The psychological condition of enslaved women in this era is eloquently illustrated by the following account left to us by Ibn al-Athir.
When I was in Aleppo I had a slave girl, one of the people of Jaffa. She had a child about a year old, and wept greatly when she dropped him, though he was not really hurt. I calmed her and told her there was no need to weep for so small an accident. She replied, ‘it is not for my boy that I am weeping, but for what happened to us at Jaffa. I had six brothers all of whom perished. I had a husband and two sisters; what has happened to them? I have no idea’.91
Al-Athir explicitly states she is only one of many slave women in such a state. Indeed, he also tells another anecdote about two slave women meeting in Aleppo.
‘Then he [the owner of the house] brought out another Frankish woman. When the first one caught sight of this other, they both cried out and embraced one another, screaming and weeping. They fell to the ground and sat talking. It transpired that they were two sisters. They had a number of family members but knew nothing about any one of them.92
Arguably, trauma experienced during a siege or sack and subsequent abuse, along with psychic stress associated with uncertainty about the fate of loved ones and the future, was far greater torture than sexual abuse or hard work.
Escaping Slavery
Opportunities to escape from slavery were extremely limited. Most captives were first taken in large slave caravans to distant slave markets in the major urban centres of the Near East. These slave caravans consisted of slaves chained together and forced to walk behind the beasts of burden of their captors. Along the way, they were often prodded, whipped, raped and taunted by those escorting them. On arrival in a major urban centre, which might be hundreds of miles from the point of capture, the slaves were led through the city triumphantly and subjected to further verbal and physical abuse. At the slave market, the ‘goods’ were sold without regard for keeping families together. Because slave markets drew customers from a wide radius, slaves were often transported substantial distances after purchase. Thus, slaves generally ended up isolated from everyone they had known before their capture. Typically, they found themselves living in towns and villages far from familiar geography among people speaking a language they did not understand. It would not have been uncommon for slaves to have no idea where they were until after some time in captivity when they gradually learned the language and more about their new environs.
With slim prospects of returning home, many slaves sought to adapt to their new circumstances. The easiest route out of slavery was conversion. Contemporary Christian and Muslim religious thought condemned the enslavement of co-religionists. Consequently, in the case of Christian women in Muslim captivity, conversion to Islam offered an escape from the status of slave. As noted above, Muslim women in the Near East had extremely limited rights and status in this era, but at least they weren’t technically chattels, as were slaves. Furthermore, conversion opened the door to the status of wife rather than concubine. While precarious (the man only had to say, ‘I divorce you’ three times to get rid of an unwanted wife), this was better than complete subjugation and destitution. There are numerous references throughout contemporary accounts of Christian captives married to Muslim men.
Another route to freedom was through payment of compensation to the Muslim enslaver to release the slave. Effectively, this happened when a ransom was paid. Yet even for common prisoners subjected to the complete indignity of slavery, the prospect of being freed from slavery through a cash payment was a real possibility.
This came in three forms, private, religious and public. First, family members or entire communities sometimes raised money to purchase individuals taken into captivity. Indeed, Jewish law demanded the ransom of prisoners and gave precedence to women prisoners because they were presumed to suffer most (i.e., sexual abuse) in captivity. As we have seen, Frankish feudal law likewise stipulated that a man must ransom a mother or daughter or risk the loss of his fief. Farther down the social scale, some mediaeval marriage contracts explicitly included the obligation to ransom one’s wife. For example, marriage contracts have survived that include the following clause: ‘And if you are taken captive, I will ransom you with my possessions … and I will take you back. And I will not wrong you concerning this’.93
Payment for a specific individual, however, assumed the person could be tracked down and identified. After a small-scale raid or pirate attack on a single ship, this might be reasonable; in the aftermath of a major military disaster, on the other hand, few family members remained in a position to make a payment. Furthermore, discovering the location and contacting the owner of any individual caught up in a major catastrophe was almost impossible.
Perhaps in recognition of this fact, or at least in acknowledgement of the limited resources available to the families of captives, the religious orders increasingly took responsibility for securing their release. The military orders took the lead in transforming the purchase of enslaved Christians into a pious duty. It was, after all, only a small step from protecting pilgrims (the raison d’etre of the Templars at their foundation) to rescuing pilgrims from captivity through their repurchase. Likewise, the Hospitallers were, from their inception, dedicated to serving the ‘holy poor’, and slaves were the incarnation of complete destitution because they owned not even their own bodies. Charitable activities to release Christians from Saracen slavery were a natural extension of the Hospitaller ethos.
