Thomas Brosset, a CWD doctoral student in the Department of History, has published an article illuminating how the First Crusade culminated in crusader success, by overturning long-held assumptions about the actions of Kerbogha, atābak of Mosul.

The First Crusade, launched in 1096, changed the course of global history when an army of European Christians conquered Antioch and Jerusalem and established kingdoms and polities to govern the Levant. The so-called crusader states would last until 1291, when the last outpost fell to the Mamluks, but conflict between the Christian West and the Abode of Islam would continue for centuries across the Mediterranean.

Resistance to the First Crusade was led at the crucial Siege of Antioch in 1098 by Kerbogha, atābak of Mosul. If Kerbogha had succeeded in defeating the crusaders at Antioch, the Christian expedition to take Jerusalem would have been crushed and the crusader states never established.

Thomas Brosset’s article offers a new explanation for why Kerbogha failed to defeat the crusaders, emphasising the need for historians to look beyond the crusader perspective and much-visited sources, to examine Kerbogha’s perspective on its own terms.

The article is published open access in Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean. The full article can be read for free on the journal’s website.

Article abstract:

This article addresses why the campaign of Kerbogha’s combined forces against the First Crusade failed by using accounts in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Latin, and Old French. The discussion starts with an overview of how the different claims that explain the campaign’s failure have evolved since the eighteenth century. Then, for the first time, Kerbogha’s route from Mosul to Antioch has been precisely recreated, revealing a longer campaign than formerly estimated. The focus of the article then discusses the reasons why Kerbogha besieged Edessa. This section is followed by an explanation of why the failure of the siege led to the collapse of the entire campaign. Finally, the tactics used during the battle of 28 June 1098 are re-evaluated by considering the poor condition of the combined Muslim force. The article claims the campaign primarily failed because of the deficient structure of the army and the rivalries between its commanders.