladin acted swiftly; the offender was seized and decapitated and replaced in his office by a white eunuch. The other black eunuchs of the caliph's palace were also dismissed. The black troops in Cairo were infuriated by this summary execution of one whom they regarded as their spokesman and defender. Moved, according to a chronicler, by "racial solidarity" (jinsiyya), they prepared for battle. In two hot August days, an estimated fifty thousand blacks fought against Saladin's army in the area between the two palaces, of the caliph and the vizier."