By Amin Maalouf Based on the various written records of Arab accounts. Not a one sided history, but just providing an interesting look at the sudden appearance of this menace from the north as the Syrians, Palestians, etc. desperately tried to slow the advance of a well trained fanatical force marching to Jerusalem and wreaking mayhem along the way. Not all that flattering towards the Arabs either, acknowledging that one of the main causes of the early crusader successes was their own factional squabbling with various leaders trying to use the European invaders towards their own political ends against each other. It does paint Saladin as a hero, but then even western accounts treat him with respect. It does focus on the brutalities of both sides, but the worst came from the crusaders shortly after the first fall of Antioch, when the crusaders, by the accounts of some of their own, boiled and ate many of their victims at Ma'arra after obtaining a surrender with promises of mercy. The official Roman Church line was that the cannibalism was a desperate measure for survival, but the evidence indicates something more fundamentally malevolent. Here's a sample (note, the term "Franj" is used to describe all European invaders, not just the French): "Until the arrival of the Franj, the people of Ma'arra lived untroubled lives, shielded by their circular city walls.... Ma'arra's main claim to faim was that it was the hometown of one of the great figures of Arab literature, Abu'l-'Alaal-Ma'arri, who had died in 1057. This blind poet, a free thinker, had dared to attack the mores of his age, flouting its taboos. Indeed, it required a certain audacity to write lines like these:The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:Those with brains, but no religion,And those with religion, but no brains.Forty years after his death, a fanaticism come from afar descended on this city and seemed to prove this son of Ma'arra right, not only in his irreligion, but also in his legendary pessimism:Fate smashes us as thought we were made of glassAnd never are our shards put together again.His city was to be reduced to a heap of ruins, and the poet's oft expressed mistrust of his compatriots would find its cruelist vindication. During the first few months of 1098 the inhabitants of Ma'arra uneasily followed the battle of Antioch, which was taking place three days' march northwest of them. After their victory, the Franj raided several neighboring villages, and although Ma'arra was spared, several of its families decided to abandon the town for more secure residences in Aleppo, Homs, and Hama. Their fears proved justified when, towards the end of November, thousands of Frankish warriors arrived and surrounded the city. Although some citizens managed to flee despite the siege, most were trapped. Ma'arra had no army, only and urban militial, which several hundred young men lacking any military experience hastily joined. For two weeks they courageously resisted the redoubtable knights, going so far as to hurl packed beehives down on the besiegers from the city walls. To counter such tenacity, Ibn al-Ahtir wrote, the Franj constructed a wooden turret as high as the ramparts. Some Muslims, fearful and demoralized, felt that a more effective defense was to barricade themselves witin the city's tallest buildings. They therefore abaondoned the walls, laving the positions they had been holding undefended. Others followed their example, and another point of the surrounding wall was abandoned. Soon the entire perimeter of the town was without defenders. The Franj scaled the walls with ladders, and when the Muslims saw them atop the walls they lost heart. It was 11 December, a pitch dark night, and the Franj did not yet penetrate the town. The notables of Ma'arra made contact with Bohemond, the new master of Antioch, who was leading the attackers. The Frankish commander promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants if they would stop fighting and withdraw from certain buildings. Desperately placing their trust in his word, the families gathered in the houses and cellars of the city and waited all night in fear. The Franj arrived at dawn. It was carnage.For three days they put people to the sword, killing more than a hundred thousand people and taking many prisoners.Ibn al-Ahtir's figures are obviously fantastic, for the city's population on the eve of its fall was probably less than ten thousand. But the horror lay less in the number of victims than in the barely imaginable fate that awaited them.In Ma'arra our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.The inhabitants of towns and villages near Ma'arra would never read this confession by the Franksh chronicler Radulph of Caen, but they would never forget what they had seen and heard. The memory of these atrocities, preserved and transmitted by local poets and oral tradition, shaped an image of the Franj that would not easily fade. .... Was the view of the Franj unjust? Did the western invaders devout the inhabitants of the martyred city simply in order to survive? Their commanders said so in an offical leter to the Pope the following year:A terrible famine racked the army in Ma'arra, and placed it in the cruel necessity of feeding itself upon the bodies of the Saracens.But the explanation seems unconvincing, for the inhabitants of the Ma'arra region witnessed behavior that sinister winter that could not be accounted for by hunger. They saw, for example, the fanatical Franj, that Tafurs, roam thgought the country-side openly proclaiming that they would chew the flesh of the Saracens and gathering around their nocturnal campfires to devour their prey. Were they cannibals out of necessity? Or out of fanaticism? It all seems unreal, and yet the evidence is overwhelming, not only in the facts described, but also in the morbid atmosphere it reflects. In this respect, one sentence by the Frankish chronicler Albert of Aix, who took part in the battle of Ma'arra, remains unequalled in its horror:Not only did out troops not shrink from eating dead Turks and Saracens; they also ate dogs!