The end of the twelfth century also saw the founding of an order specifically dedicated to the ransoming of Christian captives in the Muslim East. This was the Trinitarian order, founded in France in 1198 with strong papal backing. Significantly, a woman, Margaret I, Countess of Burgundy, was the leading patron, providing the initial land grant for the establishment of the order. Fully one-third of the order’s income was set aside for the ransom of captives or, interestingly, the purchase of Muslim slaves who could be used in slave exchanges. Significantly, the order also set itself the task of establishing hospitals to assist the redeemed slaves both physically and mentally after their return to Christian society. Within twenty years, the Trinitarians had forty houses, including seventeen hospitals. Furthermore, the Trinitarians inspired imitators.
Within a short space of time, a fundamental change in public attitudes towards captives had taken place. By the thirteenth century, the release of prisoners from Muslim captivity was no longer viewed as the responsibility of their families but rather the responsibility of Christian society as a whole. Furthermore, the suffering of those Christian captives who did not convert to Islam was equated with the sufferings of Christ. No distinction was made between men and women in the activities of these charitable institutions.
Finally, public action by the state could lead to the wholesale release of captives. This could come in the form of military or diplomatic action. Whenever the Franks took Muslim-held territory, Christian slaves in these lands were automatically freed. More commonly, however, ‘prisoner’ exchanges were negotiated when military hostilities temporarily ceased and a truce was signed. Again and again, these truces included clauses that provided for the release of captives. Sometimes, the exchanges were one-for-one, a knight for a mounted Muslim fighting man, an infantryman for an infantryman, or a woman for a woman. In such circumstances, the fact that the Muslims placed a much higher value on men than women reduced the opportunities for the return of Christian women.
Nevertheless, there were circumstances in which the Christian negotiators could and did demand a wholesale return of slaves. In 1159, for example, a truce with Nur ad-Din secured the release of thousands of captives, including men held since the Second Crusade ten years earlier. Another truce imposed on Damascus in roughly the same period explicitly included women captives. Ibn al-Athir states:
The Franks sent to review those male and female slaves of their people who had been taken from all the Christian lands, and bade them choose whether they would stay with their lords or return to their homelands. Anyone who preferred to stay was left, and anyone who wanted to go home went there.94 [emphasis added]
Women Post-Captivity
Christian theology might equate the suffering of Christian slaves in Muslim captivity with ‘a living martyrdom’ for Christ, but Christian husbands rarely viewed their wives’ ‘failure to respect the sanctity of the marriage bed’ in the same light. The Trinitarian Order established their hospitals in recognition of the fact that captives – male and female – faced significant difficulties after their release. Similarly, the Hospitallers stipulated that freed male and female captives should be given a sum of money to help them start a new life. This custom highlights that many captives could not pick up their lives where they had left off. In many cases, the cities where they had lived had been destroyed or taken over by the enemy. In other cases, their entire family had been killed, captured or dispersed, leaving them without a family network in which to reintegrate. In other cases, individuals may simply have opted to attempt a new start in life in a new place where their past was unknown. Significantly, because Christian women, unlike their Muslim sisters, did not need a male guardian, women no less than men could take advantage of this option. Returned women slaves were free to purchase property, set themselves up in an independent business or accept employment.
Nevertheless, for women, the inherent difficulty of reintegration into society was aggravated by the universal assumption that a woman returning from Muslim slavery had been subjected to repeated sexual abuse. In some prominent cases, the wives of Frankish elites were sequestered in convents following their return from captivity. While this sounds like incarceration to our ears, it may have been exactly what these women wanted to avoid the looks, innuendos and voyeuristic questions of others. A key consideration here is that a wife’s sequestration in a convent did not free the husband to remarry. Christian theology did not recognise captivity and any attendant sexual abuse as grounds for divorce. Thus, while Muslim women who won release from captivity were promptly set aside, Christian women retained their status of wife and lady – whether their husbands liked it or not. This also meant that a husband gained little by putting a wife away in a convent against her will.
Yet status alone does not create acceptance, much less respect or sympathy. Despite being the victims of abuse against their will, the Church still viewed sex outside marriage as a sin. As a result, former women captives had to confess, repent and seek absolution for the abuse they had suffered. Many would have found this an indignity; it certainly would have required mentally reliving the trauma. Not all priests would have shown understanding. The penance imposed might be burdensome or humiliating. Nor was it just husbands who might be reluctant to welcome returned captives. Parents might also be embarrassed by an unmarried but no longer virgin daughter. Not all siblings would have been as sympathetic to the sufferings of a sister as Margaret of Beverley’s brother.
