Battle of the Blacks | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Black and Armenian troops of the Fatimid army | Saladin's Syrian forces | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Unknown |
Saladin Turan-Shah |
The Battle of the Blacks or Battle of the Slaves was a conflict in Cairo, on 21–23 August 1169,[1] between the black African units of the Fatimid army and other pro-Fatimid elements, and the Sunni Syrian troops loyal to the Fatimid vizier, Saladin.
Saladin's rise to power and sidelining of the Fatimid caliph, al-Adid, antagonized the traditional Fatimid elites, including the army regiments, as the new vizier relied chiefly on the Kurdish and Turkish cavalry troops that had come with him from Syria. According to the medieval sources, which are biased towards Saladin, this conflict led to an attempt by the palace majordomo, Mu'tamin al-Khilafa, to enter into an agreement with the Crusaders and jointly attack Saladin's forces in order to get rid of him. Saladin learned of this conspiracy, and had Mu'tamin executed on 20 August. Modern historians have questioned the veracity of this report, suspecting that it may have been invented to justify Saladin's move against the Fatimid troops.
This event provoked the uprising of the black troops of the Fatimid army, reportedly numbering some 50,000 men, who were joined by Armenian soldiers and the populace of Cairo, on the next day. The clashes lasted for two days, as the Fatimid troops initially attacked the vizieral palace, only to be driven to the large square between the Fatimid Great Palaces. The black troops and their allies appeared to be winning until al-Adid came out publicly against them, and Saladin ordered the burning of their quarters, located south of Cairo outside the city wall, where the blacks' families had been left behind. Thereupon the blacks broke and retreated in disorder south, until they were encircled near the Bab Zuwayla gate and surrendered. Despite promises of safety, they were attacked and almost annihilated by Saladin's brother Turan-Shah.
The defeat of the Fatimid troops was a watershed moment in the history of Egypt and the Muslim world, as it removed the main military support of the Fatimid regime and consolidated Saladin's position as the de facto ruler of Egypt. This culminated in the restoration of Sunni dominance over Egypt and the deposition of the Fatimid dynasty in September 1171, and the establishment of Saladin's own Ayyubid dynasty in its place. Some black troops remained in service for a few years, but most who survived the massacre of 1169 fled to Upper Egypt, where they joined unsuccessful pro-Fatimid uprisings in subsequent years.
Saladin's rise to power in Egypt
In the 1160s, the declining Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt was faced with invasions by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, domestic turmoil, and the intervention by the powerful Sunni ruler of Syria, Nur al-Din, who sent his general Shirkuh into Egypt.[2][3] The complex political and military maneouvring that followed ended in January 1169 with the appointment of Shirkuh as vizier by the Fatimid caliph, al-Adid. When Shirkuh died shortly after, on 23 March 1169 his nephew Saladin was chosen as a compromise candidate to take his place.[4][5]
Saladin's position was far from secure. His troops numbered a few thousand and their upkeep was uncertain. He could count only on the loyalty of the Kurdish commanders affiliated with Shirkuh, whereas his Turkish commanders, envious of his rapid rise, might defect.[6] At the same time, he was still a subordinate of Nur al-Din, and himself a Sunni leading a Sunni army, at the head of a nominally Isma'ili state. His intention to abolish the Fatimid regime was evident, and the various factions and power groups within the Fatimid establishment, especially within the palace, were bound to oppose him.[7] The Fatimid caliphs, although politically virtually powerless, were also important symbolic figures, sources of legitimacy, and in command of enormous financial resources.[8]
This obliged Saladin to tread carefully at first, making a serious effort to establish good relations with al-Adid and promote a public image of harmony between the two.[9][10] This displeased Nur al-Din, who mistrusted Saladin's motives and refused to recognize his new position.[11] Nevertheless, in order to safeguard the Syrian position in Egypt and guard against yet another Crusader invasion, on 3 July 1169 Nur al-Din sent new troops to Egypt, under command of Saladin's older brother, Turan-Shah. They arrived in Cairo on 29 July.[10][12]
Mu'tamin's conspiracy
In the meantime, Saladin gradually began distancing himself from the Fatimid regime: he introduced the name of Nur al-Din in the Friday prayer after that of Caliph al-Adid, relegated the latter to a ceremonial role and even publicly humiliated him by entering the palace on horseback (hitherto a privilege of the caliph), and began openly favouring his Syrian troops, awarding them military fiefs (iqṭāʿ) for their upkeep, while withdrawing similar fiefs from the Fatimid commanders.[13][14][15]
These moves aroused the opposition of the Fatimid elites, who rallied behind the black African majordomo of the caliphal palaces, Mu'tamin al-Khilafa.[16][17] Mu'tamin made contact with the Crusaders, inviting them to invade Egypt. Saladin would be forced to confront them, leaving Cairo. This would allow Mu'tamin and his supporters to mount a coup to depose him, and the strike at Saladin's forces from the rear while he was facing the Crusaders.[18][19] For this purpose, Mu'tamin reportedly used a Jewish messenger, who aroused suspicion in Saladin's men because his new slippers clashed with the rags he was wearing otherwise. He was arrested, and Mu'tamin's letters to the Crusaders discovered. Under torture, the messenger revealed his master's machinations.[20][21]
