Today in Middle Eastern history: the Battle of Dorylaeum (1097)
Today in Middle Eastern history: the Battle of Dorylaeum (1097)
The Crusaders win one of their most significant victories, clearing the road to Antioch.
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The First Crusade started and finished on high notes, with bookend victories at Nicaea and, of course, Jerusalem. In between…well, it’s best not to think too much about that part. But the subject of today’s anniversary, the Battle of Dorylaeum, might actually be the campaign’s high water mark. Coming about two weeks after the victory at Nicaea, Dorylaeum saw a very extended Crusader army, caught in a Seljuk ambush, manage to will its way to a victory that all but paved its road to Antioch. It’s a victory that in some ways helped to define the Crusading movement and one that I’ve seen some Crusades aficionados argue—I think with good reason—could not have been won by a different army, for reasons I’ll outline in a bit.
As they moved out from Nicaea, the Crusaders moved across the Anatolian countryside in two loosely conjoined groups, partly for logistical reasons and party because they were still more a collection of multiple small armies than a single cohesive military force. A smaller unit of probably around 10,000 men at arms (maybe 2000 knights, give or take, and the rest more lightly armed and armored infantry) led the way, commanded by the Norman prince Bohemond of Taranto, Duke Robert II of Normandy, and the expedition’s Byzantine “guide,” the general Tatikios. Most of the Crusaders, perhaps upwards of 60,000 men at arms, lagged behind with the rest of their senior leaders—Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond IV of Toulouse, Stephen II of Blois, the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy…well, as you no doubt know there were a lot of nobles involved in this operation and I think we can cut our list short here. You get the idea.
Sometime in late June, it’s recorded that Bohemond’s army began to notice that it was being shadowed. Its shadowers were scouts from a nearby army led by none other than the Seljuk Sultan of Rum himself, Kilij Arslan, and fortified by allies from the Danishmends, another Turkish principality that ruled territory in northeastern Anatolia. I’m going to refer to this combined army as “Turks” and “Turkish” for most of the rest of this essay with the understanding that this terminology is anachronistic but also a lot easier to type repeatedly than “Seljuk/Danishmend.” The Seljuks and Danishmends didn’t always get along—disunity in the Islamic world was perhaps the single greatest contributor to the First Crusade’s ultimate success—and in fact Kilij Arslan had been on his way east to campaign against the Danishmends when the Crusaders showed up before the walls of Nicaea. But the Turkic rivals decided to team up to Do Something about these new invaders whose victory at Nicaea made it clear that they wouldn’t be easily dismissed.
Crusader accounts of the size of this Turkish army range from the iffy but plausible (25,000 or so) to the laughable (Fulcher of Chartres’ chronicle of the campaign apparently puts it at 360,000, which is ridiculous in the extreme). Modern thinking puts the Turkish army at somewhere between 5000 and 10,000 mounted archers. These may have been supplemented by some number of infantry or other support troops, but from what I can tell only the mounted archers are really recorded as having participated in the battle.
On June 30 Bohemond’s contingent arrived at Dorylaeum, which had once been a fairly important Roman transit point that had by this point fallen into disuse. Dorylaeum’s archeological site is located near the modern Turkish city of Eskişehir, which is about 190 kilometers southeast of Istanbul and about 120 kilometers south of Nicaea. So we’re still talking about northwestern Anatolia—Antioch is quite a ways off and as we know the Crusaders won’t get there until mid-October. Despite having known that someone was tracking them, the Crusaders were by all accounts caught completely by surprise when the Turks attacked on July 1. Those mounted archers ran literal circles around Bohemond’s camp, dealing heavy casualties to noncombatants and to the relatively lightly armored infantry. Unable to match their maneuverability, Bohemond and his knights formed a defensive line to protect the camp. What ensued was an hours long battle of attrition, with Bohemond’s Crusaders essentially trying to stay alive in hopes that the rest of the army, which was some distance away, would eventually come to their aid.
Despite being effectively outnumbered (if we focus on the forces that actually mattered the Turks had ~8000 mounted archers against ~2000 Crusader knights), Bohemond’s forces did have one major advantage on their side. As effective as mounted archers were against noncombatants and the lightly armored infantry, they were considerably less effective at killing heavily armored knights. Nevertheless, the Turks’ repeated charges began to take a cumulative toll on both the knights and their horses, and several small groups of undisciplined knights (more of them than Bohemond would have preferred) were suckered into breaking off from the defensive line to attack. None of those attempted breakouts succeeded and many of the knights involved were killed.
Despite the relentless pressure, Bohemond and Robert were more or less able to hold their army together for several hours until the bulk of the Crusader army made it to Dorylaeum. This is a testament to their abilities and to the high regard in which they were held by their men, but more than that I think we’re at the point where we need to acknowledge that an army that didn’t believe itself to be on a genuinely righteous (in the religious sense) campaign might have broken and fled. The Crusaders were foreigners to this land and to the Byzantine Empire’s conflict with the Seljuks. Had they been here simply to fight on the empire’s behalf, perhaps in a mercenary capacity, or simply fighting in hopes of acquiring booty it’s hard to imagine them holding fast in the face of hours of repeated and increasingly deadly attacks. The hardships the Crusaders were about to endure following Dorylaeum also speak to a level of commitment that I think has to at least be considered in a religious light.
After somewhere around five hours, the main Crusader army began to arrive at Dorylaeum. Initially knights arrived in a trickle, which must have boosted morale among Bohemond’s men but didn’t do much to change the course of the battle. But over the next couple of hours much larger contingents of knights arrived and they were eventually able to drive the Turks back. Finally, a force led by the papal legate, Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, was able to use the local geography to maneuver around to the back of the Turkish line and attack its camp, at which point Kilij Arslan and company decided to scram.
Dorylaeum cleared the way for the Crusaders to march on Antioch, as Kilij Arslan opted not to pursue a rematch. Although they didn’t have to worry much about being attacked, the Crusaders did spend the next several weeks struggling to march overland in the middle of the southern Anatolian summer. Their situation would not improve after their arrival at the city. Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, meanwhile, presumably celebrated since he’d pretty much gotten what he wanted out of the Crusade. With the Seljuks suddenly on the run, he was able over the next couple of years to reassert Byzantine control over a number of strategically significant places. As a result his interest in continuing to support the Crusade appears to have waned a bit, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.