The Templars (14 page)

But on one significant occasion the Templars’ distrust of the Assassins led them to oppose the policy of King Amalric of Jerusalem, who had entered into talks with the Old Man of the Mountain. The Ismailis had always seen their leaders as the embodiment of emanations flowing from the unknowable God, but in 1164, in an apocalyptic moment, Rashid al-Din Sinan openly renounced Islam and declared that the resurrection had arrived. The contemporary Syrian chronicler Kamal al-Din described scenes of wild frenzy in the Jebel al-Sariya where ‘men and women mingled in drinking sessions, no man abstained from his sister or daughter, the women wore men’s clothes, and one of them declared that Sinan was God’. In fact the divine status accorded to the Old Man of the Mountain was general, according to the Spanish Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr, who wrote that all his followers treated him as God.

It was nine years after these events, in 1173, that Amalric attempted to negotiate an alliance with Sinan, one of its conditions being that the Assassins would convert to Christianity. But as Sinan’s envoy was returning from Jerusalem to Masyaf, bearing a safe–conduct from Amalric, he was ambushed and killed by some Templar knights. Only with the greatest difficulty was Amalric able to persuade Sinan that the
attack was not of his doing. Meanwhile he accused the Templars of treason and of bringing the kingdom to the edge of ruin by destroying the chance of an advantageous alliance. The chronicler William of Tyre implied that the murder was prompted by a financial motive, for peace would have meant an end to the tribute paid by the Assassins to the Templars. Another chronicler, Walter Map, wrote that the Templars killed the envoy ‘lest (it is said) the belief of the infidels should be done away and peace and union reign’–in other words war justified the existence of the Templars, who feared the outbreak of peace.

The argument of Templar greed is typical of William of Tyre, for the order did not need the Assassins’ tribute. However, the Templars were likely concerned that King Amalric was being duped, for they understood that whatever religion the Assassins professed, it would be no more than an outer garment, just as Islam had been an outer garment, as the Assassins saw this world as mere illusion, and despite any conversion to Christianity their inner and secret beliefs would remain. The Templars controlled important castles adjacent to the Assassin enclave, castles that also controlled the passes to the yet more dangerous Sunni-held interior, and to have let their guard down on the word of such a sect would have been grossly irresponsible and cost the Templars their credibility in the West. In the event, the negotiations were never resumed; after Amalric died in 1174 Raymond III, count of Tripoli, was made regent, and as his own father had been murdered by the Assassins he shared the Templars’ distrust.

The View from the Temple Mount

In the decades following the Second Crusade, visitors to the Temple Mount were impressed with how it was being developed by the Knights Templar. After prayers at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with its chapels associated with the crucifixion and burial of Jesus and the discovery of the True Cross, pilgrims walked to the Temple Mount, entering through the western gate near the south side of the Dome of the Rock, the Templum Domini, or Temple of the Lord, a church served by canons of the Augustinian order. On the outer court the canons and Templars had built houses and planted gardens.

According to Theoderich, a German pilgrim who wrote about his visit to the Holy Land in 1172, the Temple of the Lord bore an inscription that read ‘The house of the Lord is well built upon a firm rock’, but that as pilgrims were in the habit of chipping away bits of the holy rock, its
surface had to be paved with marble and it was cordoned off by a tall and beautifully worked wrought-iron screen which was put up between the encircling columns.