Saladin was informed of the conspiracy, but did not act immediately. Knowing that his messenger had been intercepted, Mu'tamin for a while was cautious and did not leave the safety of the palace. On 20 August, however, he finally felt safe enough to leave Cairo for his country estate. Immediately Mu'tamin was seized, killed, and his severed head brought to Saladin.[16][22][23]
Uprising and defeat of the black troops
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/The_story_of_Cairo_%281906%29_%2814782234955%29.jpg/280px-The_story_of_Cairo_%281906%29_%2814782234955%29.jpg)
At the news of Mu'tamin's murder, the black troops stationed in Cairo, who had regarded Mu'tamin as a sort of representative and champion of their interests, rose in revolt on the next day.[23][22][24] Black Africans (al-Sudān, also termed ʿabīd al-shirāʾ, 'bought slaves'[25]) had been long employed in Egypt as soldiers. By this time they reportedly numbered 50,000 men and formed the mainstay of the Fatimid army's infantry, along with Armenian troops.[21][26] The ensuing battle was bloody, with high casualties on both sides, and lasted for two days.[16][17]
The black troops gathered in the square between the caliphal palaces and the palace of the vizier (the Dar al-Wizara), and were joined by other Fatimid troops and ordinary Cairenes.[16][22][24][23] When Turan-Shah came to notify Saladin of their enemies assembling, Saladin reportedly adopted a passive attitude, waiting to see who the caliph would support. M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson suggest that this was a tactical decision, leaving the immediate fighting to Turan-Shah while he kept himself in reserve.[27] Together, the blacks and their allies attacked the Dar al-Wizara, but were stopped by Turan-Shah's troops, while Saladin hastily brought in his newly raised Salahiyah regiment into the fray. The clash moved to the large square between the caliphal palaces, the Bayn al-Qasrayn, where the blacks were joined by the feared Armenian archers, while Caliph al-Adid watched from a pavilion on a tower of the palace walls.[16][23]
Initially, the rebel troops seemed to prevail, pushing the Syrians back. The palace troops began firing stones and arrows on Saladin's soldiers as well, although the sources say that it is unclear whether this happened at al-Adid's command or not. Believing that the caliph had turned against the Syrians, Turan-Shah ordered his naphtha archers (naffatin) to target the caliph's pavilion. Before they could start firing, a messenger from al-Adid appeared at the gate of the tower where the pavilion stood, and loudly shouted out to Turan-Shah, encouraging him to fight against the "slave dogs" until they were driven out of the country. The black troops, who believed they had been fighting in support of the caliph, were dismayed by this public betrayal, and lost heart.[16][24][28]
At the same time, Saladin sent some of his troops to the quarter of al-Mansura ('the Victorious'), south of the Bab Zuwayla gate, where the blacks had their barracks. There they set fire to the quarter, and attacked the blacks' women and children. At news of this attack on their defenceless families, the blacks broke and began retreating to the Bab Zuwayla.[24][29][30] Saladin's troops occupied the side streets, leaving only the main thoroughfare free for them and preventing them from flanking their pursuers.[31] The blacks managed to offer only occasional resistance in isolated houses, which the pursuing Syrians often simply torched.[30] Some Armenian archers tried to stem the Syrians' advance, but their barracks, located near the Fatimid palaces, were likewise torched, killing them all.[30][32]
The blacks did not manage to escape the city: at the market of the sword sellers, some 550 metres (1,800 ft) north of Bab Zuwayla, they found themselves hemmed in from all sides. Driven at last to Bab Zuwayla, they found its doors closed, and agreed to submit. Saladin agreed, provided they left Cairo, and granted them safe passage to Giza on the other side of the Nile. There the blacks were attacked and killed by Turan-Shah.[33][30][34]
Aftermath
The conflict, known in Arabic chronicles as the "Battle of the Blacks" or "Battle of the Slaves",[21][24] was, according to the historian Yaacov Lev, was "[t]he single most important event in Saladin's rise to power in Egypt".[35] Saladin now set about taking control of the administrative machinery and installing his own Syrian followers and his immediate family in critical positions.[17][36] Mu'tamin was replaced by a white eunuch, Saladin's confidant Baha al-Din Qaraqush, and all the other black eunuchs were dismissed from palace service.[37][38][23] Saladin's men seized the properties of the expelled black and Armenian troops, both in Cairo as well as across Egypt.[33][39] Saladin began billeting his own officers and troops in the vacated properties of Cairo,[33][38] while the black quarter of al-Mansura was levelled to the ground and later converted into a garden.[33][39]
