The Accursed Tower Read online

  HOWEVER IT HAPPENED, the authorities and established citizens of Acre were aghast. They instantly saw the potential consequences. Word soon reached Qalawun in Cairo, via spies, followed by visible proof. Relatives of the massacred Muslims carried the blood-soaked clothes to Cairo and held them aloft at communal prayers in the mosques. These gruesome relics had an electrifying effect. Qalawun was outraged. In Christian eyes, he had been given a welcome pretext for something he had long intended: “Since the sultan had already planned to harm the city of Acre anyway, he immediately sent his messengers to the lords of Acre, to make it clear that he had a truce with the Christians, and that they had broken it and killed his Saracen peasants,” the Templar wrote. “And he required them to make amends and bring to justice those who had done this.”18 The Templar’s reading suggests what the authorities in Acre evidently believed: that in the wake of Tripoli, Qalawun’s intentions were clear and premeditated. He had both religious and economic reasons for snuffing out the last remnants of the crusader state. Whereas when the truce was signed in 1283, he had expressed the advantages of trade through Acre, now he no longer needed it. The Mamluks had taken both Antioch and Tripoli; Acre remained the sole significant obstacle on the land route along the coast of Palestine. Qalawun already had trading treaties with Genoa, Aragon, and Venice that would comfortably channel Western goods back to Alexandria, away from the Christian port where Muslim merchants were unable to trade safely anyway. There was every reason to destroy Acre.

  Back in Acre, young Amalric gathered the leading figures to discuss the crisis. It was widely understood to be a disaster. How to explain it to the sultan and what response to make? There was evidently no appetite for handing over the culprits. Guillaume de Beaujeu suggested an alternative. The Templar, who was not present, gave a hearsay account of the discussions:

  Among the many words spoken between them, my lord the master of the Temple counselled that they should take all the prisoners held in the royal prison and in those of the Temple, the Hospital and of the Pisans and Venetians, who were condemned to die for their crimes, and say that these were the men who had broken the truce and killed the Saracens. “And thus, by the justice that will strike them—since they are due to die anyway—this will appease the sultan and will check him from harming us.” There were some who agreed with this plan, but many others who did not agree at all, and so it turned out that nothing was done, and they framed a reply to the sultan that seemed appropriate. According to what I could learn, they sent word to the sultan that the crusaders who had done the deed were foreigners from overseas, and not subject to their jurisdiction, who they were unable to lay their hands on.19

  Beaujeu’s plan to send Christian prisoners to die at Qalawun’s hands could not be stomached. Other sources suggested that even less plausible excuses were advanced. The deaths were the result of a drunken brawl involving both Christians and Muslims. Or, a Christian woman had been caught by her husband in a sexual liaison with a Muslim man; he had killed both of them and a riot broke out. Or again, Muslims themselves had started a brawl. To the sultan, all these explanations were utterly unsatisfactory. The inability of Acre’s rulers to act decisively or control people in their own territory merely highlighted the city’s weakness.

  But had the kingdom of Jerusalem broken the truce? The mere presence of the paltry crusading expedition might have breached it on a technicality: the terms demanded that in the event that “one of the Frankish maritime kings or others should move by sea with the intention of bringing harm to our lord the Sultan,” the authorities of Acre were bound to provide two months’ notice, which they had failed to do.20 One man who must have had a shrewd idea of the treaty’s stipulations was Beaujeu himself. He had been a signatory to the original document in 1283.

  In Cairo, they were also busy scanning the truce’s very flexible wording, though it is unclear which version—that of 1283 or the recently re-signed one of 1289. Whichever it was, the truce constituted a sacrosanct and unbreachable contract that Qalawun had sworn by the most sacred formula in the three-times-three names of God:

  By Allah by Allah by Allah, in the name of Allah of Allah of Allah, the witness being Allah Allah Allah, great and pursuing, inflicting and bestowing, constructive and destructive, aware of what is revealed and what is concealed, of the secret and the manifest, merciful, forgiving; by the Qur’an and He who revealed it and him to whom it was revealed, Muhammad son of Abdallah, God bless and save him, and by all that is stated therein, chapter by chapter, verse by verse; by the month of Ramadan: I bind myself to uphold this blessed truce agreed between myself and the Commune of Acre and the grand masters who live there.21

  These words imposed the severest standards of justice on the sultan. At the same time, it seemed likely that Qalawun was keen to find justification for a favorable answer; his reasons were not just the pursuit of jihad. Acre remained an important slave-trading center as well as a place for purchasing arms. It sat astride the north-south trade routes that linked Alexandria to ports further north and the vital supply of military slaves from the Black Sea. The threat to trade from the murder of merchants was extremely serious. Qalawun also called a meeting with his council of emirs and secretaries to discuss the matter.

