A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 by Steven Runciman Read Free Book Online Page A

to the Holy City of Jerusalem and prayed in the sacred places.
     
    Peace Between
Byzantium and Egypt
    The Arabs had always been readier to envisage
war as a religious matter; but even they had grown slack. Now, frightened by
the Christians, they tried to revive their fervour. In 974 riots in Baghdad
forced the Caliph, who personally had not been sorry to see the Fatimids
defeated, to proclaim a holy war, a jihad.
    It had seemed that at last the Holy Land would
be restored to Christian rule. But the Orthodox of Palestine waited in vain.
John’s successor, the legitimate Basil II, great warrior though he became, was
never given the opportunity to continue the southern advance. Civil wars
followed by a long war against the Bulgarians demanded all his attention. Only
twice could he visit Syria, to restore Byzantine suzerainty over Aleppo in 995,
and to march down the coast as far as Tripoli in 999. In 1001 he decided that
it would be useless to make further conquest. A ten years’ truce was made with
the Fatimid Caliph; and the peace thus inaugurated was not seriously broken for
more than half a century. The frontier between the empires was fixed to run
from the coast between Banyas and Tortosa to the Orontes just south of
Caesarea-Shaizar. Aleppo officially remained within the Byzantine sphere of influence;
but the Mirdasite dynasty established there in 1023 soon obtained independence
in fact. In 1030 its Emir severely defeated a Byzantine army. But the loss of
Aleppo was counterbalanced next year by the incorporation of Edessa into the
Byzantine Empire.
    The peace suited both the Empire and the
Fatimids; for both were disquieted by the revival of the Baghdad Caliphate
under Turkish adventurers from central Asia. The Fatimid monarch, accepted by
the Shia Moslems as the true Caliph, could not afford any strengthening of
Abbasid claims; while Byzantium considered her eastern frontier more vulnerable
than her southern. Fear of the Turks led Basil II first to annex the provinces
of Armenia that lay nearest to the Empire and then to take over the
south-easternmost district of the country, the principality of Vaspurakan. His successors
continued his policy. In 1045 the king of Ani, the chief ruler in Armenia,
ceded his lands to the Emperor. In 1064 the last independent Armenian state,
the principality of Kars, was absorbed into imperial territory.
    The annexation of Armenia was dictated by
military considerations. Experience had taught that no reliance could be placed
on the Armenian princes. Though they were Christians and had nothing to gain
from a Moslem conquest, they were heretics, and as heretics they hated the
Orthodox more passionately than any Moslem oppressor. In spite of continued
trade and cultural relations, and in spite of the many Armenians who migrated
into the Empire and reached its highest offices, the animosity never died down.
But from the valleys of Armenia it was easy, as past border-warfare had shown,
to penetrate into the heart of Asia Minor. The military authorities would have
been foolish to allow such a danger-spot to remain out of their control.
Politically the annexation was less wise. The Armenians resented Byzantine
rule. Though Byzantine garrisons might man the frontier, within the frontier
there was a large and discontented population whose disloyalty was potentially
dangerous and who now, no longer anchored by allegiance to a local prince,
began to wander about spreading lawlessness within the Empire. Wiser statesmen,
less obsessed than the soldier-emperors of Byzantium by the military point of
view, would have hesitated to create an Armenian question to destroy the
uniformity of the Empire and to add a discordant minority to its subjects.
     
    The Caliph Hakim
    Northern Syria had passed to the rule of the
Christians; but the Christians of southern Syria and Palestine found the
dominion of the Fatimids easy to bear. They suffered only one short period of persecution,
when the Caliph Hakim, the son