Al-Adid's unclear role in the clashes rendered him suspect in the eyes of Saladin's commanders, but for the moment he was not harmed. At any rate, deprived of any loyal troops, he was now completely at Saladin's mercy, and closely watched over in his own palace by Qaraqush.[40] Saladin's victory paved the way for a gradual but inexorable assault on the Fatimid regime itself, that spanned the years 1170–1171. The Shi'a form of the call to prayer was changed back to the Sunni form on 25 August 1170, and public lecture sessions of the Isma'ili creed abolished. Sunnis were appointed to all judicial posts held by Isma'ilis, including that of the chief qāḍī.[41][42] This policy culminated on 10 September 1171, when the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliph, al-Mustadi, instead of al-Adid's, was proclaimed in the Friday prayer.[43][44] The Fatimid regime was at an end, and al-Adid's death only a few days later, on 13 September 1171, after a brief—and possibly not coincidental—illness, only sealed its demise.[45][46][47] After al-Adid's death, the still sizeable Isma'ili community was persecuted by Saladin's new Ayyubid regime, while the members of the Fatimid family were placed under arrest in the palace, and later in the Citadel of Cairo, where they lived out their days.[48]
Only a fraction of the black troops escaped, fleeing to Upper Egypt. Saladin tasked his uncle, Shihab al-Din al-Harimi, with pursuing them and killing them.[33][49] Over the following months, Saladin pursued his phasing-out of the Fatimid army units, which provoked further resistance: Fatimid troops rose in revolt in Qus under their commander, Abbas ibn Shadhi, while other areas of Upper Egypt were in turmoil due to the restiveness of the Bedouin and the presence of fugitive black soldiery.[50]
At least some of the black and Armenian troops may have been retained in service, however, or to have been left to live in and near Cairo, as they are mentioned during the abortive pro-Fatimid conspiracy of 1173, when the conspirators hoped to use them to seize Cairo in Saladin's absence on campaign against the Crusaders.[51][52][53] Following the discovery of the affair and the execution of its leaders, these troops were banished to Upper Egypt. There they soon joined the uprising of the governor of Aswan, Kanz al-Dawla, who marched on Cairo with the intention of restoring the Fatimids. The rebels were defeated in September 1174 by Saladin's brother, al-Adil.[54][55]
Assessment in historiography
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Although the medieval sources are unanimous in reporting Mu'tamin's conspiracy, modern historians are skeptical that the conspiracy took place as described. Both M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, as well as Lev, point out that the revelation of the messenger by his mismatched sandals is a common literary device, and the moment, following the arrival of Turan-Shah's reinforcements, was clearly opportune to settle accounts with Saladin's enemies.[22][19] Lev is convinced that whole story was nothing more than a literary invention by the later historians, who favoured Saladin, to not only justify getting rid of Mu'tamin and the black troops, but even present it as a purely defensive act on Saladin's behalf.[56] Indeed, one of Saladin's chief officials and apologists, Qadi al-Fadil, legitimized the suppression of the black troops and their Armenian allies by couching it in religious terms, as a struggle against infidels (the Armenians) and pagans (the blacks).[57] Likewise, Lev points out that the account of the conspiracy of 1173, which rests chiefly on a letter by the same Qadi al-Fadl, is suspect. Qadi al-Fadil repeats the motif of a collusion with the Crusaders, which is not found in the other major contemporary account, that of Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, while at the same time, according to Lev, the exile of rebellious pro-Fatimid troops to an already restive region such as Upper Egypt does not make sense.[58]
The Battle of the Blacks has also been differently interpreted by modern scholars. Thus Andrew S. Ehrenkreutz, in his 1972 biography of Saladin, used the events to highlight his portrait of the Ayyubid sultan as a "ruthless careerist" (in the words of Michael Brett).[59][60] Jere L. Bacharach emphasized that the opposition of the blacks to Saladin was not driven so much by loyalty to the Fatimid dynasty, but by the fact that Saladin's army represented a different military system, reliant exclusively on cavalry, in which they had no role to play. As Bacharach comments, after the disbandment of the black regiments, "a standing, salaried infantry would return to Egypt only with the Ottomans in 923/1517".[61]
Bernard Lewis noted that while the clash did not have a racial background, its subsequent treatment by pro-Saladin chroniclers carries racial undertones, emphasizing the arrogance and indiscipline of the black troops, who had frequently been involved in political intrigues in past decades and now received their just punishment.[24] Imad al-Din, for example, writes that "whenever [the blacks] rose against a vizier they killed him", and that "they thought that all white men were pieces of fat and that all black men were coals".[22] Lewis also points out that while white troops of the Fatimid army were incorporated into Saladin's forces, the black ones were not. Even in the succeeding Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo, blacks were employed in the army only as menial slaves, and a strict policy of segregation with the free white soldiers was in place.[62]
References
- ^ Lyons & Jackson 1982, pp. 34–36.
