The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

The Mongol hordes threatened the Muslim world in the early 13th century as they pushed the Khwarazmian Turks toward Syria, leading to an attack on Damascus in June 1224. This siege failed, so these new Turks headed for Jerusalem, which they burned and pillaged in July.

Frederick II abandoned Jerusalem in favor of establishing “more amicable relations with the Cairene leaders” (236). The French King Louis IX led a Seventh Crusade in which he pursued an alliance with the Mongols that would allow the two parties to surround “the Arab world in a pincer movement” (237). Louis sent gifts to Genghis Khan to persuade him, but the khan mistook these for tribute, which he ordered the French to send every year, so negotiations dissolved.

The Europeans thus launched this next crusade, which targeted Egypt, in June 1249. This time the Westerners took Damietta. The sultan offered the Franj Jerusalem in exchange for the city, but they refused, and the sultan died. The sultan’s courtiers, at the behest of his favorite wife, kept his demise secret lest their troops become disillusioned. The Franks entered Mansura in 1250 but were rebuffed by the Mamluk Turks’ arrival. Louis tried to negotiate but was captured, and much of the French fleet was destroyed.