In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
The Mawadda Association presents:
An event that occurred in Ramadan, by the decree of the Most Merciful, through the compassion of the Sultan.
The liberation of Antioch.
In the month of Ramadan, in the year 666 AH.
On the fourteenth day of that month,
Islamic history witnessed one of its greatest days,
And one of its most momentous conquests.
Through it, Allah honored the Muslims after their humiliation,
Raised high the banners of Islam,
And hoisted the flags of the Qur'an.
The hero of this great conquest
Was one of the champions of the Muslims,
And one of their illustrious and blessed commanders.
A hero who, for seventeen years,
Traversed the lands of the Muslims, east and west,
Battling the pagan Tatars,
And fighting the aggressive Crusaders.
His sword was never blunted,
His resolve never weakened,
And he was never defeated in any engagement,
Until Allah cast awe and terror
Into the hearts of his enemies and the enemies of Allah.
This hero is Sultan al-Zahir Baybars.
As for the day of his that remains throughout the ages,
It is the day of the conquest of Antioch,
And its rescue from the hands of the Crusaders.
Antioch and its momentous day
Have a long story.
This story begins
In the late fourth century AH,
When the balance of power
Between Christian Europe
and the Muslim East
Began to tilt in Europe's favor.
The Europeans did not let
This golden opportunity slip by.
The Norman knight,
Greedy for spoils, arose;
The Venetian merchant,
Looking toward the treasures of the East, arose;
The Florentine usurer,
Driven by the pursuit of wealth, arose;
The Frenchman, fleeing
From famine and plague, arose;
And the obsessive zealot,
Longing for a sip of the Jordan’s water,
Or a touch of the walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, arose.
All of them rose up,
Answering the call of Pope Urban II
To obtain forgiveness
If they liberated the grave of Christ
From the hands of the Muslims.
They headed toward the Islamic East,
Having sewn the cross
Upon their right shoulders.
The Byzantines,
The rulers of Constantinople,
Opened the way for them,
And they surged like a flood
That nothing could stand against,
And no power could divert from its goal.
In the year 491
AH,
The Crusaders arrived
At Antioch,
One of the Muslim fortresses,
And the greatest stronghold separating them
From the Byzantines.
Its governor rose to meet them
With his army and fought them
With all his might.
But
How could he be victorious,
When his sword was still dripping
With the blood of his own brothers and kin?
The city fell
Into the hands of the Crusaders,
And from it,
And its surroundings,
A Crusader principality was formed
In the lands of the Muslims.
This principality was called
The Principality of Edessa,
Or the Principality of Antioch.
The fall of that great city
Struck the Muslims
Like a thunderbolt.
Islamic peoples everywhere
Rose up,
Urging their warring,
Disputing rulers
To send their armies
To rescue Antioch.
The rulers yielded to the will of the people
And sent a portion of their armies
To liberate the stricken city.
The Islamic armies
Besieged it
Severely,
Which caused the Crusaders to taste
Every kind of torment,
And to drink from the cups of misery,
Until hunger ravaged them,
So they ate the meat
Of dead animals.
One of the priests wished to bolster
The resolve of the besieged Crusaders,
So he told them that one of the
Saints had informed him
That the lance with which
Jesus Christ was pierced was buried
In a spot in Antioch,
And that they must dig it up
From the earth, and that
The saints would fight alongside them.
The Crusaders dug up
The earth and brought out the
Fake, planted lance,
And they went mad with joy
Because of it, and rushed
To fight the Muslims, fighting
Until they broke
The siege upon themselves,
And their foothold was established
In the great city.
From that ill-fated day,
The Principality of Antioch became
A launching point for the Crusaders,
A path to Jerusalem,
A thorn in the throats
Of the Muslims, and a speck of dust
In the eyes of the people of Aleppo
And the surrounding Levant.
The situation remained
In this state for nearly [a century],
During which appeared
Two great leaders, among the greatest
Commanders of the Muslims:
The just, mujahid king,
Nur al-Din Zengi,
And the victorious, conquering hero,
Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi.
Yet neither of these two
Great leaders was destined
To conquer that great city.
Antioch remained
Awaiting the great day
And the great conqueror,
Until this day arrived:
The fourteenth of Ramadan,
In the year 666.
[666 AH].
And this conqueror
Was al-Zahir Baybars.
Sultan al-Zahir did not intend
To conquer Antioch
Until he had consolidated his kingdom,
Strengthened his army,
And conquered Caesarea,
Safed, Tiberias,
The Golan, Jaffa,
Al-Qusayr, Akkar, Safita,
And many others.
He broke the power of the Tatars,
Severed the limbs of the Crusaders,
And the opportunity
Became ripe before him.
Baybars gathered a multitude
Of his soldiers in the Levant;
He brought them from Egypt,
From Mosul,
From the Hijaz, and from everywhere.
He brought the siege engines
From Damascus,
And carried them on the backs of camels.
When the camels could no longer bear them,
The princes, soldiers,
And commanders carried them on their own shoulders.
The Sultan himself took to
Dragging the timber
Alongside the oxen,
As the historians say.
Yet, within this
Massive army, there was not a single man
Who knew where they were marching.
Terror crept into the hearts
Of the rulers of the Crusader principalities
Remaining in the lands of the Muslims,
For each of them
Thought the blow was directed
At him.
Their delegations offered the Sultan
Al-Zahir a truce
And the payment of tribute,
So he accepted the truce with most of them,
But refused to make peace with some.
The delegation of Antioch was
among those who turned back
on their heels, disappointed.
Thus, the cunning warrior
was able to isolate
his prey,
ensuring for himself and his army
that he would face it alone, without any helper,
isolated and without support.
All of this preparation
was not in vain,
for Antioch was a city
among the greatest cities in the world,
fortified with a wall
twelve miles long.
Upon this wall
were 360 towers,
and in these
towers were 20,000
battlements, patrolled
every day and night
by 4,000 guards in rotation.
The army reached
the outskirts of the city
on the first of Ramadan.
The Muslim soldiers set out
on that blessed morning
to perform the duty of jihad
to elevate the word of Allah,
while observing the duty of fasting
in obedience to Allah.
The soldiers of Allah clashed with the soldiers
of Satan in battles
of intense ferocity
that lasted for four consecutive days.
And on the
14th of Ramadan,
the Muslim armies entered
the fortified city,
after it had been subjected to the Crusaders
for nearly two centuries.
The Muslims took down
the banner of the cross from its towers,
and raised in its place
the banners of Islam.
From its battlements were heard
the voices of the muezzins,
after it had previously echoed
with the ringing of bells.
The Muslims gained
on the day of Antioch spoils,
while the Crusaders suffered
losses that could not be counted.
Historians have mentioned
that the number of the Crusaders
killed and captured
exceeded forty thousand.
Tidings of the great victory
were heralded to every
land of the Muslims,
and celebrations broke out
everywhere.
Decorations were set up in every city,
and drums were beaten in
every town.
A cup for the fasting martyrs
whose souls departed
at the walls of Antioch
with their hands gripped
upon the hilts of their swords,
and a drink from the water of Al-Kawthar
for the thirsty ones who died
with a burning thirst
for water
that was surpassed only by their thirst
for martyrdom.