- ^ Brett 2017, pp. 288–291.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 261–280.
- ^ Brett 2017, p. 291.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 280–283.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 70.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 70–71.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 71.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 72.
- ^ a b Halm 2014, p. 284.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 72–73.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 76.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 284–285.
- ^ Lev 1999, p. 82.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 72–75.
- ^ a b c d e f Halm 2014, p. 285.
- ^ a b c Brett 2017, p. 292.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 76–77.
- ^ a b Lev 1999, pp. 49–50.
- ^ Lev 1999, p. 50.
- ^ a b c Bacharach 1981, p. 487.
- ^ a b c d e Lyons & Jackson 1982, p. 34.
- ^ a b c d e Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 77.
- ^ a b c d e f Lewis 1990, p. 67.
- ^ Brett 2017, pp. 171–172.
- ^ Brett 2017, pp. 269–270, 292.
- ^ Lyons & Jackson 1982, pp. 34–35.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 77–78.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 285–286.
- ^ a b c d Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 78.
- ^ Lyons & Jackson 1982, p. 35.
- ^ Lev 1999, p. 108 (note 2).
- ^ a b c d e Halm 2014, p. 286.
- ^ Lyons & Jackson 1982, pp. 35–36.
- ^ Lev 1999, p. 49.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 82.
- ^ Lewis 1990, p. 50.
- ^ a b Lev 1999, p. 84.
- ^ a b Ehrenkreutz 1972, p. 79.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 79, 85.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 87–89.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 289–290.
- ^ Halm 2014, p. 290.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 89–92.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 290–291.
- ^ Brett 2017, p. 294.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 92–94.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 291–292, 294–299.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 78–79.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 81–82.
- ^ Lev 1999, pp. 86–87.
- ^ Halm 2014, pp. 295–296.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 112–115.
- ^ Halm 2014, p. 297.
- ^ Ehrenkreutz 1972, pp. 125–126.
- ^ Lev 1999, pp. 49–50, 82–84.
- ^ Lev 1999, p. 141.
- ^ Lev 1999, pp. 87–94.
- ^ Bacharach 1981, p. 488.
- ^ Brett 2017, p. 288.
- ^ Bacharach 1981, pp. 488–489.
- ^ Lewis 1990, pp. 67–68.
Sources
- Bacharach, Jere L. (1981). "African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The Cases of Iraq (869–955) and Egypt (868–1171)". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 13 (4): 471–495. doi:10.1017/S0020743800055860. JSTOR 162910.
- Brett, Michael (2017). The Fatimid Empire. The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-4076-8.
- Ehrenkreutz, Andrew S. (1972). Saladin. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-87395-095-X.
- Halm, Heinz (2014). Kalifen und Assassinen: Ägypten und der vordere Orient zur Zeit der ersten Kreuzzüge, 1074–1171 [Caliphs and Assassins: Egypt and the Near East at the Time of the First Crusades, 1074–1171] (in German). Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-66163-1.
- Lev, Yaacov (1999). Saladin in Egypt. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-11221-9.
- Lewis, Bernard (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506283-3.
- Lyons, Malcolm Cameron; Jackson, D. E. P. (1982). Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-31739-8.