Saracen and Crusader Heraldry in Joinville's History of Saint Louis

Saracen and Crusader Heraldry in Joinville's History of Saint LouisAuthor(s): William LeafSource: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 2 (1983), pp.208-214Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25211534 .

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SARACEN AND CRUSADER HERALDRY IN JOINVILLE'S HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS

By William Leaf

Heraldry - that is the systematic use of hereditary charges based upon the

shield - had not come into being by 1095, the year of the Council of Clermont, but by 1300 the new science of Armory, as it is more correctly called, was in

use throughout most of Christendom. The authors of the Chansons de Geste

and historians such as Ambroise certainly mention heraldic devices on the

banners and shields of both Western knights and Saracen amirs, but their con

fused statements, although extremely illuminating as to Western views of

Muslims, do not add a great deal to our study of contemporary heraldic prac tice.1 Their lowly position in the Crusading armies did not offer them many chances for really accurate observation. However, Jean, Sire de Joinville,2

who is dictating in about 1305/6 his account of events he had not only wit

nessed but in which he had played an important part in his youth, had been

very close to the King and lived during the very period when Heraldry in the

West became formalized on strictly controlled principles. He is a reliable

historical observer, and it may well be that by examining specific statements

he makes about both Western, and more importantly Muslim, heraldic practice we can further our knowledge of developments in the two systems.

The Muslim chronicler al-Qalqashandi3 specifically mentions boats as one of

the possessions of an amir on which his blazon was applied in colour, and

Joinville on p. 104, describing the disembarkation in Egypt, says, A nostre main senestre arriva le conte de Japhe, qui estoit cousin germain

le conte de Montbeliart et du lignage de Joinville. Ce fu celi qui plus noble

mant ariva; car sa galie ariva toute peinte dedens mer et dehors, a escussiaus

des ses armes lesqueles armes sont d'or, a une croiz de gueules patee: il avoit

bien trois cens nageurs en sa galie, et a chascun de ses nageurs avoit une

targe de ses armes, et a chascune targe avoit un pennoncel de ses armes

batu a or.4

On our left side arrived the Count of Jaffa, who was cousin german to the

Count of Montbeliard and of the lineage of Joinville. He made the most

noble show arriving, for his galley was all painted above and below deck with

shields of his arms, which are gold a cross patty gules; he had a good 300

rowers in his galley, and each of these had a targe of his arms, and with each

targe went a pennoncel of his arms, worked in gold.

It is interesting to note that the oarsmen bear on a round shield and a pennon the complete arms of their overlord. William Marshal in 1174 is said to have

borne the arms of Tancarville ;5 however, this was unusual, because unless a

political statement was involved (such as that made by Edward III when he



SARACEN AND CRUSADER HERALDRY 209

(a) (b) PLATE I

Arms of Jean d'Ibetin, count of Jaffa: or a Blazon of Muhammad II b. al-Muzaffar,

cross patty gules. ruler of Hamah: bendy of eight or, gules, or

and sable, on a chief argent a lion passant of the third.

(c) (d)

Blazon of Sayf al-dln Arghun: or, on a fesse Blazon of Baha' al-din Aslam: or, on a fesse

gules, a napkin of the field. gules, a scimitar of the field.



210 SARACEN AND CRUSADER HERALDRY

(a) (b) PLATE II

Blazon of Sharaf al-din Yunus: 1 apenbox, Blazon of Sayf al-din Shadbak: 1 a penbox, 2a cup, 3 a cup (tinctures not known). 2 a cup charged with a napkin, 3 a fleur

de-lys (tinctures not known).

(c) (d)

Blazons from The reception of the Venetian Blazon of the amir Barquq: I or a napkin Ambassador in the Louvre: 1 gules a napkin argent, 2 or a cup sable, charged with a pen or, 2 or a cup azure, knop gules, charged box argent, between 2 horns sable, openings with a penbox argent, between 2 horns vert, argent, 3 sable a cup argent,

openings gules, 3 sable a cup or.




quartered the arms of France with his own), an adaptation of the overlord's or

patron's arms was more common. This would avoid such confusion, whether

real or induced, between two individuals, as seems to have occurred on p. 174, when the Saracen leader

.. . prist la cote le conte d'Artois qui avoit este mort en celle bataille et

la montra a tout le peuple des Sarrazins, et leur dit que c'estoit la cote le

roy a armer, qui mort estoit.6

. . . took the coat of the Count of Artois who had been killed in this

battle and showed it to all the Saracens and told them it was the coat of

arms of the king, who had been killed.

