XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 1

Секция II 116 XXX Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки it had never been resumed. As a result, by the end of the 1070s a status quo , which remained until the coming of the Crusaders, had been established: the Seljuqs took over Syria and Palestine, while the Fatimids kept Egypt and controlled some coastline towns on the Mediterranean littoral. From the point of view of this dichotomy in the Middle East, the coming of the Crusaders became a trigger for the resumption of the Fatimid-Seljuq confrontation after some 20 years of relative peace. Eventually, the prime prize in their fighting became Jerusalem, a major city in the Egyptian-Syrian borderland and a capital of the Palestine region, resulting in its conquest by Fatimid wazir al-Afdal on 26 August 1098 1 . However, since Jerusalem was their principal objective, the Crusaders — unexpectedly for other actors who had been scrambling for regional domination — joined the contest for the city, and managed to take it from the Fatimids by surprise. Later, the military prowess of the Crusaders allowed them to keep Jerusalem, despite all the Fatimids’efforts to recover it, and eventually establish Frankish states which became a major force in the region for the next two centuries. The second aspect of the situation in the Middle Eastern at the end of XI C., not less important for the outcome of the First Crusade, was related to the internal developments in the Seljuq Empire, which had direct impact on the western regions as well. Moreover, even after the disintegration of the empire, its legacy remained an important part of the political system of the Middle East. As Claude Cahen put it, “Nur-ad-Din and Saladin are inconceivable without Tughrul-Beg and Nizam-al- Mulk” 2 . Moreover, there is another, not less important point concerning the period in question, namely the role of the Crusaders in the collapse of the Seljuq empire. This question is usually overlooked by specialists on the Crusades who considered the “disintegration” of the Seljuq empire as a fait accompli at the time of the First Crusade 3 , no doubt, because the last so-called Great Seljuq sultan, Malik-Shah, had 1 See: Matveev A. Artuqids in Jerusalem: Artuqids’ Role in the Struggle of the Seljuqs, Fatimids and Crusaders for Palestine and Syria at the end of XI C. // 1st International Sym- posium of Artuqy papers, 25–27 October 2007, Mardin. (Proceedings). Ed. İbrahim Özcosar. Mardin: Mardin Valiliği Kültür Yayınları, 2008. Vol. I. P. 21–40. 2 Claude Cahen. The Turkish Invasion: The Seljukids. In: AHistory of the Crusades. Ed. K. Setton. Madison, 1969. V. I. P. 176. 3 A notion that the Seljuq empire had collapsed before the coming of the Crusaders is a truism of the Crusader history. See e.g., an analysis of the situation in the Middle East politics at the time of the Crusaders’ appearance in the East, by H. Dajani-Shakeel. Diplomatic Relations betweenMuslims and Frankish Rulers. In: Crusaders andMuslims in twelfth-century Syria. Ed. Maya Shatzmiller. [The Medieval Mediterranean. V. 1]. Leiden: Brill, 1993. P. 190–191; or one of the comprehensive works on the Crusades: The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. Oxford, 1995 (the chapter on “Islam and the Crusades”, by Robert Irving). P. 218. Virtually the only exception are the works of Carole Hillenbrand, where the coming of the Crusaders is analyzed in the context of the Seljuq history (see, e. g.: Carole Hillenbrand. The First Crusade: TheMuslimPerspective. In: The First Crusade: Origins and Impact. Ed. J. Phillips. Manchester, 1997. P. 130–141; and also, Carole Hillenbrand. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. Edinburgh: