• Christian and Muslim accounts of the Crusades differ in their basic perspectives — were they a holy war or an invasion? — and sometimes also in their details, which can be revealing. In June 1098 the Crusaders captured the city of Antioch after a siege of more than seven months. They were assisted in this by an Armenian Christian convert to Islam named Firouz, an armor maker and official in the government of Yaghi-Siyan, the Seljuk Turkish ruler of Antioch. The Gesta Francorum [The Deeds of the Franks], written by an anonymous Crusader who was an eyewitness, provides a Christian view of this event, and the history of Ibn al-Athir (1160–1223) provides a Muslim view.

Gesta Francorum

“There was a certain Emir [ruler] of the race of the Turks, whose name was Pirus [i.e., Firouz], who took up the greatest friendship with Bohemund [a Norman leader of the Crusades]. By an interchange of messengers Bohemund often pressed this man to receive him within the city in a most friendly fashion, and, after promising Christianity to him most freely, he sent word that he would make him rich with much honor. Pirus yielded to these words and promises, saying, “I guard three towers, and I freely promise them to him, and at whatever hour he wishes I will receive him within them.” . . . All the night they [the Crusaders] rode and marched until dawn, and then began to approach the towers which that person (Pirus) was watchfully guarding. Bohemund straightaway dismounted and gave orders to the rest, saying, “Go with secure mind and happy accord, and climb by ladder into Antioch which, if it please God, we shall have in our power immediately.” . . . Now the men began to climb up there in wondrous fashion. Then they reached the top and ran in haste to the other towers. Those whom they found there they straightaway sentenced to death; they even killed a brother of Pirus. . . . [Then] all ran to [a certain gate], and, having broken it open, we entered through it. . . . But Cassianus [Yaghi-Siyan], their lord, fearing the race of the Franks greatly, took flight with the many others who were with him. . . . They killed the Turks and Saracens whom they found there. . . . All the squares of the city were already everywhere full of the corpses of the dead, so that no one could endure it there for the excessive stench. No one could go along a street of the city except over the bodies of the dead.”

Ibn al-Athir

“After the siege had been going on for a long time the Franks made a deal with . . . a cuirass [breastplate] maker called Ruzbih [Firouz] whom they bribed with a fortune in money and lands. He worked in the tower that stood over the riverbed, where the river flowed out of the city into the valley. The Franks sealed their pact with the cuirass-maker, God damn him! and made their way to the water-gate. They opened it and entered the city. Another gang of them climbed the tower with ropes. At dawn, when more than 500 of them were in the city and the defenders were worn out after the night watch, they sounded their trumpets. . . . Panic seized Yaghi-Siyan and he opened the city gates and fled in terror, with an escort of thirty pages. His army commander arrived, but when he discovered on enquiry that Yaghi-Siyan had fled, he made his escape by another gate. This was of great help to the Franks, for if he had stood firm for an hour, they would have been wiped out. They entered the city by the gates and sacked it, slaughtering all the Muslims they found there.”

Sources: Edward Peters, ed., The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 163–166. Copyright © 1971 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press; Arab Historians of the Crusades, selected and translated from the Arabic sources by Francesco Gabrieli. Translated from the Italian by E. J. Costello. © 1969 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK and The University of California Press.

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