  Surprisingly, many of the emirs believed that the terms had not been breached—that the incident was the result of accidental brawls—and that they were bound by sacred oath to uphold it. Possibly they were also wearied of war and the burdens it imposed. Qalawun was evidently not pleased. He called in Fath al-Din, his chief of the Bureau of Correspondence, on whom fell the burden of delivering a more favorable opinion. The drafting of Mamluk treaties was a family affair: waiting in the wings were his father, Muhyi al-Din, evidently the author of the original truce document, and his nephew Shafi ibn Ali, who left an eyewitness account of the decision-making process. Fath al-Din had been asked,

  “Is there any scope (for action) in the truce?”

  Fath al-Din glanced at it, and did not find any scope, so then he fetched me and fetched its composer, his father Muhyi al-Din, and gave us the picture, reading the truce to us. His father said: “There is no scope in it, that is the situation.”

  I did not speak. Fath al-Din turned to me and said, “What do you say?”

  Shafi proceeded cautiously, weighing his words to divine the sultan’s wishes.

  And I said, “We are with the sultan. If he prefers annulment, then it is annulled. And if he prefers it to go on then it continues.” So Fath al-Din spoke to me, the essence of which was: “The emirs have grown overbearing and lazy; the sultan prefers annulling it.”

  I said to him: “We are with the sultan.” I pointed to one of the sections of the truce, which was: And on condition, when strangers arrive with intent to harm the Muslims, the authorities and the governor must protect them from harm to the full extent of their ability. If they are unable, they are to look closely into the matter and make good what was done.

  They [the authorities in Acre] had agreed that this harm to Muslims happened from Franks from abroad. Fath al-Din was delighted with that, and informed the sultan about it, and he started preparations immediately. He went out from the great tent and raised troops to go straight towards them.22

  7

  “MY SOUL LONGED FOR JIHAD”

  Autumn 1290–March 1291

  QALAWUN HAD BEEN intending to join the annual autumn pilgrimage to Mecca but abandoned this to plan for war. Nevertheless, he made pious arrangements for the protection of the pilgrims departing in October, while starting to make preparations against Acre:

  He organised an army to go to the Hijaz [in the Arabian Peninsula] for the pilgrimage to Mecca, and an army to the invasion to overcome the people of Akka [Acre], and many riders to the Hijaz to carry provisions to every needy person, and riders to the people of the House of War to carry weapons and equipment to every warrior. He prepared a banner to go to Mecca the protected by God to increase the two kinds of knowledge, and a banner to the land of
the Franks.1

  At about the same time, the sultan’s health started to fail.

  Despite this, he continued to mobilize the Mamluk war machine: the gathering of supplies and materials, the raising of troops, the orders to his emirs and vassal tributaries. Fast messengers were dispatched. Carrier pigeons flew. The requirements were both human and material. Muhyi al-Din related that Qalawun

  called all the troops to assemble on the appointed day and spent on the group of emirs sums of money which could not be counted, and whose benefaction could not be reckoned, and despatched a large part of the great arsenal, the like of which had not been prepared at any time previous, or in any invasion before. He ordered them to proceed, and they went forward. He used a large group of stonemasons and craftsmen drawn from the blacksmiths and carpenters, and money was spent on all. He wrote to all the lands of Syria to bring out catapults, machines, equipment and weapons, and bring out oxen from the lands on account of the [transporting of the] catapults and bring out men with their provisions from every town according to what it could provide.2

  Supply dumps of food and fodder were established along the five-hundred-mile route through the Sinai desert and up the coast of Palestine to provide for the army from Cairo and its vast concourse of animals. Forty miles south of Acre, and almost under the gaze of the Templar castle of Chateau Pèlerin on the headland at Atlit, the emir Rukn al-Din Taqsu al-Mansuri was putting his men to work felling wood for field fortifications. It was given out that this was in preparation for a campaign in Africa.