Various ways of differencing however do appear to have existed in the Middle

East. I have argued in a previous article7 that 'bendy and a chief (that is, bendy

of or, gules, or, sable, ?

of varying numbers ? a chief argent) '. . . seem to have

been the armorial insignia of the Hamah branch of the Ayyubid dynasty from

1224 to circa 1374'. I agree with Dr. Meinecke8 that it was during the time of

al-Mansur Sayf al-dln Muhammad II (642/1244-683/1284) that a lion was

added to the chief of these arms, and that this was done to indicate the sub

ordinate position of the rulers of Hamah under the overlordship of Rukn al-dln

Baybars. Certainly Joinville thought that he recognized such a system, as the next quotation, from p. 188, shows:

Les armes au soudanc estoient d'or; et tiex armes comme le soudanc

portoit, portoient celle joene gent; et estoient appelez bahariz. Maintenant

que les barbes leur venoient, le soudanc les fesoit chevaliers. Et portoient les armes au soudanc, fors que tant que il y avoit difference, c'est a savoir

enseignes vermeilles, roses, ou bendes vermeilles, ou oiseaus ou autres

enseignes que il metoient sus armes d'or, telles comme il leur plesoit.

The sultan's arms were of gold, and such arms as the sultan had, these

young men bore also; and they were called bahris. When their beards grew the sultan made them knights. And they bore the sultan's arms, except that there was a difference, that is to say scarlet charges, roses, or scarlet bands,

or birds or other signs which they put on the golden arms as they pleased. Joinville is writing about what he saw in 1249; that is to say, the period when

the Bahri mamluks were replacing the last Ayyubids as Sultans in Egypt and

Syria. However, I think it cannot be a coincidence that al-Malik al-'Adil Zayn al-dln Kitbugha (reigned 1294?6) is said by al-Dhahabi to have borne yellow banners while he was king;9 and that two of his brother mamluks, Sayf al-dln

Kujkun (d. 1338/9) and Husam al-dln Lajin, who deposed him in 1296 and

ruled till 1299, bore or a fesse gules. Other leading mamluks had similar blazons:

Sayf al-dln Arghun (d. 1347/8) or, on a fesse gules, a napkin of the field, Baha' al-dln Aslam, the armour bearer, (d. 1346) or, on a fesse gules, a scimitar of the

field. It seems possible that either Joinville knew of these developments in amiral




armorial insignia, which took place at the end of the 13th century, and ante

dated them by 50 years, or that they did in fact take place earlier than has been

thought hitherto. During the 14th and 15th centuries the amirs' insignia became more complex, until by c.1450 a tripartite design with one or more charges in

each section was in general use.10

I do not know of a tripartite blazon of this type earlier than 1382,11 and

therefore it is most surprising to find Joinville on p. 132 describing the arms

of Scecedins (the Saracen diplomat and army commander Fakhr al-dln ibn Sadr

al-din al-Shaykh, died 8 February 1250): .. . que je vous ai devant nomme le chievetain des Turs se estoit le plus

prisie de toute la paennime. En ses banieres portoit les armes l'empereur (Frederick II) qui l'avoit fait chevalier; sa baniere estoit bandee et une des

bandes estoient les armes l'empereur qui l'avoit fait chevalier; en l'autre

estoient les armes le soudanc de Halape (probably al-Nasir of Aleppo); en

l'autre bande estoit les armes au soudanc de Babiloine (i.e., Cairo; either

al-Kamil Muhammad or as-Salih Ayyub of Egypt). . . . whom I have mentioned before, the chieftain of the Turks, who

was the most esteemed in all heathendom. On his banners he bore the arms

of the emperor who had made him knight; his banner was divided into bands

and one of the bands was the arms of the emperor who had made him knight;

in another were the arms of the sultan of Aleppo; in another the arms of the

sultan of Babylon. That Fakhr al-dln was knighted by Frederick II at some time between autumn

1226 and February 1229 is well known,11 but that the Emperor and his

Ayyub id masters allowed him to use the imperial eagle in chief is curious, to

say the least. Another case of this kind quoted by Joinville on p. 348 is that

of the sixteen-year-old prince Bohemond VI of Antioch, who . . .

par le gre du roy escartela ses armes, qui sont vermeilles,12 aus armes

(MS. var. aus autres) de France, pour ce que li roys l'avoit fait chevalier

(in 1252). ... by the king was allowed to quarter his arms, which are scarlet, with

the arms (or, with the others) of France, because the king had knighted him.

These two instances seem to anticipate very closely the practice of Italian

noble families of adding in chief to their arms either the capo dellTmpero or

the capo d'Angio to show their allegiance to either the successors of Frederick II

or the house of Anjou-Sicile founded by St. Louis' brother Charles, King of

Sicily and Naples. That Frederick should knight an experienced Muslim ambassador, and Louis

the young Bohemond, who was still the ward of his mother (Lucienne dei Conti

di Segni, the cousin of Pope Gregory IX),13 says much about the attitude of the

two monarchs to Middle Eastern affairs. The King of France, pious and totally

intransigent towards Muslims, dealt well and sympathetically with Westerners.




The Emperor found Western knights uncouth, unimaginative and bigoted, and

enjoyed immensely the subtle conversation of educated Muslims.

Joinville, although he admired his king, had a much more flexible attitude

towards the Muslim world; he derived great pleasure from learning about such

people as the Berbers and the Assassins, in the same way as he was interested

in their heraldry and in the finding of a fossilized fish.

NOTES

1 See my article in PEQ, CXV, 61-74, "Developments in the system of armorial insignia

during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods".

throughout I have used the edition of N. de Wailly, Histoire de Saint Louis, Paris, 1867.

