The newly-minted Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem withstood crisis after crisis all through its history, and arguably one of the worst disasters it faced was the capture of its king, Baldwin II, along with several of his most powerful barons, by the Artuqid amir Balak ibn Bahram in 1122. This is the story of the daring rescue mission to free King Baldwin, and how it went awry.
King Baldwin I of Jerusalem invaded Egypt in 1118, only to be taken ill suddenly after bathing in the Nile river. He died en route back to Jerusalem, and without a proper heir, his distant cousin 1 and companion Baldwin de Bourq was chosen to be the new king.
The new king was described by the chronicler Matthew of Edessa as follows:
Now, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, and their other cousin, Joscelin de Courtenay, had all married Armenian princesses. Baldwin I married a woman traditionally called Arda, daughter of Prince Thoros, but their marriage fell apart almost immediately 2. He banished her, remarried to Adelaide, widow of the king of Sicily. This marriage didn’t work out any better than the last one, so Adelaide was put on a fast ship back to Sicily in 1113 and Baldwin tried (and failed) to reconcile with Arda. He then croaked in 1118 and it was a moot point, anyway.
Joscelin married Arda’s first cousin (known to us only by her Catholic baptismal name, Beatrice 3) and became lord of Edessa. Baldwin de Bourq married Morfia, daughter of Prince Khoril (Gabriel) of Melitene, with whom he had four daughters. Now they were king Baldwin II and Queen Morfia of Jerusalem.
About the same time Baldwin II became king, a powerful young Muslim lord was rising to power: Balak ibn Bahram. Balak was the nephew of Ilghazi, the Artuqid ruler of Mardin, Aleppo, and several other cities. Ilghazi had been a great warrior who in 1119, on the Field of Blood, had wiped the army of the Principality of Antioch, along with their prince, Roger, off the face of the earth. But he was by then a notorious alcoholic who spent most of his time sloppy drunk.
In September 1122, Balak ibn Bahram was leaving Aleppo and heading to his home base, Malatiya, accompanied by a few hundred soldiers. Joscelin of Edessa swooped down and overtook him on the road. Joscelin’s forces were outnumbered and surrounded on all sides by marshes, but Joscelin opted to attack anyway. Their horses mired down in the mud, and the ones who weren’t cut down by arrows were taken captive, including Joscelin himself. Balak shut Joscelin and the other survivors up in his fortress, Khartpert.
Balak’s uncle Ilghazi’s liver finally gave out just a few weeks later, on November 2 1122. Although Ilghazi had a pack of kids, Balak was seen as the undisputed choice for new amir. King Baldwin 2.0 of Jerusalem was determined to take Balak out and free his cousin, Joscelin. In April 1123, on the way to engage Balak, Baldwin and the army of Jerusalem pitched their tents and settled in for the night near the banks of the Euphrates. The next morning, while out hawking with his men, Baldwin carelessly rode across the bridge Shenchrig, only to find Balak’s men laying in wait on the other side.
His army woke, sleepy-eyed, to find their king captured and the enemy descending on them. Chaos erupted. Men broke and ran. Others were massacred. Balak then hauled Baldwin and the other captives back into his own territory. In the fortress of Khartpert, Baldwin was reunited with his cousin Joscelin. Also imprisoned with them was another cousin, Galeran of Saruj 4, and Baldwin’s nephew, Arnulf.
The kingdom of Jerusalem and its fiefs was now left in the hands of Queen Morfia and Baldwin II’s homeboy, Godfrey Almuin. The situation looked hopeless. Baldwin, Joscelin, and the others were held in the dungeons of Khartpert, deep within Artuqid territory. The fortress itself sat on a mountain fastness 250 meters above the plain of Khanzit. Balak used it to hold his most valuable prisoners, his treasury, and his harem, so you can imagine how formidable this fortress was. The army was shattered and there was really no one left to come to their rescue.
Morfia appealed to her own people, begging the Armenian garrison at Behesni to rescue her husband and his men. A contigent numbering between 15-50 Armenian soldiers (accounts vary) set out for Artuqid territory. They crossed both the Anti-Taurus mountain range and the Euphrates river in the blistering summer heat of June-July 1123. They blended in with the local Armenian population and scouted the fortress.
Balak himself had left Khartpert in May, off to conquer the city of Harran from his cousin, Badr. The fortress was left in the hands of a garrison. Ten of the Behesni Armenians approached the fortress gates, wearing peasant clothing and carrying fruit and chickens (William of Tyre says they were dressed as monks). They asked to speak to the captain, and were ushered into a guardroom. The captain and the officers were banqueting and probably drunk and relaxed. Seizing the opportunity, the Armenians snatched some weapons they found in the guardroom and killed the guards, opened the gates, and let in their allies who were hiding nearby. The Armenians then killed the captain and the other officers in their banquet hall. They then rushed to the prisoner’s quarters and set about freeing them.
The fortress was now in their hands, but they were surrounded still by the rest of Balak’s garrison, which was camped around Khartpert and would not remain ignorant for long that the fortress had been commandeered by her prisoners.
For the first time in four months, Baldwin II was a free man (for Joscelin and some of the others, it was the first time since September). He and the other lords hatched a plan. Baldwin would stay behind and hold Khartpert against Balak, while Joscelin returned Edessa and rallied the troops. Joscelin then slipped out, accompanied by two Armenian guides and one more fellow who was supposed to double back and report back to Baldwin. By moonlight they slipped past Balak’s troops who were encamped around Khartpert. He then gave his ring to his third companion, who brought it back to Baldwin to show that Joscelin had indeed escaped. Joscelin and the two Armenian guides forded the Euphrates and joined a local peasant family in cognito. According to the chronicler Fulcher, he disguised himself and traveled rode part of the way on a donkey while holding a crying baby.