  The people of Acre should not have been deceived. Al-Fakhri, Guillaume de Beaujeu’s mole in the Mamluk court, informed the grand master that Qalawun was preparing for war. As had been the case with Tripoli, this was not believed in Acre’s ruling council. Beaujeu’s reputation for political machinations, the complexity of his relationship with Mamluk spies and double agents, and presumably past incidences of crying “wolf”—as well as the Mamluks’ own strategies of disinformation—meant that these reliable warnings would repeatedly go unheeded.

  At some point, it seems that the increasingly concerned Beaujeu sent his own unofficial delegation to Cairo in an attempt to head off war. Qalawun asked for a massive indemnity—a sequin per head of the whole population. This was indignantly refused in council, as it was probably intended to be, and for his pains, some accused Beaujeu of treason.

  As if the reality of war threat needed repeating, the Muslim garrison at Jenin, thirty-five miles to the southeast of Acre, was soon tasked with protecting the trade route to Damascus and forcing the people of Acre back within their walls. In the Arabic sources, the emir Sunqur al-Massah was ordered “to ride every day with the soldiery opposite the fortress of Akka [Acre] and keep safe the coast and the merchants fearful of the people of Akka. All the time wars and incidents were taking place between him and the people of Akka, and he was victorious.”3

  By the end of October, Qalawun had all preparations in hand. “It only remained to put his foot in the stirrup. He rode from his castle… Aquarius was in the ascendant, Mars was in his glory.”4 A magnificent ceremonial departure from Cairo was staged. “It was a great procession, the like of which had not been seen for pageantry, and numbers, and majesty. The messengers of the kings attended him, he camped by the Gate of Victory—the customary station—and only the journey remained.”5 But the momentum of war was unexpectedly stalled. Qalawun’s illness worsened. He wasted away, probably struck down by dysentery. “The advance becomes a delay,” wrote Muhyi al-Din.

  This was because our master was overtaken by a disease with which he had been struggling for a time and was resigned to bear. His pain only increased, and the tent ropes were cut, and the Book told of his appointed time. His armies did not protect him, neither his troops, nor his delegations, nor his gatherings, nor his spears, his swords, his weapons, and not his fortresses nor his horses, his strongholds nor his towns. He was taken in the middle of his many machines, his number was him alone, and with this the jungle was stricken by the loss of its lion, and Islam by its support.6

  Qalawun died on November 10. He had been a great sultan, at least the equal of Baybars in his campaigns against the Mongols and the Christians, and more honorable in his dealings with both friends and foes.

  THE CAREFULLY LAID plans for the campaign were thrown into disarray. The Templar of Tyre recounted that when the news reached Acre, the people “had rejoiced greatly and believed themselves saved.”7 They reasoned that it would take a successor a year to stabilize his reign, given the power struggles involved in Mamluk successions. It was a false hope. His son al-Ashraf al-Malik Khalil had been active in managing Qalawun’s affairs during his decline, and the day following his death, the twenty-seven-year-old Khalil was proclaimed sultan.

  Qalawun’s body was carried back to Cairo, there to await later burial in a fitting mausoleum. Khalil had sworn to continue the campaign. In any case, it made all sense to push forward and legitimize his rule in the febrile world of Mamluk politics with a unifying conquest: the momentum of the Mamluk war machine was now almost unstoppable, and it would be perilous for a new sultan to stall. The inheritance of the Mamluk sultanate was not hereditary. Leadership had to be earned. It depended on the support of powerful emirs, and its withdrawal could be swift and bloody.

