Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (17 page)

Jacques de Vitry notes the building of the fortress in a few brief sentences and records the Franks’ reaction. His description gives a clear image of the humiliation and fear the new fortress created:

Immediately after the aforesaid John was crowned and anointed king, the Saracens, to the disgrace and injury of Christendom, and more especially to the end of that they might straiten the city of Acre, fortified Mount Tabor against us.
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The fact that Mount Tabor was, and still is considered a sacred Christian site, where Christ performed the act of the Transfiguration, no doubt added to the anger and humiliation that was felt among the Franks. According to Jacques de Vitry the Franks renewed their truce with the Sultan and used this relatively quiet period to try and summon help from Rome.
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The construction of a large-scale Muslim fortress caused unrest beyond the immediate region and the news made its way to the papal court. In his
Quia Maior
, presented on 11 November 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, Pope Innocent III spoke of the Ayyubid fortress on Mount Tabor and referred to it as a threat to the Crusader kingdom.
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The arrival of the Fifth Crusade in September 1217 upset the regional balance of power, which for the duration of the Crusade tilted in favor of the Franks. Their first move was towards Mount Tabor, whether because the Pope had proclaimed the fortress as a threat, or simply because it had become a convenient close-range target for the large armies that were gathering at Acre.

Two Muslim sources give a detailed description of the battle, but only one of them mentions the Franks bringing siege engines.

Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 654/1256) describes a fierce battle between the Crusader armies and the defenders that took place outside the fortress gate but does not mention siege machines. The Christian army attacked twice. During the first assault, which began on the second day of
, they tried to breach the curtain wall with their lances
hoping to dislodge the stones with the strength of the lance. This would in fact have been quite feasible, as the stones are not huge and the quality of construction is rather poor. A Muslim mounted force together with infantry stormed out, met the attackers at the foot of the wall, killed some of the Christian troops and drove the rest back to the lower part of the mountain. A day later the Christian army collected every available man and climbed to the fortress, carrying a large ladder. This was poised against the wall near the gate and face-to-face combat raged between the two sides as the Franks tried to scale the gate. Finally the Muslim defenders threw
.
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The ladder caught fie and a group of Christian soldiers, including high-ranking commanders, were killed.
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Thereafter the Christian armies decided to return to Acre and did so at dawn on the 6th day of Ramadan. The fact that the Crusader army had come to the siege without a full range of siege machines or sapper units, thinking they could take the fortress by using one scaling ladder and lances, shows they probably underestimated both the fortress and its garrison and indicates a certain lack of organization. Even if we accept Ibn al-Athīr’s (d. 630/1233) description of the siege, and assume that the Franks arrived with an assortment of siege machines, as he explicitly says, this does not add much to the honor or prestige of the Frankish siege units.
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After seventeen days (
Ibn al-Jawzī claims the siege was shorter) of siege, with no threatened arrival of Ayyubid reinforcements, the Franks decided to retreat. Although the siege had failed, the Franks were defeated and the fortress had not suffered any damage,
and
decided not only to evacuate the garrison from their newly built fortress but also to spend a further year demolishing it.
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According to Oliver of Paderborn (d. 1227) it was the construction of
by the Franks that led to the Muslim decision to destroy Mount Tabor.
⁹⁴
Ibn
points out that if the Franks had managed to conquer Mount Tabor, their control of
the fortress and ensuing raids on the lands of Islam would have cut off
or interrupted the traffic along the main roads leading to and from Egypt.
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