Usamah (1095-1188), was a Muslim warrior and courtier, who fought against the
Crusaders with Saladin. Yet as a resident of the area around Palestine, he also had a
chance to befriend a number of them. His autobiography dates from around 1175.
Mysterious are the works of the Creator, the author of all things! When one comes to
recount cases regarding the Franks, he cannot but glorify Allah (exalted is he!) and
sanctify him, for he sees them as animals possessing the virtues of courage and fighting,
but nothing else; just as animals have only the virtues of strength and carrying loads. I
shall now give some instances of their doings and their curious mentality.
In the army of King Fulk, son of Fulk, was a Frankish reverend knight who had just
arrived from their land in order to make the holy pilgrimage and then return home. He was
of my intimate fellowship and kept such constant company with me that he began to call me
"my brother." Between us were mutual bonds of amity and friendship. When he
resolved to return by sea to his homeland, he said to me:
My brother, I am leaving for my country and I want you to send with me thy son (my son,
who was then fourteen years old, was at that time in my company) to our country, where he
can see the knights and learn wisdom and chivalry. When he returns, be will be like a wise
man.
Thus there fell upon my ears words which would never come out of the head of a sensible
man; for even if my son were to be taken captive, his captivity could not bring him a
worse misfortune than carrying him into the lands of the Franks. However, I said to the
man:
By thy life, this has exactly been my idea. But the only thing that prevented me from
carrying it out was the fact that his grandmother, my mother, is so fond of him and did
not this time let him come out with me until she exacted an oath from me to the effect
that I would return him to her.
Thereupon he asked, "Is thy mother still alive?" "Yes." I replied.
'Well," said he, "disobey her not." A case illustrating their curious
medicine is the following:
The lord of al-Munaytirah wrote to my uncle asking him to dispatch a physician to treat
certain sick persons among his people. My uncle sent him a Christian physician named
Thabit. Thabit was absent but ten days when be returned. So we said to him, "How
quickly has thou healed thy patients!" He said:
They brought before me a knight in whose leg an abscess had grown; and a woman
afflicted with imbecility. To the knight I applied a small poultice until the abscess
opened and became well; and the woman I put on diet and made her humor wet. Then a
Frankish physician came to them and said, "This man knows nothing about treating
them." He then said to the knight, "Which wouldst thou prefer, living with one
leg or dying with two?" The latter replied, "Living with one leg." The
physician said, "Bring me a strong knight and a sharp ax." A knight came with
the ax. And I was standing by. Then the physician laid the leg of the patient on a block
of wood and bade the knight strike his leg with the ax and chop it off at one blow.
Accordingly he struck it-while I was looking on-one blow, but the leg was not severed. He
dealt another blow, upon which the marrow of the leg flowed out and the patient died on
the spot. He then examined the woman and said, "This is a woman in whose head there
is a devil which has possessed her. Shave off her hair." Accordingly they shaved it
off and the woman began once more to cat their ordinary diet-garlic and mustard. Her
imbecility took a turn for the worse. The physician then said, "The devil has
penetrated through her head." He therefore took a razor, made a deep cruciform
incision on it, peeled off the skin at the middle of the incision until the bone of the
skull was exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman also expired instantly. Thereupon I
asked them whether my services were needed any longer, and when they replied in the
negative I returned home, having learned of their medicine what I knew not before.
I have, however, witnessed a case of their medicine which was quite different from
that.
The king of the Franks bad for treasurer a knight named Bernard, who (may Allah's curse
be upon him!) was one of the most accursed and wicked among the Franks. A horse kicked him
in the leg, which was subsequently infected and which opened in fourteen different places.
Every time one of these cuts would close in one place, another would open in ancther
place. All this happened while I was praying for his perdition. Then came to him a
Frankish physician and removed from the leg all the ointments which were on it and began
to wasb it with very strong vinegar. By this treatment all the cuts were healed and the
man became well again. He was up again like a devil. Another case illustrating their
curious medicine is the following: In Shayzar we had an artisan named abu-al-Fath, who had
a boy whose neck was afflicted with scrofula. Every time a part of it would close, another
part would open. This man happened to go to Antioch on business of his, accompanied by his
son. A Frank noticed the boy and asked his father about him. Abu-al-Fath replied,
"This is my son." The Frank said to him, 'Wilt thou swear by thy religion that
if I prescribe to you a medicine which will cure thy boy, thou wilt charge nobody fees for
prescribing it thyself? In that case, I shall prescribe to you a medicine which will cure
the boy." The man took the oath and the Frank said:
Take uncrushed leaves of glasswort, burn them, then soak the ashes in olive oil and
sharp vinegar. Treat the scrofula with them until the spot on which it is growing is eaten
up. Then take burnt lead, soak it in ghee butter and treat him with it. That will cure
him.
The father treated the boy accordingly, and the boy was cured. The sores closed and the
boy returned to his normal condition of health.
I have myself treated with this medicine many who were afflicted with such disease, and
the treatment was successful in removing the cause of the complaint.
***
The Franks are void of all zeal and jealousy. One of them may be walking along with his
wife. He meets another man who takes the wife by the hand and steps aside to converse with
her while the husband is standing on one side waiting for his wife to conclude the
conversation. If she lingers too long for him, he leaves her alone with the conversant and
goes away.