  Khalil was Qalawun’s younger and less favored son, and he had enemies. Many had attached themselves to al-Salih Ali, his older brother, and found themselves out of favor at his death, among them Turuntay, the viceroy of Egypt. (The fact that Ali’s death was attributed by some to poison at Khalil’s hands was due less to its likelihood than to his relative unpopularity.) Qalawun himself had been concerned about Khalil’s judgment and had not wanted him to succeed. “I would never give the Muslims a ruler like Khalil,” he once remarked.8

  Nevertheless, the new sultan was brave, energetic, and ruthless. Unlike his father, he spoke and wrote Arabic well, was admired for his mastery of the traditional Mamluk military skills of horsemanship and archery, and led armies in person. He also had expansionist dreams. He was energetic and wasted no time: “He went down from his castle to the camp every day and was informed at the start of it of all matters, and put into order the affairs of the people, and returned to his castle late at night.”9

  On November 18, he arrested Egyptian viceroy Turuntay and put him to death. Khalil also sent posthaste with orders to detain the emir Sunqur al-Massah, skirmishing outside the walls of Acre, on a trumped-up charge of conspiring with the enemy but probably as a supporter of the executed Turuntay. To survive as sultan required striking the first blow. Some emirs were detained, while others were promoted to powerful positions with the bestowing of honorific robes, but dissenters still lingered in the new sultan’s circle and army command. Their murmurings would ripple throughout the campaign ahead.

  Revising the time table, the armies and tributaries of Syria were ordered to be readied by March for a spring campaign and to provide trebuchets, masons, carpenters, miners, and soldiers. Acre was warned of the blow about to fall. The Templar of Tyre was soon translating into French a letter addressed to his master Guillaume de Beaujeu. It removed any lingering doubts as to Khalil’s ambitions. It read:

  The Sultan of Sultans, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, al-Malik al-Ashraf, the powerful, the Dreadful, the Punisher of Rebels, Hunter of Franks and Tartars and Armenians, Snatcher of castles from the hands of Miscreants, Lord of the Two Seas, Guardian of the Two Pilgrim Sites, Khalil al-Salihi. To You the noble Master of the Temple, the true and wise, greetings and our good will. Because you have been a true man, we send you letters of our intentions, and give you to understand that we are coming into your regions to right these wrongdoings. Therefore, we do not want the community of Acre to send us any letters or presents, for we will in no way accept them.10

  “I took the translation,” the Templar went on, “and showed it to my lord the master and to all the lords of Acre. It was made known to the Patriarch and Legate, to the master of the Ho
spital, Brother Jean de Villiers, and to the commander of the Germans… and I showed it to the Pisan consul and to the Venetian bailli, who were completely unwilling to accept that the sultan was coming, almost until he was very close.”11 Given the visible signs over the past few months—the cutting of wood for siege works and the skirmishing outside the walls—such blindness was a willful avoidance of the evidence.

  Notwithstanding the sultan’s peremptory order to attempt no further diplomatic sweetening, it was decided to make one last initiative to stave off the inevitable. In January, four brave men were dispatched to Cairo to plead the case—the Arabic-speaking Sir Philip de Mainboeuf, a “knight of Acre”;12 Bartholomew Pisan, a Templar brother; a Hospitaller brother, the Catalan Lope de Linares; and a scribe called George. It was far too late. “They came before the sultan, but he refused the letters and their gift, and held the messengers in prison.”13 (The Templar of Tyre recorded that they later perished miserably, but their fates were clearly unknown to him. Some of them were still alive years later. Linares was released in 1306 after fifteen years. Mainboeuf reemerged in 1319. He had been a captive for twenty-eight years.)

  Meanwhile, the preparations and the gathering of materials set in motion by Qalawun went on throughout the winter. Since at least the time of Saladin, Islamic armies had mastered the logistical skills and accrued the financial resources to prefabricate and transport large trebuchets to sieges in sections rather than build them in situ from whatever timber was available. Damascus, the arsenal and arms manufacture center of Syria, had become a center for the collection, manufacture, and distribution of catapults, and Baybars had brought these techniques to a high level of development. However, it cost a vast amount in money and human labor to gather and transport the raw materials, and these triumphs of Mamluk logistics were gained at a high price. At the siege of Arsuf in 1265, the components of the trebuchets had to be carried on the men’s shoulders over patches of rough terrain. Baybars himself had recorded the difficulty of carrying the siege engines in carts through the mountains of northern Lebanon to attack Akkar in 1271. But trebuchets were an essential component of the siege train, and the Mamluks had the resources to transport very large machines across almost any landscape.