Depending on the individual’s circumstances and expectations of treatment from family and society, women sometimes opted to remain in captivity. This explains why the terms of the truce cited above state explicitly that only those slaves who wished to return would be released to the Franks. Yet, there are also examples of women who gave up comparative luxury and status to return to a humble home. Usamah ibn-Munqidt tells the story of a beautiful Christian captive who was sent as a gift to the ruler of Ja’bar, Shihab al-Din Mulik ibn Salim. She joined his harem and, in due time, her son by Shihab al-Din became the ruler of Ja’bar. Yet, despite her exalted position as the ruler’s mother, the ‘ungrateful’ Christian woman took advantage of her new status to escape back to her Christian husband. Usamah was outraged that this woman ‘preferred life with a Frankish shoemaker, while her son was the lord of the castle of Ja’bar’.95 Two things are striking about this account. First, the woman’s Christian husband evidently welcomed her back. Second, the luxury of a golden cage was not inherently more attractive than freedom.
Summary and Conclusions
Fundamental to understanding the significant contribution of women to the history of the crusader states is recognising that human development is not linear. Because women in later ages suffered significant curtailments to their independence, enfranchisement and status, it is all too often assumed that women in the Middle Ages were even more restricted. The contrary is true. As French feminist historian Regine Pernoud noted, ‘From the tenth to the thirteenth century … women incontestably exercised an influence that the lovely rebels of the seventeenth century or the severe anarchists of the nineteenth century were not able to achieve’.96
The deterioration in the status of women in more recent centuries can be traced to what we know as the Renaissance – the European rediscovery of all things Roman. Whatever benefits the Renaissance may have brought, the reintroduction of aspects of Roman Law resulted in women being denied the status of a legal entity, thereby making them subject to a male guardian. Women were effectively disenfranchised, losing the power, status and freedoms they had enjoyed in the feudal period.
The Latin kingdoms in the Levant were feudal states par excellence. Established at a time when feudalism was already an established and well-developed form of government, the crusader states of Outremer recognised the right of female inheritance from their inception. Women derived their status as overlords and vassals from that fundamental right. The right of women to own and run feudal fiefs, businesses and enterprises, from trading empires to workshops and market stands, followed logically. Women learned and exercised trades and professions, participating actively in a wide range of economic activities, many of which are nowadays more commonly associated with men.
Furthermore, women could vote. They voted in secular bodies such as professional guilds and the High Court. They also voted in the chapters of religious houses, where they could be elected to executive and leadership positions.
As a result, contemporary accounts describing the fate of Outremer is full of colourful examples of women, both prominent and humble, who contributed materially to the successes and failures of the crusader states. From Queen Melisende effectively thwarting her husband’s attempt to sideline her to Queen Sibylla’s crowning of her unpopular husband Guy, Jerusalem’s reigning queens shaped the fortunes of the Holy Land. Yet, the nameless native women who married crusaders and integrated them into local families and communities, enabling them to survive and prosper in an alien environment, were just as crucial to forging the crusader states. The latter unnamed women made it possible for the transient crusaders to become settlers, enabled the settlements to become prosperous, and in so doing, secured the viability of the Frankish states for two centuries. It was the native wives of crusaders and pilgrims that created a multilingual second generation of Franks adept at navigating the shifting rivalries and alliances among the Muslim princes. Ultimately, the mixing of Frankish settlers with locals created the hybrid society that gave the Frankish states their unique character.
Daily life in the crusader states was fashioned as much by women as men. Women made up at least half the population and could be found in every walk of life. Unlike their sisters in the Muslim states around them, the women of Outremer did not live locked behind the walls of their guardians’ homes but instead enlivened the streets by their presence as shopkeepers and customers, tradespeople and homemakers, pilgrims, nuns and patrons of the arts. Their public presence both scandalised and intrigued Muslim visitors such as the poet Ibn al-Qaysarani, who was enraptured by Frankish women and wrote effusive poems praising their beauty, or Ibn Jabayr, who, after feasting his eyes on the sight of unveiled women, felt the need to ‘take refuge with God from the temptation of the sight!’97
The extent to which their presence was more pronounced than in contemporary Western societies is not the subject of this book and a conclusion in that regard must be deferred to scholars with a greater comparative perspective. It has been suggested that ‘women were integrated into all aspects of the crusades, from preserving the home to participation in business and agriculture, from care of the sick and wounded to logistical support in wars, and from their role in religious life to active political leadership.’98 If so, this may imply that the era of the crusades generally – or specifically – was conducive to female empowerment, irrespective of geography. This thesis rests on the notion that the extraordinary logistical, financial and military mobilisation necessary to carry out these massive campaigns over thousands of miles of territory was similar to a modern world war. As such, the societies involved in the pervasive struggle elevated the status of women out of the need to harness all available human resources. Yet, such a theory fails to explain why women’s status as heiresses, reigning queens and guild masters, etc., was not confined to periods of conflict.
Rather than attempting to prove or disprove any particular theory, the objective of this work was to reveal the surprising number of famous and anonymous women who left a mark on the history of Outremer. The focus of the book has been on what women did as opposed to what others have said about them. The women are present in primary sources, but too often, they have been obscured by the subjective commentary of chroniclers or ignored by subsequent generations focused on the action and the heroes associated with military campaigns.
Therefore, it is vital to separate the subjective commentary of historians from the facts. A classic example is the ‘abduction of Isabella’ in Western European chronicles of the thirteenth century. Because Alice de Champagne, Queen Isabella’s daughter by Henri de Champagne, laid claim to the County of Champagne, French chroniclers sought to discredit this ‘foreign’ woman who threatened the status and wealth of one of their most generous local patrons. They did so by alleging that Alice was the product of a bigamous marriage and, therefore, a bastard. To that end, they needed to prove that her mother, Queen Isabella I, had not been legally separated from Humphrey de Toron. The chroniclers outdid themselves in voicing outrage and employing melodramatic language. A committee of leading prelates deliberating on the validity of Isabella’s marriage while keeping her sequestered in their protection becomes in their accounts an act ‘more disgraceful than the rape of Helen’. Maria Comnena, a princess of the imperial Byzantine family, is described as ‘steeped in Greek filth’, ‘godless’ and ‘fraudulent’. The man who offered himself as a hostage to Saladin to secure the release of 8,000 paupers is called ‘cruel’ and ‘faithless’. The subjective opinions of the chroniclers originated decades after the events and were fabricated in France by people who had never met the subjects. Yet the core of the story reveals two strong-willed women, Isabella and her mother Maria, who together saved the crown of Jerusalem from Lusignan.
Similarly, the historian Philip de Novare was inclined to attribute base or contemptible motives to female characters. His Eschiva de Montbéliard, therefore, is in ‘so great fear’ that she leaves the security offered by the Knights Hospitaller and disguises herself as a man to go alone across twenty miles of territory controlled by notoriously brutal imperial mercenaries to provision a royal castle at risk of falling to the king’s enemies. Moreover, to be sure his readers understood how reprehensible Eschiva’s actions were, he invents children she did not have whom she allegedly left behind and talks of her ‘abandoning her fiefs’ at a time when the emperor’s men had already confiscated them.
As these illustrations demonstrate, writers of history are subjective, and their opinions colour the historical record. It is necessary, therefore, to look more closely at what the women of Outremer did rather than what others say about them to find the real women beneath the sometimes disfiguring commentary. Although I have tried to do just that, I have also let the most eloquent contemporary historians speak because their voices also tell us much about the age and society that is the subject of this book. If nothing else, the praise for women we find in the pages of contemporary documents, while no less subjective than the insults, shows us this era was not consistently misogynous. William, Archbishop of Tyre, is a wonderful example of a cleric who reveals no consistent bias against women. He is equally quick to praise women such as Melisende or Beatrice of Edessa as he is to criticise other women such as Alice of Antioch.
Ultimately, all we have are fragments of a mosaic badly damaged by time. We have no comprehensive or systematic description of the society in which these women lived, much less their full contribution to it. Hopefully, this book has blown away some of the sand that hides the complete picture underneath, but there is still much to discover and reveal. The women who lived, worked and reigned in the crusader states deserve to be brought into the light and remembered.
Biographies
Agnes de Courtenay, Queen Mother (b. 1136–d. 1184)
Agnes de Courtenay, the mother of Baldwin IV, was a controversial and divisive figure in her lifetime. Despite revisionist attempts to paint her as a victim of ahostile press, Agnes was, by and large, the architect of her fate – and reputation. She bears a substantial portion of the blame for the near collapse of the Kingdom ofJerusalem in 1187.
Agnes de Courtenay was the daughter of the powerful Courtenay family. In France, the Courtenays ranked high enough for a daughter of the house to marry the younger brother of King Louis VII of France. In the crusader kingdoms, the family derived its prominence from the fact that Joscelyn de Courtenay was a first cousin of Baldwin de Bourcq, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who ruled Jerusalem as Baldwin II. When Baldwin de Bourcq was elected to the crown, he invested his cousin, Joscelyn de Courtenay, with his former County of Edessa. Joscelyn thereby became Joscelyn I of Edessa, a position he fulfilled vigorously and successfully.
Under his son Joscelyn II, however, Edessa was overrun and lost to the Saracens due largely to the neglect and poor leadership of the new count. The city of Edessa was lost to Zengi in November 1144, and by 1150, those remnants of the once rich and powerful county that had not been overrun by the Saracens, had been ceded to the Byzantine Emperor. Joscelyn II was captured in that same year by Nur al-Din and tortured. He eventually died in captivity in 1159.