3Subhal-a'sha, IV, 61, Section 21-62, Section 5, Cairo, 1914-28. 4

Jean d'Ibelin, seigneur de Baruth et comte de Japhe, son of Balian d'Ibelin and Eschiva

de Montbeliard who was allied through the female line with the house of Joinville. Later in

1252 the comte de Jaffa prepares his castle for invasion and at each opening in the battle ments he sets a shield with his arms and a pennon . . .d'or a une croix de gueles (sic) patee, 348.

5 At a tournament in the autumn of 1174 Johan de Soleingi (Soligny) says:

C'est Guill. Ii Mareschals That is William Marshal, sire,

si cuit que vos n'eiistes unkes who I believe of all your squires nul bacheler plus seit sans gile. is the one that knows least guile. Sis escuz est de Tankarvile. The arms he bears are Tankarvile.

L 'Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, edited by Paul Meyer, I, Paris, 1891, lines 1474 ff. 6 The wearing of a surcoat over one's armour seems not to have been a general rule, for

in the Memoirs of Usdmah ibn-Munqidh, translated by P. Hitti, New York, 1929, 90, Usamah, seeing one of their horsemen hastening towards him displaying his colours in a

green and yellow silk tunic, thinks that he is not wearing mail, charges him and is surprised that his surcoat covers his armour.

7W. Leaf, art. cit., 63-7. 8 M. Meinecke, Notes to lectures given at the Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University,

1974-5 (English translation), unpublished, 19; L. A. Mayer, Saracenic heraldry, Oxford, 1933 (from which all Saracenic blazons are taken unless otherwise specified), PL I, 7 of the

perfume sprinkler which is bendy sinister, a lion on the chief 9 "While amir he carried this coat of arms ^ , while king yellow banners", al-Dhahabi,

al-Muntaqa min ta'rikh al-islam, VII, MS. Library of Zeki Pasha, Cairo, quoted by Mayer, 144. In view of the Joinville quotation, I disagree with Mayer's conclusion that Kitbugha as Sultan did not bear plain yellow but merely changed the field of his amiral banner to

yellow. 10

See M. Meinecke, "Zur mamlukischen Heraldik", Mitteilungen des Deutschen

Archdologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo, XXVIII, 2, 258 ff., in which he discusses fully the development of amiral tripartite insignia.

uSharaf al-dln Yunus al-Nauruzi, mamluk of Jurji al-Nauruzi, dawadar to Sultan

Barquq (reigned 1382-9 and 1390-8), grand dawadar 1382, d. 1389, bore: 1 a penbox, 2 a cup, 3 a cup.

Sayf al-dln Shadbak, amir of Sultan Barsbay (reigned 1422-38), d.1450, bore: 1 a pen box , 2 a cup charged with a napkin, 3 a fleur-de-lys.

Blazon of the amirs of Sultan Qa'itbay (reigned 1468-95). This blazon appears eight times in the imaginary architectural facade of the Louvre painting of The reception of the Venetian ambassador, coloured as follows: 1 gules a napkin or, 2 or a cup azure, knop




gules, charged with a penbox argent, between two horns vert, openings gules, 3 sable a cup or. See Y. Artin Pacha, "Les armes de l'Egypte aux XVe et XVIe Siecles", Bulletin de I'Institut Egyptien, IV, 7, 1906, PL I and II; L. A. Mayer, Mamluk costume, Geneve, 1952, PL I; Julian Raby, Venice, Durer and the Oriental mode, Hans Huth memorial papers, I,

London, 1983, passim. The amir Barquq, mamluk of Sultan Jaqmaq (reigned 1438-53), Superintendent of the

Cellar 1468, viceroy of Syria, d.1473, bore: 1 a napkin argent, 2 or a cup sable charged with a penbox argent, between two horns sable, openings argent, 3 sable a cup argent.

12 E. Kantorowicz, Frederick II, English translation by E. O. Lorimer, London, 1931,

189. 13

Possibly gules, a -bend cheeky argent and azure, the arms of the Hauteville kings of

Sicily and dukes of Apulia (originally as in the Cathedral of Monreale, azure the bend

argent and gules). Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri Italiane, VI, Milano, 1843, s.v. Hauteville. 14

Genealogy of the dei Conti di Segni to show the relationship of Bohemond VI of

Antioch to Pope Gregory IX, drawn up from information in Galbreath's Papal Heraldry, revised by G. Briggs, London, 1972, 72; Achille Luchaire, Innocent III, Paris, 1907, s.v., and L'Art de Verifier les Dates, I, Paris, 1783, 292-6.

Trasimondo, ?

Claricia Scotti

Conte di Segni

i-1 Lotario dei Conti di Segni Riccardo dei Conti di Segni INNOCENT III (1198-1216) I

Mattia dei Conti di Segni Paolo dei Conti di Segni

I ,-' Ugolino dei Conti di Segni Luciana

?? Bohemond V

GREGORY IX (1227-41) prince of

Antioch

(1233-52)

Bohemond VI



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