Discover 18 surprising facts about Saladin, the medieval leader who recaptured Jerusalem—revealing his education, beliefs, and lesser-known personal life.

The Armies of the Crusades

The armies of the Crusades (11th-15th centuries CE), which saw Christians and Muslims struggle for control of territories in the Middle East and elsewhere, could involve over 100,000 men on either side who came from all over Europe to form the Christian armies and from all over western Asia and North Africa for the Muslim ones. The Christians had the advantage of disciplined and well-armoured knights while the Muslims often used light cavalry and archers to great effect. Over time both sides would learn from each other, adopting weapons and tactics to their own advantage. Huge resources were invested in the Crusades on both sides and while Christian armies were successful in Iberia and the Baltic, in the arena that mattered most, the Holy Land, it was perhaps the superior tactics and greater concern with logistics that ensured the armies of the various Muslim states eventually saw off the Christian threat.

European Armies

European armies throughout the Crusades were a mix of heavily armoured knights, light cavalry, bowmen, crossbowmen, slingers, and regular infantry armed with spears, swords, axes, maces and any other weapon of choice. Most knights swore allegiance to one particular leader and, as many Crusades were led by multiple nobles or even kings and emperors, any Crusade army was usually a cosmopolitan mix of nationalities and languages. Although an overall leader was typically appointed before the campaign, the power and wealth of the nobles involved meant that disputes over strategy were frequent. With the exception of the first two crusades (1095-1102 CE & 1147-1149 CE), the armies were almost entirely raised on a feudal basis - conscripted men from the lands of barons - with a significant section of mercenaries, usually infantry, added on. Noted mercenary groups in Europe came from Brittany and the Low Countries while Italian crossbowmen were highly regarded. When kings were involved they could call on conscription of any able-bodied man to serve the needs of the crown but these troops were poorly trained and equipped.

The transport of armies to where they were needed was mostly provided by the ships of the Italian states of Genoa, Pisa and Venice. Sometimes, these cities would also provide troops and ships for active service in the campaign itself. Naturally, an army in the field numbering tens of thousands of fighting men required a large number of non-combatant personnel such as baggage handlers, labourers, carpenters, cooks, and priests, while knights brought along their own personal squires and servants.

everything I learn about al-Afdal is like…..RIP dude… u never stood a chance

Since the antagonistic and politically dominant Umayyads were eager to sweep the [Karbala] affair from public memory, their sentiments against the commemoration of Husayn's death seem to have prevented any possibility of public commemorations without inciting a government purge. Moreover, there appear to have been efforts on the part of the Umayyad dynasty to actually neutralize the commemoration of Ashura by the Muslim populace. Historical sources even indicate that during the reign of the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan (r. 65-86/685-705), the general al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf al-Thaqafi went so far as to institute a special festive holiday on the day of ashura.* It is quite likely that al-Hajjaj's deliberate institution of a festive holiday on the exact anniversary of Husayn's gruesome killing and decapitation only a year years earlier was a deliberate attempt to counteract what had by then become an increasingly disturbing trend: annual gatherings mourning the killing of Husayn and his family at the hands of the Umayyads. The annual gatherings during Ashura appear to have kept the memory of Husayn alive not only in terms of commemorating the anniversary of his battle and subsequent death but also by perpetuating the oral transmission of accounts of the battle, the events leading up to it, and its aftermath. Considering the Umayyad's antipathy toward any remembrance of Husayn and the Umayyads' repression of ‘Alid movements, the lack of documented written accounts of the battle in this period is completely understandable. Moreover, that the few Umayyad historical sources that do exist involve only the history of the Prophet seems to indicate Umayyad attempts at self-legitimation, whereby Umayyads reinforced their on piety by stressing the life of the Prophet and simultaneously averted focus from the internecine confrontations that occurred after his death. [...] The historical sources indicate that Husayn's grave site was by the third/ninth century so popular and, apparently, the commemoration of his battle and death so moving to the masses of visitors that the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 232-47/847-61) destroyed the shrine of Husayn, razed Karbala, and banned visitation of the site on pain of death. Though we have only a few textual references to this in historical sources, the lack of elaboration in Abbasid-era texts actually speaks volumes. This is particularly startling, since much of the corpus of early Islamic sources was authored or compiled in third/ninth century Baghdad. As such, the significance of this act on the part of the Abbasid caliph cannot be overlooked. On one level, it shows the extent to which ritual visitation of Husayn's shrine at Karbala had developed by that time, a possible indication that ziyarah [pilgrimage] was by then already fully developed. On another level, it seems to indicate the above-mentioned discrepancy that developed in the different points of view between the Abbasids and the ‘Alids with regard to Karbala. Although the Abbasids interpreted Husayn's battle at Karbala as an anti-Umayyad battle, the destruction of Husayn's shrine and subsequent ban on visitation indicate that the commemoration rituals had by then likely acquired rebellious antigovernment connotations that were just as threatening to the new Abbasid dynasty as they were formerly to the Umayyads. *Al-Maqrizi notes that the Ayyubids reinstituted this festive practice in a deliberate attempt to replace the Fatimid commemoration of Ashura as a day of mourning.