The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

In their mind’s eye they saw their city pillaged, the men massacred, the women raped.

Breathlessly, he panted out his message: the Franj were back; they had crossed the Bosporus once again, in greater numbers than the previous year.

He would soon become the hero of a famous epic, appropriately entitled The Exploits of King Danishmend, which recounted the conquest of MalaÔya, an Armenian city south-east of Ankara.

Kilij Arslan’s father had conquered Asia Minor, the vast area of Anatolia, without any help from his brothers, and when he attempted to move further south, into Syria, he was killed by one of his own cousins.

Within a few years of their arrival in the Middle East from central Asia, the Seljuk Turks, with their thousands of nomadic horsemen sporting long braided hair, had seized control of the entire region, from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.

He sent two Greek spies to the Civitot camp to report that Reynald’s men were in an excellent position, and that they had succeeded in taking Nicaea itself, whose riches they had no intention of sharing with their coreligionists.

Kilij Arslan decided to attempt a ruse.

At the end of the week, the leader of the expedition, a knight named Reynald, agreed to capitulate provided his life would be spared.

They went so far as to drink the blood of their mounts and their own urine.

Young children were even said to have been burned alive.