From the Temple of the Lord, continued Theoderich, the pilgrims made their way south to the Templar headquarters at the al-Aqsa mosque, or rather what he called the Palace of Solomon:

The southern part of the Temple Mount had therefore become the combined administrative, military and religious headquarters of the Templars, with a vast stable underneath. The Grand Master had his chambers there and was attended by his entourage which included a chaplain, two knights, a clerk, a sergeant, a Muslim scribe to act as an interpreter, as well as servants and a cook. The Seneschal, the Marshal, the Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Draper were also here along with their attendants. In addition there were about three hundred Templar knights and a thousand sergeants in the Kingdom of
Jerusalem, as well as the native Syrian light cavalry, called Turcopoles, who were employed by the order, and numerous auxiliaries, including grooms, blacksmiths, armourers and stonemasons, and many of these would have been quartered on the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount was a busy place. Yet at its heart it was as silent as any monastery, for the Templars followed the canonical hours like any Cistercian or Benedictine monk, rising at four for Matins and retiring to bed after Compline, attending regular services and prayers in between, eating their meals in silence while listening to readings from the Bible, and otherwise caring for their horses.

The so-called Stables of Solomon were in fact a substructure of vaults and arches built by Herod to extend the platform of the Mount, and later reconstruction work was undertaken by the Umayyads and the Templars. The Templars indeed used this as a stables, but Theoderich’s claim that ten thousand horses could be stabled beneath the Mount is an exaggeration; other travellers estimated the capacity at about two
thousand horses, and allowing space for squires, grooms and perhaps even pilgrims sleeping there, the number of horses stabled at any one time was more like five hundred.

These warrior monks were a powerful force in the Holy Land, whose defence since the Second Crusade fell increasingly on their shoulders. Contrary to popular belief the Templars were not fanatics forever in search of battle with the infidel. Generally they were pragmatic and conservative in their approach to politics and warfare, if anything more so than the counts and kings of Outremer who were driven by personal and dynastic ambitions in the here and now. In becoming a Knight Templar each man surrendered his will to the order, as in the words of one recruit: ‘I, renouncing secular life and its pomp, relinquishing everything, give myself to the Lord God and to the knighthood of the Temple of Solomon of Jersualem, that, as long as I shall live, in accordance with my strength, I shall serve there a complete pauper for God.’

Self-will was replaced with service to the order and its aims, and the Templars were playing a long game, dedicated to defending the Holy Land for all time. In any case conflict in the Middle Ages tended to be more about sieges of cities and castles than battle in the open field, which was unpredictable and risky even under the most favourable circumstances. And in Outremer patience had its rewards as it was usually only a matter of time before the uneasy Muslim coalitions against the Christians fell apart. And so it was with confidence that the Templars looked out from their headquarters atop the Temple Mount upon Jerusalem and the future that lay beyond.

Amalric’s Egyptian Campaigns

The Fatimid garrison at Ascalon had controlled the route into the Nile Delta and to Cairo, the same line of attack taken by the Arabs when they invaded Egypt in 640, after their conquest of Syria and Palestine. When King Baldwin III captured Ascalon with Templar help in 1153 it opened the door to Egypt for the Franks. But the opportunity was only seized after Baldwin died in 1162 and was succeeded by his twenty-five-year-old brother Amalric, who on three occasions, in 1164, 1167 and 1168, entered Egypt to prevent it falling to Nur al-Din.

The Fatimid regime in Cairo had grown weak and unstable, with two viziers vying with one another for control over the enfeebled caliphs. Each of the viziers reached outside Egypt for support, drawing Amalric in Jerusalem and Nur al-Din in Damascus into their quarrel. For the Franks the prize was potentially enormous: by installing a friendly government in Cairo the Kingdom of Jerusalem would not only gain access to the vast resources of Egypt but would also protect its southern flank. But the prize was no less great for Nur al-Din: not only would his acquisition of Egypt give him control over the trade route from Damascus that terminated in Cairo, but he would entirely surround the Christian states.

Each side had grounds for hope. Alaric understood that for the Fatimids, who were both Shia and Arab, their greatest enemy was not his Christian kingdom but Nur al-Din, who was a Sunni and a Seljuk Turk. But though two centuries of Fatimid rule meant that Shia influences were strong in Egypt, Nur al-Din knew that the mass of Egyptians remained Sunni, and he counted on the shared Muslim bond between Cairo and Damascus. For five years this contest was waged between Amalric and Shirkuh, the Kurdish general commanding Nur al-Din’s army. If either rival won Egypt to its side, the gain could be decisive.