Here is an illustration which I myself witnessed:
When I used to visit Nablus, I always took lodging with a man named Mu'izz, whose home
was a lodging house for the Muslims. The house had windows which opened to the road, and
there stood opposite to it on the other side of the road a house belonging to a Frank who
sold wine for the merchants. He would take some wine in a bottle and go around announcing
it by shouting, "So and so, the merchant, has just opened a cask full of this wine.
He who wants to buy some of it will find it in such and such a place." The Frank's
pay for the announcement made would be the wine in that bottle. One day this Frank went
home and found a man with his wife in the same bed. He asked him, "What could have
made you enter into my wife's room?" The man replied, "I was tired, so I went in
to rest." "But how," asked he, "didst thou get into my bed?" The
other replied, "I found a bed that was spread, so I slept in it."
"But," said be, "my wife was sleeping together with you!" The other
replied, "Well, the bed is hers. How could I therefore have prevented her from using
her own bed?"
"By the truth of my religion," said the husband, "if thou shouldst do it
again, thou and I would have a quarrel." Such was for the Frank the entire expression
of his disapproval and the limit of his jealousy. . . .
Another illustration: I entered the public bath in Sur [Tyre] and took my place in a
secluded part. One of my servants thereupon said to me, "There is with us in the bath
a woman." When I went out, I sat on one of the stone benches and behold! the woman
who was in the bath had come out all dressed and was standing with her father just
opposite me. But I could not be sure that she was a woman. So I said to one of my
companions, "By Allah, see if this is a woman," by which I meant that he should
ask about her. But he went, as I was looking at him, lifted the end of her robe and looked
carefully at her. Thereupon her father turned toward me and said, "This is my
daughter. Her mother is dead and she has nobody to wash her hair. So I took her in with me
to the bath and washed her head." I replied, "Thou hast well done! This is
something for which thou shalt be rewarded [by Allah]!"
***
I once went in the company of al-Amir Mu'in-al-Din (may Allah's mercy rest upon his
soul!) to Jerusalem. We stopped at Nablus. There a blind man, a Muslim, who was still
young and was well dressed, presented himself before al-amir carrying fruits for him and
asked permission to be admitted into his service in Damascus. The amir consented. I
inquired about this man and was informed that his mother bad been married to a Frank whom
she had killed. Her son used to practice ruses against the Frankish pilgrims and cooperate
with his mother in assassinating them. They finally brought charges against him and tried
his case according to the Frankish way of procedure.
They installed a huge cask and filled it with water. Across it they set a board of
wood. They then bound the arms of the man charged with the act, tied a rope around his
shoulders and dropped him into the cask, their idea being that in case he was innocent, he
would sink in the water and they would then lift him up with the rope so that he might not
die in the water; and in case he was guilty, he would not sink in the water. This man did
his best to sink when they dropped him into the water, but he could not do it. So he had
to submit to their sentence against him--may Allah's curse be upon them! They pierced his
eyeballs with red-hot awls.
Later this same man arrived in Damascus. Al-Amir Mu'in-al-Din (may Allah's
mercy rest upon his soul!) assigned him a stipend large enough to meet all his needs and
said to a slave of his, "Conduct him to Burhan-al-Din al-Balkhi (may Allah's mercy
rest upon his soul!) and ask him on my behalf to order somebody to teach this man the
Koran and something of Muslim jurisprudence." Hearing that, the blind man remarked,
"May triumph and victory be thine! But this was never my thought...... What didst
thou think I was going to do for tbee?" asked Mu'in-al-Din. The blind man replied,
"I thought thou wouldst give me a horse, a mule and a suit of armor and make me a
knight." Mu'in-al-Din then said, "I never thought that a blind man could become
a knight."
***
Among the Franks are those who have become acclimatized and have as- sociated long with
the Muslims. These are much better than the recent comers from the Frankish lands. But
they constitute the exception and cannot be treated as a rule.
Here is an illustration. I dispatched one of my men to Antioch on business. There was
in Antioch at that time al-Ra'is Theodoros Sophianos, to whom I was bound by mutual ties
of amity. His influence in Antioch was supreme. One day he said to my man, "I am
invited by a friend of mine who is a Frank. Thou shouldst come with me so that thou mayest
see their fashions." My man related the story in the following words:
I went along with him and we came to the home of a knight who belonged to the old
category of knights who came with the early expeditions of the Franks. He had been by that
time stricken off the register and exempted from service, and possessed in Antioch an
estate on the income of which he lived. The knight presented an excellent table, with food
extraordinarily clean and delicious. Seeing me abstaining from food, he said, "Eat,
be of good cbeer! I never eat Frankish dishes, but I have Egyptian women cooks and never
eat except their cooking. Besides, pork never enters my home." I ate, but guardedly,
and after that we departed.
As I was passing in the market place, a Frankish woman all of a sudden hung to my
clothes and began to mutter words in their language, and I could not understand what she
was saying. This made me immediately the center of a big crowd of Franks. I was convinced
that death was at hand. But all of a sudden that same knight approached. On seeing me, he
came and said to that woman, "What is the matter between you and this Muslim?"
She replied, "This is he who has killed my brother Hurso." This Hurso was a
knight in Afiimiyah who was killed by someone of the army of Hamah. The Christian knight
shouted at her, saying, "This is a bourgeois (i.e., a merchant) who neither fights
nor attends a fight." He also yelled at the people who had assembled, and they all
dispersed. Then he took me by the hand and went away. Thus the effect of that meal was my
deliverance from certain death.*