Back in Khartpert, the newly freed captives were faced with daunting odds. They numbered less than a hundred, and outside the fortified walls were hordes of furious Turkmen troops, howling for their blood. They could not possibly fight their way out across 150 kilometers of hostile territory to safety. All they could do was hunker down and wait for reinforcements.
Balak found out that Baldwin II and co. had commandeered Khartpert on August 7 1123 5. He turned around, and marched straight for the fortress. On arrival, he tried sweet-talking Baldwin, promising that if he surrendered and handed over Balak’s treasure and harem, that he and his men would be given safe conduct back to Edessa. Baldwin didn’t believe a word of it.
But while Baldwin stalled, Balak cunningly sent his men to tunnel under the fortress, into the soft chalk it was built atop. They tunneled under one of the towers and sent it crashing to the ground. Again, Balak asked for surrender. Baldwin, more fearful for his men than for himself (as a king, he was more valuable alive than dead as a bargaining chip), refused.
Joscelin, meanwhile, arrived safely in Edessa and began assembling a small army.
In Khartpert, a second tower came crashing to the ground. Baldwin realized that holding out any longer was hopeless. He sent his cousin Galeran to speak to Balak and get his solemn oath that none of Baldwin’s men would be harmed if they surrendered. Balak promised, and Baldwin and his men surrendered on September 16, 1123.
Balak prompted put Baldwin, Galeran, and Arnulf in chains and sent them to the city of Harran (the same city he’d recently taken from his cousin Badr). Balak then went back on his word and brutally murdered the other prisoners of Khartpert. The brave Armenians from Behesni, the handful of survivors from the armies of Jerusalem and Edessa, and the townspeople who’d joined them, were flayed, thrown from the fortress walls, buried alive, and used for target practice by Balak’s soldiers. Matthew of Edessa says that all in all Balak killed 70 men at Khartpert. He was a contemporary and being Armenian himself, he could’ve even spoken to friends or relatives of the defenders, or even the handful of survivors, so I think his estimate is likely. That’s minus the two Armenian guides who took Joscelin to safety, and an unknown number who died fighting Balak’s forces in the weeks before the surrender. I don’t know if Joscelin’s guides were Behesni soldiers or locals, but I’d like to think that at least a couple of those soldiers made it out alive.
When Joscelin and his army arrived, there was no one left to rescue. Baldwin, Galeran, and Arnulf were in faraway Harran; the others were all dead. Joscelin and his Edessans went crazy with fury. In revenge, they attacked the Artuqid city of Aleppo, destroying mosques, desecrating tombs and cemeteries, burning fields, and even uprooting trees.
The Muslim town of Menbij turned their backs on Balak, and sided with Joscelin. Balak marched on Menbij, determined to punish them. Joscelin tried to defend Menbij, but his army was too small and they were forced to retreat. On May 5, 1124 Balak went in person to oversee the seige of Menbij’s citadel. It was a hot day and he’d shucked his coat of mail. One of Menbij’s defenders, an Armenian archer, fired an arrow straight into Balak’s buttocks; Balak died the next day.
His cousin Timurtash, son of Ilghazi, succeeded him. According to the chronicler Ibn Athir, Timurtash was interested only in having fun… and felt there had been too many wars with the Franj [Franks] in Syria. Joscelin and Queen Morfia reached out to him to negotiate for Baldwin’s release. The terms were 80,000 dinars, several strategic towns, and some important hostages.
Timurtash released Baldwin, restored to him his own horse which had been taken from him on his capture in April 1123, and let him ride out of Harran safely. Galeran and Arnulf remained behind as hostages for his good behavior. Two more hostages shortly arrived: Joscelin’s ten-year-old son, also named Joscelin, and Baldwin’s youngest daughter, Ivetta, who was only about five years old 6. Baldwin promptly went back on the terms of the agreement and showed up with his own army at the gates of Aleppo that September. Timurtash had Galeran and Arnulf killed in revenge.
Bizarrely, the Muslims themselves paid Baldwin’s ransom. The ransom money was raised from cash and jewels taken off Muslims taken captive by the army of Jerusalem and then sent to Timurtash!
And that’s the story of the strange and daring attempted rescue of the king of Jerusalem in 1123.
- Although often referred to as first cousins in secondary sources, no primary sources make it clear precisely how the Baldwins were related.
- The chronicler Guibert de Nogent would have us believe Arda was captured by pirates, and although returned to her husband, Baldwin came to believe she had not been chaste.
- Beatrice’s brother Levon seems to have married Baldwin de Bourq’s sister Cecile after her first husband, Roger of Salerno, died on the Field of Blood in 1119.
- Galeran, like his cousins, had married an Armenian princess, daughter of Ablgharib, lord of Bira.
- Orderic Vitalis tells us a picaresque story that two of his concubines sent him word via pigeon.
- Disgustingly, and in a bizarre echo of the Arda story, a couple of years later Ivetta was returned to Jerusalem but never married, because it was suspected she’d been ‘unchaste’ during her childhood in Muslim lands (keep in mind she was about five years old!).
Further reading:
Harari, Yuval. *Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550, *2007.