Amalric had large contingents of Templars in his army when he twice, in 1164 and 1167, forced Shirkuh to withdraw from Egypt and then withdrew himself. A leading Templar also took part in the mission which negotiated the treaty of alliance between Amalric and Shawar, the Fatimid vizier, prior to the Franks’ military intervention in 1167. But by then the fundamental weakness of the Fatimid regime was obvious to both Nur al-Din and Amalric, and it was only a matter of time before one of them would strike the
coup de grâce
. Amalric struck first, marching into Egypt in 1168 with the intention of outright annexation–without the support of Templar forces. The Fatimids withdrew within the walls of Cairo and burnt its suburbs to the ground, and they sent for help to Nur al-Din. This time it was Amalric who was forced to withdraw, and Nur al-Din’s Kurdish general Shirkuh entered Cairo, decapitated Shawar and installed himself as vizier. His rule was not long; in March 1169 Shirkuh died and was succeeded as vizier by his nephew Salah al-Din, better known in the West as Saladin.

Templar Relations with the Kingdom of Jerusalem

The capture of Egypt by Nur al-Din’s forces was a strategic calamity for the Franks. Why the Templars refused to participate in Amalric’s 1168 invasion has been a matter of speculation and debate. Again the earliest principal source for these events is William of Tyre, who was commissioned by Amalric to write his history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and might have been expected to fiercely condemn the Templars. Yet William himself disapproved of the campaign and said that the Templars objected
on moral grounds; ‘it seemed against their conscience’ to break the treaty which they had helped negotiate with Shawar in 1167.

What William did not mention, though it was true, was that the Templars were financially connected with the Muslims and with the Italian merchants, who carried on a greater trade with Egypt than with all the Crusader ports combined. William confined his criticism to the suggestion that the Templars may have been jealous of the Hospitallers, who had taken the lead in urging Amalric to undertake the expedition and had already claimed Pelusium on the edge of the Egyptian Delta for themselves. The perpetual rivalry between the two orders was a problem; it was seldom that they could be induced to campaign together, and each followed its own line regardless of the official policy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

For all the strategic importance of Egypt, there were other strategic considerations that the Templars would reasonably have taken into account. In 1164 when the bulk of Templar forces had been with Amalric on campaign in Egypt, Nur al-Din had taken advantage by striking in the north, inflicting heavy losses against the army of the prince of Antioch, which included the deaths of sixty Templar knights and numerous more sergeants and Turcopoles, precisely in the area where the Templars bore responsibility for manning strategically sited castles that were part of the ultimate defence of Outremer. The experience may have impressed upon the Templars the need to husband their resources and concentrate them where they were most needed.

Certainly there were strong differences over military strategy between Amalric and the Templars, with William of Tyre describing a dramatic incident that occurred in 1166. Learning that a Templar garrison was under siege beyond the Jordan, Amalric rode out to relieve them with a large force. But when he reached the river he was told that what William describes as an ‘impregnable cave’ had already fallen to Nur al-Din’s general Shirkuh. The Templars may have thought that their garrison was out on a limb too far. But outraged and confounded by the news, Amalric hanged twelve of the Templars who had surrendered to Shirkuh. Add to this the story of the Assassins’ envoy killed by the Templars in 1173, an event, according to William of Tyre, that brought
the kingdom to the edge of ‘irrevocable ruin’ as it cost Jerusalem an ally against encircling Sunni power, and there is a pattern of Templar wilfulness in military, political and religious matters. The Hospitallers could be no less independent of secular authority, but their image was softened by the alms and care they lavished on pilgrims, whereas the image of the Templars rested more exclusively on their military prowess, and then there was their involvement in financial activities. The independence of the orders was liable to provoke resentment, and in the case of the Templars it led increasingly to criticism that the order was primarily concerned with protecting and advancing its own interests.